I'm an idiot, but its the only way to be

Let me start off by saying simply that I, Scott Lotz, am an idiot. I have built up this reputation over time with activities like the milk gallon challenge, polar bear plunge, riding a unicycle outside of the campus bars at night wearing nothing but riding shorts and a helmet while holding an umbrella, dating Jenna for almost 6 years, and other things of the like...

Well I am proud to announce that in my idiocy I have been able to add another thing to my list. Last night I took my fixie out for a ride in the blizzard. I went to study all day and on my walk back home I was having trouble seeing and walking straight because of the wind. I thought to myself, I wonder if it’s possible to ride in this weather. So I got home and checked the weather; 15 degrees, but feels like 1, cool, guess I’d better wear gloves. Oh yea and 28 mph winds with gusts at 40+. Ideal conditions, I thought. So I suited up, turned on my blinkers, and headed out. I feel like I don’t need to tell you this because you probably already know, but it... was…. AWESOME!! With a few inches of snow on the ground,the street, and patches of ice that were covered, it was a challenge, but I prevailed. Now on my fixed gear bike I basically have very narrow racing tires with no kind of tread whatsoever. These offer little traction except they do sink in the snow and allow me to steer somewhat, but on any kind of slick surface they get squirrely and I was constantly fighting the bike to stay up. However, I did not fall once. Unfortunately my hands went numb after about 15 min so I had to turn it in, but I see a repeat event in my near future. And I know what youre thinking, “you should be studying for tests,” but I went at about 5:00 and I had been studying since about 9:00 so I was due for a break.

Well I believe that’s all I have for you folks. I’ll see ya when I see ya.

almost there

I dont know what the opposite of P.S. would be, but because this is at the beginning it is the opposite of P.S. But maybe the opposite of post script is pre script, so it may well be P.S. still. I'm not sure anyone knows. Anyway, I wrote the following entry on Wednesday on word in my apartment where I have no internet and just haven't been able to upload it until now. So if some of the information seems outdated, I apologize. 

So I had a meeting with the one of the deans today. All M1’s have this meeting and it’s just like an initial progress meeting and talk about your future kind of thing. Anyway she was very happy with my grades and all that stuff. No surprise there, RIGHT?? Then we got to talking about future plans and stuff like that. I told her that im leaning toward ortho or ER. It felt very much like an interview, “why did you want to do medicine” “why ortho,” those types of questions. As soon as I told her how much I like to build stuff and work with my hands she was convinced. Also, she said that my grades are right on track for ortho as long as my step 1 and 3^rd year go well. However, apparently the residencies are different from what I thought. Apparently you have to apply for a general surgery residency that you do for a year or so and then have to get into a separate ortho surgery residency. This means 2 different locations most likely and more moving. Whatev, that doesn’t bother me. But applying to 2 residencies would suck. More paperwork, more interviews, more stress. Yes I may even stress in the future. Hard to believe I know, but it may happen one day.

Then we got to talking about you know who. Yea that ol’ brunette ball and chain that I’ve been dragging around for the past almost 6 years. Basically I told them that she does in fact play a pretty large part in where I end up for residency. They told me where I get in plays a pretty large part in where I end up for residency. We laughed. Oh deans, so cheeky. They laughed at me that I would be thinking about residencies based off of a girl. Then I told them that we’ve been dating for almost 6 years and they started to see my point. Anyhoo, the male dean, Joe we’ll call him, mostly cause that’s his name, told me that things can change and not to put all my eggs in one basket. “I mean hey anything can happen. There will always be that young cute nurse that helps you out a lot,” he told me. Hmm… that does sound nice. (receive slap from jenna) I also told them that I want to end up out west for practice. They told me that most of the time where people do residencies they end up living. I told them baloney. I don’t know if you’re supposed to spell it bologna or baloney when you use it like that so I went with the non food. Anyway it seems that I will have a lot of obstacles to overcome in the future b/c of her. Knew she would cause me problems in the future. It’s okay though cause she promised to make me dinners for the week every Sunday so I don’t have to cook all week, so that’ll help.

We eventually went over the projected schedule for M3 and M4 and all the stuff that I’ll be doing. She showed me how little time there is for weddings in that area. I promised her that it was not a problem. We laughed again. Needless to say the meeting went well. She even told me numerous times about how happy she was with how the Ecuador trip was coming along already, so that’s good too. Overall, good stuff.

Very very very long road ahead of me, though. Very long. It’s kind of daunting seeing it all on paper and in the open at one time. Holy cow I’ll be a “student” for a long time. Luckily this is the last year of just school and classes. Good cause I am downright sick of it.

Life is good. Other people keep telling me that they’re up till like 2-3 in the morning working and can barely stay awake in class. I don’t get it because I go to be, on average, at 11. Then I’m usually up at 6 to get to the gym by 6:30 for a morning workout. Then I have time most days to get an afternoon run/bike/row in and I’m still doing well. Guess I’m just so totally awesome. Oh almost forgot, I am planning on running the Illinois FULL marathon on April 30^th here in Champaign (assuming my knees hold up for training. If not I’ll do the half. Either way I’m running). Training is beginning next week for it. I say this because I would love to have other family participants whether it be the 5k, 10k, half marathon, full marathon, or marathon relay. I told my parents about the marathon relay and told them they should get a team. And yes, mother, 4 months is plenty of time to be able to run 6ish miles. So, for anyone slightly interested, strap on some running shoes, hit the track (too cold to run outside for now, even for me) and lets make it a family event. Welp, that’s all I’ve got for you today. I’ll see ya when I see ya.

Almost forgot! Jenna is fast on her way to be able to do a pullup. Now this sounds kind of funny, working to get one pullup, but how many of you out there in internet world can do a pullup? HUH???? She’s been working her butt off and she’s really close. Her deadline to do one is the last week of her break, so sometime in January. The guns will be in full force for the next few weeks getting up over that bar. And she’ll be home this Saturday if you want to give ‘em a squeeze. Trust me they’re pretty robust.

K that’s it this time I promise. Sorry Aunt Wendy for the length. I like the sound my voice in my head narrating this as I type it. K bye. 

by the way it snowed a ton this week. heres 2 pictures of the results. 

Hello all

So it's been a week since the days of sitting around all day with nothing to do, not a care in the world. Back to reality. This week has been pretty laid back, actually. With only 2 classes a day, and 3 on Friday, it's been pretty chill. I've had a lot of time to get studying for finals in 2 weeks, but unfortunately I have found it hard to get a significant amount of studying done. I am just not in the mood to study and pretty much anything distracts me. But I have been studying all day today and a lot yesterday, so all is well.

So the week before Thanksgiving break my phone decided that it was going to slowly start dying. The buttons quit working one by one and then finally quit on the drive home from school, and is now dead. So I had to use Mark's old phone for the week, but he didn't have the charger, so I had to use Mom's. Not a problem until i get back to school and have no charger. It was fine, though, b/c there was a girl at school with an old iPhone that she was going to give to me... about a month ago. Then she didn't see her parents when she went home, for some reason, so she couldn't get the phone from them blah blah blah. Whatever, a free iPhone is worth waiting for. I sent her a text on Thursday (thanksgiving) making sure that she would remember to bring the phone back to school with her. I get a text Sunday from her saying that her dad already sold it. COOL! So now when I get back to school I have to get a phone asap. I ended up getting the iPhone 4, and yes, it is awesome. It was just about 100% more expensive that the original plan that I had. Oh well I now have a working phone and her parents have more money.

That was Tuesday. Wednesday my computer decided to die. I knew it was coming because it had been giving me hints for a while now that it wasn't going to make it much longer. So during Physio lecture on Wednesday it froze, so I shut it off and restarted it. However, it did not restart. So I left at the start of Micro (the next class), went home, pulled the hard drive, put it in my external case, went back to school, rented a laptop for a week, and got back in time for the latter half of Micro. I know I'm pretty awesome. So now I have another job over winter break: find a new computer at a reasonable price.

Other than that it's been a pretty awesome week. Even those events weren't too bad. I mean I have a new phone, a new computer, and all my data. All is well. Also, it snowed an alleged 8.5" Friday night/Saturday morning. Best thing ever. I went to Jenna's Friday night after coming back from the gym at 7:00 (where I had been since 4:00 climbing, running, and lifting). I got back to my apartment at 7:00 when there was not a single snowflake on the ground. I went over to Jenna's at like 10:00 when there was like a bagillion snowflakes on the ground. Now, I love snow. Love it. So this made me very happy. How it had snowed like 5 inches in 3 hours is beyond me, but it was awesome. The roads were super sketchy and I could barely see out of my car windows, but it was awesome. Also, the next day I was going to park my car and came across a girl who looked like she had done a 360 in the street and slid into the curb, almost into the stop sign. She was in an SUV, which was only rear wheel drive and therefore sucked in the snow. She had no idea if the car had 4 wheel drive and actually pushed the cigarette lighter b/c she thought it was a switch to turn on 4wd. No wonder she was almost driving into the stop sign. So I stopped and helped her get her car out and sent her on her marry way, although I feel like a similar situation would happen shortly down the road for her.

Tomorrow I have a meeting for Bienester, a program that I will be most likely doing this summer that consists of a 4 week stay in Ecuador working with doctors. It is different from my trips to Honduras, though, b/c it's not rural clinics. It is work in hospitals and even scrubbing in for surgeries. I also heard from past participants that we could get the chance to do some suturing in the ER. Good thing I had that suturing clinic. As long as these people's wounds are like scalpel cuts on frozen pig's feet, I'm totally going to rock it. It does sound really awesome so hopefully I do get to go. I am also the "president" I guess you could call it. I am in charge of setting up the trip and basically doing everything for it. I also heard that the person in charge gets a discount, although I need to find out more about that.

Here's a picture of a cat licking a snowcone. 

See ya!!