Making my day

I bought a bicycle this summer to replace the one that was stolen in DC. It's a 1981 Schwinn World Sport. Nothing special by any means.

The red paint was starting to flake off, so I went to the store and got a can of blue spray paint. I spent hours stripping off the old paint with sandpaper, and then painted it in the storage room downstairs. Then I got some fake Colnago stickers on Ebay (Colnago makes super-nice, super-expensive Italian bicycles) and put them on, kind of as a joke.

So riding to school today, some guys rode past me (I try to ride slowly so I'm not covered with sweat when I get to school). One of the guys admired my bike, and then promptly offered me 500 dollars for it.

I was taken a bit off guard, and then told him that it was actually a Schwinn that I had repainted. Damn. Could have had 500 bucks.

Rug Day

So I woke up this morning and looked on Craig's list for stuff. I've been looking for a rug for my dining room table for months. I found a much smaller rug that would fit nicely in my hallway. So I called the guy to inquire, and ended up driving out to Bellevue to one of those brand-new cookie-cutter subdivisions.

Turns out the guy imports rugs from Iran and uses craig's list to drum up business. One thing led to another, and I ended up with a 10 X 13 rug from Kashmar. Huge. Takes up pretty much the whole living room.

The rug guy, Shawn, is from Iran, and has a bachelor's degree and two master's degrees, and was an engineer until he figured out that he could make more money basically selling rugs out of his house. The rugs come to New York on a container ship, and then get shipped via DHL to his house, where he sells them to rug stores in town and to people like me on the side.

Update: The thing was just too large. So I had the brilliant idea of giving it to my dad for his birthday (Oct. 1). Turns out it fits brilliantly in the living room, and he loved the thing. My mom and I both took credit.

Party night

So tonight was supposed to be party night. We were going to play Risk or watch a movie. It's two weeks before exams, though. I should have realized that, because nobody showed up. Well, to be exact, three people canceled on me, because of legitimate family problems, and I had to tell the rest not to come (all 2 of them) because no one else was coming. Fuck. So I spent Saturday night, by myself, watching USC play Washington.

Natchez Trace

Last Saturday I rode 75 miles on my bike, mostly hills on the Natchez Trace parkway - perhaps the most beautiful road in the world. When you get on it, it feels like you're in the middle of nowhere. The road curves and winds through the countryside until it ends up in Tupelo, Mississippi. On my way, I went across a bridge that was as narrow as a 2 lane road, but suspended several hundred feet in the air. As I rode close to the edge, it actually felt like I was flying.

On the way back home, I went through a Starbuck's drive through, where they were quite surprised to hear me ask them to fill up my water bottle with an iced latte. I must say that after guzzling all that sugar, caffeine, and fat, I felt like a million bucks.

Mullet Festival

I toured the Jack Daniel's distillery a few weeks ago. It was pretty amazing. The people on the tour were even more amazing. I managed to snap this photo of one man on the tour, complete with his "29th annual Mullet Festival" tee-shirt.

Neurology

So this evening I studied a bit of neurology on the balcony. A kid's soccer practice at my high school was going on across the street. It looked like they were in the fifth grade or so. You can see my new Birkenstocks in the picture, as well as the beautiful pilsner glass that I later knocked over as I repositioned the chair.

The church, again

This is what the church looked like this evening.

Williams College

Watching the end of the Red Sox vs. Yankees game tonight brought back a flood of memories for some reason.

The announcer mentioned a crisp autumn night in Massachusetts with a low in the 40's, and I remember exactly how that felt. I miss college. I miss Williamstown.


Looking at the colors change from my room in the Greylock Quad. Warming my hands with my breath while rowing on lake Onota. Running up Mount Greylock for another year. Snuggling underneath my down comforter while watching a movie. Riding my bike to Vermont and back.

Candle light

Tonight I decided to study by candle light. So I lit every candle I own, and read. I took a few pictures to capture the scene, and here they are. Click on the pictures for a better view.

Today in Psychiatry, we interviewed our first psychotic patient. She was a middle-aged woman who claimed that she had walked to Memphis while picking up trash to make the world a better place. When we asked her where she slept at night, she said she went back home to Nashville. Every night. She said she was picking up government papers and putting them in a trash bin. She didn't say why.

After that, the psychiatrist told us about catatonia - a state where the patient is like a statue for prolonged periods. He told us that he saw a woman who would lie on her back with all four limbs in the air, perfectly still for hours. You could go up to her and position her limbs any way you wanted, and they would remain in that exact position for hours. And every once in a while, she would snap out of her state, and in a burst of activity, run down the hall for about 5 seconds, only to freeze into another statue-like form. This continued for two days. The cool thing is that the doctor gave her some drug, and after one minute, she sat on her bed and told him what the past two days were like for her.

The most amazing thing of the day is that a good third of my class still does not believe that schizophrenia is a brain disorder.

I spent an hour on my balcony this evening, just sipping a beer, watching the traffic go by, and admiring the lighting on the church down the street. It rained all morning. But when I came out of the medical center at 5 or so, it was perfect outside. The air was cool and had that post-rain smell, and the sky was a bight blue with thin wispy clouds.

So the balcony it was. There were lots of people running by on the sidewalks. More than usual. Sometimes it seems like half of Nashville runs by.

Then the firetruck left from the station, sirens blaring. Soon after, five emergency vehicles went by, in what can only be described as a flying-V formation, with three police cars forming the V, an ambulance in the protected position, and a fire SUV bringing up the rear. Must have been a big accident somewhere down the road.