Cory's Blog

I have been conspicuously absent from the blog pages lately, and with good reason. I am smack in the middle of a two week “test stretch o’ fun.” During one of my earlier test stretches, I wrote about my fantastic pneumonic device for remembering all of the topical anesthetics, “But Everyone Loves My Pet Rock”. Go back and check it out if you haven’t already. My fun saying was just one of the many ways I try to remember material as I study. You see, when you have to spend as much time studying as I do, you have spice it up a bit to keep the interest level (not to mention sanity level) tolerable. Plus, when studying is “fun,” I tend to remember more.

It was with this fun filled attitude that I undertook my studying for my Pharmacokinetics exam last week (and yes it is just as difficult a class to understand as it is to try and pronounce). I was having some serious trouble understanding the basic concept of hepatic clearance and how it affected drug concentrations in your body. In “easy” terms I was trying to understand how your liver gets rid of drugs and how this process is affected by how much blood is flowing there. To make matters even trickier, drugs can be bound to proteins in your blood that affects if your liver can get rid of the drug at all. Are you thoroughly confused? Now you know how I was feeling!

So there I was, stuck in hepatic clearance wasteland not knowing what was going on. Then, the “epiphany” occurred. I was reading in my “Pharmacokinetics Made Easy Book” and I read that in a “high clearance” drug the drug is literally ripped away from a protein and it hit me: it was just like when I eat my favorite guiltily pleasure ,chicken wings. You see, I am the “high clearance” liver, the chicken wing is a highly bound drug to protein, and I being the highly efficient machine I am rip the meat (aka drug) from the bone (protein). Viola! I am full, er, I mean clearance happens!

Alas, after much struggle, I had related one of the most difficult concepts in Pharmacokinetics to the simple (albeit delicious) act of eating chicken wings. My analogy was able to help several other people in class understand, or, at the very least, get a hearty chuckle. In any case, I was able to lighten the mood for everyone else, and made life a lot easier for me as remembering hepatic clearance was as simple as understanding how I go about attacking a 25 wing sampler from Wild Wings. I feel like the test went all right, but for some reason, by the end of it, I was really hungry. How could that be? Take care!

Posted by Cory at 07:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With all due respect to my racquetball opponents, I have a tendency to, as they say, “put on a clinic” by showing my “excessive good ability” usually ending in a “victory.” Now, I only used that extremely self centered (and only sometimes true) way of beginning this blog to say that the shoe was on the other foot Monday night, but luckily my schooling didn’t take place at the hands of a skilled opponent.

It was a typical racquetball Monday as I met my normal playing partner, Nima, at 5 down at Strom for some good exercise playing the game we enjoy. However, about 10 minutes into our first game, we noticed a couple of guys decked out head to toe in E-Force racquetball gear. They were looking for a court and setting up a table. Needless to say a little of my attention was paid to them instead of to my opponent. This lack of focus was reflected in me being on the losing end of the final score.

When the game was over, we got out of the court and struck up a conversation with the two strangers. It turns out they were members of the South Carolina Racquetball Association and they were here at USC to put on a clinic! Neither Nima nor I had heard anything about it. It was just luck that had brought us there at the same time.

We played one more game before the clinic got going. There were about 8 guys there to learn the fundamentals of the game. I thought that I was a pretty seasoned player, but even these guys had a few pointers to fix in my swing to improve my game. Along with the swing fixes, they showed a couple of drills to help me practice my new swing fundamentals. Not too shabby for a clinic I had no idea was even going on!

While learning the game was great, the biggest surprise came at the end when the guy in charge of the clinic, who is himself a USC grad began talking about how racquetball was “back in the day.” He mentioned that he played on the racquetball team, which surprised most of us who had no idea that one had even existed. He then said that he wanted to try and get one going here at USC, and then pointed at ME as the go between for him to help try and get it going!

This night ahd just gotten a whole lot better! From a chance encounter leading to some instruction to possibly getting a USC racquetball team going! My dreams of collegiate athletics could still come true. Hopefully, he will follow through on his suggestion and next semester we will have our own Gamecock Racquetball Club team! Stay tuned and take care!

Posted by Cory at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Four long years. Well, in all fairness, they are four long years that have actually gone by pretty quickly. Was that last statement an oxymoron? Probably. Does it even make sense? Maybe. In any case, let me get down to what I was trying to say. I have been playing on the same Co-Ed intramural softball team for four years, and in those four years I have seen a lot of home runs. Several were hit off yours truly. A lot came from the sluggers on our own team. Some came at the perfect time, and others at the worst possible moment from an opposing hitter, breaking out hearts. In all those homeruns, I have yet to experience one for my self. Well, at least I HAD yet to experience one for myself that is.

Sunday (yes I know, it was like 5 days ago, but it has been a bear keeping up with things here!) was the first intramural game of the season for the “Sultans of the South.” Actually, it was supposed to be our second, but the first one was called on account of the lights not turning on. Our team is a tight knit bunch that has been together for four years and we have had some pretty doggone good success over the years.

So, expectations were high starting another season in the Co-ed League. Unfortunately, our all-star shortstop, Chad (a fellow Arizonan!) graduated in the spring, so we had to find a replacement. Brad’s friend Henry was a baseball player in high school, and so we decided to pick him up to fill the gap at shortstop for the time being (it will actually be for the WHOLE season after his solid performance Sunday) and for some reason this made me think I had to move our lineup around. So, instead of having Brad in his traditional spot on the mound for us, I put myself there and moved him to leftfield. I don’t know if you have heard the term “overcoaching” used before, but let me explain what transpired next.

Over the first two innings, after a tizzy of line drives, missed ground balls, and a few dropped flies in left where Brad was playing, the mighty Sultans were down 9 runs! Things were looking grim for us, and after the second inning, Brad suggested we switch back, move him to pitcher, and have me back out in left field. One scoreless inning later and I was ready to step down and anoint Brad the Coach.

Despite our change of fortunes in the field, we couldn’t seem to put the bat on the ball well, and had not scored a run after two innings for a score of 9-0. I was leading off in the bottom of the third, and was just trying to hit the ball hard and get on base somehow so that if by some great fortune someone ELSE could get a hit, we might actually be able to score a run! Well, I went up to the plate nice and relaxed and saw the pitcher go into his motion. With my eyes focused squarely on his right hip I saw the ball come out of his hand and on the inside of the plate. I gave it a good swing, nothing too hard, and saw it rocket out towards right field. As I always do, I hustled out of the batters box with my eyes on a double and maybe even a triple. At full speed, I reached second and heard “slow down!” from somewhere. I then finally looked up and saw the umpire giving the “home run” signal. I had done it! I had hit my first homerun!

I guess that we all were riding high off that shot, because we scored 9 more runs after that and never looked back the rest of the game! It was an incredible comeback win for the Sultans! On top of the great victory, I had finally broken through with my first homerun! Will I be looking to add to my total? Not likely. I wouldn’t want to get “home run happy” now would I? That is the report for now sports fans! Take care and remember it only takes one swing to knock one out of the park!

Posted by Cory at 06:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)