Mmmm

Chicken cacciatore, with some extra veggies…this was good.  We may be poor, but we do eat well around here.

Hi Stac!

Then...

This is me and Stacey, my best friend since we were three.  In this photo we’re about twelve, I think, and on a Girl Scout trip to Alaska.  Can you even imagine how many damn cookies we had to sell?  I tell you, it was a lot of cookies.  I remember my parents’ whole basement being full of cases and cases of cookies.

And then below, that’s us, just maybe a month ago, at my mom’s 60th birthday party in Tyngsboro.  Amazing that we grew up to be decent looking people, no?

...and now.

It’s raining

I'm probably fifteen, sixteen here. That's OJ, he was a Maine Coon, and a huge cat.

Well, it’s finally happening, I am in the thick of the application(s).  (I add the (s) because it doesn’t stop with AMCAS; once I finish this I have a bazillion secondary applications to do.)  For each “work/experience” entry you get 1325 characters–that’s about 200 words–and spaces count as a character too–to describe and elaborate.  That’s not much room when you’re talking about, say, five job titles in five years at OPB.  However, the people who will read it have to read an awful lot of them, so I imagine brevity is exactly what they want. I intend to use seven of the fifteen spaces.  I mean, who really has done fifteen important things in their lives, anyway?

Today I got my first letter of recommendation!  That’s exciting.  From Max Apple, my writing teacher at Rice.  They’re all confidential, these letters people write about you, so I just hope the folks I ask say nice things about me.  I mean, that’s the plan, anyway.  Max was my teacher a long time ago, but the idea was that since my degrees are actually and still in English and Art, I should have at least one recommendation that represents that.

On another note, I saw someone this past weekend who I haven’t seen in, what, thirteen years?  And who, if you’d asked me, I would have said I never expected to see again in my life.  This guy here, sitting at my kitchen table, is Brian Deshler, one of my first boyfriends ever.  We were fifteen, I believe.  He found me on Facebook, and was in the area for a conference.  It’s funny, seeing people from high school–it doesn’t happen to me much, as I’ve been out west since college–but when I do see anyone, it always amazes me how little people change.

Fall

Sumikins in the warm tent. Don't ever stick your hand in there, cute as she may be, or you're bound to end up bleeding in short order.

Last night the temperature outside dropped to 37 degrees; there’s no denying it’s fall.  It’s 60 in the house right now, in the early afternoon.  I had to set up the little electric blanket for Sumi, tent-style; she’ll pretty much live in there until next summer rolls around.

Today I am working on finishing my AMCAS application.  (That’s the common app.)  This is something I should have been doing for a long time now, but I got stuck.  I got to a section where they give you 15 spaces to describe activities, awards, jobs, and other relevant experiences–things you want med schools to know you’ve done, and that you think make you a more competitive and interesting candidate, basically.  Me, I read it as, what are the fifteen most important things you’ve done in your life?  I pretty much froze, and it’s taken me a while to get back to it.  On some level I feel like I haven’t done enough, I don’t have enough important stuff to put in those blanks.  A crisis of self-doubt, you know.  Happens every now and then.  And once again, I just need to get on with it.

I went to Massachusetts with such good intentions, about getting work done and whatnot, and in the end I just had a complete time warp, and then coming back and getting knocked down by that cold…I kind of lost all momentum.  However, today I am sucking it up and getting on with things.

Yesterday I went to the gym for the first time since I got back, and they’ve moved all the equipment around and put in new floors.  I don’t see that it’s a better arrangement of space, but I imagine they might have done it because the morons dropping the barbells on the Olympic platform were damaging the building, or so they said.  What I see as the most significant problem in that gym–the distinct demarcation and separation of a “women’s area” near the entrance, where the 2-12 lb. free weights are kept, and a “men’s area” at the back of the gym, with 10 and up lb. free weights, still exists.  Not only does this strange arrangement reinforce the idea that it’s appropriate for women to have only a limited and cursory interest in weightlifting (ie, they should stay near the door–and most do), but it’s also pretty inconvenient for us smaller lifters who need to use weights from both areas.

Scores

All that time here...

Well, my score is in.  It’s allright.  Not what I was hoping for, but allright.  I feel disappointed.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s competitive.  In percentiles, it’s “98.4 – 99.0″, they say.  But it’s at the low end of the range I thought I was in.  I had wanted to do better.

Still sick

This cold has been a doozy.  I had a slightly unnerving evening on Friday when it first got into my lungs and I had the first decent asthma attack I’ve experienced in years.  However, come Saturday morning it broke, and I’ve been fine, breathing-wise, since.  Still feeling generally miserable though.  So far Brian seems to be fending it off without a problem.

I get my MCAT scores in a couple of days.  What’s done is done, but I just want to know already.

Back to reality

Well, I’m back in Eugene. I arrived in Portland late Wednesday night and Brian fetched me from the airport.  I started coming down with a cold the very minute I stepped off the airplane, and currently am fairly snotty and miserable.  Blech.  I have a great deal to do, but am in no shape to do any of it, so I eat soup and complain.  Here are a few photos I took back east.

Mom at Wingaersheek beach in Gloucester. You wouldn’t expect to find a beach like this in Massachusetts–fine white sand, warm water, and gentle surf, a very nice swimming beach.  One thing you might expect though is how crowded it is…

Mom's 60th birthday party.

A toad clinging to the brick face of the house, under the front light. Smart toad, there's tons of moths up there.

Mom's cat Manny, named after Manny Ramirez, of course.

Back to Africa

at the airport...

Well, Bryan got on a plane headed back to Burkina Faso on Friday night.  He is presently moving his belongings from the village where he used to live, Baraboule, to the capital, Ouagadougou, where he will live this year.  From what I understand, this is not a straightforward procedure, Baraboule being essentially the definition of “middle of nowhere.”  Apparently it is approximately rainy-season-time over there, during which the road may be covered with water–Bryan has in the past had to walk his Peace Corps issued bike through neck deep water while following said “road” home.  Oh, and there are crocodiles.  However, he has managed thus far…

Saturday I helped move Ari into her new dorm room, then drove to Lake Winnapisaukee to visit Stacey.  She has a little camp up there with a 28 foot trailer, upon which has been added another room about the size of the original trailer and a big front porch overlooking the lake.  It’s very cute, it has running water and electricity and even a little shower.  I saw pretty much her whole family too, which was nice, since I spent about half my childhood at her house–the other half she spent at my house.  Today is Labor Day, and my Dad and I are going to the beach I think.