Birthday week....

Joe turned 40 this past weekend!!! Woo! Had a nice party here for him with family and friends and a LOT of food and HOT weather. It was exhausting, though. I will post pictures when I get them loaded.

Last Wednesday I decided to quit my job. The company I worked for just crossed a few lines and I'd had it. I was working in several nursing homes, but at one in particular the nursing staff just couldn't get it together. Therapy orders would sit for weeks before being called in to the doctor and implemented and people I would refer for swallowing tests at the hospital were not able to get them done because of the lax in calling in orders. Communication around the home was ridiculous - I would make a diet change and nursing would get pissed if I directly told dietary. The Director of Nursing was worthless, IMO. She was afraid of confrontation, and when I came to her with my issues, she was upset because I was "mean" and "yelling" at her. WTF? It's mean and yelling when I ask you to do your job?

I took my concerns to my regional director, who came in and met with the DON, and then did.... nothing. Didn't have my back for the behavior of the nursing staff toward therapy and the obvious JCAHO violations in letting orders sit for so long. IMO, the guy had no spine and just wanted to keep the peace. Unfortunately, when a nursing staff crosses the line to involve patient care, you can't just "keep the peace". So that irritated me this past month. THEN, looking at my pay stub for the 7/1-7/15 pay period, I noticed I was missing about an hour and a half of travel time. Looking at my copy of my original travel log and my paycheck, I knew something wasn't right. I called the company's billing department and found out my regional manager, the same spinless guy from before, had made changes to my travel log without my permission or even talking to me. Talk about fraud!!!! I called his supervisor and she said she'd look into it. This was last Monday, and I still haven't heard back from her.

So last Wednesday, I stopped at the post office before heading to work because my company sent my nametag and the post office was holding it. I went to pick it up, and I had to pay for the postage. Seriously. My company couldn't even send me a nametag without taking money from me. At that point, I'd had enough. I'm a PRN employee and I didn't need to give a notice at all. So I walked into work on Wednesday and told them that would be my last day. The End.

My regional manager kept calling me, leaving messages about being concerned that I quit, that he had no idea I was going to quit, and how would he find coverage? I never called him back. I felt no obligation. I let my facility rehab directors know and tied up loose ends with nursing staffs for those patients I had on therapy and finished out my day. There was no reason to call the regional director, especially since he was the one who took pay from me and it still hadn't been resolved. Not my problem anymore.

So, this week I'm on "vacation" at home in Sandwich and working on the office. So far, the walls are spackled, the trim is down, and the next step is to paint (tomorrow). After that, we can put flooring down and new trim up. It's coming along!

July 2009

Life seems to happen in spurts! There are days I have tons of time, then I go months in 5th gear without taking a breath!

School starts up again in 3 weeks - 3 WEEKS!!!!!!!!! I'm finishing phase 2 of my first year of med school and I'm so ready to get going! I know my time will be that much more limited and I will be that much more stressed, but I will also be that much more close to moving back HOME.

The first year of med school was definitely a challenge and a journey. After deciding to split my first year in two (hooray free time!), I also battled an abscessed molar from a shoddy dentist, my husband getting laid off for 9 weeks, and my father having cardiac issues and stents/pacemaker placed. I also took a part-time (that turned into full-time) job as a speech therapist in a group of nursing homes. And now I'm ready to finish out my M1 year.

This year's courses include Biochemistry, Embryology, Genetics, Physiology, Behavioral Science, and Neuroscience. Only 1 lab - Neuroscience (spring).

Outside of work and school, this summer we've been able to get the yard landscaped, the deck stained and we're currently in the middle of remodeling the office/3rd bedroom. We've got a few more things to do: paint trim on the house and garage, plant a few plants, and give the inside a good cleaning. That leaves the other 2 bedrooms and the basement to sift through for Fall/Winter/Spring projects.

Current events have been quite stressful, from happenings in my own circle of friends to what's happening with our country. It's no secret that I loathe our current administration and it's really frustrating to want to go into a specialty that our president continues to demonize and has no provisions to protect. It's also a bit frustrating to live with people (at school) who adore what I think is vile and try to keep a happy face. I don't begrudge anyone their opinion (we are still a free country for the time being), but I don't have to be happy about it. I am relieved that we find middle ground in some of the basic joys in life, like shopping, food, some TV, and the neighborhood kids. And reluctantly, I admit I am thankful for exposure to another POV I otherwise wouldn't experience.

As far as current events more close to home, one of my best friends is going through a divorce and it's been hard, no bones about it. Joe and I always thought they were the "perfect" couple - you know how it goes. But things are not always as they seem and I respect that. My friend initiated the divorce and I feel awful that she's now treated as a pariah amongst those closest to her. I don't know why society feels that someone who initiates a divorce automatically gives up all rights to all things in a marriage. Sometimes they just don't work and it takes real balls to own up to it. It pains me to see her hurt and it's even more hard that I'm at an extremely busy part in my life and can't be with her more to help her. I just don't feel like my "spirit" is enough and am beginning to feel like a jerk of a friend :( But I'm trying as best I can.

Lastly, I've also been somewhat successful in working on getting my body in a healthy state. I've lost about 2 inches at each measurement point and I'm guessing 15-20 pounds (?) since the start of summer. I didn't really get serious about things until about after Memorial Day, but I've gotten in an eating plan routine and I'm working on my exercise routine. I've also been training myself to be an early riser so I can work out before classes this year, or at least try. I still have what seems a long way to go, but at least I'm getting results! The next thing I *really* need to work on is my weekend food intake. I'm excellent during the week, but the weekend slows me down. It's hard living in 2 cities and coming/going between 2 homes. But, as I've said with the rest of the stuff, I can do it.

All right, done with the update. Hope to post a little more consistently soon!

The Second French Revolution

This young man from Harvard is quite wise...

The Second French Revolution

Every old ideological conflict eventually becomes new again. So it is with today's battle between the forces of socialism, called “fairness” by its advocates, and the forces of capitalism, labeled “liberty” by its supporters. What we are witnessing is an ancient struggle between those who believe in the rights of the individual and those who believe in a sort of “general will.” Those of conservative bent ardently hope for a second American Revolution; those of the left wish desperately for a second French Revolution.

This is not mere rhetoric. Look at the history of the first American Revolution, and you will see the fundamental principles that animate Rush Limbaugh; look at the history of the first French Revolution, and you will see the spirit that animates President Barack Obama.

John Adams' Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, ratified in 1780, provides the basic framework for American governing philosophy: “All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.” The purpose of the government is to secure these rights.

By contrast, France's 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man is an ode to the collective. “The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation,” it states. “Law is the expression of the general will.” The purpose of the government is to make laws benefiting society, not to restrict itself from encroachment upon the rights of the individual.

This philosophical distinction has dramatically different ramifications. The American Revolution was followed by peaceful governance because it granted power — and responsibility — to the individual. It did not excoriate the upper class for its wealth, nor the poorer class for its plight; wealth and poverty were not seen as the result of societal shortcomings. Dramatic social leveling would have been superfluous, in this view.

The French Revolution, by contrast, was bloody and tyrannical. The lead advocate for the rights of man was Robespierre, to whom the individual meant little. He pushed for King Louis XVI's execution on the basis that the collective good required his death; he hunted the nobles with the explanation, “To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.” This revolution stated that man's equality trumped his liberty.

The same arguments echo through the ages.And so today we have Obama excoriating those on Wall Street with the fervor of a Danton, slandering those in the financial industry as “shameful,” “outrageous,” and “greedy.” It is no wonder AIG executives are relegated to their homes, intimidated by liberal thugs who send death threats reading: “Get the bonus, we will get your children,” “All you mother——ers should be shot,” “We will hunt you down … We will hunt your children and we will hunt your conscience,” “All the executives and their families should be executed with piano wire around their necks.” It is no wonder that in France, 45 percent of the population approve of kidnapping business executives and threatening them to prevent layoffs.

Obama's recent trip to London highlighted the capitulation of American ideals to French ones — only the leading expositors of French Revolution ideals are now British. Not once were individual rights mentioned. But British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Obama spoke repeatedly of the need for fairness. The current economic crisis, said Brown days before Obama arrived, “should be used as an opportunity to move towards a fairer and more equal world order.”

The constant emphasis on fairness and dearth of discussion about individual liberty bodes ill not only for the pitiable fellows over at AIG (and their children), but for our society more broadly. When America is lathered into tarring-and-feathering mode not because our individual rights have been violated, but because our politicians have told us that “things just aren't fair,” we're entering French Revolution territory.

While the French Revolution was partially justified by monarchy and aristocracy, a Second French Revolution is wholly unjustified: it tears down those who succeed through work rather than by dint of birth. A Second French Revolution replaces a purported aristocracy — the achievers — with a true aristocracy of government administrators.

The American Founding Fathers would have been ashamed and appalled. Most of all, they would have been frightened for the future of our country. The supremacy of the “general will” over individual rights, Adams stated, would bring “horrible ravages.” He was right. He is still right. If we are to have a second revolution, let it be American, not French.

Ben Shapiro, 25, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School.

Busy Bee...

Life has been quite comfortable. My husband and I have been living apart as a result of my education, but he'd been working hard and I had been working hard at the classes I'm in and enjoying the reduced schedule that decompression offered.

And then the economy's iron hammer came down on 2/20/09 when my husband was laid off. His company couldn't afford to keep him on staff (as well as 2 others) and they gave him the proverbial "pink slip". So here we are, almost 4 weeks later. The job market has been a joke for him - who knew mechanic positions were that hard to find??? Of about the gajillion places my husband doled his resume out to, a few had openings, but were in the process of being filled. One showed great interest, but was an hour to an hour-fifteen away from home. One way. And didn't pay well enough to afford the drive every day as well as domestic expenses (which are our mortgage and utilities and groceries - no credit card or car mortgage payments!).

The day my husband was laid off - 2/20/09, I started making calls in the Champaign area to go back to work as a speech-language pathologist, and fortunately, I've been able to make enough of a caseload that we can stay afloat - that is, if the State of Illinois pays me in a timely fashion. Of course, that's a gamble with this ill-run state!

In the meantime, my free time has now dwindled back to nil. Boo! But, it's okay for now. It's necessary that I work, and fortunately, playing with 2-year-olds all afternoon and writing a few notes and making a few copies for parents isn't as intellectually challenging as studying for my med school classes (as my schedule was before I decompressed). In fact, I suppose it was blind foresight that I decided to decompress. Who knew that I'd need all this extra time!!!

Anyway, since my husband has been having such terrible luck with finding a job, we have discussed the option of him going back to school, and this may be the option he goes with. Since his formal mechanic education has been by way of a technical degree and on-the-job training, he will have to start from scratch, like a true freshman (sorry honey!). Luckily for him, the general education courses that make up the first 2 years of college education are now offered ONLINE! This is a luxury that I didn't have when I was an undergraduate college student in the mid-90's. So, he can pursue a different career avenue (he's thinking teaching) and be afforded student loans for living purposes, as well as continue to look for a job.

Joe volunteers his MWF afternoons to coach high school rugby, and I'm thankful that he at least has this going on at this time. It's his own personal therapy to be able to get out and teach kids his favorite sport. And, thank goodness the weather is getting warmer. He's also been able to ride his bike a couple of days for some super-therapeutic intervention!

At this point, I think the plan is for Joe to go do his admissions testing at the college (for freshman class placement in english, math, etc.) and then enroll him for summer. It may take 3-4 years for him to complete his degree, but who cares!!!!! Teaching, if that's what he wants, is a pretty solid career choice and more stable economically anyway. Plus, I suppose it's another avenue for coaching as well.

My spirits are a bit higher than they were one month ago, but there is still a long road ahead.

Gibbs-Slap!

No, I'm not mean......

No, I'm Not Mean
by Tibor R. Machan

 
       The position of someone who defends human liberty, freedom from
coercion among people, is sometimes quite irksome.  That's because those
who want to coerce others mostly give as their reason that they want to be
of help.  Virtually every government program funded by taxation, money
extorted from citizens, is justified by citing the needs and wants of
people who will go without government support if the program is
discontinued.

       So those of us who prize human liberty above every other social
condition will seem, on casual inspection, to lack compassion and
generosity. We will be saying "no" to numerous public policies proposed as
ways to provide for the helpless or needy.  In fact the bulk of those in
Western societies who advocate coercive policies that expropriate the
labor and resources of citizens say that they do so because they want to
eliminate poverty, deprivation, ignorance, illness, and other untoward
circumstances people face.  Opposing such coercive measures then is taken
simply to be mean, hardhearted, and ungenerous. 

       Nearly all the responses I receive to my criticisms of government
coercion accuse me of lacking compassion, of wishing that those in need go
unaided, unsupported, be left helpless.  But the charge is wrong, very
wrong indeed.

       Suppose one objects to burglaries, robberies or holdups. And
suppose those perpetrating these tend, in the main, to use the loot they
take for various helpful purposes.  They buy food and furniture and
medicine with what they have stolen.  And maybe without the stolen
resources they would find it troublesome to purchase these things for
themselves and their families.

       Does opposition to burglaries, robberies, and holdups imply even
in the slightest that one is opposed to the would be perpetrator of these
crimes getting the benefits the stolen wealth could get them?  Does
opposition to the violent, aggressive, hostile means of obtaining the
means for getting those benefits imply that one begrudges the benefits
that can be gained with what was stolen? More drastically, does opposition
to rape mean being opposed to sexual satisfaction for those who would rape
others?

       Of course not.  Millions of people oppose crimes that involve
taking things from people at gunpoint and the like, yet all these millions
do not see anything wrong with the beneficiaries gaining what they need
and want.  In fact, millions of people who oppose such criminal takings
voluntarily contribute to charities, emergency funds, such as the Red
Cross or the Salvation Army.  Indeed, Americans, specifically, are the
most giving citizens in the world, as can be observed whenever some people
around the globe are struck with natural disasters. 

       Most of us who champion a fully free society also support
voluntary means for giving aid to those who need it.  There is no one in
the libertarian movement I know of who opposes such means although they
all, without fail, oppose the coercive approach the government uses to
help people.  Many of us also argue that voluntary means for helping those
in need of help are more effective and certainly more ethical than
government's coercive ways.  Some have researched this thoroughly and have
concluded that voluntary help is, overall, superior to coercively supplied
help not only because coercion is wrong in itself but also because the
voluntary approach tends to support a culture of mutual aid throughout a
society.

       No, I am not mean.  I am personally a frequent contributor to
voluntary efforts to lend a hand even while my focus in my writings
happens to be mostly on eliminating coercion from human interactions.
That may be because I personally grew up in a country that was a police
state, where coercion of the citizenry was routine, the norm, and to even
argue against it could land one in a gulag. But just because my efforts
focus on securing or protecting the right to liberty of all it does not
follow that I and those like me fail to be generous, compassionate,
helpful, and so forth when such conduct is called for.  But we oppose
efforts to make such conduct legally mandatory! It is clear to us, also,
that mandated charity or compassion has no moral worth at all since it
isn't done of one's own free will, a basic requirement of all moral or
ethical conduct.  

Works and Days 10 Random, Politically Incorrect Thoughts

1. Four years of high-school Latin would dramatically arrest the decline in American education. In particular, such instruction would do more for minority youths than all the ‘role model’ diversity sermons on Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Montezuma, and Caesar Chavez put together. Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except perhaps Sophocles’s Antigone in Greek or Thucydides’ dialogue at Melos). After some 20 years of teaching mostly minority youth Greek, Latin, and ancient history and literature in translation (1984-2004), I came to the unfortunate conclusion that ethnic studies, women studies—indeed, anything “studies”— were perhaps the fruits of some evil plot dreamed up by illiberal white separatists to ensure that poor minority students in the public schools and universities were offered only a third-rate education.

2. Hollywood is going the way of Detroit. The actors are programmed and pretty rather than interesting looking and unique. They, of course, are overpaid (they do to films what Lehman Brothers’ execs did to stocks), mediocre, and politicized. The producers and directors are rarely talented, mostly unoriginal—and likewise politicized. A pack-mentality rules. Do one movie on a comic superhero—and suddenly we get ten, all worse than the first. One noble lion cartoon movie earns us eagle, penguin and most of Noah’s Arc sequels. Now see poorer remakes of movies that were never good to begin with. I doubt we will ever see again a Western like Shane, the Searchers, High Noon, or the Wild Bunch. If one wishes to see a fine film, they are now usually foreign, such as Das Boot or Breaker Morant. Watching any recent war movie (e.g., Iraq as the Rape of Nanking) is as if someone put uniforms on student protestors and told them to consult their professors for the impromptu script.

3. All the old media brands of our youth have been tarnished and all but discredited. No one picks up Harpers or Atlantic expecting to read a disinterested story on politics or culture. (I pass on their inane accounts of ‘getaways’ and food.) The New York Times and Washington Post are as likely to have op-eds as news stories on the front page. Newsweek and Time became organs for paint-by-numbers Obamism, teased with People Magazine-like gossip pieces (at least, their editors still cared enough to seem hurt when charged with overt bias). NBC, ABC, and CBS would now make a Chet Huntley or Eric Sevareid turn over in his grave. A Keith Olbermann would not have been allowed to do commercials in the 1950s. Strangely, the media has offered up fashionably liberal politics coupled with metrosexual elite tastes in fashions, clothes, housing, food, and the good life, as if there were no contradictions between the two. No wonder media is so enthralled with the cool Obama and his wife. Both embody the new nexus between Eurosocialism in the abstract and the hip aristocratic life in the concrete.

4. After the junk bond meltdown, the S&L debacle, and now the financial panic, in just a few years the financial community destroyed the ancient wisdom: deal in personal trust; your word is your bond; avoid extremes; treat the money you invest for others as something sacred; don’t take any more perks than you would wish others to take; don’t borrow what you couldn’t suddenly pay back; imagine the worse case financial scenario and expect it very may well happen; the wealthier you become the more humble you should act. And for what did our new Jay Goulds do all this? A 20,000 square-foot mansion instead of the old 6,000 sq. ft. expansive house? A Gulfstream in lieu of first class commercial? You milk your company, cash in your stock bonuses, enjoy your $50 million cash pile, and then get what—a Rolex instead of a reliable Timex? A Maserati for a Mercedes, a gold bathroom spout in preference to brushed pewter? The extra splurge was marginal and hardly worth the stain of avarice on one’s immortal soul.

5. California is now a valuable touchstone to the country, a warning of what not to do. Rarely has a single generation inherited so much natural wealth and bounty from the investment and hard work of those more noble now resting in our cemeteries—and squandered that gift within a generation. Compare the vast gulf from old Governor Pat Brown to Gray Davis or Arnold Schwarzenegger. We did not invest in many dams, canals, rails, and airports (though we use them all to excess); we sued each other rather than planned; wrote impact statements rather than left behind infrastructure; we redistributed, indulged, blamed, and so managed all at once to create a state with about the highest income and sales taxes and the worst schools, roads, hospitals, and airports. A walk through downtown San Francisco, a stroll up the Fresno downtown mall, a drive along highway 101 (yes, in many places it is still a four-lane, pot-holed highway), an afternoon at LAX, a glance at the catalogue of Cal State Monterey, a visit to the park in Parlier—all that would make our forefathers weep. We can’t build a new nuclear plant; can’t drill a new offshore oil well; can’t build an all-weather road across the Sierra; can’t build a few tracts of new affordable houses in the Bay Area; can’t build a dam for a water-short state; and can’t create even a mediocre passenger rail system. Everything else—well, we do that well.

6. Something has happened to the generic American male accent. Maybe it is urbanization; perhaps it is now an affectation to sound precise and caring with a patina of intellectual authority; perhaps it is the fashion culture of the metrosexual; maybe it is the influence of the gay community in arts and popular culture. Maybe the ubiquitous new intonation comes from the scarcity of salty old jobs in construction, farming, or fishing. But increasingly to meet a young American male about 25 is to hear a particular nasal stress, a much higher tone than one heard 40 years ago, and, to be frank, to listen to a precious voice often nearly indistinguishable from the female. How indeed could one make Westerns these days, when there simply is not anyone left who sounds like John Wayne, Richard Boone, Robert Duvall, or Gary Cooper much less a Struther Martin, Jack Palance, L.Q. Jones, or Ben Johnson? I watched the movie Twelve O’clock High the other day, and Gregory Peck and Dean Jagger sounded liked they were from another planet. I confess over the last year, I have been interviewed a half-dozen times on the phone, and had no idea at first whether a male or female was asking the questions. All this sounds absurd, but I think upon reflection readers my age (55) will attest they have had the same experience. In the old days, I remember only that I first heard a variant of this accent with the old Paul Lynde character actor in one of the Flubber movies; now young men sound closer to his camp than to a Jack Palance or Alan Ladd.

7. We have given political eccentricity a bad name. There used to be all sorts of classy individualists, liberal and conservative alike, like Everett Dirksen, J. William Fulbright, Margaret Chase Smith, or Sam Ervin; today we simply see the obnoxious who claim to be eccentric like a Barbara Boxer, Al Franken, Barney Frank, or Harry Reid. The loss is detectable even in diction and manner; Dirksen was no angel, but he was witty, charming, insightful; Frank is no angel, but he merely rants and pontificates. Watch the You Tube exchange between Harvard Law Graduate Frank and Harvard Law Graduate Rains as they arrogantly dismiss their trillion-dollar Fannie/Freddie meltdown in the making. I suppose it is the difference between the Age of Belief and the Age of Nihilism.

8. Do not farm. There is only loss. To the degree that anyone makes money farming, it is a question of a vertically-integrated enterprise making more in shipping, marketing, selling, packing, and brokering than it loses on the other end in growing. No exceptions. Food prices stay high, commodity prices stay low. That is all ye need to know. Try it and see.

9. As I wrote earlier, the shrill Left is increasingly far more vicious these days than the conservative fringe, and about like the crude Right of the 1950s. Why? I am not exactly sure, other than the generic notion that utopians often believe that their anointed ends justify brutal means. Maybe it is that the Right already had its Reformation when Buckley and others purged the extremists—the Birchers, the neo-Confederates, racialists, the fluoride-in-the-water conspiracists, anti-Semites, and assorted nuts.—from the conservative ranks in a way the Left has never done with the 1960s radicals that now reappear in the form of Michael Moore, Bill Ayers, Cindy Sheehan, Moveon.org, the Daily Kos, etc. Not many Democrats excommunicated Moveon.org for its General Betray-Us ad. Most lined up to see the premier of Moore’s mythodrama. Barack Obama could subsidize a Rev. Wright or email a post-9/11 Bill Ayers in a way no conservative would even dare speak to a David Duke or Timothy McVeigh—and what Wright said was not all that different from what Duke spouts. What separated Ayers from McVeigh was chance; had the stars aligned, the Weathermen would have killed hundreds as they planned.

10. The K-12 public education system is essentially wrecked. No longer can any professor expect an incoming college freshman to know what Okinawa, John Quincy Adams, Shiloh, the Parthenon, the Reformation, John Locke, the Second Amendment, or the Pythagorean Theorem is. An entire American culture, the West itself, its ideas and experiences, have simply vanished on the altar of therapy. This upcoming generation knows instead not to judge anyone by absolute standards (but not why so); to remember to say that its own Western culture is no different from, or indeed far worse than, the alternatives; that race, class, and gender are, well, important in some vague sense; that global warming is manmade and very soon will kill us all; that we must have hope and change of some undefined sort; that AIDs is no more a homosexual- than a heterosexual-prone disease; and that the following things and people for some reason must be bad, or at least must in public company be said to be bad (in no particular order): Wal-Mart, cowboys, the Vietnam War, oil companies, coal plants, nuclear power, George Bush, chemicals, leather, guns, states like Utah and Kansas, Sarah Palin, vans and SUVs.

November surprise!

Haven't had time to post since school started, but now that I have a 2-week break for Thanksgiving I feel the need to catch up on things, including blog posts.

My first semester of medical school has been such a whirlwind and it was really hard being away from home for weeks at a time and only able to spend about an hour per weekend home of quality time. So, to take the stress off, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity U of I has to "decompress", meaning I can split my first year into two and halving my courseload. I still have 6 courses I'm taking, but it's better than the 14 I had before!

So, I guess this year is my M1 year and next year would be M1.5. After that, everything proceeds normally with M2-4. So this year I'm taking Anatomy, Anatomy lab, Micro/Immuno, Micro/Immuno Lab, Histo, Histo Lab, Statistics, Intro to Human Disease, and RMED. Technically, the labs are components of the whole class, but they have their own skills exams we have to pass in order to pass the course overall that are unique to the labs themselves. So that leaves Biochemistry, Embryology, Genetics, Physiology, Neuroscience, RMED and Behavioral Science for next year. I'm sure I'll blog more about it later. But for the mean time, my stress level is low and my exam scores are high and I think decompressing was the best decision of my career so far :)

Outside of med school, Joe and I are celebrating our 3rd anniversary tomorrow. We had a rocky patch a year ago, but the counseling has worked and we've been able to weather the times apart pretty well. Thanksgiving is the day after tomorrow and this year we'll be at Sue's house in St. Charles.

I still have my finals for Micro/Immuno and IHD classes 12/15 and 12/19.

First day of school...

And I miss my husband. But really, I'm too tired to worry about it. I have to go eat dinner then get cracking on my Anatomy and prepare for tomorrow's lectures. Ugh.

All moved in!!!

Everything is finally moved in and has a place in my new room. I'm spending time with my new roommates shopping and watching the olympics. My wonderful husband helped me move everything in and put my sofa bed together. what a pain!

At any rate, we got it together (offer crappy directions). Tomorrow I need to finish some last-minute shopping and head to the university to get my ID and browse the bookstore for things I will need for classes. whew!