faces of the future

I like to refer to us (my friends here, our class, etc.) as “the faces of the future” whenever we do anything completely ridiculous. Thanks to PAX (…which is also the name of our international medicine club), classes were cancelled and our cars have pretty much been buried in snow. I’m only sad about the class cancellation because I wanted to skip one of my labs in March so I could go to the family medicine conference in Philly to run for national office. The downside is that the makeup date for that lab would be April 24, which is after classes have already ended and also happened to be when I wanted to run away to Arizona with my friends for the emergency medicine conference. Oh, date clashes, why you gotta be like that?!

On the plus side, it’s super pretty outside!

But it also means we’re snowed in. I wasn’t about to chance sliding into the river in an attempt to get home, so I set up camp on Sean/Isaac’s futon.

F: (gets up to microwave some food) Ahhhhhh!!!!
S: What’s going on? Are you okay?
F: I’m fine, I’m fine! The world just looks like it’s spinning off its axis and I can’t see anything right now. Probably just some orthostatic hypotension. Give me a minute!
S: Here, follow my finger with your eyes! Smile! Look like you’re angry at Isaac! Puff out your cheeks! Shrug your shoulders. Stick out your tongue! Say “Ah!”
F: (does all of the above)
S: Alright, my official diagnosis is orthostatic hypotension.
F: But that’s what I said before you ran through all the cranial nerves with me.
S: And you’ve had too much coffee.
F: But I haven’t had any coffee.
S: Too little coffee!

Say hello to your future doctors! (Hopefully.)

We were going to see how long it took for our cars to merge into one entity.

polar vortex

Sucks to be in it, but very pretty to look at? :]

I’m more than a little proud of the fact that I managed to cut my January electricity bill to $14.31. Yes, that does indeed include the time spent in the polar vortex. (Last year’s January bill was $57. I’m doing well!)

snowball fights

It snowed a pretty hefty amount today, so I holed myself back up in my basement study room after a lunch lecture. Then came the interruption.

:[

We decided to take it outside because I wanted revenge and throwing snowballs in the catacombs with a bunch of others caught in the crossfire (whilst trying to study) would’ve been inconsiderate (and inconvenient since all the ammunition was outside).

Before said snowball fight, there was a nice 3-5-inch blanket of snow covering the pathway leading to the place where we studied. I think we did a pretty good job of clearing it! :D?

The fight ended because we could no longer feel our fingers (snowball fights without gloves probably wasn’t the best of ideas).

roughin’ it up

I mentioned in passing that I promised a date to one of the fighters at the competition last month, and I’m not one to go back on my word, so we made plans to hang out while he was back for Thanksgiving! He asked me what kind of activities and/or food I wanted to do/get so he could think up something special. I figured livening up my life with a bunch of stuff I’d never done couldn’t hurt, so I suggested going shooting (I’ve gone to a shooting range once in my life, but I’ve never fired a rifle before :O ) and going out on his 4 wheeler because that sounded rather intriguing. (I had no idea what a 4 wheeler was. ._.) :O He lent me a ginormous jacket, coveralls and gloves since I really only have just one warm jacket that gets me through the winters here and was somewhat hesitant about possibly murdering it.

I can probably officially say now that I’ve shown up to a date (of sorts) in clothes covered in mud (and possibly also dog poop).

What can I say? I’m awesome.

Kidding. But in my defense, it was because Mike and I went to the dog shelter the day before to take the dogs out on runs and I figured I’d wear the same clothes since I’d probably be getting all muddy anyway. And really, he’s already seen me parading around in a bikini. C’mon now. We bumped into his cousin along the way and he told us his wife was out tracking a deer, so he gave us a vest, which he put on me so the chances of me accidentally getting shot would somewhat decrease. (Whatta nice soul. :O )

I’ve since discovered that 4 wheelers are a type of ATV and holy effing crud, they are a ton of fun! :O! He used to race with em’, so that’s probably why we’re still alive and everything, despite blowing through the snowy countryside hills the way we did. I’m very glad that I didn’t fall off. I think that summer I spent taking horseback riding lessons and my rolling sessions with Dan and Mike definitely came into use there. It was super pretty out there (he says it’s even more beautiful in the summer, but hooray for seasons?). I will admit that it definitely made me enjoy the snow more. I wish I’d taken more pictures (when we were stopped, of course), but sometimes you just gotta enjoy/live in the moment! He also told me that his parents hold horseback riding workshops/lessons. Where was all of this during my childhood?! (Oh right. I lived in the suburbs. Although said suburbs = 4x more people than the biggest city here. It all makes sense now.)

It’s probably a little hard to tell, but there are a bunch of targets set up (with distances marked) off in the distance.

I actually hit the targets! :D To be fair though, it’s probably a little difficult to miss if you’re using the sights properly.

Still alive with intact limbs and all! Graininess because I resorted to using the front camera. I am not well-versed in camwhoring.

I sometimes wish I’d been raised on a farm. I feel like I have absolutely no practical knowledge or streets-smarts, and I don’t really consider myself to be very book-smart either (I just work really hard), so holy crud, there’s gotta be something. :O Would’ve been cool, but as it is, maybe I’ll just make a list of things I want to do before I leave WV.

In other news, my blanket fort (aka piles of blankets on the floor of my study room with the space heater aimed at said pile) has returned because it’s cold as shit over here.

Say hello to my best friend, the space heater!

it’s april

It’s supposedly April.

And yet this happened on Thursday.

What is the meaning of this madness?

And…two days later, this is how it looked:

My friend/adopted-mentor and I were going to go biking yesterday, but on account of the wonderful snow we got hit with on Thursday (and the fact that I don’t have a bike rack/he accidentally locked his keys in his car), we ended up taking his dog out to the Greenbrier River trail. I thinkkk we walked 7 miles or so. Winston had a hell of a lot of fun finding gigantic sticks to run around with, chasing squirrels, romping around and exploring the world. I wish I’d taken a picture of him! He was the poster child for happiness, and we were happy to just have sunlight in our lives again. It was such a beautiful day!

I’m doing a happy dance on the inside. Limbs crossed for this weather to stay.

Afterward, I went off to my neighbor’s place since he was having a spontaneous cookout and we hung out for a while. Dustin and Adam act kinda like my two additional older brothers, so when they found out that I’d spent half the day with aforementioned friend, the conversation went something like this:
A: Oh, new boyfriend, huh?
F: What? No.
D: Really now. Do we know this guy?
A: Do we need to give him the safe talk?
D: Because we’ll do it.
E: Safe talk?
F: Just ignore them and they’ll go away. :[

They also gave me all kinds of shit for bringing over mini marshmallows and chocolate chips to make s’mores (I had chocolate chips already so I figured I’d get little marshmallows to go with them; in short, I wasn’t thinking), but they turned out fine!