May 17, 2007

Life updates:
Studying is going fairly well. About midway through this week, I got stressed thinking about this weekend, which made my studying not that productive, which I know is COMPLETELY counterproductive, but it happened.

Essentially, today is D-Day. My last day of studying in Louisville before packing up and driving to Maryland tomorrow. Unfortunately, it's 10 am, I still haven't taken a shower, I have to stop by the auto mechanic on the way to school, I have a doctor's appointment at 2, and I really need to stop studying by about 7 pm tonight. So I'm not going to get a lot of studying done today, I can already tell. We're driving my car back east, so I brought it into the mechanic to get some minor-but-annoying things taken care of. Like, in the entire time I've owned the car (4 years next month), the cigarette lighter has never worked, because the first owner was a smoker, I think. So they fixed it, but called me yesterday to say that the fuse was still blowing sometimes, so could I bring in the thing I wanted to plug into it so they could make sure it would work? The thing I want to plug into it is an AC adapter. It plugs into the cigarette lighter at one end, and has regular electrical sockets at the other, so you can plug in a laptop, etc. And for a two-day car trip, I need to be able to study. And the doctor's appointment is for this weird, small patch of itchy rashiness I've had on my knee for -- I think -- about two months now. Since I am overcome with medical student-itis and can only recognize serious diagnoses like sporotrichosis, I'm going to let an actual doctor take a look at it to tell me that it's nothing. And that 7 pm deadline tonight? Well, there's only about 5 hours of great television to watch tonight -- and the only reason I'm allowing myself to watch it is because I have to pack at the same time. (Yeah, right. Like I haven't been watching all of my shows this whole time. Study, schmudy.)

Which brings us to packing. I've been minorly worrying about this event for some weeks, now. Tonight I have to pack for the following:
-A wedding I'm in: rehearsal dinner outfit, shoes and makeup for the big day (since we're driving east in a packed car with cats, I sent my dress back ahead of time so the MoH is holding it for me).
-Regular clothes for two weeks. Of course, I'm going to Southern Maryland, where the weather is crazy anyway, and we are in a summer of global warming craziness, so I need both warm-weather and cool-weather clothes, in both nice and not-so-nice outfit variations.
-Study materials. Laptop, power cord, PDA, PDA charger, about 10 huge books, various papers, pens, and other assorted insanity.
-Test-taking clothes for June 1. You know, they always say to wear something comfortable that you look and feel good in, with lots of layers. I have no idea what this outfit will be, but I have to bring lots of choices so I can figure it out later.
-A wedding we're going to on June 2. No biggie, just an extra dress.
-ALASKA. This is the most stressful, because I'm packing for Alaska ahead of time, but leaving the suitcase in Louisville. When Eric flies back east for the June 2 wedding, he's going to bring this suitcase with him. We're going to need to bring our largest suitcase for Alaska, since we're going to pack our winter coats and all, but the problem is that the handle broke off of our largest suitcase the last time I used it (it was a piece of crap, not a big surprise). So this weekend when we stop at my parents' house, I'm taking one of their large suitcases for Eric to bring back to Louisville with him. So I'm going to pack up our broken suitcase with my stuff, and then he's going to repack it into my parents' suitcase. I know it's so stupid, and of course I trust the man I've been dating for six years to pack all of my stuff into a suitcase, but I'm also completely neurotic when it comes to this and it's giving me palpitations. I have to be in control. It's my biggest downfall. And this is only Lesson 1 in a series of lessons I'm about to learn in the "If you want to be a doctor, you can't keep control of every part of your life" lesson. TLC, take a cue from me. When you design your little figurine to go with my life lesson, please send one to me. I'll display it proudly, I promise. On top of my control issues, I'm also a neurotic packer in general. There's always something I throw into the bag at the last minute, and I'm not going to be able to do that. So tonight I have to pack for a trip I'm not even taking until June 3, and I don't know how I'm going to do it. Thank goodness for Grey's Anatomy AND Scrubs AND ER AND the Lost special all being on tonight to sort-of take my mind off of it.

Oh yeah. And we can't go overboard in packing (did I mention I'm also an over-packer?) because when we drive back from Maryland on June 12, we'll have all of the stuff we're taking tomorrow PLUS the luggage from Alaska. So when we pack the car tomorrow, we have to make sure there's room to put the Alaska luggage in there also. And with my small trunk and the cats and all of their traveling accoutrements and all of my study materials, I'm not really sure if it's going to happen. But we'll cross that bridge tomorrow.

So there it is. I let out all my Crazy. Now I feel better. But you probably don't. You probably liked it better when you didn't know all of that was inside me, being suppressed with every fiber of my being. I've gotten pretty good at keeping the Crazy in -- most of the time, with most people. But now you know :)

Last night we saw Spamalot, the fifth of our six Broadway shows. It was awesome. I haven't seen The Holy Grail in many, many years, but I remembered the basic plot, and Eric tells me that the majority of the dialog was exactly the same. There were definitely some updates, though, and Broadway-appropriate adaptations. "You'll never make it on Broadway (without Jews)" is just one such example. I think the reason I liked it best was because of the way it made fun of Broadway shows. For instance, the song called, "The song that goes like this" was a parody of all other Broadway shows that "go like that" -- in its first iteration, it was the boy-and-girl-sing-together-lovingly-and-romantically song; in its second, it was the girl-sings-like-a-diva-in-a-solo song; and in its third, it was the boy-and-girl-kiss-and-prepare-for-a-wedding-after-the-boy-completes- his-mission song. Pretty hilarious stuff. As I've said after each one of these shows, go see it. Not counting 12 Angry Men, since that's a play, I think I rank the shows we've seen in this order: 1) 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, 2) Spamalot, 3) Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, 4) All Shook Up. I've heard Lion King is good, but I really don't think it can knock Spelling Bee out, but we'll have to wait until next month to see.

There has been one thing I've noticed during almost all of these Broadway shows. Each one has at least one gay or Jewish joke, which I find hilarious, but I'm not always sure the Louisville audience does. I always feel a little uneasy when those jokes fly, and it reminds me (again) that I actually can tell on a daily basis that I'm not on the East Coast and instead am in a weird part of the Bible Belt. Oh well. Not a topic for discussion today.

So, happy Thursday to you. I hope it's more productive for you than mine will be for me. The next time I blog I'll be back home in Maryland, and hopefully studying even harder. Oh yeah, and happy six years to ESC. It feels like it's been both forever and no time at all.