so i've been very pensive lately, perhaps because i'm not getting enough sleep. and things just sometimes strike me as really weird. today, for example, i was sitting on the T, just thinking about random things when it hit me that i'm in a long distance relationship. i mean... i haf a boy and he lives across the country. and that just struck me as extremely odd. i'm dating someone. and this someone is an amazingly wonderful guy who lives 3,500 miles away. so yes, i have been in this situation for a while, for all of you who are scratching and shaking your heads at me in disbelief. and the question is - why did it suddenly just dawn on me the way it did?
what struck me as odd is that i barely ever see my boy, and i talk to him even less than i talk to my other friends, but i'm happier in this relationship than i've ever been in any one before. i mean, don't get me wrong, i really dislike the distance. there are so many things i wish i could share with him and tell him on a daily basis, but we're so busy we can't do that. so we revert to 5 minute phone conversations when i'm half asleep or short little emails, messages on my cell phone that make me wish that i had picked up the phone, stories we share about the other and then try and reconstruct in our minds to picture how the other felt, what the other saw. it's hard going... i always knew distance was difficult, and although it's doable, phones and emails won't ever make up for seeing him smile or holding his hand. i miss him all the time and sometimes it feels daunting. but at the same time, i feel like i've found someone who can make me laugh and hear me freak out and watch me make a fool of myself, and yet understand all those crazy variations in the context of who i am. i can't explain it. i don't know where this is going. maybe it'll end tomorrow. but it still makes me happy anyhow.
and then the other thing that dawned upon me... was about my friends. i just realized that my friends are the most amazing people, in ways that i don't think i fully appreciated. steve, for example, is the biggest goof. if you meet him, he spend most of his time being silly and totally random. but the thing about steve is that he has incredible depth to his character - there's so much thought and contemplation that goes into everything he does and everything he says. sometimes, just being around him and listening to his insights, i come to really appreciate many things i take for granted. and so yah.. a lot of my friends are so amazing. stan, for example, runs marathons and takes amazing pictures. and ellie, she's a big ee dork, but i swear that that girl has the best aesthetic sense of anyone i know.
so it's just goes on. well i'll stop being pensive. i wasn't too articulate today anyhow.. but i figure most will understand what i meant anyhow.
i think i had the best weekend ever. it made me so happy. i got to see my peeps - shahma, maggie, christophe, goonley. bought some chocolates for my secretary and my ex-office mate, got cat some funky colored green eye shadow, and yah, i got to see boy. i met some of his friends too, who are all really nice people. one of them got really drunk last time i saw him and started calling me "shauna." so now that's what he calls me. i hafta think of a stupid retro 70s name to call him.
so let me just expound on how much residency and medicine sucks. i can't believe that a profession that is directed to *saving* people's lives can possibly have such a detrimental effect on the people who work within it. i mean, he's on call like 3 - 4 times every week, and when he's on call, he sleeps 5 - 6 hours at most. he gets in at 6 am one day and leaves the next day at 8 or 9 at night. and it's not like me at mit where i can just bomb away a problem set after a night of no sleep. he's responsible for lives, mostly people who are at death's door. if he's slightly off on the amount of medication, off on reading their signs, it's not a incomplete we're talking about. not only that, he can easily have 60+ patients a night to take care of. i just don't understand how he does it.. and how he keeps on going without getting bitter and apathetic. and, at the end of the day when i can call him to whine about the most insignificant worries, he listens to me. it makes me feel like i'm such a selfish human being sometimes.
in any case, it was nice to see my peeps. i think i have the best friends ever. they are always so nice to me. shahma hauled himself out to see me even though he was really sick... and i got to see potts and jan. they seem to be very happy with each other as well.
as for boy, =). that's all that needs to be said.
i think i'm going to be sick. we took a new technical specialist here out to lunch and i got so sick. i think.. i think i don't like todd english. i also think that i don't like goat cheese either. it's too acerbic. makes me sick. so i have discovered that i get headaches when i eat food that's too rich. i don't have the ability to digest fat properly. i need to remember that. like i remember how coffee makes me really sick. but then again, i drink coffee anyhow. so maybe that's not a good example to compare to.
so anyhow, this weekend was nuts. momo and beckfat and i went to see blue crush. which, btw, is an oddly satisfying movie. it's pretty predictable, the acting is, at times, ridiculous, the plot is pretty thin, and yes, there are women in bikinis but not as much as you'd think, and yet the movie is really enjoyable. we pretty much laughed through the whole thing. though i'm not sure why. i think i've turned pretty stupid, but it was very satisfying. and then on saturday, momo and i went to see the redsox vs. orioles and let me tell you, they played quite a game. manny ramirez hit two home runs, and they played a spotless game. except that we were sitting next to two people who were kinda stinky. ask momo about it. he'll tell you about how the smell was bad enough to kill cows. he'll even make the sound of a dying cow. he does that well.
and then i studied for the rest of the weekend. lsats. and then slept. very tired. talked to boy for two hours on saturday night. except that halfway through, i got really drunk on 1, yes 1, cider jack. and he was laughing at me the entire time because i probably said some really ridiculous things. and then i called goonley who laughed at me some more because he has seen me drunk off of less. okay. so this is a very spastic entry.
other than that, i'm doing really well. kinda busy at work. this is a pointless entry other to remind you all that i'm a nut.
i am so excited! my gres are done. i did pretty well.. i'm glad they are out of the way.
in any case, today is such a day of sadness, with all the tvs going on. i made the mistake of turning onto nbc this morning when they were interviewing a family that lost a dad... and i started to cry really hard. i don't know these people, i don't their circumstances. i cannot even begin to fathom what it is they have experienced but for a few seconds, i felt so much compassion for them and wanted to share their sadness.
sigh.
so for anyone who is feeling sad today, i'll add a ray of sunshine. i'm sitting here listening to "kung fu fighting" by carl douglas, and it reminded me of something extremely funny that happened last time i went to sf. jason, jen, jairam, chris and i were walking around university ave in palo alto when we wandered into walgreens. they had a display of these ninja chipmunks who would spastically throw around nun-chucks and clubs when you squeezed their hand. they would do this, of course, synchronized to a very high pitched chipmunk rendition of the kung fu fighting song. so what does shahma do but go and turn on all the chipmunks in the display, like all 30 of them. and they're all vibrating, and waving their nun-chucks and the display is shaking from all these little ninjas, and the store is filled with a cacophony of high pitched chipmunk singing... and then he runs out. i think i nearly died laughing that day. that was one of the funniest things i think i ever saw. okay so maybe it's not so funny to you.. but i want to remember it someday.
today's an exciting day - it's absolutely beautiful outside. i love this weather - when it's still sunny but a little chilly in the morning and evenings. when you wake up, and the sun peaks through your window and the grass is covered in dew. fall is my favorite season of the year. i especially love it when the leaves begin to change color, bringing forth a plethora of shades.
oh! today is also a good day because i get a new office =). wahoo!
ooh. gre words. i wrote an essay the other day and in it, i had the words diaphanous, curmudgeonly, and vindicated. that scared me. right so my gres are tomorrow noon. i'm pretty excited for them, because i've been testing extremely well on the practice exams i've been taking. i'll be so glad to have one of my exams done. note i said one. lsats are still in a month. and then after that, it's on to applications. sigh.. at least the painful law school essay is finished! yay! trumpeter sound!
so i'm still thinking.. where should i go in november? hawaii to my aunt's orchid plantation? or to france? i'm in the mood for some croissants, methinks. we'll see =).
right. so today i went skydiving, at an altitude of what they estimate to be approximately 10 - 13K feet. i think goonley would be proud of me, as he went parasailing with me last year in interlaken, switzerland. they strapped us into jumpsuits, jumping gear, slapped plastic headcovers on us, and shuttled us into the plane. fear doesn't even begin to set in until you realize that your ears are popping and that suddenly, the plane has gotten very cold and your fingers are beginning to numb a little. when they open the hatch, you're staring into freedom... and then you jump. free fall is so liberating, if you discount the fact that your hands are by now frozen, that the wind is blowing so hard against you that you can barely hear, and your eyes are watering from the dryness. breathing is even a little hard, because you're falling so fast. and just as you begin to wonder how long you can sustain that sort of velocity, the parachute opens and pulls back hard on you and you're falling straight. and when you finally stop worrying about dying and you look about you, there's a pacifying stillness to floating in air, and a sudden serenity. the world is so beautiful from above.
my description doesn't even do justice to the experience. of course, it was well worth the money and the slightly frayed nerves. it's especially good to put myself in difficult situations, especially ones in which i cannot exactly predict my behavior.
i am so relaxed now.. what a great pre-test stress reliever!