I enjoy thumbing my nose at unrest. While I was living at home (I can't remember when, exactly), working at some job or another, a hurricane brewed ominously on the coast, and people began to panic, and to prepare. I went to our local grocery store - H.E.B. - not because I wanted to pick up batteries and baby food, distilled water and duct tape like everyone else...no, I distinctly remember craving key-lime pie. That was it - nothing else; and so I stood in line with my trophy, while the anxious shoppers around me glared at my flippancy, giving me the dirty eye - or, what we call ojo. I enjoy thumbing my nose at unrest, but not because I am unsympathetic to the plight of others - I only thumb my nose at unrest that doesn't touch me. I'd been pleased that this economic nosedive hasn't affected me that much - sure, my bank was bailed out, but my money's fine (last I checked). Since I'm a student, I won't be looking for a job anytime soon. Thus, while this plague of decaying money rages around me, it's almost as if I sit calmly in the eye, eating my plum-filled Christmas pie.
That is....until now. Our landlord has been weaving through the process of refinancing this condo since before we moved in at the end of April. Florida, it seems, has some of the most atrocious sub-prime mortgage travesties, and the fallout continues to spiral. I'm not sure I've mentioned this before, but we're living in an area of considerable wealth, although the changing times have certainly taken a toll; when I last lived her, Lamborghinis and Ferraris were as commonplace as Fords and Chevvy's in most cities. Now, it's the lower-end BMWs, Mercedes, and Audis that seem to be the in thing, with a few Bentleys thrown in for good measure. Nevertheless, our landlord is apparently being foreclosed-upon. Now, this doesn't terribly upset me - I'm planning on being long-gone by the time anything is done about it, but I like our landlord; he's been very easy to work with, and I hope that things work out well for him.
I'm sure things are going to work out well for us. Nicole and I have decided to push the STEP back a few days, in order to better buttress our learning, and to leave time for last-minute tweaks. The pace of study has been moving along nicely, with subjects being completed in a timely manner - we've been doing questions in the morning, watching lectures in the afternoons, and hitting the books in the evening, and I've thankfully finished with the first year nonsense. Pharmacology, while it may be tedious, was actually fun for me, and it was the one subject in which I took meticulous notes - that was how I did so well, and, luckily, that's what I'm doing right now. Knowing myself, though, I'm in danger of resting on my laurels and not pushing myself, so I've got to make sure that, even though I think I've got it, and have done well on nearly everything pharm-related that I've ever done, I don't take it too lightly.
Today's our day off - that's the only reason you're hearing from me. These days of rest have fallen into a pleasant pattern - we'll get up, go to the gym, and then go shopping. Nicole likes the produce department at Publix despite the hideousness of their bananas, so that's where we go, with an obligatory stop by Target. Then, we'll go sit and read by the pool for a few hours, before fixing dinner for the week, and relaxing a bit. I like that things have fallen into a pattern, because it allows me to read and enjoy myself, without resenting the dogged determination with which I have to approach my studies ("CARPE" has become my new motto). I've managed to get through Malcolm Gladwell's ternion of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers, and I'm pleased to say that each was better than the last. I also finally managed to finish Raymond Feist's Magician: Apprentice - I've been working through it a few pages at a time all semester, and it's done. I picked it up because it's supposed to be one of those classic fantasy books that I always felt I should have been exposed to. Speaking of fantasy, though, I've finally broken down and ordered George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, which was the fantasy novel of its year. I tend to judge some books based on their amazon reviews, and this one has something like 1400 reviews, mostly positive - that's....well, that's Harry Potter, or Twilight level popularity.
The thing is, though, the rest of the Game of Thrones series has fallen into a trap that's plaguing epic fantasy right now - a new author will write a fantastic book, and then keep on writing, not knowing when to quit. The fervor whipped up by their novel nuances and characterizations proves too much of a money cow to pen final chapters, and so they keep going and going and going - the Wheel of Time series, the Sword of Truth series, the Malazan series - they all seem to fall into the same pattern. One author has even died before completing his works. Now, I'm all for epic-ness (thanks, Tolkienn), but some folks oughta know when enough's enough. That being said, I'm only committing myself to the first book in this series, since it's supposed to be all down-hill from here. However, I'm not going to start it just yet; in light of Fox's show "Lie to Me", which is based on the groundbreaking work of Dr. Paul Ekman - as well as Gladwell's references to Ekman in Blink, I've picked up Dr. Ekman's book Emotions Revealed - it seems like my kinda thing.
Despite all of this excitement over escapist literature (that's right...for me, even mainstream psych lit is escapist), many hours a day are still spent poring over Kaplan's green books. Such is life.
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