Every few months I have a scare where I nearly (or actually) lose a bunch of really important files. For example, a bunch of music, or all of my childhood photos that I have spent countless hours organizing and assigning dates to. Ironically the last time I nearly lost all my music was when I was attempting to upgrade to better back-up software. I thought I had lost all of my pictures on my computer yesterday, and after sever small heart attacks, got it all back. Today, I went and bought me a big-ole hard drive (and it glows all perty, too) and doubly backed up all my pictures. At least it allowed me to peak at some pics I hadn't seen in a long time. Here's a couple: I knew there was a reason I liked Moab.
This picture is France to me.
Well, so is this picture. Look at that funny milk in boxes. Mmm...and limonade. Delicious.
Oh, and a belated happy birthday to my Grandmother. Why do old photos look so amazing? I'm going to drop my camera a few times to see if it will start taking pictures like this:
Well, that last list was rather depressing. Why don't we cite the top reasons why my job is totally sweet:
#8) Free Viagra..................................................pens. #7) I Understand why House is so cranky all the time. #6) My white coat has more flair than the required 4 pieces. #5) I can think of a medical acronym for almost any 3-letter combination, which makes sitting in traffic that much more exciting thanks to my shared love of license plates. #4) People occasionally get better! #3) I wear pajamas to work most days. And comfy shoes. #2) I get to see what your kidneys, bladders, and (occasionally) other organs look like from the inside! and finally [again, drum roll...] #1) All the grape juice and graham crackers you can eat!!!
P.S. I am still quite annoyed that nobody in Africa south of Egypt has bothered to check out this blog. I will now list every African Nation in a thinly-veiled (we're talking picometer-thin) attempt to get their attention. This will also be a helpful reference for you all the next time someone asks you where, say, Tanzania is. South Africa Egypt Nigeria Algeria Morocco Sudan Angola Libya Tunisia Kenya Ethiopia Tanzania Cameroon Côte d'Ivoire Uganda Ghana Equatorial Guinea Botswana Senegal Gabon Madagascar Congo-Kinshasa Mozambique Burkina Faso Chad Zambia Mauritius Mali Congo-Brazzaville Benin Namibia Malawi Guinea Niger Rwanda Burundi Zimbabwe MauritaniaSomalia Swaziland Togo Sierra Leone Eritrea Cape Verde Central African Republic Lesotho Djibouti Seychelles Liberia Gambia Comoros Guinea-Bissau São Tomé and Príncipe
Now that I've figured out to post mobile-y, I can finally remember to blog all the random little thoughts that occur to me during the day. Welcome to the stream of consiousness series!
Words that me cringe (and honestly I don't know why):
1. Nectar
2. Buckle
3. [Ask me sometime, it's PG-13]
In other news (remember that blog that we forgot about?): You know that scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy has just killed the wicked witch and the oh-eee-oh...e-ooooh-oh guy gives her the broom? Unless my memory is skewed, as he's handing it to her he says: "Here...and take it with you." What? So, the "here" part wasn't clear? "And" take it with you? Just in case she thought he was giving it to her but expected her to leave it at the castle on display, museum-style?
I have had enough unpleasant experiences interrupting folks in the restroom (one was enough) that now I have to jiggle the handle of the door 3 or 4 times loudly before I dare open it. Kind of like firing a warning shot across her bow.
Have you ever been yelled at for no reason? Have you ever tried to calmly explain to someone that your actions are motivated by concern and knowldege only to receive a tyrade of accusations that you are cruel, heartless, and bad at your chosen profession? If not, I recommend you try it: it's a blast.
Worst parts of my job in rank order:
#6) 3:45 a.m. alarm #5) The magical Pager Fairy will page you to a number that, when immediately called back, will be busy, or not answer after 50 rings. #4) Enduring 8+ years of "higher education" only to be made to feel like a complete idiot on a daily basis #3) Seeing my daughter for < or = 1.5 hours per day. #2) When a hot dog vendor screws up his job, you don't get your hot dog. When I screw up my job... [drum roll] #1) Not a day goes by that I don't smell that homeless, drunken, tobacco, poopy, urine smell. Not a single day.
Just watched this: I liked it. Of course, it's cheating to use those songs.
Remember this stuff?
Delicious. I even ate the stick! My brain still can't shake the long-held notion that the stick is actually made of chalk.
Seen on every computer at my work. I try to model rolls as often as I can.
This is what a 30 hour shift looks like. Damn, I look good.
Actually, I kind of look like this guy. I wish lungs really were made of nerds ropes.
Some "artwork" at another hospital where I work. "Here you go, folks: Let's inspire confidence by painting giant bacteria on the walls!"
Although I tend to get the blahs with wintertime, it does bring one of my favorite things: snow-junk. I live to kick this crap off my mudflaps. [insert mudflap joke here]
Remember when I hated Chuck. E Cheese's?
Well it totally redeemed itself. It turns out that all Lucie wants to do is put the quarters in. Then daddy gets to play the games!!! (how do you think I won that lik-m-aid?)
Well, she likes rides, too, I guess. And yes, that is Thomas's occiput. Koelpin's in the hizzy!
I just finished a 32-hour shift so I may be delirious, but I'm pretty sure I'm sitting in a jiffy lube waiting for my car and I am having trouble averting my eyes from the television. The very dignified Jerry Springer show is on, and some crazy folk are beating the crap out of each other over who slept with who's landlord. As if this show weren't strange enough, and again I may be hallucinating, but there are multiple people spinning plates on poles randomly on the stage. WTF? Have they lost their minds? Perhaps I am judging too harshly. Maybe their team of writers spent weeks pondering an appropriate symbolic element to display and they meant for us to ponder the fragilty of our interpersonal relationships, and that at any moment we may lose our spiritual balance and fall off the rod of mutual trust only to shatter in discord.
Yeah. That's what they were thinking.
Either way, those hos be CRAZY*!
*please bear in mind that I am post-call and have lost 80% of my better judgement.
When you're foretelling the end of the world, could you at least use correct grammar?
"Stocks were down Wednesday morning as worrisome reports from tech companies like Apple and Motorola fueled doubts that the Fed's emergency interest rate cut will not be enough to keep the economy on track."
"fueled doubts that [whatever]...will not be enough..." (emphasis added). Don't you mean doubts that it will be enough? Or maybe fears that it will not be enough? Next they'll probably misuse literally and really set me off.
Sweetie (whose actual name I no longer remember) and I had a movie marathon yesterday, and we had some phenomenal success.
First off, Blue Harvest: This is Family Guy does Star Wars. HOLY CRAP! Anyone who has ever seen Star Wars will find this hysterical, and a serious fan may need a non-rebreather to remain consious. Peter and Ryan and Brook and Rob: I order you to watch this film within 48 hours. You will thank me for it.
Next was 3:10 to Yuma: I'm a big fan of Christian Bale, and Russell Crowe seems like a decent fellow, when he's not singing in his "band." But I'm not usually much into westerns. This was no exception. They both do well, but the heavily poignant moments in the film just weren't all that poignant. I just needed some more poign. Of course, the film didn't get a fair shake, as I was up wrasslin' my critter half the time, trying to fix her up some vittles before she hit the hay, thus my attention was not long fixed upon the screen.
Third, and most importantly, Sunshine: This is a must see. I don't know how this film managed to be so sneaky. I hadn't even heard of it being in the theaters. But then I saw that old Danny-boy(le) had been up to something new and decided to give it a shot. I loved it. Don't get your hopes up, it won't fix global warming or straighten your teeth, but it's pretty damn good. Jase and Malc need to see this. Jase needs to buy it on HD-DVD and melt his face off watching it downstairs.
Lastly, last week we watched the following disappointment: Strangely, I thought I hadn't seen it before, only to realize halfway through that in fact I had seen it. Man, that tells you just how forgettable this movie is. Ok, I'm being harsh. It wasn't THAT bad. It wasn't as bad as, say, Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story. But it was not good. Interestingly, the plots of Sunshine and Event Horizon are not terriblly different. But this is a great example of how something can go horribly wrong between the script and the the screen.
Go see Sunshine. And Blue Harvest. Probably in that order, so as to more easlily go to sleep afterwards.
There are these new elevators at the urology office. They say "going up" and "going down" as per the yuge*. The "going up" voice is American. The "going down" voice is all Australian: "Goyng Dine." Similarly, the dictation recording at the VA hospital is in a non-regional American dialect until it says "Enter werk top, fall-ud bah thuh payound kuyee." (Enter work type, followed by the pound key) It makes me laugh every time. Apparently, Dolly Parton lent her voice talents for that one line.
In other news, I've developed quite a European following according to that map over there----> Come on, Africa! You're lagging behind the rest of the world. Maybe I should blog about the Congo or something.
*short form of usual. Fine, how would you spell it?!?
Having been "tagged" by tarsky I will now reveal 6 things that few people know about me. (I don't there is anything about me that nobody else knows...well, ok...except for that.)
1) I ridicule and chastise my wife for filling our home with Us Weekly, Star, and other filthy rag-mags in the house, often informing her that by purchasing these magazines she is contributing to the horrible suffering these socialites endure. However, what do you think I read when I'm liquidating my assets?
2) I once lit a stack of pizza boxes on fire and threw them down into the gutter.
3) I should have failed AP English in High school but instead was allowed to graduate thanks to the kindness of the teacher to whom I was often rude. (Geez, this is getting depressing!)
4) I once dreamt something very specific only to have the exact event actually occur in real life months later.
5) There is a scene in the modern remake of Miracle on 34th Street, specifically where a mother drops off her deaf child on Santa's lap and explains, "You don't have to say anything, she just wanted to meet you." Santa looks sadly for a moment, and then begins to sign to the child, and this effing kid, who is either the greatest actor ever to live on the earth, or is genuinely reacting to a fluent-in-ASL Santa, LIGHTS UP. I cry every time. EVERY...TIME. Hell, I'm crying now.
6) (following Pete's 'in another life' theme) I would have liked to be a professional musician.
There, now that my soul (which is not y-shaped) is bare nekked...
Following along that theme (again, you will be quite confused if you haven't read Pete's blog yet, so go over there), I don't think I can perceive my soul per se, but I have definitely pondered the fact that what makes up my consciousness does seem to hang out in my head. This may seem obvious to some, but why should we necessarily be aware of our thought center being in our head. I sometimes think it's because we rely so heavily on our eyes for perceiving so right behind our eyeballs just seems like where we think. It's almost like I have proprioception of my thoughts. Strange. Let's hang out sometime, and stay up late, and sometime around 3:30 a.m. this will make sense.
Now for the daily dork-out: Apple is sposed to make several big announcements today. Let me tell you that I got all excited when I went to apple.com today and it has this mysterious "something in the air" teaser. Some new wireless related thing?!? Something not meant to be taken literally? Who cares! I'm stoked!
On NPR's Morning edition today around 6:00 my time there was a hilarious spoof of a political ad. It was really funny. But I can't find any record of it anywhere! If you find it, you will win my undying respect.
The actual title for this post should be potpouri (sp?), but I figure as long as it's a Jeopardy! title I'm safe.
Every day I hear people ask me about their "prostrates." I can't think of anything to say now that isn't incredibly pretentious so I'll just leave it at that.
Did you know that people form Pueblo, Colorado pronounce it "PEE-eblo?" I think that's pretty awesome. You say Or-eh-gone, I say Or-eh-gun. You say Call-o-raw-do. I say Call-o-rad-o. You say all-tuh. I say Al-tuh. You say nuke-u-lar. I say you're a $&#*-ing idiot.
So...there's this guy at the place where I work who wanders around mooing. Not like "moo" but actually like a cow sounds. It's exactly the same each time and repeats about every 3 seconds. It's strangely comforting to hear him wandering about.
In other news, not having my wife and child in town has seriously improved my Wii playing. I'm on song 35 of 42 on Hard. That's Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. I thought Muse's Knights of Cydonia was impossible, but then I passed it. Little did I know what horror lay beyond. I'm pretty sure Raining Blood, made famous by Slayer is impossible. It's so hard, it's funny. And I'm not even trying on expert! What could possibly make it harder? Do razor blades shoot out of the fake plastic guitar and force you to play with bloody stubs instead of fingers? I will now do something that I would never have done were it not for this game: Post a link to this death metal song on youtube.
Funny, I always thought slayer was a Norwegian pop band made up of 6 blonde siblings.
Also, Super Mario Galaxy rules. A lot. I think I already put that on here. One sec. Yep. Sure did. Sorry about that.
Oh, gosh. Maybe I should announce the craziest news to hit me since I found that mummified yak in my garage. (Sorry, my humor suffers when I watch tv while I blog) We are moving to...
...
Let's see, I should do a Pete-style cluefest.
Hint #1) It's not Guam. As much as I'd like to move to Guam. Just so I could say Guam more.
Hint #2) It is a state who's 2-letter abbreviation is not the first two letters of the state.
Hint #3) The city's name is also that of a Country.
Hint #4) It is "the Shirt" in the chef inside the US*. Can you see it?
Hint #5) It start's with a C, ends with an I, and in the middle there's an Olumbiamissour.
That's right, we are moving to the "show me" state! I finally secured an actual Job! One that doesn't come with a "at the end of this year you're guaranteed to be unemployed again" clause! Righteous. We'll be there for the next 5 years (at least, I guess). The coolest part is the real estate. Those of you living in California may want to ignore the following for your own good. Click here, but come right back.
Ok, so I wouldn't want to live there, but come on. Gar has spent that on Macs over the last year!
In even more incredible news, last night I went to McDonalds. (Stay with me...) I ordered my usual 10-piece mcnuggets. (Wait for it...) When I got home I reached into the bag and pulled out...An effing Filet-O-Fish!!!! I didn't even know they still make that bleeding thing! A square hunk of highly processed FISH with a slice of AMERICAN CHEESE! What in the blue #&(@???? I think it was my first FOF ever. But I can't be sure, because my marms used to buy those puppies all the time. A piece of that filth may have made it into my gullet before I had reached the age of accountability. But I was hungry. So I ate it. All I can say is velveeta + tartar sauce = No wonder the French think we're schmucks. I love Wikipedia's account of this masterpiece:
The Filet-O-Fish contains a breaded fish patty made mostly from pollock and/or hoki (but also contains "left-overs" from various other fish [originally the sandwich was made with halibut]), half a slice of processed cheese and tartar sauce, on a steamed bun.
Also learned from Wiki: The FOF was created by a francise in Cincinnati because of declining sales on Friday due to the Catholic prohibition of eating meat on that day. This rule has apparently been lifted since. But don't take my word for it. Take Wikipedia's article dedicated to a sandwich at mcdonalds. (If I was a writer for the Daily Show, and felt like crossing a picket line, I would make a joke about "W" here.)
This post is almost complete. We need a pic.
Holy hell, I didn't mean for it to be so large. But this is too good. I'm going to leave it. Ewww.
Peace out.
*Minnesota=Hat, Iowa=Head, Arkansas=Shorts, Louisiana=boots. And I don't even want to know what Tennessee is doing.
Can it be? Radiohead has finally made it's way to that great repository of online musicianship! Well, not in full force, but In Rainbows and some totally sweet podcasts (which are of course free) are up. Check out 2 of my favs:
I'm pretty sure Weird Fishes is the greatest thing to come out of the band since Kid A.
I'm not sure what caused it. Maybe it was the fact that some crazy newspaper delivery person pounded on our door at 3:45 this morning because she saw our sign that says "deliveries please knock loudly." I opened the door and she pointed to the sign, and I restrained myself enough to say simply, "not at 4:00 a.m.!" Or maybe it was playing the world's sweetest video game, Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii last night. Let me just nerd-out for a second: this game is so sweet. There are enough hints of the good old school super mario games that it adds a nice bit of nostalgia. But more importantly, it is pretty dog-gone creative. If any one remembers the 1970's The Little Prince musical, this game will recall memories of the tiny planets the prince visits on the way to earth. Anyway it got my brain all-a-churnin'.
Anyhow, whatever caused it, I had a pretty intense series of dreams between 3:45 and 5:45 when my actual, non-russian-newspaper-deliverer alarm clock went off. I shall try to make a full account:
First, and most believably, I was somehow taking "4 credit hours" of college courses while being a surgery resident. Except I hadn't been to class since the very first day in September and it was now December. I was panicking trying to figure out if I could still pass or withdraw. The first class was English literature. I showed up with my book opened to the story that I was supposed to have read, but had not. After class I went up to the teacher and asked her what my chances were, and she showed me her precise calculation that I had "1/3" of the class left, and thus could still save my grade somehow. I left this class and went outside to an overly hilly version of the U of U golf course area. I then went to my next class at a different campus which had a giant clear sphere outside with a sort-of trapeze artist inside. This was definitely inspired my Mr. Mario. He was flipping around and then spun too fast and got rammed into a platform. Pete was there and we both remarked about how odd that was. I went inside to a gym. There were tons of young attractive people and I thought to myself that this was a nice bonus of going back to college. Inside the gym was my art class. I had to go to a store to buy some brushes and paints. Then I was in the gym getting changed and some guy came by selling drugs out of a giant Maverick refillable soda jug. He was yelling out fairly nonchalantly: "5 for 1" which I took to mean 5 joints for $100. I have no idea whether this is ridiculous or right-on. I then went outside and adjacent to the gym was a mall. There were several rent-a-cops and I thought about reporting the drug-dealer, but ended up not saying anything.
There you go. Who needs acid when you can just play Wii and go to sleep.
P.S. Due to lucie's continuing ability to call people for realsies from her mommies cell phone including, but certainly not limited to, Me, Gar, the secretary of the chairman of a program that I have applied to, we have now suspended all previous cell phone priveleges and issued her an old cell phone that she can dial on to her heart's content.
