All Done + a Meme

With Mod 2. The Honors part anyway. All we have left this semester is Infectious Disease, which is Pass/Fail and Intro to Differential Diagnosis (also Pass/Fail). And then on the 14th I'll be done for the semester!!!

I feel surprisingly refreshed after this exam, which is sort of unusual for me. Usually I feel like I want to go to sleep, but I can never ACTUALLY GO to sleep. So I'll lie on my couch for hours watching crappy TV, and then will have to start class for the next block the following morning. And I'll never really feel up to it.

This time it's different.

This time, I don't even feel like I took an exam this morning.

Thank you Renal, for putting things into perspective for me. If only I could have approached the whole last year in such a relaxed fashion. For the rest of the day I'd like to work on the minor changes they're asking for on another paper of mine that just got accepted (BOO-YAH!!) first try with no revise and re-submit even. _{Now all I have to do is learn how to come up with projects myself, and figure out what I want to do research on for my PhD Eek!.}

And then I'm going out to dinner. Maybe if I'm really efficient, I'll get a workout in, but frankly it's looking dubious at this point.

And now on to the real business of this post. The seven weird things about me that I was tagged with by Amy. Now let's see....

1. I was named after my mother's parakeet (who was actually a boy parakeet). When I was born, my grandmother said to my mother (imagine this in a heavy southern accent), "Well shit. She's gone and named that poor baby after that damned bird!" When I have kids -- if they are girls -- they will therefore have to be named: Megan, Elizabeth, Abigail, Penelope, Polly, or Lucy. I was wise enough not to name my pets "Fluffy" or anything silly like that.

2. I majored in Sociology in college because I was afraid of Math -- and I wasn't even getting bad grades! The biggest mistake I made was dropping calculus as early as possible. Fortunately, the mistake has been rectified, since Epidemiology is pretty darn mathy if I do say so.

3. When I was 4, I played "Ornithologist" with my friends. This entailed making them sit on a stack of pillows until they "hatched" an egg. Don't ask me how I determined when this had happened, I really don't remember. I also don't remember how I learned what an Ornithologist was.

4. I cannot stand cucumbers. Or orange juice with pulp (different reason though.....)

5. My first (and second favorite) job ever was working on the assembly line at Becton Dickinson packaging test tubes. I still recognize the Falcon tubes we packaged every time I set foot in a lab.

6. Back when I was in school in NYC, we used to walk to the Asphalt Green for gym class. On the way past the park we would often see used condoms rolled up on the sidewalk. We used to ask our gym teacher what they were just to antagonize her.

7. When I was in college I studied Italian and H.A.T.E.D. it. I took it because we were required to take a foreign language, and it was the only romance language that only required 3 quarters rather than 4. I also didn't like Italy when I visited it after college, probably because I was sick during the week I was in Rome, and afterwards had a falling out with my traveling companions. Then I went around by myself for a few days -- with a pack of Italian men salivating in my wake. (I am assured that this occurred because I was in the SOUTH -- Rome -- , and that this would never have happened in Verona, which is in the NORTHEAST.)

The fact that I am married to an Italian man remains one of the greatest ironies of my life. In fact when I first met Luca, I announced that I had studied Italian in college, but that the only word I could remember was "cazzo*." Fortunately, Luca found this highly amusing.

*"Cazzo" is a slang word meaning "penis." It is used the same way that we use "fuck" in English. No, I didn't think you'd be surprised at this coming from me.

Now who to tag...
How about Doctor Scientist, Trix, Pants, Gabbiana, Ben, BECK, and Doctor's Girlfriend.

I tried to tag ONLY those people whom I couldn't remember has having done this meme before, so I apologize if you already have. And you know the rules -- 7 weird things about yourself, and then you must tag 7 new people, blah blah blah. Don't worry, I won't check up on you!