A number of totally random thoughts, after two days of class (we’re halfway through a week of derm):

• As far as STDs go, I don’t think the joke will ever get old where you automatically assume if someone asks a question about one, they clearly have it. And no, feigning ignorance in some sort of reverse-psychology way (“Do herpes sores hurt?”) is totally overcompensating, and I can see right through you. (I was tempted to ask this question today, as I honestly don’t know, but you probably don’t believe me now that you see the way my mind works its paranoid little magic.)
• Due to the miracles of videotaping and online streaming of classes, I bumped into a classmate on the way back from the gym that I’m pretty sure I didn’t see at all last quarter.
• It is extremely funny when your preceptor asks a generally quiet classmate about the “things you need to be monitoring status post surgery,” and, after having previously talked about the answer in more discrete terms, the classmate blurts out, “well, eating and shitting,” as if the word is standard medical vernacular. (Perhaps he was confused with dumping .)
• The television show, House is strangely intriguing to me, in a kind of this-is-so-fake-and-somewhat-offensive way. The doctor assumes all patients are lying, degrades his colleagues in a paternalistic hot-shot way, and probably freaks people out that they’re going to have Wilson’s disease and go “crazy,” or end up getting African sleeping sickness by having sex. Medical dramas are bad, but not that far-fetched.
• I was a late bloomer. Most kids get Fifth’s disease (erythema infectiosum, caused by Parvovirus B19) by the time they’re 10, but I got it when I was 14, in Mrs. Baxley’s typewriting class. She sent me to the nurse, and I got the day off of school in 8th grade. Sure fooled them; it’s not contagious once the rash appears.
• I keep feeling like I have all this time on my hands. I look at the clock, and it’s only 7:38pm, and I can’t believe it’s so early. And then I remember the difference: it’s the beginning of the quarter, I don’t feel entirely exhausted, and I’m not so tired that my body’s begging to let me take a nap about 7:38pm. What a difference a break makes.
• I just launched ericmah.com about 5 minutes ago. Eric is a good friend and running for City Council in Manhattan Beach, California. Vote early, contribute often. Please, Google gods, make those links help get him on your index list.

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