I Love My Friends

When I was figuring out where to go to school, something that HMS students kept saying was that their classmates were the best part of medical school. Even so, I was pretty wary of who my partners in medical education would be. Until I met E, who has indeed become one of my best friends, at revisit weekend, I didn't click with a single person connected to this school. So I really just didn't expect to really get close to people I met in med school. Maybe because I have continued to be at least some what suspicious about my own reasons for going into this field, I was just kind of suspicious about my classmates.

But my fears were largely unfounded and not only have I met a diversity of genuine and down to earth people, I have made incredibly good friends. It's exciting, even after a year, to be still getting to know these people better, but already trusting and loving them. I'm feeling particularly gushy right now because we just had this fabulous bonding weekend. Four of my friends came out to our house yesterday for a perfect day of peach picking, swimming in the lake and incredible barbecuing. We ate tons of veggies: peppers, onions, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, tomatoes, with breaded tofu, and chicken sausage. Plus home-made guac and a fantastic peach cobbler for dessert. Icing on the cake is that these friends helped to clean up.

Then, because we are super-cool medical students, we cleared the table and returned with cups of tea and our weekend take-home quiz. Hey, who doesn't like some scintillating saturday night group study? After having our fill of that lovely activity, we talked into the night over cups of decaf and delish liquor provided by K and then had PJ cuddle time and a sleep over. This morning was pancakes followed by dance party to late 90's pop and then I sadly escorted them out the door. Partly it was just wonderful to get to seem them outside of school.

Sigh. I love my friends.

My Friends Just Can't Stay Out of the News

Maybe I would be in the news too if I didn't come home to walk my dog after school instead of rabble rousing all the time. Anyway, go them! Maybe it will make Howard Brody blog about the hallowed institution again.

In The Thick of It

Seems like if I don't have a headache from too little caffeine, I have one from being dehydrated. And despite my best efforts over the summer and sticking to half decaf in the morning. Here I sit, jittery, headached, sleepy. And content.

It's days like today that make me look ahead to May and the beginning of my full-time clerkships and think "Dear golly, we have got to move into the city." It's the having such an abundance of work and commitments that I can't get home to see Lion before she's gone off for the evening that gets to me, and all I want is for us to live blocks from everything that takes us out of the house.

But then, I bike home from the train station through my wooded neighborhood. Harriet greets me with excited tail thumping and we run upstairs to the yard. There I discover that our lovely neighbors/landlords have gone to the trouble of installing for us a fantastic pulley-style clothesline to replace the one that I hastily stuck up in the shade without thinking twice eight months ago. And wonder how we'll ever bear to leave. There may be short commutes in Boston. There may be more action and there could even be other nice neighbors to be had. But there are not our neighbors. There are not our woods and our yard. Our house is not there. I only have eight more months before my schedule burgeons out of control, and I can't fathom that that could be enough time for us in what has become such a home.