Monday, October 10, 2005
Mood: Disturbingly mellow, considering the fact that I've got 2 exams and 2 papers this week
Music: Coldplay - Fix You

Ah, the woes of being in a (relatively) small graduate program. So my entire graduating class consists of 127 people. This is pretty freakin' small when you compare it to the thousands that I would've graduated with at an undergrad program at UT, or even my 600+ graduating class in high school. In addition to having a small graduating class, all of us have the same classes, and all at the same time. So eventually, everyone's going to know each other, and even if we don't REALLY know each other, at the very least we'll know each other by name.

This presents a problem when it comes to bathroom usage.

It's already embarrassing enough to take a number 2 in public. But when everyone knows each other? That embarrassment is magnified by the hundreds. Because you're no longer "The Anonymous Crapper."

The usual situation with taking a dump in public is that if you walk out of a stall and someone suspects you to be the culprit, they think "Oh my, it appears that this nameless girl has produced a vile stench in here", and you'll never see that person again. But in pharmacy school, that anonymous calling becomes "Holy crap, CINDY totally dropped a bomb in here."

Therefore, us pharmacy students are forced to go into exile when nature calls us (ie. outside of the pharmacy building), or we wait until the pharmacy building is completely empty, and hope that there's no chance in hell that another pharmacy student will walk in on your much-needed solitude.

Kind of a pointless entry, but I guess all I'm trying to say is that although I'll be going into a great profession in the future, in exchange I can't take a crap in peace for the next four years. :P

Cindy blabbed at 09:26 a.m. |

Thursday, October 6, 2005
Mood: Exhausted
Music: Aqualung - Easier to Lie

For those of you who were wondering, I had my phone situation resolved. The bastard still managed to run off with my phone, but I disabled my service, bought a new SIM card, and one of my pharmacy school buddies was kind enough to give me his old cell phone. Parth, if you read this blog at all, I owe you big time buddy.

Anyway...."Bitch, you did NOT" comment of the day:
I was at an American Pharmacists Association meeting yesterday, and the speaker was telling us about a real conversation between a medical student and a pharmacy student. The pharmacy student was telling the med student about her concerns with a certain medication given to a patient, because she felt that it wasn't the appropriate drug to be administered. The med student looks at the pharmacy student and says "You get paid to count, not to think". BWHAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!? If there's one thing I've learned in pharmacy school so far, it's that pharmacists do SO much more than just count pills. Pharmacists of the world, you guys had better represent and show the world what we're made of, haha.

Bleh...anyway, since I can't think of anything else to write, I've decided to join the bandwagon and write 10 random things about myself:

1. Even though I've lived in Texas for 10 years now, I still don't use the word "y'all"
2. I peel my bananas from the non-stem end
3. I don't know jack about sports. At one point, I thought the Jets were a basketball team. Then I thought they were a baseball team. Then someone had to finally correct me and inform me that they are neither a basketball team nor a baseball team, but a football team
4. I'm an EXTREMELY slow eater
5. I can't stand wads of wet hair lying around...I absolutely FEAR seeing clumps of hair in clogged drains
6. I get a sadistic feeling of satisfaction out of seeing people get their comeuppance (ie. seeing the bitchy rich girl crash the BMW that her daddy bought her)
7. I can't watch old people cry, because it makes me cry too
8. If I had craploads of money and craploads of time, I do nothing but travel and eat
9. I adore nerdy guys
10. I drool in my sleep. Ewwwwww....

Share your quirks, people. :)

Cindy blabbed at 08:44 p.m. |

Friday, September 30, 2005
Mood: Pissed
Music: Clacking of keyboards around me

Some fucker stole my cell phone and sold it for 60 bucks. I know this because I tried calling my own phone after I realized that it had been stolen, and the guy who picked it up said that someone sold him the phone for 60 dollars. Or maybe the guy who picked up my phone is the same person who stole my phone and was just CLAIMING to have bought it for 60 bucks. Why the FUCK would you buy a cell phone from some random guy??? Wouldn't that set off a red flag in anyone's head?? Either way, the dude ran off with my phone, and I'm beyond pissed. I hope he gets hit by a truck and then falls into the sewage in New Orleans.

Cindy blabbed at 11:51 a.m. |

Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Mood: Stupid
Music: Muse - New Born

I don't know why this is so funny to me.

Cindy blabbed at 02:16 p.m. |

Saturday, September 24, 2005
Mood: Bored
Music: Coldplay - Don't Panic

Hurricane who?? Everything's in perfect working order here in my part of town. No floods, no damages, and we didn't even lose power. Just a crapload of rain and wind in the middle of the night. In a strange, morbid way, a lot of us are actually kinda disappointed by this. We obviously didn't want to see massive amounts of destruction, but I guess we wanted SOMETHING to show for all this panic and preparation.

Some people feel that this storm was hyped up WAY too much, and that all the madness that came with the evacuations was unnecessary. I'd have to disagree with that. In the beginning, Rita really WAS a serious threat, and people took the appropriate actions. Just as no one expected Rita to grow into a category 5 hurricane overnight, no one expected it to veer as far off its original track either. In some ways, I almost wish Rita DID stick closer to her original path, because we had plenty of warning, and we were long prepared for her arrival. Meanwhile, people in Beaumont and Lake Charles only had a last-minute warning. I'm hoping everyone in those areas fared well.

Anyway....to say the least, Hurricane Rita was pretty anti-climactic. Meaning school will probably resume soon. Gotta get back to work. :P

Cindy blabbed at 01:00 p.m. |

Friday, September 23, 2005
Mood: Bored
Music: Muse - Butterflies & Hurricanes (ahahaha, how appropriate :P)

Rita's gone down to a category 3, woohoo! Well, sort of "woohoo!". Category 3 hurricane is still pretty huge, but I say we can handle that just fine. Parts of Galveston have already flooded, but it's good that over 90% of that part of town has evacuated.

Clouds @ 4:28 pm

Nothin' too bad right now. It hasn't even started raining yet on my side of town. Rita, let's get this over with so we can get on with our lives.

Cindy blabbed at 05:21 p.m. |

Thursday, September 22, 2005
Mood: Blank
Music: Green Day - She's a Rebel

Just a few pics of the pre-Rita madness around here.

An Exxon station near my house. It's been roped off because they completely ran out of gas.


A sign hanging outside of a CVS near my house


The line of people waiting inside the CVS. My roomie Tiffany pointed out that one of the guys in line is trying to buy a load of beer, haha.



This truck had "Dallas here we come!" written on the side, "Clear Lake" written on the back (one of the areas under mandatory evacuation) and "Runnin' from Rita" written on the other side. :)
"Blow me Rita"

So yeah...that's just a glimpse of what's going on around here in Sugar Land, and this is supposed to be one of the safer zones in Houston. I wanted to get pictures of all the empty shelves in the supermarkets, but they weren't letting people in. Anywho, I obviously won't be taking pictures DURING the hurricane, but I'll definitely take pictures of what happens after the storm....hopefully it'll just make my backyard look like a pond. :P

Cindy blabbed at 07:15 p.m. |

Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Mood: Anxious
Music: Phantom Planet - One Ray of Sunlight

EDIT 9/22/05: Rita changed its course, and Sugar Land is supposed to be just outside of the biggest reaches of Rita's highest winds. So now my parents and many of my neighbors have decided to stay back here. I still think it's better to leave, but I'm having a tough time convincing them. They keep saying that if we leave now, we'll be in traffic for an entire day, and we'd run out of gas before we even get there. And all the gas stations are closed because they ran out of gas. It's true...there are cars stranded on the roads because they ran out of gas because they could reach their destinations. But meh...maybe I'm subconsciously looking for an excuse to visit Austin for the weekend. *shrug*

EDIT: With a lot of poking and prodding from my sister in Austin (and a lot of worrying on my part), we're getting out of here tomorrow night.

Holy crap, Hurricane Rita is now officially a category 5 hurricane. O_o;;

Honestly, I didn't give a rat's ass about Hurricane Rita in the beginning, because they said the worst we were going to get was a category 3 hurricane. And since I live kinda far inland, I figured the worst I'd see in my area was some minor flooding and maybe a few items being blown around people's backyards. I thought people were just staying on the safe side because of the recent events with Katrina.

But a full-blown category 5 hurricane? I'm starting to get a little freaked out.

People are going nuts here. Mandatory evacuations for residents of Galveston island, traffic is backed up to god-knows-where, all the stores are out of size-D batteries, bottled water, and duct tape. And moreover, I'm wondering what we're going to do with all the Katrina evacuees if Rita is projected to do major damage in the downtown Houston area. Ikes.

My neighborhood's looking pretty mild (no boarded windows or anything), but still...all this news coverage is making me a little nervous. School shut down this afternoon and will be closed until Sunday. Hopefully school will resume on Monday if there isn't any damage to the UH campus. And if it doesn't...well, it's gonna suck having to make up for all the lost time that we're gonna have. And for those of you who were wondering, I'm staying put here in the Sugar Land area. But I think I should be fine, category 5 or not. It just means that my mom's gonna have to move a lot of her plants and the such into our garage so they don't end up on the other side of the neighborhood.

Anyway, to my fellow Houstonians, be safe, and hopefully our city will survive the weekend.

Cindy blabbed at 03:31 p.m. |

Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Mood: Mellow
Music: Billie Holiday - He's Funny That Way

Woohoo, I get to cross something off of my life to-do list! I took a short trip to Austin yesterday to see the Dalai Lama speak. :)

I think one of the things that impressed me the most about the Dalai Lama was how humble he was. To me, almost all people with a high level of religious or political influence would exude either an air of superiority or at least an attitude that would reinforce their position of authority. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing...many times it's necessary. Even the president has a certain feeling of authority to him, even when he's casually speaking to a random citizen. But the Dalai Lama stripped himself of all authoritative feelings from the beginning. One of the first things he said to everyone was "I am nothing special. I look around, and I'm one of you....I'm a human being. When I speak to all of you, I feel that I am simply speaking to other human beings." He'd even poke fun at himself now and then, such as when someone asked him about his opinion of the war in Iraq, he cleared his voice, and said in a mockingly serious tone "That...is beyond my wisdom". Then he chuckled a bit and went on to share his thoughts. :) It definitely made his lecture feel more personal...he made it seem more like he was your grandfather giving good advice, rather than a highly revered Nobel Peace Prize winner addressing a mass of people. :)

Another thing that impressed me about the Dalai Lama was that he was realistic in his thinking. While he did promote peaceful ways of dealing with conflicts and the such, he acknowledged that many times violence has a good intention behind it (ie. to bring freedom to an oppressed country, etc.), although it's still not the best way to deal with things. It's good to hear him see things at a realistic level, rather than immediately ragging on all who use violence, without thinking of what the original intentions were.

Anyway....so now that I've crossed off 1 thing on my life to-do list, I've actually thought of 4 more things to add to it. Two of them should be extremely easy to accomplish, once I find the time to do them:

• Learn fencing
• Celebrate Mardi Gras in New Orleans
• Re-read "To Kill a Mockingbird" (as cheezy as it sounds, that book really does have a lot of life lessons in it)
• Lay in the grass and do nothing

I'll look forward to tackling the new additions. :D

Cindy blabbed at 02:28 p.m. |

Friday, September 16, 2005
Mood: Nerdy
Music: Weezer - El Scorcho

Gather 'round, citizens of the internet, and I shall tell you a nerdy tale.

So I've learned in my classes that zinc is an extremely important part of our diets. We don't need much of it, but that little bit goes a long way. I'm not going to bore everyone with the details of what zinc does, but it does all sorts of great stuff for our body. A deficiency in zinc can lead to growth retardation, skin lesions, and impairment in sexual development. The part I want you guys to focus on in the prior sentence is that a deficiency in zinc leads to impairment in sexual development...got that?

So you know you're a pharmacy nerd when you think it's absolutely hilarious to insult a guy by saying "You have a severe deficiency in zinc!" Therefore:

"You have a severe deficiency in zinc!" = "There's impairment in your sexual development!" = "You have a small penis, tee hee!"

What's even nerdier is when your classmates think it's retardedly funny too. So a note to anyone considering pharmacy school: joining pharmacy school means you're relinquishing any former titles you might have had and enlisting in an army of nerds. You have been warned. :D

Cindy blabbed at 08:25 a.m. |

Thursday, September 15, 2005
Mood: Sleepy
Music: Gorillaz - DARE

I usually say that all I need in life are good friends, good music, and good food.

Unfortunately, all of my closest friends are up in Austin, my ipod has been doing strange things, and I've recently come to the conclusion that I'm lactose intolerant. :(

HOWEVER....I'm making good friends fast here in Houston, my ipod isn't my sole source of music, and being lactose intolerant simply means that I'll have to eat my dairy in moderation, not cut it out from my diet altogether....meaning I can still gorge on steaks, cookies, cakes, and all that good junk. :D

It's all about perspective. :)

Cindy blabbed at 08:36 a.m. |

Sunday, September 11, 2005
Mood: Bored
Music: Phantom Planet - One Ray of Sunlight

So I figured that since I haven't blogged in over week, I'd make a post.

...and I can't think of anything to write! *yanks hair out*

I could talk about pharmacy school, how much I miss the city of Austin, or all the hoopla that Hurricane Katrina has brought to Houston....but I won't. Because talking about pharmacy school would bore all of you to tears, talking about how much I miss Austin would be obnoxiously whiny, and talking about Katrina....well, everyone and their mother is hearing about Katrina, whether they want to or not. Bleh.

I'm a terrible person. And by terrible person, I mean a cheapass college student. :D

I've been getting free meals for 2 weeks straight. I go to organizational meetings that have the words "free food" written on the flyers, I eat, I zone out through the actual meeting, and then I flee from the scene when the meeting's over, without signing up for the club or any of its activities. It's almost like the food equivalent of a one-night stand! I guess that makes me a food whore. :P

Aside from the food whoring, I've been studying a whole lot. Which is what I'm about to do now. *sigh*

Cindy blabbed at 11:29 a.m. |

Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Mood: Sleepy
Music: Tori Amos - Pretty Good Year

Sappy post ahead, but heck...it's early in the morning, and the quality of my posts have been diminishing anyway. Blargh.

Being from Texas, I hear about "southern hospitality" all the time, but with the recent events concerning Hurricane Katrina, I'm truly impressed. People from Louisiana have been rushing in to Houston for refuge (traffic was backed up for days on I-10), and I have to say that I'm pretty impressed with how well we're taking care of our neighbors. Houstonians are buying meals for random strangers from Louisiana and housing refugees. Hotels are being told to drop their rates for hurricane victims, and almost all of the museums, theaters, and theme parks are giving free admission to people who can show a valid Louisiana, Alabama, or Mississippi ID to make their stays more comfortable and enjoyable.

It's all pretty heartwarming. :)

So hats off to my fellow Houstonians for exhibiting the southern hospitality that everyone talks about, and I hope for quick recoveries for the hurricane victims.

Cindy blabbed at 08:38 a.m. |

Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Mood: Mellow
Music: Poe - Triggerhappy Jack

I survived my first week of pharmacy school! Woohoo! I was going to do a "first week of school" post about all of my classes and professors, but meh...I decided not to. So too bad.

And until I can think of something more interesting to write, I'll be writing a lot more about my endeavors in pharmacy school, because I'll be spending a crapload of my time there. :P

So anywhoooo....in pharmacy school, I've learned how to give diabetic foot exams. What happens is that diabetic patients tend to have problems with blood flow to their feet, and then they start losing feeling in their feet, bad stuff happens, and in the worst-case scenario, the patient needs an amputation. So basically, during a diabetic foot exam, I'm supposed to check out a patient's foot and make sure that they don't need to get it chopped of anytime soon. :P

So obviously, when we learn how to do these diabetic foot exams, we need to practice on each other. Not too bad, right?

My problem is that I'm extremely and retardedly ticklish. Yikes.

I was pretty terrified that I was going to kick someone in the face out of reflex.

For part of the exam, all you have to do is take the patient's foot and look at it. You check for blisters, bunions, corns....all that nasty stuff. So that wasn't too bad....my partner would just hold my foot and well...LOOK. Another part of the exam includes feeling for a pulse in the foot to check for blood flow. Luckily, the pulse points that we look for are all on TOP of the foot, so I didn't have to worry about my little problem there either. However, part of the exam includes a part where you take a monofilament and you touch it to 5 points on the bottom of the foot to make sure that the sensory nerves in the patient's foot are still working.

In other words, you take a thin plastic stick and you poke the person's foot. ON THE BOTTOM.

So when my partner was poking my foot, it was determined that yes, my sensory nerves indeed were working. And they were probably working a little TOO well. I didn't die. But holy crap I had to try hard not to laugh. My instructors were making rounds to see how everyone was doing, and one of them came by my group's practice session and happened to see me red-faced with my partner poking at my foot. She grinned and said "I assume you're ticklish." Why yes I am. *sigh*

But anyway....so now I know how to tell if you need to see a doctor about your feet! Our instructors were telling us about cases where they've seen patients with things like tacks and random children's toys embedded in their feet for weeks without even knowing it. Pretty serious stuff. So take care of your feet, and try not to kick your health care practitioner if they're poking at your foot with a monofilament. :P

Cindy blabbed at 09:15 p.m. |

Thursday, August 25, 2005
Mood: Exhausted
Music: Jason Wade - You Belong to Me

Man oh man...pharmacy school is really something else. It's really time to get some self-discipline and just work until my brain bleeds. O_o;;

You know what I need right now? A cannon. A bigass medieval cannon. A cannon that'll shoot far enough to blast me straight to school in the mornings. Seriously, I would rather fly through the smog of downtown Houston, risk mid-air collisions with pigeons, and plop onto the lawn of the University of Houston campus covered in gunpowder than sit in my car for an hour. The drive to school is SUPPOSED to take about 35 minutes, but instead it gets stretched out to a full hour because of Houston's ungodly traffic. Otherwise maybe I should keep a couple of angry gorillas in my trunk and let them out now and then to move cars for me. Or maybe I should just drive a monster truck. Yeeeeah, a monster truck sounds pretty kickass right about now.

Otherwise things are pretty peachy right now. Tiring, but not too bad so far. Sorry for the boring posts, but I'll make my obligatory "first week of school" post soon. :)

Cindy blabbed at 05:03 p.m. |

Sunday, August 21, 2005
Mood: Awake
Music: Radiohead - High and Dry

Gwahahaha, I'm gonna be a doctor. :D

A doctor of pharmacy, that is. *grin*

I get a white coat and a stethoscope!! Isn't that cool?? And no, I have no idea how to use that stethoscope yet. But I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to learn in the extra 4 years of school that I've got ahead of me. 4 loooong years of pharmacy school, which begin at 9 am tomorrow morning. Yikes.

So anywhoooo....ever since I met my friend Linda, I've been inspired to make a "life to-do list"...in other words, a list of things to do before I die. And since I'm a huge nerd, I actually put mine up on the internet. I've put a link in my sidebar too, so it'll be a constant on this blog now. So check it out and let me know if there's anything else that I should be doing before I croak. :P

Cindy blabbed at 09:40 a.m. |