Madonna Returns!

Hallelujah Madonna has returned! Her new CD goes back to her roots, which is dance music. I have her CD going right now and let me tell you that I am moving. Yesterday I listenend to it 6 times and had many dance sessions in my office. God she makes me feel sexy! I am dancin around like a sex kitten, it rocks! Who would have thought I could feel like that in my khakis and ID badge. I need to find a club that will play her new stuff (CD needs to be heard LOUD)and I will grab my hot girlfriends and we will dance all night. Loren, are you up for some hot sweaty grinding? We can find an old school club and play college again! Come on over baby...you know where I live! Thanks Dave and Sean for the CD...you rock and you are welcome to come out and dance too!

Bandwagon

Everyone is jumping on the panda bandwagon. Check this video out at CNN.com! Under "Dog has makeover to look like a panda"

Gives me an idea!

Thanksgiving 2005

Our beautiful, succulent turkey. For moi!
My homemade Challah. I was brining out my inner Jew
Todd and Mom enjoying their very rare roast!
Me and Ruth enjoying some Beaujolais Nouveau

Cappy after a hard night of eating

Chris's wedding

Pictures from Chris and Laura's wedding November 19th in New Jersey.

Disturbing

This is really disturbing to me for some reason. Gee who is having Rosemary's baby?
Ick!

From www.celebrity-babies.com

November 22, 2005
Tom Cruise purchases sonogram machine
Entertainment Tonight reports that in the issue of People hitting newstands on Friday, Tom Cruise reveals that he has purchased a sonogram machine so he can follow the progress of his and Katie's baby on his own. These run anywhere from $15-200,000! Tom said that he will donate the machine to a hospital after the birth of the baby. He also revealed that he and Katie's wedding will be sometime in 2006, after the baby is born.

As a side note, nobody has proved that "regular" use of a sonogram is safe. This is why doctors employ the tool conservatively because the effect of sound waves on a developing nervous system have not been shown to be harmless, although doubtful to be harmful. But still...

Sad

These past couple of months have been filled with goods thing after another and now...not so much. I am sad that my plans have hit a speed bump, if not a complete road block. It seems I get sooooo close but like always my plans have a way of falling down in mid flight. Kind of like cornflakes falling from the sky. This overwhelming sadness fills me and yet I am so stunned that I can't really feel anything. This numbness perplexes me yet I am secretly glad not to feel anything, though I know it will be coming. It always finds me.

I understand that I dream big which usually translates into big rewards but also comes with big risk. However, I can not be anything but. Although I envy the other camp right now because they won't experience major let down they will also never experience reward. Plus those people are boring and have nothing interesting to say anyway. But still...

Quote of the day:
"You have to dream, you have to have a vision, and you have to set a goal for yourself that might even scare you a little because sometimes that seems far beyond your reach. Then I think you have to develop a kind of resistance to rejection, and to the disappointments that are sure to come your way."-Gregory Peck

Panda viewing

I can die now, I saw the cub. Although he was sleeping, it was really cool to see him up close. I got an added bonus because both Mei and Tian were outside and ACTIVE! They usually sleep, but today they were both up and eating and really close to the viewing area. I have also been watching the cub a lot today and he is venturing out of the den. He climbs all over Mei and tugs at her ears. Then he falls into a squirmy ball and kicks his legs in the air. It is fucking adorable. I just want to eat him up!

To top off my day, I am going to Cafe Citron for dinner and drinks with my boss. Super excited!

Quote of the day: "In order to keep a true perspective of one's importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him."

Bird Flu

I hate infectious disease epidemiology. It's gross and usually involves diarrhea. I try to stay clear, but being the ONLY epidemiologist makes that impossible. Unfortunately, working at the PC with volunteers in SE Asia I have to keep abreast of the situation. Alas, KFC has invented a cure for all of the bird flu woes. I hope it doesn't mutate into the panda flu. God help us!

I got the picture from theonion.com, I love them!

I also noticed something the other day on the back of my student loan statement. I have disability coverage which protects me in case I am...well disabled. Very necessary when you owe over 100 grand. Anyhoo, the coverage is not applicable in these instances:

1. I become disabled due to a nuclear catastrophe (excluding nuclear medicine treatments)
2. I become disabled due to a terrorist attack
3. I become pregnant (pregnancy according to FMLA is short term disability, which is why 12 weeks of leave needs to be offered, even w/o pay)

Hmmm, I think. Ok point 1. IF, big if, I survive a nuclear disaster who the fuck is going to be around to make me pay? Point 2. Very sneaky, but once again if there is a large enough terrorist attack that leaves me disabled I doubt anyone would care about my money. Point 3. Obviously someone has tried that in court, very clever. Although there are a few women I have known who became pregnant and somehow became stupid and irrational. "Please don't drink in front of me, I might breathe the fumes" (not made up). Pregnancy can make smart people think/do dumb things. I guess that could be construed as disabled.

Head out the window

As I was driving home this evening I watched Cappy in the back seat with her head out the window. She sometimes sits with her head resting on the door but every now and then, she POPS up and stands with her head thrusted out the window as if she hears her name. She stands tall as the wind whips her hair and whiskers back and she seems to be searching for something. She has a smile on her face that could melt butter. What is it that feels so good about putting your head out the window? Liberation, relaxation, what is it? So tonight I decided to try myself traveling 80 mph down I-66 with my head out the window. WOW, what a feeling! I am so envious of how Cappy can be brought to life just by having the wind in her face. The smile it brings to her face gives me goose bumps. Maybe I should try putting my face in the wind more often and listen to see if life is calling my name.

Tues stuff

Now that my brief (very brief) momment of genius is over, I am back to my slow processing. Someone asked me this morning to explain a very basic statistical test and I drew a complete blank. It was a simple as asking a computer person what www stands for. I was so embarrassed, I ran crying back down the hall into my office and hid under my desk. Ok, well that is what I was day dreaming when it happenend. Kind of like a scene from "Scrubs". I also spent 10 minutes this morning looking for my keys when they were in my pocket the whole time. I am so cool!


I did buy a new purse this weekend at Nordstrom's in the Mall of American in MN. My cousin talked me into it, ok she didn't have to talk much. It is a purple Monsac and I love it. It is the first time I have ever spent over $50 on a purse and because of that I will keep it forever.


My panda has been moved into the big exhibit and Mei does not seem to mind. He is playing a lot now and even trying to climb up on the rocks. He spends a lot of time lying on his back chewing his foot. Just like a human baby! Tai also tries to sit up but each time he collapses back into a squirmy ball. It looks like he is laughing when he does that. Tai weighs just over 17lbs and he is about 28 inches. It is really nice to watch mom and son play now.

Mass of the earth

I awoke this morning with the formula Newton used to determine the earth's gravational attraction to objects (actually Cavendish's formula he used to find the mass of the earth). G=m1*m2/d^2 Why would I have that in my thoughts? What is even more bizarre is that I actually remember the mass of the earth 5.979 x 10^24 kg but the distance to the moon eludes me. Then to really freak myself I spontaneously pulled the formula for volume out of my butt, no joke. 4/3 pi r^2 baby. Ok smarty pants I say, I bet you don't remember the radius of the earth. No shit, like 30 seconds later I remember 6.3713x10^4 meters and that makes the volume 1.0 and change x 10^15 meters cubed. How the fuck did I calculate exponents in my head and how did I remember all those constants? I know what this means now...I said in physics class that once I began to understand physics, those physics would cease to exsist in the world as we know it. Oh shit, the end is coming. However, it is very cool to have a moment of complete memory recollection. THAT will never happen again. It was like a moment of clarity, I could think without hinderance.

Now I can't even remember the combo to my gym locker that I use everyday. But the density of water at room temperature is approximately 998.23 kg/m^3. Go figure...:/

Weekend at Mom's

Here are some pics from our FABULOUS weekend in the country. We moved about 1 ton of dirt to fill in a new tree plot. My back still hurts and will probably hurt for some time to come.

The tree colors were fabulous, and here are some pics of the trees at mom's house!

When I woke up in the morning I looked out the window and this was my view.


Mom also took in an abandoned dog and her pups. We had a BLAST playing with them. We figure they were only 5 days old when mom got them. Todd named them Hansel and Gretal.



Of course the dogs had a good time. Here is a picture of Cappy, her cousin Sheyanne and Taylor the West VA trailor trash dog. They were trying to help unload dirt, but they were more of a distraction.


Last but not least, me and Todd after all the farm work! Mom rewarded us with homemade chicken pot pie, blueberry muffins, walnut cake, quiche, wine and cheese. I ate so much that I would need to move 3 tons of dirt to work it off. We also had a HUGE bonfire on Saturday to burn off all the brush.

Rx for Global Health

Boy crippled by polio



Before I start my bitch about global health...I got tickets to see the panda! Wooooo hooooo I get to see the panda on Nov 21st at 11:10am. This is huge, I will have to take the day off. Oh well, my boss understands.

I was watching "Rx for Global Health" last night on PBS narrated by Brad Pitt. It is a 3 part series (9 hours total) of global health problems including AIDS, malaria, polio, dysentery, etc. and the like. As most of us know, most of these problems are in 3rd world countries and Africa suffers the brunt of it. 80% of all AIDS persons are living in Africa. Yet Africa has roughly 719 million people (same as Europe) and Europe only has 1% of AIDS cases. Europe, being a conglomerate of rich nations, does not have nearly the problem of AIDS that Africa does. I guess that wealth has something to do with the lack of an AIDS epidemic. It was really sad to watch the program but it was also appalling to me to see such terrible poverty and sickness and to know that we HAVE the money and manpower to do something about it, but we don't. After all what could Africa possibly offer us, surely not oil.

Oral polio vaccine


I also find it shocking that we have had a polio vaccine (that works 99% of the time) since 1952 and there are still cases of polio out there. The oral vaccine is 2 small drops on a child's tongue. No doctor or nurse is needed to administer the vaccine. Then to top off the madness the directors interviewed affluent families living on Vashon Island off of Washington state. Many of these people refused to vaccinate their children because they believed their immune systems are strong enough to protect them and vaccines are linked to autism. Hmmm. Ok, this is a dangerous situation. We have relatively smart people who are plugged in, yet lack critical thinking skills and the ability to READ scientific literature. I don't mean reading an article about polio in the Post, I mean read an article in a PEER REVIEWED SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL. Medical information for the masses,in this day and age, is so watered down and taken out of context, that I chuckle every night at the nightly news. It is hard for these people to fear something that does not exist in the US anymore. There parents were the last generation to fear polio, small pox, mumps, and whooping cough. As my mom told me, having a preventable illness as a child was incentive enough for her to assure her children never had to endure it.

People like that is what makes me think of myself as an elitist. I will admit it, I am a snob when I deal with ignorant people who try to come off as intelligent. It is not worth my time or energy, so I blow them off. That is why I have little patience for middle class Americans who know better. This is why I like the idea of helping people in 3rd world countries who WANT HELP. Very sad. How many mothers in Africa would give their leg to have their children vaccinated and how many people in the US are not vaccinating? When enough people stop vaccinating their children, the diseases will re-appear. Every medical person knows that, and that is what keeps public health officials up at night. The only reasons we don't have those epidemics is because MOST OF US are vaccinated thanks to my parent's generation of diligence. It will be my generation that will bring down the cornerstone of public health...mass vaccination.

Wal-Mart Movie

I am going to a screening at G-town Univ to see this. I hate Wal-Mart so this should be thrilling. Click on Wal-Mart movie to check out the trailer

It is all about brownie points

Todd earned big brownie points on Friday. He went to the zoo and bought me the new panda book written about Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing who lived at the National Zoo from the early 70's to the early 90's. PLUS he bought me a t-shirt with Tai Shan on the front. Let's say it "Ooooohhhhh"! I am such a lucky girl!