An insane week

So I worked an overnight conference on Tuesday night, the second one of these I've done, and though I was dreading it because of the whole overnight part, it was actually pretty interesting, and the results (which I edited) were highlighted on the front page of the Post today! It was about cesarean section, and I learned a lot. Did you know that some insurance companies won't cover epidural but will cover a c-section, so some women choose a c-section because they're afraid of natural childbirth and don't know there are other ways to do it? Anyway, the general findings were that if women want to request a c-section it's not necessarily bad if they're only having 1 or 2 children.

Anyway, I didn't work the days surrounding the conference, so I got a ton of stuff done for Urban Village, and then last night we got together and finally put a finished product together, and it looks AWESOME. But where did the week go? What's going on? It's Thursday and I'm off to my hometown again this weekend (like last weekend and the weekend before!). I think the dog expects to spend her weekends at my parents' place now.

I was supposed to see some family who came in to town this week but I guess they overbooked their social schedule and chose their friends over us... which sort of was OK for me because of the craziness with the overnight, but it kinda sucked because my parents were going to come down and then everything fell apart.

So this post is just as random as my week... oh well.

Subaru's unna getchoo!

So France's police force is switching to our car as its main vehicle!!! Their old Peugeots were too slow, and our Subaru WRX was just right. Haha!

Manny

New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Day:

manny, n. (pl.-nies) a male nanny: my husband would like us to hire a manny for our two boys.

ORIGIN: 1990s:blend of man and nanny.

I thought this was pretty funny. I get this word-of-the-day email from Oxford University Press. It made me think of Manny, Moe, and Jack (those car guys - The Pep Boys). Then it made me laugh more.

I'm "in the papers"

OK, so it's not a physical paper per se, and my name is not actually used, but my father-in-law was spotlighted in a dermatology magazine and mentioned me as one of the valued things in his life... which was nice. But, all Jen ego aside, really the article is about him and his practice; the magazine has started spotlighting well-known dermatologists... and Bob is the fourth spotlight, just after the guy who invented Johnson's baby shampoo and Retin-A! Here's the Skin & Aging article. I just had to share it... because he likes me, he really likes me...

Now if I could just have a spotlight of my own! :)

The Cherry Blossoms are Back

DC is about to get all dreamy-eyed over the cherry blossoms. The peak for the blooms is supposed to be Monday or Tuesday, according to the cherry blossom festival article in the Post. It's hard to believe (how cliche!) that it's been a year since Ben and I went down to see the blossoms. It was just a few weeks before the wedding. I had just had my hair highlighted, with disastrous effect, and we took pictures down by the tidal basin that turned out looking like Ben was on a date with carrot top. But regardless, it was fun; we discovered a huge tulip garden that I didn't know existed. And seeing as tulips are "our flower," and I intentionally included them in the wedding flowers, it made me happy to find them. Actually, if I remember, we found the tulips because there was a roasted/candied pecan stand next to it that was drawing droves of people (and us) to it just because of the intoxicating smell.

They really are beautiful, but what I think is the best part of the whole process is the petals falling and completely covering the tidal basin, so its entire surface is white.

We're going back on Sunday! I think it will make me nostalgic for the wedding. It's been long enough that the bad parts of pre-wedding planning have slipped my mind. I guess I'm lucky in that sense! Anyway, I'm excited.

Paradox of Grammar

"A curious paradox exists in regard to grammar. On the one hand it is felt to be the dullest and driest of academic subjects, fit only for those in whose veins the red blood of life has long since turned to ink. On the other, it is a subject upon which people who would scorn to be professional grammarians hold very dogmatic opinions, which they will defend with considerable emotion." W. Nelson Francis, "Revolution in Grammar," in Aspects of American English (Elizabeth M. Kerr & Ralph M. Aderman eds., 1963).

Clear Care Contacts Crisis

What the hell is wrong with CIBA Vision? So I've gotten these fantastic new (O2Optix) contacts that are super comfortable but they require the special peroxide-based solution, Clear Care. I found out this weekend after searching high and low at probably 15 different store in four different states that they ran out and won't have more until April. So I'm wearing the crap Acuvue Advance contacts that get dry even though they're not supposed to.

Only a mother's love...

Funny cat and rooster strange bedfellows video.

Pug + Beagle = Puggle

This is awesome! Well, it seems to be a bit hit-or-miss, but essentially the puggle is adorable! Here's another, even better, picture of a puggle puppy.

Funny new soft drinks and caffeine

So, I was watching Regis and Kelly this morning while on the elliptical machine (YES! I'm going to the gym again), and Regis wasn't there but Anderson Cooper (whoo hoo!) was, and I was a bit too far from the TV to read the subtitles but I got the basic point that there's a new Coca Cola drink released in France (ha!) and coming to the states called Coca Cola Blak. They had a bottle of it on the show, and Kelly and Anderson, while chatting about American Idol, try it. It's apparently half coke, half "coffee essence," and the reaction was mixed; Kelly liked it, and Anderson spit it out on the floor. I thought this was very very funny. I actually used to do this myself; I would pour my leftover coffee into ice cube trays, and then use it in my diet coke instead of ice cubes. I liked it; so, I assume (but we know what assuming does) that I'll like "Blak."

So then I started researching this, and came upon some interesting information. There's this guy called Caffeine Fiend who writes about the harms of caffeine, and you can calculate how much of your favorite drink it would take to kill you. This I also thought was very very funny. But Coca-Cola Blak was not on there yet, obviously.

So, in all, I've managed to pique my interest in this "Coca-Cola Blak" crap and also entertain myself in an otherwise boring environment.

Break from mind-numbing data entry

Despite the fact that I was hired as an EDITOR, I am currently stuck doing data entry. It will all change soon when more documents start coming in for the busy season, but for now... it's cutting up big word files into lots of little ones and uploading them. It's driven me to buy "TAB Energy" drinks... which I would have bought anyway because I read about them in the New Yorker the other day. Ha! They really do taste like a "liquid jolly rancher" like the magazine said. But yes, I've been drinking them like a champ.

Anyway, Ben has been in San Francisco since Monday and I've had the whole bed to sleep on, which just isn't right. I've been sleeping on his side of the bed, because the alarm is there. The bonus to this is that I can set the alarm for an hour before I want to get up, so I can hit the snooze 6 times, which I, in my mind, claim helps me wake up bit by bit. It has helped; I got up "early" (7am) two days in a row and worked out. Lately in the mornings it's been "One more?" from Ben, and a grunt from me, over and over every 9 minutes, until it's almost 8 o'clock. Or, the snooze gets smacked and I haven't even woken up to know it. I guess going to bed before 11 this week has helped that. This actually means that I'm getting over 8 hours of sleep, which seems to be what I need. That, or I need to really deprive myself, like I did Monday night after going out with my sister-in-law and not getting home until midnight. Then I had to get up earlier than usual for a meeting with a small-business banker from PNC. And forgot that the cleaning people were supposed to come... it was a bit of a mess. But even though I was very tired, I popped out of bed. Frantic and frazzled, yes, but I was out of bed.

The drawback to sleeping on the other side of the bed is that I sleep funny, sort of diagonally across the bed, like half of me wants to be on his side and the other half on mine. Then my bizarre contortionist sleeping habits get even worse and I wake up all discombobulated. This morning my head was UNDER Ben's pillow and my feet were off the opposite side of the bed. And the blankets were pulled into the middle of the bed and piled on top of my head. I have no one to blame for this but myself. I'm actually rather amused by it.

I am totally rambling. Perhaps to avoid my busy work.

Faulkner quote

The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

(Granted, "a little" for Faulkner is reportedly more than I drink in a year. But hey, it worked out for him.)

Dream

So, I have dreams that wake me up either crying or laughing. I don't talk in my sleep, but I cry and/or laugh, which then wakes me up.

This morning I had a very long dream about my aunt who passed away a few years ago. I was visiting her, and she was sick like she was at the end, with people looking after her and monitoring her vitals. But, she was still up and moving around, talking, being her vibrant self. My grandmother was there and kept chastizing her for being too active because she'd hurt herself or get too exhausted, and my aunt ended up making herself bleed from her side (which has nothing to do with what it was really like). Everyone rushed to take care of her, and I was sort of just a spectator. She fell over, and got up, and then went into another room.

She came back (maybe in a wheelchair?), and said that she and her friends had thought up this very important project that she wanted ME to continue when she was gone. I immediately got worried, and thought, oh my god, how am I going to do this with work and the new business, too? I asked her what it was. She wanted me to create profiles and descriptions of every charity and do-good organization, compile them, and create a catalog/directory, like a yellow pages. I think she called it a Hope Catalog. I thought it was a good idea, and I think I agreed to do it even though I had no clue how I was going to fit it into my schedule. Then she died. And I woke up crying. But not the usual no-tears dream crying, because I opened my eyes and tears spilled out and I cried on Ben for a long time, because I miss her and wish I could have spent time with her as an adult, and because the dream was very real and uncanny, especially with the sort of plea from the grave. And also maybe because of the stress of the new business, though I wasn't thinking about that consciously.

The good news is that the "Hope Catalog" already exists, but in online form. It's called the Charity Navigator, and I used it to find a charity to donate to as a wedding favor.

Peanut Butter

So, I had rice cakes with peanut butter for lunch. The peanut butter is sitting here next to me. I looked at the label, and it says "60% peanuts." This means that 40% of whatever is in there is NOT peanuts. Curious and a bit worried as to what might be in there, I read the ingredients. First is peanuts. Second, to my horror, is "corn syrup solids." Corn syrup is bad enough, but SOLIDS? What ARE corn syrup solids? That's even scarier than the corn syrup because I have no clue what the difference between the two are. There's also something added to "improve creaminess" further down the list. Are we really that demanding as a culture that we need extra fake additives to make things creamier?

To corn syrup and corn syrup solids: A curse on both your houses!!