Weddin'

Had fun tonight catching up with some old and current friends. Here are some highlights.

Weekend

Well, we are going to a wedding this weekend. I have not been to a wedding in at least 3 years, and we are going to 2 in the next month. Since the wedding is in Greenwich, I got concerned about my shoes. I realized my dress shoes are all old, navy, or black. I was never concerned about my shoes really until I moved here. I think about them a little more now, but I am not willing to go through major pain. So I ended up buying 2 pairs, so hopefully they will go with something. I thought my friend Regina would have been proud of my choices (she was always pushing stylish yet brutally uncomfortable shoes on me). I swear I tried on about 10 pairs, and I could not walk in most of them. They all have this crazy heel that is like balancing on a nail. My balance is bad enough! The last time I tried to buy dress shoes, they had all of these shoes with heels and no straps on the back. It was like wearing a heel flip-flop. How in the hell does anyone walk in that?

Look what else I found!

I should get a few bucks for them on Ebay!

Emily Dickinson?

When I was in third grade, I fancied myself a poet. I was in some experimental split class that had many self directed times of the day. There I explored my "talent" for poetry. I think my teacher was being nice by encouraging me. I remember thinking this poem in particular was genius. I thought it was very deep indeed. I will let you judge for yourselves. As you can see, I did receive a sticker for my fine work.

Really old n' scary!

Good thing I got over my fear of prosthetics. My job would be really tough. I can not believe I did not fess up to a major childhood fear which is tornadoes!

Old Schtuff

I was cleaning a closet, and I came across a box of old stuff I did not know I had. I found this amoung other photo collages from college, but I thought this was pretty funny. Linda made it for me, and she has 3 kids with a fourth on the way! You may have to click on it, but I love the caption where I am standing in the airline check in desk.

Oh Yeah!!!

White House Is Subpoenaed on Wiretapping - New York Times

Clip From movie Knocked Up

Do not watch if you are planning to see the movie. I just love Jodi!

"This place is a zoo"

Today was really hot and steamy. Despite this, I went to the zoo with a former patient of mine who I have not seen for a while. She is almost 16, and she is doing incredibly well. When I started working with her, she had just had a severe TBI (traumatic brain injury) and was lucky to be alive. She was a gifted kid at the time of the injury (especially in music), and she needed help just to sit up. At the end of a year of seeing her, she was playing violin again and able to get around well. She is a funny kid, and it was really good to catch up. Here are some highlights from my favorite exhibit in my favorite zoo. Mike will be jealous he missed it. As you can see, it was hot out!

knocked out

I saw Knocked Up last night. Good funny flick, and I got to see a lot of my Freaks and Geeks kiddos in the movie. I give it a thumbs up!

Overuse anonymous

wcbstv.com - Coney Island Hot Dog Champ Suffers Arthritic Jaw
Wow, I did not realize even the most sedentary of sports has such a risk of injury!

San Francisco bans bottled water for city staff - Yahoo! News

San Francisco bans bottled water for city staff - Yahoo! News
interesting!

good news squared

1. My knee stopped clicking. I was losing hope, and I went swimming to see if my knee could tolerate it. I have been going stir crazy and not working out for a few days. The swim was terrific! Outside, hot, sunny, (watchin' my shadow on the bottom of the pool which is perfection to me!), cold water, no crowds!!!!! When I got out, clickin' was over (hopefully for good).
2. Last month I went to this awesome aquatic therapy course, and I got all riled up. Since then I had a lot going on, but switching to practicing in the water has been brewing in the back of my mind. Now that it is quiet this week, I finally called one of the therapists who taught the course. She runs sessions in White Plains, and she said I could come by to practice. Turns out she has one of my friends that I used to work with in the hospital here working with her. She said if I like it she could use some help. I reduced my hours with the agency that I work with now, and I would love to get into the aquatics with somebody else instead of on my own. I feel like my learning has stalled a bit, and I could use some colleagues again. That is what I miss most about working in the hospital setting. I also have to be realistic and know that working with the kids is not helping my joints. It will be easier on my knees to work in the water for sure. So, I will have trouble falling asleep tonight.

Slackin'

I do not have many kids that I can see this week, so I am doing some odds and ends. I will clean up the house, etc. I would be doing all sorts of hard core workouts, but my knee is still clicky. I think I will try swimming on it today since the long course pool is open (less turning).
I suppose I could do some paperwork too. I love to put that off. If I am feeling really nice, I could do somebody's laundry too.
A and K, thanks for the recommendations. We ended up going back to Truro, but I am saving it all for another weekend. We do not have much time, and taking the ferry took a day off of our trip. We got a cool place though......
http://www.cyberrentals.com/USA/Massachusetts/Cape-Cod/vacation--Truro/p158083.htm

I met the Mets

We finally made it to a Mets game. This was my first, and we have been talking about going since I moved here. Mike just threw it out there as an idea, and luckily there was a game last night (perfect weather too!). The traffic sucked getting there (a normally 40 minute ride turned into an hour and a half), but it was worth it.
The game was scoreless into the bottom of the 9th, and the winning runs were scored after an error by the Oakland As. So the whole place was satisfied. The other exciting moment was when the catcher got kicked out (while he was batting) and started throwing all of his equipment on the field. When the game ended, Shea was chanting his name. It was pretty funny. Here are some pics, and aren't we so photogenic? I gave up on pictures. I took about 20, and Mike had his eyes shut in all of them, or slightly open.

meet the mets

Going to my first Mets game tonight. The tix were cheap, it is cool and sunny, and my knee is snapping around. I will give you all the full report later.

sorta clean bill of health

Well, my ligaments are intact, and there is nothing torn or floating around in my knee. That is the good news. The doc just thought since there was a little swelling, my synovial fluid is snapping around. Of course it is always fun to see how degenerated my knee are, and we discussed long term planning which was helpful. So I am currently relieved about the status of my knee.

Cheapskates rule!

Not Buying It - New York Times

Threat to the planet

I realize as an American with the typical lifestyle here, I am polluting the earth and being incredibly wasteful. I try to do little things like recycle, use my canvas shopping bags, and turn stuff off when I am not using them. I know that is very little in the grand scheme of things. I wonder what the large scale environmental impact of the printer cartridge is? I always send them in the envelopes the manufacturer provides, but they are so small! They should do that for bottled water as far as I am concerned. That uses a great deal more plastic! (I have considered that they can not process them in normal town plants, but it is funny the great effort to recycle them like they are causing the landfills to overflow!)

He used up the brains in the family

Study Says Eldest Children Have Higher I.Q.s - New York Times
Thanks alot John.

Hippo Birdie 2 Ewes

Happy Bday to Ann. I hope you day is filled with joy! I will never forget dancing on your birthday in the Rock on 5th and ending the night at the Lantern. Of course, this is another highly memorable night indeed!

Snap, Crackle, Pop

A couple of days ago, I got out of the car and my knee started crunching around. It makes a clunky snapping sound with nearly every step now. So I am going to my orthopod tomorrow. It does not hurt, but it is really annoying. I can not figure it out. Maybe something is floating around in there, or I have a flap that is sticking up from cartilage. Soooooo, wish me luck. I am anticipating that I may have to retire from triathlons.

WTF

It tells you how much my service is valued when a client's family calls to cancel an appointment so they could go to the pet store.

Windin' down

I am just trying to wind down on my year here. We spent a great deal of time trying to figure out our vacation for the last 2 nights. Anyone have any great ideas for our long vacation in August? That is going to be our big anniversary trip.

Shaking Off Amnesia, Gonzales Remembers He's Actually Pool Salesman From Tulsa

Elliott Smith- Stupidity Tries

This is also cycling through my head. I want to learn the guitar to this, but I have a feeling it would be way too over my head.

Buns are cooked

We did the Cook your Buns 5K race tonight after work. We do a lot of races put on in Greenwich. It is the best sporting value we have encountered in a long time. $15 for a T-shirt, entry into Tod's Point (if we went there to hang out it would have cost us a total of $40 dollars), and a post race BBQ put on by Whole Foods. Mike wanted to get a hotdog before the race, and we joked about having BBQ instead of water stops. It makes me want to live in Greenwich so we could go to their beach when we wanted. I was not trying for a good run (I am being careful with the knees), but I ended up with a personal best anyways. I got to pass people for once. Mike placed in his age group, so he had a good showing. Greenwich lost a Supreme court ruling a few years ago, and now they have to allow others to use their beach. They keep exclusive by making you drive to another building to get a parking pass and charging $10/person and a $20 parking fee. The beach is nice, but it is not like the ones on Long Island on the open Atlantic. We go to Jones Beach for free with our NY parks pass!

Elliott Smith

Can not get this out of my mind this week.

Family Guy - Electric Man

Gotta love the union suit.

This one's for the girls

I guess the guys would not find this interesting at all. I have noticed the thong underwear fad is fading away (admit it, they are uncomfortable!). I sat at many a lunchtable at a previous job (which employed a ton of women), and they would claim thongs were comfortable. I supposed they just wished they were really comfortable. I suppose they are if you like the feeling of having a perpetual wedgie. Now, I do not wear granny panties. I am a bikini girl. I was in the mall the other night, and I bought more underwear (strategy to avoid the laundromat). I decided to throw in a pair of boy shorts for the hell of it. I tested them today, and I have to say that they totally suck. I got the same size I use for bikini, and they were huge. I thought I would pull a grampa Simpson by lunch. The bottom part lacked elastic, and they were just flappin'. They also tended to bunch up in my crack. It is amazing how something that appears to be comfortable was driving me batty all day. Is it just me? I do have enough junk in the trunk!

The Daily Puppy

The Daily Puppy
Here is Anita and Jonathan's Pup.

Please explain

In the middle of a treatment the other day, the kid's mom asked me, "Are you Catholic, Protestant, or Presbyterian?". Apparently I appear to be a type of Christian. After I told her I was Catholic, she asked the child to ask me his question. The burning question, "What is a saint"? I guess he was interested since he had been to some Caribbean islands. So I did my best simple explanation of what a saint is to the young one, and he seemed satisfied with the answer.

WNYC - Radio Lab: Memory and Forgetting (June 08, 2007)

WNYC - Radio Lab: Memory and Forgetting (June 08, 2007)
Radiolab is back, and this was really good. I apologize for 2 memory-related posts in one week.

Whewhh!!!!

I got up at 7:30, because I passed out on the floor last night watching the "Untouchables". I am the queen of passing out watching movies, even when I like them. As you all know, it has been a crazy week. I topped off the craziness by undergoing a state audit yesterday morning. I see kids in a particular program governed by the dept. of health, so I was one of the providers that was randomly audited. As you may imagine, it was a tad stressful. They wanted all of my documentation for the kids I have seen, and I had to undergo an interview. I am not too eloquent in a stressful situation, but it went well. I knew that they would find errors, and they were not as hard on me as I expected. Part of the interview problem was just semantics and the dept likes to use a ton of acronyms. I am glad that I went through the process now, and I learned a lot. It would have sucked in another three years.

I got home last night, and it smelled like I was entering a turpentine factory. Carol fixed a floor upstairs, and you could taste it down here. I was bummed since I picked up some fish last night I wanted to make for dinner. So Mike and I decided to go out for Sushi at a little place we like in White Plains. I was looking forward to catching up with Mike since I have not really seen him all week. When I flew back from MI, he was in Chicago. He went to the Waldorf-Astoria thursday night for an Economic Club meeting, and it was a fancy event. It was black tie, and Condi Rice and Alan Greenspan were going to be speaking. Mike dusted his tux off to discover the boutonniere from the wedding was still pinned to it, and his shirt was never washed. He had to make a run to Syms to fix that up! When Mike got home from the event, I was in the throes of the last minute audit panic, so I could not appreciate the debriefing. The hostess asked us which table we would like, and I picked the WRONG one.

The cornholios at the other table were 2 dudes. One was a tanned, pumped up lookin' character. The other was a similarly tanned, but kinda bloated guy. I can assure you that they did not get laid tonight. The not good lookin' guy was talking so loud with expletive-laced sentences, and much of the conversation revolved around "f'ing women, people who are fat, types of fish, hot women, and how much he could bench". Holy shit, what a meathead! I had to look at him since he was talking so much about looks that I had to see if he was hot-but he was not. I swear his friend did not say anything the whole time. He was telling the waitress she was beautiful, and then commenting after she left about her, etc. I am sure they were on the way to the bars down the street. I tried my best to drown him out, but his booming voice kept appearing in my ear.

When we were going back to the car, a guy approached us to beg. What was funny about it was that he gave us a dollar amount of the begging. He told us he needed 8 dollars to get to Poughkeepsie. I just realized that even the cost of begging is higher in NY (who knew?). Of course, we did not give him a 20, but we did fall short of his 8 dollars. He shook our hands, and then was saying something about how I should not be afraid of him since I had Mike to protect me. Mike then told him that he keeps me around for protection, and the dude thought that was pretty funny. This is the second time I was approached this week. Some young dude asked me for money at the gas station by the airport in Detroit on Tues. He needed money to get to East Lansing supposedly. I always tend to throw a person a bone, and maybe they sense it about me. I can see the comment section now filling up with requests for money!

Keane concert - Bad Dream

This is a clip to the concert we went to in the park last week. It is a little wobbly, but I like how you can hear the crowd singing along. Another song he sings too high, so the sing along is pretty scary.

Thanks Joe Rao

News 12 Interactive - News
This good lookin' man is our local weather guy in Westchester, and thanks to him, I saw the International Space Station tonight!

Bloggin' from the Dead

www.myspace.com/billatthemovies

This one's for PB from the D

wcbstv.com - Moose Collision Leaves Driver In Serious Condition

wcbstv.com - Moose Collision Leaves Driver In Serious Condition
This is the exit after Mike's work. I guess I should be on the lookout for Moose now!

Forgetting May Be Part of the Process of Remembering - New York Times

Forgetting May Be Part of the Process of Remembering - New York Times

Sweet flick

Here is a flick that I remember from being a kiddo.

Back from Michigan

I am back from MI. A little delayed, but no worse for the wear. The time went quickly as usual, and I am bummed to be going back to work tommorrow. Oh well! Several of the boys this year were difficult to recognize due to new hairstyles. We had several arguments about one of the boy's hair color. Many of us thought it was lighter, but we were wrong. He looked like one of the Beatles in the 60s, and usually he sports a buzz. Another kid had a Mohawk (he tended to keep it braided), and another had a sweet mullet (with frosted tips). The girls had a creative prank of sewing the boy's underwear shut (you should have seen some of them sweetly sewing them!). It was typical Michigan weather (temps from the high 40s to mid eighties, sun and rain). I was able to get some warm showers and sleep which is tough to do when you are sleeping in a room with 10 people. The kids were really having fun, and that is what counts. Unfortunatly last night, a UM plane carrying the transplant team crashed. Many of the staff at the camp worked with who was on the plane and often took the Survival flight themselves, so it was a somber mood. Otherwise, I caught up with some friends and family too. So overall it was a success! Here is one of the volunteer's picture websites to give a flavor. http://s55.photobucket.com/albums/g133/kathyp54/