Experiments in Life

Here is today’s post….as promised to a good friend of mine….

Verb the noun!

That is all.

A quick disclosure: this has absolutely nothing to do with Ashley and my dogs.

I am not entirely sure what to think about this. Apparently, scientists at the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research at the University of Pittsburgh have succeeded in re-animated clinically dead dogs. You can read more about it in this Fox News story, but the gist of the story is that they drain the blood from the dogs and replace it with a very cold saline solution that chills the tissue down to near freezing. The dogs can be kept technically dead like this for somewhere around 3 hours, at which point the saline solution is replaced by extremely oxygenated and glucosed blood, with little to no side effects in the good cases (although the bad cases have severe physical and mental problems).

At first I thought this to be a hoax, but after some more research, I found the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research website that seems to vaguely describe the program. Looks like the research is being partially funded by the Navy.

Socks are great! In fact, they are better than great….they are fabulous!! Today, I am wearing socks #30 and #5…and no, they don’t match (BTW, the socks were prenumbered. I did NOT number my crazy socks!!) Today the socks I’m wearing have big blue stars on one and light blue little stars on the other. For those of you who were not at movie night last night, I received two sets of the mismatching socks that are the craze these days. So, I now have 14 new socks and no two socks are the same. They are absolutely wonderful These socks rank up in the “Best Gifts I’ve Gotten this Year” category. But the story I got with these socks is priceless as well.

So, I was checking out the socks and the cashier held them up and smiled. Then she asked, “And how old is the person you are getting these for?” At this point, I’m sure a deliciously wicked smile slowly spread across Amy’s face as she replied, “Oh, she’s in her mid-twenties!” I can only imagine what the cashier’s face looked like!

Isn’t that just great? In case you didn’t notice, I have a sock fetish. I’m not really sure why. Maybe it’s because of the pressures to conform to the expectations and rigid dress code set down by society for working women that drives me to act out in any way I can, with socks being an acceptable medium. Maybe it’s because I got tired of wearing boring old white socks. Maybe it’s because I simply like the feeling of soft, comfy material between my toes (toe socks of course!). Or maybe it’s simply that I’m a crazy woman and my socks are the door to my strange personality.

For as long as I can remember, I have been rebelling against what people have told me I had to wear. I’m sure my mother would wholeheartedly agree that this was indeed the case in my childhood. Over the years, as I have grown up and become a mature adult**lol**, I have managed to tone down the wardrobe a bit. This coming from the child who has been picking out her wardrobe since Kindergarten. Apparently, there were many days that I simply chose to stay in my pajamas or wear completely mismatched outfits to school. I guess that was just not a battle my mom was willing to fight….maybe that’s because she knew she would lose. However, there must have been days that she put her foot down because the wardrobe did get toned down….otherwise I’d probably still look like Punky Brewster with her crazy hair-dos and bandannas.

Yes, in my infinite wisdom, I have come to the conclusion that crazy socks are okay….and if I can, I will try my best to influence those around me and bring out the sock fetish they never knew they had. After all, there are worse addictions than crazy socks!

Thanks for the socks Amy!!!!

I hate Matlab……

That is all.

But that’s a good thing, I promise! You see, I had a doctor’s appoitnment this morning, and just so you know…I didn’t have any problems getting the door to open Anyway, my doctor informed me that I had lost a total of 11 pounds since April! I almost fell out of my chair. For those of you who don’t know, I was recently diagnosed as glucose intolerant, or as having pre-diabetes. So, as you can probably guess, this is a really big deal for me.

Over the past few months, I have been watching close friends on their own journeys to weight loss. I must admit, for one in particular (you know who you are) I have been extremely envious. There were many talks and sharing of tips, and I finally got off my butt and hired their personal trainer. It was very frustrating and things seemed to be headed no where. My frustrations came to a head when I started seeing my doctor on a monthly basis. Especially since during one of those months I managed to gain 6 lbs. It was horrible. That was about the time we found out about the pre-diabetes. However, instead of letting this news devastate me and totally control my life, I have turned a lot of things around. And I have to say that I’m pretty proud of myself. Not only did I lose those 6lbs, but I lost an additional 5! Sorry if it sounds like I’m bragging a little much, but this is an exceptionally important part in making sure that I don’t develop full-blown type II diabetes.

This transition would have been a lot harder if I had not had the support of my wonderful husband, great friends, and loving family. So, thank you guys for being so supportive, especially to my husband. Poor Jonathan has really been tested on this for better or worse, sickness and in health thing! Everyday, he came home, not knowing whether I was going to bite his head off or be passed out on the couch because I was so sick that I couldn’t do anything else. I’m not sure how he managed to come home everyday to that, but he did and I’m very grateful. I truly couldn’t ask for a better husband. And a special thanks goes to my parents who have been full of great advice and many much needed diabetic cookbooks and recipes To my friends, thanks for caring and looking out for me. Now the group has a pre-diabetic and a hypoglycemic, we’ll be the ones sticking together at the food table debating on what we can and shouldn’t eat I look forward to it! Strangely enough, I feel on my part at least, that commonality between the two of us has created an instant bond of understanding and friendship. Hope they feel it to! By the way, I have some recipes you might be interested in trying

Okay, I’m through with the sappy thanks you’s and wishy-washiness! You can all dry your eyes now and get back to whatever it was you were doing prior to being sucked into what was meant to be a rather short post discussing my weight loss

Well, since Ashley reminded me, I was going to title this post “Old Lady Land”, but I decided to be nice and just say Happy Birthday!

Really, though, it is nice being married to an older woman. Sure it can get tough when she gets up at 5am and is ready for bed by 8pm and sometimes it is hard to get excited about eating dinner at 4 in the afternoon when she is ready to eat, but that is ok. I am sure that the senior’s discounts she will get soon will more than make up for it.

All kidding aside, it has been a great four years with my older woman (just over two married!) and I continue to love her more and more each day. Happy Birthday Ashley!

Just thought you guys might find this article interesting. I’m no physicist but it sounds like a really big breakthrough to me. But I’ll let the local expert be the judge of that

MIT physicists create new form of matter

On a side note, Snobbers appears to be feeling much better. As a matter of fact, I’m wearing a lot of dog snot at the moment. She definitely lives up to her name

You know, there is nothing like cleaning up dog yak first thing in the morning. What a way to start the day! (And if you can’t figure out from the context what yak is referring to, you probably really don’t want to know. Anyone with kids or pets will probably know what I’m talking about )

I guess I should take a moment and explain who Snobbers is to those of you who don’t know. Snobbers is the alias we have assigned to our dog Rosie. It really is an accurate description of her. We chose that name because all she does is sneeze and slobber on everything. Put those two words together and snobbers is what you get. Snobbers is also considered to be a smoofism, but I’ll save that for another post. Anyway, Snobbers has a brother named Dante who will be hence forth dubbed the Gutless Wonder! This name originated when he was just a puppy. He was afraid of everything, and being the good mother that I am, I of course made fun of him and we’ve been calling him that ever since Both of our dogs are australian shepherd mixes and from the same litter. They constantly keep us on our toes (refer to beginning of post!) Hopefully we will have pictures of them in our gallery soon. However, that would mean we would have to actually set up the gallery and download pictures off the camera. At the moment, that is beyond us. Perhaps over the weekend.

I’ll stop boring you with tales of our dear little ones, even though they are the cutest, most sweetest, bestest dogs in the whole world (no, I’m not biased at all ) However, I’m not so sure Jonathan would agree with that. More than likely he’d say they have faces only a mother could love

Toodles

Wow! Two posts in one day! I better watch it, I don’t want to get too carried away!

I had to create a new category in order to accurately describe the stories that will be posted here…(and no offense meant to any blonds who may be reading this post). All the stories are true. The names and places have been changed to protect the innocent (mainly me!) Keep that in mind as you read the following tale and any future tales lumped in under this category.

One reason I wanted a website was so that I could share my life with friends and family on a daily basis. So, hold on tight and buckle those safety belts folks, you just jumped down the rabbit hole and you’re in for the ride of your lives. I hope you find this site funny and amusing. And now, on with the show…

This blond moment in particular is very short, yet extremely blond! The moment started when I arrived at the dentist’s office at precisely the time of my appointment, 7:30 AM. Why would someone schedule such a dreadful activity so early in the morning…why, because I’m insane of course Especially since the morning activity was going to involve a drill and some horrible tasting filler stuff. Anyway, so I arrive at the office and open the door…at least, that is what I had planned to do. Instead, the door did not budge. I looked at it like it was going to magically open before me and made the only logical conclusion that one can make that early at the dentist’s office….the door must be locked. So I proceed to peep into the windows looking to see if anyone was in there. And there were people in there. And all of them were staring at the door and at me and looking at me like I was crazy. So, after a moment, my dentist came to the door and opened it up for me. It was at that moment that I made a horrific discovery. The door opened outwards!!! Now I knew why the door wouldn’t open, I tried pushing on it (which is really bad since I had actively turned the handle on the door earlier and should have realized from that action which way the door opened).

**I am reminded at this point about a favorite far side cartoon of mine, the one where a kid is bent forward pushing as hard as he can on a door…a door that says pull in rather large letters…I also believe that somewhere in the picture is a sign that reads something like “So-and So School for the gifted” Illustration complete, on with the story- yes, there is more **

The dentist even asked me if I had tried the door and so, to cover up my mistake I said yes and that it did not open when I tried it. Well, to make matters worse, she replied “Really. Let me try and see if it works.” And, of course it did. So now I look like a total idiot in front of my dentist, her secretary, and however many hygienists were there at the time. To make matters worse, she took me right back to the little room and began to drill on my poor tooth. As she preceeded to cover me in toothdust, I decided that this was not a way a person should start their morning….ever!!

And that concludes this afternoon’s entertainment. Thank you and Good-bye

I know, this is an awful strange way to begin my blogging, but I just couldn’t help it. It all started last night when Jonathan and I watched a show he had picked up on the Tivo. The name of the show, of course, is “I Am My Own Twin”. It was very interesting to say the least. And if the name doesn’t have you intrigued, maybe this little blurb will grab hold of you:

Imagine giving birth to three healthy children. You, your husband, doctors,
and nurses were all there to witness the magic of those births. One day, you
are shocked to discover that genetically speaking, you are totally excluded as
being the biological mother of those children. And now the DA’s office is
hounding you, wanting to know where you got the kids and what kind of
welfare fraud you are trying to get away with.

Have I caught your attention yet? It’s a very interesting puzzle. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find an article describing the particular cases we saw on T.V. However, they are replaying the episode a couple more times. If you are interested in finding out how the story ends (because I’m not going to tell you how it ends, you’ll just have to watch it for yourself ! ) the episode will be aired on Jun 24 2005 @ 05:00 AM and again on Jun 26 2005 @ 07:00 PM on the Discovery Health Channel.

And that concludes my first blog ever on my first personal webpage ever