Back from vacation

I have been a bit slackerly about my blogging of late, but I suspect that you’ve survived. If you have perished, my apologies.

Normally the week after a test is the least busy of the cycle. However last week I was occupied by my new hobby of film-making. I had known about the ward’s film festival for almost two months now, but wasn’t sure if I’d contribute anything this year. For better or worse I get to use med school as an excuse to get out of any time commitment presented before me, and wasn’t sure if I wanted to jump into a project at this time. But I saw that the post-test week coincided nicely with the festival, so I went ahead and planned a movie.

I must admit that I cheated. I did a re-make of a presentation I had made several years ago. I was assigned to make an instructional presentation for a technical writing class and had to put together a Powerpoint on my chosen subject. Whereas most people instructed the class on scientific or domestic tasks I presented “How to Stay Single at BYU.” I’m moderately proud that I got a 100%, which in a curved class didn’t make me the most popular person. In any case I took the 2 minute presentation and modified it into an 8 minute film, modifying BYU jokes to Columbus/OSU jokes. If Scorsese can do a remake than so can I.

I put together the script about a month ago, roped in some actors, borrowed a camera and filmed the day after the exam. It was a bit of a hectic project, but it certainly could’ve been worse. My cast of 9 were largely cooperative as our supposed 2 hour filming time turned into 4, plus an additional couple scenes filmed later that night. But 100% of the filming was done in one day, which was a very nice change from my previous projects.

No matter how many times I do this, I find new ways of complicating the process. This time my problem was my camera. I borrowed one from a bishopric member in the other ward. I got it a week beforehand and saw that this one used mini DVDs. This was a step up technologically from my previous camera, which I assumed would be a plus. It was a helpful format for the filming, but made me miserable when I tried to get the data into iMovie. I could bore you with the details, but the final story is that I had to converting the file took 5 different steps, each requiring a new computer program, none of which I knew about or how to use. I spent about 12 hours working with the files before I was able to start the actual editing of footage for the movie. Luckily iMovie didn’t give me any problems (a first) and the actual editing was done in a single day. I tweaked a couple things before the festival, but was largely done with plenty of time to spare.

The festival only ended up having 3 movies, so no official awards were given. But each group got a bag of candy, and ours was a variety pack of candy bars (versus skittles and Crunch bars) so I’m taking that as a victory. We had pretty constant laughing for the movie, so much so that I only think they heard half the jokes. I’m counting it as a success.

How did this film compare to previous efforts? It’s a much quicker film than my previous three, which I think is an improvement. The scenes are so short that it doesn’t bog the film down if the joke doesn’t work or goes over the audience’s collective head. I think I have a greater variety of jokes in this film, which was also a goal of mine. I liked my Swicket movie, but I realize that the majority of the jokes are either sarcastic cut-downs or obscure historical facetiousness. This one is quite a bit more basic in delivery, and I think was more successful because of it.

Now it’s back to business as normal. Three more weeks of anatomy!

Song of the moment: “Please Don’t Talk About Murder While I’m Eating.”

This week in TV

Need some help with your TV watching? Here are some of my latest reviews.

This weekend I caught the Heroes marathon. I must say that this was some good marketing. They let the show run for a couple weeks and get some good reviews. Then they go back and show all the episodes over again in one night so those that are now interested can catch up. Way to go ABC. There are many reasons to watch this show. First and foremost, it has Weiss from Alias. Any show with Weiss is worth watching. It also has people with superpowers, which is just cool. They do a reasonably good job of making these superpeople fit into our world, with the notable exception of the flying brothers. I can suspend my disbelief to allow telepathy, precognizance, increased healing etc. But flying? The story is interesting, the actors are good, it’s definitely a good watch. Honestly it seems more like a miniseries to me, but we’ll see if they can sustain it.

I gave 30 Rock three weeks to catch my fancy. The first two weeks fell quite flat. I really wanted to like this show, but it was making it very hard on me. I find Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin very likable, and was willing to ignore Tracey Morgan. Finally this third week it lit up. I can now recommend this show.

I admit that I only gave Twenty Good Years one week to impress me, and it failed. The other comedies that I watch (Scrubs, The Office etc) have no laugh tracks because they know that the material is funny. I think laugh tracks are a crutch. TGY relies on this crutch quite heavily. John Lithgow is amusing, but this should would have us believe he is hilarious. Perhaps it got better after the premiere but I haven’t had time to spend on it.

Lost is keeping up appearances. I can’t say that much happened in this week’s episode, but it kept me interested the whole time. I discovered that watching Lost is more fun with a group and a Tivo. Bryce and I kept stopping the episode and spouting mad hypotheses about what was happening. I called both plot twists with Sawyer, but got one way wrong with Jack. Next weeks we’re going to place bets.

Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I’m still in search of a scary movie.

It could be my general emotional invariability, but I have yet to find a movie that scared me. Sure I can find ones where I’m startled, but that is hardly what I’m going for. I have also found movies that I find gross. I watched the first thirty minutes of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and gave up on it. It wasn’t too scary, it was just entirely unappealing. I like eerie movies, but again eerie isn’t scary. For instance I quite enjoyed Silent Hill from earlier this year. I was never scared during the two hours of film, but I enjoyed the unsettling atmosphere conveyed. Startling, gross, eerie, but scary these films are not.

My latest attempt was Open Water. For those unfamiliar, this was from a couple years back and is about two scuba divers that were accidentally left at sea by their diving group. It’s based on a true story, which is supposed to make it scarier, as is the home-video-esque filming, a kin to that of Blair Witch. Sadly neither of these factors worked for me. Sure I’d freak out if I had sharks nipping at my legs, but watching these characters in peril didn’t convey anything for me. So it failed to elicit a scare in any way. Furthermore I didn’t like the movie. I’ve liked many of the movies that have failed to put a shiver through me, but this one just wasn’t very good.

Some friends invited me to watch Saw 1 and 2 with them this weekend and I declined. I suspect that these follow more in the gross out than scary category. But I’m running out of ideas. Any suggestions?



Ring – moderately creepy
Ring 2 – lame
Grudge – Super lame
Blair Witch – best I’ve found, but I can still go camping without trepidation.
Pscyho – silly
Silence of the Lambs – great, but not scary
Alien – great, not scary
Excorcist – need to see all the way through
Omen – ditto
The Shining – too slow, and Jack isn’t scary
Nightmare on Elm St – silly
Seven – saw on TV, so a lot was removed.
28 Days Later – great, not scary
Dawn of the Dead – old, too slow. New, entertaining but not scary.
Night of Living Dead – original was too fake. Remake was pretty good.

No Talent Hacking

Commercials drive me crazy. Like most things this stems back to my ego; if someone makes their career out of making commercials they should be able to do it better than I think I could. My current gripe is against unoriginality in advertising.

LG recently launched a campaign for their Chocolate phones using Goldfrapp’s song Strict Machine. The phone and commercial have been very successful (you could argue which prompted the other) and the song was briefly the most downloaded song on iTunes. Great for LG, great for Goldfrapp, great for everyone. Then Motorola releases their new KRZR phone and guess what band they play on their commercials. Oh yes, Goldfrapp, this time singing Ooh La La. That took a lot of thought.

At least Goldfrapp is a relatively new band and thus the two cell phone companies are going with something “hip.” There are currently two commercials for upcoming movies (Flushed Away and Stranger than Fiction) using the song Don’t Bring Me Down by the Electric Light Orchestra. I like the song, and can kind of see the connection to either movie, but of the thousands upon thousands of songs available today, they both decided to use the same one?

Originality people. That’s your job so do it.

Song of the moment: silence for hardcore studying.

Rehash

In honor of the height of the World Series, I'm posting an article I wrote about baseball several years ago. Feel free to ignore it if you've read it before, or don't care about baseball, or don't care what I think. But if you don't care what I think, why do you read my blog? Weirdo.

Pinko

I consider myself a patriot. I love my country. “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free,” as the hillbilly national anthem goes. With that said, I hate baseball. I really don’t want to be tried for treason, so I’ll change that to I have severe reservations against the playing and viewing of the popularly conceived American Pastime. I mean really, is baseball the American Pastime? How many of you say “I’ve got 15 minutes to kill, let’s go play baseball? Television is the American Pastime. Or eating cereal. Or playing Solitaire. On the computer of course, not using real cards; that takes too long, involves remembering the correct setup, and tempts you to cheat. Why do I dislike baseball so much? What did it ever do to me? Let me tell you.

Baseball discriminates against nonathletes more than any other sport. I suppose I can’t say any sport with much certainty since I’ve only played 3 sports, but it discriminates more than basketball and poker. And poker is a sport; it’s on ESPN. Of course by nonathletes I mean those that stink at sports, either through a lack of practice or natural inability to move in any coordinated manner. That is to say, me. I suck at sports, all sports, including poker. If I learned anything from “physical education” in elementary school, it’s this: the most important thing at sports isn’t whether you’re good or bad, but whether people can tell if you’re good or bad. When you’re playing basketball you can get lucky and make some shots when you have absolutely no skill. Getting the large ball in the large hoop which is relatively close to you happens a lot more often by chance than hitting that tiny ball flying past you with a piece of wood. When you stink at basketball your teammates can compensate. They can ignore you for most of the game then only pass you the ball when they’re winning by several dozen points. They can even ignore you for the entire game, call you Handicap and leave you behind at the church when they go out for victory Slurpies. Or so I’ve heard. If your second baseman sucks you can’t just ignore him. You can’t just say “Just pass it to third, we’ll just pretend there is no second base.” Well you can, but the other team is going to get the hint, start running straight from first to third and the pitcher is going to get run over in the cross traffic. When you suck at football, it doesn’t really matter, because there’s a billion other players on the field and no one will ever notice. When you suck at volleyball it doesn’t matter because so does everyone else and no none really knows the rules anyway. In hockey you’re considered mediocre if you can stay upright on the ice. Alright, I lied: I’ve played sports other than basketball and poker. I just pretend I’ve never heard of other sports so when I get roped into playing I can pretend it’s my first time and have an excuse for sucking.

In baseball the most enjoyable part, batting, takes the least time and is the hardest to do. Now, I acknowledge that a large part of my animosity towards baseball comes from the fact that I am horrible at it. But even if I were good at it, I think I’d hate being on the field. How fun is playing left field? You stand there, squint, pretend you can see what’s going on at home plate, and pretend that you have some impact on the outcome of the game. I really should bring my cards out with me so I can play Solitaire, except for the fact I can’t remember how to set up the cards and I cheat. I could practice my poker too, except for the fact that I’m standing in the middle of a field, by myself. Even if the Right field guy were closer, he got put in the outfield so is obviously unpopular, perhaps even more so than myself. So I just practice my poker face, which I could be doing in my nice comfortable, air conditioned home. The only fun thing is batting. So I endure all the card playing in the outfield, then more card playing on the bench waiting to bat, then finally I’m up. About 20 seconds later I’ve struck out and back on the bench. For some players it takes longer than 20 seconds to strike out, but not for me. I’ve waited all this time, being bored doing something I suck at, for 20 seconds of being excited and still sucking. How are you supposed to hit that ball? It’s tiny, breaking the speed limit, and I’m not even allowed to use my actual body to hit it. I have to hit it with a stick. At least I know I have enough coordination to get my body to hit the ball. I’ve played dodgeball, I know how to connect a body and a ball. So this should really be my strategy. Get hit, get myself some battle scars, which supposedly chicks dig, and walk to first base.

Baseball reminds me of getting shot. I’m not saying I’d rather shoot myself than play baseball, I’d rather do most anything than shoot myself. I’m just saying the actual sport fundamentally disturbs me because I feel like I’m getting shot at. The baseball is the smallest ball of any sport. I’m not considering the golf ball because it ruins my point, and because while poker is a sport, golf isn’t. Funny pants, golf carts, and being popular among old and rich people, don’t get me started. It’s not as bad as figure skating, but doesn’t have the scantily-clad women to redeem it. So this tiny ball is thrown as fast as possible in my direction. It’s traveling much faster than any other object I regularly have to deal with. Usually things traveling at pitching speeds, such as free-way traffic, trains, the space shuttle etc, are to be avoided. They have big signs saying “Stay away from this area, or you’ll probably die.” But not in baseball. You need to stand right there next to the bullet-like object. You need to try to connect with the bullet-shaped object. It goes against all the bullet dodging instincts action movies have installed in me. Baseball’s really the only sport where I fear being killed. Getting fouled in basketball might hurt, but I won’t die. The football won’t injure me. The people following it might, but we’d have padding, or be playing touch football, where no one ever gets tackled (right.) A hockey puck would hurt, but again, I’d have my Kevlar padding in place. But not in baseball. Did I say my strategy would be to get hit by that ball of death and get to walk to first? Maybe I should reconsider.

Perhaps baseball’s worst sin is making me use my left hand. Get it? Left hand in Latin is sinistra, which is also used for wrong or evil. I love Latin jokes. My left hand is completely useless. I make fun of my whole body, but in actuality everything I’ve ever accomplished with my body has been with the right side. Those complete luck shots in basketball? My right hand. Punching my little brother while “boxing?” My right hand. My left hand is completely ineffective. I don’t know if it’s a Democrat or what, but for some reason I’ve never been able to use my left side as well as my right. And in baseball they want me to catch the aforesaid bullet-ball with my left hand. They do give me a glove which gives my fingers a bigger surface area and webbing between them, which helps. But my Creature from the Black Lagoon hand is even more uncoordinated than my unfettered right hand. When are they going to stop making sports that require me to properly use several parts of my body at once?

Theoretically I’d like to be better at baseball. But this would require practice. I’ve got to tell you, I don’t even have time to play all the video games I own, let alone all the new ones I buy. I don’t really have time to practice something that I currently dislike and may very well hate even when I’m good at it. But even if I built up the motivation to go practice, it’s very difficult to do on your own. It’s hard enough to get people together to play a scheduled game. Pickup baseball just doesn’t work. Twenty people don’t just show up at a field without a significant effort. Baseball just requires too many players. It’s far too bureaucratic. Three on three baseball, now that’d be awesome. But it’s hard to find people to play, and it’d be even tougher to find people to pity-practice with me. You can’t really practice much on your own: I’ve tried that throwing the ball in the air and swinging thing. For one thing, it requires using my left hand. For another, the pitcher is never going to be standing over my head and dropping the ball straight down towards the plate. It’d be easier that way, but I think baseball would lose whatever appeal it has. I suppose I could ask someone to pitch to me so I could practice, but pitchers are almost as popular as quarterbacks, and I don’t know those kinds of people. Plus with just the two of us there he could miss and peg me in the head, and I’d likely die. At least at a game people would see it and I’d get a nice funeral. If we were alone he’d just panic and run to Mexico, there’d be no justice, and I’d end up haunting the baseball field and sitting in left field for all of eternity.

So we’ve established why I dislike playing baseball. In all honesty I’ve made most of that up, because I don’t often play baseball, since I hate it. But as a certified couch potato I feel I am qualified to rant about how bad baseball is to watch. For starters, it’s boring. It’s the most boring sport ever created. Sure they only score once an hour in soccer, but they’re always doing something. You can see people running around, doing bicycle kicks and admire the beauty of dreadlocks flapping in the wind. Plus the female players seem intent on taking their shirts off now. Basketball’s fast. Hockey’s fast. Football is fast, then nothing, then fast, then nothing, but they’ve got flashy graphics and commentary to fill the time. Baseball is slow. You can tell it’s 110 degrees by how slow everyone moves. It’s a little more entertaining when you’re actually at the field and you have the horribly fattening ball park food to eat and idiotic mascots to laugh at. But then you can’t change the channel after 3 minutes when you realize nothing is happening. You have to understand that baseball is a sport where half the players are standing around and want nothing to happen (on the field), and the other half are standing around, doing nothing, only hoping something will happen (on the bench). Only the pitcher and catcher are actually doing something. Everyone else is just hoping and desiring. Some say that hope and desire are what makes the game special. I say hope and desire aren’t much fun to watch, unless it’s sinful desiring, which rarely occurs in baseball. The only thing that would make baseball exciting is putting money on the game, in which case you feel dumb if you lose and feel guilty if you win.

Well I suppose most of you think I’m a Communist Pinko now. But I say you can love America and not it’s Pastime. And baseball’s not that bad; there are worse things. I’ve mentioned golfing and figure skating. There’s also Dungeons and Dragons. How about the Bubonic Plague, that’s certainly worse. Baseball’s just not for me. When we’re all in the Celestial Kingdom and have perfect bodies, I’ll give baseball another try. That is unless baseball tryouts are part of entrance into the Celestial Kingdom, in which case I’m screwed. But I’ll really be happier playing poker in the Terrestrial Kingdom than solitaire in the Celestial. Hope to see you there.

Why I should run the world

Or at least my ward.

Yesterday we had a ward service project. This I support. But our service was for OSU. Why do service for the largest, best funded organization in town? That’s like us sending all our foreign aid to Switzerland and ignoring all the developing nations. Furthermore we did the “service” project in exchange for OSU providing us with their buses for ward trips. Every time they mentioned the project in church they both said that it was service and that we needed to do it so OSU would continue to help us. So it was really a bartering project, not a service project. They said that we needed 100 people for 3 hours to finish the project (they would never tell us what the actual project was, so we didn’t know what to expect.) Knowing the size of our ward, I felt obligated to help us achieve something resembling that 100 number, despite my objections to the project and my relatively busy studying schedule of this week. We ended up with 34 people, and we finished the project in about an hour. Either they intentionally misled us as the needs of the project, or they planned it exceedingly poorly. That’s not to say that this was a horrible experience. It was relatively easy (cleaning parking garages), I had fun and I got free pizza. But there’s a lot of room for improvement.

I’m going into studying hibernation for the next week, so you’ll only hear from me when I am purposefully avoiding studying.

Product Endorsement

I am a connoisseur of all manner of prepackaged foods, but candy bars are a particular favorite. I try not to indulge too often, but on Saturday I was next door to our local International Store (I don’t remember the name of the place, so we’ll settle with that generic name) and had a craving for some Cadbury goodness. I’m sure when other people buy imports they get art or furniture, but the only thing I get from outside of the country is candy. And luckily this store has a reasonable candy section crammed between the pottery and the wine.

I bought two new varieties of chocolate. The first was a Yorkie bar. I’d seen them before at Many Lands in Provo, but never ponied up the 1.50 you must pay for fine imported junk food. The main reason I bought the bar was because it has the awesome slogan of “Yorkie: Not for Girls.” It even includes a crossed-out female silhouette in case an illiterate woman attempts to buy one. I don’t know how well this advertising goes over in Britland, but I thought it was pretty awesome. I was disappointed to find that it was just plain chocolate, but it was certainly better quality than Hersheys. It is also shaped a bit like a Toblerone, which at least provided some tactile variety. All in all a good buy.

I had actually gone to the store to buy a Flake bar and was disappointed to see that they were not currently carrying them. If you’ve never had a Flake you should fly to England immediately (or Canada if you’re lazy) and get one. They’re awesome. Basically it’s just chocolate but it’s been rolled extremely thin and layered on top of itself. They’re a pain to eat, but definitely worth it. Instead of Flake’s they had SnowFlakes, which are much the same as the original, only in white chocolate. They did have the audacity to cover the outside of the white chocolate with regular chocolate, thus eliminating the distinctive shape of their predecessor. The SnowFlake was tasty, but it was no Flake.

And now you know.

Song of the moment “Faster Kill Pussycat” Paul Oakenfold featuring Brittany Murphy

Pertinent Points

1. On Friday I learned how to play cornhole. According to wikipedia this game is popular among college students in the Midwest (it originated in Cincinnati) and Nascar enthusiasts. It’s kind of like horseshoes using beanbags, and played in teams. I cheated though, because I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be drunk to play. One of my anatomy buddies bought a house and we played at his house warming shindig. Good times.

2. On Saturday I cultured myself by going to the Gallery Hop. Once a month all the art galleries in Columbus stay open late and the spaces in between them are filled with street vendors and performers. And tons of weirdoes. But really, the weirdoes were more interesting than the art. Some of the best were a satyr/mime guy, a band with a drunken Bjork imitator and a handsaw player, and roughly 2000 gay men.

3. On Sunday I got my calling. It only took 9 weeks, not that I’ve been counting and with each passing week growing more confident of the ineptitude of the ward. And after all that I was called to be the Elders Quorum Secretary, which I’m pretty sure constitutes just going to EQ, which I usually do.

Another week in anatomy

Once in a lifetime. Hopefully.

Yesterday I skinned a penis then split it in half.

Today I removed a leg. I split the pelvis in half using a chisel, cut through the perineal cavity above the thigh and pulled the leg away from the body. Holding the leg, I’d say it weighed forty pounds.

Weird stuff.

Windsday

Two unrelated points: Lost and Tornados.

I suppose I’ll start with tornados, since they actually involve my life, not just an hour in front of the television. We had another tornado in Columbus yesterday, this time considerably closer to my apartment. Other than a barn burning down because of lightening, I haven’t heard of any specific damage the tornado itself did. The real problem for me was the hail. The radio said that the hail was dime-sized, but when I went out into the storm (because I’m smart like that) it was most definitely nickel-sized. I suppose I can be thankful for no quarters or half-dollars falling from the heavens, but I was rather put out by this hail and it’s impact on my car.

When the hail first threatened to smash the windows of my apartment (I don’t know what the structural integrity of these windows are, but it was certainly quite loud) I thought about going out to protect my precious Subaru. But I really had no options of where to move it, so resigned myself to whatever damage might occur. I checked it this morning and it was mostly alright. There are no obvious dents, though you can see some pock marks if you move back and forth. Yet another weather adventure in Columbus.

Last night was the season premiere of Lost. I had caught myself up a couple weeks ago in preparation for the event. I inadvertently got my roomy hooked on the show as he watched a couple episodes with me and he’s been watching the first two seasons the last couple weeks. He hasn’t quite caught up to season 3, so I had to promise him not to erase any Lost episodes off the Tivo until he gives me the go-ahead.

Honestly the episode wasn’t amazing. It was good, but not like last season’s premiere. Last year they hit the premiere and the show flipped inside-out, much as Alias would do every season. The big reveal (which I’m obviously not going to reveal to you) just wasn’t earth-shattering. Interesting, but it didn’t really surprise me. Whereas the average episode of Lost gives you several “what the heck is going on?” moments, this episode only had a couple, below average and certainly below what you’d want for a premiere. But I still have high hopes for the season. The last season lagged a bit in the middle, but ramped up very well near the end. There are still plenty of mysteries left on this island and it’s going to drive me crazy having to wait a week between each show. I suppose I could study.

Song of the moment: “Overkill” Colin Hay

Vital Information For Your Everyday Life

Random facts:

1. Friday was the first time I have ever overslept for an exam. Luckily oversleeping did not make me late, it merely deprived me of the two hours of morning studying I had allotted myself. While I love sleeping-in, oversleeping vexes me greatly.

2. I misspent two hours waiting in line for John Stewart tickets today. We were actually there for three hours, but I considered the first a valuable investment. The remaining two hours in line (which was impressively long) weren’t profitable since we could’ve returned tomorrow and gotten the same general admission seats. We did get some studying done. Hurray for the anal triangle!

3. I dissected the anal triangle today. I’m not going into any further detail on the subject. It was less uncomfortable than dissecting the testicles a couple weeks ago, but certainly not one of my favorite regions.

4. I’d say that 90% of my fruit purchases in the last 6 years have been bananas. Bananas are not in my top 5 favorite fruits.

5. ILP, the program that sent me to China, has requested to use my China blog for their promotional materials. I believe they’re just going to use the pictures, since the commentary is a bit erratic for their purposes. If you haven’t spent at least 3 hours looking through the website you should.

My China Blog

And if you must know, these are my top fruits, in no particular order: strawberries, cherries, pineapple, lychee, green grapes, seedless oranges and kiwi.

Now you know.

Song of the moment: a tie between “Slow Ride” by Foghat and “Don’t Bring Me Down” by the Electric Light Orchestra.

7/208 a Doctor

Gutenmorgen Aller!

I’m currently celebrating Oktoberfest, in case you were wondering.

Friday was our test, which I’ll comment on a bit. Well first I’ll comment on the utility of anxiety. As I prepare for a test I have two types of anxiety. The first is for the test itself. The second is for the studying process preparing for the exam. I both dread taking the exam, and the countless hours of studying leading up to that point. Both of these anxieties are somewhat useful. If you had no anxiety you wouldn’t prepare or take anything seriously, and thus would never get anything accomplished in your life. However these two types of anxiety often have a reciprocal effect on each other. If you’re really nervous about the test you’ll get over your studying anxiety and make yourself do it. If you’re dreading the studying you’ll avoid it by telling yourself the test isn’t going to be that hard so you don’t need to study. Unfortunately I hit a point in the middle of the week where I lost all anxiety for the test and the only thing remaining was a dislike for studying. It’s nice to be able to go through the actual exam without any foreboding feelings, but they’re really necessary for the week beforehand.

Luckily I managed to study anyway and did relatively well on the exam. In the words of my roomy we “rocked it like a hurricane.” And of course the Scorpions who sang that famous metal anthem were in fact German and we listened to them on the way to Oktoberfest Friday. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The exam consisted of five parts. The first was Physician Development, where we actually practice doing physicals on actors. The most noteworthy part of this part of the test this week was that they tricked us by giving us female patients. Finding her heart sounds only involved moving her breast a little bit, but when I had to measure her liver I spent a couple minutes tapping and pushing her ample bosom around. It’s not exactly that I’m being immature about the procedure, but it just hadn’t factored that into my daily schedule. The second part of the test involved identifying body parts in the cadaver lab. It is pretty incredible to me that I can now identity most every muscle, bone, artery, vein, nerve and duct from the neck to the waist. This is however my least favorite part of the exam. I much prefer the computerized testing where I know there is some clue as to the right answer in front of me. We took an additional anatomy exam, an embryology exam and a biostatistics exam, none of which were very noteworthy. Then we were done and we don’t have to worry about testing again until Monday.

Our celebration Friday night was Oktoberfest. Oddly enough there was also an Italian festival going on at the exact same time so we had to decide which nationality was cooler. Italian sausage vs. bratwurst? The bratwurst mein freund. Unfortunately we didn’t actually bring any directions with us so we spent about an hour finding the German Village portion of Columbus. Once we got there it was late enough, the line was long enough and the prices high enough that we opted not to go in. So what did three single guys (and one married guy) do on a Friday night? We went to Bed, Bath and Beyond of course. To be fair we went to a tavern and walked around while we waited for a table to open up, and they happened to be the only store that was still open. But it was still mighty lame.

Saturday I did approximately nothing. I got nine hours of sleep, watched a session of Conference, went to the post office and watched some Scrubs reruns. It was quite marvelous.

Song of the moment: “Rock it like a Hurricane.” The Scorpions.