Thinking back

I'm not really sure why, but due to some events that have recently transpired at my house, I am reminded of a great story from my past.

It must have been 1998 shortly after I got my drivers license. I was invited to attend a surprise birthday party for a friend of mine and many of my friends were gonna be there. I went and had a great time. I don't remember the party, thats not the good part of the story. As my friends and I were leaving to go do something else after the party, some of the kids started popping the baloons. There may have been some hoodlems there, I can't remember. There was also probably some rowdy kids messing around, it was a birthday party after all. We had to walk down the street to where we had parked to keep the surprise. As we crossed the street and were almost to our cars, we heard sirens all over the place. Not so unusual. The unusual part was that they seemed to be coming right towards us. Even more weird is that they (meaning several cop cars) came around the corner and pulled up right in front of us with their lights and sirens on. What?! This is weird and scary. I can't remember if the cops jumped out of the cars with their guns pointed at us, but I really want to say they did. Even if they didn't it felt like they did. So, 6 guys from high school that were not trouble makers were scared. I mean scared spitless. We had to put our hands on our heads, the whole drill... Scary! We had no idea why this was happening cause we clearly did nothing note worthy of cops. We were frisked by the female cop, she took our ID's and still we had no idea what was going on. Finally after several minutes of being scared to death and getting questioned, they let us go (maybe partly because they discovered that the mayors son was one of my friends). Come to find out, one of the neighbors had called the police department saying they heard gun shots!! Pretty sure there were no guns at that party. However, they must have sent the entire city squad to the scene. Several cars on us, several more cars on our friends down the street, several cars at the house. It was crazy! Maybe one of the more scary moments of my life. Now I laugh about it and think of what a great story it is.

Happy

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUSAN!!!

Hope you have an awesome day!

Love,
Jim

Follow up

Just in case you missed the first picture I posted, I have included another one to get our salivary glands workin! What is a mille feuille, one might ask??? Well, since you were all too lazy to look it up, here is the definition from wikipedia.

The Mille-feuille (French 'thousand sheets'), Napoleon (U.S.), vanilla slice, cream slice or custard slice (Commonwealth countries) is a pastry made of several layers of puff pastry alternating with a sweet filling, typically pastry cream, but sometimes whipped cream, or jam. It is usually glazed with icing or fondant in alternating white and brown (chocolate) strips, and combed. The name is also written as "millefeuille" and "mille feuille".

If I had to sum it up, I would say that it is one of many world class pastries commonly found in France. I have consumed more than my fair share in my lifetime and if I lived in France would probably eat them almost every day as I did on my mission. They are a small portion of the goodness that will exist in heaven. That's what I think.

Mmmm

Sometimes this is what I think about randomly:

The mille feuille

My fate

It has all been determined. Today, I got all my rotation assignments for next year and I am super excited about them. I thought I would just share them cause people always ask about them. So, here they are:

08/18/08-09/26/08: Fallon Clinic Drug Management Services
*Fallon is a big insurance company in MA and runs clinics and hospitals (kinda like IHC in UT) and this rotation will deal a lot with the process of Drug Utilization Review and Managed Care issues. It's right near my school and should be a good learning experience.
09/29/08-11/07/08: East Boston Neighborhood Health Center
*This is obviously in East Boston which happens to be nearly 70 miles away from my house so I am trying to see if there is another option. Otherwise I will have to find a place to stay in Boston for 6 weeks cause I refuse to commute for an hour and a half every day into a crazy city such as Boston. If I end up there, it is a big community health center and I would be focusing on things such as diabetic and coagulation clinics. Most of it would involve geriatrics.
11/10/08-12/19/08: Walgreen's
*This is a Walgreens out in the country by my house and it will be the same old retail thing that I am quite used to. It may be a slight break and should be pretty relaxing compared to the others.
01/05/09-02/13/09: Westborough State Hospital
*This is a psych hospital and I am so excited for this opportunity. I will have a preceptor that teaches at my school who is a great teacher. Mostly I am fascinated with Psych and I am really excited to see everything I've learned actually work or not work in the real clinical world.
02/16/09-03/27/09: MCPHS/CVS
*This is another one that I am really excited about. I will again be with a professor from school who specializes in community pharmacy. I have her for an OTC class right now and I love it. I will spend half of my time at CVS doing various things and the other half will be on campus. Hopefully I will get some teaching opportunity cause that would be really cool.
03/30/09-05/08/09: St. Vincents
*This is the hospital that is just across the street from my school. I will again be with a professor from school. Probably I will learn a lot of the logistics of hospital pharmacy on this rotation.

I think these are gonna be really fun and very beneficial for me as I try to prepare for my career as a pharmacist. All that is missing is the chance to see some surgeries and cool stuff like that. I really hope I get to see some of that!

Stupor of thought

Lately either I don't have time to blog or else I have nothing to blog about. Actually I must admit that at times when I would generally blog, I have found a new activity. I am addicted to Lost. Yep, for some reason I started to watch season 1 and I just keep watching. I told myself that at the end of season 1 I would take a break until the semester was over, but that hasn't worked so far. I can't keep thinking about what is going on and not watch the next episode. I hope that there's an episode coming up that won't leave me hanging so I will no longer be attached... Is there any chance? I don't think so.

Here is a good story I've been meaning to blog about for quite some time. For Easter I was invited to dinner at the house of friends of my Aunt and Uncle. There were several families present and Trish went with me. I believe we started talking about desserts or something of the sort, when Trisha sort of made an unpleasant response to something most would think was fantastic. My aunt realizing the reason behind the response proceeds to tell everyone at the table that Trisha is LACTATING! How's that for Easter dinner. Interesting table talk. Trish was a little bit terrified and tried to quickly correct her, because in fact she is only lactose-intolerant. The damage was already done and we all laughed about the implications of such a comment. Pretty funny!!

I only have about 4 weeks left of this dreaded semester and I could not be more thrilled. It's been the longest 10 weeks of my life and I'm afraid that with all the upcoming tests, etc... this semester may kill me by the end. Other than school, I am training to run a half marathon in May (thats only five weeks away). My brother is gonna come out and run it with me and my mom is coming out to visit as well. We're gonna go to NYC and have a great time! So, lots of work and then I'm gonna have a great break! Can't wait for some summer sun and good times!