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Friday, January 30, 2009

25 Random Things

Yes, I know, this is something on Facebook that I received also, but I thought I would post this out here for the Cyber World as well!

1.) As much as I dream of travel, the farthest east I have gotten is Dallas, TX, and I've only been out of the country once, and that was to Tijuana (aka South San Diego).
2.) I am only one of two family members to have completed a 4-year college degree (and the only one ever to have gone to grad school)
3.) I have one of the weirdest pet peeves: warm seats. Doesn't matter what kind of seat, but it always grosses me out like no other!
4.) I often wonder if my birth certificate is a mistake and I am really younger than I am. I sure feel like it.
5.) I've only had three relationships. I was engaged twice. Married once (so far. HA!)
6.) Up until high school, for a variety of reasons, I would usually miss out on 30 days of school. Yet I had a 4.0.
7.) I have started to (or declared) the following majors in college: History, Sociology, Pre-law, Criminal Justice, Child and Adolescent Development, Psychology, Early Childhood Education, Speech Pathology and Human Development and Family Studies (what I eventually got my degree in). In all I've attended 4 universities and 2 junior colleges, not counting the correspondence course I took from BYU and the stint in the Air Force ROTC at UC Berkeley.
8.) Most of my favorite things fluctuate with whatever I happen to have on my mind at the time, but the few that stay the same are "Pizza", "Winter", "Gun Powder", "Tombstone", and "Chaplin".
9.) I do have a love for science and biology, however have never done well in a course in college.
10.) I always joke that I am the love child of my mom and the mailman because I stand out from my family so much: I'm the only one without glasses, the only one without a need for braces, and the only one obsessed with history and literature. This is on both sides of the family, including nieces and nephews.
11.) I learned to play the piano at age 3, and can play both the piano and clarinet by ear. In fact when we were in Colorado, I memorized 10 hymns in an hour on the clarinet. But I can't read sheet music to save my life.
12.) The menagerie I currently own is not the first time I've had so many animals. In junior high, my backyard became the haven for unwed single mother cats. We had 7 kittens in our yard, plus the mothers.
13.) When I leave for work, I do what I call the "changing of the guard". I cover my chinchillas and uncover everyone else. As I do so, I'll sing "Good Morning" to them. I'll even say goodbye to each one of them by name, but that's usually when I'm stalling.
14.) When I applied to Stanford for work, I was told that it would take 25-30 applications to get an interview, and at least 40 before I would be offered a job. I applied to one position, my current one, and got it.
15.) My best subjects in school were math and music. My favorites, however, are psychology and history.
16.) I've never experienced the death of a close friend or family member.
17.) My mom used to tell me that God gave me the weather I wanted for my birthday, because it was always sunny. When I decided to move to Colorado, I prayed for snow. My first snowfall was on my birthday.
18.) Before moving to Colorado, I have never lived in another house aside from the one I grew up in. That's almost 23 years of the same roof.
19.) I think that, if finances and life permits, I would love a large family. I don't necessarily want to give birth to them all, though.
20.) I recently entered my books on a reading list website. So far, it totals about 850 books. That's not counting church books, cooking books, text books, or all the stuff still at my parent's place.
21.) If I could go anywhere internationally, it would be Paris to see the Louvre. In the states, either DC or the OK Corral.
22.) The number 17 has always been lucky to me. I moved to Colorado on the 17th. I graduated on the 17th. Got married on the 17th. Didn't have a sweet 16, but a 17th birthday party. I'm sure there's other stuff, but you get the picture.
23.) Every one of my animals that I currently have were named after a character either from a movie or a book. Chris is the exeption, and he was almost Grissom.
24.) A lot of my email addresses are JMBPerry. Everyone assumes the B is for my maiden name. It's actually for what my parents almost named me.
25.) I had several other possible careers when I was younger. At one point I wanted to be a criminal profiler. I was offered an internship for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in their bomb squad, and because I scored a 97 on the ASVAB for the military, it was suggested that I go into Military Intelligence.

Monday, January 26, 2009

She works hard for the money.... Eeh-ehh, eeh-eeh.

So, here I am, once again gracing the clinic with my presence, offering up to leech anyone of 10 mls of blood to see if they have a chance of developing the same disease their family member has (Type 1 Diabetes).

There are two clinics in the area, clinic A and clinic B. Clinic A was visited once a month by my Coworker Left, and I covered Clinic B. However, because of the low numbers, it was decided by the doctors that we visit BOTH clinics EVERY week, and rather than have us come down here a lot, we only come Mondays and need to watch both of the clinics, easy a 15-minute drive from each other (albeit both on the same major street).

Most of the problem is with Clinic A. The physicians and staff there don't really care about recruiting so much, and in the past year (all of 2008) they have only had 3 people screened (to put in perspective: This month at our university's clinic I had 9 screened two weeks ago, and 5 last week. And these are just Wednesday afternoons, not all-day things). It makes me sad that these people want the prestige associated with this university but do not want to put forth the effort to help make it better through research.

Today I've had a few screenings already and should have some more this afternoon (two that I know of for sure anyway). As weird as this sounds, I have a fascination with blood. There's a lot of reasons for this. Holding that tube is like holding life. After all, blood is in living things, and is essential to them. There is also the idea that, when it comes down to it, we are all made up of this same stuff, so in a sense we are all the same, but that something so small makes us unique. And our uniqueness is in this warm liquid that flows through us.

OK... enough of the romanticism about blood. I feel enough like a vampire as it is. On to other stuff.

Today during lunch I went through the two bookstores; BN and the church bookstore. My one positive to covering both clinics is that, smack in between is a BN and an LDS bookstore. I hadn't set foot in a BN since before Christmas, and the last time I was at the LDS bookstore would have to be the same, but I haven't bought anything there since last October's conference. I made up for it though. I bought 6 books there, plus magazines and a framed art piece at BN that was regularly $35 but with discounts and sales it was only $7.50. It's really beautiful; a comet shooting across the sky over Stonehenge. Very cool indeed.

I had to be really selective about what books I read now. Since I'm trying to work out more, I'm bringing stuff "to do" during the workouts. I usually do the bikes and the treadmill, and have to keep my mind occupied so I don't feel so much like I'm "working out" but just enjoying myself. I've found myself bringing four things with me: my Tazmanian Devil key with the chip to unlock the gym; a book, my iPod ear buds because they have TVs attached to each piece of equipment (except for weights, of course) and a bottle of water. I do look odd in there, with ear bugs on attached to a television that I listen to, but don't really watch because I am too busy reading what's going on to Stephanie Plum, and yet I can tell you who she's hunting as well as what Paula Deen prepared on her show.

I've only been working out for a few weeks now, and although I don't have a scale to track my progress per se, I am noticing a difference. I do tend to eat less, and I feel lighter in general. I've also learned a few things, the most important being not to watch Food Network while you're working out, and to learn to stretch more to increase flexibility.

Well, enough yammering on my part. Time to start working and writing!

Friday, January 16, 2009

Yes, Virginia, Chivarly ISN'T Dead!

I had an interesting encounter on the bus yesterday. Being my lazy self (that's what happens when I only get one day off in a week) I jumped on the absolutely last bus I could without having to drive to work. Needless to say, there were 20 people ahead of me in line already, and the bus looked already to capacity with other folks who couldn't shake off the humpday sleep and opted to come to work late. Wearily I ascended the stairs of the bus only to, surely enough, get stuck standing smack-dab in the middle of the bus.

As I sighed and began to load my purse and backpack into the overhead cargo, a man (probably 45-ish) stood up from his chair and insisted I take his seat! I wasn't sure if I should be shocked by this generosity, or appalled that he likely thought I was pregnant and need to seriously lose some weight! Either way, I was moved.

It reminded me of my dating days. Growing up ultra-lib, I never expected men to hold doors for me (to buildings or to cars) or any of the other subtleties of chivalry. You can ask my husband about racing him to the car so he couldn't open the door. And it wasn't just me that had this problem: I lost count of how many girls have raced my husband or any male to the car door so they don't open it.

It gave me inspiration, and an idea of sorts: What about a dating book, not on how to get a date, but how to ACT on the date? What are the do's and don'ts that I can pass on from my own insane dating experiences?

So that is the new project of mine: To write like no other. At least this time it's not fiction (which, btw, is still in the works).