OOO I remember! I think it's time to start taking the Gingko.

Last week I had my blood drawn for the "stay healthy, be fit" thing they do at work all the time. Pretty much you go in and get your BMI, Blood Pressure, Resting Heart Rate, and then they draw a vial of blood and do the basic 28 chem test on it. They then send you the results via the mail and you can call someone to go over your results to see if you need to get to your doctor. The real reason to do the test is because if you signed up for the PE class, and you get a before and after (at the end of the 12 week PE class) blood test done, then you can use it toward your credits for PE and thus get time off of work.

Anyhow, blood drawn last week. Yesterday morning a lady from the hospital where they're doing the blood tests called. The conversation went something like this:

"Hello! this is Julie from [insert hospital name here]! And you had your blood drawn the other day."

Heart rate skyrockets. I can hear the blood rushing in my ears.

"there's a problem."

I practically have a coronary.

"The people there didn't write down your blood pressure and resting heart rate like they were supposed to."

sigh of relief. Heart rate starts to drop and I no longer think I'm going to pass out.

"Do you happen to remember what your blood pressure was and what your resting heart rate was?"

"uh, they didn't do resting heart rate, but my blood pressure was 122/70."

"Oh, that's really good! I'm surprised you remember that."

"well, that's the lowest it's ever been"

"Yes, when you've been fasting, your platelets drop which tends to drop your blood pressure."

:::thinking to myself::: No, I think it's because 1) I wasn't at a doctor's office, and 2) I'm beginning to think the particular type of pill I'm on is going to cause me to have a stroke.

"Anyhow, I've got a second hand right here. Do you know how to take your pulse?"

Heart rate is still higher than normal, I can FEEL my pulse without even having to put my fingers on my neck.

"Go"

I count. About half way through the time I can FEEL my pulse slowing and returning to normal.

"Stop"

"15."

"okay, that puts your RHR exactly at 90. Good. Thanks! your blood test should arrive on Monday at the latest!"

after I got off the phone my RHR dropped to about 75. And I kept re-running the Homer's Triple Bypass Simpson's episode through my head:

        [a "window" shows Homer's heart, beating fast]
Burns: Relax, Simpson.  I just brought you in here for a friendly
      hello...
Homer: Whew...[heart slows down]
Burns: ...and goodbye!  You're fired!
Homer: [gags] [heart speeds up]
Burns: But, wait.  Perhaps I'm being too hasty.  You _are_ highly
      skilled...
Homer: Whew...[heart slows down]
Burns: ...at goofing off!
Homer: Aaargh!  [heart beats faster]
Burns: Now don't worry, Homer.  You're the kind of guy I could really
      dig...
Homer: Whew...[heart slows down]
Burns: ...a grave for!
Homer: Aaargh!  [heart beats faster than anything]
Burns: Your indolence is inefficacious!
Homer: [stares blankly] [heart beats normally]
Burns: That means, you're terrible!
Homer: Aarrggghh!  [heart goes crazy] [collapses]
-- The straw that broke the heart's back, "Homer's Triple Bypass"

I don't remember

I just do not remember what it was that I was going to blog about tonight. I totally had something too. I knew I should have written it down when I thought of it at work. Oh well, I'm sure I'll remember in the middle of the day tomorrow, just so I can forget about it all over again.

As if I didn't already have enough to do...

But, I think. Just think. That maybe. Just maybe. I will start knitting. That's right. Knitting. Mostly because I want another purple blanket, and I can't seem to find any fleece in purple that I like.

Also, I watched "Mind Control Made Easy or How to Become a Cult Leader." It's like basically the history of all religion. WOO!

Water

So, Shawn's out of town (in colorado actually. on business. in boulder. I'm so jealous). And I decided "hey, why not make 5 days worth of spaghetti?" So I break out the big pot and get the water going. The noodles get boiled and then it's time to strain them.

So, I grab the pot holders and take the pot over to the sink (and the colander). I start pouring.

All of the sudden I'm like "hunh, that's funny, my stomach feels like I'm pouring really hot water on it."

The I realize that if feels like I'm pouring hot water on it because I AM pouring hot water on it.

I mean really, WTF? It's like Shawn goes away and everything goes to pot.

State of the Union

Did anyone else catch the very obvious pants hiking by our vice president?

And, I don't like Bush. At all. But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't take one of those autographed little copies of the speech.

Veet vs. Nair

Yes, I know, this is of GREAT importance to all of you readers. Especially all you male readers.

Which is better? Veet wax strips or Nair wax strips?

By far, the winner is Veet. The strips have more wax, and I think because of that, the wax sticks better to the hairs, and even more importantly, the wax doesn't have the tendency to come off of the strip and stick to your leg.

Nothing hurts more when waxing legs than pulling on the hairs, but not actually removing them.

Stupid Cat

And his stupid hurting himself.

Yesterday he was let out, and at like 1pm he wanted back in. So he was let back in. About 2 hours later I noticed he was limping.

[Aside] This of course spawned a conversation on the correct use of "favored his leg" because I said that the leg he was holding up was being favored and Shawn says that the leg he was preferring to use was being favored. I just now looked it up on Dictionary.com. Favored: v. tr. entry 5: To treat with care; be gentle with. favored my wounded leg. Tina 1, Shawn 0 [/Aside]

I figured it was just something like his puncture wound he got on his shoulder was beginning to abscess, but alas, that has healed nicely with no problems. And besides, he was fine with me touching his shoulder, and fine with me touching his paw. He only made the sick kitty sounds when I touched the area under his body where the arm meets the body...but I couldn't feel anything weird. Figuring he just pulled a muscle or something, we decided to RICE it. Okay, really just the R part. Because really, have you ever tried to put ice and compression on a possible muscle tear on a cat? yeah, me neither and I really didn't feel like trying it yesterday.

And today he's all acting normally and being obnoxious all like "hey, let me outside! Hey, Hey you! let me outside. You're home today, which means I can go outside! LET! ME! OUT! SIDE! NOW!!!!"

yeah, he's like a 2-year-old.

Take Downs

Okay, Shawn said I needed to take down the last post. Because it was about work. I don't think I said anything bad, I think I pretty much just said "this happened. Is that bad?" But then, he's always much more of the type that when asked "how was your day?" he answers, "Work-like" and when you ask "well, what happened today?" he'll answer "stuff". So anyhow, he thinks they can fire me for posting that last post, thus I've been told to take it down.

But, the main reason of me posting was because when one person starts ACTING paranoid, and then someone else is ABSOLUTELY paranoid, it tends to breed paranoia. And I basically just wanted to be told that THEY are paranoid.

Which, Bond did nicely.

I don't know why....

I'm even thinking of doing this....But today I went over to the Daily Coyote Blog to check out the daily photo op and what do you know? Cat Balls!

[Aside] Doesn't that just sound like a great thing to say? in the same genre of "Aw! Horse Shit!"? [/Aside]

Anywho...I took one look at the photo and said to myself "hmm, I wonder if the cat is neutered...I mean, his balls look to be on about the same scale as Quazi's."

And thus, I will post pictures of my cat's [non-existent since he's been neutered] balls. And then you can discuss amongst yourselves about the theory that it's quite possible that the Vet lied to me and did not, in fact, neuter the cat as asked.

[Aside] No, really, Quazi is neutered. Furthermore, he acts like a neutered cat. Thus I do believe that the vet really did neuter him... as Dr. Frank-n-furter would say, "He's got big balls". [/Aside]

The Ants

Oh my God, the ants. I had to commit mass insecticide today and I feel poorly about that, but it had to be done.

Mostly because my desk exploded with ants at approximately 4pm today. That's right, exploded.

I went to check voicemail and change the voicemail message for our dummy account and at some point I looked at my jacket and was like "hmm, that's funny, I've got two ants on my coat"

funny odd, not funny haha.

Now then, I've always had the stray ant around on my desk, and usually I just let them be because There's No food here! Carry on, nothing to see! and thus, the little scavengers go back to where ever they come from with the message of 'no food, look elsewhere'.

But today (oh today). After I noticed the two ants, I happened to look at the phone cord and there were another 3 ants, and then, like from a horror movie, I slowly turn my head to the left and THERE. ARE. ANTS. EVERYWHERE. They are forming long lines and just marching along my desk and they are all carrying little ant eggs with them.

So I started the insecticide. I grabbed my little tab markers (the little sticky note things that come in their own holder) and started mashing the ants with the sticky. Then I cleaned up stuff as well as I could (which is only funny because I throughly cleaned my office on Friday), and continued to catch the stray ant with another sticky note until I left at 7pm.

Watch, I'll come back tomorrow and I'll have to start from the beginning. Sigh.

Names

Since we were discussing Celtic names last night, I decided to look up how these crazy names are spelled/pronounced (Someone had seen a name written as Aoife but didn't know how to pronounce it).

Sian, Darragh, Oisin (boy names) are the Celtic spellings of Sean, Dara and Osheen
Aoife, Niamh, Caoimhe (girl names) are the Celtic spellings of Eva, Neeve, and Kiva

But it does remind me that one of the characters in a book I read a while back (Labyrinth, which I didn't like) was Shelagh. Now I'm pretty sure it's just pronounced like Sheila (see: Darragh), but back then I just called the character Sch-lay-gey.

Lowe's

[Aside] I am a dork. I should have left about 25 minutes ago to make it to Bond and David's house on time, but instead I have decided I NEED to blog about this before I forget it [\Aside]

We went to Lowe's to get stuff so I can start my seeds a' growin' (check gardenblog for why)

Anyhow, we're waiting in the line (outside, in the cold) and the lady in front of us is buying like over 100 plants.

She and her daughter get to the checkout stand and the guy just looks at all the plants like "Oh. My. God." and the lady proudly says "We've got 6 flats of the yellow, and 3 flats of the purple."

And the checkout guy responds, "how many plants is that?" as it's pretty obvious that the term 'flat' means nothing to him.

Somehow, even though they had a total of 9 flats at 6 plant-packs per flat (which should be 54 plants), they determined that they had 106 plants.

so the guy enters in 106 plants at a cost of $1.75 per plant, and your total is $185.50 add in the 8.25% sales tax and your total is $200.80

The lady freaked out and stated "No, annuals are cheap, I was a landscaper for years, you can do a lot of landscaping for $200 and this surely does not cost $200!"

Thankfully she and her daughter said that we should go ahead since we had dirt and a light bulb.

By the time we left, they had 2 Lowe's guys, the daughter and the mother going through and hand counting each plant.

Real Genius

I told Shawn last night that we were going to watch Real Genius and he said "okay, sounds good." Then, he looked at the DVD box. Then the complaining started. At first I thought he had something against Val Kilmer and I was like "BUT DUUUUDE! Best line ever! 'I'm your huckleberry.'!"

Then the truth came out: The movie was made in the 80's. Therefore, it had to be bad.

Psh! Weird Science was not bad.

But no, Real Genius was good, not great, not something I want to watch over and over and over, but it definitely was not 'bad'

Baby Poll

Hey, I know there are a few of you that read this blog that have babies (or have had babies...even if it was 17 years ago). Anyhow, The Ambitious Mrs. is doing a survey on her blog to compile products that parents say "When (insert name) was a baby, I couldn't live without _____." So, for you parent types, click on the link and enter your baby's (or your) favored products.

Trading Movies

Tonight, I think we are going to watch Real Genius. Most people I know like it, however...it's apparently got it's detractors (ahem).

When I was leaving, I ran into Bond and Colleen (not exactly hard since I normally say 'bye' to them on my way out) and Colleen says "What's that?"

So I hold up the movie and say "most people I know like it, so I'm going to watch it."

Her response: "OH! like the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas!"

"Yes...only the complete opposite...as I said, people LIKED this movie."

Stem Cell Research

This is going to revolutionize the world. Look into it. *

That is all.



*And now I fully suspect to lose some (if not all...I mean, I only have like 5) of my readers. That is because I'm a Satan-worshiping-heathen, and I'm going to hell. So. I think I shall enjoy the ride.**

**Unless I decide to become Buddhist. In which case, I guess I can enjoy my next life as a dog. ***

***Actually, I would rather like to be a dog. You know, one of the dogs that has super-cushy digs.

LOLCats

I know there's a very good LOLCats caption that can go with this photo. I just can't decide what.

Weird Cop

There was a cop today.

He was standing on the median by a crosswalk in the neighborhood. He appeared to just be standing there and taking notes. And of course getting everyone to stop at the stop sign instead of rolling through it. He never waved at anyone to have them pull over, he never smiled, he never moved. He didn't even say 'hi' to the little girl that crossed the street in front of me.

He did, however, write furiously in his little notebook after each car drove away though.

We're waiting for a ticket to come via mail for having those license plate holders on our cars. You know the ones, the ones that cover up the word "Texas".

Vitamin D

So, while watching the news tonight, there was mention of how one of the new theories of things contributing to heart disease is a Vitamin D deficiency. Throughout the whole report they keep showing Vit D supplements. Nowhere in the newscast to they mention the easiest, cheapest, and generally most effective way to get vitamin D: go outside. Go get your recommended daily allotment of sunshine (it's seriously only something like 10 minutes).

[Aside] if you take calcium supplements (or even if you don't), be aware that calcium needs vitamin D in order to be absorbed and used by your body. So drinking all that milk isn't going to do you a lick of good if you don't get any vitamin D to go along with it. [\Aside]

And thus another thing can be added to the list of problems Americans have because they play video games and watch TV instead of playing outside.

Allergies

I hate you with a passion right now, stupid allergies!

2007: A Year in Review

Let's see here, this can be equated to a Christmas newsletter don't you think? I mean really, that's all Christmas newsletters are (aside from the whole "I hope this letter finds you happy, healthy, and god-fearing.")

January: I went crazy and bought like 16 yards of fleece fabric to use for making baby projects since everyone I knew was getting pregnant. Update on this: We still have like 12 yards of fabric left. And we had 2 ice days--which basically resulted in us not going to work for a total of 3 days (since the ice storm happened to coincide with MLK day).

February: Baby Shower for Calison and French Onion Soup Night. Yes, I believe we might have to have another French Onion Soup night.

March: My dad loses his wallet at a Las Vegas Casino (funny, that didn't make his Christmas Newsletter). Jesse and Kristie got married, and Grinder points out that I never post on this blog when I'm going to be going out of town. Something which I rectified at Thanksgiving time. And, most importantly, my car started it's decline into not working anymore. (And I guess I should explain that the car was referred to as "Satan Saturn" not because it had problems but because the license plate started with 666)

April: I got pulled over by a cop for having a tail light burned out. And I chopped my hair off. This happened to coincide with Shawn riding in the MS 150 from Houston to Austin.

May: I followed I.V.'s favorite toy around the house for a day. And my father-in-law was laid off.

June: Dani came down to Austin for a visit. Calison was born. And Shawn and I started our McKinney Falls debacle.

July: I noted that our bathroom was still unfinished. Updated Note: It is still unfinished--we have yet to put up the mirror. And one knob needs to be put on the cabinet door. And we still need to put up shelves of some sort. Okay, we're at about the same point we were back in July. Awesome. Yam was born. And dooce inspired me to take more pictures.

August: My car commenced it's slow, painful death. And most importantly, and most especially, I became an aunt when MyAm was born. I also posted proof of Shawn's mad sewing skillz.

September: The Satan Saturn died for the last time, and I got a NEW CAR (though it didn't arrive until the end of October). Bob came down to San Antonio for an interview and Elsie came along (that was the last time my car died--driving down to San Antonio to visit them). Pam, the baking goddess, and I also came up with a list of what people should wear AT ALL TIMES if they've been told they are going to be on Survivor. I also gave an update on the copious amount of TV we watch. Suffice to say it is "A lot".

October: My parents came down for a visit. And I lamented about what to wear for Halloween. I ultimately ended up wearing normal clothes and going as a "workaholic" yep. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Well, at least until such a time that I'm impeached for perjury. Also, someone delivered cyanide m&ms to my work for me. What a lovely thought...

November: It was National Blog Post Month. Which just basically means I blogged. A lot. So, obviously, not a whole lot of things happened. Which means I bored you all to death (Oh NOES!) We went back to Colorado for Thanksgiving. And I got into making a family tree. I then got my family into it, too.

December: I posted holiday relevant stories, and holiday relevant pictures. I also signed up for an walked in the Trail of Lights 5k. As I said though, we never finished. That's me, aiming for mediocrity.

Drummers

So, last night we started talking about drummers. We started talking about them because Craig Ferguson had Bob Spitz on his show (of course the show was like 2 years old--he was talking about how the new year wouldn't start for a few weeks if you were Chinese and it was going to be the year of the dog, and we all know what we are currently in the year of the pig, ergo the show had to be from December '05). Anyhow, Bob Spitz is the guy that wrote the Beatles' Biography. So, of course there was talk about Ringo. And more specifically about how he was a pretty mediocre drummer (from a drummer's standpoint).

I then said something about how since it seems that for a band to be considered "good" you have to have good guitarists, and drummers can be taken out of the equation. [Aside] don't ever say this to a drummer. [/Aside]

Of course this started the conversation about drummers. And more specifically that I don't know drummers for bands. Except for Travis Barker (Blink-182/Aquabats), Tommy Lee (Motley Crue), Lars Ulrich (Metallica), and Ringo Starr (Beatles).

Then, the quizzing started:

Who is Ginger Baker (not that he's necessarily a good drummer, just that he's famous)?
Who is the drummer for Tool?
And the drummer for Weather Report?
And surely you must know the drummer for Rush!

And I didn't know. At all. The only thing I could think of was "Keith Moon?" and even then, I had no idea who he was.

[Aside] That sound you hear? That's all you dear readers blustering "what? how could she not know who GINGER BAKER IS?" [/Aside]

So then, dear readers, Do you know the answer to any of the above questions? and I'll give you a hint, Keith Moon is not an answer. Though you get extra credit if you can tell me which band he was in. The only rule: No looking up the answers on the internet.

Oh yeah, Happy New Year.