11/24/06

Thoughts \ Developed Thoughts \ Rants \ Raves \ Writing

04/15/2005 23:18 -0500 GMT

Indulgence

Friday night, and I get to indulge. I get to indulge because I met a lot of deadlines this week. For some reason, Med School has been more realistic of late. Part of me thinks that it's the calm before the storm. Part of it, I'm sure, is Spring fever, with beautiful weather sapping me of motivation to sit under fluorescent lights. Part of me thinks I'm accommodating to this mad studying schedule. And the deepest part, the part that has the hollowest, most profound voice, is bellowing in tones that could almost be background noise, is telling me that I am delusional, and that if I don't kick my own ass into third gear immediately I'm going to be sorry come exam time.

Indulgence.

So after getting the taxes in at 8:55 this evening, and driving out of the parking deck of the Hoover Galleria, where a post office is located, and where I laughed at fellows running hard to get their tax forms date-stamped on time, laughing because they were minutes closer to the closing time than I was, laughing at myself for the silliness of leaving these things to the last minute, laughing at the fact that we finally got our taxes sorted out in such a way the we don't have to write a big check in April, laughing at the fact that I was laughing at my nonsensical procrastinative tendencies.

Man, it felt good, though, to meet that deadline, and others today, related to financial aid, course assignments, a committee obligation, and what not...it felt good, and so when the Oingo Boingo CD kicked it into gear in their 1995 live version of Dead Man's Party, I bopped and I shook and my head banged, and I only about a third of the way cared if people at the traffic light might look at me funny.

Tomorrow, Maggie takes her GED exam, and I have a funny feeling about it, that this might be the day where her consistent, hard work pays off in the form of a high school equivalency education that no one can ever take away from her, and that will mark a landmark of uncharted waters hitherto unexplored by Mumbi women. I am so proud of that girl I got lucky enough to capture that I could just about burst.

Indulgence...my indulgence this evening is to freely think about places in the world that I would like to visit on the way to Zambia this Summer. I'm going to Zambia some time in June, and returning to Birmingham some time in early September. I get to indulge in the glorious thoughts of where, in range of the stopping points along the way, I'd like to get off and see a bit of the world. Where would I like to go on this heavenly planet to chill out after working hard, to steel myself for the tasks of actually working after the year of studying theory...where or where shall I go today...? It's nice to dream every now and then, particularly when the dream you make will come to fruition.

Previously I've done stopovers in Munich, then Cairo, then Nairobi; in London, then on to Lusaka; in Jo'burg; and now?

There's a whole crew of about 7 of us from the UASOM class of '08 who're going to be on the African continent this Summer, and a nuclear crew of us are going to be in Lusaka and Kigali, two strong hubs that have UAB affiliations past and present. Of these, several are doing a ten-day stopover in Cape Town, arguably the most beautiful city on the planet, for some serious R & R prior to working our asses off for a term. Cape Town.

What's the weather like there in June? It'll be quite cool...appropriate for the penguins we'd see. My dilemma, if you can classify it as such, is that I want to sit on a beach, sip cocktails, read books, play a little chess, and simply contemplate for a few days. I've a strong suspicion that my comrades would like to do more active things - hike Table Mountain, for example - and I'm not game, sad to say. Nevertheless, I think Cape Town it shall be, with some space and some freedom and some wanderlust satisfied, I can hit Lusaka running, both balls to the wall, and learn a lot of the meat of what I want to learn, in this medical education I am pursuing. 

So if I leave Birmingham on the 12th, that puts my in Johannesburg on the 13th. And if I hit Cape Town the same day, then I could have until the 17th, a Friday, to chill out. I hit Lusaka on the same day - the 17th - get unpacked and settled, then have a Saturday of light work, where they give me allowances for jet lag, and another day off (?) on Sunday the 19th before I really hit the ground running on the 20th.

That's a full four days, in a foreign land, doing and being however I'd like, before facing the tasks at hand again. I like it! No, no...I love it!