The days getting shorter and shorter...

I (*hopefully*) finished the data collecting phase of my summer research project, so today I'm able to stay at home and do some of the data analysis on my laptop. I just picked up an Orson Welles film, so that is playing in the background. It's definitely not as hot today as it was last week, but in my living room it's still on the warm side.

I have a meeting with Dr. Richardson tomorrow, I'm hoping that we'll get somewhere with the data analysis part of the project. I'm around for another two weeks before leaving for Toronto, and it would be great to be working on the manuscript by then. We'll see what happens-- while it's been a bit nice to work at my own pace, the project started slowly and now I have to play a bit of catch-up.

I was looking through the latest Time Out New York, and for some reason there didn't seem to be too many exciting things happening these days in New York. The SummerStage schedule wasn't very good this year and there weren't too many free events that caught my interest. I don't know, maybe I just didn't take advantage of all the things the city has to offer. I did get a chance to see Corteo and Macbeth at Shakespeare in the Park, and of course I took those trips to Brazil and to Germany for the World Cup (which was amazing). And I did move to my new apartment and started going to the gym regularly (we'll see how long that lasts) , but that's been about it. Over the last few weeks I have been spending some time with old Columbia friends, mainly because Anu is leaving for graduate school in Dallas in a few days, and we've been trying to catch up before she left.

Last Friday I shadowed Sigrid Hahn in the Sinai Emergency Department for a number of hours. She is great to shadow, because she explains things really well. I had the chance to take a few histories and present the patients to her. There was a lady having an acute stroke, two guys with heroin overdoses, and a few elderly patients with heat-related complaints. I had a really good time there; I wasn't used to juggling all the different patients at once, but I felt that I could do a reasonable job obtaining histories under those circumstances, and think about potential plans of action. I'm hoping to shadow a bit more during the year, but it'll all depend on how much time I will have to do that.

We got an email from Mt. Sinai today saying that our schedule for next semester is on Web-Ed already. That coupled with the fact that I just ordered all the textbooks I'm going to need (a paltry $600), these summer days seem to be drawing quickly to an end. On the one hand I'm a bit excited about moving on to the next step (first-year is only good enough to get your feet wet), but on the other hand... I am worried about what happens when the ball starts rolling-- it'll never stop.