No pictures

Hello,

No pictures in this entry - somehow the camera ended up back at home. It's a long story and involves the snafu that is daylight savings time for me, always. No matter how many times I am reminded, I always managed to be surprised by the change in time the day after daylight savings time (two days after in this case.) This time, I was in Des Moines with Raul, and I was all set to get up at 5am Monday morning, so I could be in Mason City at 8:30am for a scheduled community activity. Somehow, we managed to change the time on all the clocks in his apartment except for the one we used as an alarm clock. Needless to say, we were both an hour late the next morning. Oh well.

Anyways, Raul drove up to spend this weekend in Mason City with me. It was wonderful to see him. Friday night we had a date at a local steakhouse, and the food was excellent. I am pretty sure they cook all their food in this mixture of butter and olive oil. Instead of dessert, we opted for angioplasty. Just kidding. We were able to walk it off - the weather was warm (40 degrees), so we walked the 4 miles round trip to and from my apartment to the restaurant. I have never been so happy to see signs of spring as I have been since moving to the Midwest. And judging from all the Mason City-ians I saw sporting flip-flops and shorts this weekend, I am not alone in my sentiment. It is always so exciting when winter is coming to an end.

We both have end of rotation tests this Friday, so we spent most of the weekend studying. Med school has really changed my life - if you had told me 5 years ago that there would come a day where I could sit down for 8+ hours and study the entire time (with short breaks to eat and and whatnot), I would not have believed you. Likely, I would have really hoped that you weren't telling me the truth. But that is exacty what we did this weekend - 8 hours on Saturday and 6 hours on Sunday (with more to come tonight) of studying. Some of that discipline is Raul - he's a studying machine. As some of you may know, my grades dramatically improved after we began dating. Truthfully, I miss my old lazy life sometimes. I feel very lucky to be in med school and to have the experiences I do, but sometimes I really miss spending my weekends on the couch talking on the phone or with a book or watching TV. I know, poor me. : )

I hope you all are well!!

PS - I got an email from Canterbury Inn in Atlanta today confirming my reservation in May. I never booked any such reservation and thought it was a scam. So, I looked into Canterbury Inn, and it is indeed a motel (albeit a very crappy one) in Atlanta. I called to tell them that they'd sent a confirmation email to the wrong address, and the woman on the phone totally read me the address and phone number of the person who booked the room and then asked me for my credit card number. I hung up. Maybe it is a scam afterall...should you receive any confirmation emails from Canterbury Inn, do not give them your credit card information.