all work and no play makes Leanna very very tired.

Today I finally get a day off!!! I have been exhausted lately, working too much... 8 days in a row in fact (and 68 hours, but who's counting). Last night, 11 hours of sleep. Night before, 11 hours of sleep. It seems that I've picked up some of Paul's coping strategies. It's healthier than getting addicted to coffee (or crack), anyway!!! And today is the payoff. I'm feelin' fine and we're planning on going hiking later at Bear Mountain, just an hour away.

Well, given this busy time there's a lot to catch up on. Lets go backwards in time because that's the way I feel like writing it today.

LAB PRACTICAL (Last Tuesday and Wednesday)

What a nightmare. All of the VT residents had to administer the practical at all three lab sessions (which for me meant coming in on my day off) and consisted of asking 3rd year optometry students questions about VT and watching them fumble, guess, stress, and mess up which is SO VERY painful. Some of their answers were really funny, in a pitiful sort of way... like they had never seen any of that stuff before. "BUT WE TAUGHT THIS TO YOU!!! WHERE WAS YOUR BRAIN AT THE TIME?!?!" I now see why being a teacher can be so frustrating. But I also recall as a student that you have to see something a couple times before you remember it... in any case, it was a very exhausting experience. By the end of the first day and 6 hours of practicals, I was ready to go to sleep. But no, I had 4 strabismic VT patients who ALL came to therapy that night, and I finally left the building at 8:00 after being there since 8:20. These long days kill me.

WORK on SUNDAY

This was actually kinda fun. It was in an area of Brooklyn that feels like Israel, everyone is Hassidic Jewish and everything is in Hebrew. Well, not everything, but there is a hebrew eye chart in the exam room just in case I need it. I saw about 7 patients, and 2 of the kids I found an eye turn that hadn't been noticed before. The kids eyes were straight until you cover one, then uncover it, then it goes out and stays out until they blink. This is not normal. It is interesting to explain to parents when they look at you like, "Who are you? some young goy who thinks my kid has a problem? you don't look old enough to baby-sit!!". They didn't say that, but it was in their eyes.

MINOR PRESENTATIONS (1 week ago, last friday)

Although the presentations were really to just a classroom of residents and a few of our supervisors and doctors, this was still quite a stressful event. It's called 'minor' becuase it's practice for the 'major' presentations which occur in March, where we will be lecturing to a room full of doctors for 50 minutes, who have come in to get Continuing Education. It's really quite stressful, so this practice session was not such a big deal but still enough to loose some sleep and peace of mind over. So what have we learned after our little lectures last friday?

1. Leanna is not cut out to lecutre. Apparently everyone can tell exactly how nervous I am.
2. Slide contrast is very important.
3. Don't more than 6 words in each line and 6 lines of text on a slide.
4. Paul is A NATURAL in front of a crowd. He had 3 good laughs out of everyone, he paced around the stage like he owned the place, and his presentation was smooth and simple to understand. Everyone absolutely loved him.... (especially me! I am so proud!!!)

Very glad that event is over.

FIRE IN THE BUILDING?!?! (wednesday before last, Oct 29th)

I was in my PJ's and robe on my day off, having some tea and surfing the internet (same as i'm doing right now, in fact!) and I get a knock on my door from my neighbor, who is concerned about smelling smoke in the building. To my relief, she is also in her robe. We went up to the second floor, which was definitely hazy and smoky, but no fire in sight. She called the fire department, and within 5 minutes there were 4 fire trucks surrounding our street. It took them a while to find the source of the smoke, since it was inside the walls, and in the meantime they were in and out of my apartment checking the furnace. They seemed to know that this would be the issue... and eventually the did find the guilty furnace. It was my next door neighbor's, and she had just moved in 1 week ago. I hadn't actually met her yet, but she is a very sweet girl who recently moved to the states from Korea. So, the firefighters busted in and broke up a bunch of drywall in her utility closet, making a mess, and then left her without a heater or hot water or gas!!! Eventually the hot water adn gas got turned back on, and I helped her clean up the drywall and speak with her very stressed out landlord. In the end, it was fine, but kind of exciting at the same time. They actually had to bring in the hoses and use them on the wall and stuff (i guess the heater had been mounted too close to the drywall adn caught the wall on 'smolder' (it wasn't really 'fire).

ACADEMY MEETING (the second conference)

I think I wrote about conference #1 in the last blog post, and that was truly such fun. Academy was too, but in a different way. We ran into so many people from our optometry class and our professors from Pacific, it was wonderful to see everyone. And it was always busy! Not too hard to find free food most of the time. And all the residents from SUNY were together. We were quite a force... we always wanted to be together to. We'd go out to lunch together ("yes, party of 19 please?") and dinner (see pics) and to the many events at Academy. The education was good, I only went to Contact Lens and Disease lectures (you can overdose on binocular vision, apparently).

HERE are some pictures of the event!!!


Well, I think that just about it. We are hopefully going to see soem beautiful leaf colors on our hike today, but so far this is what we've got from our backyard. It's actually kinda pretty... I still can't wait for the snow!!!


And, oh yea.... I almost forgot one of the most significant things that has happened this week:
WE HAVE A NEW PRESIDENT!!! And for once I am happy with election results!!!!!! I just hope he lives up to our expectations... :)