Countdown to MD

This week, Mr. renewed the lease on our student apartment. That is the last lease we'll sign for this apartment, which is both exciting and terrifying.

This upcoming year will be filled with away rotations, step II exams, residency applications, interviews, and, in a year, Mr. will submit his rank list. I'm certain it will be exciting ...and expensive.
This week, the two midwestern programs Mr.'s thinking of doing away rotations at posted their applications and schedules for the 2009-2010 school year. As visiting students often have an advantage when applying for residency, narrowing down which programs to apply for aways at
has been like making a mini-match list... only we haven't seen any of these places yet, so Mr. can't judge based on the people or the program outside of rankings, location, and data posted on Frieda.
The first is easy. It's the program in located halfway between both sets of parents.
The other will be in Chicago, the city all midwestern 20-somethings dream of living. As there are four programs in Chicago, it's really difficult to determine which to choose. The location is the same, so that's a draw. Then two are prestigious while the other two aren't as prestigious. From there we're stuck. One has a really strong ortho program, but the other has a decent ortho program and an extremely good and well-known brand. I'm leaning toward the latter, but of course I'm not in medicine.
How are we supposed to make this decision?

Bad Day Cliché

Today started alright. I think I got close to the 7 hours of sleep I had hoped to have. STM let me know about service changes on the train so that I was able to alter my route accordingly.

However, today has been decidedly bad.

It's been busy at work, which is sometimes a good thing, but not today. A file we needed was corrupt, and after going back to the original email and pulling it back from the archives, I discovered that it, too, was corrupt.

A room for a presentation today that had been moved twice already was moved, yet again, unbeknownst to me or my boss. So, she sent the wrong room number to the distribution group of 800 or so attorneys only to be corrected by one of the girls in attorney training (who actually hadn't been notified of the 2nd or 3rd change but luckily the 3rd change was to the same room as the 1st change had been). Point of story - my boss looked bad, and she doesn't like that. This was not my fault but still not good.

Then, a couple attorneys couldn't open the documents links from that same email. Must have been some technical glitch, so still not my fault but still not good.

However, shortly thereafter I did screw up by not calling someone I was supposed to. This is a minor slip but it was not my only one of the day.

Lunch came and went, and I only had time to eat the sandwiches I had packed, unable to get any chips as I had intended.

Then, my bigger slip came from not changing the sharepoint calendar for this training that was switched last Thursday. The frustrating part is I could have sworn I changed it. I know to update the calendars. There have been lots of changes lately, so I've made a deliberate effort to be more on top of these changes. So I was shocked to see that that particular change hadn't been made. Of course, this came to light because my boss emailed 4 or 5 attorneys reminding them of this date (better than 800 attorneys but still not good).

On top of work stuff, my iphone's touch screen just decided to stop working today. I slid to open it, and then couldn't type my password. I turned it off and couldn't even slide it on. I tried turning it off to see if it was just the bottom of the screen that was broken, and I can't slide the top bar to power off. wtf. And, of course the genius bar doesn't have any appointments until like, tomorrow at midnight.

However, to top off this already bad day, when I went to the vending machine to get some cheetos for my now starving stomach--10 minutes after my shift had ended but with work still left to do--they got stuck in the machine. We have really nice machines here. Stuff like that never happens. But of course it happened to me. today. I'd take a picture to show you my sad cheetos stuck in a crevice at the bottom of the shelf above them, but I can't. My phone (also my camera) is broken. Boo.

Next thing I know some one will accuse me of having a case of the Mondays.

Update: I just tried the vending machine again in hopes that the second bag of Cheetos would push the first bag out. Now they are both stuck. Really?

Crocs

So, it's been quite a while. And then, after a certain amount of time of not posting, the pressure to write a good post grew. Should I post about Mr.'s rotations? He finished with peds a couple weeks ago. Nothing very noteworthy there (except observations that would probably be offensive and thus I'd rather not touch).

January I was overwhelmed with a research-heavy online winterim course, and I decided that cramming a 15-week course into a 3 week period is not such a good idea, particularly when the student also has a full-time job.

However, Mr. started his surgery rotation this week, and what better topic to write about as the wife of a to-be surgeon and a fashion student than his new choice of footwear:

Ah, crocs. I remember first seeing them on the feet of tourist children one summer a few years ago. I thought they were the most hideous things I had ever seen, but considering my shoes lit up when I was a child, I had no room to judge.

However, a season or two later, I began to notice them on adult tourists wandering Murray Hill trying to find the Empire State Building. They quickly became equivocal in my mind to fanny packs and cargo shorts. Sure, they might have a function, but they're really really ugly. Since I don't garden and prefer enclosed shoes for hiking, I never imagined I would ever own a pair.

And then I married a medical student. A medical student - I might add - who has relatively good fashion sense most of the time. However, last Saturday he went to the academic Barnes & Noble on 18th & 5th to purchase a pair of crocs for surgery. His choice of store is somewhat reassuring. While I imagine there are plenty of places closer to our apartment that sell crocs, he views them strictly as a necessary accessory for his medical training. This didn't stop me from teasing him about them, but ever so secure, he expressed no shame in his beloved, navy blue crocs.

Monday was an orientation, and Tuesday he scrubbed into his first surgery of the clerkship. It was 12 1/2 hours long. How he survived that without eating or taking a bathroom break is beyond me, but I'm sure he's glad he had comfortable footwear.

Still, I hope he never wears them outside the hospital. ;)