A Tale of Three Wii's

Finishing another block pushes me another six weeks behind on the blog, but it suffices me to say that all's well that ends well, and so it was with microbiology and pharmacology. Actually microbiology was really interesting and hopefully on my week by week recap I'll be able to highlight some of my favorite microbes for your entertainment.

Pharmacology on the other hand was not one of the most organized classes we've had here (thankfully microbiology was one of the best), so sometimes lectures went long and tangential. One day in the middle of the block I was slouched over, daydreaming, and more or less catatonic when all of a sudden in a cacophony of forgotten-to-be-muted rings and chimes I was startled back into reality as my phone started ringing, notifying me of a new text message, a new voicemail, an email, and an instant message--it was a wiialert! I didn't have a moment's time to lose as I knew that I had to act fast. Faster than an orderly running for a crash cart on a coding patient I was at Amazon.com within seconds checking out with 3 Nintendo Wii's for a pricey $750. They sold out again within a minute's notice but my order which I had attempted many times prior had finally gone through.

So the story ensues with 42 of my classmates + 1 world renown lecturer looking in my direction as I pursued the three elusive Wii's. I had postings up on Craigslist and the Mayo Classifieds within minutes, and within minutes I had two calls from people who were already interested in buying them. There was just one problem: I didn't have any of them in hand yet. One of the callers however decided to stick with me and he became Wii #1 starting my story of the three Wii's.

Wii #1 went to a man who's wife went in for surgery at Mayo and needed something to keep her entertained while she would be recovering for the next few weeks. He showed up in leathers looking like he was ready to kill, I thought he might be with Hell's Angels as he unrolled a wad of cash and gave me a cool $300. I was waiting for the ATF and FBI to jump me at any moment and I think I still am.

Wii #2 "Hi this is so and so from Luther Midelfort Northland am I speaking to Dan?" is what I heard when I picked up the phone. Confused and swearing that I heard that so and so was from Dunder Mifflen I was bracing to retaliate against this unsolicited sales call on my donotcall.gov phone number. I was pleasantly surprised however when the individual on the line inquired about the Nintendo Wii and I was even more impressed that they turned out to be a Mayo department. "Umm sure I can take a corporate check, and send it through the Mayo intraclinic courier system... or I could drop it off to you..., wait, you're in North Wisconsin!?" Wii #2 is pending a Mayo Clinic billing department corporate check. I sold a Nintendo Wii to the Mayo Clinic!

Wii #3 Went out the door this morning. I had just come in from playing with Mikey outside in the 1/16th of a inch of snow we received last night when I got a call from a desperate women on the other end of the line. "Are you Dan? Do you still have your Wii available?" I told her I did and was immediately barraged with "Thank you thank you thank you thank you - you are my hero - thank you! Can I buy it from you right now and can we meet half way?" Considering the notion that I would need to get ready and go somewhere I was caught off gaurd on this lazy Saturday morning and mustered up little better than a prolonged "Ummmm..." "Well you see, my best friend is having a wedding and it is right now, and I'm the bridesmaid, and I didn't know these damn Wii's were so damn hard to find in the whole city (try the whole country I thought to myself), and now I'm late and I need one to give to them because that's what they wanted and I've been looking all morning." *Sigh* fine, I can get ready I thought to myself, heck I can even dig up a gift bag for it, but what frightened me was what she asked next: "So how much does a Wii usually cost? Is there anything wrong with the one that you are selling? Can you promise me that it will work?" This is an example of a very bad buying situation for the buyer, had I been a malicious salesperson I could've probably exploited this situation pretty badly and left the buyer out of money and out of luck. But being the nice guy that I think I am I only scooped her for the $50 commission and now in turn have christened a wedding with a Wii.

So there really wasn't much of a point to this post. Sure pharmacology was probably the worst of times, and this wii alert in class that day probably was the best of times, but the real enjoyment that I had from the sale of these three Wii's wasn't the fact that I could pay our utilities for three more weeks, but rather the three little crazy vignettes that I otherwise never would have acquired. So the moral of the story is: if you ever stumble upon a stash of Wii's one day, maybe try picking one up and if not to play, list it for sale and see what comes your way.

Mean Time Between Failture? 6 Months

Halo 3 the biggest most anticipated game of the century is coming out September 25, 2007 and I for one will not be able to play it - why? No not because I didn't preorder the game, no not because I'll be too busy studying in medical school as I am now (as we'll be in our selective block then), but because my second Xbox 360 has up and died on Carolyn tonight on of all games: Viva Pinata!! Arrrgh!! This makes for the second system failure from a brand new console a year ago, spaced out 6 months apart. At this rate my now extended 3 year warranty is going to see 6 console repairs and at 4-5 weeks a piece, that means out of 3 years of owning an Xbox 360, for half a year it will be off somewhere being "repaired."

Frankly this isn't as dramatic as I make it out to be. Do I really have Halo 3 preordered? Sure I do, I mean, it is the most anticipated game of the universe -- but do I really care about it? Well let's just say I've never played Halo 1, or Halo 2, so Halo 3 doesn't seem to be such a dramatic thing to me. But not having a console that I could play Halo 3 on or any other game for that matter irks me major. I guess there are always people worse off, but for now, it's time to look into getting a Wii.

Week 5: Cougars, Badgers, and Bears?

The second week of the didactic core was rather uneventful - oh wait, except for the two hundred or so pages I had to read and digest for this week spanning such topics as multifactorial inheritance, epithelial tissue, cell division and chromosomes, population genetics, connective tissue, cartilage and bone? - I guess that's uneventful. More of that in the next entry since I'm writing in retrospect and there's even more to add to that list following week 6.

Week 5 finished up our introduction to the patient experience for a little while as the course only meets intermittently through April 2008. My second patient experience this time had no camels involved, but was rather a portrayal of an old woman with her grand daughter who felt faint and dizzy after riding the roller coaster at the state fair. There was not anything too spectacular with the patient's medical history, or rather me taking that history so I guess I could call that progress from last week.

I took Friday afternoon off after we got out rather early which was something that we enjoyed this week (getting out Tuesday, Thursday, Friday). Carolyn decided it was time to visit the zoo closest to us in Oxbow Park. Seeing that I had nothing better to do than to study on a beautiful Friday afternoon, we decided to go and Mikey loved it: sorta.

The zoo is fifteen minutes outside of town is situated in a state park (Oxbow), situated around corn fields and soybean. What started as a collection of injured animals now is a semi-grassy oasis in the middle of nowhere with caged animals such as otters, badgers, owls, a pair of bald eagles, a cougar, a wolf, a black bear, and even a petting zoo of cows, goats, and chickens. It just seemed to be an anomaly to be in the vast surroundings of agricultural Minnesota and suddenly see a wolf running laps in its cage, or see a cougar eating a big chunk of steak on a fake tree limb. Welcome to Rochester I guess. Mikey loved the waterfall in the bear cage - no the lumbering multi-hundred pound flesheating beast didn’t deter him - he wanted to play in the water. I think we have a ways to go with Mikey still.

Week 5 segues into week 6 which ultimately was the relative calm before a before a secretly brewing storm.