My Ottawa Adventure

Ok, so the trip to Ottawa wasn't as smooth as I thought it would be. I banked on 5 to 5.5 hours from Ben's place to Ottawa. So, I left at 9 a.m. so I wouldn't get stuck in as much rush-hour traffic. I woke up at 7 and looked outside - snow. I was expecting snow, because Ben told me it was going to snow, but I hadn't banked on THAT MUCH SNOW. And still falling. So, I thought, I should leave a little earlier. I left at 8:30. By 11, I was still in Toronto. Just getting out to Oshawa. I had broken down and taken the 407 instead of the 403 from the QEW to the 401 because the 403 had an accident on it. Then I got on the 401 - mistake #1. I should have just paid the money and taken the 407 out to Oshawa. Oh well, got out of Toronto, drove to Kingston, things were relatively ok except for the 10-foot visibility, the fact that my hood got frozen shut so I couldn't refill my windshield washer fluid (thank you man in the gas station who cracked it open for me) and I kept getting a weird fog on top ice on the bottom configuration on my windshield that was only solvable by driving with the defroster on and the window open. I got to the outskirts of ottawa around 4 o'clock and then I hit disaster Ottawa traffic. The transit strike (which is ending thank goodness) has really f-ed things up for people who live in Ottawa. It took me 2 hours to drive the 15 km to my hotel on the 417. That's right. I was driving roughly 7.5 km/hour. Then I went out to dinner with my friend Michelle and her husband John. It was fun - we talked about how the replica statue at the McMaster interview banquet hall was a bit disfigured and had a really small penis. We also delved into many less serious topics such as what the hell we're going to do about residency.

I stayed at a bit of an odd hotel. I can't tell you what it was specifically that weirded me out - it just felt like lots of people had cheated on their spouses there. And then the next morning I went to my interview at another hotel down the street. I was the first one there (of course) and proceeded to go get some coffee. I was standing there putting milk in my coffee and instead of pouring the milk into my coffee, I opened the little container and diligently poured it into the garbage. Don't ask me why, I think my wires got a bit crossed on that one. Thank goodness I don't think anyone saw me. Then, I almost spilled coffee all over myself on the way back to my table. In good news, I didn't. The actual interview part went really well and my resident and doc who were interviewing me were SO NICE. Then at some point later in the day I kind of cornered the program director and asked him to give me the downlow on whether I could do some of my core rotations in community hospitals. I'm not sure if I made him uncomfortable. I hope I didn't. Sometimes this residency stuff makes me feel a bit pathetic and desperate. Thank goodness I was talking to another girl from my class and she said it made her feel the same way. Phew.

I'm really hoping at this point that the Mac sites I added to my application have been approved by the program. Ben and I haven't decided what is going to be ranked where, but I would hate to rank something I haven't even been officially entered into the match for! Ranking opens Feb 5th. I'm going to try starting to study for my surgery NBME today and forget about this. I also want to make some bread. I once found a blog that was all about making bread and different bread recipes and it was really good and I've lost the URL - anyone know it?

This post was a bit of verbal diarrhea so I'll stop now.