My Concert History

I saw Talib Kweli a month ago, a few days before my last block exam; it was awesomeeeee.

I was thinking I'd make a blog just to talk about it like I did with Gaga, and it occurred to me that really, I'd like to compile a list of every show I've been to, just because sometimes I feel like I've been to a ton of them.  I've actually been putting off this post for a while just because I knew it would take a minute to think of everything.  I am sure I will have to update it at least a few times after I post it the first time.  One thing for sure is I can't let myself reflect on every one of the concerts or its going to be entirely too drawn out.

Trying to make this chronological:

MSI guy

2001 Krazy Fest - Alkaline Trio, Elliott, Saves the Day, Hot Water Music, Boy Sets Fire? @ the Water Tower
2002? - The Used, Coheed and Cambria @ Expo 5
2002-2004...so many random indie bands that I just don't have time to remember
2003 Krazy Fest - Hatebreed, Andrew WK, Atreyu @ Waterfront park
2004 - MSI @ Jillians
2004 - Chevelle @ waterfront?
2005 - MSI @ Jillians

Deftones - bleh show

2005 - Modest Mouse @ the old Male High School
2006 - Slipknot (HAha....) @ Indianapolis
2006 - Mars Volta, System of a Down @ Columbus, OH
2006 - Deftones @ Dayton, OH
2007? - Queens of the Stone Age @ the place on Liberty
2007- Modest Mouse @ the place on Liberty
2008 - Common @ Butler University

Kanye's random monster/dinosaur

2008 - Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, N.E.R.D., (was supposed to see Rihanna too, but she bailed) @ Cincinnati
2008 - the Smashing Pumpkins @ the Palace
2009 - The Decemberists @ Indianapolis
2010 - My Morning Jacket @ the Yum Center
2011 - Lady Gaga  @ the Yum Center
2011 - Talib Kweli @ Headliners

Gaga's monster

2011 - The Decemberists @ Iroquois park

Mama's day

Two years ago was my first mother's day, and it didn't occur to Jeff that it meant he was supposed to do something special.  I've made a point to remind him this and last year.  That's just the first thing that has came to my mind as I begin this post.

Note the shoes...they really cool

So I ask him today what he's got for me, and he says, "I meant to get something yesterday...," and then a little while later while he was working in the yard he picked a nice pink rose for me out of our garden.  At first I had thought he had stole it from the neighbors- but nope, it was just a nice, pink, sweet smelling rose that belonged to us already.  I decided that the fossil purse I got for myself a couple of nights ago would be good enough :).

BEAUTIFUL

I spent the day on the porch. Working, studying, entertaining Saia, and mostly just enjoying the day.  In the afternoon my mom and grandma stopped by to see a few plants Jeff and I bought yesterday.

Schlafly Raspberry - Try it

Yesterday, we were at an ACE hardware getting things for projects around the house and we decided to splurge a bit.  We got a push broom (!), a pair of loppers (omg wonderful!), a bulb for the aquarium, a giant piece of glass for a frame I've been putting together slowly over the past year, a piece of plexiglass to fix our garage door, and a bunch of dirt and plants.  Everything has made it in the house except for the aquarium bulb and the giant piece of glass, which were unsuccessful endeavors...stupid excessively-breakable things.

I knew I could get away with splurging ($34, lol) on plants and gardening stuff if I made one special purchase: I picked out a nice big tomato plant for Jeff.  He complains how the tomatoes he buys always go bad before he gets to use them (as does most of our produce, unfortunately).

what's it called?  Couldn't tell you.  Ask me later.

 I always want to buy plants when I see them, but I think I've largely convinced myself that gardening is too hard.  I tend to always over or underwater my plants.  I have no concept of plant food.  And I've never successfully transitioned my plants from one season into the other.  I tried to grow some food seasoning plants last year- but that was a complete failure and if you ask me growing things from seeds is impossible.  But, its a hobby that I know I'd love if I could just teach myself enough about it to keep up with it.  All of the flowers I picked out yesterday were to go in pots outside, but I need more plants for my indoors.  Indoor plants are the ones I have a really hard time with though.

Lucky for us, we didn't have to become gardeners to have our own- the garden at our house was one of the most beautiful things about it when we bought it.  The stonework and organization most definitely add value to the property.  Crazy enough, whoever planted our garden put in the most work-free plants anyone could ask for.  Everything we have blooms at some point in the spring or summer, and there is always something in bloom it seems.  Our work has mostly just been cleaning up the leaves and the ungodly amount of helicopters from the oak tree above our yard every spring.  And that is plenty of work if you ask me.

look what my camera can do!!! amazing! see tomato

After we bought the plants and things yesterday, we had somewhere to be, but before we went we both wanted to do all of our projects.  Jeff fixed the garage door, did an unnecessary amount of tree trimming, planted the tomato plant, and swept up my aquarium bulb.  I arranged and planted all of my flowers in pots.  We made a special barrier for the tomato plant to protect it from animals and Saia out of crap from around the house: an old door screen, some random piece of metal, a couple hangers, and a broom pole.

Kasha: officially our outdoor cat as far as we are concerned

Finally, I had to go ahead and make a post about today because I managed to take a nice series of pictures.  I ignorantly discovered a number of options my camera has that I'm going to be taking advantage of all the time.

Counting the hobbies now...blogging, photography, trainspotting, homemaking... gardening?

Osama.......

I just got on facebook for the first time today and was overwhelmed by the news feed of comments about today's big news...  Most of them were by one person, and there comments as well as the replies to them just frustrated me a bit, so here I am.

I spent half an hour getting ready today, 45 minutes on a bike in the rain (bad day to start riding again), 9:30-4:30 in Quill's coffee shop, and then finally I arrived at a nail place to get my first manicure thing.  I'm actually going to post a brief blog about that later too.

I looked up at the bright flashing TV above me for the beginning 5 o clock news and held my mouth agape for about 5 minutes while the breaking news headline bore half the screen. I wondered how late I was to find out- nobody around me looked surprised.  All of a sudden it made sense to me why that random chick at Quills went outside in the rain just to take a picture of the newspaper stand.  And here I thought she just had some random thing for that, or was into photography......

Oh the life of social and cultural ignorance led by a med student. I didn't know about Libya until 3 days into it or something when Chris posted some article on how the Libyan government turned off their internet (and that's all it specified).  I responded to his post- "....and why would a government feel the need to do this?" lol.

I think I was surprised because I had believed all the assumptions and jokes out there that Osama was going to die in a cave.  In fact, I figured there was a chance he was dead already.  So much for that.  It is pretty nasty he has been catered to and playing golf this whole time...  This is a nice Louis C.K. clip that I recently saw and I thought of during the broadcast:

http://tv.gawker.com/#!5621218   I can't embed it, but this guy is hilarious people. Please do yourself a favor and watch him sometime.

The news likes to post blog quotes and facebook comments these days, and they showed a few that were worth mentioning but one in particular I remember and appreciate: "The Bible says not to boast the death of our enemies."

I don't feel boastful.  I feel surprised, proud for the outcomes this may mean for Obama's presidency, all of a sudden more understanding of why the Afghanistan efforts were continued after all...  but mostly, I feel solemn about the circumstances of what brought us to this point, and about the widespread ignorance the entire 9/11 fiasco brought us, which will be further perpetuated in this breaking news.

The news went on with some surprisingly intelligent comments on the matter, the context of which I am unsure: "70% of Americans do not know a Muslim."  "80% of Americans have not learned about the religion of Islam."  Those numbers shock me...Sometimes I feel ignorant to just how ignorant the populations around me are.  I want to believe that everyone can be and is internally virtuous, but a lack of understanding and exposure is so detrimental to the necessities of acquiring virtue... especially when it comes to culture and religion.  Am I just a hippie with unrealistic ideals?  Hmm, maybe according to just 80% of the country.

Why are people boasting on their facebook walls, making t shirts, videos, having patriot parties?  Because we beat the "bad guy."  The world of black and white, good and evil: of course that is the American view of the world.  Just what we all learned as kids when we developed our concrete thought processes.  Osama was wrong.  But he beleived in this black and white philosophy too- hence he was an "extremist."

And of course now everyone is worried about a backlash from the extremists.  What else can we expect but what happened with Tupac and Biggie?  How many Muslims do people think the US has pissed off with this action?  Muslims did not like Osama, and I am sure that there are just as many, if not many more, Muslims that are satisfied with this event than there are Christians (after all, they outnumber us by plenty).  There will always be extremists, but they will not be any better at making offensive advances now then they were after 9/11.

Thunder 2011

I've missed you blog!  Don't want to lose this.  I'm officially calling blogging a hobby.  And I don't have a lot of good hobbies so I need this.

Thunder went great this year.  It was cold and wet- so we unfortunately missed the air show, but we walked to the waterfront just in time to get a great view of the fireworks.  The crowds were sparser than I think I can ever remember, and the fireworks show was very well done. 

Saia really liked it.  His great-grandma Eva probably described his feelings of it best:  "in awe and/or scared-."  surely ambivalent things going through that little head.  I was trying to encourage him to cheer, and Jeff says he would occasionally let out a little "Yay."  Now when we've been passing the bridges from the interstates, he starts talking about the show.

I've got another couple posts in my queue that will come later.  Board studying is officially starting tomorrow :(, and today I'm finishing up to-do lists...

Isaiah at 2, spring time

I made Saia his own facebook page a couple weeks ago.  I think I decided to during a conversation with Chris about how some people do that for their kids.  The idea was so that we could tag him in all of his adorable pictures.  I also liked the idea because I could advertise what he’s been up to.  I intentionally try not to talk about him too much on my FB.  He may be a lot of my life, but a lot of the things we do together are pretty routine.  Plus lately I’ve been avoiding my fb page in general, so. 

ringling bro/barnum and bailey

 I like how on his fb page I can refer to the things we do as super exciting… like going to see trains, going to Cherokee park, going to his cousin’s or uncle Chriss’.  Or riding horses, going to his first circus, playing with Noodle at popo’s and nana’s.  Saia’s got a pretty consistent routine.  It’s fairly all over the place during the week, but consistent week to week.  It’s actually changing a bit starting this week, because Jeff switched to first shift, M-F!!

Sunday:                typically will be at home with me and Fejj.  We’ve been spending as much time as possible in the backyard which is fenced in so he gets to do pretty much whatever he wants out there.  We’ve got a toddler basketball set up, a little red toddler car, a sit-and-push toy, and a bunch of golf wiffle balls that he throws everywhere.  Kasha is usually out there with us too.

 Monday:              with Daddy til he goes to work, then aunt Jamie’s until I come get him.  He gets to play with his cousin Kamauri (2 ½ and loves Saia a ton) over there.  Maurmaur also loves Thomas just like Saia.  Daddy bowls Mondays so we’ve been spending a lot of Monday evenings at uncle Chriss’.

Tuesday:              Daddy takes him to daycare then I pick him up. 

Wednesday:      with daddy until he goes to work, then Popo takes him to Green hill hippotherapy and his house until I get him.  Starting in June, Saia will have daycare on Wednesday.

Thursday:            Daddy takes him to daycare then I pick him up.  Developmental interventionist and speech therapist come this day.  Daddy bowls on Thursdays too, so we commonly look for a friend to visit on this evening.  We’ve been visiting a friend of Chriss’ a lot lately who has a 6 year old girl that Saia loves to play with.

Friday:                  with daddy until he goes to work, and Popo comes to take him to his house.  Saia loves my parents house-  they are really attentive to what he wants over there (“attentive”), they have a great train set up he can play with, and they have a hyper little white dog.  Popo often takes him on walks to parks or takes him to see a train.

Saturday:             I want to sign Saia back up for swimming lessons.  Those will be Saturday mornings.  Last time we had them, Jeff never had a chance to go, but that should be different next time around (crazy).  This is the day I’ll typically try to match my dad by taking saia around the neighborhood to swing, see trains, visit the parks, go out for lunch.

Me and lists.  Sheesh…

Well I wanted to share some pictures, and I thought I’d advertise that he is sleeping in a big boy bed now.  It’s pretty cute.  We have to shut his door and wait for him to lay himself down, but he always does. 

Potty training isn’t really happening.  I’m still mostly focusing on getting him to talk about the potty (which he loves to do) and eventually telling us when he needs to do his business (which hasn’t happened yet).

He started saying I love you a month or two ago.  This video is a pretty cute representation of his speaking skills right now. 

Spring Cadaver Ball

I mostly want to share my pictures from last Friday. Album here.

wish I would've got a better picture of my dress.

I was a primary organizer for the fall CB, but you all missed out on hearing everything I did for that one.  For the spring, I was aware of the progress for organizing the event, but the only thing I did in the end was pick up the beer.  I wanted to take a picture but my phone busted while I was at the grocery.  Imagine me, all dressed up (still wearing flats at that point), with my hair curled and make up on, pushing a grocery cart at valu market with 5 30-packs of PBR and 5 30-packs of High Life.  And a guy from the meat dept pushing another cart of miller light and high life behind me.  I don't care for high life, but it was what my Pres asked me to get.  I don't know thought we should get it, but I returned the extras yesterday and out of the 20 30-packs, we had 7 leftover High Lifes.  Ouch.  Go PBR.

I cracked my screen a couple weeks ago after I dropped it without the case on. The first drop was pretty dramatic- it actually lost a chunk of glass and a part of the circuit board is showing above my screen.  Sure enough, a couple more mild drops added more cracks.  When I was in Valu market, I was holding my phone in my hand and foolishly pushed my cart with my phone in my palm.  big loud crack.  Now the touch screen doesn't work below the screen crack, so I can't unlock my phone.  I thought it was completely useless, but Jeff has taught me how to make calls with voice command, and he suggested I use iphone headphones to answer calls.  We are waiting for a new glass to come in the mail and hopefully it will work out.

Track selection

A couple weeks ago we finally got to do something all of us had been waiting for:  picking our tracks and laying out our plans for 3rd year.  We are finally escaping the days of hours tucked away in lecture halls and in lonely study rooms. In exchange, we get to actually be in the medical environment (in a sense, the "real world") and feel like we are reaching our goals...

I'm anxious and worried about how well I'll adjust.  But, I'm largely optimistic that the clinical years will bring good things for me.  Especially since they are so structured time-wise...  I still worry a lot about my background of knowledge, though.

the light is coming

My post-2nd year schedule:
c. April 26 - June 8: Step 1 study and test date.  I have my study schedule ready for this.  Do me a favor and try not to ask me about it too much-  I don't need the stress when I'm trying to relax (which will be on Saturday evenings and Sundays.  so if you do anything, plan on not seeing or hearing from me at any other time.  unless your babysitting lol).

June 9 - June 27: Hopefully lots of splurging on who-knows-what (Chicago trip?) in addition to booze.


June 28- July 2: Clinical orientation... whatever that means.

July 5 - Aug 26: Pediatrics - supposed to be good.  it will be nice to miss the flu season.  we'll get the GE cases instead right haha.

Aug 29 - Oct 21: Surgery - earlier than I really like to do it... but I'm going to do my best.  Sucks that our birthdays will fall in here.  I'm still in denial that my hours could literally be 5AM-5PM 5 days a week + call.  I just can't put that into perspective right now.  I'll be missing a lot of good weather.

Oct 24 - Nov 4: vacation week: potential elective time...Ortho? :)  Also could try ENT or something.

Nov 7 - Dec 16: Psychiatry:  ahhh, easy break just in time for seasonal depression and Christmas.  for my woes as well as others'.

Dec 19 - Dec 31: vacation weeks

Jan 3 - Mar 23: Internal Medicine: looking forward to the sampling of the subspecialties.  so many avenues. and rounds.

Mar 26 - Mar 30: vacation week, probably too late to catch the big east tourney... darn it

April 2 - May 11: OB/Gyn, not an easy rotation from what I've heard, but I look forward to the specialty exposures.

May 14 - June 22: Family medicine, probably either in Jefferson county or Madisonville.  If in Madisonville (I'll find out in a few months, possibly dependent on potential pregnancy), I'd totally try to get Dad to move down with me for 2/4 weeks so I can still see Saia half the time there.  And we'd go fishing a ton!  and Jeff could come a bunch and motorbike.  Madisonville could potentially be a lot of fun.  But I'd like the west end really.

August: due date for ERAS applications - date to pick a specialty by.

I ended up picking tracks based on the following priorities:
1) most interested specialties needed to be closer to the middle-ish... Surgery and OB/Gyn
2) wanted to be with people I liked and not overtly competitive.
3) wanted a primary care rotation before surgery.  IM would've been the best strategy but priority 2 overruled...
4)Save least laborious rotations for last in case we get prego, do peds as far away from a potential first trimester as possible

I've applied to be track captain for the rotations in either the fall or spring and am crossing my fingers.  I like the idea of immersing myself with a thorough knowledge of details of my tracks and this would facilitate that well.  Odds are 1/3 though, and I really am not sure what to expect; in med school, everyone is qualified.  And I'm not sure I'm much of an interviewer.

Well thats a nice boring school-focused blog.  I wanted to share the schedule mostly.  exciting :)