Hippocratic Oats

Everybody’s working for the weekend

December 14, 2009 at 12:48 am 2 comments

I’m currently in the process for studying for yet another exam.  For those of you who are counting, that would make this #5.  It’s the first physio exam and probably one of the more difficult MCP (molecular and cellular principals) exams.  It involves a ton of detailed memorization (glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, pentose shunt etc).  It’s all material I’ve seen before, but the amount of material that we need to know is crazy.  It’s somewhere around 600 pages of notes we need to have memorized.  But on a much happier note, NO ANATOMY PRACTICAL!!!  All throughout anatomy I would rock the written portion of the test, but the practical portion score would kill my grade.  Thank god physio doesn’t have a lab component!

I knew I would be spending the majority of my weekend at the library studying, so I decided to take a day off from studying and have some fun on Friday!  Classes finished up around 2 and Erica, Tara, and I headed over to Marshall Street to start talking to local business owners.

I’m currently on a committee planning the Doctors for Global Health Dance Marathon.  As their website says, “Doctors for Global Health (DGH) is a private, not-for-profit organization promoting health, education, art and other human rights throughout the world. DGH is comprised of hundreds of health professionals, students, educators, artists, attorneys, engineers, retirees and others. Together we build long-term relationships between people and communities around the world to find effective solutions to social justice issues.”  The Dance Marathon will be 12 hours filled with music, dance performers, prizes and free food!  Hopefully it will all come together, and be a good time for all involved that also will help a lot of people.  We had some success with store owners and picked quite a few raffle prizes.  There’s still a lot of work ahead of us, but things seem to be shaping up nicely.

Tara’s awesome poster.  Can you figure out what dance the little guy is doing?

After spending the afternoon working on asking for donations, we headed to the store to pick up wine for the night’s festivities.  I didn’t end up getting this one, but my inner nerd LOVED the label.

When I got back to my apartment, I was pleasantly surprised.  The bowls I ordered from open sky had arrived!  They were such an amazing deal.  Another blog I read, KERF, offered a $24 coupon for the bowls.  They ended up only costing me just under $2!  God,  I love a bargain!

My Friday night started at a restaurant in Syracuse called The Mission.  The restaurant is actually located in one of the cities oldest churches.  There’s a ton of history behind the building.  It was built in the 1840′s and was even a stop on the underground railroad.  In an effort to revitalize  the downtown and use some of the older buildings, a local artist transformed the store into a Mexican style mission.  I met up with Anna, Tara, Tony, Justin Jenny and Tara’s friends Tom and Givanna around 6.

The bar.  You can even see the original stained glass windows.

The view from our table.

A picture of the back of the restaurant from their website.

The Mission serves Pan-American Cuisine… a combination of fresh, homemade Mexican, Southwestern, and South American specialties featuring Latino ingredients.  The menu includes Mexican favorites such as burritos, tacos, enchiladas, quesadillas with a variety of house made salsas.  Yum!

I decided to try the pollo enchiladas.  They were pretty tasty!

After dinner, Tara, Tom, Anna, Giavanna and Andrea stopped by my place for Friday Night Wine Night.  It’s our second wine night, and I have to say it’s become one of my favorite parts of med school.  It’s great to get together with classmates outside of the class room and fave some fun.  Tom and Giavanna are grad students at SU, and it’s also nice to get together with people who aren’t all wrapped up in med school.

The view from my kitchen

A few of the bottles we sampled throughout the evening.

Old vine zinfandel that Tara brought over.

I used to get Santa Cristina at Trader Joes all the time.  I was pleasantly surprised to find it here in Syracuse and even a little cheaper!  Santa Cristina and I had many a good night together back in Boston

I whipped up some of Hanley’s favorite dip.  Soooo cheesy!

Giavanna and Tara.  Tara is holding one of my raspberry brie bites. I made them from scratch!  It’s my not so secret recipe

Tara, Erica, me, and Rikat

My camera got passed around for a bit so I’m not entirely sure what Tom and Tara have such varying opinions about…

It’s clearly not the Jersey Shore because who doesn’t love that little piece of TV genius!

Tara and Anna…a little blurry, but still super cute!

Rikat and Frank, Rikat’s boyfriend.

Andrea, Anna, Rikat and Frank on the couch.

Empty wine glass and Anna.  Art shot!

Matt and Mike also stopped by, but I somehow managed not to get any pictures of the two of them!  I’m sure Mike isn’t too upset…

Post wine night aftermath.

Some of the empties.

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After a fantastic evening, I unfortunately had to get back to reality and work Saturday morning.   I spent the reminder of my weekend sitting at my favorite study carrel in the library.  Between Saturday and Sunday I was there for a total of 21 hours.  I know some people prefer to study at home, but I really like getting my work down at the library.  Not only does it eliminate all the distractions (primarily TV) of my apartment, but I find it incredibly motivating to see all my classmates studying hard.  It keeps me focused and on track knowing that everyone else is in the same position I am.  It’s also interesting to observe the 3rd floor subculture that has developed.  I’ll see the same people every time I go there and  people tend to sit in the same spot every time.   I guess I’ve totally become one of those people…

I only made 4 coffee runs during those 21 hours, and I finally tried two things at Starbucks that I’ve been dying to try.  The oatmeal was delicious with the mix-ins.  I added brown sugar and dries raisins, cranberries, and cherries.  I also tried the awake tea latte that Anna is always getting.  It was good, but a little too sweet for my taste.

Well that’s about it for now.  I’m not sure if I’ll get a chance to post again before the exam on Friday.  Things tend to get pretty crazy, but I’ll definitely be back with a full report next saturday!

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