No more stupid flu

And on a related note, I'm so in love with sudafed and Mexican sweet chili tea that it elates me. Pretty much, I spent Friday aching, sleeping, lying in front of the tv, and feeling sorry for myself. Saturday, since our porch is inexplicably leaking onto the falafel place, I got to watch them send people up through our apartment for like three hours, but then felt okay health-wise. Sniffly, but nothing my friends sudafed and tea couldn't handle!

I found a B&N in Park Slope and was able to reserve two of the Blueprints books at it, and when I went over, found the other ones, so now I have the complete series for the cores, plus the Pharmacopoeia. Okay, the latter is 15 dollars, and the thing is the size of a fast food calorie guide. I know it's absolutely wonderful and essential and all that good stuff, but come freaking on. I thought these things were a drug company handout. Are they destroying *all* the perks?

So that venture was hideously expensive, but wound up with me finally getting the B&N membership because it made things cheaper. When I got back, I signed up for the full year USMLEWorld for the step 2 CK, because I figured it would help focus my direction of study for the cores and make sure I know the questions in and out, especially with drugs, where I'm weak.

This all resulted in me spending on study supplies nearly what I spend for a month's rent. So I bought myself a pair of Italian sandals because... I mean, come on. And they were on sale. The books were not.

Ended up heading over to the East Village with Lori for good and pricey Mexican food complete with homemade cheese, followed by live jazz at a place a few doors down.

New Yorkers don't seem to really care how other people dress, which is awesome for me since I have no fashion sense and no money (though I'm waking up latent shopping instincts I've never seen except when I shop for scuba gear), but I discovered the benefit to dressing in those cute little cocktail dresses every woman in the city has rather than the jeans I was kicking it in... people think you work at the restaurants. I got asked when I was walking back to the bathroom and was just "Uhh... no, just passing through."

Which, since NYC is expensive, might be helpful in picking up tips. Also, since a lot of these places charge 7 bucks for a Brooklyn lager, which I can get in 6 pack form at TJs for 8 bucks, I stand to make 34 dollars worth of profit sans tip. Hmmm...

Eh, prolly illegal.

Park Slope has some great brunch deals (like 4 dollar all you can drink sangria, which is a *great* idea), so did that with a big group this morning, followed by climbing up someone's fire escape to a HUGE roof space connecting all the apartments. Cue Dick van Dyke impressions.

Tomorrow, back to the hospital to present my SOAP notes and hope clinical skills has prepared me well. Problem is, the SOAP notes we did for physiology were pretty different, plus relied on a medical history (not psych) that was written up, not gained from an interview. The write ups we did for clinical skills were ridiculously long and involved questions that annoyed the doctors and made a patient interview take 45 minutes on a simple and focused procedure.

We'll see how it goes.