Very Inspiring Blogger Award

I was nominated for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award by Montana over at Pretty Lil Mudder! Thank you so much! :] (Check out her blog for super awesome race info and workout ideas!) We’re also starting up a recipe linkup soon with a few other ladies from Girls Gone Sporty. Stay tuned (Fridayyy)!!!

According to the post, the rules are:

• Thank and link to the person who nominated you
• List the rules and display the award
• Share seven facts about yourself
• Nominate 15 other blogs you enjoy, then comment on their posts to let them know you have nominated them

7 Random Facts About Me

1. I get called upon by the guys (HBLers + 1) to help move things [aka furniture] around. I find this very flattering. The last time this happened, my friend’s mom happened to overhear and protested, “Don’t ask her to do that for you!” (M: No, Mom, you don’t understand! She’s really really strong! She does powerlifting and holds a state record for deadlifts! She’ll be fine. And we can’t move it without her.)
2. By the time I graduate medical school, I will be in about a quarter of a million dollars in debt. This does not include interest and also depends upon me continuing to live on <$10k/year, so mayhaps you can see why I get a slight bit annoyed when people say that we go into the field of medicine “for the money.” (I really don’t think I’d be picking the least-paying specialty if that were the case.) But one of my life-long goals is to be able to spend my life doing something that I love, so here we are.
3. My goals when/if I ever swim out of my student loan debt are to pay off my parents’ house, take them on a cruise, fund no-kill animal shelters (Please Save A Cat + Friends For Life are biggies on my list) and donate to the clinic I used to volunteer at. I’d also eventually like a house with an awesome kitchen, fruit trees + an herb/vegetable garden, and a room with high ceilings that can be a dance studio
4. The only time I willingly call people is when I’m driving (relax, I’m using a headset/just one earbud)…but I still usually hate talking on the phone (#25 of 25 Things You Didn’t Know). This is probably why long-distance relationships would be a bad idea for me. (Y’know, other than the fact that I’d only be able to pencil him in once every couple days in probably-10-minute-intervals.
5. I can fall asleep anywhere at almost any time, within a matter of minutes. The floor, a couple chairs, standing up…you name it. (Sometimes, I seriously think I have narcolepsy, but it’s more likely just chronic sleep deprivation…?) Symptoms of narcolepsy include:
   • Excessive sleepiness or sudden muscle weakness
   • Cataplexy
   • Sleep paralysis
   • Hypnagogic hallucinations
   • Automatic behaviors (like driving home and not remembering how you got there)
   • Disrupted major sleep episode (disruption of the longest sleep episode that occurs on a daily basis)

   …and now that I think about it, my dad can do the same thing. Crud. (Nooo, orexin, stay with me!) Even if I really do have it, I’d like to think that I’m a pretty effing high-functioning narcoleptic. :O

6. I’m not very good with improvisation, or being extremely articulate with words (spoken, anyway). Given the opportunity, I plan it all out to excruciating detail before I start talking. More on that on Saturday. :O!
7. If food is in front of me, it tends to disappear. Especially if I’m preoccupied with doing something else. I spend most of my day thinking about food, eating, or planning my next meal(s).

Unofficial #8: I’m really, really terrible about nominating people because I always feel like they’ll feel obligated to respond even if they’re super busy (also because all[?] of the people I wanted to nominate have already been nominated already! Go figure. What can I say? We have good taste in people. Can I just…ask you, my dear readers, to share random facts about yourself? :]?

JUST KIDDING. I’m nominating the ladies I’ve been doing Fitness Fridays with because they are awesome and have not in fact been tagged yet (as far as I can tell, anyway)! ;)

1. Jen from JVKom
2. Brittney from Brittney Breaking Free
3. Katie from Fit Beach Babe
4. TO MY DEAR READERS <3

I’d also just like to note that Trish is wonderful and awesomely amazing. <3 She went to the farmer’s market over in Ithaca earlier this(? I’ve lost track of dates) month and got me some pepper jelly! 3 homemade blueberry muffins using blueberries she’d picked herself! (Super jealous. I wanna go berry picking!) I’ve been enjoying it with a smoked jalapeno cheese spread and maple chicken sausage patties stuffed with a beet greens scramble (recipe will be up in a couple days) in a pita bread pocket. <3

kay why

I’m about 85% moved in! I’m saying this with a lot more gusto than I’m actually feeling because, as luck would have it, I managed to get sick over the weekend (sigh). What a great way to start my rotations, right? :'( I actually had to stop 1/3 of the way into my drive to park in a hospital lot, where I promptly passed out for 2 hours (…).

The weekend was pretty darn awesome though–aside from chilling with the cats, I got to go hang out with the dogs at the shelter for the first time in ages, and took a bunch of them out for runs/walks/jogs. I also gave Raisin and Char Char a rather thorough grooming session, because hot and humid summers are definitely not their best friend.

Raisin’s one of my favorites. :D Just look at that face!!!

Sheba was also pretty thrilled to see me. <3

I also stopped by the local coffee shop to give me spare key to my friend. In so doing, I happened upon a ginormous dandelion. o_o Excuse my short + stumpy fingers. I just wanted you to have a comparison for how big it was.

Church meal! <3

After church, I went over to a friend’s neighbor’s place to go swimming before heading over to his house for a cookout/BBQ. (He’s heading to CA to start med school.) We went out to the corn fields and picked a whole ton to bring back to shuck/cook up. I unfortunately forgot to take pictures of all the awesome food that was there, but I did get a couple shots of the pool noodle wars!

It’s adorable how tiny Mia is in comparison to her pool noodle. :P

My friend happens to grow a whole ton of different veggies/herbs to sell, so at around midnight, he handed me a plastic bag and asked if I wanted to go on a “midnight raid.”

F: What do you mean?
A: We’re going to the Garden of Eden! You can take whatever you want!
(Sorry if blaspheming. It was all in good fun.)

Hence, how I ended up with eggplant, some kind of super-spicy pepper (forgot what they called it :[ ), tomatoes, beets, and huge bunches of fresh basil, Thai basil + cilantro. I’ve never prepared beets before, but…what better time to start, right? :O

Here’s some of it! :D

Despite my being sick and somewhat starved-out state (forgot to keep food/water next to me in the car; poor life choices :[ ), I managed to drag everything up to the third floor without any help. (I tend to dislike asking for help if I know I’m capable of doing it on my own.) Everything has been put away and I now have a mattress to sleep on! :D

;_;

“after boards, i’ll…”

It seems so far away. So, so far away. Just one more week left and I will hopefully be done with this exam forever. I took a practice half-exam yesterday and it was a terrible, terrible time. (I am the poster child for all the terrible habits/things you should not have/do while test-taking.) But I made it out in one piece, and there are some definite signs of improvement. There’s hope for me after all!

I am officially the last one left in my basement catacombs/cave. :[ It’s sad and kinda lonely down here, but my friend left me with happy reminders/words of encouragement before she moved away, and the maintenance staff are super nice, so it’s better than nothin’!

She left this on “her” window (it faces my room) the night before my super-practice test. :]

It was hard to take a clear picture of this, but it says, “Farrah is gonna do AWESOME. Or the bunnies will get her.”

I’ve been listening to video game music (usually the Chrono Trigger station on Pandora, and most recently, the Mystic Quest OST!) to keep myself motivated. (Time to save the world! Only in this case, the world is really just my future.)

I can’t help thinking about all my after-boards fantasies and all the sunshine and rainbows to follow. What am I gonna do with my 5 glorious days of summer?

I want to do everything, but here’s a list that will most definitely stretch into the rest of the year:

• Completely revamp my blog and switch to self-hosted! (That’s my first after-boards project! I have so many grand plans on it, but I need to get done with this darn exam first!)
• Work out a ton (I’ve been a blob for most of this past month :[ )
• Read A Dance of Dragons.
• Pole classes! Yes, in the 4-5 days that I’ll have. I’m hoping to try out the Fly Gym class too. :D
• Eat everything in CA. Sam and I are planning a day trip to Sac to visit friends and eat at an awesome restaurant!
• Watch a billion movies.
• Catch up on Supernatural (I may or may not be 2 seasons behind. ._.), Once Upon A Time…etc.

Update: May Fitness Challenge (05/16-05/22)

I am officially done (again) with my med school courses! The “again” is due to the fact that ACLS apparently did count toward our grade, so we’ve had that all week. It was somewhat frustrating in the sense that I have my giant test to take tomorrow, and ACLS effectively sapped all my boards study time away this week. On the plus side, it wasn’t all for naught! I did my megacode yesterday and after I finished and signed off on what I’d done, they had me sit elsewhere while they deliberated on whether or not I passed/failed.

When they brought me back over, here’s the conversation that followed:
L: How do you think you did?
F: I think(?) I did okay and I hope I passed. I don’t think I left out anything glaring…
S: Do you think you left anything out?
F: I feel like there was one point where I should have addressed the patient’s oxygen levels first but I was tending to something else.
S: But you corrected it, didn’t you?
F: Yes indeed.
H: Who was your instructor this week? Dr. Cookie?
F: Yep, but I’d go to Dr. M’s reviews at night since I heard that all the instructors emphasized different things. (This was an understatement. I went to him specifically because he held us to a higher standard and included a great amount of detail. I figured it’d be safer to err on the side of way-too-much-information.)
S: We wanted to know who taught you because we think you did very well. In fact, we recommended you for IP (instructor potential).
F: …:O! Really!?
L: You interacted with the patient, made sure they were comfortable, explained and clarified all the procedures in great detail and went through your reasoning behind everything that you did. We were very, very impressed.

I aced today’s exam too (not bad for never having owned the book, right? :D ), so it looks like I won’t have to retake it! :P I sincerely hope this trend continues!

My mom sent me a giant container of mixed nuts (brazil nuts, hazelnuts, cashews, almonds, walnuts, etc.), another ginormous Costco bag of walnuts (she said they’d be good for my brain), a bottle of pineapple aloe juice, 2 cans of lychee (I requested em’), a bag of dried longan, allergy meds, a giant bag of Krave Lemon Garlic turkey jerky(!), a mystery package that I can’t read the calligraphy for (I’ll figure it out eventually) and 4 bags of dried mangoes.

I’ve concluded that my mom would be amazing at Tetris (maybe that’s where my Tetris-ing skills came from). I guess she figured that if she was going to pack up a box, she might as well fill every last bit of space up. :P

I also got a package from Becca a couple days later and it completely made my day. :D! I think both of them realize how much I miss having an accessible (aka not a 2-hour drive away to get to the closest one) Asian market, so said packages reflected that. :P They definitely provided me with the pick-me-up I needed. <3! But of course, before I could check it out, it had to pass inspection first.

“There’s nothing for me in here? I guess you can have it then.” :[

Becca sent me 2 boxes of curry, furikake seasoning, ingredients (minus the eggs, obviously :x ) to make tea leaf eggs, a reminder of home + a super cute card. <3

May 16

• 1 hour + 1 min. on ellipticals @ 7% resistance while studying (214 questions completed)

May 17

• 30-min. At-Home Abs/HIIT

May 18

• 25 min. Tahitian practice
• 5×2-min. Supermans

May 19

• 1×200 bridges @ 24 lb
• 3×25 BW squats
• 1 hour + 5 min. ellipticals @ 6% resistance while studying (250 questions completed!)

For the record (you may have already noticed this), I’m not much for taking gym selfies or anything of the sort, but I recently remembered that I could take screenshots on my phone, so I’ve just been including my fitocracy points in pictures, haha. :D

We started off the week with another lovely stab to check for TB (yet again). I’m proud to say that Mike is still alive, and so am I.

May 20

• School is killin’ me. :[ The entirety of me walking to and from different buildings + all over the farm probably added up to 20 minutes.

She makes my studying more bearable. :]

May 21

• 1 hour + 7 min. on ellipticals (intervals) while studying (250 questions completed)

I’ve taken to buying a tub of mixed greens for $1.59 (manager’s specials! <3) and loading it with stuff so that I at least won’t be eating like crap during exam week. :O

May 22

• 2 hours on ellipticals (intervals and then even harder intervals) while studying (342 practice questions completed ._. only 98 left until I’m caught up, but I think I have another 250 tomorrow…)

Total: 342 minutes
Running Total: 1537 minutes!
(Start, Week 1, Week 2)

The #20×31 fitness challenge is hosted by Jen, Samantha, Carley and Anna. It’s not too late to join if you’re interested! (We still have a whole ‘nother week!) Just 20 minutes per day for the month of May! :]

sublet interview

I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes, we get really bored of studying and find really unique/creative ways to deal with it. I’m somewhat proud to admit that throughout the last two years of med school, I have only really self-diagnosed myself with two things:

• Narcolepsy
  I’m pretty sure I don’t actually have this (it’s more likely to be prolonged sleep deprivation), but I can fall asleep within 3 minutes anywhere/at any time and start having all kinds of crazy dreams. I also get hypnagogic & hypnopompic hallucinations whenever I fall asleep in the catacombs
• Compulsive Eating Disorder
  I spend most of my day thinking about food/planning the next week’s worth of meals, and am very capable of stuffing down somewhat frightening amounts of food in one sitting. In all honesty, I probably don’t have this either (I just really, really like food), but it would explain my constant preoccupation with food. ._.

Anyway, my other favorite pastime study break (aside from food + the gym) is pranking other unsuspecting friends/students. Past examples have included supermanning past my friend’s study window. About a month ago, one of our classmates was discussing the possibility of subletting my friends’ apartment while they were in Ohio for the first couple months of rotations, so they thought it’d be hilarious to pretend to interview her. They took it a step further and asked me to be the secretary/scribe, and we all dressed up to make it more official/believable.

There’s a chance that we went slightly overboard with this, but we figured we might as well go all-out to make it convincing.

We even left a water bottle and a snack at her seat!

They started off by noting that she was late and asking her to sign in (while they posted an “Interview in Progress” sign on the window). They also asked for her resume, and looked at each other with a disapproving sigh when she said she didn’t have it with her.

The questions started out somewhat normally:

1)      How do you feel about pets and are you planning to have one?
2)      Do you plan on having visitors over? Are you planning to have parties at the apartment?
3)      Do you smoke? Drink? Use illicit drugs?

(This is where I chimed in so she’d know I was actually taking notes on her responses.)

4)      We understand you were the class secretary. Can you please describe your responsibilities?
5)      Please describe 3 strengths and weaknesses.

I’d like to note that one of the strengths she listed was “great driver,” and my friend asked in all seriousness, “Are you referring to the time you almost ran over me and my at-the-time-fiance?”

6)      Which color of the rainbow would you be and why?
7)      What time of the day do you usually start drinking?
8)      Our administrative dean walks in here wearing a sombrero. What would he say and why is he here?
9)      What song best describes your work ethic?
10)      Say you invited us over for dinner. What would you serve us?
11)     How would you rate us as interviewers?

She gave them a 4 because she was completely unprepared for said “interview.” She thinks we are terrible people, but is glad that we had so much fun scaring the crap out of her.