it’s days like these i’m glad i have a camera handy. francisca and i were walking to a verbal defense workshop in the OMM lab today when we were lured into the vet school by a promise of cake. there, we rubbed elbows with none other than heather locklear– whose grandmother had just donated a heap of cash to our school. francisca, of course, was more taken with her husband–a beautiful rock star man of some sort.

…and we had cake, too.

after a grueling test/essay extravaganza, the kids and i went out for indonesian food and an adventure. we drove up to the mountains and hiked along a trail to a cliff overlooking a waterfall, then climbed the side of a mountain to get to another trail to get to the waterfall. we took the wrong road back to the car… and ended up hiking up up up through the mountain… and didn’t realize it until about a mile in. after we doubled back and found the car, we picked up ice cream, root beer, and berries galore to enjoy back in the city. mmmm.

pictures here.

from our behavior and medicine book:
two studies demonstrate a modest but unmistakable shift toward hedonism between the freshman and junior years of medical school…. students became less concerned with achievement and less intellectually curious and became more impulsive, agressive, and interested in play…students become more self-indulgent, cynical, agressive, and confrontational over the course of medical school.

and that’s not all.

a woman on the panel today on depression and suicide stated quite bluntly at the beginning of the hour, ” i hate to tell you this, but not all of you are going to be here in a few years. some of you will kill yourself.” lovely. apparently, the number of physicians who kill themselves each year is approximately equal to the size of a graduating medical school class.

…and according to analiza, medical students are the loneliest people in the world. it may be a slight overstatement, but i’m definitely feeling it. there’s too much competition, too much ugliness, too much cynicism as a way of life.

i miss the shiny happy people.

on a lighter note, me and my photography skills were auctioned off today for a charity benefitting children with AIDS. i was initially worried that no one would be interested, but as soon as the bidding started, my price went up! lots of cashy cash for the kids, eh?

and… i’m still smiling from last night’s fun. we watched love actually, a movie that’s so incredibly bad that it’s good [as long as you get get through the first half of it]… and then proceded to dance around the apartment. i miss dancing. ryan, if you’re reading this, it’s time to dance again.

and again.

i’ve been drooling over these little sushi-shaped chocolates by kooki sushi since i found out about them. i wanna try the apricot roe [made with dark chocolate and gummy candy] and the green tea wasabi. quelle fun!

but… since i won’t be visiting their store in san jose any time soon, i’ll have to settle for real sushi tonight. toro, todai, wabi sabi?

where’s a dinner date when you need one?

i recieved so many compliments about my new shoes today that i began to wonder if something was up. i mean, even the boys were saying hello to them. too bad they were killing my feet all day until i finally broke them in [or my feet went numb] after [a happy sushi] dinner. that was also about the time when i stopped wobbling on them and started walking normally. hmmmm.

i sped through my presentation on frontal lobe tumors today– ending in record time and gleeful that it was over. while i was waiting for my turn to speak, i got a massive case of stage fright complete with tremors, sweaty palms, and nausea. good grief. the nice thing was that the lights were turned out so that the audience couldn’t see me, and more importantly, i could barely see them.

and lastly, i can’t seem to play golf, do yoga, learn about brain injuries, or even buy TIDE laundry detergent without missing my dad. i’m becoming more depressed by the day, and i can’t help but wonder how far away i am from hitting rock bottom.

there’s a new photographer on my favorite’s list– who has kicked me out of my slump and inspired me to take photos again. love the clean lines and bright colors. clicking through his site is like taking a vacation. check out imaginate by placido perez.

the test over, henry, francisca, and i went down to the driving range for some very therapeutic ball smacking. i really must make this a habit. out of 100+ balls, i hit about 10 out past the lake and onto greener pastures [my first time at a driving rage, obviously]. a few wayward shots nearly hit a lost duck that was idly swimming around in the firing range.

ryan came by for dinner at honolulu harry’s [coconut shrimp=fun], and we ended up microwaving peeps from the 99 cent store. additional pictures to follow when i have more time.

to the right: the remaining un-microwaved peeps squished together so that they looked like gyri [everything looks like the brain to me now] or strange multi-headed alien forms. in the full sized picture, you can see them in their spectacular purple-sugared glory.

Congratulations, kim!
Your IQ score is 133

This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others.

Your Intellectual Type is Insightful Linguist. This means you are highly intelligent and have the natural fluency of a writer and the visual and spatial strengths of an artist. Those skills contribute to your creative and expressive mind. And that’s just some of what we know about you from your test results.

oh sure.