Geriatric selfie

One of my new goals is to teach my cute little Grandma how to take a selfie. Wait, let’s be real: a more accurate statement would be “teach, and then try to convince my Grandma to take a selfie.” This is a fairly ambitious goal for a granny who hates getting her picture taken, does not get along well with technology, and has no interest in social media—but wouldn’t that be awesome? Man on a mission.

**Update: Several weeks later, Grams agreed to give it a try as long as I'd stand next to her. Fair enough. Little did she know, I'd put the camera on burst mode so it would take a bunch of pics. I figured one of them was bound to work out. Well... the first ~20 looked like this:

But then the planets aligned! Proud of this spunky little lady. There you have it, my very own Grandma in the perfect geriatric selfie:

[Just don't tell her I posted this...]

Attack of the leftovers

(This is what the internet
says germs look like.)

I'm living proof that not all med students are germ-a-phobes. I’m a big believer in letting kids eat a little dirt, I view the "10 second rule" as merely a suggestion, and I'm not afraid to touch door handles with my bare hands. “It’s good for your immune system,” I always say. And it is. That being said, we had exam week at med school and then a short break for summer, so I was studying my brains out. I didn’t have a lot of time to cook, plus I wanted to eat all the stuff in my fridge so it wouldn’t go bad while I was gone. Great plan, except I ran out of real food the last couple days, and decided to just eat some leftovers I found in the depths of my fridge. I figured I’d just microwave them for a few extra minutes to kill off any lurking microbes. So I did… and got to spend the first two days of my vacation sick. But my immune system is relentless and eventually won the battle. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger—right? [Translation: the same thing will probably happen again next finals week, but this time my body will be ready.]