I don't have anything interesting to say today. In general, I never really have something interesting to say. Not to discredit myself or my thoughts, but who could possibly be interested in reading what I have to say? Marketers, that's who! Yes they leave little uplifting comments about your blog and then leave some sort of link to a dating service or Canadian immigration service. The thing that is really funny about all of this is how marketers play the odds. I have never mentioned dating on my blog, but since these people are playing the odds chances are that they will run into a few people who may want to check out the site. In fact I'd definitely wager that there are a ton of blogs devoted to dating scenes (ala that show with Sarah Jessica Parker about the 4 whores...I don't think I need to say that I am not a big fan of that show..heh heh heh and no i don't think that people who write about dating dates or hwatever are whores...just the four characters on that show) I'd be interested in finding out if these people get paid per hit to the links when people click on them. Is it a traffic based income system, or do people have to sign up for whatever service is being provided in order to be paid. Now all that being said I have never mentioned Canadian immigration (I received a link to this as a comment on a blog many weeks ago). I also cannot imagine that there are too many blogs about this, unless it is some sort of niche fetish thing. "Oh yeah, talk to me more about U.S. naturalization baby oh yeah." I am sure there are some blogs out there that are all about immigrating and that is all fine and good, but are there enough of them to warrant a marketer sending out links to a Canadian immigration service? I keep forgetting that if there is a surface somewhere, someone will try and put an ad on it even in a digital medium. Frankly I think the whole idea of placing an ad in a blog cloaked as a comment is pretty rude, but I'm not going to let it get to me, nor am I going to block them from being made. Why you ask? Because I don't really care and this crap is never going to go away. It will also be an interesting experiment to see what kind of links people end up putting on there.

In other news: I was in the lab last night finishing up an experiment that went horribly wrong on Monday morning and managed to procure a recrystallization of p-nitroaniline. Very exciting stuff this recrystallization. I feel like the lamp actually worked and I wouldn't freak out because I won't be getting an F (a not so obscure movie reference in which I invite all of the marketers to try and name the film..here's a hint: Brat Pack)

Every thursday I have my 2nd calculus class of the week and I have been writing an impromptu comment in my notebook each time I've been in class for about an hour. Here is the run down:

Week 1: I am going to f**king die in this class!
Week 2: More than I ever wanted to know about pi!
Week 3: Class cancelled, no comment
Week 4: Why am I doing this to myself!
Week 5: More than I ever wanted to know about turkey (the bird not the country)
Week 6: TBA

John Roberts was just confirmed as the next cheif justice of the supreme court. I...I don't know what to say except "Women run for your lives because soon your womb will not be your own!" This might be a bit extreme, but keep in mind that the power that comes with this position can and does strange things to people. This move also adds another piece the Bush agenda wherein the checks and balances swayed in a single direction and accountablilty is no longer viable option in government.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
"Does anyone have any Scope?"
-ah yes the old standby Family Guy

I really need to be studying physics right now

9/22/05-9/28/05

9/22/05
So I have felt the first pangs of nervous anxiety this semester and thought for a few brief moments about whether or not this is the path that I was meant to follow. It was all very brief I assure you but it did cause a night of restless sleep (if you can call lying awake, staring at the clock, sleep.)

Strange also is that I am really enjoying organic chemistry...my dentist upon hearing this referred to me thereafter as "one of THOSE people"...) It has not been that difficult so far, but I know the worst is yet to come. Keep your fingers crossed for me. Physics has been really interesting so far as well. Calculus 2 is a large pit of hell that I cannot wait to crawl out of.

In November I will be starting an MCAT review class in an attempt to get a decent score. I would be lying to you all if I said that I was not worried. Frankly, I am terrified by the whole test, application and interview process that waits for me in the middle of next year. Will they think that I am too old? Will my grades be good enough? Am I smart enough to be a doctor? Will I score high enough on the MCAT? Will I be accepted in a US school or will I have to resort to the University of Guadalajara or a school in the Caribbean and live the rest of my life with the stigma that is sometimes attached?

For the moment I know somewhat of what it must be like to be in Med school based on the fact that I have been pretty much studying non-stop for the last 3 weeks. I am starting to get those dark circles near my eyes.

9/28/05
Nothing new to report except that the amount of sleep that I am not getting is compounding in on itself such that I have no idea what day it is, the time, nor anything else. When I do sleep I am dreaming about formulas and nomenclatures, carbon chains and chalk boards. Thankfully I am getting some sleep. My body aches, I have too much reading to do. My orgo lab has not been to pleasing so far and will have to continue an experiment into the evening hours tonight in order to obtain a crystalline yield. My wife misses me and thinks that we don't spend enough time together, but she is also as busy as I am in terms of time. She is working for two professors, taking classes, and doing field placement. Our only solace at this time is that we get to eat dinner with each other (usually) and we take a moment to watch an episode of x-files, six feet under, northern exposure, [Enter TV show name here], etc. The best part about all this is that we have no money. WE PO! We are so poor that our "welcome mat" just says "wel!" Not that anyone needs to hear about our financial woes and we really don't have it that bad, since we have a solid roof over our head and the occasional spending spree at Taco Bell. So really I have nothing to complain about, but it sucks not to have a lot of money and anyone that says that money can't buy you happiness is an idiot. It may not make you happy, but the material things that you can purchase in exchange for said money can be quite amusing and amusing for a very long time. Again, I digress, I shouldn't even be talking about this because of all the hurricane victims, and world poverty in general. we have it good so I'll just shut up now.

Had a conversation with the pre-med advisor who managed to give me a pretty good pep talk in which he said that he was certain that I would get in to med school somewhere. That was very nice of him.

I find myself answering questions from people in my physics class even when I don't completely understand the material myself: Recipe for disaster anyone?

Organic lecture is going ok. I'll come back to you all on this one after my first exam on the 11th of October.

On the 8th of October my favoritist band ever is coming to Radio City Music Hall and I trust that I will be going with the wife and the in-laws. Dead Can Dance has produced some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard and their concerts are a religious experience. The most incredible sounds and feelings emanate from the stage when they are on. Wow...I have something to look foward to. Dead Can Dance may not be for everyone, but they should be. If you don't like them than I will respect your opinion, but we can't be friends anymore. HA!

Birds are neat creatures when you don't own any as pets. They can fly and that is just so cool!

I will start exploring medical schools in the coming weeks in semi-conjunction with my MCAT prep course. I need to explore all of my options and see what each school has to offer and start looking in to the likelyhood of me even getting in to certain ones.

Well that's all folks.....

QUOTE OF THE DAY
Now I'm where I want to be and who I want to be
and doing what I always said I would and yet I feel I haven't
won at all. Running for my life and never looking
back in case there's someone right behind to shoot me
down and say he always knew I'd fall.
(File this one under..."I can't believe milhouse is quoting a freekin musical")

Blah Blah Blah...school....Blah Blah Blah...work...Blah Blah Blah...whine whine whine

Yeah so here I am in this world of too much coffee and not enough to do at work, but you don't want to do any kind of studying whatsoever so you update your blog kind of day. (12:02pm)

(1:28pm) So I was wrong about the day that I was having, the phones started ringing of the hook and people on conference calls looking for information, the usual checks to write every week and then the mail comes in and that occupies your time.

Funny story...My wife spelled cheese "C-h-e-e-z-e" the other day. I think that she has a certain snack craker on the brain.

I'll just leave ya'll today with a nice little uplifting quote....

QUOTE OF THE DAY
"But if you never try
you'll never know
just what your worth.
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones...
I will try to fix you."
-Coldplay

Finally!...an update

So in the headlines today a string of bombings went off across Iraq with 130 people killed. The reason I bring this up you ask? I would like to know what the hell the Iraqi Prime Minister is doing in MICHIGAN???? Is there a problem with the Iraqi-American population in MICHIGAN that we don't know about? Are there bombings in MICHIGAN that are not being reported? What the hell is going on here? The words "Puppet", "Photo-Op", "America done good", "making progress" and various other "buzz" statements are slowly seeping into my already over-active brain. Does anyone else think that this is a little odd or am I just a little crazy?

I don't even want to mention school in here today because I am sure that most of my loyal readers (all three of you!) are sick and tired of hearing about it. Let me just say that I now know how to write the formula for ethylisopropylmethylamine. I can also tell you where a spaceship's location would be between the earth and the moon where the gravitational fields of the earth and the moon acting on the spaceship are equal to each other. I haven't quite figured out how to balance my schedule so that I don't feel like I am behind in every single class (which I don't appear to be so far, but it still feels that way.)

Other than that life is good despite my need for sleep, my need for more time with the wife, and my desire to climb to the top of a bell tower and start taking people out.

Ciao!

So I'll be updating this tonight I think.....

Off to the dentist to get my crown, so I can't say much..

and so I say...Alas...

So very very tired

Only two weeks into school and I am exhausted...just plain exhausted. I go from school to work and work to school and by the time I get home I don't feel like doing anything at all, but there is always studying to do. I read and read and work on problems and read some more....this is going to be hell in a hand basket and I've only just started...add to that the fact that I still have not been to one of my classes (said class meets for the first time this Monday)...I think I have it bad now but will soon have it even worse. Thankfully I do have the weekends to catch up on things until I start my MCAT prep course which will take up a good deal of my Sundays starting in November.

So here are the updates in general:

Organic Chemistry so far is actually really interesting. The instructor is very thorough and is more than willing to stop and answer questions when someone has an problem. Don't see that too often in classes with large populations of students.

Physics is really damn interesting. I wish that I had taken it a lot earlier in my school career. The instructor is pretty darn good so far. I have never been very good with ratios and dimensional analysis so I fear this may be an issue with me for the duration of the semester. I know that it all comes down to an algebraic or fractional relationship, but for some reason it is very hard for me to keep what is where straight. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will wake up and smell the coffee sooner rather than later.

Calculus 2....let's just say that I get a lot of personal attention in the class since I am pretty much teaching myself this stuff. So far, on my own, the concepts have not been too bad. Reading the sections on my own is much clearer than any lecture I am going to receive from this professor.

back to rambling, I am so tired that I had two glasses of ice coffee last night around 10:30pm and was still able to go to sleep an hour later. I just couldn't keep my eyes open. As I am writing this I am drinking more coffee and I still feel like I could get in another 40 winks or so.

Last weekend was a great deal of fun. As my readers may or may not know from my wife's blog that we went to Vermont for a wedding. There where a couple of things that I have to comment about with regard to the whole ordeal. I was pulled over by a state trooper about 20 minutes from our final destination. There are two reasons why we were pulled over, #1 NY license plates, #2 the kind of car we were driving, neither of which have anything to do with how fast I was going. The trooper went on to inform me that I was going 76 miles an hour in a 55 mile an hour zone. Needless to say I do not believe that I was going that rapidly, as I tend to only go a few miles over the speed limit. $80 that we don't have. Alas. The second thing was that my wife was listed with her maiden name on the program for the wedding. I found this really insulting and I am not sure why. It is as though I don't exist or something. In this day and age there are a number of people who do not change their names when they get married and others share in the change. For instance I changed my middle name to my wife's maiden name and she has her maiden name as her middle name in addition to changing her last name to mine. She is happy to be married to me (yes, I still firmly believe that and lately we haven't seen each other enough to get into any fights..gotta love the working, schooling marriage thing...HA!) and we both agreed to share the responsibility of names in some way or other and for that not to be acknowledged in anyway on this stupid program just pissed me off. I mean she went through a lot of hoops to change her name the least you can do is acknowledge it! If the tables had been turned in this situation you can bet that this woman would have made quite a stink about this instead of writing about it on a blog. But these are only two minor details which did not dampen the weekend all that much.

Tomorrow will be a fun filled day of homework at the liberry with the usual cohorts.

Tuesday is crown day...what fun the dentist is!

Hope that everyone has a great weekend!

A Quickie...no not that kind.

So my first week back at school is now officially complete. What a week it was. Firstly, I must recant what I said yesterday about ratemyprofessor.com "raters" as they seem to be spot on about this calculus teacher. This guy is a trip, clearly very brilliant, but he has no sense of how to teach things well. And yes I can see that from one class with him. Also, If I did not know that he was a teacher I would most certainly mistake him for a bum. Yesterday he was wearing an old t-shirt that had a few wholes in it and his pants looked as if they had not been washed in a couple of years. I don't know what I am going to do except make an attempt to learn it all on my own. Wish me luck.

Road trip to Vermont today so this is a short one sorry to disappoint all.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
"Acting is, as I've proven time and time again, not my greatest forte"
-George Clooney (as quoted by AM New York)

Yep...I am still here....

I have nearly completed my first week of class. I've got a physics class on Friday morning at 8am and today I have my first calc 2 class. I understand from a number of people that I have one of the worst rated professors from ratemyprofessor.com, but I do think that these ratings should be taken with a little bit of salt. I noticed that the average ratings for other teachers (for classes that I have had) were not that good and frankly I thought were fantastic. Poe-tae-toe, poe-tA-toe. This was my first experience with the website and I gotta tell ya there are a lot of whiny people out there. This isn't high school people and while there might be a certain lack of personal attention with a lot of professors, no one can expect to do well in a class if they just attend and take notes. You have to study people...jeez...and nine out of ten times it is not the professor's fault if perchance you did not do well. In high school I did not study much but managed a very good GPA (good enough to get into a couple UC schools) but when I first went to college (a small little community college...in like...the valley...yes I am from the greater Los Angeles area...but I digress)...I did not do as well because I didn't study all that much. I realized early on that I could still pass all my classes with a minimal amount of effort (I was living on my own in an apartment with a full time job and getting over the discouraging fact that I could not afford to go to the school that I was supposed to go to (a whole other story all together) and thereby did not find the need to put much effort into college...I wanted to be a doctor but was very disillusioned with baggage and stuff...and oh yeah I was 18....). Long story short...I am not going to blame any of my professors for my lack of drive and ambition.

With a 9 year break from colleges I have grown up a great deal more and hope that my previous grades do not affect my chances of getting into a medical school. ("God milhouse all you do is talk about school and medical school blah blah blah...who gives a crap about you and your dreams"...two words MY BLOG....MINE...heh heh heh.

With this week of school nearly done I do feel as though I might be a little over my head with the work load. Straight from the get go I have been studying and I haven't even had all of my classes yet. Organic chem is going well so far but my friends and I are afraid that the worst is coming and it is going to be coming quick. Physics has been good so far (interesting subject that I wish I had taken earlier, seeing as how it is the glue that puts things like bio and chem together etc.). With all the studying I have been doing I haven't seen my wife a whole lot and for that I am disappointed (she has been really great and supportive and thankfully understanding). At the very least we will be spending this fine labor day weekend together up in Manchester, Vermont for a wedding. It will no doubt be the only weekend from now until the end of the semester where I will not be doing a whole lot of studying. I can relax, maybe even have a couple of drinks.

Work has been nuts..."n-v-t-s...nuts" (obscure movie quote # 1). We are putting together a couple of shows at the moment, a 5 city tour with a big name star and a little off-broadway ditty that will be around the beginning of next year. From previous posts you all know that my boss is CRAZY and I am only here part time now because of school (which my boss agreed to btw), but I don't think he always remembers that. I bust my ass when I am here, but that doesn't seem to mean anything. I realized today that I have been with this company for six years now. I also realized that if I can handle all of the long hours (I once did 60 12 hour days in a row, working on two shows and assisting the boss man) and pre-madonna bulls**t in theatre than I can certainly handle all the hours and pre-madonna bulls**t (the parent friendly blog!) in medicine.

I am also starting to feel a bit of pressure about the MCAT and my med school applications. I have been talking to other folks who have been doing all kinds of cool shadowing doctors stuff, doing multiple volunteer shifts, trying to get work in research etc....I don't know how people have time for all of this stuff and school. It is hard enough for me to take 4 hours out of my week to get in my minimum volunteer shift. Again...I say Alas.

I should get back to work. For those of you who actually read my blog I will probably be doing updates in the evenings now for the most part unless I can get in a few moments at work (like now)....do I have readers?

My thoughts go out to the families down south. (Note to looters: People down south like guns and they have a lot of them. See NYT article published today by Felicity Barringer and Jere Longman)

Hope everyone has a safe weekend.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
"In the past year, over 800 million people have died. Despite millions of dollars of research, death continues to be our nation's number one killer. Although, so far there's no known treatment for death's crippling effects, still everyone can acquaint himself with the three early warning signs of death: one, rigor mortis; two, a rotting smell; three, occasional drowsiness. It is also important to know what to do you when you die. One, Don't try to drive a car; two, do not operate heavy machinery; three, do not talk."
-Obscure Movie Quote # 2
(I'll leave it up to you guys to guess what movies I have quoted in today's blog)

I think the Haiku of the day will be on permanent hiatus.