The Next Week and 2 Days

This next week holds so much excitement! This weekend is my bachelorette party and ALL of my bridesmaids and many great friends are making the trip to Nashville. Our personal party planner Kori has a fun-filled weekend in order, and I can't wait to see what she has up her sleeve. I've been mentally preparing myself for the past month...


Match day is next week! Eek! Its getting close. Next Thursday is the day George and I will find out where we'll be for the next 4 years.

As you would imagine, I can hardly contain myself! Woohoo!

Now, I just have to get through the week of working nights in the ER....

So far in the ER, I've sutured multiple wounds on a hand after a chainsaw accident, stapled a laceration on a head, and seen an open joint fracture of the big toe and tib-fib fracture just to name a few. I'll keep you updated.

Southern Winters

What a beautiful day today! Clear skies, cool breeze, mid 70s = absolutely perfect February day. With the possibility of this being our last Southern winter for several years, George and I keep pausing to remind ourselves that the "winter" weather in the South is one of the perks of living here. However, southern summers are excruciatingly hot. There are pros and cons to living in different areas of the country; these have been the topics of our conversations recently. We submitted our rank list for residency this past Wednesday! Now its up to God and fate. We know we will be happy wherever we end up since we'll be together.

Back to the beautiful day. George, Hudson, and I were so excited to get to go and visit George's best buddy Chase (who I'm sure will be making many many appearances on this blog) out on his farm. As soon as we got there, the men headed off on four wheelers with guns to shoot things. Hudson and I stayed behind at the cabin to take in the nice day. When they returned, George set off to catch a trout. Where there is water, you will find George with a fishing pole. Hudson was a maniac. He went totally nuts over his reflection in the pond/George's fishing pole. I mean he went totally berserk; I've never seen anything like it. Well after about an hour of catching little bass and brim, George hooked a huge trout. As we were packing up to leave, we saw 6 wild turkeys and 2 deer, a momma and her baby. Successful day.

I have many more great pictures but I'll have to upload them in another post because I'm having trouble getting my photos to load, sorry!

Snow!

Yesterday, we woke to a white winter wonderland. The neighborhood was covered in a good ~2 inches of snow. Since my schedule is pretty relaxed, in comparison to other months, I decided to take the opportunity to let Hudson frolick in the front yard while I played with my new camera (Nikon D3100). Here are a few pics from the morning.

TGIF! Have a great weekend!

Finally finished with interviews!!

I am happy to report that I have finished my residency interview trail! Luckily, Mother Nature was on my side throughout, and I never had any planes cancelled or delayed. However, I did unfortunately get an AWFUL stomach bug during the last week of my interviews which forced me to miss my flight and subsequent interview for preliminary year in Houston. Luckily, I was able to reschedule the interview, and my tickets were on Southwest, so I rescheduled for free. I love love LOVE Southwest! Another tool I have learned to love is Priceline. Amazing! I wish I had started using it earlier. I saved sooo much money using it, and now I'm slightly addicted . Since I know many of you are curious as to where exactly I interviewed, I have made a comprehensive list of all the dermatology programs in alphabetical order below:

Alabama (Birmingham) - UAB

Florida (Tampa) - University of South Florida

Illinois (Chicago) - University of Illinois in Chicago

Iowa (Iowa City) - University of Iowa

Louisiana (New Orleans) - LSU

Michigan (Ann Arbor) - University of Michigan

North Carolina (Durham) - Duke

Ohio (Cleveland) - Cleveland Clinic

Texas (Houston) - University of Texas in Houston

Texas (San Antonio) - University of Texas Health and Science Center

Virginia (Charlottesville) - UVA

adapted from http://mapoftheunitedstates.wordpress.com

Between these derm interviews and interviews for my intern year, I did a total of 24 interviews!! Wow, good thing I didn't add it up until now. I honestly liked every one of the programs and will be happy wherever we end up. George and I will be finalizing our rank list this month. We submit our final list on February 23rd. We find out where we will be for the next 4 years on March 17, which is less than 2 months away, so exciting!

Now that I have my interviews behind me, I can focus on other important things in my life like my wedding. Whoop whoop. Yesterday, I sent emails to pretty much everyone - preacher, florist, cake lady, organist, wedding coordinator, etc - to touch base about what we need to be doing to get everything ready. Also, I submitted our official list to the calligapher yesterday. The list was the biggest pain thus far. Getting everyones names exactly right in a word file was super tedious. Speaking of, I never heard back from the calligraphers, so I'll have to check on that one. Last weekend, we went to the Pointe Ball in support of the Alabama Ballet with some great friends, and none other than the Malemen Band was playing that night. That's our band for the wedding! We had never heard them in person and were excited to get the chance. I think they will be tons of fun!

Next week, I take my Step II Clinical Skills exam in Atlanta. This test is ridiculous. My understanding is that it was originally intended to ensure that you spoke English well enough to see patients. Its a 8 hour test where you see 12 standardized (fake) patients who act out there sickness. I'll be required to interview and exam them and then come up with a treatment plan. I am not looking forward to it. However, I am looking forward to spending 3 nights with my good friend Steph and catching up with Little Sarah along the way!

Happy early birthday to Kori and Kat!
After my quarter life crisis, 26 isn't as scary as I had imagined.