Sadness and anger.

Recently, my friend George W. Quinn suffered a tremendous loss in his family. His mother, Janet, had been diagnosed not all that long ago with stage IV lung cancer. After hearing about the condition from my friend Dan, I had figured that George might want to start thinking about saying his goodbyes. Its not that I was trying to be a dick or anything, its just when that sort of cancer has hit that particular stage, it would take a medical miracle for her to pull through. Janet Quinn died this past Saturday. There was a blog that covered her treatment and eventual death located at this address: http://janetquinn.blogspot.com. Its sad what happened and her funeral (actually it more of a mass gathering because she was cremated) is supposed to be today. But that's not what pisses me off.

I would like to give a big fuck you to Howard University. Apparently, during rotations, a student has to show up for their thing no matter where their site is. I had recently contacted them about going to the funeral, and someone there basically said that I had to show up to my rotation site because the death was not in my immediate family. I would like to consider my friend's parents sort of like family, at least because I had worked for Safeway as a cashier and I would occasionally see them come through my line. But Howard policy states it has to be immediate family. I think I'm going to try to skip the rest of the day and show up anyway.

More later.

Rotations suck and other things.

It seems that Children's National Medical Center (hereafter abbreviated CNMC) really likes to torture Howard pharmacy students. It has been only recently that the student's got access to the intranet of the hospital network. I mean, they need to print out the reports on the patient's medications so they can participate in their treatment. At least, they are supposed to be learning how to treat patients. It seems as though CNMC is about as coordinated as Howard University, which is to say: never. My rotation there is more or less paper pushing or administration if you will. I've had to do some things that the hospital pharmacy basically pushes onto whoever comes in to work with them. It sucks, it sucks badly. At least I've got two more weeks of this BS, and then I have August off. Considering I've had to wake up at about six in the morning, it'll be worth the month of doing nothing.

I was reading the Washington Post Express periodical, and it seems that tweens (those between 11 and 14 years old) are not only dating, some of them are in abusive relationships. I think that's way too young to be dating and stuff. Think about it, these kids (and honestly, they are still kids) are bedding each other. What next? Kids having sex by the time they hit kindergarten? But what really pisses me off is that, apparently these kids have cell phones. Now what's so bad about that? I don't know if these kids will be responsible enough to learn cell phone etiquette (actually, a lot of people don't have cell phone etiquette, but that's a topic for another time). I remember when mobile phones were about a big as a lunch box. Nowadays, they are about as wide as the index and middle fingers of a normal human hand. Kids could be text messaging in class and I'm sure that would piss teachers off. Pretty soon, land lines will go the way of the dodo bird. But, kids that young should not have cell phones. When I was in high school, it was prohibited from bringing them to school. It should be that way right now but it probably isn't. At least if they had an iPod with them, it wouldn't be as bad. But it would have to be the iPod nano, the regular iPod would have me looking at them and thinking "Jeez, their parents must be loaded".

Time to go, but I shall return.