brooke

what do you do when you realize your wife is so smokin hot, but you look like the unibomber and your bellybutton gets deeper every year? i wouldn't know because i look like sean connery with rock hard abs, but hypothetically, what would one do? if this was the 90s i'd call brooke a fine babe and let her wear my jean jacket. she'd stroke my sideburns and i'd run my fingers through her ratted bangs until they got stuck, and then i'd write M.L. plus B.K. on her trapper keeper and totally french her while we're listening to whitesnake. brooke, stay sweet.

i'm poor

also, i have no pride anymore. med school is expensive, and i've got flights and applications coming up, so i've added a donate button on here. i'm not asking for big donations, but the way brooke and i look at it, if a bunch of people told everyone they know and they told everyone they know and everybody donated a dollar or two, i could actually be able to go to med school once i'm done with this premed craziness. so any of you with blogs or big mouths...help a brotha out. love you guys.

schto eto za research?

so i've never really fully described what i'm doing for research, so here goes... i work under mike redd who is the faculty professor in the Trede lab at hunstman. im his only undergrad, which is nice, because he's pretty busy. but he let's me do all my own experiments and keeps me on a pretty loose leash. he basically "trained" me by showing me everything once, and i just tried to take good notes and ask around if i had any questions. but i've got it all down pretty well now. this may be a little boring but i want to lay out the whole procedure in detail, just for my own memory.

Thursdays: i set up fish, by separating out mating pairs into separate breeding tanks, and letting them love each other overnight.

Fridays: I take the fish down, by pouring the fish back into their main tank and then pouring any embryos into small petrie dishes for cleaning and sorting. the embryos are kept separate from the fish in the tanks because they fall through a perforated inner tank and rest on the bottom where the fish can't get at them, because they will eat them. after the eggs are all harvested (there are usually hundreds), about 100-120 are separated out and rinsed, getting rid of any unfertilized or rotting embryos, and any that might be showing signs of abnormal development.

Mondays: after the embryos have been sitting in an incubator over the weekend, they are now little swimmers with eyes, a pumping heart, immune system, and circulatory system. it's crazy how quickly they develop. if you've got 15 minutes, you can actually watch cell division. it will change your life. at this point, i soak the fish in a certain drug that we are using and let them swim around a little in it for like an hour, and then i make a small wound in the back part of the feathery part of their fin, which begins an inflammatory response. i let them sit in the drug with these wounds for a couple of hours and then fix them in a formaldehyde solution that crosslinks all of the cellular components to freeze them all at that moment in time.

Tuesdays: i wash the embryos 3 times for 5 minutes and soak them in a block solution to prepare them for their first antibody. this antibody binds to certain cellular components and will give a place for a second antibody to bind the next day.

Wednesdays: the embryos are washed 4 times for 20 minutes each time, and then soaked in a second antibody that has a pink fluorescent tag on it that will allow all of the leukocytes to show up under fluorescent microscopy.

Thursdays: fish are setup for the next week, and the fish from the current week are washed 4x20 and then run through a glycerol series of 30% glycerol, 50%, and 80% and left in the 80% overnight.

Fridays: fish are taken down, and the current fish get their heads separated from their tails, and the tails are arranged on a microscope slide, and then examined under a fluorescent microscope. under one filter, you can see all of the leukocytes (white blood cells) and i count them. under a different filter i see only neutrophils, which are a specific white blood cell that has been genetically altered to carry a gene for a fluorescent green protein called GFP. these glow green under the different filter, so i can differentiate how many of the total leukocytes are neutrophils. i can then compare counts with the control slide, to the counts from the slides from fish at different drug concentrations, and see if the drugs have any sort of effects in the inflammatory response.

as i've been doing this process i started getting frustrated with the lack of accuracy and repeatability with the experiments and decided i would start messing around with it and testing different things. so i started making things really sterile with some of the fish, bleaching them and putting them in filtered water. some of the other fish, i soaked in bacteria rich water, made from rotting fish embryos. the surprising results are that the bacteria water, drastically increased neutrophil counts, while reducing macrophage counts. this was something no one expected, and i'm doing other tests to fine tune things. but to make a long story short (or not as long), the lab is potentially going to redo how they perform their experiments to reflect these findings. everyone is all excited about it, so it's pretty exciting, but now it puts a lot of extra pressure on me to get this figured out. crazy, but i'm loving research.

Bring on the fall

i'm writing this during my actual fall break, which is a week long miracle of relaxtion, of which i am half way through partaking of. this semester is so bloody nuts. i have about 40 hours a week of extra curricular that i need to do on top of my classes, which are gen chem 2, cell bio, and physics. so it's a heavy classload to start off with. cell bio was introduced as the hardest class we have ever taken. i heard lots of warnings about this professor, including from biology TAs who had talked about getting like 50s on his exams. so that was a great little pep talk. but i actually am really interested in cell bio so i'm not too worried about it. i managed to pull off a 98.5 on the first test, with another one in a little over a week, so i needs to get to studying. its really complicated material, and there's a lot of it, so it will be a lot harder than the first test. i really like my physics class too. since i basically slept through physics in high school and got an F in it, and that was back in 1992, i pretty much had no idea what physics was all about. but i get into the problem solving and enjoy the challenge, so it's been a cool class. i got a 100 on my first test, and just took my second one, and should find out this week how i did on it. as for gen chem, it's a different story. i've really enjoyed my chem classes up to this point, but i'm having a hard time staying motivated. after doing o chem over the summer and then having to go back to gen chem, it's hard to get into just doing equations and math again. i'm just like "where's the chemistry". i really liked o chem, and gen chem is just a little dry and useless, since all of the stuff you have to memorize, i've been told you don't really have to have memorized in the real world of chemistry. so it kind of seems like busy work. add that to the fact that on the first test, the only points i missed were four points on a problem that i got right but they said i didn't show enough work. it said to show your work, because there were only two choices to make, so you had a 50/50 chance of getting it right. there are two criteria that a mechanism has to pass in order to be valid, i tried out the first criteria on the first mechanism to see if it was valid, and it didn't pass the first criteria, so i skipped the second one, since it obviously wasn't valid, and then showed all the steps for the second mechanism which met both criteria. they docked me four points for not showing all steps for both of them. so i got a 96. i was so irritated, i had words with the teacher. that isn't how it works in the real world. if something has two requirements, and one isn't met, you don't have to test the other one. it's a ridiculous waste of time, during a time sensitive test. so lame. but all in all, things are going pretty well. in addition to these classes, i do 15 hours a week of research (details in the next post), up at huntsman cancer institute, which i love, but also takes about 5 hours of total travel time, for the week, with all of the walking and waiting for the bus that i have to do. i also volunteer 4 hours at the hospital, and 3 hours a week at a cancer wellness house, where i have been doing yardwork for them over the summer. i also TA biology, which takes about 10 hours a week, including the four classes that i have to attend during the week, a two to three hour library review that i teach every week, plus time that we take for TA meeting and my own study and review. i also am VP of AED, the premed honor society, that takes a few hours every week. so it all adds up, and my day runs from 5:10 in the morning when i wake up to catch the bus at 6AM to 10:45 at night when i get home, monday through thursday. friday isn't so bad, i get home at 8:45, but i also end up studying for around 7 hours on saturday too, so i can stay caught up, since i don't have a lot of time to study during the week. but if i can keep this up for the next year, i'll take my mcat in june and then apply this summer, and then i can relax a tiny bit for the next year, and just keep some extra curricular, and finish up my classes. since i start studying the mcat in january, i need to set aside 20 hours a week to study, so i'll be getting rid of my ER shift, and TAing, which gives me 14 hours back, and then somehow i've got to come up with the other 6. we'll see. i guess i can do anything for a year. med school is probably going to be easy after all this. yeah right.

end of sums

so it's been a couple o' months since i updated this thing, a testament to how CRAZY my life has been recently. but i'll get to that in due time. just for my own memory i want to tie up the loose ends of what happened this summer, and move on to the current fall semester. i locked in my As with a 102 on my o chem final and a 96 on my physiology final. i ended up accepting a tutoring TA position for Dave Temme teaching Biology in the fall. this has been pretty interesting since i didn't necessarily see eye to eye with him on everything, but have since kind of changed my opinion. i don't think much is going to happen with the matt linton drawing thing. i get the feeling he wants the whole thing to be his own work, which i completely understand, even if it does look like his 5 year old son illustrated it. he broke my heart, but i'll move on. i enjoyed my two week break. did a little camping, did a little sleeping, played a little rockband, loved a little neighbor. and now we move on to fall...

trax gallery

just a small sample of some of the friends i have made in my travels.

here we have the motley crue fan club manager with his friday the 13th tattoo. he was on his way to adopt a puppy.


this average looking guy has more fun going on with the back of his hair than i have all week. plus grey sideburns.

in case you can't see it, her tattoo says "rick" which i'm always a big fan of.

this guy has some major inner thigh fitness going on.

end of summer semester

I can't believe one week and I'm done. Thursday and friday are finals and then off to wyoming for camping. This semester has been nice. I like having less people on campus and transport, but it's also more accelerated so you have to learn more in a shorter period of time. So that can be stressful especially when you have to take a final on something you only started learning the day before. The only grade I know so far is my o chem lab grade and I got the highest in the class with a 99.5 which is good because there is a down curve where 95 and lower get an A-. I talked to giles and he said he is going to hook me up with an awesome letter of recommendation for chemistry, so I'm excited about that. The only downer is that the TA position I thought I had is not a formal position. I need it to be legit for my application, not just helping the teacher out. So now I'm scrambling to try and TA something else, but it might be too late. However, I talked to matt linton and he's interested in having me design the diagrams and charts for the new edition of his textbook. So that could be a unique little addition to my application. Other than that, I'm just tired. You know you are tired when you stand with your hand under the paper towel dispenser and get frustrated because no soap is coming out. Brooke was extra juicy this morning when I left. It was hard to say goodbye. Our hands were together and then they slowly slid apart...then just fingertips...a chicago song was playing in the background...a single tear in her eye. Actually she was mostly asleep and a little sweaty, but she rocks my world.

7/2

sometimes I look at my life and I'm just like, what is going on. If you had told me a year ago that in a year I would be at huntsman cancer institute doing drug dilutions and experiments on zebrafish embryos, I would have slapped you right in the mouth. How did I get here? A year ago I was covered in sawdust, working in my shop, spending much of the day in my underwear, watching movies at lunch with brooke, feeling tired if I had to wake up before 8. Life is so crazy. But it feels good to be exhausted and busy ALL THE TIME. It's very fulfilling. I had a physiology test yesterday and feel pretty good about it. I felt a little rushed so that makes me a little nervous, but it should be fine. I studied so hard for it yesterday my brain just hurt at the end of the day. So only one test left in both classes. Two and a half weeks and the semester will be over and I'll be camping in wyoming. I can't wait. On a side note, I should do some research into why asparagus makes your pee smell so nappy. I mean, what's up with that?

7/7

for the last year I have woken up every weekday at 5:10. For some reason, for the last two days I have slept through my alarm. What the crap is going on. I'm not that guy, I don't ever even hit snooze. I slept in yeaterday until 5:50, and today until 6:45. I got a little over 7 hours of sleep, which was amazing, but I've got to get this figured out. I guess I am losing my mind.

4th of july weekend

this weekend was so much fun. first of all, i got monday off, which all by itself is so exciting. but we went to fairview canyon to camp with our best friends the stewarts. we got up there on friday night and stayed until monday afternoon. so three nights. i freaking love camping. its sad because we had built up all of our camping gear when we lived in st. george and we were planning all these trips, and then we moved. so it was fun to break it all out again. it was pretty hot in the day and pretty cold at night, but the kids all did really well. luckily my parents got them great sleeping bags, so they stayed warm. brooke forgot our air mattress, so the first night was a little rocky, but then we borrowed one from my aunt connie and uncle lane who live in fairview, and snuggled for the other two nights. going to bed and waking up when all the kids want to get into bed with you is my favorite part about camping. we played lots of cards and just talked and got all caught up. we had a big soccer game in a field and of course fat matt got a little sore just playing with the kids. the crazy thing is that it started raining on sunday, the 4th, and then snowed for two hours. big dumpy flakes! on the 4th of july, i couldn't believe it. then it got all sunny and we had kind of covered up the wood, so we were able to get a fire started again. but it was so fun. i seriously love the stewarts. lesa is like 7 months pregnant, so that was kind of funny to see her waddling around, trying to pick stuff up. she even played soccer for like 5 minutes. what an amazon. no serious injuries with the kids, besides the occasional burn on their hand after telling them 10 times that the camp stove is hot. i had to make like 3000 cups of hot chocolate for them, and we forgot to put a diaper on jonas for the way home, and he peed his pants and filled up his car seat with a pee puddle. i showered twice to get the smell of beef jerky off of me, and brooke and i made out a little bit. what a great weekend.

2nd physiology exam

i gots a 98. we'll see if that's impressive, when i find out what the rest of the class did. there are a couple people i'm trying to beat that edged me out on that last one. maybe it was good that i got a low A on the first one, if i steadily improve from there. better than going down. its just so much memorizing. about 80 pages, each with two slides on them, so basically memorizing about 160 slides. but this is nothing compared to anatomy, so they say. so i'll look forward to that.

pigeon poop

at the cancer house they are having a little issue with pigeons and pigeon fecal matter on the driveway and steps. So I made some little tack strips with nails sticking up and nailed them to the roof. As of this morning, no poop on the stairs but still a little poopoo on the driveway. They are crafty little pigeons and their true hangout has so far eluded me, but I'll find it and the next time they try to squat, there will be a little nail tickling their little anal orifice.

6/30

I'm seriously contemplating stepping in front of a bus right now. It's 7pm and I'm halfway through a lecture given by the TAs in my physiology class. Matt linton is out of town for this week. 20 year old TAs are so annoying becauae in their mind they know everything, but too often say the wrong thing. students listen to that and get the wrong ideas about stuff. Plus they are so uninteresting. I want to pull off my ears so I don't have to listen anymore. Plus I have a headache which is not helping. On a brighter note, I made fish babies this week and found my own drug to use in the study and got dilutions all worked up. It's so nice to feel like I'm starting to get the hang of this reseach. I did torture one embryo to see what I would have to do to make it blow up. It was pretty resilient, but the centrifuge finally did it in. I know that sounds bad, but it's literally the size of a piece of sand, so get over it. Also I have a mole that went from flat to puffy in two days. Should I be concerned?

sleep disorder

I saw on the news this morning that research shows that people who get less than 6 hours of sleep show inability to perform some normal functions. As someone who averages about 5-1/2...duh. It's actually been more like 4 hours and 45 minutes lately. I feel like death in the morning, but somehow I manage to do alright. It's just such an adjustment from going from spending all day every day with your family to getting no time with them. I feel like I just need to soak up every moment I can. And with brooke that usually means we don't go to bed until around 11:30. This makes 5:10 roll around way too quickly, but it's worth it. I love that woman. She's super juicy.

karate kid

so my brother hooked us up yesterday for my nephews birthday and for his kids going away party since their mom is moving them to colorado. they will still be back hopefully every couple weeks but it's going to be sad to see them go. so we had a fun day for the kids yesterday. we went to "jump on it" where they spent a couple hours jumping on the trampolines. they got their backflips down really well, and parker and cam were even doing backflips straight into front flips. rowan got her front flips down too. it was seriously so fun. then we went to chucky cheese which is always a fantasy land full of large people and the smell of feet overpowers. but the kids love it and we got to watch a grown woman stand next to the wheel of fortune game like she was in vegas at the nickel slots. when she would run out of tokens she would stand there until someone brought her some more. afterwards we went to see the karate kid. it was so good, and of course all the kids come out and want to beat each other up. especially cam, who found out that he could fold his legs together and lift himself up (see video) like the samurai guy at the top of the mountain in the movie. but it was seriously so good. then back to mike's house for fight night and cake. we spent most of the night outside watching the kids ride bikes and throwing frisbees around. just a great night all around.

gi joe

let me paint a picture for you: greasy, slicked back mullet, black shirt, tucked into black pants, tucked into black combat boots. i felt like i was risking my life taking this picture. notice how far back i was standing. i was sure he was going to turn around and have some flashback from nam. lucky matt's got some sweet camouflage skills. by the way it took me like 14 tries to spell camouflage right.

6/19

stupid zebrafish. no babies and i think i killed 2 of them. i'm the worst dad ever.

1st round summer tests

the tests are in and i'm pretty happy about how things went. i got an A on my physiology test, although i'm so bugged with myself because there was a really easy question on NADH and ATP output from the krebs cycle from beta oxidation products, and i started doing it, and started second guessing myself and decided i would just come back to it later and then completely FORGOT! it was seven easy points down the drain. its just so annoying because normally i could rattle that question off in my sleep, but you know how you get a brain cramp about something every once in a while...lame. so i got an A but it wasn't the A i wanted. i'm trying to impress my professor so i can TA for him, but that is not the way to do it. maybe i could impress him with my body hair growing talents, or how i can drum along to songs using only my teeth, or how i can grab my uvula, or maybe sing him an 80's song... the possibilities are endless. so maybe i don't need to stress out. that class is seriously 2 and a half hours long, at night, with a one hour discussion before it. sometimes its so tempting to have nappy time, but it's actually pretty interesting and i somehow stay awake, but my poor butt with no meat on it is often numb and lifeless and requires a great deal of rubbing and massaging before it comes back to life (thanks to the old ladies at the front desk for helping me with that). things went a lot better in o chem. i got a 99 on that test, which is with that same instructor from last semester where i got two 100s and 2 99s on his tests. so he's trying to keep me from getting a 100, and i'm trying to not let him keep me from getting a 100, so we're locked in an eternal struggle. sometimes we stare each other down, or make intimidating gestures with our bodies, trying to assert our own dominance over the other. but every once in a while we give a wink and a thumbs up, or a gentle shoulder rub out of respect. anyway, so far so good. now i gots to go harvest some zebrafish embryos. hopefully daddy made some good babies last night. i kept the lights low and put on a little mood music. hopefully those girl zebrafish gave it up. the boy zebrafish looked good and i gave them some good tips on how to keep the ladies happy. hopefully a little tickle and some spooning, and i'll have some cute little babies to subject to drugs and fin clips, and eventually euthanize and cut off their heads and look at their tails glowing with fluorescent markers under a microscope. a detailed rundown of my research process will soon follow. hopefully all 3 people who read this blog can sleep despite all their anticipation.

run forrest

so I haven't posted in a while and might just forget about the stuff I,ve been saving and just pick up from right now. I started running a few times a week again to try and get my heart out of immediate danger and hopefully get in shape enough to not die over the fall and winter semesters when I won't have any time to exercise. But today I ran over to the cancer house, which I love, because it's running down streets with lots of trees and old homes. Anyway, I was mowing the lawn like I do every thursday, and I saw a girl run by. Like me she was a little chubby and trying to lose a few, I'm sure. The funny thing is to see the tricks that us chubby people use when we're running. I do the same thing. As she's running by me, she's got a big stride going, she's breathing mostly through her nose, etc... Everything looks like she's got it all under control. She runs down the sidewalk, past where I can see her, and I'm sure she thinks she's out of sight. However I got done mowing the lawn on that part right then and came down the stairs and saw her down the sidewalk, not running anymore, hands on her knees, totally winded. Why do we do that crap, so funny. And then when she saw me, she straightens up really quick and checks her watch, like, "how many miles was that?" again, I've totally done that. I'm going to be typing a lot from my phone now, so I can type stuff as I think it, so forgive the errors in spelling and punctuation. I don't care enough to correct them. Well back to my landscaping duties.

zebrafish surgery

today was pretty amazing. i am so out of my comfort zone, but i'm just really excited about this research program. on tuesday i started and just basically sorted some zebrafish embryos, taking out any unfertilized eggs, and putting the rest in the incubator. then on friday, i came back and we took the embryos, which were now 3 day old larvae, and sedated and anesthetized them with triacaine. this made them stop moving. then we could separate them and put some in a drug solution and some in a control solution. then, using a microscope, we made small fin wounds on their tails. this was pretty hard since they are only about a millimeter or two long at this point, so when you're looking under a microscope any little twitch makes the blade go all over the place. the funny thing about that is i've been getting this little twitch in my finger for some reason, and when he asked to see my hands to make sure i'd be able to do the precision cutting, my finger was all twitching and he got a little concerned, but then it went away and i showed him that i could do it. but it was really interesting getting to do this little microsurgery. the basic idea behind it is to make a wound and then track the migration of lymphocytes and leukocytes to the wound. you can figure out the effects of drugs on the healing process, and all of it is comparable to what goes on in the human body. i should have a better idea of everything in the next couple of weeks, but hopefully soon i can go on my own and start doing my own experiments. i might even get some money out of it, if i get research funding. if not, i'll just get a paper route.

and...i'm back in school again

wow that was short. so i'm back in school, studying physiology and organic chemistry. i decided to skip gen chem 2 so i could take o chem from the same instructor that i had for gen chem 1. i figure it will help me to get a better letter of recommendation. it has created a few issues though. my professor says i should follow it up with o chem 2 in the fall, but the lab lecture conflicts with my cell bio class. also, a guy who does mcat testing says it would be better for me to finish gen chem 2 as it will better prepare me for the mcat over o chem 2. so i think i'm just going to take gen chem 2 in the fall, and hope i don't forget o chem over the semester. so anyway, back to this semester. physiology is on monday and wednesdays from 6-8:30 at night. so a night class for two and a half hours. pretty brutal, plus it's at the sandy annex, so i have to commute there from the campus in salt lake. both physiology and chemistry have discussions with them, plus i have a chem lab and lecture that goes with it. i also started my research on monday, so that should be pretty good, but will take a good chunk of my time. i'm just excited to expand my responsibilities past blanket distribution in the ER. AED will be meeting a few times during the summer as well to get things planned out for the coming fall semester. so it should be a busy summer, but also, i will hopefully be catching the early bus home every day and getting home at 6:30. hopefully i can catchup on time with my family before the year from hell starts in the fall.

summer break

hi, i'm summer vacation and i'm only a week long. lame. this was actually my favorite break in a long time. i had no cabinets to build, no websites to design, i just got to hang out the whole time. so fun. i still did my er shifts, and got my training done so i can get going on research when the summer semester starts. i'm a little stressed out just because every semester i am adding new stuff to my schedule, and i'm limited to 24 hours in a day. so now i have another 12-15 hours a week being added for research, and in the fall i'm going to be TAing, so that will add another 8 hours or so a week. plus AED will take a few hours a week, so extracurricular stuff is get up around 20-25 hours a week. kind of nuts. but if i can get through this next year, then i'll be applying and taking my MCAT and then i can just maintain for the next year and have things settle down a little bit, but it's just a lot of stress. so if i can survive straight weeks of getting home at 10:30 every night for a year, i should be okay. no problem right? hopefully i'll still have saturdays with my family, but i'm not holding my breath. i'm going to see if i can't get into the gym over the summer so i can work my gut down a little bit. i figure it would be sad to work for 12 years to be a doctor only to have a heart attack, so i might as well fit a little cardio in, maybe some toe touches, some jumping jacks, scissor kicks, lunges, jazzercise, pool aerobics...

finals week

spring semester is officially done. i am so glad. i needed some family time. things went really well. i got my fourth test back for chemistry (my last midterm test). i got a 99, which of course bugs me, because why did i miss that one. actually i'm pretty grateful because the section that i missed it on was one that i filled out the whole thing in the last one minute of test time. it was worth 18 points and was labeling an amino acid with molecular geometry, bond angle, and hybridization. so if i missed one out of 18 in a mad rush to get it filled out, i guess that's not too bad. the good news is that the lowest midterm is thrown out, so that sick 92 is gone, and i have 100, 100, and 99 for my exam scores. i'm pretty sure i aced the final, so i feel really good about chemistry. i'm taking the same teacher for ochem in a couple of weeks, so i'm excited to keep that relationship building. maybe we can go see a movie, or hold hands in the park or something. i got a 99 on my calc final, but he messed up on one problem which made the answer come out really messy, so he gave 5 extra credit points for whoever got it right. so i ended up with a 102 in that class for the semester. so i've got two letters of recommendation locked up pretty well. so excited about that. my bio final i didn't worry about so much. i would need to get a 60 on that final in order to get an A- in the class, and that's before the curve, so i didn't study as hard for that as i could have. i wanted to focus my attention on calc and chemistry. so i probably got a B on the test, which after the curve will probably be an A, but it doesn't matter. i got an A for the class and don't need a letter from him and i'm not going to try and TA for him, so i'm just glad its done. that class wore on me for some reason. i have my own views on evolution and sometimes they were in line with the class, but sometimes i just heard "this is all hypothesis" or "we have no way of knowing" one too many times. maybe if the biologists prayed for answers, they'd find them....hmmmm....dilemma. anyway, good semester, excited for a week and a half with my family, and then back to the books. PLUS RESEARCH!!! can't wait. fish lab, here i come.

part 2...

3 more classics.

tiny dancer

why would brooke reveal the existence of these pictures to me and then leave me alone with them. does she not know me at all? i guess when she was in wyoming, at my parents, over spring break, my brother dared her to get up onstage at some christian revival thing and start dancing (those who know brooke will not be surprised). i'm so happy to share these with the world.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

i got my first B this week. on a chemistry test. i was killing chemistry up to this point. i had two one hundreds. what the crap happened. sure the average was a 54 and i had an 85, but it might as well have been a 54. i knew that i hadn't had time to check my answers so i probably had a couple of dumb mistakes in there, and i did. but one of the things i got wrong really bugged me. it was on resonance structures, and i listed the two structures that were possible from the lecture and the book, but he said there was another one that was possible, even though it's not in the notes or in the book. i wish they would have said before the test that we'd have to do some mind reading, because i wasn't aware that that was allowed. anyway, they actually made a couple mistakes in grading and i ended up getting a 92. not great, but at least the A streak is still alive.

leaderSHAPE

already i'm bored just writing this. when you go to something called leaderSHAPE, you know you already have to expect cheesy get to know you exercises and pep talks, and super extra motivated 19 year olds who figure this is their first step on the road to student body presidency. i was so dreading this. for anyone who knows me, people are the last thing i want to be around on a saturday and i really hate wearing nametags. well, they gave me a nametag, and of course there ended up being people there, so it really started out disappointing. i did know a couple people there, so i wasn't completely awkward, but i would definitely say that i was almost completely awkward. i sat in the back row, and of course the first thing they talk about are the kind of people who sit in the back row, which made everyone get up after the break and move up a couple of rows, which was nice because it left the back row all to me. we had some pep talks and got to get up and practice being leaders and figured out what type of leaders we were and came to know how we could be better leaders, and leaders and leadership and leaderSHAPE, and before you know it 8 hours had flown by as if i was holding my breath for the whole time while someone was pushing thumb tacks into my scalp. the way i see it, if you're a leader, it comes naturally. people follow you because they trust you and you can fix things and make things work. leadership training is for macdonalds managers. i really don't mean to be cynical but cynicism sat with me for that entire 8 hours, and we got to be pretty close. plus i got to be psycho analyzed at lunch by a friend of mine from the 810 bus. so learned all kinds of things about myself. i don't look people in the eyes when i talk to them. i realize that about myself (see line 3 and 4 above). i do need to work on that. i also use my beard as a security blanket to keep people away. it is warm and fluffy, but i probably need to get over that too. i have made a few friends on campus, so i'm slowly getting better. i think lunch was the most informative part about today. the other thing was that while i was shaping my future of leadership, my wife was skiing with my kids, and rowan was hitting black diamonds and jonas skied for the first time at 2. i can't believe i missed it. so fun. i was so jealous. but then again, they didn't get to see who could make the tallest balloon structure by working as a team. their loss.

santa hits the ER

what's up with this guy? he sat outside the ER all grumpy and blew on a trumpet every once in a while. he about gave some lady a heart attack. but luckily a life flight helicopter was flying overhead and i was able to get this picture while he was distracted. santa, why you gots to be so bitter in the off-season?

p.s. actually now that i look at this photo full size, i guess he wasn't distracted. he was looking right at me. it's a little scary...those eyes...that beard...those little christmas ornaments...if santa tracks me down and kills me, someone give this picture to the police.

Calculicious

So i had a crazy idea. i was tutoring a few people in calculus and made an announcement in the weekly review, in class, before an exam, that we were going to be doing a review before the exam and that whoever wanted to join, could come. well i ended up getting like 20 people there and decided to talk to the teacher about doing these things for him on a permanent basis. i was thinking i could start up with him in the fall and tutor/TA for him, but he was like, "why don't you start now?" so he reserved me some classrooms and has been making announcements in class, and i've been getting like 40-50 people in my review sessions now. it's actually been really fun, and it's helped a lot of people. Peter, the calc professor, is like a math magician, and i don't think he understands how our little minds work sometimes. things are obvious to him that are incomprehensible to us. so i think it helps people to hear calculus be taught by someone who just learned it and doesn't see the world like in the matrix movies with everything made out of lines of numbers. but this is going to be another major leadership opportunity for my application, especially since only graduate students normally TA math, and i'm TAing while i'm actually taking the class. this has letter of recommendation written all over it. every time something like this happens, i'm just reminded that i'm doing what i'm supposed to be doing. it's just amazing how all these things just keep falling into place. i'm so freaking excited about it!! Also, i got a 100 on my calc exam this week.

Bio Exam

i was pretty nervous to get this bio exam back. bio evolution is split up into two sections, botany and animals. the two halves are taught by two separate teachers, the second being harder than the first. so this exam was the first one that i was taking from this teacher, who gives pretty hard tests. he said, in a review before the exam, that the scores will average lower on this one than on the first two, and this isn't going to be the type of exam where someone gets a 100 percent. so i was naturally pretty nervous when he announced that tests had been graded and were being handed back. he mentioned that the class average was 54 percent, but that there was one 100 percent out of about 250-300 tests...as a side note, my teacher has a handsome moustache and a perfectly round head of hair. magnificent.

Mr. Vice President

AED has a new vice president. his name is matt lamont and he and i are the same. i'm pretty excited about it. it's going to be a considerable time commitment, but will be a really good leadership experience to put on my med school app. in addition, the vice president becomes the president, and the last few presidents of AED all got accepted to the U med school, which is pretty competitive, so it's definitely good news. as i'm typing this, my oldest son (9) was reading over my shoulder and said, "Dad, congratulations, can you get me Barack Obama's autograph?". he's a special boy.

beard

i don't know if the entire structure of my blog is going to come crashing down or not, but i shaved today, so it's more like matt the schoolboy with a little patch of something on his chin. but brookie likes it, and i like her, so that equals the square root of we made out tonight. night night.

a lone lonely loner

so glad this week is over. i had a calc test last friday (100%), and then a bio and chem test on wednesday. there was just a lot of new material and this was my first test with the bio professor who teaches the second half of the evolution course. so i was pretty nervous. i feel like i did well, but who knows, i really will throw up if i get a B on a test, but i know it has to happen sooner or later. i didn't get a lot of time to check my answers, which always makes me uneasy, but i was well prepared, so what else can i do. the hard part was that my family was in sheridan wyoming, with my parents for my kids spring break. i wish i could explain the feeling of coming home at 11pm at night, and the house is empty except for our dumb noisy hamster. at that late hour, i don't want to make a big dinner, so what is easy? chili dogs. so gross. i woke up 5 hours later still tasting chili. i wanted to do one of those movie shower scenes where i start crying and slowly sink down in the shower, clenching my fists, but instead i just took a plain shower, and skipped the academy award winning performance. but still it was a hard week. my daughter gave me a rubber band that i think she took off some asparagus and told me to wear it so i would remember her. so i still have it on, and will probably wear it till it falls off. i just love my kids and wife and have to figure out some way to be able to continue to get quality time with them. cinderella (the band, not the cartoon lady) knew what they were saying with "don't know what you've got, till it's gone". actually i did know what i had, and it's not gone, just not there as much. i should write a song called " i already knew what i had, but if i didn't, i would know once it was gone, even though it's not, it's just not there as much." i could have it playing in the background during my crouching in the shower scene. please let some producer read this blog one day.

physician shadowing

i got my first opportunity to shadow over spring break when we were in st. george. it actually felt really amazing to be with an actual doctor, watching actual procedures, not just wheeling someone around or distributing blankets. and it was my friend randy, who is an interventional radiologist, so i got to see what a day in the life of IR is like. i'm so excited to get going and do some real work. it was exciting to hear from him about the business side of it. he has his own group that he is a partner of, as well as partners with another guy where they own a vein clinic. i want to make sure and explore different business opportunities when i get done, especially since i'll be pushing 50 with probably 300 grand of debt. i'm going to need to get some money working so i'm not working till i'm 95. but anyway, it was great to get in on some action, and i can't wait to go back and get some more exposure. next time it will be actual IR procedures, where this one was a shift in the vein clinic. got to see lots of white legs, lots of veins and 80 percent of the patients were polygamist women, so the party was intense. randy wore a spongebob surgery cap, which i didn't really agree with, but all in all, it was an amazing day.

my parents

can i just take a second to talk about my parents. i feel like my parents are the most amazing parents in the world. i'm sure lots of people feel that way, but that's just because of the propaganda that their nazi parents feed them. my parents are truly one in a million. they have always supported me from my days as a model scout (scam), my band days in l.a., pottery barn, redrock doors, and now med school. most people would think brooke and i were crazy with everything that we've done, but they've always believed in us, and have understood, that we've been very prayerful about everything we've done, and it's all been for a reason. they have given us our small business loan, we're living in their house, they help us out financially every month. they are just so faithful, and make me so proud. i'm sure its payback because i was such a good kid growing up i.e. getting suspended for acting gay on a band trip. (see previous reference to carlos). i just love them so much and am so grateful to them. and then we were in cedar with brooke's parents and they took us skiing, and bought the kids snowboard bindings and boots, and paid for our tickets. i just feel like brooke and i have the best parents ever.

my poor colon

so i had a colonoscopy this week. i've always wanted one, and it was great. turns out, my colon is pretty impressive and fully healthy. however, it may be housing some bacteria that like to make me bloat up like a kitty balloon that you would give to some old lady whose cat died in a scooter accident. it is the worst. but now i'm on some antibacterial meds, no bloating so far, and my doctor and i have become super close friends. what more can you ask. the best part was the gallon of fish water smelling electrolytes that i had to drink before hand, and the waterworks that resulted. it was actually kind of fun for the first hour, and since our house is especially small, we all got to join in together in appreciation of sweet, fasting-acting laxatives.

brianhead

on thursday, we got all packed up for our final trip to the mountain. we heard there was still snow on the mountain, so we were all excited. should have checked the wind report. the whole mountain was closed down except for the bunny hill. i was so bugged, but then... a flash of genius. brooke can talk anyone into anything, so she hooked us up with free snowboard rentals for cameron and rowan. we were going to teach them next year, along with getting jonas on skiis, but figured, if we can get this out of the way now, it saves us some frustration and self loathing next season. seriously, teaching kids how to ski/snowboard sucks my will to live. but when its done, it is so worth it. our kids could follow us anywhere this season, it was so amazing, so hopefully by the end of next season, everyone will be back up to speed. at lunch time, rowan wasn't feeling good and passed out on the floor, so brooke's mom stayed with her while we finished the day. what a super lady. just super. both of them did so well, and cam even said, "i'm never going to ski again, i'm a snowboarder". as a skiier, it gives me mixed emotions, but still, just to have your kid be happy and proud of themself at the end of the day is amazing. also, parker dropped my phone in a snowbank, where it continues to happily reside, causing me a great amount of stress. i think i'm going to get a palm pixi to replace it, but wonder if that name makes me less of a man. actually, i kissed a boy when i was 7, so it doesn't really matter. he was my best friend, and he was black, so i learned to appreciate diversity at an early age. plus bullies were going to kick our butt if we didn't. carlos, if you're out there, call me.

spring break '10

i can't believe its spring break!! i'm so bloody excited. i get 9 days with my family, including a trip to st. george, and possibly a ski day. i do have to fit a little homework in there, as well as some graphic design to finish up a website that i've been working on for my lame brother (just kidding my sweet little fig newton). i've also got to squeeze in a doctors visit on monday, because matties having some weird stomach/gas issues. ulcer maybe? we'll see. the doctor i've gone to in the past is kind of lame. he's a D.O. and looks to probably be my age, with my same haircut from junior year of high school. who has long hair on top with the sides shaved anymore? plus he wears doc martens and corduroys. so i decided to go to someone who didn't go to online med school, so hopefully that works out better. also, why am i dreaming about calculus and chemistry. it's like this never ending problem that i can't figure out, and makes me wake up multiple times during the night. can't i just do the normal dream of being naked in class or something? at least let me be naked in class working on an unsolvable problem. then it would at least be interesting. also, while i was working on a calculus problem in my dream last night, my 7 year old son was driving me in a car with the girl from twilight. stay tuned...

time rolls by...so slowly

sometimes it feels like eternity until i hit med school. my friend shane got accepted this week to the U med school. i was seriously so excited for him. it just made me so anxious to get to that step. i went and talked to my counselor this week, and she was very optimistic about my potential to get into some of the schools i'm looking at. which is good because when i first went in to talk to her last semester, she wasn't so optimistic. maybe its the beard. i'm not very impressive at first sight. most women and children are frightened at my general appearance, but a select few see through to my sweet cuddly side. i'm just so excited to move to the next step. i take my MCAT in a year and apply to schools right after that. then a year after that, hopefully, i start school. i'm taking physiology this summer, along with gen chem II so that by the fall, i'll be all caught up to start O chem. i'm excited about physiology, just because the teacher is matt linton who is the AED faculty advisor. so hopefully i can get in good with him and TA or something. i also got my research schedule figured out, so i'll be hitting that hardcore this summer. can't wait.

chem exam

so if you don't want to read any bragging, please avert your eyes. the main point of this blog is to catalog the things i've done so i can review for my med school application. so forgive a brotha for a little self appreciation. anyway...i got my chem exam back and was a little nervous because i heard there was only one A, and there are two classes, each with about 150 people in them. so the odds were a little stacked against me. to make a long story short, i got a 100 percent, which was the second one for me in that class. i talked to the teacher and he asked how i was doing in the class and i told him what i got on the exams and he told me that he'd never had someone get two 100s before in all his years of teaching. so i'm definitely going to be hitting him up for a letter of recommendation. its a far cry from sleeping through exams in high school, and getting a 0.9 GPA my senior year. anyway, it was a big relief.

the 811 acrobat

this is my amazing busdriver on the 9:30 PM bus. i had a picture of him earlier, but here is the full effect. enjoy.

loves of my life

there really isn't a story to this. i just love my family and wanted them to be on here. i miss them everyday. brookie, parker, cam, rowan and jonas. I LOVE YOU GUYS.

Lava Hot Springs

Daddy needed a vacation. this weekend was just what i needed. my sweet succulent brother rented a house in lava hot springs for our annual family trip. it was so great. the roads were perfect getting out there. it was so cold and then to jump in those warm pools was so amazing. i had seriously been looking forward to it for so long. the feeling of sitting in a hot pool with snow falling all around is amazing. however, the nights were a different story. jonas was sleeping on the floor and wasn't into it, so he decided to get up multiple times in the night. on the second night, my ulcer (if that's what it is) started acting up, giving me a bunch of stomach pain. parker had swimmers ear and couldn't sleep, cameron was coughing all night, and jonas did a repeat of the previous nights performance. so it was not a great night's sleep for matt. i finally unded up on the couch in parkers sleeping bag with my legs dangling off. this morning we went exploring in an ice cave. the kids loved it. we had perfect skies for the trip home, but i was so tired that brooke had to drive the last hour of the trip. we almost got run off the road by two crazy cars in the middle of a bout of road rage, so that kept the dream alive. but all in all, it was an amazing trip. i love my family!!

a week of exams

i can't believe my midterms are done. things didn't go quite as well as the first round. i made a couple dumb mistakes, but ended up with a 98 on my calc test, and a 96 in both my bio lab and biology evolution exam. i took my chem exam but haven't heard back on it yet. i feel good about it, but there were a lot of places to make mistakes. i wouldn't be surprised if i got a hundred, but i wouldn't be surprised if i missed twenty either. so hopefully somewhere in between. it was just a very stressful couple of weeks...so happy it's finished. i feel like i have given myself an ulcer which is worrying me a little. somehow i need to reduce my stress. but just when i feel like my life is super crazy, i meet this girl on the bus, who is close to my age, divorced, with seven kids, going to law school. me and my silly little problems...

TRAX accident (TRAXident)

i had a crazy experience on thursday night. i was riding on trax to go home at about 8 o'clock at night, and all of a sudden it felt like the conductor slammed on the brakes, and we got jostled for a minute and then kind of jolted to a stop. the conductor said there was a problem and he would give us more info as he could and to stay on the train. after about 5 minutes he said medical was coming and we realized that we had hit something. then after about 30 seconds about 40 ambulances, fire trucks and cop cars showed up. so we figured at this point that someone was hurt. at one point i saw them carrying someone away on a stretcher. i could tell he was at least, really hurt, because his arm was just flopping off the side. but then they took out another backboard from the ambulance, so i could tell that it wasn't just one person. after about 40 minutes some people got on the train and asked if we were hurt, and then evacuated us from the train onto a different train so we could catch our connections. so we drove by the front of the train and saw, for the first time, what had happened. a car, carrying four 18-20 year olds, had tried to squeeze through the railway gates to beat the trax. the car was destroyed, and that night when i got home, i turned on the news and heard that the two people on the drivers side had died and the other two were in critical condition. it just makes me so mad. its so useless. the other three passengers might not even have had a say in what the driver was doing. he just wanted to save two minutes. i couldn't stop thinking about it. to be in a vehicle that caused people to die is just a crazy emotion. i hope the other two will be okay, but it doesn't look good. and the poor conductor will have that image in his head for the rest of his life. hopefully people will wake up and get a little patience.

AED and old ladies

i feel like AED and i have become special life partners this week. we had a lot of stuff going on. monday and wednesday i got to go knit with old people. surprisingly enough, i knit a mean hat. i was pleasantly surprised at my old lady knitting skills. it was supposed to be to teach old people how to make these hats and then they would make a bunch of them and then we would donate all of them to a homeless shelter. well they were kind of tired and the jazz game was on, so interest was not at an all time high. but that was okay with me because those old ladies were kind of cramping my style. trying to tell me how to knit hats right...whatever. i had my own little technique and it was working for me. granted my first infant hat turned out a little thick, and may be a hazard to a baby's soft spot, but at least that baby will look good when it starts bleeding out its ears. then i started a new, bigger hat that i didn't finish but is equally impressive. i brought it home with me to finish because i didn't trust anyone to finish it for me. cuckoo...

also, we had dr. samuelson's lecture on personal statements this week. i couldn't make it because of my bio lab, but we had our new signs out advertising it, and that was pretty exciting to see, i must say. they turned out really well. everyone stole the flyers out of them at first, but then we made new flyers with "do not remove" on them, and that did the trick. add a member meeting in there on monday, and it was a full week of AED. but it was actually kind of nice to get to know everyone better. one girl whipped out her guitar and started singing, the student advisor was trying to hook up with the old ladies...lots of fun.

so many exams, so little time

crazy, crazy week. so glad this one is almost done. it started off so carefree. we were in st. george for brooke's 100 miler bike ride. we got to stay with our friends the stewarts, and it was just a really nice, relaxing weekend. it always feels totally like home at their house, and we're just completely comfortable. brooke was puking the day before her race, so she was a little nervous, but felt great on the big day, and they didn't get rained on until they were about 20 or 30 miles from the finish line. could have been a lot worse, it was supposed to rain all day. anyway, on sunday, we went to our old ward, and it was so fun to see all of our old friends. it made me kind of homesick. that and it was like 75 degrees outside. i miss wearing shorts in the winter time. but the easy times couldn't last long. by the time we got home from church, i was starting to feel gross. we stopped in cedar to see brooke's parents and i threw up and passed out on the couch for a couple of hours. i don't know if i even said hi to anyone. it was so bizarre. but it made me feel a little better. brooke drove on the way home so i could read some literature on the research i'm going to be working on. by the time we got home i felt better but just kind of wiped out. i knew i needed to get some sleep because of the hellish week that lay ahead...

so the week began, i got to start at my new research job, and that was really interesting. the immunology research they do is with zebra fish, so i got my first taste of the fish lab. i got trained on how to sex fish, divide them up into ma

ting pairs and then collect the eggs(embryos) from fish that were mated a few days earlier. then we took the eggs into a microscopy room, where i got to sort through them, under a microscope and find the fertilized embryos and separate them from the unfertilized ones, which would just start decomposing and killing all of the viable ones. so it was pretty interesting and i'm excited to learn more. the only problem i'm having right now, is that i just don't have big open chunks of time to be able to go over there to do the research, so i may just have to spend the rest of this semester training, as i have time, and then just make sure and schedule open times on the days that i need to for research for summer semester. but anyway, that was a highlight.

however, it wasn't all fish embryos and microscopes. i had 3 exams to stress about as well. my biology lab exam was on tuesday. that was crazy, just because it was all basically an exam to see how well we kept our lab notebooks. the whole thing was based on our notes and drawings, so if we didn't draw it, we wouldn't recognize it and if we didn't have good notes, we wouldn't know how to answer the questions. so there were about 100 questions and it took almost three hours to complete. but i feel pretty confident. i took a lot of notes and drew a lot of extra pics and life cycles, and googled extra info. so it was pretty easy, but the preparation was just hours of drawing, so kind of tedious. but it felt good to get that out of the way.

my next worries were calculus and biology which were both on friday. i felt pretty prepared for calculus. his tests are never as hard as the homework, which is kind of his strategy. the homework took me about 25 hours to complete. his questions are just so freaking hard. even the math lab TAs are surprised at how hard they are. here is a sample answer from one of the crazier ones:

but it feels so good to get it done, and it's like running a marathon, you just feel so accomplished when you finish. so i took the test on friday, and got everything right except the last one, where i made the dumbest mistake. i actually did it right at first, using the equation for the area of a circle which is pi(r)squared. but then i got something in the back of my head saying no it's 4pi(r)squared, i remembered seeing it on my homework. so i redid it, and got it wrong. the stupid 4pi(r)squared is the surface area of a sphere, not the area of a circle. but it won't count off too much, because that formula was just a tiny part of a much bigger problem, involving related rates, and implicit differentiation, all of which i got right, but still, it's the dumb mistakes that kill you. i was so frustrated. settle...

then my bio exam. i did fine on it, maybe missed one or two, so i'm excited to just have those done. i felt like i spent so long on the bio lab and the calculus that i was cramming for the bio exam. but i was really calm, and i'm happy with how i did. the calm thing is so important. on my first trig exam, i almost had a heart attack, i was so nervous. so i've learned that if i'm prepared, i don't need to worry. sometimes i'm my biggest problem. but anyway, it feels so good to have those behind me. now i just need to get prepared for wednesdays chemistry exam. then i have a great weekend at lava hot springs with my family to look forward to. i seriously can't wait.

one or two random notes:

#1-we got a free car this week. brooke's former triathlon "coach" asked us if we wanted a car. his mom passed away, i think, and no one wanted to mess around with selling it. so we are the proud owners of a 1997 (?) toyota camry. it's actually in seemingly great shape. a little old lady smell, but that should come right out. i don't know if i mentioned that someone opened their car door into the impala and put a big dent in the side, but that is really bugging me right now. people are so lame. but it would be nice to drive a different car and not rack up the dents and miles on our sweet little impala. plus if something breaks down, it's nice to have a backup, since we're not exactly rolling in the benjamins right now.

#2-why was a guy on my 6 am bus rocking out to chicago and earth wind and fire so early? he had his headphones so loud and was gyrating in his seat. chicago? that was like 1993 prom date music. poor guy.

#3-i seriously saw a guy put his cigarette out on a trash can, and then throw the cigarette on the ground. i wanted to go rub it in his face and then punch him in it. people wonder why i'm antisocial.

the poster is done!

ok, so i finally got this AED poster done, and it looks pretty good. its just going to be nice to get everything looking legit. plus the old signs had some drippy stains on them and tape residue. so anyway, i'm excited about it. they should be done on monday or tuesday and we can get them up to advertise the dean of admissions lecture from the med school that is on the 9th. i have a bio lab at that time so i can't go, which really bugs. i'm trying to see if we can work out a webcast or something. its on writing personal statements for your application, so i really want to see it. they'll do it next year, so i guess i won't die if i don't get to see it, but still...

i'm actually really enjoying my bio lab. at least the microscopy part. i want to get a microscope so i can show the kids what i've been looking at. i'll attach a picture of Volvox to this blog so everyone can see what i'm seeing, but it's pretty amazing. the part that sucks is drawing everything into our lab notebook. we have our first exam on tuesday, and there is only one more for the semester, so if we do bad on one, the whole semester is shot. we've looked at like 100 different organisms and can be tested on any of them, so its a little stressful, and is supposed to take like 2 or 3 hours. so i'll look forward to that.

i got done organizing the basement at the cancer center this week. it felt good to just throw away huge trash cans full of old junk and boxes. the problem is that i'm done now, so i'm on to the next assignment. so it looks like i'm going to be making some flags for an upcoming event. i guess i'm going to be learning to sew on wednesday so i can sew these flags together. so apparently i'm like a little elderly woman to them. whatever.

also, i feel like i'm venting a little, but what is up with the girls with all the makeup and hair and crazy clothes? i saw a girl in the computer lab at 7:30 fully done up. she had to have been awake by like 4:00 am to get all done and to school by that time. why oh why? just put on some sweats and a hat. they are trying so hard. or there are the guys that walk around in the middle of a snowstorm in shorts and a t-shirt. i'll still think you're tough if you put a coat on. i'm just so glad i'm 34 and married, and i just go to class and the library and study. i don't have to worry about all these other games that everyone else has to play. its kind of why i grow my beard out, so i can look like the crazy old guy who lives in a box and no one will talk to me. so far so good.

don't people have jobs?

i find myself getting very annoyed at different people. my patience for idiots is really in short supply these days. the group i will focus on now are the computer lab rats. i get so annoyed when i need to get on a computer and there are none available because everyone is on facebook or chatting with girls in singapore. anyway, there are 3 guys in the downstairs computer lab who are like 50 plus, and they seriously get there by like 7:30 in the morning and are there until like 6:30 at night and all they do is check email and watch tv shows and movies on the computer. ALL DAY LONG!!! the worst one is this guy, who actually brings a bag full of food and drinks and just camps out all the live long day. there is this cloud of smell like old cheese around him, and i just find myself getting mad every day that i see him.

human peacock

this almost makes me mad.

brain fry

why do i do this to myself. i will spend 3 hours on one problem, just so i don't miss something on homework. technically it doesn't count for much, but i guess i justify it because i'm trying to understand the concept. but when you're doing the 4th derivative of tanx and the answer is , and you're trying to enter that into the computer, it really makes me question my life. why can't my teacher just put problems on the homework that have to do with stuff that he's actually taught us. i mean he actually wants us to learn this stuff, and apply it, and take it to the next level? what's wrong with this guy. he's actually kind of funny. he's german, never combs his hair, wears 10 different color versions of the same sweatshirt, and says words like "exceedingly." but he also may be one of my favorite teachers. i never find myself looking at my watch in his class. spacibo herr alfeld.

today has just been frustrating, with feeling like i'm not getting calculus as much as i want to, to just being busy, to having more on my plate with AED (i get to design posters now that will be used to advertise special events), it's just whipped my little brain into a thick, creamy paste. then i take that frustration home with me and put it on my wife and kids. luckily they don't let me wallow in my self pity for long, and we end up having a gay old time, but still...lame. most of the time, i love school, but every once in a while, i have a day like this where the whole process just seems like it's never going to end. i'm such a baby, i need a glass of warm milk.

public transportation

ok, so i actually spend about 3 hours a day on public transportation. it's just another place for me to study, but i am constantly reminded that other peoples lives are very different from my own. i have interesting experiences almost daily. here are a few:

one of my bus drivers must have been a gymnast in his younger years. he is about 65 years old, and everyday, before the bus leaves, he starts hanging from the hand bars on the ceiling. after a minute, he'll slowly rotate around until he's upside down. then he'll slowly rotate one way, and then back the other way, do a full dismount, and then sit in his chair and we drive away. he doesn't even crack a smile.

one guy pulled out a fiddle and played three songs.

a drunk guy, last night, got mad at me because i wouldn't go hunt sasquatch with him

there is a guy from africa, who just sits on his cell phone and laughs for an hour straight. every time i see him.

there is a massive guy who smells funny, who is always on my bus. one day his coat touched my lip. i dry heaved and spent the next 45 minutes on the bus with my lips stuck out until i could wash them.

i noticed a guy get on and asked myself why someone would dress the way he does. really awkward. so i kept my eye on this guy, and saw him watching a girl across the way from him. after about 5 minutes, he proceeded to pull out his cell phone and inconspicuously (so he thought), take pictures of the girl so he could take them home with him and put in his serial killer scrapbook.

a guy got on with this funky bike that has a hinge on it so that it can fold in half for storage. he was so proud of it and kept talking to this guy about it. instead of just keeping it on two wheels, he insisted on taking advantage of the folding mechanism, which results in it only resting on one wheel. he couldn't balance it and it kept falling over. finally he got to his stop, but couldn't get his stupid bike hinged back up and ended up missing his stop.

there are countless others, in addition to the standard drunks, stoners, shower-o-phobes, hot and heavy teenage couples, people who don't understand personal space, people who don't understand that other people don't want to hear their loud conversations about their favorite dish at chuck-o-rama, and all the other colors of the rainbow that i see on a daily basis. i'll keep you updated.

I need sleep

okay, so just a disclaimer: for those not in the know, i don't capitalize or use a lot of punctuation, and i don't intend to start now.

so i've decided to start a blog to catalog the adventures (or misadventures) of a non-traditional, mid-thirties premed student, with a wife and four kids. this is something that doesn't happen to most people, and something i actually feel very privileged to be a part of. at 34, soon to be 35, who gets the opportunity to learn biology, and chemistry, and calculus. i used to worry about when my kids would bring home math homework, about not being able to help them. i don't worry about that anymore. instead i worry about being home to help them with it. and that is the hardest part about what i'm doing. i miss my family. i used to be in my underwear, all day, with my kids coming down and bugging me in my office, and hearing them jump from the kitchen counter and having the lights shake in my office as they would crash on to the floor. now, i'm settling for conversations via skype in the morning and at night, on particularly long days.

just for the record, this is my general schedule:

wake up: 5:20am

catch bus: 6:07am

study on bus: 6:07am-7:15am

study at library: 7:30am-9:30am

classes and study: 9:30am-6:45pm (or 9:30am-8:45pm tuesday and wednesday)

catch train and study all the way home: 6:45pm-8:30pm (or 8:45pm-10:30pm T and W)

when i get home, its like a little vacation every night. if the kids are up, i play with them and hear countless stories about all the important things in their days. we read scriptures and say family prayers, and they are off to bed. if they are already asleep, the best i get is a half-conscious "hey dad" and a not great smelling kiss. but i'll take it. then my wife and i get some time together. finally. the late night meals are not ideal, but its all we can do. that is my prized time, just laying on the couch, watching our favorite shows, pausing every five minutes to analyze "survivor" strategy, or for me to tell her some uninteresting story about school, that i can tell is making her eyes glaze over. she's got plenty of those same stories too. sometimes we pretend we're interested, sometimes we don't. we're honest like that. but that's what all this time away gives me: an appreciation of what i have.

so here's what i have: an eight year old minivan, and a '64 chevy impala. we love our cars, and don't need anything more. our '08 gmc yukon xl, is a distant memory (even the black rims). why did we need all that? who knows. we spilled a can of paint in the back of the minivan and didn't even blink an eye. its just a funny, thick, black, messy memory. we live in a basement of my parents second home in highland. somehow we crammed all of our stuff in this tiny space. and it fit. it's our home. and again, why did we ever need anything more. of course, anyone takes a dump, and we all feel it. and we're never far enough away when grandma starts cooking broccoli, but its all part of the experience. brooke, the other day, asked grandma if she could bring her up some dinner, to which she replied, "only if it's healthy and nutritious." sometimes i get flashes of the movie "duplex" in my head with her (you'll have to see the movie), and then she does things like sew up my 40 year old coat that i stole from my dad, and that softens me up again. but she keeps us laughing.

so most of the time i'll just write a quick review of what's been going on in my day, but for now i'm trying to play a little catch up. so quick catch up: last semester was my first semester, and i took biology, chem prep, college algebra and trig. i ended up with a 4.0, including highest in my class in algebra and trig. who knew i'd be good at math. i was really nervous. but school is the easy part. the hard part is all of the extracurricular stuff that you are expected to do as a premed. you need community service, patient care experience, research, leadership, and physician shadowing. so last semester i began working at the ER. its pretty trivial work. i pass out blankets to the patients and take patients to and from scans. but it exposes me to life in the hospital, and it's really interesting. i try to keep busy, so i've invented a lot of things to do there, and have got to peek in on a couple of traumas. it seems like an eternity until i'll actually be doing this kind of stuff. but if i ever get down on myself, a warm blanket is always close by to comfort me. at the end of the semester, i discovered the cancer wellness house, where i'm now doing community service. mostly handyman stuff and organizing. they need it. but i get to kind of be alone with my thoughts and make things better than i found them, so i love it. plus its about a five block walk down through some old homes, so i enjoy the time away from campus. campus is beautiful, by the way, with lots of trees and old buildings.

so this semester, i'm in biology evolution, gen chem I, and calculus. so far things are going well, i got 100 percent on all of my first exams, so i'm well on my way to my next 4.0. if i don't pass out from exhaustion first. yesterday, i went to an interview for a research opportunity at the huntsman cancer institute. my friend dustin referred me to one of his buddies from grad school. he was hesitant at first, about hiring an undergrad, with little to know lab experience. but we started talking and he found out that i had paid attention in my classes, and started to warm up. he told me he was starting some research on MS, which is obviously close to my heart, and when i told him my dad has MS, he got really interested. he wants someone he can train and then set loose to do his own work. thats exactly what i want. i don't want to be someone's lab rat, i want to do my own project, discover things, get published. i felt really good about this meeting, and can't wait to get started. i was talking to myself, laughing, punching the air...all the way to the bus stop. great meeting. of course this means more time out of my schedule. i'm probably going to have to start studying on saturdays now. but this is what i have to do. but i'll be doing that probably 8 to 10 hours a week, with ER 4 hours a week, and cancer wellness house 2 hours a week. i'll probably be a TA next semester which is another 8 hours a week. in addition to that, i'm becoming involved in AED, the premed honors society, and am the new VP of public relations. designing flyers, posters, recruiting, events... lots of extra work, and the student advisor wants me to run for Vice President of the charter at the end of the semester and then be president the next year. its good for the resume, so i'm sure i'll do it. i don't know how i'll fit it all in and still have time to study and be with my family, but as i'm discovering, a way always presents itself.

so anyway, as this blog title suggests, i'm tired. i almost passed out on the bus earlier this week. i don't know what that was, but i'm sure sleep played a factor. brookie and i stayed up too late last night (11:45), so 5:20 came way too soon. but the weekend is upon me. only a couple classes and a few dozen warm blankets stands in the way of me and my family for a two day mini-vacation. can't wait.