Friday, January 30, 2009

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.

4 comments:

XE said...

Oh my gosh, that really sounds terrible! So it basically took you 11 hours to get from Toronto to your hotel?!? UGH! At least the interview went well :)

Liana said...

Winter sucks.

Try not to worry too much about the Carms ranking thing. Don't try to second guess how the program is going to rank you. Put the place you love the most first and then the next best program second and so on. Similar to what you said in your last post... if you rank a place number one, you get matched to that place unless you get bumped out by people who also ranked it number one and were ranked higher than you. So really it shouldn't matter if you rank one of those Mac programs number one and then they for some reason didn't rank you.... the computer would automatically move on to your next selection and treat that like a number one.

However if you really liked the Mac programs it would be a shame!

Hopefully that makes sense?

Liana said...

Thought I should add a disclaimer... my understanding of the process is as above but maybe you should just call Carms and doublecheck if you're really worried?

Milk and Two Sugars said...

I would just about die driving through all that! You are very brave.

As to the bread blog, there are lots but I think one of the best is http://www.wildyeastblog.com/ . Hope you have fun baking!