Vietnam ho!

I'll be leaving to Vietnam sometime soon, but not before wednesday, which is when I get my final vaccination for Japanese encephalitis. This immunization hasn't been one of my favorites, due in large part to the fact that the vaccine is made from the brains of mice. Yes, you read that correctly. I have been getting tiny mouse brains shot into my arm for the past two weeks.

I got my first seconday application today. It was from Dartmouth. I'm smiling.

I think I'll get a lot of secondary application/interview lovin' from medical schools. The fact that I railed the MCAT has many things to do with all this free love.

Got back from New York and Boston on Wednesday. It was freakin awesome. Especially the museum of modern art. I want to live in that building so I can wake up with Picasso and Matisse lining my walls.

I'm too lazy to write any more now, but with some luck I'll find motivation later.

It's been a while

So I've been slacking. What can I say? This isn't exactly a priority. Though I can't say that I have many priorities these days.

The Vietnam thing is going to work out. Hooray. Now I can bring back that avian flu to all my family and friends. Don't worry, that was the last black humor on this post.

I leave to New York and Boston in just over a week. I just got from visiting my sister at Andrews. I don't have that I want to say about either of those trips yet. Maybe later.....

I hate medical school applications. I also hate parents insisting on seeing them, and then insisting that I change certain things.

I also hate having to share my computer with the whole house. And having to move it out of my room.

Maybe I'm just angry.

I can't wait to get out of here. Can I say that? It feels so disrespectful. But my family makes me more angry than anything else. Well, can't say I like security hugs from unauthorized people. And animals, children, and loud women...

I am angry.

I can't be angry. I've been so wonderfully happy lately. I think I'm probably just anxious about a couple of things. One of those is probably medical school applications.

Something I did after reading Franny and Zooey

Here's a short list of things I plan to do during the course of my life.

Number one goal:
Finish Medical School and become licensed.

Other goals:
Pass the bar
Write a book worth reading
Hold a public office
Hold a church office
Play in an orchestra (even a community one, so long as its good)
Start and run an orphanage or health clinic in a place that needs it
Compete at Olympic tryouts (probably in swimming)
Learn 3 other languages
Read all the books on my ever-growing To-Read book list
Be in a play or musical (preferably musical)
Have dinner at the White House
Visit 100 countries
See the northern lights (the reds and yellows, not just that blue-green)
Visit outer space
Climb Mt. Whitney, Kilimanjaro, and Fuji
Get a private pilot's license
Run a marathon/compete in a triathalon
Go to a World Cup (soccer) game
Figure out who Jesus was so I don't confuse him with Solomon or Moses or St. Francis of Assisi or Erasmus or Thomas a Kempis or Jan Paulsen
Fail a whole lot at something but not give up (I'm hoping this one doesn't involve a woman)
Always drive a crummy car that on ego days I like to pretend I'm too good for
Give blood 100 times
Save the world (yeah, I'm one of those types)
Sing Bass solos for a performance of the Messiah
Coach a church softball team

There are many other goals I have, but some aren't quite appropriate. I can't very well go around proclaiming to the whole internet world that one day I'd like to really kiss a girl. That's just not something you put on a lifetime to-do list. I mean, that could work on a list of things to do for a day. I'm very good at making lists, by the way. Checking off each little bwat is very enjoyable for me, even if I have many empty bwats at the day's end.

Some other goals just aren't so easily quantifiable. For instance, learning to be more patient is a goal, but it doesn't have an easily identifiable endpoint, therefore, it doesn't quite belong on the above list. Even learning 3 other languages is sketchy in this regard.

Furthermore, I realize that many of the items on the list would appear on many other peoples' lists. This is a testament to the era I live in. I might have written "Meditate in the desert for five years" or "Win 10 duels," but I do not consider such things to be priorities. This, of course, is subject to change. Moreover, not all of the items on the above list are of equal priority. Their above arrangement is merely the order they came to mind.

Also, the above list is maybe a tad unrealistic. I will not be overly disappointed if I don't complete each of the tasks, but then I tend to get more done if I have a lot to do, so I don't plan on trimming the list down either.

Hope this helps. If you want to know more specifics let me know. I'll be spending a good portion of the day on the piano and trumpet (I'm giving my medical school applications a day's rest, or rather, yet another day's rest).

Confirm purchase: 1 month subscription of "Inactivity Unlimited"

Since no discernable progress has been made on the aforementioned list, I'll content myself to continue rambling about increasingly unimportant things.

I wrote a certain type of letter (my first, in fact) a month or so ago. It was nice and flowery and well metered with many a literary technique applied to it. I even took the time to revise it. Of course, I have no intention of ever showing this bit of writing to anyone, ever, save maybe a 26-year-old, heartbroken, angry-at-the-world version of myself. Yesterday, however, I discovered a set of papers that had been with my letter in a pile of my mom's stuff. The pages of the letter itself have yet to reveal themselves. I'm trying really hard not to make the connection.

Summer reading list (completed):
A Storm of Swords - George R. R. Martin
Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
Eragon - Christopher Paolini
Eldest - Christopher Paolini

Currently reading:
Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Future reading:
The Brothers K - David James Duncan
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
In the Beginning - Chaim Potok

Ambitious, I know, but I've always been better at reading than doing things that actually should be done.

I strained my back the other day, so I put ice on it. I even slept that way. Now my bed smells like peas. Like the kind from the pod that you freeze.

All beginnings are difficult

If I was to prioritize my life at this moment, opening myself up for public derision probably wouldn't make the Top 100. But I was never very good with numbers, nor priorities.

Well, maybe we (as in the collective I) will jot down a few priorities, just so I don't have to explain these things verbally to every person.

- resume work on Med school applications
- contact ADRA, Greg Frykman, and that school in St. Croix to see if I have a job next year
- wait and see if the Red Cross is going to need me in Baton Rouge
- email cool people that I don't talk to enough otherwise
- read another children's book
- wear pants tomorrow

I know it all sounds very ambitious and strenuous, but I have been going about these tasks at a modest pace. Wait, I misspoke. I've been thinking about these tasks at a modest pace.

I'll leave at this; any more and I might feel compelled to check my spellings, which is not a summer activity.