Grady's Anatomy

If you get a chance to watch an hr long special on CNN called Grady's Anatomy, you should give it a shot. It will be on tommorrow night (Sunday) at 8ET. It covers the lives of four real medical residents, one of them graduation from my school last year and is now starting his surgery residency at Grady Hospital in Atlanta. Not quite as drama filled as Gray's Anatomy, but definitely a good 1hr schpiel to check out.

Europe advice

I will be heading to Europe, specifically Italy, Switzerland, Prague and Southern Germany for a month after graduation. I am in charge specifically of looking up stuff for Southern Germany, but any advice on places to go, things to see or where to stay, or travel advice in general would be nice. Since every one of you guys seem to have traveled the globe after graduation, I thought I could elicit some help.

House hunting and mortgage woes

So I spent the last weekend over St. Patty's day looking for homes in Tulsa. After burning through nearly 30 homes, I'm spent. I narrowed it down to about 3 or 4 homes, with 1 that I thought was promising and 2 that are real nice, but maybe a little too far away from work.

The house I found is a small bungalow that is 5 minutes from the hospital, 1200Sq ft or so, with 2 bedrooms and 2 baths. Here is my dilemma: the seller is asking $120,000, which is definitely not bad, but I called the county assessor to verify a few things, and they told me that the house was purchased a year ago at $34,000 and now has been valued at $60,000. The owner claims that he did $50,000 in renovations, and it definitely looks nice, but I don't want to pay too much if I can't unload it in 5 years when I leave. On top of that, the bank won't lend me more than the appraisal value. It is also on the high end for houses in the neighborhood, with the majority selling from $60-$75,000.

Here are a few pics of the house:

The next step I guess is to make an offer, but I have to figure out the whole mortgage thing. I'm trying to apply for physician loans, because I don't have any income, these loans are the only ones that will allow me to have no down payment, and will let me close up to 60 days before I even receive a paycheck. Problem with this is that most of them require some combination of a credit score of 700. Some will take the middle number out of the three credit bureas, an average of the three, or just use the FICO score. My FICO score when I check a month ago was a 683, with various discrepancies on my credit report. I have fixed it with transunion and experian, but equifax is really starting to piss me off. Both the Transunion and Experian scores are above 700 but my Equifax score is at 640, and is what is killing me. For some reason, my credit report from them has no activity on all my accounts, it was like they are too lazy to gather any of the information. It is impossible to find a number or way to talk to someone from Equifax, so I have placed disputes online, and now I'm just crossing my fingers and seeing what happens. Has anyone else had problems like this or any idea of what I can do?

My timeline is closing in. I need to be moved by the first weekend of May, so that leaves me about 2 weeks or less to find a place and get things rolling.

I can't wait till this crap is over with and I'm hanging out in CA with everyone. This blows.

March Madness

It's that time of the year again, when the brunt of my spare time from Thursday to Sunday will be spent glued to the tube. I am taking part in 4 different brackets this year, one that I'm doing just for fun, and the other three in hopes that I might actually make some money this year. One bracket is with Schaefer and peeps from back home, which he e-mailed a few days ago about splitting the winnings and making 50% go to a charity, specifically the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. I think this is a great idea, and with so many people running office pools, we could fundraise so much money for charity if everyone donated a portion of the tournament pool money. The other two brackets are with the orthopedic clinic and the anesthesiologists at the hospital. An interesting stastic that I heard on the news is that American companies are projected to lose nearly $4billion in wages and productivity from distractions caused by the NCAA tournament. I know that the next following weeks, in clinic and in the OR, we will definitely be slowed down. My attending joked today that turnover time is going to be ridiculous for our Thursday and Friday surgeries.

This year I had intended to go to the final four, when I won tickets through the NCAA lottery, but with all the expenses I've accrued this year with traveling and the upcoming Europe trip, I had to pass, and instead had to sell my tickets. My $200 investment turned into a $1000 profit, so I'm not too terribly disturbed.

On other news, I ran a 4 mile early St. Patty's day race last weekend and finished at around 45 minutes. Pretty piss poor for most people, but damn good for me.

This weekend is the start of house hunting. I'm going to head down to Tulsa on friday to start the search, hopefully I'll have a good idea by the time I leave on Sunday, by miracle maybe I'll find a home before I leave.

Hope everyone is doing well. Have a fun and safe St. Patty's day, and hopefully I'll see most of you guys in a month for Meathead's wedding.