Dukes and Pirates

Signs my caffeine detox worked (AKA, ET on one cup of coffee today):

(Disclaimer: May also be signs of excessive studying and pod-induced claustrophobia. 

Read as: side effects of medical school. 

AMCAS should issue a warning label.)

 - I spontaneously start dancing in my seat like a jitterbug

(Please note, this is NOT me attempting to swing dance in my seat, which would have disastrous results, such as me falling out of my chair and suffering a traumatic brain injury after hitting my head on the corner of my bed, or perhaps more tragically, falling out of my chair and toppling my desk over, killing my cool stereo system in the process).

- I facilitate a rum-war between my Lego Jack Sparrow and my teddy finger puppet pirates

 

- I want to dunk Liz in a pit of green Nickelodeon goo to commemorate her birthday (HAPPY BARFDAY!)

- I work on a ridiculous blog entry instead of studying.

 

Ok, who am I kidding? That happens almost every time.

Exam-time Munchies

I know, I know, people get them all the time. But I don't get them barely ever.

Being hungry for a snack is so inconvenient when you don't have any good snacks at hand. Luckily, I remembered just in time that I still had some tortilla chips in my cabinet, and salsa in the fridge. Just in time for what, you ask? Some kind of colossal disaster, I'm sure, but luckily we will never have cause to find out, until the next time I have a salt-craving.

I'm waiting for my ghrelin to calm down and my leptin to kick in so that my stomach stops grumbling at me (and no, those are not monsters hiding in my closet; they are intestinal hormones! I bet whoever named them got a good chuckle out of it). I think if I were to name a hormone, I'd call it "savvy," for a multitude of reasons. Other suggestions?

You know what's awkward? When your stomach starts grumbling at you while you're trying to study in a quiet pod surrounded by other quietly studious people with tamer stomachs. My stomach has no sense of propriety. Granted, it is my stomach after all, but still! Poor excuse!

You know what's brilliant? Always over-estimating either how many chips or how much salsa you need to put on your plate at snack time. You leave yourself the perfect excuse to go back and fetch more of the other to make up the difference. *grin* Sometimes, eating junk food is totally worth it. Now if only I had some sharp cheddar cheese, or samosas, or chaat, or bhel puri…...

Instead, I am settling (not too much) for this, against the lovely backdrop that is the disaster zone otherwise known as my desk:

Isn't caffeine supposed to be an appetite suppressant? I guess it's busy enough keeping me awake and "focused" right now.

I suppose it's a good thing that now I can't stop thinking about renal clearance.

A derepressing (not depressing) December

aka How I Got My Brain Stuck in the Alphabet Soup Jar

...and valiantly strove to fish it back out before 12:30pm Monday desperately hoping something had stuck.

Well, except the torture is over, so I'm not actually hysterical and can look back on this weekend with a healthy dose of amusement and sarcasm. In that vein, I invite you to enjoy a photo-essay.

I spent my weekend drowning in a sickly colored stew of enzymes and mechanisms involved in DNA, RNA, and protein replication, repair, processing, etc., with a base of genetics and modes of inheritance, flavored with diseases and molecular bio techniques, with some drugs to taste. My white board at some point said at least part of it best:

 (Ignore the cute doodles, courtesy my friend TQ; if only they were that accurate).

Despite having yet to crack the spines of any of my borrowed CMB textbooks, I felt kind of like Oasis and Ender, crushed under the weight of all that knowledge and despair:

 Raja, on the other hand, looked positively gleeful and extraordinarily pudgy conquering my mountain of textbooks:

I would almost wish to share his sentiments, except it would probably involve an immensely high volume of sugar intake to reach his girth, which is his secret source of power.

Sunday night found me studying the drug list. And consequently musing on all sorts of toxic scenarios therein. In short, I was going a little crazy:

(For the uninitiated, α-amanitin is arguably the most deadly amatoxin, in this case found in Amanita phalloides, or the death cap mushroom. It inhibits RNA polymerase II, causing the cells in your liver to burst, leading to death within a little over a week.)

Luckily, I made it to and through Monday, arguably in one piece, and hung out with a lot of pretty cool people Monday night to glory in our post-exam-ness. And as soon as I got back:

Boy was I tired.