eidolon

[Tuesday, February 15, 2005]

Family Relations.

My mother is mad at me. Last night, she asked me whether I got her voicemail. I actually hadn't, but then I reminded her that she wasn't supposed to call me at work unless it was an emergency.

"Honey, I just called to tell you that I ran into the doctor on the admissions committee at Jefferson."
"Mom, that's not an emergency! That could've waited until I got home."
"It was an exception honey. I don't always do this."

When I pointed out that last time she called me at work, it was to tell me she was at a shoe sale at Lord and Taylor's and did I want a pair of polka-dot pumps in size 8?, I was told that I had an attitude. I'm also ungrateful towards people who have nothing but good intentions for me, and so discouraging towards people who want to help me, especially people who carried me for nine months inside their own body and were paralyzed for a few weeks because of me. She spent the rest of the night closed in her bedroom and I was beset by guilt. I hate the pregnancy card.

I was supposed to cook dinner for the two of us tonight. Seafood jambalaya! I got the ingredients from Trader Joe's yesterday, before the fight happened. I was informed frostily last night that I needn't bother making dinner, because she was going to eat out by herself tonight. I shrugged. I was halfway through cooking the meal just for me, when my dad called to tell me what I should be doing (because whatever I'm currently doing is never what I should be doing). Then he told me I was cooking my shrimp all wrong. According to him, there are only two ways to cook shrimp - steam them, or bread them and fry them. I'm cooking them in a stew. I pointed out that there might be more than just two ways to cook shrimp. But my dad re-asserted that I'm doing it all wrong.

I decided not to mention that I forgot to defrost the bag of seafood before I put it in the pan, so my shrimp defrosted on the stove amid bubbling jambalaya. I also didn't mention that I forgot to make the rice, so my stew is now cooling on the stove while I wait for the rice to cook. When shrimp turns from grey to pink, that means its done, right? Maybe it's good that I'm only cooking for one tonight.

Posted by ink | 6:07 PM

[Monday, February 14, 2005]

Snowboard Bums.

I bought a pair of size 8 Burton Boots off of Craig's List last week for $40. Of course, they're also bright paddy green. In an effort to make this "last season" a good one (I told myself if I didn't improve by the end of this winter, I'd give it up for good), I also bought myself a buttpad. Last time I went over Christmas, I landed so hard my back arched up in reflex and I had to lie there whimpering for a few minutes. I had a wonderful map-of-the-world shaped bruise on my right buttock to show for it. That marked the beginning of my downfall as my confidence was shot. But with this buttpad hopefully... I'll be better. I know it goes under your snow pants, but despite that - I don't understand why they had to make it so hideously... zebra-striped. Yellow and black zebra-striped. Unnecessary. A plain yellow would've been sufficient. Or just black. Or even blue or grey.

Homer-the-Manager: "Or flesh colored."
Ink: "Exactly."
Homer-the-Manager: "With hair on it. So it's all hairy. Like a plumber's butt."

Posted by ink | 11:18 AM

[Wednesday, February 09, 2005]

Louque.

I'm listening to music I haven't listened to since the summer in Cambridge. I forgot how much I love this album. It's got a smooth groove to it, with a good mellow beat. And it reminds me of last year's lazy summer days spent between Cambridge and Boston. It reminds me of the sun on my skin, little tank tops and skirts, flowy summer dresses, and the hot stickiness of my book bag against my back as I toted around my laptop and my MCAT books. It reminds me of flipflops and grass, my summer sublet in Central Square with its wonderful dark wood floors, and that beautiful tree that would keep watch over me outside the window. It reminds me of the sun pouring through the leaves, creating shifting patterns of light on my bedroom floor in the late afternoon. It reminds me of wireless network squatting in the late night hours when I'd curse at my fickle signal while I scratched at my neck, hot and damp from an East Coast summer. Afternoons spent at the corner coffeeshop with an iced coffee that sweat sympathetically alongside me. It would leave a ring on the table, and when I left, I would leave nothing but a warm chair, the slight imprint of my bottom, and a vague memory in the air of the time I spent there. The bakery where I'd gorge myself with sweets while I gorged my brain with Physics facts. The beautiful Boston Public Library which I would wander during study breaks, pretending I was at Hogwarts.

That warm, hot, lazy summer, overlaid with a sheen of frenetic MCAT studying. At the time, I had considered it a summer sacrificed to the almighty medical school gods. But now - I realize that even summers in which you do nothing are filled with that same magic. Perhaps even more so filled as there weren't busy activities to push away the leisure and enchantment of a summer evening.

Posted by ink | 11:37 AM

Backlash.

Sometimes, the more I talk to my ex, the more incredulous I am that I ever dated him. We don't talk very often, so we caught up on things. I mentioned that I wanted to practice medicine in developing countries, and my statement was met with an incredulous "WHY? You'd work for beans? Go for the porsche, the beach house, the power." My jaw dropped. We then proceeded to wrestle about money and why money was or wasn't important. "Why would you do that, if you can just pay a doctor to practice in a developing country FOR you? You could create an army of doctors!"

This then devolved to talk about our social lives. "Why do you want to talk to a guy who actually has something to say? Most guys our age don't have anything to say anyways. You're young. Have fun." I've been doing the party hearty thing for the past 4 years, the scene is getting tired. "Lighten up," was the response.

Being dumped by him was a favor from God.

Posted by ink | 1:05 AM

[Tuesday, February 08, 2005]

Freelance.

The place I work right now is funny. Last time I worked here, I was a programmer. I wrote programs for them, making sense of their huge data files, dumped it into databases, and was quite happy. This time, they want me to do data analysis. Instead of just creating output files, they want me to look at them and decide what they mean. What this translates to is a lot of excel and MS Access, some statistical analysis packages, and God knows what else. As much as I would've leaped on this opportunity a few years ago, these days, all I want to do is sit in the corner with my music and write programs. I've done enough thinking for the past year in school. What my brain needs right now is a long cool soak between the black and white lines of code. It will steam much like an overworked car when it immerses itself into linux and the accompanying weezer (my preferred coding music). In fact, there are other places that will pay me a lot more than what I'm getting here, just so I can sit in a corner and program.

I forgot how much I liked perl until I got to touch it again today. My manager Homer is too overrun with projects, so my boss Red Queen pulled me off the data analysis to help Homer out. The bliss of having well-defined assignments and concrete beginnings and ends... I wonder whether I can write perl on-the-side when I'm in med school in Boston. Offer my services to any companies who need text files parsed or otherwise chopped up and dumped into a database through a script. Make a little bit of extra money. Perhaps I'll put up an ad on Craig's List when I arrive in Boston.

"Perl programmer for hire."

Homer: "You'll have lots of competition you know. Especially in a place like Boston, full of students."
"Fine. Asian female Perl programmer for hire."
"You'll get all these geeks handing you tiny textfiles just so they can talk to you."
"It's okay. As long as they give me my 50 bucks per script. And for an extra fee, they can watch me program."
"Oh my God. It'll be like geek porn. You'll get hired for their bachelor parties. Wear a little school girl outfit and write code on a computer. They'll be like Dude. Did you see that line she just wrote? That was awesome and wipe the sweat off their foreheads. Some might even faint! Then you can jump in with your medical training and revive them. They might even like that!"
"..."

Posted by ink | 10:14 AM

[Monday, February 07, 2005]

Super Bowl.

Last year's Super Bowl was slammed for revealing a breast for a split second, a body part that most children have not only seen in their younger years, but most likely also touched and suckled. This year's Super Bowl has commercials for Cialis, "recommended for erectile dysfunction", and also "only for men healthy enough to endure sexual activity". And yet no one complains.

"Mommy. What's erectile dysfunction?"

The Anheuser-Busch commercial, on the other hand, brought tears to my eyes. For those who missed it, it opens up with a typical airport scene. People waiting in chairs, individuals reading newsppapers, buying drinks. Then you hear one clap. Then more clapping. People turn around to see what's going on, and start to stand up and clap themselves. Camera cuts to soldiers coming off a plane and walking through the airport. People line the walkway as they applaud. Commercial ends with the words "Thank you" in white, against a black background. Nowhere in the commercial was a bottle of beer seen. I thought it was very classy of them.

Close to my heart were the careerbuilder.com commercials. Many a time, I've felt like I was working with monkeys myself. My favorite was when the monkey xeroxed his butt.

Posted by ink | 9:04 AM

[Sunday, February 06, 2005]

Brother(3:33:47 PM): hey jeh
Brother (3:33:51 PM): i got tweezers
Brother (3:33:58 PM): i forget how to use em
Brother (3:34:04 PM): you get in as close as possible right?
Ink (3:46:49 PM): oh jeez
Ink (3:46:52 PM): what are you using these tweezers for
Brother (3:47:54 PM): my nipple hair!
Ink(3:48:22 PM): it grew back?!
Ink (3:48:46 PM): did it make babies? is there more than one now?
Brother (3:48:44 PM): i never plucked it out
Ink (3:48:58 PM): i know you didn't. -i- plucked it out for you last time. because you were too much of a weenie to do it yourself.
Brother (3:51:41 PM): can you tell me how?
Ink (3:51:57 PM): yes. do you have a good pair of tweezers?
Brother (3:52:06 PM): i think so
Ink (3:52:07 PM): a cheap pair won't get a good grip
Brother (3:52:15 PM): they cost $2
Ink (3:52:19 PM): erm. are they metal or plastic?
Brother (3:52:26 PM): metal
Ink (3:52:31 PM): well. i guess it'll be okay. grab at the base of the hair. do it real fast. Hopefully it won't hurt anymore than a purple nurple.

Posted by ink | 3:48 PM

[Saturday, February 05, 2005]

Projects.

With all my free time, I am going to do the following things:

1. Learn Italian
2. Look into drawing classes
3. Learn Flash/Dreamweaver
4. Practice guitar
5. Read
6. Decide where to travel this summer
7. Save money so I can do #6.

Posted by ink | 9:08 PM

[Friday, February 04, 2005]

Aunt Flo.

My nether regions and I usually have an odd relationship, as I generally find her to be quite a nuisance. She gets grumpy once a month and makes me cry (at Kodak and long distance commercials, as well as cramping pain), but then I medicate her with Midol and life goes on. But when all is not well with her - I become extremely concerned.

I went through the usual list of culprits with Meels, my med-school-bound female friend, and received a whole education on all the ways girls can get sick. I never knew how unusual it was for me to have never experienced any of the more common infections. Whereas on one hand, I was relieved (since some of them sounded particularly awful), on the other hand - I felt like I was left out of some club that all women were a part of, by virtue of having one of a gamut of common problems (a large number of my friends have had UTI's in particular). None of the symptoms seemed to fit me though, which was worrying. What if I had some rare disease that would leave me sterile? Though the thought of having children terrified me, the thought of never being able to have children terrified me even more. Of course, the inevitable possibility of STD's crossed my mind. Bald Eagle could very well be diseased. I thought of all those herpes commercials and how I might become one of those women. I prayed for chlamydia, which is at least curable.

What was truly disappointing was my inability to even say the word "vagina" when I called to make my worrisome doctor's appointment. I had this inexplicable urge to shorten it to "vaj", as if she and I were close pals. I forced myself to explain my situation in as scientific a way as possible, in order to practice for when I'm a doctor myself. Still, I could feel my ears burning the entire time. Embarassing.

All that trouble turned out to be over a pair of new underwear I wore a few days ago. Standard allergic skin reaction, just in a particularly inconvenient area. The doctor put me on medication, and sent me on my way. She was kind enough to write "for treatment of allergies of the trunk" on my prescription to spare me the potentially humiliating scene at the drugstore. I'm still convinced all those pharmacy boys laugh in the back room at the prescriptions they hand out to patients ("Dude, whenever I hand out a prescription for Viagra, all I can think of is 'That guy's pee pee is sad!'").

I filled out my prescription at Walgreens (the best drugstore in the country in my opinion. All your info is stored in a central database so you can get your prescription refilled at any Walgreens in the country) and took my medication. The doctor recommended that I make a date with a frozen bag of peas for the weekend. Despite the inconvenience, I'm relieved. I'm herpes-free! And in about a week, all should be well again. Ah, modern medicine.

Death to pretty polyester underwear from Victoria's Secret! So much for being adventurous. I'm a cotton-girl all the way from here on.

Posted by ink | 10:58 PM