Rock lobster

Happy Halloween!

We here at Michigan love to learn. We love to learn so much that we worship our TAs when they show up to our parties randomly. Here are a bunch of Epid students with our TA, so-named "Hot" Steve, situated in the middle, sans costume.

Josh, Kristin, Steve, Steve (the TA), Emily, Rebecca
Alicia, Krishna
Catherine, Sam, Marina


And, my sorority sisters, and me:

Sam, Alicia, Kellie, as alpha sigma kappa

What made Milwaukee famous has made a loser out of me

Notes on driving to Milwaukee on a Friday afternoon.

The kiwi fruit is
too messy to eat en route;
skin and guts on me.


Friday, Chicago:
All the way through Illinois,
The traffic stands still.



Real discomfort is
holding your bladder for hours
since the freeway's jammed.

How does it feel to be without a home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?

So, the first round of midterms is almost complete and it is fall break. This is an exciting time because it means we don't have class on Monday or Tuesday. Not only that, but my one Wednesday class was canceled. Also, my parents are here to visit.

Our pathophysiology exam was exceptionally difficult. It wouldn't have been so bad, except that the teacher threw a handful of questions on the test that a) he didn't cover in lecture, b) were not on the PPT slide handouts, and c) were not in the book. So, I guess if you're a good guesser, you're lucky.

Our biostats exam wasn't bad though. We got to bring a cheat sheet of equations into the test. This was a great idea!!! Even better would have been had I actually put all of the equations on the sheet. I missed a few very important equations, so I made them up. Unfortunately, I looked them up later and I was slightly wrong about where the parentheses should have gone, or something, so I have the wrong answer. Whoops....

So, to celebrate being done with exams, the usual folks and I went out bowling and drinking on Thursday night. I was excited about the idea of $1 long islands, until I drank one and it was arguably the worst-tasting beverage I have ever consumed. I'm not entirely sure there was any alcohol in the glass at all. If there was, it was about a splash, and the flavor was masked by Coke and an entire lemon squeezed into one 12 oz. cup. Gross, gross, gross. So, I attempted to drink a beer, which I wasn't a big fan of either. Drinking didn't matter too much -- 'twas the insanity shared and fun had by all.

Following are a few pictures from the evening...

It's possible that I just got a gutter ball...


Sam and Andy swing dancing at the lanes...


Kellie as a calendar girl...


Hello, I say!


Girlshoes.


Krishna and Steve.. I don't know...



Enough for now. Homework, ho!

Testing 1,2,3; can anybody hear me if I shed the irony?

Midterms are in full swing. Stay tuned for more later.

But nothing compares to these blue and yellow, purple pills

Who knew it would be so hard to refill a darn prescription?

I went to the UHS Pharmacy and gave them copies of all of my prescriptions the other day, only for them to tell me that a copy is not good enough. I could come back with my old prescription and have them fill it.

Instead, I opted to call them this morning. The somewhat disgruntled pharmacy employee told me that he would call my home pharmacy in Minnesota and transfer the prescription over to them, and it would cost an extra $1 to process the order. Fine. Do it.

So, I check my messages after I get back from running only to find out that, for some reason, my prescription doesn't actually have any refills on it, despite the fact that I was just into the doctor a few months ago and asked her to refill it for another yer, which she agreed to do.

Next thing: call Fairview pharmacy. They told me that, yes, they don't have that prescription information either. So I had to call the clinic. They tell me that my nurse practitioner isn't in today so they can talk to her tomorrow, but they'd leave a note with the triage nurse and see if she can do something for me.

Seriously, I was just in the doctor three months ago! She was supposed to renew my prescription to save me from this hassle. *sigh* It's never that easy!

So, I await a phone call from Fairview in hopes that they can straighten everything out so that I can have my prescription by the weekend. My fingers are crossed. I love the run around of large institutions, where nothing ever takes less than 7 phone calls in order to reach someone who can really help you.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

One thing that is super awesome is when it's 2:30 in the morning and you've just finished an assignment and are ready for bed... then you realized that you left your clothes in the washer many hours ago and forgot to switch them to the drier. So, you run to the basement, throw your clothes in the drier, and are stuck staying awake for another hour to finish them. Lucky, I had time to read about glycolosis and catch up a little in pathophysiology during that hour, I guess!

On an unrelated note, here's a picture of one of my closest friends -- a half Jewish, half Greek girl who spent her last half a decade roaming the streets of NYC, then came to Michigan to introduce me to the wonders of ruggelach (a chocolatey bread). Drumroll please... Meet Sam.


Samantha and Alicia (at Mitch's on South U)

(Not the greatest picture of either of us... But, there will be more.)

Don't go chasin' waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to...

Since my tank was just above half-full, I decided to stop at the gas station for the first time since B left (about a month ago). I don't use much gas, it seems, which I enjoy.

Upon putting all of six gallons into the tank to top it off, I checked my tire pressure near the air pump when I hear a, "Hey, are you from Minneapolis?" This guy pointed to my license plate and the conversation began. He discussed the bridge catastrophe, and how his relatives are up there, etc.

I was in Michigan, moving my stuff into my apartment when it happened. It was so surreal, watching CNN and realizing that those places where places I used to drive and walk and bike (River Road). Then being back in the Cities for a week or so afterward, with detours around town everywhere, made it more obvious how inconvenient it would be. Though the tragedies were quite sad, I was amazed that only a few people died. That bridge is probably one of the busiest roads in the Twin Cities, and no one enjoys rush hour on 35W anyway!

I almost forget about it, being away from home, but it seems that's what we're known for now. First it was lakes, then the Mall of America... now, Minnesota is the state where the bridge collapsed. Bravo, MNDOT! Our state now has a reputation to be proud of.

Another link to news that reminds people of Minnesota was brought up by one of my fellow frisbee players, who mentioned the little girl whose intestines got sucked out by the pool drain earlier this summer.

But after my dreaded beheading, I tied that sucker back on with a string. And I guess I'm pretty different, considering.

There are very few guys in the School of Public Health. In fact, they constitute 25% of the School, and 20% of the Epidemiology department specifically.

Here are the two who annoy hang out with Kellie and me the most: Krishna the Killer, and Steve Doogie Howser, M.D.

Smiling for the camera...


More their natural selves...

Everybody wants to rule the world...

Thursdays night was a Lish-treat night. I bought myself a ticket to see The Bad Plus at The Ark because they're really awesome. I thought it'd be a nice reminder of home, since the drummer is from Minneapolis and is a member of a couple other groups in the area (i.e. Happy Apple, Halloween Alaska). Also, I will always think of my parents when I hear those guys because we experienced them the first time at the Montreal Jazz Fest a number of years back when they opened up for my absolute favorite sax player, Joshua Redman.

It really was a fabulous show, complete with a lot of tunes from their latest CD, Prog. I was a little upset that they didn't play "1980 World Champion," but they did a lot of other great ones, like "Giant,""Physical Cities," "Anthem for the Earnest," and lots of other phenomenal tunes I guess I should feel privileged though, since they played "1980 World Champion" for us back at The Dakota before their new CD was even out. So, I was there for the sneak preview of that earlier this year.

Anyway, I'm pretty awesome, so I will end this entry with two photos... One of me with The Bad Plus after the show, and the other is my signed CD.


Alicia, Dave, Ethan, Reid


The disc.

Fun, fun, fun, 'til your daddy takes the T-Bird Away

Something at which all graduate students in the School of Public Health seem to excel is the fine art of procrastination. This is not a new skill of mine, thus I have it perfected maybe beyond the abilities of others. The one person I have met thus far who can trump me in this marvelous skill is my buddy the medical student, who's here for a year to quick get an MPH in the middle of his attempts at getting an MD. I'm not positive that he has opened a book yet. Lucky for him, it doesn't seem to matter. I am subsurfacing along with the rest of my fellow SPHers, hoping the wave doesn't come to pull me under.

As I may have mentioned previously, classes aren't necessarily easy. They're not hard yet, but they're not easy. Epidemiology seems straightforward and logical, thus it's a matter of learning the terminology to survive. Also, it appears that the professor has this crazy expectation of us to be academic track athletes, thus giving us about 2 minutes to complete approximately 1,000 essay questions on a test. This is the rumor I've heard, being that apparently only one person actually finished the final last year.

My latest news is attempting to find a research lab to work in for the duration of this year, the summer, and next year. It would be ideal to get a GSRA position, where at least part of tuition is paid, however this seems to be a difficult task. Thus far, I've sent out two emails total and have heard back from one -- a study on genetics and bipolar disorder. They, unfortunately, do not have the funds to offer a GSRA position, but that's okay.

I'm currently working for an OB, though I haven't gotten really into the job quite yet. I completely my training modules and recently started to go through the data collected so far to see how much I understand of it. I will have to see how the lab-thing fits into my schedule though, since that's more important and necessary to graduate than working for this OB. It is, however, a very interesting project and I'd like to be involved with it.

But, back to wasting time (which I'm doing right now, since I have an hour before class begins and only one assignment to work on in that time)... There are a lot of neat things to get involved in here. Some of my friends and I are thinking about trying to go to the swing dancing lessons at the Union sometime, as well as participate in things like drinking sangria on the porch at Dominick's some Thursday nights.

There are also a lot of neat lectures and symposiums to attend. i.e. I decided that I may want to add an environmental concentration to my epidemiology degree after I attended a lecture by this world renowned Australian epidemiologist on the environmental effects on health. I'm currently looking into more EHS classes to add to my schedule for next fall... being that I don't exactly have a lot of elective space otherwise!

I'm getting plenty done though, despite my occasional preoccupation with fun and laziness. It's a lot of reading though, and memorization isn't my strong suit, so it's going to be a lot more work for me than for some others here. That's what the weekend is for though, right? A lot of reading....? Mom, maybe I need you to call and yell at me to get to work like I'm in junior high.

Really, though, I love it here. It's so interesting to meet people, whose lives and stories have taken them so many places, and whose ideas are jumbled with experiences I've never even contemplated.

The latest idea though... Girls backpacking trip through SE Asia, South America, or Eastern Europe after graduation in 2009. Maybe we can help with the health of the populations we encounter while we're there.

Wild thing, you make my heart sing...

The following outline two encounters with Michigan's most feared beasts...

1.
It was a Wednesday. Our garbage can was full so I opted to play "good roommate" and take out the trash as I was leaving for class. I've got my backpack on, my M-Card out, and I grab the trash bag and tie it tightly shut.
I walk down to the dumpster and open the lid, taking note that the previous day must have been garbage day as there are only a few bags in the dumpster. I throw it in and I realize (DUM, DUM, DUMMMMMMM).... One of the bags is actually a sleeping raccoon, awaiting his nighttime climb up our cherry tree.
I barely missed the raccoon with the bag I chucked in, so I booked it away from the trash. You just don't know about those things.

2.
(And this one is even more horrific.)
It's 2:30 am and Kellie and I are returning home from seeing a midnight showing of Snatch at the State. We are walking up the stairs and I notice a shadow flying above us. I think to myself that there's a very large insect up there. Is it a moth's shadow cast by the hallways lights. I realize that it's much bigger. And far faster. It must be a bird. No, no... a bat.

I inform Kellie of this, as she's directly in front of me on the stairs; she flips out. We run down the stairs and out the door. BY this time, Kell is basically hyperventilating. Our neighbor from across the hall is just arriving home for the evening, too, so we tell her of the unfortunate animal events.

Our apartment building is designed so that there are 4 units on each floor, and a connecting set of double doors that lead to the next building over, where there are 4 more units, connected to 4 more, etc. So, we decide to go through the other building so we can watch the bat through the doors. We start to devise plans to get to our apartments. I run downstairs to at least open the door to the outside, in case the bat decides to fly downstairs and can then get out. I even sat outside, jingling my keys in hopes that the high pitched noise would draw it toward me.
After a few minutes of no luck, I go back upstairs, having left the door propped open downstairs. However, I'm worried about raccoons running into our building, too!
So, here we have a physics PhD candidate, and two MPH candidates sitting outside the doors trying to brainstorm how to get to our apartments, 15 feet away, without having the bat swoop in our faces as we're unlocking the doors. The only thing we think is to call the emergency maintenance phone number, where the guy isn't really happy to hear from us at 2:30 am, but ready to drive 45 minutes over to our building to save us. Of course, we don't want to sit in the hallway for 45 minutes waiting...

We decide to stay quiet for a while. The sound of our voices seemed to draw the bat toward us, and it was constantly swooping at us, on the other side of the doors. I even came up with the selfish idea to draw the bat to the other side of the double doors so it was no longer our problem.
After many minutes of watching and hoping it would fly downstairs and out the door, we finally realize that we don't see it swooping around it's path. So, we get our keys out and parade down the hallway, hunched over, and hurriedly unlock our apartment.

Kellie, scared as she was, decides to conquer her bat fears by walking downstairs to ensure she didn't see it. She closed the outside door (so the scary raccoons didn't march in and take over), and ran back upstairs, hood pulled tightly over her head to protect her of the "just in case" potential.


And that's how we conquered our bat tonight... in fear, and with luck.

Hail to the victors, valiant.

We shut out Notre Dame, 38-0. It's about time we won a game this year! This was the first Saturday I was actually proud to sport my Michigan apparel. Let me say that neither Michigan nor Notre Dame have any sort of passing game at all. We lucked out and managed to use our rushing game to get ahead.

We'll see what happens next weekend, during our first Big 10 game....

Sail on silvergirl, sail on by

I was born and raised around the Mississippi River. Aside from my brief stint in The Concrete Ranch (our apartment in Crystal, MN), I've pretty much always lived within walking distance of it.

Well, A2 doesn't have anything close to the Mississippi, nor does it have chains of lakes. So, I'll just have to settle for the Huron River and Traver Creek for the next couple of years. Le sigh.

Huron River

They said get back honky cat, better get back to the woods

In random news, my cat's new favorite food is yogurt -- fruity, delicious yogurt. Every time one of us is eating a container of yogurt, he comes begging...

Eight days a week...

The first week of school has come and gone, along with our second Michigan football loss. Since football is so big in Michigan, I did get season tickets, and will be observing all of their losses from the stands, and hopefully some wins too.

The week started out bright and early in biostatistics class, at 8:00 am on Tuesday, where I found my buddies Steve and Krishna to hang out with. It turned out that attending class was fairly useless as a) we discussed ultra basic statistics, and b) we couldn't actually understand much of what our professor said because i) his mic was really quiet, and ii) he spoke with a very heavy accent. Honestly, I think the volume was the biggest of his issues.

After sitting through two hours of biostats, I remained in my same seat for an hour and a half epidemiology lecture by our Maltese professor, Dr. Sandro Galea. He is really awesome, and has a very weird Mediterranean-Canadian English accent. It's actually pretty cute, and the class will be pretty awesome.

After epid, we had an ice cream social, complete with Washtenaw Dairy ice cream and homemade treats: cookies, raspberry cheesecake bars, brownies, etc. It was a pretty sugary lunch. Post-lunch, I ran over to Steve&Barry's to grab a Michigan tee-shirt, since I had to borrow one from Kellie for the previous Saturday's football loss. I only had a sweatshirt.

Post-shopping, I ran to my health management and policy class, entitled "Issues in Public Health Genetics." It's a class mixed with second years, since our class has to take our genetics concentration classes out of order due to a professor being on sabbatical. But, a lot of my friends are in the course, including my favorite second year buddy, Katie, who taught me the ropes at Michigan back in March and swayed my decision-making.

After HMP, I met a new girl named Sam. I'll admit, she's pretty cool, plus she's in almost all of my classes. She's from NYC, and we've already decided to attend some of the Michigan gymnastics meets together. So, we bonded instantly.

Kellie, Krishna, and I went to the bookstore later to see what books we could buy and, by that time (something like 6:00), all I had eaten was sugar and junk food so I was famished!!! We stopped by Jimmy John's and Kell and I headed home.

So, that's pretty much how my Tuesdays and Thursdays are. Start class at 8, straight until 11:30, break for a couple of hours, then get done at 4:30 on Tuesdays and 6:00 on Thursdays. Though, Ashley and I found out that we can do our stats lab outside of the actual lab time, meaning that we don't actually have to attend our 5-6 pm lab on Thursdays, except for handing in homework.

My Mondays and Wednesdays are pretty awesome because I only have one class, from 1-2:30. It's called "Pathophysiology." Intense, yes. I'm not sure I understood much that the professor was talking about on the first day, since I've never before taken a biochemistry class. However, it sounds like I can still pass... Plus, it seems that it'll be a pretty interesting course, encompassing anatomy, physiology, psychology, biochemistry, etc... Lastly, the professor is incredible. He's this black man with a heavy British accent and an affection for good ice cream and classical music. So, he's my fave.

Fridays, are great because I only have class SOMETIMES, and only for an hour... and lunch is provided. It's the independent study course required for my department, and a lot of it is chatting about our capstone project, or watching presentations of second year students.

I did get a job though, to fill up any free time I may find. As I may have previously mentioned, I'm working for an OB/GYN who does research on stillbirth and perinatal deaths -- from how mothers view their care to mental illness and its potential effect on said deaths. It sounds quite interesting. I haven't even begun to get into it though. The coolest thing is that I had to get a new Michigan ID badge, allowing me around the hospital complex.

Outside of academics, I've formed a nice group of friends that's always expanding. On Thursday night, we had an epidemiology outing at this bar on South University called Mitch's. Afterward, a few of us wandered around South U for a while before attempting to find the bus back to Northwoods, since I had parked at Sam's.

Friday was Catherine's birthday, so a bunch of us went to Arbor Brewing Company for dinner to celebrate, then followed up with hanging out at Connor O'Neill's. I met some new people there, mostly from the HMP department.

Saturday was a tailgate at Krishna's, then an awful and embarrassing football game. After the game, a few of my friends and I grabbed some coffee together and hung out.

Then, today, I ran some errands and went to a departmental picnic, filled with veggie burgers, swinging, and gymnastics on the lawn with Sam (don't worry, Mom, I didn't sprain my ankle this time...).

One thing I've noticed about the people I'm meeting is that a) they still fit in boxes -- i.e. there are the people you can tell were the popular girls, the ones who are more geeky and introverted, etc., and b) the conversations and senses of humor (ranging from sarcastic to silly) are all really interesting. We all are here for the same thing, which means we have similar interests, so we can switch conversation from a topic like "movies" to "health" fairly quickly. But, we're also getting to the point to start trusting each other with more personal things. The evolution of friendship is interesting to watch and experience. Also, because we're all here from places around the globe, we bond, at least at a superficial level, fairly quickly. Despite seeing that people may still be in their socially constricting boxes, we step out of them and reach out to people who may have never been our friends ten years ago, because of different outlooks on life or whatnot.

So, tonight is Sunday, meaning that I should get some work done and do any catching up I may need. However, first, I'm setting my new printer up!