It was an honest mistake ...

As part of a long ruminations I've been having lately about the direction of my life (which sometimes ends with me saying I'm an old man and start shaking my fist at BU college students calling them whippersnappers), I've compiled a list of what I consider the worst mistakes I've committed in my life. Possibly, this list's existence is to be a reminder so I never repeat them again, or as a future reference for my future children, or just for everybody's amusement. The fact most of my egregious mistakes involve high school or infectious disease means it's mainly for amusement. And since society likes lists, I've placed the top 10 so far. Note, they are not ranked.

a Becoming the manager for the girls' basketball team, thinking it's a great way to get dates.
b. Learning how to skip.
c. Wanting attention, even if it was negative.
d. Accidentally plagiarizing from the Disney Channel and Arthur Schlesinger.
e. Picking fights with people I was unmatched with, including a QB from a rival high school.
f. Gave up playing a musical instrument.
g. Forgetting certain precautions and asking really, really important questions to romantically-interested girls.
h. Letting myself be worked to death and verbally insulted in a laboratory, even if I was the youngest student there; should have stood up for myself and had more confidence against the post-docs.
i. Not saying I love you enough to family, girlfriends, drunken reprobate roommates.
j. Donating blood on a day when I had little sleep, no real food, a horribly-planned party to set up in Cobb, and an incompetent Scav captain to wake up 10 times. (Yes, this last one is very specific.)

Winter Update

1. I had a dream this morning where snowfall predictions turned out to be false, and everyone was pointing at a light dusting of flurries at Cherokee Park and laughing at the meteorologists. Then I realized Cherokee Park was back in Kentucky. I woke up screaming and remembered I was back in Boston, but there was a foot of snow outside.


2. The undergraduate technician in the neighboring lab is actually not as innocent or work-oriented as she appeared to be when she made snarky comments about her mom pushing her towards dental school. I may ask her out for coffee soon.
3. My Masters diploma application and first thesis draft are due soon. Thus, the C. elegans worms I experiment on rule my life. Stupid important worms.
4. I will be getting a crash course in high-performance liquid column chromatography next week. Somewhere, Paul Strieleman is laughing.
5. The last albums I downloaded were by Radiohead, Miles Davis, the Shins, and Maroon 5 (one of these things is not like the other...)
6. I've been surfing online for tickets to Europe, because let's face it, I won't have this opportunity during med school. My friend Ramon is pro-France while my sister Roze wants Ireland, and my lab mate Andrew went to Poland on the cheap (although he lost his luggage in Italy). Hmmm... going to have to make some choices. Also, if you have about $1500 in disposable tender and some free time this summer, I invite you to come along.
7. And finally, I'm still wondering if karma is setting up the Patriots for a horrible fall (losing the Super Bowl to the Giants, Bridget Moynahan with a rolling pin on the 1-yard line, a giant video camera falling on Randy Moss). But considering the luck they've had so far, it seems that God is wearing a hat with a B on it.

The Summation of Current American Politics

Saw this guy standing on a street corner in Manchester, NH during the state primary yesterday. The photo was also included on Digg and Yahoo News.

Auld Lang Syne

Currently, I'm stuck in bed with a runny nose, ear canal drainage, a continuing medication regimen of penicillin, and possible halitosis. But last night, I finally celebrated a New Year's without an impending sense of stress for the new year with 50 of my closest relatives and seven bottles of Seagram's (and two liters of 7 Up). For the first time in about five years, I wasn't concerned about having to climb the AMCAS mountain or pandering to resumes, MCAT scores, GPAs or picking certain extracurriculars over others. This new year, I'm drinking till 2AM, eating sliders till 3AM and planning tuberculosis screenings for 8AM, there's a half-inch of snow and the wind chill's at -32C, there's bird flu and Pakastani insurgencies for the upcoming year, and I feel fine.

I do have the usual resolutions - of losing weight, getting more fit, keeping up correspondences with friends and family, actually looking for a relationship, hoping the girl doesn't care about my dancing skills. But I also realize that everything I put off from my senior year of college onto moving to Boston. I started to pick this year when I went on a relief trip to New Orleans during Spring Break, then actually had a Spring Break vacation going to a bachelor party in Miami, and then went to the Philippines in September. I have not travelled as much as I used to in my youth, and now, before the long nights of USMLE Board studying begin for me, I have technically three months to go travel, to experience new people, places ideas, and the serendipitious forces that have kept me alive these past 25 years. I'll also pick up recreational reading again, as with the status of airports, I'll probably have more free time to read in between traveling.

So first planned trip is an excursion to California to erase all my bad associations with that state (which actually only involve LA) and then to southern Europe (the Mediterranean coast, Northern Italy, possibly eastern Europe). If any one has more places or books to suggest, feel free.

To 2008.