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Funeral Blues
W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Goodbye Thursday, hello Friday morning … and hello three more days until medical school starts. And while I typically/flippantly answer one of three ways* when people ask me if I’m nervous, or excited, it is actually something I’ve given some thought to. To which I’ve given some thought, dangling prepositions aside. The Impending Life Change.

I peeked at the class list for the upcoming term, and SUNY Downstate will be keeping us busy. Starting from genes to cells, moving up to organ systems, delving into A&P, the usual suspects. I have a feeling my brain will be a bit sore from the stuffing it’s about to receive, but I am looking forward to it. During my post-bacc at Hunter, I was working full-time for the former employer, taking classes and labs at night, volunteering at PSVAC and taking the occasional EMS shift at Lutheran. These days I’ll be able to focus, erm, 100% on school. And another few percentage points for nights and weekends at Lutheran, but hey, I can study on the bus, right?!?

So scared, no, nervous, no, I’m pretty invincible. It’s nice to be invincible again, beats being invisible. Concerned about taking out the equivalent of my entire mortgage again in loans, and frustrated about hoop-jumping for paperwork related to getting in the doors of Higher Learning, but everything’s manageable. Excited, too, about taking the next big step on my new career/life path. Heck, it’s even got me blogging again. I also find comfort in various furry and unfurred noodles who seem to believe in me and abilities mine.

Expect more updates soon. This coming week is orientation, and on 24 August … the floodgates of knowledge open to me!

* Friends, family, strangers on the bus, when they find out they ask me: “Medical school? Are you scared? Are you excited? Are you ready?” My top three responses, then, are:

• “Eep.”
• “Nah.”
• Actually, it’s only the two. I’ll have to think of a third. I’ve pretty much just been focusing on enjoying my Last Summer of Freedom and Working to Save Money, and haven’t focused too much on teh quipzes.

This is my first blog post from the WordPress iPhone app, so bear with me. First post in way too long, too. Guess I’ve been busy living it up in my last free summer before med school! Case in point:

Saturday evening, Papa Bear showed up at my house, ready to load up for our track day at New Jersey Motorsports Park. His enclosed trailer is awesome, with plenty of room for our motorcycles and all our gear. We enjoyed a traffic-free ride down to the Quality Inn in Millville, NJ – $60 per night! We had plenty of time to catch up; I haven’t seen enough of Dan this year.

Sunday, 6 am came very quickly. We grabbed our free breakfast and drove the few miles to the track, and set up in the paddock at the Thunderbolt course. I failed tech inspection with a leaky fork seal (nothing I could do about that but “promise to watch it”) and a too-loose chain. Easy fix, but adjusting the chain meant I missed the first lap of red group, so I never got to see the race lines. Shame, that, since I’d never been on Thunderbolt before. Ah well.

So I took it easy the first session, for that reason and because I haven’t been on the track since 2007. Eep. Everyone passed me at least once, but it wasn’t crowded out there so there were no problems. Apparently someone crashed during the checkered lap, no injuries but he was out for the day. Someone always tries too hard in the first session …

Dan, like me, took it easy in his first session – though he was in the blue (advanced) group. He may have gotten passed as much as I did. As I geared up for my second session, I was concerned I might get bumped down to the white (beginner) group. Turns out I wouldn’t find out yet, as crash #2 happened right in front of me in lap 2 of red session 2. Right after the 90 degree left halfway through the back of the course. I didn’t see him go down, but I had to pick my way through his yard sale of plastic and metal debris. Sigh, session 2 over for red.

A coach, Chris M, pulled me over on the pit-out lane, asking me if this was my first time on this track. Yes sir, sez me, that’s why I’m going slow, and I never got the lines. He wanted to take me out in white to show me the line and evaluate me, maybe bump me down to the beginners. No problem, I’m not proud, let’s go …

There was some confusion about me needing a white sticker to go out in that group, but it turned out to be bogus. I followed Chris and got the lines, but a lot of the two laps were at parade pace due to the ART basic gang. And then, right after the 90 degree left again, sone idiot tries to pass into the baby duckling line of ART basic riders, on and off the throttle all choppy … he set up a tankslapper, hit an ART student (!) and was pitched off his ride 10′ into the air. He came down hard into a tumble right in front of me; I could hear him cry out in pain as I swerved to avoid him and his bike. I later found out that his buddy did the same thing on lap 2 of session 2 the day before, crashed out secondary to idiocy. You’d think it would have slowed him down … the aftermath was a busted collarbone and femur.

Hard lesson to learn.

So if you’re counting, that’s three crashes before blue even got their second session. And we were fresh out of ambulances, so the track was closed until one came back. At 11:30 we started up again, and when red came up I went back out with Chris M. He led for a few turns then signaled for me to pass him … I went ahead for two laps, and then the rain came. Big time. I pitted in, and went to find the coach.

He said I wad running mid-white pace, but didn’t need to be demoted as long as my lines stayed clean. Whew! =) Which would have been fine, except for the storm …

Turns out Thunderbolt was aptly named. Dan and I hunkered down under the pop-up for what seemed forever, getting to know some of the riders near us in the paddock, eating, watching others pick up and leave, and wondering if we should do the same. I really wanted to wait it out, though, as this may have been my only track day this season! We caught a break in the weather, and then it came again … really heavy. It laid down a lot of standing water on the track, the guys running slicks would be SOL.

Eventually it cleared, and TPM dried off the race line so we could get back out around 3:15pm. They had held a meeting and let us decide if we wanted to wait it out … the 20 of us who’d stayed were all for it. So when the track was safe, they gave us open track tine for the rest of the day!

Now this meant everyone could go out any time they wanted, for as long as they wanted – as long as we played it safe and watched out for the wet spots. There were about 10 places where water was running across the track (there were a lot in the 120 degree left) and there was standing water coming onto and at the end of the front straight. No worries, take it easy they told us, and do all of your braking early on the straight.

So Dan and I joined the free for all, and we had a blast! I could feel the rear sliding around a bit on that left, but it was manageable, and a fine spot to learn traction control. I stayed slow on the straight to let the red & blue riders pass me so I wouldn’t be a rolling road block in the turns.

I got more comfortable as the afternoon went by, the air warmed up, and the track dried off. I dialed in turns 1, 2, and 3, and up to the 90 degree left … figured out how to handle that one as it had some slick patches … but I never got to master the tighter left or the decreasing-radius right on the back side. I needed more time and maybe a coach.

There was one more crash: one of the kids next to us lowsided coming from the front straight into turn 1. He was unhurt, and his Aprillia was mostly unharmed … just muddy as hell from where it went off-roading. Guess he missed the note about the standing water …

In any case, I haf no complaints. The open track time was glorious, I got all I wanted. Dan was feeling good by the end of the day, and we both had big ol’ smiles on our mugs as we loaded up for the ride home. I’m so glad we went!

Just a quick update tonight, I’ve got to head into the city to pick up Michela. Shh. Illicit blogging!

So last week was the Park Slope Volunteer Ambulance Corps’ annual fundraiser dinner … where all the EMTs and officers dressed up and thanked all of the wonderful people who support us, financially and otherwise. Everyone is amazing, we’re very luck to get such great support. Plus, we held our raffle … and a local girl’s father won the 42″ HDTV! I hope he lets her keep it:

She’s very excited. Clickly linky above for picture set.

And yes, of course, I can’t forget last weekend’s überAWESOME NIN/JA tour concert! Michela and I went down to Philly for this, we went with Jeff and Cyn … the show was as good as I’d expected it to be, better even, since I’d never seen Jane’s Addiction live before. Perry, sure, all the time, but not JA. And They did. Not. Disappoint. Pictures? Sure, click here!

Deep fried, of course.

This year’s Hunter College Pre-Health Post-Bacc club End-of-Year party was something else. No bar, no skee-ball, no me cooking everything … our very own Derrick hosted, and he hosted a Fry Party. Basically, we all brought what we wanted to see put into boiling hot oil, and he did the honors.

In no particular order, we had: Jamaican beef patties (yum), pickles, okra (cool), pizza, grilled cheese sandwiches, a big cupcake from Crumbs (effing awesome), a breadbowl pasta deal from Domino’s, Twix bars (the tastiest), Reese’s peanut butter cups (not bad) … and more. All deep-fried and served up hot, of course. Michela and I didn’t stay for the whole thing; I’m sure someone put John’s playlist in there before the night was over. =P

Oh yeah. Then there’s the sweatshirt (see left). See, people were hatin’ John’s playlist a bit, and Derrick convinced John that he could remain in charge of the music as long as he wore this big kitteh sweatshirt. Now, I’m not judging, but (a) John looked super-cute in this, and (b) I have to question why Derrick owns this particular article of clothing.

So a super fun night, and as this may have been my last chance to hang with some of these post-bacc kids, some good memories. Have a great summer everyone, and good luck getting in when it’s your turn! All of the pics (including plenty more with the kitteh shirt) are up here.

I’m a big fan of this one:

… and with it, a full recharging of the “all is right with the world” batteries. This was the sixth annual AngelRide CT (and the 4th one I’ve done), in which 250 or so bicyclists rode from Norfolk CT to Mystic CT over two days. As charity rides go, it was pretty easy — just an 80 mile day and a 60 mile day), but there are some nifty hills in there to keep them cyclists honest.

I was on the motorcycle safety crew again, and it was a real pleasure to spend three days on the best bike in the world (the 1998 Honda VFR, of course). And it was great to see some old friends and make some new. We brought in a great handful of new moto recruits, who I’m sure will be back in 2010. They did an awesome job wrangling the wayward bicyclists and keeping them self (though we had one of our motos go down in some gravel — he’s okay though).

This ride raises money for the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a legacy of Paul Newman. The Camp allows kids with cancer and other terminal or just-plain-tough diseases to be regular kids for a week or two, and play like regular kids — without sacrificing medical care. So we all helped some kids be kids, kids who normally had to worry about WBC counts, rad therapy, or being to weak to swim in a lake. It’s a very good cause, and I’m thrilled I got to help out again.

So, as always, pics are up on Flickr, here … enjoy!

On a serious note … on Monday, Michela and I had to say goodbye to Mezzanotte, the sweetest little purry furball that we’ve ever seen. He’d been lethargic for a week, with an obvious temperature, and when she took him to the vet they diagnosed him with Feline Infectious Peritonitis. It’s invariably fatal, and rather than put him through more pain and misery and have him slowly get weaker and die, we made the hard choice. Hard for us, but the right choice for him.

We miss him dearly.

Mezza was bright and sunny (if a little dim, but hey, he was a silly boy kitteh, and spoke in LOLz), supremely affectionate, curious and playful, and very loving towards his family (including his sister, Lani, who remains a comfort to Michela). He would hop into bed and cuddle unabashedly with his people, and poke his face into whatever we were eating at the table, again, without shame.

In short, he was a cat. He was the best of cats. And he was with us far for far too short a time. We gave him lots of love, and we know he had a happy little life, but it still killed us to hold him at the vet as he slipped away. 

Mezza, rest in peace, little buddy. We love you and miss you.

If you’d like to see pics of his happy little self with his kitten pals, check out here and here.

It’s someone’s birthday this weekend … which means it’s time to bake a cake! Sorry, Paulie, it’s not for you, but I’ll do what I can to save you a piece. This is what I plan to make: a sweet German Chocolate Cake. I used to go to FoodNetwork.com all the time for recipes, but I’m liking AllRecipes.com more and more. Especially since they have a nifty iPhone app so I can look up recipes while out in the world (and clearly cannot cook them).

Don’t tell her what I’m making! Let it be a surprise.

Some new photos are up on Flickr! I should get some of them up on Facebook soon, as well.

First off, last night we had a wee photo shoot for the Park Slope Volunteer Ambulance Corps. We took over Pritchard Square in the ‘Slope for about an hour as the daylight waned, with a pro photog and everything (thanks, Howard). He has the money shots, but I just took some snaps of us having fun during the process.

Then, there’s lots of love for Jess Furman. She came back to NYC for a show on April 7 at Rockwood Music Hall on the Lower East Side … she rocked, of course, and we packet the place. Take a peek at the pics here!