Day 2

So today wasnt that bad besides the fact that I almost fell asleep this morning watching Beerfest. I think thats due to the fact that the movie sucked though. My afternoon nap was perfect. I fell asleep within about 5min and I woke up naturally at the end of a cycle. I need to do something with my room though because its too light. I still havent found much to do.. I downloaded the new Nas CD which also sucked. I work tomorrow which should help me get through the day. Then thurs I'm going to NYC to see a play, and fri-sun i work again.

Biphasic Sleep - Day 1

ok so today i start this new sleep schedule. apparently this is how most great men sleep including Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, JFK and Harry Truman. i left some people out but thats because they were shit presidents. its based on the principle that one complete sleep cycle (all 4 stages) takes about 90 minutes to go through. notice how if you wake up in the middle of a dream you are super groggy? its because you woke up in the middle of a cycle during REM. thats why sometimes you feel much more rested after 7.5 hours (a multiple of 90) than after 8 hours. this doesnt really explain how im expected to go from 8h of sleep down to a total of 6h, but hell its worth a shot.

i wanted to try polyphasic sleep which is about a 25 minute nap every 4 hours but i think that would be too inconvenient for me at this point in my life... im not in control of my schedule enough. so im going to try this biphasic thing for a week and then reevaluate. ill sleep for a core of 4.5 hours and then take a 90 minute nap in the afternoon. it looks like the core will be from 2am - 6:30am (which i just did today) and then nap will be from 12:30pm until 2pm. this is what fits my schedule the best at this point because ill be working at 3pm over the next few weeks while im here on break.

i think my biggest challenge will be finding things to do to keep me occupied. i already have nothing to do for these 2.5 weeks of being home, so finding an extra 2 hours worth of stuff to do per day might be hard. ill keep you posted.

medical school, italy

a lot of exciting things have happened in the last week that ive been waiting on for months so let me get to it. first, i got into new york medical college!! its not one of my top top schools, but i finally know that i'll be going somewhere next year. im still waiting on uconn and georgetown, so hopefully i will have some choices to make in the next few months. georgetown is definitely 1st, but if i get into uconn and nymc then... well i dont want to think about making that decision yet.

the second bit of news is that i booked my flight to italy and i'm leaving may 3. my plan was to leave in march, but the date kept getting pushed back because of med school uncertainty, inability to leave work, easter, etc. i didnt mind staying the extra couple months because i was continuing to make money with no real expenses, the weather was getting better, and neil came home so i had another friend. work wasnt bad either... complaining about work always makes you feel better and sometimes they had us doing the jobs of 2 people, but i really got along well with most of the pharmacists and other techs which made it bearable. though my transition from college student to the "real world" was extremely abrupt, i will take away only positives from my year off.

my plans in italy are open ended. the only things i know are that may 4-7 i will be in dublin, and then may 8-14 i will be in rome. besides that, who knows. on one hand i'm nervous because i have no f-in plans for the next 3 months, but on the other hand im excited about the possibility of being a complete vagabond. my uncle said he motorcycled around italy at my age... but that would probably require me to learn how to ride a motorcycle and to actually drive it around psycho italian drivers which i def wont do. other that that, im up for just about anything...

random things

ok i havent updated this in a while, mainly because nothing cool or important happens to me. i did find a few things to write about though.

first is the new song of the week which is "In The Middle" by Mat Kearney. The other day i bought the new Honor By August cd from awarestore.com and they also shipped me this Mat Kearney sampler cd and another cd called Earsnacks Volume 7. as a marketing tool, i think thats a pretty good idea. awarestore.com distributes cd's for a bunch of lower profile artists, so its a good bet that the people buying their cd's will be open to listen to whatever else you include. so basically, mat kearney is sweet but apparently his mom didnt get the memo that matt was spelled with 2 t's.

second, fyi sadie from the OC is my new "favorite" famous person. it used to be katie holmes for the longest time, but then she started dating creepy tom cruise and getting pregnant. i think sadies real name is nikki reed and shes part italian and american indian which is a super hot combo.

i think i started writing about fantasy baseball last time. well, we drafted our teams and it seems we are all pretty happy. all of us besides ben who somehow drafted no closers, which is possibly the most absurd thing ive ever seen happen in fantasy baseball history, if not all of history. i should be in the top 3 again this year (yawn), and will probably win it again if bonds and schilling have decent years.

baseball, song of the week

its almost march which means baseball... and more importantly, fantasy baseball. i just found out our baseball draft is on selection sunday for the ncaa tournament which will make for one sick sports day. if i had any Felix Felicis i would probably drink it at around 5pm so it would last through our selection as a 1 seed and my drafting of this years Derek Lee and Chris Carpenter in the middle to late rounds. this year should be interesting because its a live draft. more favorites will be played, and hopefully i can get at least one Met hitter on my team before Crea drafts them all.

ok so the new song of the week is called "Boston" by Augustana. ive put it through my usual hazing routine of playing it about 20 times per day for the first week, and then seeing if i still like it. i do. it also has personal meaning to me because its about this broad thinking of moving to a new town.. to get out of the rut she has found herself in. two differences though... 1 im not a broad and 2 theres no way i want to go to boston. i was thinking italy or florida or somewhere warm and awesome. in fact, this broad is clearly crazy for wanting to leave california for boston. "some snow would be nice"... no it wouldnt. snow sounds cool until you realize its accompanied by ridiculously cold weather. on the east coast we have this fantasy of packing up our things and moving west. i guess californians have a similar fantasy about moving east? and here i thought seth cohen was the only one...

most ridiculous item of the day

Ok taking a page from Dutko's buddy Bill O'Reilly (jackass), i have to comment on the most ridiculous item of the day. First a few ridiculous things that deserve honorable mention...

Not sure where they are in the season, but my favorite show of last year is back on, Beauty and the Geek. Luckily, the same formula is working again this year: make fun of the beauty because she cant add simple numbers and thinks Abe Lincoln was our first president, make fun of the geek because when hes around girls he either makes inappropriate sexual comments or his face turns red. Ok so this show is made more ridiculous by the fact that apparently one of the geeks, Wes, was not really a geek at all.. He just faked it and got on the show because he knew a casting director. Now he is dating one of the "beauties" who apparently also faked how dumb she was. She went to SMU and was an English and Business double major and was also premed! Here is her myspace profile. Now, I feel betrayed by this show. There's something comforting about knowing that there are girls out there who think 1942 was the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue and guys who actually get spontaneous nose bleeds.

Second most ridiculous item is my man James Blake losing to some tall asian dude named Wang in the San Jose tournament on tuesday. No, not that tall asian dude named Wang. Though maybe he and PanPan are related. Apparently that surname is quite rare.

Third is Dick Cheney shooting a 78 year old man in the face with a shotgun, then pondering his cover-up options for 24 hours before telling anyone. The guy just had a heart attack because one of the pellets was lodged in his heart... this is ridiculous alone, but whats more ridiculous is this quote I saw from either a doctor or press secretary or something. The person said between 5 and 600 pellets were still lodged in the man. I mean seriously, can you narrow it down a little bit more?

Ok so truly the MOST ridiculous item of the day comes from Matisyahu. Is that a hacidic reggae jew rapper you ask? Yes, yes it is. I dont think I need to say much more to convince you of its inherent ridiculousness. I saw the dude on MTV and his song was actually quite good. Check him out on myspace music. Dude sports a beard and performs in a suit and top hat. Also read his bio here. HILARIOUS. Reminds me of Informer... a licky boom boom down!

Oldies but Goodies

So I just downloaded a few old songs that I had previously classified as "pothead music"... Stairway to Heaven, Free Bird, and a bunch of Bob Marley songs. Yes i know, you're saying how could these classics be left out of my ridiculously huge mp3 collection. Maybe I'm just slow to change my interests (see the EMO revolution of 2001). Though, I'd like to think I'm actually a music elitist... one step ahead of the rest.

So here are a few new songs that I just got that you may or may not have heard:

-Ryan Adams - La Cienga Just Smiled
Ryan Adams is pretty much the man. Though, he believes in quantity over quality.. not unlike some of my college friends at a latenight. He somehow puts out like 2-3 albums per year... but his style is hit or miss with me. There are some songs like this one, the Wonderwall cover (possibly better than the original), I See Monsters, Thank you Louise, Come Pick Me Up, My Winding Wheel, My Sweet Carolina and a few others that have really hit. Love is Hell 2 disk album is pretty sweet actually. But sometimes he gets too country or too depressing or too rock for me....

-All American Rejects - Move Along
Well if youve never heard this song, youre looking at me like wtf are you talking about with this teenage mtv punk band. Listen to it. This song has a ridic drum line and is overall amazing. If I actually went out at night anymore, I would listen to this to pump me up.

-Matt White Band - Too Many Lovers
So Ive been checking out a bunch of random indie bands lately on MySpace Music. This is one of them. Dude is from Texas so that eliminates all chances of seeing him live. Im also not buying anything because I still refuse to pay for music unless its Pearsall. I found this song off LimeWire and its sick.

-Damian Marley - Road To Zion
Ok this is my only hip hop type song. This one features Nas which always jumps it up a few notches in my book. Damian Marley's other song "Jamrock" is also getting some airplay, and it also gets credit for being in my FIFA06 game. Bob Marley's other sons kind of sucked, so heres to Damian actually grabbing some mass appeal like pops.

First Post, basketball

Ok this is my first blog post. I havent read many blogs so I dont really know how this goes... the only ones Ive read are Makaron's which will be much more articulate than mine, and Chuck's which will be much less. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, probably because I've just had 2 straight days off of work for the first time in a while and I'm bored out of my mind. We'll see if it lasts.

My subjects will be sports, tv, music, my life, medical school, and other amazing things. Probably not much medical school stuff right now because 1. it looks like i'll be waiting a few more months before hearing anything worthwhile and 2. the process is annoying as hell.

Right now I'm watching #4 Nova vs. #1 UConn. About halfway thru the 2nd half Nova went on a hot streak and dominated till the end. Its not fair that Jenna Sperry doesnt even like basketball and her team is amazing while I have to deal with 4 years of NIT bound Hoyas. On a side note, when you are #4 and u beat #1 you dont rush the court. Then, it takes them like 5 minutes for any sort of students to filter onto the court. Now Jay Wright is kissing some teenage girls. I hope they are his children...