the girls  ¶ 22:55

The Library
Once upon a time there lived a librarian with great dreams of a new society. He lived in an evil kingdom full of monotonous drones that worked day and night protecting the kingdom's greatest treasure, its beautiful books. Everything in this society worked in perfect order- all its divisions in frightening mechanical precision and symmetry. The books were all kept in cold austere buildings and heavily guarded. No books ever left these libraries, they could only be replicated. This lonely artist, this bohemian, dreamed of making great changes. Some called his dreams for revolution anarchy, but he called it freedom. He wanted a society where books could be fully enjoyed and used and where they could be displayed in all their glory in beautiful libraries open to all with no restrictions or silly security checks. He had gathered a few fellow "free spirits" to join in his quest, but their plans were severely restricted by the Spartan-like Police 53 units that scrutinized all the libraries- shutting down or worse, destroying libraries not conforming with the kingdom's standards. Despite these odds, our bohemian persevered and one day he had his chance. while the Police units were occupied with another portion of the library he quickly switched two books on the shelf. Noone seemed to notice. WIth glee he quickly switched two more books around, and while doing so inadvertantly triggered a cascade of events that flooded his libary with replication drones. the librarian froze in panic fearing that he was caught, but the drones simply ignored him so one-minded were they in their task. Quickly and efficiently they gathered and copied all the books in his library, in their EXACT order, and hauled them over to a new library built in the kingdom. As they departed the librarian stood stunned. He'd done it! He was free his people were free, they would have a new library, a different library and that library would be copied to other places in the kingdom forming a whole new society. "La vie longue la révolution!"

Today the revolution continues and its followers more numerous than ever. I hear the kingdom has become a military state and has hired outside help- mercenaries with strange weapons of mass destruction and bioterrorism. Despite the radiation and methotrexate, the revolutionaries fight on...to be continued

Author's note: In case your wondering where in the world this strange little bit of science fiction arose from, I thought i"d add some commentary. THis whole thing stemmed from my first attempts to study for the USMLE. Who knew that licensing exams could stir this out of me? hehe it all began with a little comment made by a lecturer on one of my boards CDs...just think of cells as libraries and their books as DNA...that's all it took. So, this is my "revisionist perspective" of cancer ;) we gotta see the other side of the story sometimes. I apologize for the holes in the trnasition from cancer to libraries to all those who are scrutinizing my story in great detail. Ciao. ¶ 18:01

SItting at my desk post-exam once again. I'm back from my 5 day conference in Washington DC and completely exhausted from the frantic studying of the last 48 hrs before this exam. i'm just glad it's done. Now my life moves on. As usual i left my conference with a renewed sense of purpose in medicine. Although I have to say that the highlight of my conference was meeting Linda Costanzo, author of the physiology book that's taken me through my first 1.5 yrs of medical school. SHe autographed my physio book (I know, I know, GEEK!!) and gave me some sound boards advice. :) I'm planning my AIDS week of action, and met a fantastic physician who works in pediatric infectious disease here in cleveland. My research is going well..plodding along as database projects usually do, I've formulated and am DETERMINED to follow through with my crazy USMLE schedule in the next 3 months left til the big day, I'm still working on my Spanish,I WILL get through the mountain of paperwork that has since piled up on my desk, and I will make it to all the social events i have on my calendar. I guess I am once again on the upswing of my manic med student cycle. We'll see how fast it takes me to get back round that circle. will post my conference pics soon, but in the mean time here's a photo of this nation's capitol.

Capitol Bldg  ¶ 11:59

DC is here and I had some old friends and some new ones come over to learn how to make sushi from an amateur :P Hope they got their time's worth. Here are some of our results though...all in all a great evening. We made sushi, listened to Arab, indian, japanese, and caribbean music. Everyone took a turn center stage to dance...hopefully i'll have the videos of these daring folk dancing up on my site soon...heehehe...I'm going to miss this. I just realized that all except 1 of the people at my house tonight would be leaving Cleveland soon. *sigh* oh well...guess i should enjoy it while i can. Just click on the photo for more pics...


Sushi Night!  ¶ 10:39

Pics from Brazilian Carnaval. 
Guess I'm tired of text these days. Here are more photos :) THese are from the Brazilian carnaval a few weeks ago. Someone from the community posted them so i thought i'd share. Click Here ¶ 14:17

Photo Slideshow from Texas...Finally got it loaded up :)
Click Here ¶ 14:43

At Sultan in San Antonio. Old habits die hard....;)  ¶ 17:12

Sarah and Abi at the Riverwalk. San Antonio, Tx  ¶ 13:13