A Penis Free Columbia

Hey guys! Time for a quick update.

So I have been orienting my ass off for 8 hours a day since last Friday. I dont start actual work until this coming Monday. Last Friday, Monday, and Tuesday were my OB/GYN orientation days and Wed, Thursday, and Friday are my hospital orientation days. The hospital orientation days are extra-painful for me since I went to school here and am already VERY acquainted with Palmetto Richland hospital. Anyways, during my OB/GYN orientation we got our rotation schedule for the next 12 months. We have 10 months on-service (OB, GYN, Night Float, or Ultrasound) and 2 months off-service (Family Practice). I had specifically requested months ago to start on-service because I wanted to jump right in and not feel left out. So what did I get assigned to first? Why, Family Practice, of course. That OK though because our family practice months are pretty chill. We are just assigned to work in the outpatient clinic everyday and take OB call every other weekend. So, I found out that because I am the resident on FP, I am also in charge of castrating (circumsizing) all the newborn boys in the hospital. I almost had a panic attack when I got this news. I got no problem operating on an old lady for 6 hours, but the thought of accidentally castrating a newborn is terrifying to me. The picture you see above is the torture device we use for removing the excess skinnage on the babies, called the gomco. I was so nervous when I found I had to start off doing this that I had one of the attendings take me over to the newborn nursery so I could practice a few rounds. Well, after the bleeding and screaming finally stopped, I noticed that I had actually created a very nice looking penis for Baby Boy X. I think he will make some lucky woman very happy one day. However, even after my success I am still extremely shaky about the whole thing, so a little word to the wise. If you are reading this blog and about to pop out a baby, you might want to avoid Palmetto Richland for about a month or so. That is, if you want to be guaranteed that your little boy will be able to have children someday. Just damn.

Meet my New BFFs

Well, it's Saturday morning and I am super hungover from the heterosexual life mate's all girls dinner last night and also super bored because nothing is on the boob tube so I thought I would blog again! First and foremost, let me tell you about the wonderful menu the HLM prepared for us last night. The dinner started with my top 2 favorite appetizers, roasted red pepper hummus with pita chips and yes you guessed it, nuts. I think we all know about my love for nuts. After several glasses of wine and even more fistfuls of nuts, we were served our first course of feta, cucumber, and tomato salad. Yum. This was topped only by the main dish of lemon pepper salmon on a bed of spicy mashed sweet potatoes. I love it when the HLM cooks for me. I think Aurelia and Johanna enjoyed it just as much as me seeing as how we all licked our plates.

Anyways, I thought I would go ahead and introduce you to the girls I am going to be spending 80+ hours a week with for the next 4 years of my life. I was really anxious about meeting them because people who go into OB/GYN usually fall into one of two categories. There are the blonde, petite, Lilly Pulitzer wearing nice-to-your-face-but-talk-about-you-behind-your-back types and the big, butch, I-say-whatever-I-want-right-to-your-face types. How I got in the mix I have no idea. Well, there is a total of 5 of us and I already know one of the girls because she went to med school with me. She is married and just had a baby 4 months ago so clearly that is the last you will ever hear of her. So I am very pleased to say that the 3 other girls do not fit in to either of the previously mentioned categories. The first girl is named Julie and I can't remember where she is from but she went to med school in the Caribbean....St. Maarten to be exact. So while I was crammed in a small dark study room with no windows on the second floor of the library, she was lying on a white sand beach switching between her Physiology notes and the new issue of Vanity Fair. What a biznatch. Anyways, she seems really cool and her boyfriend is a vidalia onion farmer somewhere in Georgia. She said she is pretty sure he is not going to be able to move here because apparently he can't farm onions in Columbia, SC. The next girl is Allison and she is from Toledo, Ohio. She moved down here about a month and a half ago and this guy she had been dating for awhile came down to visit 2 weeks ago. She said that during his visit they got a wild hair and decided to get hitched. She bought a place out in the Northeast so they went out to the fountain at Sandhills shopping center and somewhere between buying creams at Bath and Bodyworks and eating at Wild Wings they got married. Huh. Well, she is funny because she said that when she moved down here she thought that everyone was going to be all nice and Southern and that she was surprised because none of her new neighbors had come over to meet her. I thought this was strange so I started asking her some questions to figure out what was going on. It turns out that the culprit is a "Go Away" doormat on her front porch. She said that up in Ohio this is commonplace and everyone knows that this is just a joke but I quickly informed her that that is not how we roll in the South. So I think she is going to get rid of the mat and hopefully make nice with her neighbors. The last girl is named Susan and she is from Pinehurst, NC which I have never heard of but apparently is just up Highway 1 (which I also have no idea where that is). She went to school in Israel and is dating a 7-foot tall Jew that is still over in Israel. He is hoping to get in the Masters of Business program at USC next year so he won't be around for at least a year. Well, thankfully they all seem like a great bunch of girls and I think we are going to get along just fine. Sheeewww.

So tonight is the "Welcome the New Interns" party at the home of my favorite attending, Dr. Sara Smith. It is a cookout and a dessert cook-off for the new interns. I have been testing out recipes all week long and I thought I had this shizzle in the bag until I met the girls yesterday. They also are big cooks and have been feverishly scanning FoodNetwork.com all week for recipes. Crap!! Yesterday at orientation they were talking about sticks of butter, cream cheese, Crisco, lard....I've got my work cut out for me. I found a great recipe for lemon bars and asked my roomie Todd if he thought that would be the golden ticket and he quickly let me know that if I want to win this thing, its gotta be chocolate. So its 11AM now and the party is at 6:30 and I still don't know what I am going to make. Oh, and I'm really hungover and don't even feel like getting off the couch.

Leave me some comments about what you think will win it for me. I'm bored.

Cheers!

UPDATE: I made Emeril's Ooey Gooey Chocolate Cupcakes for the party and didn't win a darn thing, but I did snap a shot of my new BFFs. Pictured from left: Allison, Susan, Mua, Julie. Alicia didn't make it in the pic cuz she was pumping or feeding or doin sumpin wit her baby.

Dayton Rocks!!

Heeelllooo again blog-fans! I have just gotten home from my first day (of 7) of orientation for my OB/GYN residency that starts on July 1st. Let me tell ya, after doing exactly nothing for almost 3 months now, sitting in a room listening to boring ass lectures for 8 hours has really taken it out of me. However, not only am I exhausted, I'm also slightly panicked. This is gonna be rough. Anyways, in an attempt to relieve some tension I thought I would blog about Julie and Jon's wedding in Dayton, Ohio last weekend.

First off, I have to give credit where credit is due. I'm fairly certain that this was the most fun wedding I have ever been to (sorry Willy and Lindsay, but anything short of leg amputation would have made this a better wedding for me). I was worried that I wouldn't get there because when I got to the airport in Charlotte, they informed me that once I flew in to Atlanta I would have to see an agent right away because I didn't have a seat assigned for the flight from Atlanta to Dayton. So of course, knowing me, what's the first thing I do when I get to Atlanta?? If you think it is go find the agent, you clearly don't know me at all because the first thing I always do when I get to an airport is find the nearest bar and order a bloody mary. You know how most people have their own little travel rituals or things that they allow themselves to do only when they are traveling?? Well, mine is eating gummy bears and/or Skittles and drinking bloody marys. At no other time will you see me eating a bag of Skittles.....can't say the same for the bloody marys. Anywhoo, once I finally made my way to the ticketing agent, he seemed shocked and appalled that I didn't already have a seat on this extremely overbooked flight. So the agent goes on the loudspeaker and kindly asks for volunteers to take the next flight. No one stands up. He offers a free roundtrip flight. No one stands up. He offers a roundtrip flight plus AirTran bucks. No one stands up. To make a long story short, he ends up having to give away 2 roundtrip flights, $200 in AirTran bucks, and a free "gift" in order for one measley person to stand up. Just damn. So I happily head towards my coach seat (I was hoping a first classer would offer up their seat but no such luck) and order myself a bloody mary.

Right after I get in to Dayton it is pretty much time to head to the rehearsal dinner which is a cookout at a country club. So Sarah, Susanj, Conrad (Susanj's boyfriend), and myself all make the 30 minute drive out to the cookout. When I got there, I headed straight for the keg and was ecstatic to see that it was a keg of Killian's!! Julie tells me that she got it just for me, but I have my doubts. She said that at Willy's wedding I was the only one who actually bitched about the keg of Bud Light but she knew that if I was the only one speaking up about it, everyone else must be thinking it. Smart girl. Anyways, then I headed over to the food table where I found an array of things that would send me straight to the ER. After deliberating for about 10 minutes over whether I was more likely to choke on an all-beef hot dog or a hamburger, I chose the hamburger. Well, I was completely grief stricken over whether to start eating or not when someone (sorry, I can't remember who) saved me from myself and pointed out the turkey and cheese croissants sitting on the table that I had overlooked. Shew....disaster averted.

Nothing much else happened at the rehearsal dinner, but we tapped the keg within a good hour and a half and then made the drunken trek 30 miles back to the Marriott. We had noticed earlier in the day that the Marriott had a pool bar so we all decided that once we got back we would all meet up at the pool for some more drinking. Sarah and I were the first to get back to our rooms, so I went out on the terrace to look at how many people were in the pool. Well, I could barely even see the pool for the 400 people that were crowded around the bar area. There was even a stage with quite possibly the worst cover band I had ever heard belting out Prince songs. I felt like I was looking down on a club from the balcony or something. Once I went down there for a closer inspection, I saw that there was exactly no one in the pool and that all the girls there were totally skanked out like they were at some LA club and not the Marriott hotel bar in Dayton, Ohio. It was totally bizarre, and I of course forgot to take pictures. Anyways, the night ended up with me finding Sarah puking in the bathroom of our room and everyone else playing Joe's Wii on the plasma TV in the hotel lobby.

On to the wedding day. It was my first Catholic wedding and it kinda seemed like we were at a church service where there just happened to be a wedding taking place also. I guess that's just how Catholics roll. After the service we all headed outside to find not only an enormous RV, but also someone dressed as the Tiger (Clemson's mascot). Apparently, Julie's dad had purchased a 1985 RV just to take the wedding party from the church to the reception. Little did he know, it would also become the drunkmobile at around 11 PM and start taking everyone's sweaty butts back to the hotel. Anyways, we saw the wedding party off and then headed to the reception which was held at a place which apparently serves as a farmer's market where you buy fruits and vegetables during the week. You know what that means, no a/c. And as you know, I am quite possibly the sweatiest person alive. I was rocking a full body sweat after being there for a solid 5 minutes. I think Sarah said it best...."talk about swamp ass..." She was wearing a thong, so she had to pick her dress off of her ass everytime she stood up. Ew.

The reception got off to a great start around 3:30 with lots of drinking, good food, and the classic Long family Goldschlager shot. This is about the time that I met my new BFF Kimberly Sims. Kimberly is our friend Slimer's fiance from Texas and she is awesome. I know by the end of the night, Slimer was wishing I would shut the hell up because I could not stop talking about how much I liked his fiance. You woulda thought I wanted to marry her, for rizzle. Anyways, the reception continued on its merry way and the only bumps in the road that I noticed were an extremely unfunny, long, rhyming poem created by the bride and groom and a bizarro taking off the garter dance that involved sunglasses and what I think was a Right Said Fred song. We managed to drink through that and I think I can credit Clapp with noticing that the centerpieces looked like great things to put beer in. They were like these 3 feet tall skinny glass vases with some flowers coming out the top. We all took bets on how many beers you could fit in one (I guessed four), but it actually turned out to be like 1.5 because the things were so freakin skinny. In the picture below you can see Clapp and Joe drinking out of them. So after drinking a few more vases of beer, everyone decides that it would be a great idea to get in the fountain. All the girls, even Christine in her bridesmaid dress, hike up their dresses and jump in the fountain because shakin' their booties in the fountain sounds like a much better idea than shakin' them on the dance floor. Duh. I gotta say, this is at about hour 6 of the 8 hour reception. To top all of this excitement off, pizza gets delivered to us at around hour 7. Oh yeah, and Sarah is smoking some random cigar with some random bow in her hair. I tried to attach a pic but it wouldn't upload. So after about 8 hours at the reception, the DJ plays his last song, and we all head outside to find the RV waiting to take us all back to Club Marriott.

It was a really great time. Mad props to Jules and Jon. Well, I am much less tense than I was when I started writing this blog but I am very worried for the life of the blog. After my first day of orientation I am fairly sure I'm not gonna have enough time to go to the bathroom, much less write my blog. We'll see how it goes though. Right now I am off to a Friday night girl's dinner prepared by Chef HLM.

Lovin' the Dirty South

Being in ATL for the past few days definitely affirmed one suspicion that I had about myself....I am TOO BIG for South Carolina. I mean, I was created to live the fast paced city life and am saddened to think that I have been stifled for the past 26 years in country bumpkin South Kakalakey. It was so awesome to just walk out the door of Ryan's apartment and be in the middle of all things happening...awesome shops, restaurants, bars, parks...you name it and it was right there. Even the gym next to his place is a cooler gym than mine with an even cooler name, Urban Body Fitness. I want to workout there. I feel like I have been trying to get out of SC basically since I was old enough to realize that you can get out of SC, and I just can't seem to get it done. WTF?? Clemson had to offer me a full ride, then I had to go to med school, then I had to not match in any of the awesome cities I wanted move to. The forces are really workin' again me here. And since I can't seem to get out, I make a motion that all of my blog-fans move to fun and exciting cities so I can at least go visit you there. Capesh?

I got to ATL around 4:30 (should have been 3:45 but I got stuck in one of the few drawbacks of big cities - traffic) and after checking in on the blog and facebook, Ryan and I headed out to my old stompin' grounds. My sister went to college in Atlanta what seems like a hundred million years ago but was actually when I was around the ages of 8-12. While she was there I discovered the area in Atlanta called Little Five Points. We have a Five Points in Columbia, but Little Five Points is nothing like it and back when I was 12 I thought it was the coolest place that could possibly exist on Earth. It is where all the freaks in the city hang out, playing their slit your wrist music while openly selling and using their hallucinogenic drugs. I remember a time back when I was about 11 years old that a guy on the street asked me if I wanted to buy some ex and after telling my dad about the whole incident, we just continued on our merry way. WTF?? I mean for rizzle now, shouldn't my dad have yanked me out of there so fast I thought I was seeing double?? I don't think any of my current blog-fans knew me in middle school, but Little Five Points is where I bought all the black and white striped thigh highs and neon green skirts I used to wear. Anyways, after walking down memory lane for a little while Ryan and I headed over to a an Italian restaurant called Osteria for some eats. I highly recommend it the next time you go to ATL because it was affordable and just like the food I had over in Italy...oh, and it just happened to be half price bottle of wine night. Yippee! Next we headed over to Pozole for some of the best margaritas I've had in my entire life and I guess it was around margarita number 2 when I started talkin smack to Ryan. For some reason I decided to tell him that I could totally school him at a game of pool and before I knew what hit me, I found myself at a new bar with a pool stick in my hand. For those of you who have played pool with me, you know that I absolutely cannot school anyone at pool, not even my cat Doc. They always say that the drunker you get, the better you get at pool, but I I don't know who those people are because the drunker I got, the more times I whiffed the ball. I was taking a good four to five shots before I even hit the cue ball. So the picture you see of me with my shoes off in a dirty bar (ewww) where it appears that I might be about to win the game, is actually an optical illusion as I did not win any games in any normal or acceptable fashion. I would normally feel really bad for how horribly I was playing, however, sadly Ryan was not that much better. Sorry Bello. Even worse, there was some kind of championship tournament going on at the table directly beside us with people who can actually play pool. Yeah, they hated us.

You may recall, the next day was going to be our day of trivia and moneymaker shakin. After Ryan willingly carried my bags around Lenox Square for a few hours and after we caught up on Season 2 of Arrested Development for a few more hours, we headed over to this bar called Locals for a night of trivia. After stressing over a team name for a few minutes (since this is the most important and humorous part of trivia) we agreed upon the name Twin Peaks. In my opinion the funniest team name of the night went to "Paris Hilton is back in jail and the guards are cumming." Despite the fact that the questions were much easier than I am used to (who doesn't know that "Cleveland Rocks" is the theme song for The Drew Carey Show??), Twin Peaks came in at a disappointing 7th place. Alas, we needed the rest of Substance P. Trivia was over at around 10 PM and Ryan informed me that the dance club did not open until friggin' midnight. WTF?? Well, I was already tired from the night before so I fell asleep at approximately 10:01 PM and did not end up shakin my tailfeather or moneymaker or pretty much anything. I suck.

That was the trip in a nutshell. Tomorrow morning I am off to the booming metropolis of Dayton, Ohio to see Julie and Jon get hitched and will be back Sunday evening. In the words of Dave Atell and repeated to me by Clapp, "I went to Dayton, Ohio, recently. Know what's a fun thing to do there? Pack up and get the fuck out, that's what." Can't wait!

Cheers!

Off to ATL

Hey guys, I know I haven't updated in awhile, but I have been fairly busy believe it or not. In a few minutes, I am headed to ATL to visit none other than Mr. Ryan Bello for a few days before he makes the big move to Seattle. He has guaranteed me plenty of blogging and facebooking time while I'm there so I'll be able to update.

Quickly, the only plans I have for the trip are blogging, facebooking, and shopping to find a dress to wear to Julie's wedding this weekend. Ryan has planned for us a night of trivia and shakin' our moneymakers on Wednesday night at this bar by his apartment. Little does Ryan know that I am solely the entertainment for trivia nights here in Columbia and not actually the brains of the operation. I am nothing without the rest of Substance P. Nevertheless, I'm sure he will figure that out pretty darn quickly.

Check back later for the update.

Cheers!

"I Can't Handle the Meat" AKA The Blog About Joe

Hello there blog-fans! After a short stint of doing nothing and having nothing to blog about, I am finally back in the land of those who have a life. This past weekend one of my friends from college, Big Willy aka William Powell, got married down in Charleston. I was really excited to go down there because this was the first time since college that the whole crew (minus Suanj and the Staff) were going to be together since graduation and I knew that I would finally have something to blog about. I was sure that this was going to be a weekend full of heavy drinking and crazy antics reminiscent of our 4 years together at Clemson. Unfortunately, at least for me, the weekend o' fun quickly turned in to the weekend o'no fun.

Mel and I drove down to Charleston together and got to our friends Julie and Jon's house late Friday afternoon. The two of us were going to be staying there for the weekend along with our friends Suses and Chris Clapp. We all showered up and then headed out for the rehearsal dinner which was a barbeque out on a beautiful river on James Island. Well after I started itching all over, I realized that the so-called beautiful river was actually a freakin cesspool of mating mosquitoes. After about an hour at the party I had appoximately 400 mosquito bites and was full on miserable. My Irish heritage was workin' hard against me that night. I was totally that girl at the party who wouldn't stop complaining about the friggin bugs. Clapp advised me to just get so drunk that I wouldn't care about the pain anymore but this just led me to being drunk and itchy instead of being happily buzzing and itchy. Anyways, this is where my friend Joe and I somehow got to talking about the blog. I learned that Joe is one of those who reads the blog but doesn't comment. He challenged me by saying that no one comments on the blog because it is not about him and that if it was, there would be an astronomical amount of comments. So this is your chance Joe. I'll even post a pic of you to entice any lady friends out there to leave ya a comment. We'll see how many comments you get.

Anyways, after we all finally left the cesspool, we headed over to Justin's house for some more drinking and beer pong. It wasn't long after we had gotten there that we realized that we were actually not young and crazy, but old and tired so we headed back to Julie's house where I slept on a half inflated air mattress and scratched myself to sleep.

I woke up the next morning, showered, and got ready for the 4:30 wedding. The four of us girls decided to go downtown for a little pre-wedding shopping and lunch when tropical storm Berry hit. For those of you who don't know, Charleston is miserable when it rains because the whole city floods, not to mention the fact that the reception for the wedding was indoor/outdoor. There would be a big tent outside that housed the band, dance floor, bar, food, etc.....Well, we got drenched and continued to shop as I informed the girls that all this misery would be worth it if they had my two most favoritest wedding foods, shrimp and grits and the carving station man, at the reception. I could not shut up about how making little meat sandwiches at a wedding makes me sooo incredibly happy.

The wedding went off with only a few hitches, including a 30 minute delay due to a late 350 lb wheelchair bound grandfather whom our friend Shaun (the best man) wheeled in to the church but failed to lock the chair causing the grandfather to take a little trip backwards down the aisle before Shaun caught him. After several chuckles, the wedding began. Anyways, we all headed over to the reception and I was ecstatic to see that there were shrimp and grits AND the carving station man. I had had a few glasses of wine and was feeling good when we decided it was time to eat. I got a big ole plate of food, sat down, and took the first bite of my meat sandwich when I felt it get stuck in my throat. Now, this is not the first time this has happened. Last Thanksgiving during a party at my aunt's house I got a piece of beef tenderloin stuck in my throat. After an extremely painful and unsightly 2 and a half hours in the bathroom trying to make myself puke, I had to go to the emergency room. Well, at the reception as soon as I felt the meat get stuck I ran to the nearest bathroom knowing what was about to go down. The thing that makes this problem so unsightly is that when something is stuck in your esophagus you can't swallow anything so you have to spit up saliva every couple of seconds. Gross. So, I spent the next 3 hours in the bathroom spitting up and trying to make myself puke while everyone else got drunk. When the reception was over and everyone was deciding where to next, I decided it was time for me to make another trip to the ER. I really didn't want to go and tried to suffer through it all this time because I have the world's shittiest insurance and I knew this trip was going to cost me a small fortune. Well, another problem here was deciding which drunkard to drag with me. Drunk Julie happily surrendered herself but told me that she was way too intoxicated to drive so I would have to drive myself to the ER while spitting and puking. Awesome. We waded through the flood to the car and pulled up to MUSC's emergency room around 11PM. By this time, the pain had reached an all time high so I was quickly called back by a nurse to answer some very important questions about my religous background and my mother's maiden name. I finally get put in a "room," stripped down, put on the gown, and began to wait on the doctor when wouldn't you know it, I felt the damn thing go down. I called the nurse and told her that I felt it go down, but she told me that I still had to be seen by the doctor. After a few minutes the doctor comes in and basically tells me that I am a stoopy and need to stop wolfing down meat sandwiches. Maybe I should try this little thing called chewing.

Well drunk Julie and I leave the hospital and meet up with the rest of the now unbelieveably drunk crew out at a bar. The minute I walk through the door I am bombarded with 3 shot glasses and am being ordered to take them. Believe it not, those drunk stoopies couldn't understand that since I hadn't swallowed in 3 hours I had no desire to chug liquor. Joe did find it very amusing, however, to repeatedly tell me that "I just can't handle the meat." Needless to say, to everyone's surprise including my own, I had my first and last experience as the designated driver that night.

So, Julie and Jon's wedding is in two weeks so I have a chance to redeem myself. Before I left, all my friends informed me that under no circumstance am I to touch any form of meat at their reception. I mean.....pretty sure that won't be a problem guys. As much fun as pain, spitting, puking, and a trip to the ER are, I think I 'll be able to refuse the carving station man.

Cheers!

Note: Joe is on the far right in the above picture. The other fools pictured are Keelan on the left and Jon in the middle.