61st Anniversary

Of my parents!  I have been traveling a lot lately from my home in the south to the old home in the north.  My project has been awesome - the people are kind and hard working, which is great because the weather has been beyond abysmal.

However, on the occasion of their 61st wedding anniversary, I took my parents out to dinner.

Anywhere they wanted.  All they had to do is name it.  Fancy?  Sure!  Really fancy?  Sure!

What they wanted?

Olive Garden.

Below is the picture of my 80+ year old parents, married 61 years.

Congrats!!!

It's Been A Long, Long Time

And I finally decided that I never wrote here for the readers, although I did hope perhaps part of my posts might be helpful - back in the day - I wrote here for me.  Sort of as a journal of sorts of how the hell I got through the last 5 years.

Sometimes I read here and am slightly bemused that the physician whom I fell very, very hard for got me so very, very far onto the medical school path at such at late age. About that point when I think about him, I think about the really nice golf clubs he bought me "just because"... (yes, you can insert an "awww" here).  Damn he was good with the flowers, and the theater, and the... man, I did adore him.  (he's got a dating profile active on a site for wealthy men - oh, and he got married in 2010).

Eventually, I started dating someone else.  It took sometime for me to really like the new guy, but eventually did.  Love?  I suppose, but very differently.  More cerebral, more adventurous (insert skydiving), more outgoing.  Anyway, we'd gone golfing once.  Starting to put those clubs in my car, "just let me take them back to my house for you.  Safe keeping."

Those golf clubs ended up, of course, at a person I pseudonamed Sir Hawtsalot... which should probably be better repenned as Sir Cheatsalot but, whatever.

When I figured out his primary characteristics were charismatic, charming, cheat, liar, and thief, I bailed on him... he called me fickle.  For the record, fickle is someone who cheats... not someone who is trying to understand the big roaring red flags that wave and every woman I know, ignores.  Except me.  I just didn't want to believe them at first.

I mean he's on the board for a charity.  He has some really great connections (hee hee - think about that...).  And everyone I know, that doesn't date him, just thinks the world of him.  But... cheat he is.  And thief.

See, I'd dumped him and moved on.  Going so far as to block his phone calls at the vendor if he tried.  I deleted his email address (the corporate, and AOL.com ones) and banned those at the provider as well.  I discarded my thoughts of him (mostly - thanks Olivia for talking me off the bridge once in awhile when I meandered on it).

I'd moved on.  Really well.  Kind of found a new individual, with charm, wit, and some common interests somewhat inspiring if not interesting.  Top that, I was in my final semester before MCAT.  I was seriously, done.  Red flags were listened to.

Until he figured out a means around my email block and wrote me saying he missed me and thought about me a lot.

Apparently, he'd read something I'd written and felt compelled to write.

From India.  While on a trade mission.

Dumb me responded with nothing until I went to Galapagos.  I sent him a postcard from the outpost almost parroting his email above.

Apparently, he forgot to mention his engagement.

The engagement he entered into 4 days before writing me the original email above.

Apparently, he also forgot to mention that he was keeping my golf clubs.

When he finally did feel the need to tell me he was getting married (6 months after meeting the woman), I wrote him back saying, "good luck and best wishes" adding that I deserved better than what I got from him (like not being led on or strung along or purposefully misguided by him), but that as someone (the "devil") once told me, I don't have to like it, I just have to accept.

The idiot wrote me again and offered to pay the concert tickets back as a donation to his MARITAL charity of choice.

Seriously.  Cheating dolt.

Where that brings me is this letter, now very viral on interwebs :D, that I wish I'd had the kohonas to write myself 2 years ago.  How much more fun would that have been???

(very, if you have to ask!)

Enjoy!!!

(and yes, I think Taylor Swift and I could have a running friendship; boys be damned anyway!  :D)

1st Day MCAT Prep

Physics.

Back in fall 2010, I started physics 1 but ended up dropping the entire semester due to circumstances that were beyond my control; let's just say the after affect of telling a public company to restate their financials was just dwindling down the highlight of my career.  Coupled with familial issues, I dropped the semester.

I've never gone back to take the class.  The MCAT has an entire section devoted to physics (and gen chem).

Back then, my professor said I'd have an easy "A" if things hadn't gotten so out of control in my personal life.  He commented that I was teaching other students in my lab the right way to look at things and using analogies to make things more clear.  One of my lab cohorts was a pre-dental student, the other was pre-vet.  I'm sure they've been admitted by now...

Me?

I'm using Khan Academy to brush up on the physics that I don't quite understand, and Exam Krackers for the homework (and the 1001 series).  And tonight, Khan did for me what it always has:

it lightened my load and helped me understand.

Physics is not hard, I actually think I like it - all the math, all the manipulation of data.  Yep, I'm all in.

And, thanks to Khan, I even get the questions right!



(BTW, I don't have a problem with Newton's Law; I'm just using it as an example of what the learning is like watching these videos.  OH!  AND MIT has a similar series that they offer.  I'll keep you posted on what helps the most...)

My Cat Ate That

I don't own a cat.  My roomies and I back in the mid-80s had an adopted cat that our Iraqi roommate found while walking home one day.  And despite that we were not allowed to have cats or dogs, she ignored that and brought the kitten home anyway.

It was Duluth, MN.

It was beyond cold.

We named the kitten, "Fish."  That way when the RA's came and asked if we had a cat or dog, we could say that we had fish.  Oh.  And I had a fish tank to show them with pretty gourami in it.

I digress.

My MCAT is scheduled for April 27th and I am postponing it.  When I look at dates, I see June 20th (still in time for this app cycle),  I see July 2nd (still in time for app cycle) and then a bunch of dates that put me into next year's app cycle given I'm not a 4.0 and would be late in the gate for app review.

So, today while I was slightly bored, I thought about a schedule to get the requisite studying done for the test:

Sat - physics 4 hours, ochem 2
Sun - physics 2 hours, ochem 2
Mon - gen chem 1
Tues - off
Weds - gen chem 2
Thur - phys / ochem review 1 hour
Fri - off

Rinse/repeat for the following week, then change it up.  Biology to replace ochem (which is likely to be my best subject followed by gen chem); keeping physics every week (likely to be my worst), and add in verbal reasoning.

I'm still working full time and know that Tues night is my NCSI night (what's life without Mark Harmon??  OMG, now that I've found TV, I'm not giving up that!), and Friday night is my night with my son to do whatever (generally, movies and dinner).

While evaluating the schedule, I know that as time gets closer, I'll ramp up the hours but must admit, being that the exam is in summer, and I do live in sunny FL on the suncoast, jet skiing is on my brain.

My focus is not on the 10 hours each weekend day but heavy on weekends and review all week long.  That way whatever I cram in my brain on Sat/Sun, stays with me (remnants of ochem 1 so very long ago...)

Now, to get my MCAT changed... and buy a fish!

Pretty Much

Madeleine Albright famously said, “There’s a special place in hell for women who do not help other women."

Over the past two months, by a younger woman with so much talent and equally classless, clueless, arrogant, egomaniacal behavior, I've been told:

1. My Big 4 public accounting background is worth bat guano, or even less than that because she worked for a "public" accounting firm (I use the "" because public does not equal Big 4; never has, never will, especially when that "public" accounting firm simply means CPAs are doing tax work for a corporation)

2. My background and career as: Director - Big 4, Vice President - $2B public company (you know, the ones you buy stock in either through a brokerage house or online - like ETrade, Scott, Ameritrade, etc) is worthless experience (yes, those words)

3. She knows. It. All. From dog pedigrees, to different types of organic molecules, to car engines, to roof top ornamental designs, to Big Mac v. double cheeseburger calories, to candy ingredients, and IUPAC naming (of course, she's wrong 99% of the time, but I digress)

4. She butts into conversations that have nothing to do with her, or the work, or the business, and are outside her privy of information (you know, like two people who are conversing say about internal audit, of which she again claims to know. it. all)

And top it off, she lies. A lot. About everything. And she manages a team of 6, all but one of whom, can't stand her but are hog tied to do anything about it.

Last week, she lied again. To make it worse, she threw me under the bus (again; and I defended myself, again).

And last night, this is the conversation that I heard her loudly talking on the phone:

Ego M: "So, why are you still at work?

Ego M: "Ah, you've got dick on the brain. Perhaps, it'd be better in your mouth or other areas" /snicker, "than on your brain. There's no pleasure there."

Ego M: "At the firm I used to work for, that public accounting firm? There was a man with a last name of Dic. He had a daughter who got license plates with 'LIL DIC' on them. Her boyfriend would drive the car only to be asked often if he indeed had a little dick, but they would laugh it off and say that is was, actually, rather huge." snicker snicker

Really?

In 2013 this kind of behavior is tolerated at one of the largest companies in the world?  Let alone anywhere? 

There IS a fine line between funny and classless and inappropriate. At work, this was definitely that latter two. Sadly, because this young woman is smart but insecure, narcissistic, she will never know what it feels like to do the right thing, and will never know what it means to live up to the quote by Madeline Albright. 

When will med school get here? Seriously, I know people like that are everywhere but I like to think in smaller doses in an industry where those kinds of conversations will happen in private, behind closed doors, where, it might have been funny... or not.