A DAY IN THE VACATION LIFE....

The medical school that I am attending allows its students to take two months of vacation during the last two years of rotations. After being away from home for two months, I am electing to take one of those vacations this month.

I originally had some very motivated and elaborate detail-cleaning and baking plans for my break. And while I’ve done plenty of laundry and attempted to clean my oven yesterday (I discovered after-the-fact that I had used carpet cleaner all over the appliance instead of oven cleaner, at which point I decided to quit cleaning. So, yes, my oven is currently saturated with carpet cleaner… ) , most of this has taken the backburner to self-indulgence.

I began the break by planting myself in a blanket cocoon of dog hair and static electricity to finish a book called, “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia”. This memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert is a great tale of self-discovery and travel, and she is a very creative and talented writer. With the rest of the world (it had a long run -- and very well may still be -- on the New York Times Best Seller list), I highly recommend the book. And if you have already read this book and enjoyed it, I think you might like “Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World” by Rita Goldman Gelman. I don’t read enough to give this next statement any merit, but this second book is one of my favorites.

I’ve also been renting quite a few movies. Yesterday, the contender was a movie that I’ve wanted to see ever since I saw the previews. It is called “Paper Heart” and is a “documentary”/love story about the main character’s quest to understand love. I say “documentary” because the lines blur when it comes to determining which parts of the film are scripted and which ones occur in real life. However, my main infatuation with this movie is the main character herself. In the extra features of this movie, it is revealed that this young lady is both a musician and a comedian. She is really hilarious, and her talent at such a young age is quite sickening. In fact, it sent me into a temporary state of self-pity when I realized exactly how lame I am at my ripe age of twenty-five, but I quickly snapped out of it. Who has time to be a medical student and a musician and a comedian anyway?

I’ve started re-reading the Twilight series again since there are always things that are forgotten when you've only read a book once (especially when you read them so fast), but I am going to try not to sit for hours and hours on end and abandon life’s responsibilities like last time. I realized this the first time around, but it’s painfully obvious in those first few pages that the book is written for a teenage audience. Somewhere, however, – and I can’t pinpoint it exactly, but I think it is shortly after the Edward-Bella relationship starts to form – there is a strange transition where the story becomes engrossing and addictive. I can’t explain it, but you’re hearing this straight from a skeptic-turned-fan.

Well, I am going to get off here and tackle the few cleaning projects that I have set out to accomplish for the day. You know, before the carpet cleaner does some severely irreversible damage to my oven.


But not before I go outside and play with my doggies first. : )