Mixed Bag

Well. I'm on overnight ICU duty. Thus the reason for an entry at 3:30 am. I saw an absolutely fantastic movie tonight. Warrior. I knew it got good reviews, but I still wasn't expecting much from it. I've seen one other movie before about MMA and it was pretty mediocre. I guess I expecting a few more misses on this topic before someone finally stepped up to the plate, but I have to say, Gavin O'Connor did an awesome job on this movie, as well as the entire cast! Mike and I have been amazed at how actors from Europe or Australia have no problems with doing an American accent, let alone an American New York accent. It doesn't always seem to work very well the other way around for some reason... It's also much more than a movie about fighting or the sport of MMA. There's a lot of family tension in the movie that is portrayed extremely well by the actors/actresses. I was very very impressed with this movie. The fight scenes are also spectacular - they actually REALLY look like MMA fights that you could find on Spike. I don't know a whole lot about BJJ, but Mike says the set up and execution for the different holds and chokes were pretty accurate. The actors did a lot of training and prep for the movie and it shows. I give it an A!

Today Mike and I were working out at Eisenhower Middle School and I happened to see this reddish/brown mixed breed dog wandering around. It took a lot of sliced chicken meat, coaxing, time and a quick lasso with a leash to finally get him. We brought him back to the house then put up "dog found" signs. He started barking after a couple of hours and our dogs went going nuts, so we decided to take him to the shelter where they have a drop off area for when they are closed. Right when I had finished all the paperwork and had him in the kennel, we realized there was no food in the kennel, only water. We didn't know if the shelter would be open tomorrow so I was going to have Mike go get some food just in case. Right when Mike got back in the car, an old man in a blue truck arrived at the shelter and it turned out to be the owner!!! We were super happy that they were reunited. What good timing for the owner to arrive right at that time. =)

Only a few more days until the New Year. Even with all the uncertainty, I'm looking forward to all that 2012 has to bring! Especially graduation!!!

Current State

Sooooo.... Remember a few months back when I said that I wasn't burnt out from vet school? Well. I changed my mind. I am officially burnt out. All right. I'm not completely and totally burnt out. But I'm definitely feeling the chronic effects of 4th year. It's 4:30 am and I'm the lone human holding down the fort in ICU until the morning tech comes in. I'm tired but I have to stay awake and make sure these 6 dogs and 1 cat don't decide to do something crazy (i.e. die). I'm about halfway through my clinical year. It's gone by fairly fast and I've truly enjoyed most of my rotations and learned a lot from them. I took my national boards (NAVLE) last week and I am SO GLAD they are over. Hopefully I passed so that I don't have to retake them in the spring. It's one of those things where I'd like to believe I passed but you just can't really know for certain until you see that official "PASS".

I don't know if I told you this already, but I have officially decided not to do an internship. I decided that I really want to do a little bit of everything and I wouldn't be able to do that if I specialized. As much as I love internal medicine, I don't want to only do internal med. I may want to do internal med like 80% of the time, but I would also like to do some surgeries in life, I would like to do general medicine like vaccines and seeings lots of cute puppies/kittens, I want to see a variety of emergencies, and I also want to work with small rodents like ratties. :) So it really does seem a 24-hr hospital that also sees regular appointments would be the PERFECT environment for me. But here comes the confounding factor of today's times..... the job market SUCKS. It is so scary to go into this field at at time like this when many hospitals just aren't hiring. I'm going to get a move on the job search soon. I'm also planning on taking my California state boards in February when I head over to Yorba for my externship. Only 6 months of school left and there's still so much to do. I'm worried about my future but I'll be glad when it finally gets here!