Phlebotomy
we learned how to draw blood today. wow, what an experience... very stressful. first, there was a volunteer and a professor/doctor demonstrated it on the volunteer but made a mistake and ended up with blood pooling and dripping down his arm. eek. that part really made me nervous - if an experienced person does that, what am i supposed to expect?? on top of that, there was that rumor that last year, someone hit someone's nerve while drawing blood... anyways, it wasn't nearly so bad as I thought - to my group: sorry if I was a nervous wreck. i remember right before b stuck a needle in my arm, h was trying to tell me something funny and i was like, "haha-haha-haha" very nervously. sorry h. :) i don't even remember what she said. :D i nearly passed out at a previous needle experience (it was a very looong three years ago) and so i was a wee nervous. sorry to my partner!!! i felt so guilty cuz i stuck her twice. right before i slid the needle in, i had this panic-doubt attack - 'is that the vein? is that a tendon? is there blood in there?' aside from the guilt, it went fine. it passed over quickly.

it's harder to be objective and think through steps more clearly when it's someone you know, i think. that's my excuse. we all accomplished our goal - we all drew blood successfully without hurting anyone irreversibly. wow my standards are low.

class from 9 am til 5 pm tomorrow. man, it's still summer for the rest of the world, except for this hot corner of the countryside.

i'm going to nyc at the end of august!!! i'm so excited to even be there. i'm expecting the sex and the city new york. i've touched four continents, but i'm excited about the east coast. thank God Jen got into Columbia. ;)

my cousin on the "phone". i haven't put up a picture in a while. anyways, this weekend is the calm before the storm - i start class on monday. that means no more trips to SF. :) (or not so often, at least). i'm so tempted to pick up and go again this weekend... bernette's there already... we'll see. need to finish some stuff here at lab first. 

interesting commentary on fahrenheit 9/11:

"Moore, himself, is not as partisan... He does not spare Democrats in his film. Moore points out how most Democratic senators, including Kerry, not only voted for the Iraq war but didn’t criticize Bush’s decision to invade until recently. In one scene, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle urged his colleagues to vote for Bush’s Iraq war. Daschle attended the Washington, D.C., premiere of "Fahrenheit 9/11" and told Moore after seeing the film that he "felt bad and that we were all going to fight from now on." That’s a key difference between Democratic politicians and Republican ones: Most Democrats will admit when they are wrong, while most Republicans won’t.

Still, there are some Republicans who will admit when they are wrong and even speak out against policies that are wrong. One is retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, the Bush administration’s special envoy to the Middle East and commander of the U.S. Central Command in the Middle East in the late 1990s. Zinni recently said senior Pentagon officials were guilty of "dereliction of duty" for poor strategic thinking, operational planning and ground execution. Lack of basic equipment has been a continuous problem in this war; the Army did not fully equip soldiers with bullet-proof vests until June 2004, as many soldiers had to pay for such vests themselves."

Article here

it's interesting to think that maybe it's not a partisan issue (not much more than finger pointing), but an optimism on what we CAN do right in the future, and learn from our mistakes.

hopefully.

more support for the film: (which I think IS important for americans to see).

"Moore’s movie also touched on some dangerous precedents set in the so-called Patriot Act, but didn’t even cover how Bush’s decision to invade Iraq violated the United Nations charter, how the U.S. violated the Geneva Convention in its treatment of detainees, how a U.S. Justice Department memo proclaimed that torture of prisoners was legal in violation of the International Convention Against Torture."

one more disclaimer, from michael moore himself:

"Let them know that the OPINIONS in the film are mine, and anyone certainly has a right to disagree with them. And the questions I pose in the movie, based on these irrefutable facts, are also mine. And I have a right to ask them. And I will continue to ask them until they are answered."

i was watching "30 minute meals" and rachel ray was making a low carb meal. she was making a turkey burger with onions in it, to add some juice to the really lean meat... and she apologized for the carbs in the onions! how many carbs can be in onions? can that also be the difference between making you skinny and fat? hm. maybe this low carb thing is going too far... there was an article on msnbc saying how the low carb thing is waning. never deprive, that's my motto. ;) u end up craving it then. i agree with margaret cho's diet.

i watched two shows of $40-a-day, again with rachel ray, but she's in rome and paris. it made me miss it so much!! i have new restaurants to hit the next time i'm in the city now. :) the food looked amazing.

happy sunday~

liz is so funny:

"wow, that stinks, I guess med students
don't get the conventional summer off. well hope you're stocking up on the
four Rs- rest, relaxation, recreation, and romance before the school yr gets
underway.

it's funny, the four Rs always used to mean recycling, reusing, reducing, and
renewing. now I've got two sets of four Rs."

data analysis is driving me crazy....!?!?!

i watched michael moore's "fahrenheit 9/11" tonight. to be honest, I wasn't thrilled about seeing it - I didn't like Michael Moore that much, and thought he might spin and bias everything. Alas, he still had bias, but it was a lot more informative than I thought. I think it was scary and it hit home b/c, if Michael Moore IS right, the consequences of this could be earth shattering. there was a lot that I *didn't* know. it was nice to see the other side of the story too - to see what Baghdad even looks like, and to see how it affected civilians there. so sad too, about the parent that lost a son, and a protester who was telling her that her tears were "staged" to be anti government. it made her son's death a lie.

but who knows, maybe all presidential candidates are corrupt and equally invested in making money? probably.

everyone's going to be away this weekend, so tempted to pick up and leave too. I need to put in some serious lab time tho, before school starts. I can't believe that classes start in 10 days!! eek.

listening to josh kelley - :)

a funny article, about a single NY woman holding a dinner party:

"Consider the obstacles to staging a sit-down dinner party in a New York studio apartment when you're young and unattached: Tons of friends but no place to seat them. Not enough chairs, even. Certainly not enough silverware. Even more certainly, not enough time to prepare, given burgeoning careers and hectic social schedules. And a fairy godmother hovering nearby to conjure up the caterers? Forget it.

It's paradoxical that many of my recipes come from "The Joy of Cooking." Tell me, where is the joy? It is a baldfaced lie of a title. The name suggests Snow White in an apron waving a spatula, the woodland animals chattering nearby, stirring batter. I, by contrast, had knife cuts on my fingers and dried egg whites on my jeans. Had the book been more appropriately titled "The Exhaustion of Cooking: Why Kill Yourself? Just Make Reservations," the classic wouldn't be in its sixth edition.

The kitchen itself is diminutive but functional, like a Volkswagen. The 6-by-2-foot-wide strip of floor permits one person to cook. Two people can stand akimbo. Three people in my kitchen for 10 minutes will soon be good friends."

You can read the rest of the article, here

clubbing in sf last night. i don't recommend anyone to do that often - esp if you have to drive two hours back the same night. we got back at 3:30 am, eek. good thing the driver was awake, cuz no one else was. :P it was fun tho - this is what people our age do, right? just realized what a closed world my academic/medical/research world is. the people are different and what people do are different. it was fun hanging out with my friends though.

my friend lives two blocks from the SF mall. If I lived there, I would go shopping in Union Square all the time. We stopped by our favorite stores - FCUK, Anthropologie, the huge Banana Republic in SF, and Lush. no more shopping for me for a looooooong time.

Sarah McLachlan concert

We went to see Sarah McLachlan last night. My friend has a good summary of what happened... we had a much more exciting night than anticipated. :D I guess that's a good thing, we had such a blast. Andy was mesmerized by Sarah McLachlan, I think~ he kept on getting closer and closer to the stage until he was right up to the railing.

I fell asleep at 7 pm and woke up at 11:30 pm. My sleeping schedule is so off lately, I've been more exhausted than usual... is it the heat? Is it me? :P It's cooling off tho, at least.

SF this weekend! yay~ I feel like we're so close to the city but rarely make use of the fact that we are. I get to go to my store of the moment, Anthropologie, too. Then a wild night of clubbing. Actually, hopefully not... I haven't been clubbing in two years. Liz would be shocked. :) (Liz, are you reading this??) I feel like I'm getting too old for clubbing. :P

"will we burn in heaven
like we do down here
will the change come
while we're waiting

everyone is waiting

and when we're done
soul searching
as we carried the weight
and died for the cause
is misery
made beautiful
right before our eyes
will mercy be revealed
or blind us where we stand"
-Sarah McLachlan

it's so hard to go to bed sometimes. wish i could just stay up all night.

it's been a good summer, i'm just glad it still feels like summer, even tho I'm rotating in a lab. my lab is great - i love the PI, she's very supportive and nice - never realized how important that is! she has a cute baby too. :)

it's been nice to catch up with a few people over the phone in the past few days. we talk about guys. a lot. it reminds me of the sex and the city episode, where miranda gets upset with her friends b/c that's all they talk about - relationships, even tho they're smart and intelligent women with much more going on in their lives. not sure why - maybe it's just the period in our lives right now, where that's where a lot of our focus is going to be on in our twenties. maybe in our thirties, our focus will be on kids and that's all that we'll talk about.

in church the other day, there was the cutest baby boy right next to me. he was trying to grab at a rosette on my shirt tho, almost pulled my shirt off. whoops. didn't really know how to handle it, keep praying? pray that the baby stops? it was a little awkward.

photoblogging is addicting. i just can't write anymore, it's simply not enough. aren't you readers disappointed if it's just words and no pics? ah well. here's one for my cousin, missing her a lot as she grows each time i see her. last year, we told her seriously, "Don't grow up anymore, ok?" and she looked seriously back at me and nodded just as seriously. her dress was so cute that day.

food network is finally on!!! it's so exciting. tip of the day: did you know that if you want to pick out a tender steak, you need "marbled" meat - meat marbled with fat.

too bad jamie oliver is only on at 4 am and 4:30 am... :(

in honor of food network, here's a cool recipe I saw today, from a woman I hadn't seen before (but then again, I haven't had the food network in a little over a year).

oh! first day of lab today, it went really really well. i think i'm going to have a good time, hopefully. maybe this is the lab i'll end up in...?? who knows~ it was a great start tho.

Pecan Dreams Recipe
courtesy Paula Deen

Recipe Summary
Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Yield: 25 small squares

1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 cup flour
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup chopped pecans
Topping:
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup almond toffee bits

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Begin by greasing a 9-inch square pan.
Using a bowl, stir together the confectioners' sugar and flour. Using a fork, cut the cream cheese and butter into the flour mixture until crumbly. Press the mixture into the pan evenly. Pour the nuts over the pressed dough and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the pan from oven and allow to cool completely.
To make the topping, whip the cream and sugar together, using a mixer, until stiff. Fold in the almond toffee bits, and spread mixture over cake. Cut into squares and refrigerate.