I <3 Paris je t'aime

So this movie came out last summer and I remember seeing previews for it and reaaaaally wanting to see it, but, like so many summer plans, it got pushed back and pushed back until either school started or it wasn't showing in the one or two theaters that carried it...well, since I'm determined to actually accomplish my summer goals this year, I saw that Paris je t'aime was on sale at blockbuster the other day and sat down this morning to finally enjoy it. Most of the movie was subtitled which forced me to drop everything else - the cereal bowl, laptop, mindless cleaning - and really devote myself to each character and scene in order to follow the film at all, and I think that was refreshing in and of itself. There's so little truly free time during school that any time I sit down I feel like I'm sending off an email, half-assing my way through pbl, a patient write up, or Bate's reading, that it felt so good to really immerse myself in a story that ended up resonating in my own heart.



It was kind of like a less sappy and french version of Love Actually, with 18 short films put together all showing a different take on the concept of love (so maybe it isn't less sappy than Love Actually). Some of the stories definitely fell a little short (ahem, Elijah Wood and the vampiress) but there were more than a few that brought a tear to my eyes. Most of them were like jumping into a movie that's already half way over, making you feel like you've missed the backstory about what the characters are doing and trying to piece together the puzzle of the scene you've entered in on. I wouldn't really say that each piece was organized as a mystery, per se, but most of them definitely had that "ohhhhhhhhhhhh!!" moment at some point like when you realize hugh grant's character was emma thompson's character's brother in Love Actually and then things made so much sense. With all the talk about love and marriage lately, maybe it was just heartwarming to watch these characters look for love, challenge their love, or even find happiness by themselves after falling in love with the city.

I don't want to ruin any of the storylines for anyone, but i'll just say that my favorites were definitely Place des fêtes (the one with the Nigerian guitar player), Loin du 16e (with the housekeeper forced to leave her own newborn in daycare so that she can earn a living watching someone else's children), Tour Eiffel (cause seriously, who doesn't love a good mime story), Faubourg Saint-Denis (the one with natalie portman...which i had two watch twice to figure out), and the last story, 14e arrondissement.

don't know what you got til its gone...

By my calculations, one day of this year's summer vacation is roughly equivalent to a week of past years, so that makes today the last week of june. Now that I'm on my third official day (of ten) of summer vacation, I can say that this summer is starting off as one of the best. Yesterday was one of those perfect summer days that you dream about all january long. After four weeks of 10 hour days in the library I've never cherished these beautiful summer days more than I do right now.

The perfect 70 degree day started off with a run down along the lake before meeting up with Lis for what was supposed to be a relaxing day at a coffee shop reading the new david sedaris book outside in the sun. Well that idea got chucked out the window as soon as lis mentions, "oh hey...can we stop by this little store down the street? I was in there shopping yesterday and sat down with a drink and didnt realize until I got home that I accidentally pocketed the sunscreen I was looking at so now I need to go back to return it." So, after lis righted her transgression, we decided to hike up to Old Town to find a coffee shop and get our read on and get a little boards smack talk out of our system.

On our walk down Wells we stumbled across The Spice House, this amazing store that Cate has been nagging me to go visit for months...and now I know why. You could smell the place from a block away and once you walk in, you're surrounded by hundreds of glass jugs filled with custom blended spices, my favorite of which were the Chicago Neighborhood Blends with names like, "Argyle Street Asian Blend," and "Bronzeville Rib Rub." One of the shopkeepers mentioned that we were welcome to taste whatever we wanted, so we started sprinkling the tester bottles into our hands and licked away (I'm sure Cate shuddered as she read that). I ended up getting a bag of Chinese Five Spice Blend since I've been running across recipes that call for it and haven't been able to find it at Trader Joes.


Not a block away we found ourselves in a store filled with nothing but olive oil and balsamic vinegar...mmmmm...much like The Spice House, the gentleman at Old Town Oil invited us to try the oils til our hearts were content. Lis and I were a little unsure about gulping down cups of oil, but then the guy started pouring so we felt obliged...and lo and behold, they were delicious. Orange Infused Olive Oil, White Pear Balsamic Vinegar, Chipotle Olive Oil...I think we tried at least 10 different ones before heading out without making a purchase. I'll definitely go back, the whole time I was there I kept wishing a baguette would magically appear in my hand to dip into the giant vats.

Lis seemed to know all the hot spots to hit, so we strolled into the Old Town Aquarium (which is actually just a fish pet store, but superfun). After speding the afternoon wandering in the sun, we decided to ditch out on our plans for coffee and hit a bar instead. A bucket of beers later and we decided that our meals of spices and olive oil were starting to wear off and we needed some real grub and headed to Johnny's Grill for a gyro and hot dog.

Since John started his internship at Kraft this week, he told me I had to be the housewife until school started back up...which boils down to errands, cleaning and dinner duty til next friday. Tuesday night I made these AMAZING chicken tostadas and last night I attempted a Japanese Soba Noodle Bowls covered with vegetables, which was pretty good (especially since I grilled the chicken with my delicious new Chinese Five Spice Blend) but I think it needed a little more seasoning. I started my cleaning duties this morning with a kathy griffin marathon in the background but now I think its time to move on to my book club duties and lounge around outside with Mr. Sedaris...I could get used to this housewife life - you've got some new competition, cate!

wrong thing to read today...

What a downer of an article in the NYT today...it hasn't even been 24 hours since i finished that gut-wrenching, social-life-destroying, usmle exam from hell and I wake up to read an essay that quotes one physician as saying:

Recently, he confessed, he has been thinking about quitting medicine altogether and opening a convenience store. “Ninety percent of doctors I know are fed up with medicine,” he said.

In surveys, increasing numbers of doctors attest to diminishing enthusiasm for medicine and say they would discourage a friend or family member from going into the profession.

The dissatisfaction would probably not have reached such a fever pitch if reimbursement had kept pace with doctors’ expectations. But it has not.

Another is a looming shortage of doctors, especially in primary care, which has the lowest reimbursement of all the medical specialties and probably has the most dissatisfied practitioners.

AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Of course we all know that it'll take decades to pay off our med school loans...that we'll be paying up the wazoo for malpractice insurance, working 80 hours a week (if we're lucky), and struggling to explain to insurance reps (who don't have medical training) why a patient needs to be authorized for whichever service they might need...so what's the upside that is supposed to carry us through the next 40 years of our career? Well, according to what we said in our interviews to get into medical school, its "that feeling you get when you know you've truly helped someone in a way they couldn't have done without you and devoting your life to helping others live longer, healthier ones of their own.

Over the past two years we've caught glimpses of what real medicine has in store...but I have a feeling that as we start our rotations in a few weeks, we'll realize just how skewed our preconceptions probably were. I definitely noticed it during my preceptorship last year - patients rushed in and out, referred to endocrinologists, cardiologists, orthopedists, dermatologists for cases that simply took too long for an internist to handle appropriately (especially at the risk of being sued for the slightest oversight).

So, despite my incredible excitement to start surgery in a few weeks, and finally ditch the lecture hall for patient exam rooms, I hope the people I work with are as excited as I am and prove that the field can still offer a lifetime of rewards despite all the setbacks

Pigs are flying!

They must be somewhere if I actually think Bill O'Reilly held a decent interview...let alone on a topic such as gay marriage...




What great quotes from this one "...It's like comparing winter to summer" "The reason is they just want it to be different" "...but isn't that just bigoted?"...you KNOW Bill was just dying for the guy to come up with a decent answer so he could agree with it...but, of course, there is no sensible reason in the world why two people in love shouldn't get married...booya

So I kept reading references to this article during the past week, but it took a little while to hunt down the original piece...As much as I'd hoped the news couldn't possibly be true, it seems like I'll have to cross off one of my favorite retail joints. Not only do I love a good stroll through the aisles of Urban on a warm summer day, but their website makes regular appearances on my Christmas lists and is the source of many a present for friends and family. Apparently, the owner/president of Urban Outfitters, Richard Hayne, spends the profits from his liberalesque wares funding neoconservative politicians. Little did I know that when I'm bringing home my bag of overpriced faux-vintage apparel that I'm funding none other than hellspawn Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who's compared homosexuality to incest and bestiality. Among the highlights of the article:

Shopping in Urban makes you feel like you are somewhere radically Left-wing, an antidote to the corporate blandness of The Gap. But Hayne is a stanch conservative who donates money to Republican politicians, not least Rick Santorum, a now failed Senator whose views on homosexuality are both bizarre and old-fashioned.

Hayne doesn't give many interviews precisely because he's afraid that college slackers who get to know him will suddenly realise that buying his clothes is like giving cash to George Bush.

Once described as projecting a "Dick Cheney-esque aura of no-nonsense grayflannel gravitas", Hayne must be the only retailer whose expansion plans depend on no one finding out who he really is.

While it shouldn't really come as any surprise that a multi-millionaire retail giant isn't exactly saving the whales on his spare time, the fact that Mr. Hayne is making his money by appealing to the young liberal crowd just seems vile. Its something you expect out of a disney villain, Jafar or Usula perhaps, but not a real life human...looks like I'll have to stick to American Apparel, hopefully they continue to be the real deal...

2 states down, 48 more to go!

The California State Supreme Court ruled today that denying same-sex couples the right to marriage is UNCONSTITUTIONAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Furthermore, in contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights. We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples."

I'm sure the backlash from conservative groups has already begun, but I think they're finally starting to become the true minority. As more and more people realize how many LGBT people are already in their lives (siblings, best friends, classmates, favorite actors/singers...) I think they are starting to realize that everyone deserves to share love within a relationship. I downloaded the official statement by the court, and wish I had the time to read it front to back, but I'm just glad that I'm finally not depressed by a headline on CNN and have a little more hope for the future.

unexpected flashback

Thursday nights generally mean two things:
1 - SCRUBS & THE OFFICE!!!
2 - scrounging around the internet to research my learning issue for PBL for friday morning

These are usually pretty humdrum events (especially since scrubs has been pretty lackluster since the writer's strike ended), except that while trolling around google, i found an old webpage i made for a class my sophomore year in college...precisely four years ago. The class was "Behavioral Neuroscience" and one of our assignments for the semester was to keep a weekly journal about what we had been learning. That was definitely one of my tougher classes, we met M-W-F and every friday was a full exam on that week's material.

Back in the day I was pretty fascinated by neuroscience, going so far as to include neurobiology in my major. Researching...volunteering...TAing - all of it just brain, brain, brain, brain, brain....

For the past two years, I've pretty much looked down my nose at boisterous undergrads thinking to myself, "man have they got it easy..." and then as I read through the journal I was struck by just how much neuro I've forgotten in these two years. Granted, in undergrad we had an entire semester (and really, an entire four years if consider all the time involved in getting a major) to slowly learn about the brain, one synapse at a time. Nowadays, we're lucky to get 2 1/2 weeks to master the entire nervous system - so it's not exactly comparing apples to apples. Nonetheless, I kind of miss how enthralled I used to be in the whole neuro-realm. After the lectures we've been having this week, becoming a Neurologist is about the last thing on my mind (is that a pun?).

I'm still amazed by the notion that a simple bump on the head has the potential to completely change a person's entire life - physical abilities, mental capacity, and even personality - but this whole "find the lesion" game they've got us playing in class is definitely not my cup of tea. While I think I'm still fascinated in the subject as a field, what it has to offer in terms of clinical practice just doesn't feel the same way to me, which kind of makes me sad. I can't really say that I feel a burning passion for any particular area at all right now, and maybe that's just a consequence of spending an entire two years learning basic science out of books. With third year a month away, hopefully I'll start feeling some passion for SOMETHING in particular...maybe even hit my stride again once triple block neuro rolls around...