supermanning

I apologize in advance for the terrible quality, but this is a screenshot of a video of a video (just let that digest for a moment). That’s why it’s so pixelated. Since our lives are so often just filled with studying, we often take study breaks to clear our minds. Last fall, it involved me supermanning past the window where my friend was studying.

That’s a pretty good shot of my brachioradialis. :O

In my spare time, I like to practice flying. :D

birthday celebrations

It was my birthday last week, which is slightly bittersweet because it means that I now officially have to pay for my own health insurance (nooooo!!!). Parting is such sweet sorrow. :[! However, I have pretty much the coolest friends ever, so…three birthday celebrations later, I am finally actually writing about it. :O

On the actual day of, we had plans to go to the Chinese buffet in town because it was right after Easter and my friend was craving General Tso’s chicken (she gave up meat for Lent). Monika and Hira were about two steps from getting me a gift card to Kroger for my birthday (yes, such is my love for food and grocery-shopping), but decided instead to get me a curling iron for my “future cosmetic endeavors.” (They reasoned that I was much more likely to buy myself food vs. a curling iron, and they are indeed correct.) Mayhaps I can finally start learning how to do all of these hairstyles! <3 It’d be a great improvement from my current state (…I rarely comb my hair).

Andrea made me a strawberry mango cake!

On Friday, the gang (our band) and I were going to head to Stardust Cafe, a farm to table restaurant that’s probably one of my favorite eateries here…but we neglected to remember that it was Friday and that reservations might have been a good idea. (Oops.) We tried Food & Friends, but the wait was equally as long and we were all hungry, so I suggested we go to When Pigs Fly, which was not downtown and thus, less likely to not have a wait. It’s another one of my favorite restaurants in town because the owners are super friendly and welcoming, and they have awesome portions. And pulled chicken. PULLED CHICKEN. <3 (Every other place on earth seems to serve just pulled pork, which I cannot consume, hence my enthusiasm.) When they heard that we were out to celebrate my birthday, they asked if I wanted them to sing for me, while including as an aside that I probably would not want to hear it because they couldn’t sing very well.

: How ’bout this? Why don’t we give you free ice cream instead? That’ll be better for your ears anyway.
F: Deal! :O!

(They have homemade ice cream that I’ve been meaning to try.) It was hard to decide on a flavor. I sampled the black raspberry, blueberry pomegranate, orange cream and strawberry cheesecake and they were all equally amazing. *-* After dinner, we went back to our respective study hovels and I eventually returned to what I refer to as my crazy kids (aka the 80-ish cats at the shelter). I completely embrace the term, “crazy cat lady.” I’m fast headed in that direction and very much love it here. :]

Sarge’s progression from the bed to my butt. (“Well, your butt does have its own orbit…”)

This is how I lure the army of cats in at night so I can close the doors and prevent them from run-ins with the heartlessly cruel neighbor/getting eaten by coyotes.

The next morning, I got in some studying before running off to church. (I’m the pianist about 50% of the time.)

An obligatory picture of my church meal! They are amazing cooks. :x

I disappeared back into the catacombs to stuff in 5 lectures so that I could actually enjoy myself later on. My pastor invited a bunch of people over to his place to have a birthday party for me. :O!

Two types of fried rice (and not questionably reheated, so there were no traces of B. cereus!) + a vegetarian sushi roll! I probably had 6 plates because I have issues with moderation.

Jennifer made me an amazingly delicious chocolate cake with shredded coconut and pecans. We ate it with sliced bananas. <3

We improvised with the candle because the guys neglected to check their text messages when they went to Wally World and I insisted that they stay and not go back out to get one.

I was even serenaded by a quartet! This required three takes. Ronald got my name right on the third try, hahaha.

Someone’s prom is this coming weekend and my friend is helping her with the hair, so I was the guinea pig model for a waterfall braid. :D I need to learn to do this. And possibly also change my part every now and then.

I hadn’t played Settlers since grad school. We used to gather every weekend at someone’s house and play until we hated each other (for serious, this game gets pretty personal and breaks up friendships like no other–except Munchkin, which may well be the ultimate game of backstabbery). In spring semester, it got to the point where we actually brought the game to school to play during our study breaks.

I managed to win, but just barely! If Jennifer had not traded a card with me, she would’ve won right after my turn.

I’m the blue! :D They called my road the “Great Wall of China.” hah.

I’m really going to miss all the friends I made here. Here’s to hoping I pass my boards + get my schedule soon so I can plan out when I can come back to visit. >_>

bowlathon

For some reason, I never ended up posting this, so here it is now! In all kinds of weird tenses because I wrote it…last April. As in 2013. I’m cool.

At the end of Endocrine, our school held a bowl-a-thon to raise money for the Talia Seidman Foundation, which helps kids who can’t go to school due to medical conditions by giving them ways to still participate in their education/still have the social experience as well. There was a prize for the best team costume, and since we finalized our “team” the other day (Monday), we brainstormed some ideas.

F: We’re dressing up as emo kids for this bowling thing we’re doing on Thursday. It’s gonna be wonderful. D:
N: lolwhaat.

Other ideas included 80’s-themed since Adam has enough of that to clothe us all, or just whatever sport we used to do…but Mike used to wrestle and didn’t want to spring that on people (“I would do that in a city where I knew I’d never see these people again. But I’m going to have to see everyone the next day, and I don’t think this town is ready for that yet.”)

Adam is a cyclist, so his clothing would be very much the same.

I’d basically have a choice between a leotard (I didn’t bring any of mine here because, let’s face it, what reason would there have been to bring it?) or uh, pole dance clothing, so how about no.

So we decided to be emo kids. (Mike’s idea.)

As it turned out, however, Mike decided to ditch our team to join another one. To be fair, he did call to ask if we’d mind, since the other team needed a 4th person to be considered a team, but we had a lot of fun giving them crap/trash-talking them when we got there.

M: Hey! I like the look!
F: Whatever, traitor.
M: But you said it’d be okay.
S: Hey, Judas. Was your team’s costume theme to dress up like douchebags?

It was highly amusing since our entire team consists of HBLers, which meant that a number of the people there basically never see us. There were definitely several people who gave us double/triple-takes. (I think they thought we dressed/acted like this on a regular basis.)

I wanted to document the fact that I managed to bowl a strike (two, actually, but one piece of pictorial evidence is enough) and the machine didn’t shut down on me. (True facts. The only other time I ever bowled a strike was in 2008, where the machine promptly decided that all was not right in the world and spontaneously murdered itself, thus taking with it the only evidence that proved that I was capable of bowling a strike.)

In case you couldn’t tell, we suck at bowling.

On the offchance that you need more proof, these are our final scores (somewhat blurry). Notice that my score is the highest and doesn’t even break 100. We’re awesome.

But you know what? None of that matters. We won the costume contest and got $50 to go stuff our faces with sushi (or whatever we wanted to order there). :D Mike’s team won for highest overall score (their team won bowling pins, so I’m pretty happy that we were rewarded more for creativity than for actual skill, haha).

Victory is sweet.

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.

ashland adventures

Over MLK weekend, we decided to go on a trip to Ashland to see what we could do about finding housing at least somewhat close to each other, although our #1 hope is to just all be in the same complex so we can have band jam sessions whenever and so I’ll have people to cook for (and people to buy my groceries in exchange <3 ).

As we were standing on the street corner debating what to do next while Mike tried to obtain a new phone from the AT&T store (the first one we’d seen in almost half a year), Isaac decided to be difficult.

I: But Farrah, we’ve already been over this!!
F: It’ll never happen again, I swear! I’m sorry!!!
I: (looks around) People are going to think we’re together and that I abuse you.
F: You went there. :] I just went with it.

We ended up staying at a hotel downtown, but much to our chagrin, we found out that they’d shut off the hot water boilers. Translation: ice cold showers. They offered to comp us 50% of the night’s fee or to upgrade us to the hot tub suite. Mike went with the hot tub suite because it’d mean hot water…but it was filmy and gross and we looked up way too many organisms that could be hanging out in there, so we decided against going in.

Mike attempted to take a cold shower and pretty much froze. I tried later on and regretted my poor life choices. Sean decided to wait til we got home, so we gave him all sorts of crap about it the next day and made a big show of washing our hands or using hand sanitizer whenever he touched our things.

I: If you wanted friends, you should’ve thought about showering, Sean!

The suite we upgraded to also ended up only having one ginormous bed, but there was also a couch and we asked for a cot, so it worked out. Isaac tends to hit people and practically has convulsions in his sleep (“I’ve done my time!!!”), so no one wanted to be near him. When we were in the old room, I offered to take it for the team because I can sleep and have slept through explosions. We ended up exiling him to the couch in the suite so he could hurt no one.