Yummy

Mmm... inexplicable midnight BBQ. Again.

Yup, ate chicken... what's the type of vegetarian that eats anything except beef? Not a vegetarian? A carnivore with a bad experience? Gotcha.

Though actually, largely due to cost and my laziness in bussing to the store, I've been running really low on the meat, chicken, fish, or otherwise. I'm mad into the peanut butter though. Ulp, talking about food again. It seems a relevant topic since that's what sucks up the remainder of your loan check when you live on campus. Well, that and rum, for my alcoholic compatriots.

So what's up? The FIRST UNIFIED QUIZ is up; that's what. Monday, to be specific.

I felt unwoefully prepared for it up until a brief study session with Joie and now I feel woefully unprepared. Dehydroga-whatnow? Damn biochem. At least I'm getting the big picture. Now, if only they'd test me on the big picture instead of the middling minutia.

Also, one particular professor has decided to delve completely into trying to screw us. The guy speaks softly, so I was having trouble understanding him, and I had no idea what he was talking about despite reading ahead, thus I headed home for the LippIncott Bible. Apparently, I wasn't alone.

So now, this guy's taken to adding stuff into his lectures as "fair game", which isn't in his lecture notes to try to force people to attend. Even better, he often says things IN lecture like "don't bother scribbling this down; I'm putting it on Angel later" and then lo and behold, it's not on Angel, so even if you DO make it to lecture, you're screwed. No questions during lecture either, so if you didn't hear one of those super secret extra points (because if you don't like my non-mandatory lectures, you're a scumbag and I'm going to contribute to you failing the USMLEs), you can't ask him to repeat it, even if, like in today's case (before I left), your question is due to an error in the lecture notes wherein the words "increased volume in blood" have replaced "increased volume in urine" which is quite a damn difference. Sigh. Stop changing lecturers! Leave Paparo as Histo guru, since I do *not* need to hear about the ever present 7th grade wonders of mitosis, and leave Trotz in charge of biochem, or, if you're nice, give us Saeed back. Either that, or take a lesson from Anatomy and change out people who are equally talented at not only knowing their stuff, and this is critical, but at CONVEYING THAT INFORMATION TO OTHER HUMANS. Other-histo guy thought we were too dumb. Current biochem guy... I think... hates us... or life... or both. Previous biochem guy thought we were way too smart. Where's the porridge that's just right??

Fortunately our current anatomy prof is absolutely awesome, and the previous profs were good, so histo and biochem, take notice. Embryo, you've been taught by one dude since the beginning, and though I was not down with the first lecture, we're on fine terms now, so stay the course.

Oh, Anna Nicole's dead. I just thought I'd mention that to emphasize the increasing disconnect I feel with American news so that it only occasionally catches me by flashing an interesting enough headline when I'm checking my mail. It's odd to think that due to a rather key lack of television, a complete devotion to studying, and other factors, major news events (Poor Ms. Smith not withstanding) can completely pass me by. I don't know anything about any of the movies that are out either.

I do know Grenadian news!!! China has been building Grenada a giant, disproportionate, out of place looking (but awesome) cricket stadium. This, naturally, has been quite expensive and time consuming. The Chinese were doing the official handoff to the Grenadians in a huge ceremony, which Grenada celebrated by playing.... the Taiwanese national anthem. D'oh!! Well, if you're going to pick the wrong anthem, by all means, make it an enemy. So, the prime minister had to go on live and apologize deeply and pledge an investigation into how Valerie Plame's name was leake... er... how the band could have practiced the wrong anthem and had *no one notice*.

I found this out at the dive shop on Wednesday, otherwise known as Grenada's Independence Day. They wished me a happy Independence Day at which point I was thinking "It's great that Grenada and America have in common our independence from... well... you people..." But best not to smart off at the people that control your air supply, plus they're incredibly awesome and I'm an anglophile. But they had fireworks! (the country; not the dive shop).

Speaking of media, two noteworthy aspects. First of all, House apparently comes on at Glover's at 11 PM on Tuesday nights because the Fox feed, unlike the CBS feed, is from Colorado rather than New York. What on earth cable service do they use? Patch Networks? So I got to watch House!!!

I also got to discover why, until now, I had never seen a full episode of American Idol. Gods. I got there at 10 and we left it on to make sure we secured the television, and whew! Insipid anyone? This brings me to the second noteworthy aspect. Glovers has two televisions, one of which is a sweet-ass plasma (I think) and the other is a hospital-style mounted television that you have to balance on a bar stool to get to. Guess which one we had?

The good tv was occupied by a group mostly of riveted men watching Scarface, a movie I am *extremely* embarrassed to have never seen. Well, now I've seen the last hour of it because to distract myself from American Idol, I'd turned around in my chair to ponder why Al Pacino's half naked sister seemed to be coming onto him... Ewww... I hope it had something to do with the mountains of cocaine. I have GOT to see the rest of that movie!

The interesting thing about Scarface is not only its apparent attraction to men (and bloodlusting females such as myself) everywhere, but how transcendent the movie is. There were guys of ALL cultures watching that movie, yet, right towards the end, as Pacino whips out the enormous gun, EVERY man (and the women, myself included since I knew *that* part, who weren't engrossed in Ryan Seacrest) in the place said, yelled, or mouthed "Say 'Hello' to my little friend!!!!" Booyah.

What was also weird is that Scarface drew most of the men working at the bar and American Idol took a good portion of the women, thus giving an extremely screwed up vision of America (or perhaps not) which probably is a large contributing factor (or at least pre-current political climate) to why the entire world thinks we're completely bugfuck. I dunno; maybe we are. Say Hello! To your NEXT AMERICAN IDOL! Aiiieeeee!!!! Rat a tat *boom*. Or something.

But House was good. Hooray for House. Lots of Hugh Laurie bicep porn. Always a good thing.

Back to Wednesday, because it's late and I'm disjointed, if you couldn't tell by the 'cuda picture, instead of responsibly studying over the holiday, I went diving!! I'll probably upload some more pictures at a time when I'm not being lazy (good luck).

First dive was Purple Rain, which was nice, but a little dark due to a cloudy day. It's been raining a LOT lately, but the vis was still nicer than anything I'm used to. There weren't any eels or other large, unique critters out because I had my camera and that's the way it works.

Second dive was the reef leading up to the Veronica L and the Veronica L herself. I do so love that wreck, though Fang started showing a bit too much interest in me after I hit him with the strobe a few times, so I bravely hid in the wreck. Heh heh. But tons of parrotfish, wrasse, and other brightly colored fish that I can't identify yet. Tons of squirrelfish. To my Monterey dive buddies, squirrelfish seem to be the "rockfish" of the Caribbean in that they're everywhere and like to get in the way of pictures of other things.

So, to bed to bed! I have two days of hardcore studying and then half a day of crying and wishing I'd studied Wednesday instead of diving.