Same Name, Different Tune 7:45 PM

I've been a huge fan of Smashing Pumpkins as long as I've been old enough to buy CDs.  My admiration began way back in middle school with the release of mellon collie and the infinite sadness and continued through to the latest release, zeitgeist, even if it was only down to two original members (albeit the two most important members of the original quartet).

With the departure of Jimmy Chamberlin from the most recent iteration of the Pumpkins, I think it's safe to say that the dream is dead.  As much as Billy Corgan would like to believe that he embodies the Pumpkins, he needs to look back at all those bands that have tried to go on with only one original member and realize that he's done.  Whatever he's putting together now is barely recognizable as the slow ballads and grinding power cords that defined pumpkins for a decade.

Let's face it.  A band implies a group of people that collaborate to make a finished product.  Sans three members, you no longer have a band, you just have a name.  Go ahead, Billy, keep making music.  But let's not pretend that its worthy of the Smashing Pumpkins moniker.  

New Beginnings 8:06 PM

For whatever reason, I find myself unable to sleep through the night before a new rotation.  It's been a reoccurring theme; a trend that isn't likely to change anytime soon.

It really wasn't until I got to this place in my medical training that I realized how many hurdles one has to overcome, and how overwhelming things can become.  Because on that first day, it's more than applying medical knowledge. It's getting to know new people, learning new expectations, integrating yourself into the flow and recognizing the routines.  A new rotation is like a perpetual interview, and just when you've got the interviewer figured out you are sent to a new interview, another rotation.

Habit is a funny thing.  Most people have delegated so much of their lives to habit that you don't even realize it until something disrupts those routines.  Most people get up at the same time every day.  They have an order to brushing their teeth and washing their face.  They always go for a specific coffee mug or read a certain section of the paper first.  I feel like I haven't had my routine for the past year, and there's something very unsettling about that.

I guess this is why I yearn for the light at the end of the tunnel (May 8th, 2011 to be exact).  I want a little more routine in my otherwise chaotic world.