The Jackson airport has free WiFi, so I figure I should blog while waiting for my delayed flight. I'm on my way up to Vermont for 4 days to be in the wedding of a good friend of mine. Obviously, I'm excited for him and look forward to spending time with him and his family, but another exciting thing is the weather! The heat has been rather oppressive in Mississippi of late, so I'll welcome the high of 60 that they are predicting for Vermont for today.

My flights go through Atlanta and New York en route to Burlington, which means 9 hours of total travel time. Last time I traveled I was spoiled by a direct flight from here to Chicago, so I'm not looking forward to this. I'm not crazy about long travel days, especially when I have no company.

The summer has been progressing nicely. Life in the lab has yet to get busy, but the rats (32) for my project arrived on Monday. I have eight rats each that range in age from 5 to 10 weeks. The oldest ones aren't too cute, but the young ones are still tiny and adorable. They remind me of the hamsters we used to breed, so I'd like to hold them and play with them, but am afraid that I'd get attached. Hopefully, the results from the project will be positive so their lives won't be in vain. :-)

One cool thing is that I've biking with some classmates of mine. There is a huge church with a large parking lot across the road from my house, so I've been out riding circles alone there a few times, and I went out on Monday and Wednesday with friends and rode about 25 miles each time. These guys are fairly serious bikers and they taught me a good bit about the basics of pacelining and about riding in a group in general. Because I haven't biked much, my quads limit my speed before I have any aerobic stress, but I was still able to stick with the guys without much difficulty. I think I'm addicted.

Nothing else of note to report on. Looking forward to a week at beach in North Carolina with family in a few weeks, followed by my brother's wedding here in town. He needs to go ahead and work on a nephew or niece for me.

Time for an update, I guess. It's been too long, as my Dad keeps reminding me.

School finished up nicely. I don't think I was as ready to be done as some people, but the changes in my schedule have been welcome. It was odd, though, having absolutely nothing to do the weekend after classes ended. I had asked my advisor if I could start in the lab the Monday immediately following finals, and I'm glad I did. I was starting to get bored. It would be nice if I were better able to just relax and do nothing, but I've never been able to do that. If I have things to do I don't mind having no school or work, but I can't just sit around and be distracted by a big screen TV all day.

Working in the lab has been interesting and enjoyable thus far. My advisor might just be the most laid back Ph.D. I've ever met, which makes the lab environment very relaxed. I appreciated something he told me the week before I started. He said that he wasn't going to be breathing down my neck all the time, but that he would be there to support me and answer questions. He knows that this is my career now, and that I am driven and want to get stuff done. The new research building that I'm working in is incredible in many ways, but the one disadvantage is that the office of my advisor is a good little distance away from the lab. So asking him questions isn't the most convenient thing to do. He's also very busy. Thankfully, there's an awesome Chinese postdoctoral fellow in the lab. I can't speak highly enough of him. He's a great teacher, he's patient, he's generous with his time, and he's skilled at doing animal surgeries. And we have something in common in that we both like food, a lot. He told me he could eat 15 or 20 eggs. That's kind of gross.

These first two weeks in the lab have mostly been taken up by reading and practicing a fairly difficult procedure which involves isolating and cannulating an arteriole from the gracilis muscle in rats. Most of it is microsurgery, and I love it. I'm ordering rats for my actual project this upcoming Tuesday. I'll be looking at the mechanisms by which blood flow to skeletal muscle tissue is impaired (exercise capacity is diminished as a result) in obese rats. The subject matter is interesting and the experiments are fun. I'm having a good time.

I've settled in at the new house along with one roommate, and am looking forward to my other two roommates moving in in about a month. When we're all moved in, it's going to be an American, a Brazilian, a Chinese, and a Zimbabwean. I was thinking about hanging our four flags outside the house. :-)

The summer should be a good one. World Cup, two weddings, beach week in North Carolina. No other big plans that I know of, but every day is an adventure!

Another week has passed in beautiful (weather-wise), springtime Jackson. Life is chugging right along nicely. One source of excitement is that baseball season is underway, although it doesn't look like my Astros will be any good. I'm no fair-weather fan so I'll be watching most of their games anyways. I haven't perfected the art of watching baseball and studying effectively at the same time, but I'm working on it. The Astros-Phillies game is open in another window as I type :-)

School is enjoyable as always. Neuroanatomy is the only class that currently requires much work, so the schedule is fairly light. It's hard to believe that the first year of med school is almost over! I guess that comes with getting old. My grandma always used to tell me that time flies by faster as you age, and I'm beginning to believe it. One thing that helps me to enjoy school more is going to the free clinic. Yes, it takes up time, and I'm not always in the mood to go. But afterwards I feel great every single time, and have never regretted going. I not only see the relevance of the stuff I'm learning in class, but it also motivates me to study for something other than doing well on a test. The more I know, the better care I will provide for the patients. Yesterday at the free clinic we were short again on medical students, so I got to see a few patients on my own. Thankfully, none of them had complex disorders.

I'm closing on my house in a little over two weeks. I went by the place today for the first time in almost a while, and it turns out that I have lots of nice flowers in the front and the back yard. Not sure how long they'll be in bloom, but I'm hoping it'll be for a while. They look very nice.

Our first intramural soccer game starts in about an hour. The games are being held over at Newell Field on the artificial turf, and I look forward to getting our butts kicked. That's probably a slight exaggeration, but sadly, it looks like our team will be mediocre at best. Lets just hope all of the other teams are as out of shape as most of us are. I'm going to go ahead and predict that the M2s will win the championship. For some reason all of the athletes ended up in that class.

Nothing much else is going on. I've seen a lot of good movies lately. Read and am reading a few good books.

I'm excited about this summer! Starting in the lab the Monday after school gets out. I'll be in two weddings. Doing some (hopefully) fun research. Good times!

So, a good bit has happened since I last posted.

Found a house, made an offer, signed the contract, then withdrew the offer after an inspection revealed problems. Found another house a few days later, had a great inspection, and am now waiting around to close on it on April 28. It's exciting. I have one of my classmates to thank for getting me to even consider buying a house. He is buying one, and he told me how easy the whole process is. He wasn't lying. Now let's just hope I can find another roommate (or two), and things will by hunky-dory.

Spring break has been a blast thus far. Went to Destin and chilled there for 4 days at the beginning of the week, and have been having hanging out, doing a whole lot of nothing since I've been back. When I'm busy, I always long for the breaks, but when the breaks come along, I get bored unless I have a lot to do. Anyways, I'm excited for the next few months of school. I've never really enjoyed neuro stuff all that much, but I'm hoping that will change now that I have to learn it in a lot more detail. When I blink it will be summer.

I haven't been running much recently, but I don't mind it too much. Have averaged about 25 miles a week for the past month, and I've been lifting weights more. I'm thinking I'll take it easy with the running until about mid-June, then start training for the Chicago Marathon (Oct. 10). Who knows, though, I could get re-motivated again next week and start running more. I'm enjoying doing the heavier weights for now, but I know that's not good for marathon training.

Went to the free clinic today. We stayed very late (past 6 PM), but it was one of my best JFC experiences thus far. There were a lot of patients, but only 4 medical students (two M3s, one M2, and me) and 2 premeds (normally there are 12 to 15 med students). Sooo, I ended up seeing a few patients all by myself. It went great with the patients, and I appreciated the fact that the upperclassmen medical students trusted me. I'm not sure if I was even technically allowed to do that, but nobody wanted to be there until 8 o'clock, so they said okay. Good times!

Another week, another blog. I should be sleeping right now, but Pops wants a post, so here goes nothing.

School continues as always. The workload has picked up slightly, but mostly it's just because I've been going to all of the Phys classes. Today I was at school for five hours, tomorrow it will be seven. That just gets old, but I told myself I wouldn't skip any of their classes, and I'm trying to stick with it. We recently finished up learning about the kidneys, and now we're on to the endocrine system. The kidney stuff was cool because it was so relevant to all of the disorders I see at the free clinic every weekend. Endocrine stuff has always fascinated me, so I'm enjoying that. Don't think I'd want to be an endocrinologist, however. Too much of a cerebral specialty, with very little in the way of procedures.

Still running. 62 miles last week, hoping to get 70 this week. There's a 5K this weekend, and it looks like it will be a fun one. A decent number of my classmates have told me that they are running it, so that will be a good time. I hope it doesn't end up being too cold or rainy or windy.

The interviews/elections for the free clinic were this evening. My top choice was the position of Research Chairman, and I was elected to it, along with an M2 friend of mine. Looks like we'll have a pretty solid Board of Directors next year, and I look forward to serving in that capacity. Three or four of my classmates were also elected to various positions.

I just finished up a decent book by Atul Gawande (general surgeon in Boston and professor at Harvard Medical School) called "The Checklist Manifesto." It's probably not as good as some of his other books, just because he doesn't say all that much, but the basic idea is great. He talks about the value of checklists. The book is full of examples and stories of where checklists have made a profound difference--particularly for safety--in the fields of medicine (surgery, in particular), aviation, construction, etc. Now I'm starting "Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan. It's about time, too. It came in the mail two weeks ago, and it's just been sitting on my desk. My roommate also loaned me a book called "The Great Influenza" by John Barry, which I'm reading. It's excellent.

Valentine's Day is coming up. What am I doing for it? Watching the movie, of course.

Time is flying as always, and I continue to get older and more decrepit. I'm not feeling the decrepit part, but I'm sure time is taking its toll on my joints and vessels and everything else it's supposed to affect.

Life is great, though. I tend to live in the moment, for the moment, and don't tend to dwell on the past much. That's why I always have trouble when I sit down and try to write one these posts. Nothing major ever sticks out in my mind. It's all a mush. Of course, I remember what's been going on, but I have to expend mental energy to remember the high points, or at least things that are "more interesting" than everything else.

Some people like to update their blogs every day and write about every single thing that happened to them on a particular day. I couldn't do that. I tend to take a more general, philosophical approach to blogging, and that takes energy as well. That's probably why I don't write on here much. And there always seems to be something more interesting to do. So know that if I am blogging, I have nothing better to do and am probably very bored.

Today was the least profitable day I've had for a while. I thought I was going to have class until 5 PM, but it turns out that I only had it until noon, so what do I do? Make the best of the free time I didn't know I would have? No, I didn't do a good job with that. Ended up piddling around for most of the afternoon, reading a little bit, watching a bit of TV, going to the store, etc. Before I knew it, it was 6:30 in the evening and I had to go work out and run. And I haven't done anything since the workout. Just one of those days I guess.

Tomorrow's schedule will be very light as well, but I hope to do a better job keeping myself occupied. It's difficult, as I discussed in my last post.

The last two weeks have been fun. In school, I thoroughly enjoyed re-learning all about the cardiovascular system, on the weekend I had a great time landscaping with classmates in a Habitat for Humanity project (even though it made me miss the Free Clinic), running has been going very well (excited about the 5K in town and half marathon in New Orleans), and I've had plenty of nice social events at various places with different people. Nothing extraordinary, but nothing simply ordinary.

Here I am, all excited about the new semester, motivated, ready to work hard. And there's nothing to do. Funny how that happens. I'm not complaining, but I don't like to be idle. I get bored quickly with inactivity, and while I don't necessarily want to be doing school all the time, it does tend to ward off boredom. So I've been making a great effort to be productive with my time, and the last 10 days have been fantastic in that regard. However, each passing day I find myself wasting just a little more time than the day before.

Okay, I exaggerated in that paragraph. School has been taking time, maybe even more than last semester, primarily because I've been attending classes. So that's three to four hours a day right there, and then some reading after class. That still leaves about 8 or 9 hours each day that I have to occupy. Am I in med school? I guess so, but most of the time it doesn't feel like it. Or maybe it's just that I don't feel like I thought I'd feel as a med student. I remember in college being freaked and excited at the same time, thinking that I'd be some sleep-deprived zombie with no life who has his head in a book for 12 hours a day. It's a good thing it's nothing like that, because I've found that I'm inept at studying for long periods of time unless I have a significant amount of pressure on me to do so (e.g. the day before a test).

As for as productivity, I've been keeping busy doing the things I said I was going to do in my last post. I'm in the midst of reading 5 books right now. I should probably just read one at a time, finish it, then get onto the next one, but for some reason I can't do that. I think I got that trait from my dad. If I open a book, I usually get interested and read a few chapters, then I'll end up picking up another one the next day and doing the same. Before I know it I'm reading a bunch of books and it takes forever to finish any of them. I'm actually doing well to just keep it at five.

I had a great day at the free clinic on Saturday. We had a fun group, and the two M3s let me talk to the patient and present the case to the doctor a few times. Working at the free clinic is really a great learning experience, and I absolutely love the patients. They're funny, respectful, grateful, non-compliant (hehe), and terrified of needles (deep down, who isn't?). My goal is to try and go every weekend this semester, except when I'm out of town for races (only once or twice) and for that conference in April. I know that's ambitious, but there's no reason (laziness, but that' not a good one) why I shouldn't be able to. It's a lot better than wasting time watching TV or browsing the internet.

The water crisis in Jackson has been a nuisance, but I don't want to complain about it. It made me realize that I've always taken running water for granted, when I know that many many people in this world don't have it. I'm blessed, and thankful for what I have, but I am happy that the water is back on. It makes life much less complicated.

I've been hanging out with Belhaven friends a good bit recently as well. That's been great. I don't like losing touch with people, especially when only live two miles away. It's always very interesting to me to see how relationships change over time. How I'll hang out with a certain group for a few months, then inexplicably won't see them for months, then I'll start hanging out with them again as if we never stopped. That happened more in college than it does now, but I think it will happen.