A few things, since its been nearly a year:

• This LiveJournal is ten years old. That is ca-raaazy! Though I haven't posted in such a long time, I remain an active LiveJournal user. I check ONTD and Twatlight every day, keep up with my friends list.
   
• School: I'm finished with Year One of medical school and even though I finished over a month ago, I'm still in shock. I did not fail out. Matter of fact, I did...quite well, actually. The material is not hard, persay, it's just the sheer volume of stuff that they throw at you. Every day they pile it on, and you're just expected to keep up with it somehow. Medical school is not impossible. It is hard, yes, but not as impossible as people say it is. Just like everything in life...nothing is ever as bad as they say it is. But my life down there? Consists of studying all day, every day. And if you think "all day" means only three or four hours a day, you are so horrifically wrong. You undershot that by about another four hours, and that's on the weekdays. On the weekends, I put in anywhere from ten to fourteen hours during exam time. So yes, medical school is doable if you put all the necessary work into it.
• More school: And as much as I bitch and moan down there about how I never get to relax, I love the work, love the material. It is the material itself that drives me to want to do well. I am currently toying with Pediatric Cardiology or Endocrinology. Possibly even Oncology. Not sure yet, though...all I know is that I don't think I want to be a general pediatrician anymore.
• School, the social aspect of it: So with all of that studying, my friends and I need to blow off steam every once in a while, and rightfully so. Most people go out on Friday night and then stay in on Saturday to study. That's once a week that we go out and socialize. Once a week. So of course when we've had a few drinks, when we look sort of pretty and not in our usual classroom attire of shorts and plain tank tops, when we are out having fun, we take lots of pictures to document it. This way, we don't just remember the late nights in study hall or the feeling of wanting to pull our own hair out after we've looked at the same lecture for the seventh time and still don't have it all down. We want to remember that we have fun, and most of all, that we're allowed  to have fun. We feel like how we felt when we were 19 with fake IDs sneaking into a bar for the first time, the giddyness, the excitement. So it fucking irks the living shit out of me when people say comment with things like, "Aren't you supposed to be in medical school?" "Boy, you don't look like you're studying too hard down there!" "Seems like more fun than work!" Yeah yeah, fuck you, asshole. You have no fucking idea, so shut the fuck up.
• Home: Home life is the same as usual. Eric is still here, still my rock. My family is more loveable than ever, save for a few instances. My grandmother is slowly losing it in her old age, and I'm pretty sure she's got early stage Alzheimer's. Of course it scares the daylights out of me. In the ten months that I've been away, it is remarkable just how much motor and cognitive function she's lost. I'm scared as to what I'm going to come home to at the end of this year. I'm trying not to think about it.
• Broadway: Every year, a new peice comes out that reinstills the hope in me that new good theatre is still being created, that not everything is just a rehash of some movie or television show. In 2007, it was Spring Awakening. Last year it was In The Heights. This year, its Next to Normal. What a ridiculous, fabulous show. Everyone in it is insanely talented. Alice Ripley has the acting and singing chops of Patti Lupone proportions. Jennifer Damiano, I don't know how they could ever cast you as just a swing in Spring Awakening. You are so, so much better than that. Shame on you, Jim Carnahan. Even you, Tripp Vanderbilt (I got into Gossip Girl while at school so I can have a stupid TV show to watch..something frivolous and silly with beautiful people and beautiful clothes, and obscenely unrealistic problems. So shoot me), impressed the bejesus out of me.
• Hanson:  Because they will never go away, they will always be in my life and in my heart. I saw Taylor Hanson perform with Tinted Windows Wednesday night. It's still surreal that I saw him. Why does he always looks so ridiculously sexy, even in the worst outfit imagineable? Tight white jeans with a brown belt, his band's T-shirt in a skintight fit, a scarf around his neck and white sunglasses. Mullet haircut. Stop being so inadvertently sexy, Taylor Hanson. You're making me wonder about myself. I love the fact that they gave him a tambourine to play on stage, just so he would have something to do with his hands. I've seen the YouTube videos of him just singing and being a frontman, and its clear he doesn't know what to do with himself when he's not playing an instrument. It was probably the most awkward thing I've ever watched. When Taylor's not fronting with Hanson, he says things that Hanson's Taylor would never say. Like "fuck" and "shit" and referencing sexual stuff. It's a nice departure. We all know you had a shotgun wedding, Taylor. Stop trying to be so...Evangelical. Your wholesomeness died along with your single life way back in 2002.

So will I keep updating? Who knows. I always say I will, or try to, and then never do. So let's just leave it at a "we'll see". If the mood so strikes me, then so be it.

Shame on you, Hillary Clinton. I was never going to vote for you, but I did expect more.

In a perfect world, this is what I will be able to do:

June 1st - Passing Strange matinee with Eric - definite
June 6th - Gypsy - definite
June 8th - Xanadu - Tentative (I know, I know...so sue me!)
June 15 - Staying in for the Tony's
June 22 - Leaving for tentative vaca with Eric. Not yet confirmed.
June 29 - Resting from vacation
July 6 - In the Heights (hopefully...if the Tony's don't destroy it, which they probably will)
July 10 - The Little Mermaid for Gabby's birthday - definite
July 13 - August: Osage County matinee/(MAYBE) Spring Awakening evening
July 20 - Boeing-Boeing matinee/Spamalot evening
July 27 - Saved matinee/Port Authority evening
August 3 - Spring Awakening matinee/[title of show] evening

Anybody who wants to come along/meet up let me know. I will not be able to see another Broadway show until I am home again in January (Can you say EQUUS?), so hence the absurdity of this schedule.

How in the FUCK do people get stage seat AA4?!? It's impossible :( :( :(

I want...a big, fat, juicy steak. With creamed spinach. And cheesy, garlic potatoes that you know, you KNOW, were made with an obscene amount of butter. A chopped salad of some sort to start. And a fabulous, delectable chocolate dessert, ice cream on top preferred. A bottle of Pinot Grigio or Reisling than I can get inexplicably tipsy on. 

Hell yeah. 

Food and I have a very strong relationship, ever since my days as a swarthy nine year old with an unhealthy affinity for pasta. When everyone else's after school snack was a granola bar or a few cookies, mine was a half of a pound of fettucine, in my grandmother's sauce chock full of sausage and fennel and whole garlic cloves. Every day. It wasn't cute. 

Since then, I have "slimmed out" as many people have put it, having learned something called portion control and oh, I don't know, common sense? But I've never stopped loving food, something that's both a blessing and a curse. I'll try almost anything once. I can count the foods that I know I don't like on one hand. When someone asks me about a restaurant, any restaurant, I can pretty much recall any meal I've ever eaten there. I regularly look up menus online...just because I'm curious. I can't pick just one favorite food; it changes on a daily basis. 

Every now and  then I'll get a craving for something I've eaten sometime before. The other night I was working at the restaurant, trying to think of what kind of salad I wanted to order for dinner, when all I could think about was the buffalo mozzarella that I ate in the caprese salad in Sorrento. I have never tasted fresh mozzarella like that in my life, and I've eaten it ever since I've had the ability to eat solid  foods. A few weeks ago, I had a sudden urge for macaroni and cheese, something so simple and so ridiculously void of any nutritional value. I made it a healthy (or healthier, rather), homemade way with melted 2% american cheese and a huge dollop of part-skim ricotta cheese for good measure, mixed in to whole wheat rotini. It wasn't half bad, given the odd mixture of cheeses I used. My mother makes the most amazing eggplant parmigiana but she made THE best batch of it over the past summer, where the marinara sauce was homemade from the tomatoes and the basil from our backyard. The flavor was explosive. There is no other way to describe it. She has tried to duplicate it ever since, but hasn't been able to match it exactly. I pray that one day she will. Eric and I ordered this baked apple dessert from Grande Luxe Cafe the last time we were there and I still remember the way the soft, sugar-laden crust felt in my mouth. That crust was the best part, better than the baked apples in the middle and the ice cream and caramel on top.

I both love and hate that I enjoy food so much. I feel sorry for picky eaters. They miss out on so much. 

Can you tell I'm hungry?

Dear God, please take this sticky, yucky, achy, bleary-eyed version of myself away from me. My throat feels like Sweeney Todd himself worked his magic on it. I have turned into an obsessive compulsive sneezer. I sound colic-y. If I were a dwarf from Snow White, I would undoubtedly be Sneezy. If I were a Spice Girl, I'd be Sniffly Spice. If I were in some sort of normal state of mind, I wouldn't be writing this ridiculous entry. 

I hate colds.