A "Big Commitment" ...ha

I would just like to publicly announce that I have officially committed to physically going to school on a daily basis. GASP, I know. It's ok if you full-time workers want to laugh at me - I am fully aware of how ridiculous it is and I in fact encourage you to laugh at me. It's a big step for me, however.

I started this past Monday and have successfully attended class every day this week! I'm pretty darn pround of myself, I must admit. It's been rough getting up at 6:30 every day. I used to do it all the time during the year that I worked in Bethesda, but honestly it wasn't easy then and it isn't easy now! I'm really not a morning person! I'm not as bad as my husband tends to be in that department, but getting up early still is NOT my cup of tea. It's good for me though. Third year isn't gonna cut me any slack, and I might as well get used to it.

I also really needed to get out of my isolated bubble. There's not much I can do about the fact that I have to study alone (or the fact that most of my day must be consumed by studying... alone) - I just can't study with other people. FAR too distracting. I might be able to do a group review session right before a test, once I've learned the material well, but in medical school the reality is that you NEVER reach the point where you're comfortable enough with said material to break out of your solitary study bubble and bounce information off of your classmates. You study til the last minute and STILL feel almost completely hopeless walking into the test! So realistically, that means I have to be alone much of the time. That's just freaking depressing. I was beginning to feel that in my life, it might be quite LITERALLY depressing, so I really needed to do something about it. I think I was in the middle of a vicious cycle involving study-induced isolation followed by depression followed by lack of motivation followed by worsening grades followed by further depression and lack of motivation... you get the picture. Going nowhere good. Seeing other human beings (other than strangers at the store/gym and my husband) is so far proving to be quite uplifting in and of itself! Shocking.

It's also freeing up the rest of my day to actually study, which will eventually bear fruit as far as my grades are concerned. One would hope, anyway. I know that I've been operating in a perpetual state of "catch-up" as a result of my previous "strategy" (if you can even call it that!), and it was a lot easier to deny it than to do something about it, so I denied it. I'm still adjusting to the difficulty of "doing something about it" (I'm VERY tired for one, and still trying to figure out exactly how best to use this extra afternoon study time), but if nothing else it just makes me feel good to know that I am, in fact, DOING something about it. And I'm hoping that even just having something to "feel good" about (as relates to school) will start the reversal of that vicious downward spiral from which I'm trying to recover.

My hope is that this (rather large) change, coupled with my sincere attempts lately to slow down, cut the superfluous crap and enjoy what's good about my life (in general), will have an overall calming and uplifting effect. Because honestly, like I said before, I have way too much good in my life to be allowing anything to make me feel bad.

Happy Valentines Day!

Ahhh, Valentines Day. I admit, it's a total "Hallmark Holiday" - an excuse for retailers to squeeze another buck out of us poor saps whom they refer to as "consumers". But it's fun to have an excuse to buy a little something fun for your sweetheart, dress up a little and have a nice dinner out (Lord knows we all need to get out and do that from time to time!), and spend a little time thinking about all the wonderful reasons that this person gives you to keep on loving them so much. It's a day that forces you to forget the little irritations and squabbles and make an honest, old-fashioned effort at romance. And who doesn't need a little more romance in their life? I know I could use some! And I don't even have kids yet! Anyway, I'm all for a day to slow down and enjoy the person you love.

On that note, I've also very much enjoyed being snowed in for the past week! Again, I'm all for being forced to slow down and enjoy the people (or in my case, person and kittens) you love :] We did absolutely nothing productive. Well, that's not true - I did do some laundry and I washed the slip covers from our couches. But we didn't tackle any major projects or anything - just sat around and watched movies for the most part! We were snowed in last weekend with the Friday-Saturday snow, then Ben worked Monday and Tuesday (while my school was still closed), and the Proving Grounds closed Wednesday and Thursday from the Tuesday-Wednesday snow so Ben was home with me (again, my school was still closed), and Friday was his regular day off (though I did have to go in and take my exam... which doesn't need any discussion. Yeah, it went THAT well...). I probably couldn't list all the movies we watched if my life depended on it - it was a lot of movies! Tomorrow is a federal holiday for Ben so he'll be home with me AGAIN, and I just have lectures tomorrow so I don't have to go in to school. So long story short, we've been blessed with LOTS of quality time together here lately :] And despite how crazy my husband can be, amazingly enough we don't drive each other nuts when confined to a small space for long periods of time!

I am about to begin suffering for all this time off that I've enjoyed, however. We still have to learn the same amount of material unfortunately. They've compressed our schedule a bit by adding a third lecture each day for the next 6 school days, which is just FANtastic. Now I can try to cram three hours worth of lecture material into my brain each day instead of two, which was apparently already too much for me to handle. So I'm real psyched about that. Ugh. If I actually survive the next year and a half, it'll be an honest-to-goodness, modern-day miracle.

PS - Funny story: Ben and I just exchanged cards and little gifts - we totally got each other the same card! Well, not the same exact card, but they had the same message in them - one was adapted to be a "husband" card and the other a "wife"card. It was pretty funny :] Guess we feel the same way about each other! I got him a nose hair trimmer (LOL) and Office Space on DVD - just stuff he has wanted and has never gotten around to buying. Plus I tease him about his protruding nose hairs fairly frequently ;] And he got me the gift of guilt-free, delicious coffee (a Starbucks gift card), which is just about all I really need in life (aside from my Valentine, himself!).

The Obligatory Blizzard Post

Just figured I'd join the Blogger snow conversation :] Hey, it's the biggest news of our week! We never really measured, but reports around the area were in the 27-28" range. It was pretty intense! I woke up at some point in the middle of the night to total white-out conditions - I could barely see the parking lot from our bedroom window! My poor husband got up this morning and went out for the first round of shoveling with about 20" on the ground and the wind still whipping...

Poor guy didn't know where to start!

Knee-deep, plus the plow left-overs that got shoved behind our cars

This was at about 11am - it didn't stop til after 3.

I love the little strip of car that's still visible on the car in the end-spot - it would eventually disappear before the snow stopped falling!

He went out again around 3:30 after the snow stopped falling and cleaned up the additional accumulations, let the cars run a bit, and got us all pristine-ly dug out. He gets very amped up about digging out the cars, and won't quit til every flake is gone! I'm telling you, he's OCD about certain things, which is totally unexpected if you've known the kid for any appreciable amount of time. It's bizarre. Last time he cleaned the bathroom he was in there for over an hour, no joke. And it's not like we live in total filth, he's just really intense about cleaning!

Anyway, of course our myriad weekend plans got cancelled, which is just as well. We moved my mom's birthday dinner from Friday to Thursday to beat the snow, and spent a lovely evening at Red Lobster in Owings Mills with my mom :] On Friday I did some last-minute grocery/liquor shopping (you know, the essentials!) - and of course the stores were total mad-houses - so by the time Ben got home from work we were ready to stay in for the weekend! I've just been studying all day, with a few breaks to prepare meals here and there. My poor sleepy husband went into our bedroom to "lay down" at 8pm... I'm expecting that he'll either sleep thru the night, or wake up with a second wind at about 10pm and go bonkers. He'll probably do something ridiculous like start scrubbing the kitchen floor because he's all jacked up (and has had a bug up his butt about scrubbing the kitchen floor for about a week now... guess I shouldn't complain!). Though with all the snow/salt/road-grossness that always follows snow storms, there's probably no point in cleaning the floor til all this is gone! As I always say, "whatever blows your skirt up, darlin'!"

I'm feeling pretty good about my exam, I think. My studying has been going well, and it's not nearly as much material as I'm accustomed to studying for a single exam. However, it's only a 55-pointer, which means very little room for error! But that also means it doesn't account for an enormous portion of my grade, which is nice. Exams in this course are much lower-pressure sitautions, because there are more of them so no single exam is worth more than 14% of my total grade. For which I am very grateful :]

For now I'm on a study-break, blogging and watching Christmas Vacation ;] With a glass of wine, of course. Pacific Rim Sweet Riesling. TRY IT.

Wilting Wednesday

Wednesdays are rough. I'm right smack in the middle of the week, and whatever motivation I may have mustered after my weekend of rest is clearly wilting. It doesn't help that I have ICM on Thursdays, which I spend my Wednesday evenings dreading. ICM should make me happy - I usually get to see a patient and learn clinically-relevant things. But it also means that I have to be at school in the afternoon, which I don't like. And luck usually has it that Thursday is NOT a day I'd otherwise have to go to school (not always, but it seems like more often than not I don't have any reason to be there for the course I'm in). Ah whatever. Just me bitching over piddly things. At least I can sleep in a little tomorrow.

In other more exciting news, I got a summer research internship at the Johns Hopkins Cystic Fibrosis Research Center! I'm pretty thrilled! It's not going to pay nearly as much as NIH would, but I'm much more excited about the work itself, and my commute will be about 15-20 minutes - even shorter than my commute to school! It pays enough for us to get by, which is really all I need to be concerned with.

Anyway, I've expressed interest in a project related to the specific genetic mutation that my niece Lacy has - deltaF508 - which causes her CF. It's the most common CF mutation (hence the research focus), and it results in the production of a protein that doesn't get processed normally by the cell and doesn't function well. This protein would normally form a channel in the cell membrane that allows salts to flow through. But the mutant form of this protein (that Lacy has) gets hung up in processing and never makes it to the cell membrane to do its job, and the lack of this one channel results in Cystic Fibrosis. HOWEVER, research has shown that if we could get this protein out of the processing jam and get it to the membrane, it would function well enough (though still not at 100%) to significantly improve function in the tissues where it's needed, and possibly eliminate CF symptoms altogether in patients who are more mildly affected to begin with. The lab that I'm working in this summer is working on this problem, and it's the project that I'm most interested in helping out with. My boss expressed that I could work on whatever interests me, so I'm hoping to get assigned to this project :] It would feel pretty good to walk away from this summer job feeling like I've made some contribution that could directly affect Lace one day. And not just in a round-about way, but in a very real way - this is the mutation that she suffers from (along with the other 80-some percent of kids with CF), so a new therapy for solving this particular problem is something she could directly benefit from. CF is actually THE most common inherited disease in the US - that's a lot of kids (and a lot of future kids - 1 in 31 of us are carriers).

Switching gears, we went to Florida this past weekend and had a GREAT time escaping the snow for some 70-degree weather! It did rain most of the time, but when we landed in Orlando and the guys out on the tarmack were wearing shorts (the guys on the tarmack at BWI were in beanies and winter coats!), we were pretty thrilled ;] It was only 75 and sunny on Friday - Saturday and Sunday were mid-60's and rainy. Still really warm though! It was wonderful to finally get to visit with my grandparents a bit - my granddad is an absolute riot - and the wedding was beautiful :] Despite the rain, of course. I suppose I'm bad luck at weddings... Anyway, of course we didn't get to spend much time with my childhood best friend (the bride) since she was otherwise occupied, but they had great music and good food and an open bar, so we had ourselves a lovely little evening, and we did get to talk to her a bit - she definitely made a little extra effort to stop by a few times since we rarely get to see each other. Such a sweetie :] Where are the pictures, you might ask? Good question. My camera made it all the way to Florida, just not to the wedding. FAIL. I was so pissed. But we made sure that her photographer got a few shots of her and I together, so there is SOME record of this alleged "trip to Florida".

We have a busy weekend ahead that is likely to be snowed-out, which wouldn't be a huge crisis since I do have an exam on Monday and I really should STUDY if I'm trying to stick to this "turning over a new leaf" thing with this new class. It's only on a week and a half of material, and I've been keeping up better this past week, so hopefully the studying won't be too overwhelming. Anyway, we're supposed to go to dinner on Friday for my mom's birthday, bring my step-sister home with us for a sleepover, go to my step-dad's holiday family gathering (in Edgewater... NOT CLOSE AT ALL), drop my step-sister off with them and hang out for a bit, host Ben's work friends and their wives for the UFC fight Saturday night (til 1am), go to church (I also have a nursery training while we're there), and then head to Janelle's downtown for a Superbowl Party!!! So if it dumps on us Friday night thru Saturday, missing out on having Shaylin here and going to this family thing would really free up some much-needed study time! Ugh how do I get so over-booked? Probably because I don't pay attention. Grr.

For now I gotta go get ready to head out for dinner - we're meeting my Dad and his girlfriend and my Grammy at Carabba's in Hunt Valley for dinner :] Of course my husband still isn't home, and we're leaving in 45 minutes. Wish me luck!