fast.

that's how time is going. i'm not all that busy, and i'm not all that entertained in my spare time, but it's somehow going by SO quick... like i think one day i may wake up and my entire life have just rushed by. i mean, i'm practically 30.

maybe this feeling is exaggerated right now because my weekends have been very busy. very very fun. and very busy. it's made my chicago month race. unlike my last chicago month... but let's not relive that again...

weekend #1 - skinner came in from pittsburgh: we ate, we played games, we dyed her hair, we shopped. it was so fun to see her! here's one of the few pictures of our weekend. it was bright and sunny!


weekend #2 - sarah came into town for an interview and stayed with me at meridith's house. we went to dinner friday night, then helped meridith and her boyfriend with a puzzle (that took us a WEEK to finish, by the way), saturday morning she had her interview, then the four of us went out for a sushi lunch. sarah and i then took the train downtown where we intended to shop a little, then meet a friend for dinner. we only went to old navy so she could get a scarf and gloves... it was cold! then as we were heading towards the pub where we were supposed to be meeting our pal matt, we accidentally ran into santa claus. turns out, that night was the parade and fireworks show prior to the lighting of the michigan avenue trees. it was fun and pretty, and made us a little late. which turned out to be ok because matt ended up working a little late. we beat him there by about 10 minutes. after dinner, which was amazing! we met matt's friends and ended up staying out until about 3 am... (there was a small decision making session around midnight, when we would've needed to leave to catch the last train out... we decided to stay over with matt at his friend ryan's and take the train in the morning...) sarah was exhausted! she had been up since 5 am, and had only slept a few hours the night before! we headed out for the train station after a brief nap... made it onto the 8:30 train, which subsequently broke down and got back an hour later than it was supposed to. no matter though. we grabbed some breakfast and went back to meridith's where sarah showered and headed out for detroit. this is one of the only photos that i took before my camera batteries died. i had extras with that were also dead. sarah took a few, but she hasn't sent them to me yet.

weekend #3 - thanksgiving... i had about 5 full days off work and really wanted to come home. i decided not to since it's an 8 hour drive and i am coming home on friday anyway... now i'm even more glad that i didn't make the trip since everyone was sick sick sick. i ended up having thanksgiving with meridith's family on thursday. we put together another puzzle (it's possible we've become obsessed...). thursday night we attempted to do some pre-black friday shopping at some nearby outlet malls that had "midnight madness"... it was madness alright. absolute madness. we sat stopped dead on the interstate for an hour and a half... all three lanes of traffic. dead. stop. we ended up making our way to the left lane and skipping past the outlets and turning around at the next exit and heading home. we made it back home about 2, i got up at 4 to go to best buy (where the line was insane and they had hired a dj to entertain the crowds) to get my new red razr phone which is so so pretty and then went back home to bed. about 7 we got up and went to old navy. then back home and to sleep until about 11. later that night, we made a successful attempt at the outlet malls. which was fun and the weather was so nice. saturday i went with meridith's family to her sister's house in milwaukee. her neices are real cute. it was fun. when we were getting ready to go, the 2 year old was giving everyone kisses... she looked at me and said "camden, kiss?" it was so cute!

so that's about all. and really sums up my month here. the actual rotation has been a waste of time. but it's been easy and guilt-free to take time off to interview... i'm 3 down and have another in des moines on friday. then next week in kansas city. then??? not sure where... but there are a few left after that. i'm still waiting for one to jump out and scream "pick me"... otherwise, they have all gone very well and i could be happy at pretty much any of them.

there you have it. a post. and check out the ticker... 6 months. eek.

in which i say nothing witty.

as if anything i say is witty. but i like to humor myself anyway.

******

i'm staying with my best friend from college this month. and this weekend our other really good friend flew in from pittsburgh for girl's weekend. we had fun. and did girly things. like hair dye-ing and foot spas and shopping (but we were all really good and nobody bought anything!!!). and we went to meridith's parent's house... they have a new kitten and it's super super cute! and it really makes me want one!!

******

next weekend, my friend sarah comes into town. she has an interview at one of the residency programs here, and she's going to stay with meridith and it. it will be good to see her. though i'm not sure we'll do anything actually exciting. at all.

******

we don't have clinic until tomorrow afternoon. but i have to go in at 9am anyway... to discuss spina bifida. i'm mostly annoyed because i can't stand listening to mcgreasy speak. and it's highly possible that he intends to talk about spina bifida from 9am until noonish. and that makes me want to poke my eyes out.

eewww.

dr mcdreamy (who truly does love me) has been replaced with dr disgusting. i'm not sure he's showered in the past couple months. he doesn't smell, but his hair is so greasy and out of control and probably hasn't been cut since the last time he washed it. ick. and he's weird. weird weird weird. and he thinks he's funny. but he's not. good thing for me he doesn't really work all that much, and i have to take a bunch of days off for residency interviewing and whatnot.

******

speaking of residency interviewing. i had my first one yesterday... and it went really really well. there were a lot of things about the program that make it very attractive. and several that make me want to run. the problem is, that's how it's going to be everywhere, and i have to be fair (to the programs and myself) and figure out a way to weight those things in order to determine where i would be the happiest. i know that i really really want to be in kansas city, but there are definite disadvantages to that program as well... so, i smell a big pros and cons excel spreadsheet coming my way! :-)

******

back to mcdreamy... i kinda miss him. and the rest of the PICU team. and him. it was by far the best rotation of my clinical experience thus far. (and not just because he's mcdreamy. though that didn't hurt...)

PICU.

so, everyone is crabby because i haven't posted in, umm, forever. it's because the picu (pediatric intensive care unit) is a crazy hole of madness and messes. just when you think things are settling down, you have three code blues within an hour. that's a lot. it's a high stress environment even when things are settled. it makes me nervous how much i like it though.

i perhaps like it so much because of my very own dr mcdreamy. h.o.t. and he loves me. and he's on the residency selection committee. it's good times. and did i mention h.o.t. and single. and h.o.t. :-)

the residents that i've been working with are really great and all the doctors make great teachers. i've learned more in the past few weeks than in the last several months combined.

but it makes me tired. so i'm going to sleep now.

ouch.

i've come to the sad sad realization that i am allergic to cinnamon gum. everytime i chew it, i get these sores in my mouth (this time worse than ever before...)... and i googled it... "cinnamon gum" and "allergic reaction"... totally exists. and if i don't stop chewing it, i'll get squamous cell carcinoma in my mouth. and besides that, it hurts real real bad.

do you have any pumpkin?

ps, it's highly possible that this is a you-had-to-be-there story...

friday night after the ray-pec high school homecoming football game, i went to get frozen custard with the family i'm living with because we had buy one, get one free coupons. we're all standing around, staring at the menu, deciding on our individual orders and it's mary's and my turn... we had made the decision and were ready to order...

but when we got up there, she saw a sign that said "pumpkin spice latte"... and decided she'd like to have pumpkin in her concrete (like a blizzard from DQ, but about 47 times better...). except pumpkin isn't listed on the list of things you can get in your concrete, so i explained to her that it's a seasonal thing, so obviously it wouldn't be on the menu that lives there all year...

so we go back up to the window, and i ask the girl, "do you have any pumpkin something that you can put into a concrete..." she kind of stares at me and then points at a LARGE sign hanging directly above her head that reads "pumpkin pie concrete"... yeah, so mary gets excited and orders it. and loves it, i might add.

as we're driving out, one of the kids says "pumpkin pie concrete"... at which point we all look over and on the HUGE sign for the custard place it says in gigantic wording (that we can probably read from our front door...) "PUMPKIN PIE CONCRETE!"

we almost died laughing. i can't remember the last time i laughed so hard. mostly because we're big dorks... but oh man... the ridiculousness with which i asked the question just keeps magnifying itself...

rad.

radiology is pretty boring. make that very boring. it would probably be ok if i were actually reading films with a doctor. but instead i hang out with the techs while they are shooting the films (or ultrasounds, or ct scans, etc)... and it's boring. very boring.

******

i officially have two. count them TWO invitations to interview for residency positions. i anticipate a few more (maybe 5 or 6; i applied to 10 programs)... but i just submitted my application on friday, so we're looking good so far! currently, i'll be interviewing in des moines and omaha. i applied only to midwest programs... so i'll stay semi-close no matter what. (at least that's the plan as it stands for now...)

******

in order to keep myself from puking from nerves about interview invitations, i bought these.

$1.99

guess what that bought me today!!

ears. noses. throats.

aka ENT. sometimes it's fun to see how many acronyms you can get into a sentence. it's like a language within a language.

what a great weekend! i saw a lot of my family on saturday, and had lunch with my best friend from high school today (haven't seen her in 3 years) (and ps, she has a cute cute baby girl who is 4 months old. and cute!).

i have to be in the OR at 730 tomorrow. yuck. one more week of ENT, then two weeks of radiology. good times, huh? we shall see.

i know this isn't the post you've been pining for... but i'm tired. good night.

to keep you busy.

eewww.

decovin totally peed on me after we came inside from our walk this evening. gross.

it's good to be home.

can i just say that decovin is the happiest baby i know. he's so sweet and good and playful.

******

friday, i went to see my friend sarah in omaha (her hometown) where she is doing a rotation. we babysat all night. well, until like 1:30am anyway. but apparently a baby was recently killed by it's sitter and so her aunt, who is notoriously hyper-vigilant anyway, was flipping out. and sarah, who cannot say no because she is catholic (which is a guilt far greater than camden-guilt), said we would come babysit. it was fine, i guess. i'm not sure what we would have done anyway. but when we got back to sarah's we were hyped up a little, and decided to go for a quick swim. it was pretty chilly out. chilly enough such that the temperature of the air made the temperature of the water feel warm. kind of. it was freezing. we stayed in maybe 3 or 4 minutes. but at least we had some excitement!

i left there saturday morning and drove the rest of the way home. i spent the rest of the evening unloading my car and filtering through things. somehow, i collect a lot of things. but hopefully, i've pared down to just a few suitcases to get me by the next few months (while i'm living with friends in the city).

sunday was pretty fun. church was great and it was wonderful to see so many old friends. one of my teen girls came up to me and said she was desperate to talk to me, so i took her to lunch and heard all about the woes of teen love and the drama that goes with it. she's a good kid though, and it was fun to spend a little time with her.

sunday night, mom and i went to see the devil wears prada, which was pretty cute.

monday, we came to jen's. where i am now. getting ready for sleeping. because it's late!! we had a nice pesto salmon dinner with vegetables, went for a walk, and played darts. and did i mention i snuggled that baby a LOT?

all in all, it was a very nice holiday weekend. and i don't have to work this week. so it's won.der.ful. i could get used to this!

i'm movin' on.

woowhee. i've lived in davenport for 6 months now. that's kind of a long time. long enough to get acclimated to your living space. long enough to learn the best route to the best mall. long enough to pick out a favorite coffee shop. the weird thing is, it's not long enough to make this place home. or perhaps it was my mindset from the beginning. when you know things are temporary, you never think of them as permanent. you start the countdown from the start, and when the countdown is up, you pack up your little ford focus and hit the road. and it doesn't even matter if your name is jack. today's the day. i loaded up the car last night (to the brim, mind you) and will take off in a few hours. i'm going home.

it was surprising, i didn't even cry when i said goodbye to the friends i'd made here. and i would consider them to be good friends... and i cry easily... and it's hard to know when we'll see eachother again... and all those things combined, i expected to cry. but maybe knowing from the start that all this was temporary somehow shielded me... that and the fact that i'm really ready to leave. because i'm going home!

so i have a couple of errands to run today, and tonight i'm going to visit a friend in omaha. but tomorrow? tomorrow, i'm going home.

ps. i'm excited!

9 months.

sweet!

just like grey's anatomy.

this week i started an anesthesia rotation. i'll finish it up next week. 2 week rotations are great.

this doctor thinks i actually am an anesthesiologist. he stays in the room long enough to start the case and then leaves me to play with the gases and keep the patient still. and breathing. yikes.

******

here's my new haircut. i love it. love.

******

my roommate and i went to see the world trade center movie tonight. depressing. good. but depressing.

******

so i've had a headache for the past 4 days and today the doctor noticed. so he took me into an exam room in the pain clinic (where we worked this afternoon - but i hadn't met any of the nurses there yet...) and cracked my neck, then gave me a shot of toradol (cousin of ibuprofen, but much, much better), then turned out the lights and told me to take a nap.

a few minutes later, i hear a nurse outside talking about how she thinks there's someone in room 5. she opens the door and asks if she can help me. i explain to her who i am and she leaves the room. i hear her a few minutes later explaining to another nurse that "there's a med student sleeping in there. it's just like grey's anatomy!"

boards.

so totally over. for a couple years anyway.

boards.

tomorrow. eek.

quite a cluster.

so, i've been up for 2 hours now. left my house at about 8... drove around for about an hour and ended up back at my house. see, first the road to the coffee shop that we study at was blocked. so i thought i'd try one of the other roads... and then another and then another. then i thought i'd stop and ask one of the cops that was blocking the way except he screamed at me to keep going (which made me even madder because he was young and cute)... then karen (my roommate who left 45 minutes after i did) asked a lady who was helping direct traffic and found out that there was a gas leak or something. so then we decide to go to panera. except panera was BUSY. and karen doesn't deal with lots of noise well when she's studying. so we made the decision to just get coffee and then come back home to study. so here i am. if i fail boards, i'm totally blaming the cop who screamed at me.

who'd've.

as in, "who would have"... can you have a word with 2 contractions in it?

i can stop studying now.

proverbs 17:22 "a cheerful heart is good medicine"