Best Girlfriend Ever

It is official, shiny seal included. I am the best girlfriend ever.

Now for some back story. Duane is the most impossible person to buy for. Christmas, birthday, etc. shopping for him is horrid. I can only buy the guy so many whitty/ obnoxious shirts. Originally, I was just going to get him another watch since -ahem- somebody broke last year's. But no matter, it allowed me an extra year of life out of the same gift... I thought. Then Duane informed me that "Santa" was bringing him a watch and my hopes were crushed. Back to the drawing board I went.

That is where the title of Best Girlfriend Ever was proposed. While browsing through some random sites for gadgets (Duane likes gadgets and small trinkets to amuse himself with, lol.), I discovered a USB, desktop-controlled foam missile launcher. That's it! I thought. Sure, I'd be dooming myself to be shot by said missiles countless times and well, poor daisy will never have a peaceful nap again, but nonetheless, I'd found the perfect gift. That, of course, meant I had to share my joy with someone, and since it was at like 3:00 in the morning, Justin got to share in the joy. He then declared that if I got that for Duane he would declare me the best girlfriend ever and even throw in a shiny certificate.

And so here we are, I have my shiny certificate and it was signed and authenticated by Duane last night at Justin's. And I haven't even been shot by any missiles yet!

Darwin Award

In case you are not familiar, Darwin Awards are handed out to people...posthumously, of course... to people who kill themselves in such ridiculous ways that they deserve some recognition and thanks for removing themselves from the gene pool. Like, say, the fellow in California, I believe it was, that rigged his car with a jet engine, hoping to go reeeally fast, only to shoot himself into a mountain side about a mile and a half away, leaving only some lugnuts and a charred spot on the rocks. I'm fairly sure I almost won one myself once... but that is a story for another time. And, well, I'll keep my dignity, thank you.

But why am I talking about Darwin Awards, you say. Well, I worked today, which is sure to supply many, many almost Darwin nominees. This patient had no intention of harming himself, however, he is positively too stupid for that plan to hold up. You see, my new friend Bob is 79 and has emphysema, for which he requires oxygen. You'll surely never guess how he got the exploding lung disease. Why, smoking, of course. And smoking, as it turns out, is something Bob just couldn't quite give up after being given at-home oxygen. (Sidebar: If you don't see where this is going, you're as dumb as Bob.)

Yes, you guessed it. The moron blew himself up. His face is nice and crispy, as are his left hand and his nostrils. The best part, however, is not that he blew himself up...even though that's certainly hilarious--seriously, how dumb can you be?! They give you explosion hazard signs!!..but that we had a nice long chat both about how that hasn't happened any of the other times he's smoked with oxygen on and that he had no idea oxygen could cause explosions like that. Ya think?!

Oh well, fortunately for Bob, he assured me he cannont remember a thing. "I reckon that fireball knocked me right out and on the floor!" You don't say, Bob, you don't say.

Up All Night

I'm one step closer to being a man. Haha. I spent all night--well, until about 4:00 this morning--playing Xbox with Duane and Justin. Ian and Joe were there for a while but neither stayed. That's cool though; there are only 4 controllers anyhow.

First, we, of course, played a variety of killing people games. Now, I haven't played any of those...or any games, for that matter...on a regular basis since the granddaddy of them all, Goldeneye, back in the day on N64. You could control James with one stick; now there are two. I certainly have no mastered the two stick system when it comes to walking/running, shooting, aiming and trying not to die all at the same time. Fun times. However, Call of Duty (I think that's which one it was) has some lovely vehicles in it. Those are my favorites! Hop right on in, drive it around all willy nilly and mow everyone right on down. Plus, I'm pretty good at driving stuff since Mario Kart was always the way to go...and I've had to play hours of it on my cousins' Game Cube, which does have two sticks. w00t! Well, until Justin got pretty good at shotgunning people out of them. Boo. :-(

Then it got good. Took a break from all the killing to do some boxing. Fight Night, I believe. First, I must explain my fighting game stategery: furiously mash random buttons and giggle the joy stick. I adopted this for all wrestling games my idiot brother made me play. Only Mortal Kombat was worth learning what buttons did. Anyways, back on track. Did myself some boxing. Good boxing, I might add. I kicked Ian's ass and he was actually trying to hit the right buttons, throw specific punches, etc. Justin beat me though, but it was a pretty even fight. Took a while to get me outta there. Certainly longer than it took me to annialate Ian. mwahaha! And then to round out the night's gaming we played some sort of fighting/fantasy game. Now this thing kicked ass. There were several reasons: I was a lumbering ogre-like creature with a ginormous axe of death, the ogre and his axe had some pretty sweet combo moves, and it didn't involved a significantly more skilled Duane killing the rest of us.... and oh yes, I was the "combo master!" Gotta love games that I actually have some skills at, lol.

The night was not all gaming, however. We did take one little break to watch the greatest move ever! Well, not really ever, but it's hilarious nonetheless, especially since everyone watching could assign some other people we know to each of the characters. The movie, of course, is Saved! Hilarious, I say, HILARIOUS!

Ornaments

This very well could be included in the last paragraph of my previous post but it's special and deserves it own.

In addition to the penguin and necklace/earrings set, Duane also got me a pretty "Kailey & Duane 2006"(instead of "Season's Greetings") snowflake ornament. Whoop-dee-doo, you say? Now my "Christmas problem" aside, his ornament idea is brilliant enough, but Christmas problem considered, it really doesn't get any better. You see, last year--in an OMG WHAT DO I BUY HER PANIC, I'm sure--Duane had himself a very excellent idea. He bought me two ornaments: one that says "Our First Christmas Together, 2004" and then a "Kailey & Duane 2005," with the intention of buying a new one every year.

So eventually we can have a whole tree of ornaments. And--every guy's dream, of course--Duane has at least one "sure thing" gift idea every year.

CHRISTMAS!

So, um, I have a small Christmas problem. Duane and Jamie have both pointed out...numerous times...that while I might be all mature and grown up the other 99.99999% of the time, when it comes to Christmas, I'm about 5. But really, what's not to love?! Presents, light/other pretty decorations, 150 nativities taking over the house, etc. And the prospect of snow, of course. (Aside: Snow and I have a relationship similar to what I have with Christmas.)

Anyways, today is Christmas, the greatest day EVER. Until, that is, I open Tony's awesomely bad gift of the year. Recapping several past years, I've gotten such thoughtful gifts as a spindle of CD-Rs (most of which HE USED), a Weir hoodie he got that was too small, and MEN's fleece pants from Aeropostale. So obviously, there's no much to be expected. This year I got massaging house slippers. They're hideously pink, have obvisouly been worn and returned by someone else already and well, they don't really massage, just vibrate, which feels weird. And oh yes, let's not overlook the big red clearance tag. Its cool though. While ordering his present, I had to spend an extra $10 to save $10, so I got myself some ice skating accessories and deemed those his present to me.

The other boys in my life do not disappoint, however. My dad is good at Christmas shopping for things my mom would be like "WTF? Why should we get her that?!" Like, say, my singing Rudolph and Santa. Or my Rudolph figurine collection. My mom thinks those are all useless clutter and I'm sure she has dreams about tossing them. I, however, very much enjoy them, which is why my dad's Christmas problem (worse than mine) is handy. And then there's Stevie. He doesn't buy me "diamond jewelry" at Santa's workshop anymore though. :( But its cool, we hide in his room while the rest of our idiot family talks in their living room. Finally, there's Duane, of course. All of my hints were correct, unlike last year. Pft! That's not plaid! Heh. Although, he did get a little tricky and said there was a 3 piece set but the box only had two of the 3 pieces. I was momentarily confused until I realized the singing/dancing penguin's box opened. Yay for pretty jewelry!

Kailey's Foot Funk Scale of Craziness

In the past 9 months or so, I've discovered quite the trend: Crazy people have disgusting feet. The crazier they are, the grosser the feet. It's uncanny; foot nastiness is an excellent predictor of how much my shift is going to suck.

Now, I'm sure someone out there is thinking: "Wtf, Kailey, all feet are nasty, how can you tell someone's mental state from their toenails?" My response to them: You've never seen a crazy person's feet. Take Norm, for instance. God knows he takes the cake...and probably the pie, too... for craziest patient. His feet were beyond words. But "beyond words" only works for me and the other unfortunate people that encountered those feet, so I shall try. Lemme paint you a little picture...and have the puke bucket at the ready. First of all, his feet were purple-ish and sprinkled with an oh so wonderful layer of cheesy dry skin. Gross? Certainly. The worst part? Oh no, we're just getting started. What really puts Norm leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else is his toenails. They were gnarled, chipped, about 3" thick and all sorts of strange colors. And oh yes, we can't forget the little chips that he cracked off...resulting in some awesome bleeding...while he flailed to try and get out of his restraints. And, of course, we can top off all this foot fun with an odor that, well, let's just say that I work at a hospital so when I say something reeks, that really means something.

On the flip side are my many other, much less crazy patients. They've all had feet that were nasty to some degree. The crack head last week was dry, scaly and had nail issues but he was fairly coherant and other than that whole crack problem, wasn't such a horrible guy. The hallucinating lady this evening had gnarled toes and 6" long nails; however, if she takes her medicine, she's apparently very nice. And, well, I'm sure if I'd have seen Oviraptor Man's feet, they'd have been just as icky as his fingernails, placing him just behind Norm on the Foot Funk Scale and certainly in craziness.

Ok, so there's the gold standard and some comparison for crazy person feet. And now I present my scale:

• 0-- Normal, hygenic feet. As feet go, they're not so bad. You are likely normal.
• 1--Manual laborer and ballerina feet. They've been abused and are probably a little deformed. See Rebecca's feet. You might be a little goofy sometimes.
• 2--Old people feet. Ask Grandpa to take his socks off after Christmas dinner. They're horrible, and let's face it, old people start to get a little crazy.
• 3--Diabetic old people feet. #2 but worse.
• 4-- (here is where true mental illness sets in) Very dry and scaly. Toenails are a little gross but nothing a bath, some lotion and nail clippers couldn't handle. You are probably a little depressed.
• 5 through 9-- The dry, scaly awfulness gets progressively worse. Toenails begin to discolor and gnarl. Also, the stench ramps it up. You are probably biopolar, schizophrenic or otherwise nutty.
• 10--Norm's feet. You are officially the nuttiest person ever. In fact, you propose to several girls 1/3 your age, love your birds so much you pierce your nose with their leg bands and just can't seem to escape those voices. Even Charles Manson has prettier feet.

Home!

Hooray, I'm home for Christmas break. FINALLY! Boo, Duquesne and its extra long semester this year. Well, actually we started a week late, which caused a lack of Christmas spirit. Oh well. Its over. No more art, no more horrific biostats. Gee, I hope I passed that final. -rolls eyes out of head-

And now the boredom begins.

Oh boy, o-chem!

Caption: I wish I were an SN2 reaction so then I could attack your backside.

Nothing like a good chemistry joke to make your day. Ajit is my hero for posting that on his Facebook.

Anyways, Saturday morning was the O-chem (Duquesne for Organic Chemistry for any mentally challenged folks out there.) final. It was at 8:15, technically we didn't have to show up until 8:45 but that would incur icy stares of death from everyone else. And, well, Jamie was going to go at 8:15 anyway, so its not like I could have slept. Oops. Back on track now. Final Saturday morning. Grades posted this evening. Oh how I love PJ and his army of TAs.

Now for the important part. Due to the extreme gayness of the point distribution and my knack for failing to read directions--"if the answer includes resonance, you must draw resonance to receive full credit"...guess who didn't draw any resonance..--I had to do pretty damn well to even get an A-. Farewell, 4.0, I mourn for you. :'( But all is well in the world since I got exactly the grade I needed for said A-. Not a point (or square, of course) to spare. -whew- If only I'd drawn the resonance, it would be an A. -tear- And yes, shut up, I realize that the A- makes my QPA like 3.98 now so its not the end of the world.

So next semester has two goals for O-chem II:

1. Read directions. This one is also knowns as don't lose like 12 meaningless points on various tests/quizzes because I failed to read the giant, bold type DRAW RESONANCE STRUCTURES part on the cover of the test.
2. Count correctly. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6... Forgetting the number 5 is bad. I should not do it when trying to name things--especially when the whole naming system is based on said numbering...

Bored²

It's finals time here at Duquesne and just about everywhere else. College students across the country are holed up in their little study closets in the library, studying all day and night. With the help of some Adderol and a tripple shot of espresso from Starbucks every few hours, of course. Meanwhile, I have done such exciting things as played Text Twist to about 150,000 points, whacked a penguin around on YetiSports (sorry, Jamie) for a few hours and checked Facebook and random people's blogs about 934850934850324958304 times. I AM SO FREAKING BORED!

But don't you have to study? you ask. Well, I did study you see. I spent several whole hours on Ochem Monday afternoon and a similar amount of hours on Cell Molec Tuesday afternoon. And then I spent the remaining part of the day calculating what grades I need to keep an A (A- in Ochem's case). Other than Ochem needing a pretty good performance, the highest grade I need to keep an A in any class is an 82 and this is mostly due to the very small amount of points we have overall. Everyone else, meanwhile, is going: "HOLY SHIT! I'M GONNA FAIL!!! -PANIC, PANIC-" Thus, I have no one to play with and have grown rather bored.

There are, however, two very good things about this boredom: SLEEP and work! Although most of my finals are 8:45s (blech!), they are all on different days, allowing me to take a nice, long nap after each. And the final that's not at 8:45? It's not until 1:15 so I can sleep 'til noon...maybe later. And as for work, all the extra time translates to me working several days. Thank goodness! In the aftermath of my Christmas shopping, my back account is on life support. Well, not really, but it's a lot lower than I'd like it to be, so alas, I work!

Party!

Today was the Camp Quality Christmas party. I love seeing my Tyler!! Even if it does mean driving 2.5 hours...way over the speed limit...

Anyways, the party was lots of fun. Santa came and all the kids got gifts. Nothing spectacular, just the cheap crap (bouncy balls, little cars, styrofoam airplanes, etc) that kids like. Although, poor Ty is just too shy. He tolerated, we'll say, sitting on Santa's lap. Nate, however, was probably laying down a Christmas list for the next 10 years. And then we opened the presents we got for each other. Nate was all about his Spongebob DS game and Ty was pretty darn thrilled with his Aquadoodle. He told me he was going to hold it all the way home so he could get a good look. Haha. He's soooo cute! Then I opened my presents from them. They picked them out themselves and oh boy, were they proud of that. When they walked in to give them to me, Ty got all smiley, lol. He got me a teddy bear (wanted to get me a necklace but diamond necklaces are a little out of the 5 year old price range) and Nate got me a picture frame ornament. Its now holding that top picture. I love them!

I'm a little sad they didn't bring the baby. But I did get pictures and she's adorable, of course! Now I just need to figure out when I can visit again...

Original Recipe or Extra Crispy?

I finally got to work a few days this week, after having been cancled about 14,000 times in a row. Shortage of crazy people! And this evening, this man was my patient. So obviously, he's a little crispy.

Nice guy though. All the suicide attempts are. Certainly better than my crack addict Sunday night. Anger. Adivan. Anger. Adivan. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Finally, he told the nurse she should just give him "the shot." That means he got jabbed with Haldol in the ass, in addition to the rest of his bedtime meds, which included some IV Adivan and a sleeping pill. Within 5 minutes, he was snoring and never moved again. Good stuff.

Anyways, back to poor Patrick. He was quite a nice guy and so were his brother and dad, who were both there visiting. His roommate was an entertaining, VERY belligerent old man. He'd let off the loudest, longest string of obscenities whenever someone would come tell him to do something. However, there was plenty of silence to be had. Especially the awkward kind. We were sitting there watching the news when a report came on all about what the police are considering charging Patrick with. -cricket, cricket- Awkward. Awkward.

Luckily, the next story was about Paris Hilton wanting children soon. Nothing better to break the silence than that piece o' crap.

Oviraptor Update

I'm sure everyone has been told about "Oviraptor Man," my uber-psychotic patient that reminded me very much of the evil, conspiracy-minded egg-eating dinosaur. This dude was scary.

Well Duane and I went to the Museum yesterday to do my art assignment. However, that didn't take so long and art isn't very thrilling to look at, so we went and looked at much more exciting things--dead stuff!

Most of the dinosaurs are put away while they remodel the main portion of the musuem. I stuck my head behind all the "Exuse the Dust" construction blockers and it's looking pretty awesome. But anyways, there were a few dinos on display. One, of which, was this here oviraptor. Note its long, frightening, I'm going to stand here and plot your demise claws. Welcome to "Oviraptor Man's" hands.

Also, there was a giant Christmas display. There were some huge trees that were kinda nice but the best part was obviously the ginormous nativity, especially the hanging angels. I really like it. My dad would steal it. This pic is really only about a third of the whole thing, although it's the important part. The middle is just random people standing around talking and the far right is the inn with no rooms in it.

April 25, 2008

WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING ON APRIL 25, 2008?!?!

Duane randomly asked me what I was doing that day a few nights ago. Obvisouly, nothing to my knowledge. At first I thought he was just messing with me since we all know playing make Kailey think there's a secret is such a fun game. -blushy- But he swears he's serious. And more importantly, I apparently don't have to wait the whole year and some odd months until I find out what I'm doing that day. I only have to wait the some odd months part. And oh yes, he's "pretty damn certain" that I'm really going to like/be excited for whatever this happening is.

Some friendly suggestions:

1. A trip of some sort. Justin says we'll get one heck of a deal on airfare that far in advance.
2. A show of some sort. Best seats in the house? Too bad they don't schedule stuff that far in advance.
3. Baby Jesus. This one is all Jamie...and after midnight, so it's a little (read: a lot) nutty. Apparently, I could be giving birth to the Second Coming.

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Comments!

Fake Friends

Poor Justin is taking some flack for his dislike of the generic "Happy Thanksgiving!" texts he received yesterday. I totally agree with him that the mass text/ "Happy -insert holiday here- text is stupid. This is for a number of reasons:

1. Text messages are just about as impersonal as it can get. Gee, how heartfelt and caring of you to send me and 50 of your closest friends the same message. If you actually cared that extremely much about wishing someone a happy holiday, you might...oh no, don't say it...actually call the person. What a flippin' crazy idea.
2. Waste of time and, in Justin's case, money. We've already established the extreme unpersonablitiy (is that a word?) of the texts, so let's follow that theme here a little more. Wouldn't it just be better/easier/cheaper to wait until you see the messagee to tell him/her Happy Thanksgiving. Sure, its a few days late but that's ok. You can ask about what they did for the holiday, how the break went, etc. Oh, what's this, you only see the person at random times or in that one class you just happen to have together once a week, you say? Yeah, you probably don't care that much anyway.
3. Fake friends. Ok, so maybe most people don't have this stupid complex but I sure do and I bet Nitza and several of our other friends do too...or it at least irritates the hell of out them. Gee, how nice, so-and-so are talking to me. Wait, we have homework due this week. Gee, isn't it convenient how you called now? Last week, no homework=no communication. You'd think they dropped off the face of the earth. Oh no, they were just out with their better friends but thought since some homework/test/project/other thing requiring a "smart person" is on the horizon, they should put in a call to the nerd of choice. So call me cynical. Maybe some people are just trying to be nice and exchange pleasantries but experience has taught me otherwise many, many times. Oh, let me count the times people have suddenly stopped talking to me when we no longer had classes together...

Terribly sorry if I offended you, random anonymous commenter. Grow some skin.

Better Late Than Never

Thank you for not sucking today, Ben. And thank you, Santonio for not fumbling everytime you touched the ball.

The first half did not look pretty. Ben threw three, THREE, interceptions. The first one was most certainly his fault. Shitty throw. The second and third, however, were the turnover gods laughing at us...again. Interception #2 looked a whole lot what I imagine the imfamous Bluefield interception looked like in our craptastic 2-minute meltdown. The ball hit Hines, wonderful, team-leading, MVP Hines, right in the chest, bounced right off and into the arms of the defender. And off he went. -tear- Interception #3 was ridiculous. Cedric Wilson dove for the short throw but the ball appeared to have spiked into the ground. Oh no, that would be fortunate. Instead, it spiked off of his helmet as poor Cedric was eating the turf and bounced right into some Cleveland dude's hands. And yep, there he goes. -more tears-

Thank goodness for the second half. And the Browns' general crappiness. Ben decided to come out of his fog and look like Ben again and the receivers decided to actually do some receiving. So, hooray, they made up for a very depressing first half by kicking some ass and maintaining sorta-kinda-ever-so-faint hopes of making the playoffs.

In other football news, Dallas is ahead of the Colts now. Payton Manning looks funny when he's losing. I like it.

Home

I just got home for Thanksgiving Break. And, of course, within about twenty minutes, I was bored out of my mind. There's noooooothing to do here!

Oh well, it could be worse. Poor Jamie has a kidney infection and wants to die. She was all sickly for the past few days and spent most of this afternoon/evening getting poked by doctors. First she went to Health Services at school. They probably yelled at her for being sick without an appoitment...friendly people there, lemme tell ya. Then she drove home and spent several hours in the ER there. At least a few days of uber antibiotics should do the trick, although not eating two boxes of Gobstoppers in two days might have been a better prevention. Her kidneys cry.

Tomorrow, my mom and I are going to the Steubenville mall to harrass Tony at work. And perhaps we'll do some Christmas shopping, although, it is the Steubenville mall. We'd sooner find good gifts at one of Weirton's 50 dollar stores.

Eye washed!

I got to use the eye wash in lab today! Oops..

In what can only be described as the most scatter-brained day ever, I forgot to put the comb into my gel when I set it up. Now that's a pretty important part since it makes nice little wells to inject the sample into, so basically, no comb=useless slab of gel. Well, it hadn't been polymerizing very long so I figured I could sneak it in. Of course, this meant I was frantic, which is never a good thing. I forcefully shove the comb in (my gel was already geling -tear-.) and a little bit of the liquidy part comes shooting out. And of course, I was just so lucky to be crouched down in front of the gel at the time so the liquidy part hit me just below the eye. -whew- I thought, at least it missed my eye. Well as it turns out, the chemicals that make the gel are all wonderfully toxic and carcinogens (while they're still liquids, that is, as the gel polymer, babies could play with the stuff). So Dr. Rita is standing there like: "AHHH EYE WASH, EYE WASH!!!"

So, yes, I spend the next 5 minutes spraying off my face in the sink. -sigh- It was not unlike when I shot myself in the face with frog juice in Rohal's class. Damn that fascia.

Half Way Over the Hill

Today is my 20th birthday. According to all small children in my life, I'm now officially an old woman. Better file for Social Security and MediCare tomorrow. My days are numbered.

Ok, so this is coming from 5 (Ty), 7 (Nate) and 10 (Stevie) year olds, so its not the most accurate discription. They think 12 is pretty ancient. And, hey, at least I'm not a teenager anymore. Also, I'm only one year away from my 21st birthday plans: Going to the Marl Inn and having a drink at that lovely "place of liquid refreshment" with Mr. Carey and Caritis. Oh yeah.

Anyways, to celebrate me being old, I think I'm going to get my haircut when I'm home for Thanksgiving. Shoulder-lengthish, I'm thinking. It'll pretty much force me to wear it down, thus making me look older. No more kiddie price at the zoo for me! In a related story, Duane and I went to dinner last night and our waiter told us the drink and wine specials. So what if I'm not 21 and cannot enjoy, he didn't think i was 12!!!

And finally, I got some pretty good gifts. Jamie got me a giftcard to Benihana. SHRIMP! -joyous shudder- And Duane got me this really pretty snowglobe. Now, in case you are unaware, I am obsessed--OBSESSED--with snow/Christmas and heh, sick little children (that will make sense in a minute, I promise). So he got me a snowglobe with a giant snowflake and shiny star in it, and that shiny star is the Make-A-Wish star. So they got money for his purchase. And, really, once I saw Make-A-Wish on the box, there could have been a smelly old sock in there, I'd still have been happy about it, lol.

WHOA!

The heavens parting and angels singing.

Halleluia!

So that, in a nut shell, is what my afternoon was like. The two awesome things that made me happy were, in reverse order, #2: it was Thanksgiving dinner night in Towers--good food! and #1: I'M GOING TO BE LISTED AS AN AUTHOR FOR A SCIENTIFIC PAPER AND POSSIBLY GET TO PRESENT SAID PAPER AT A CONFERENCE!!!

Got that? No, I didn't think so. Well, working in a research lab generally means the possibility of being published; however, that generally doesn't happen until you've been working on something for quite some time. But, alas, I have gotten very, very, very lucky. The American Chemical Society has its annual undergrad research symposium thingy in late February/early March this spring, and Patrick (guy who works on the other part of the HCV stuff) is submitting an abstract to be presented. WELL! I get to be listed as an author on that, which, in case you were unaware, is A HUGE FREAKING DEAL! And, to make it even better, depending upon what the ACS people say, Patrick and I may be able to do a joint presentation of the same project. (Usually, there is only one presenting author but we don't have enough data yet to do two separate presentations, yet he'd still have to include my data so I would be better at talking about that.) Hopefully, they're nice and I get to go, which would be an even HUGER FREAKING DEAL! Its in Chicago and Duq pays for me to go, I do believe, so w000t, free trip!

And to think, at the beginning of the semester I was pretty sure I didn't even want to do that much research. I thought it was going to be boring and suck. And now I'm going to get pseudo-published and present AS A SOPHOMORE!

Toothpaste

Disclaimer: Schmoopiness factor may exceed tolerable limits.

So, toothpaste? you ask...

Thanks to Pitt's wonderful "cohabitation" friendly visitors policy and Duane's lack of roommate, I generally sleepover most weekends. And this, of course, involves brushing my teeth and since I don't generally pack my own toothpaste, I have to use Duane's.

Well, he has a serious toothpaste problem: He squeezes the tube in the entirely wrong way. Everyone knows you go from the bottom! Squishing it from the middle--oh the horrors, the horrors! So obviously, I take it upon myself to fix this toothpaste dibacle, which generally involves some good-natured teasing about my crazy girl OCD.

And thats where it gets good. -blushy- That invariably leads to joking about how he's going to have to have his own tube of toothpaste that is going to be hidden up high (where else?) so I can't get to it and fix it...and how he's going to squish my toothpaste tube and mess it up. Yeah, so its toothpaste but the not-so-hard-to-comprehend subtext says that the personal toothpaste tubes will be required when we're married and living together. And well, I just love when we randomly talk about stuff like that!

Also, I've recently been informed that his wallet will also be hidden so as to prevent my compulsive rearrangement of bills...but they must be in order!

When life gives you lemons...

This is a little over due but oh well, you'll get over it. My goal main goal this year was getting a club I'm in to hold an Alex's Lemonade Stand, which I do believe I've mentioned before. Well, not only did we have on, we had two!! And we're planning another for the spring.

I got to talk about the kids at our last meeting, effectively guilting many people into volunteering. Oh well, whatever works. Even better, we got everything for free from dining services and managed to raise a few hundred dollars! And that's a VERY badly needed few hundred dollars.

Everyone really liked hearing about all the kids and looking at their pictures on my trifold board thing. Nothing opens people's hearts and wallets like cute kids! And, well, I think even hater-of-all-things-cute-and-cuddly Rebecca would say they're cute. However, the best part was definitely talking about camp with a few girls who are pretty sure they want to come to camp now too! How awesome is that?! One of them is in the PA program here and wants to be a ped-onc PA so I think she'll definitely end up going.

I missed my Little Guy!

No, I didn't die or forget about this thing. Stupid art test.

Anyways, this weekend is Sibling Weekend here at Duq and since, well, my actual sibling wouldn't be so enthusiastic about coming to stay, I had Stevie come for the night on Friday. We had so much fun!

First we went to eat at Towers, which he was pretty darn impressed with. Our sausage is amazing, lol. Then I took him to look at my lab, which turned into an unexpected 2 hour adventure. Lakshmi said I should take him to see all the fancy machines in the other labs too, so I did, which he was very impressed with. And then we played with dry ice for a while. Who doesn't love dry ice?! Then I took him downstairs to the Bio Dept labs to look at dead things in jars for a while. While doing that, one of the professors overheard us and offered to take us to see the frogs and various other creatures he keeps. Made Stevie's day! Finally we went to game night at the Nite Spot and played the world's longest game of pool since we both suck...a lot.

Then he went home and I was sad. :( I miss seeing him almost once a week. Oh well, now that he's a cool kid and has a cell phone, I can always just call him up.

Success!...Sorta

I spent my first day working in the research lab--or playing with STDs, as Justin says--today. It was relatively exciting, just a little overwhelming. So much to remember!

Luckily, everyone is very, very nice and helpful and they're training me well. -whew- Some professors sort of make you learn as you go and you're pretty much screwed. Although, I gotta say, I'm definitely giong to be developing an accent--probably Indian--since I'm going to be spending around 10 hours a week with people who don't exactly speak English... Oh well, they're friendly, know my name and I can inherit their biochem books. I'll take it!

Even better than meeting nice people and having some idea of what's going on are good results! First of all, we had no idea if our reaction was even going to work. She's very skeptical of the study whose results we're building off of, so when I developed my gel and got a nice big band o' dimer, it was very exciting. Ok, so you had to be there....and be a science nerd.. Believe me, we were happy.

Now I get to go back and try to get a little better, more tidy results on Thursday. And that involves playing with dry ice. Alright!

SNOW!

Despite being fairly sleepy and having to work 7-11 today, it was a splendiferous day because...


IT'S SNOWING!

Dirty Laundry

The laundry room downstairs currently looks like several people's closets have exploded. There are piles and piles of people's crap all over the place. Now, come on, folks! How hard is it to obey a few simple rules?

1. Do not indefinitely leave your laundry. I'm pretty sure the pile of guy's socks/underwear has been down there so long now that its owner cannot possibly have any of those items left. I don't want people touching my stuff...especially bras and panties...so I retrieve my clothes in a timely manner. I wish more people did the same.

2. If you indefinitely leave your laundry, do not flip out when someone moves it. Story time: Sometime last year, I needed to do laundry and while all the machines were finished, they, of course, were full of abandoned laundry. Well, I generally prefer not to move people's undies (eww!) and usually wait a little while (I check every half hour or so), nobody ever came to empty their washer so I chose to move someone's sheets. Oh boy. About 45 minutes later, I was down there again putting my clothes into a dryer when the girl whose sheets I'd moved came to retrieve them. She went nuts: got all red, had the bulging forehead vein going, and stormed about the room, mumbling about how now they needed washed again. Omg, get over it, they're your sheets and HELLO?!? YOU LEFT THEM FOR AT LEAST AN HOUR AND A HALF!

3. Don't waste a washer. A few weeks ago, I opened a long-ago finished washer to discover one towel. ONE TOWEL. That ONE towel was still there the next day, btw. There are no words...

4. Yes, boys, girls wear bras. Please do not gawk while we're washing them. Granted, I live in the Honors College and well, some of these guys have never even talked to a girl... But still, awkward staring only makes me think you're more of a freak than you probably already are.

5. Don't leave dryer sheets on the floor. This is very importants. Why?, you ask. Because clumsy people like me can very easily step on them, helplessly flail about and land in a very painful split. The garbage can is only 2ft away!

Lab Rat

I'm so excited. I met with a biochem professor today about working in her lab. As it turns out, she's just starting a new project with hepatitis C RNA and needed a 4th undergrad in her lab, so my timing was perfect! I'll officially be a lab rat (that's how the faculty refers to the student researchers) on October 19!

Basically what the "problem" is is that hepatitis C RNA dimerizes (eh, the bases get stuck together in pairs and form kink) rather often, leading to lots and lots of mutations. So all that genetic variability means #1: nobody has quite the same form so a vaccine, which would be against only one to a few forms, would be useless and #2: it keeps changing anyhow, so any treatment or vaccine is going to become obsolete. So the project I'll be working on is trying to figure out what causes it to dimerize so then perhaps someone can figure out how to stop that.

Also exciting, she generally keeps people in the lab until they graduate so I'm pretty much set and starting next semester, I should be able to get credits for working there. And even better! She likes to have you work during the summer too but not necessarily through the Undergraduate Research Program, which is very good for me since I don't want to do URP since I wouldn't get the time off for camp. She has no problem giving me that week off, hurrah! And oh yeah, you get paid... a lot.

Out of this world!...Reunion

I went home this weekend for the Camp Quality reunion. I was soooooo excited, but also rather nervous that Ty's mom would go into labor and they wouldn't be able to come. Luckily, she's still about to pop and Jason (his daddy) was able to bring the kids after their soccer games. Unluckily, however, it POURED and was FREEZING. No fun.


Because of the wet and freezing lack o' fun, lots of people didn't show. I'd say maybe 1/4- 1/3 of the kids and companions were there. And they were mostly older kids, so I didn't really know any. We still had plenty of fun though. Inflatables! Hello?! How could those not be fun?! And of course crafts and wood shop stuff, which pretty much sums up the oringinal camp experience.

The bestest part, however, was that Jason told me Ty's last chemo is this week!! Hooray for being off treatment!

ZAP!

My right arm...side...whole body... still feels a little strange since I almost electrocuted myself today. -blushy- I had to unplug something to plug in the microwave to heat up some leftovers for lunch. It seems what I was trying to unplug wasn't plugged in all the way, so my finger hit the metal prongs. And well, you know how that goes. Eating pasta with a crappy plastic fork is hard enough, but having the post-shock shakes make it a lot trickier, haha.

In other news, Christi (see first ever post) died last week and that's just depressing. Her awesome parents, however, agreed to let her doctors try to establish a cell line, named FU NB 2006, with her cells for research. Hopefully that takes! (The odds are not good though.) It'd be pretty neat to use those for research I might do this summer. And in still other, less depressing news, only one kid from the shooting is left in the hospital and he's awake and off life support (the one shot in the head, obviously). Maybe I'll see him in ABI the next time I work.

Speaking of work, I would just like to say for the record that all units ending in the letters I-C-U are my friend. The nurses are inexplicably MUCH nicer and hey, the patient pretty much isn't allowed to move, making my job quite simple!

Kiss, Kiss...Bang, Bang

This is a bit overdue but oh well. There was a rather large shooing on campus here Saturday night. I was already asleep and I'm pretty much impervious to sirens now, so I didn't hear. But had I been awake, I definitely would have heard since it was all of, like, 500 feet away. Boo, living in the ghetto.

Luckily, today they arrested one of the guys that did the shooting. (There were two.) And a warrant is out for the other. Apparently, one of them got jealous that his girlfriend was "being friendly" with one of the basketball players. Now obviously, a hail of gunfire is the solution there. Minus the one that got shot in the head who is still in critical condition, the other 4 are doing fine.

I can't say that I'm reacting like lots of other people though. Aka: OMG, WE'RE ALL GOING TO GET SHOT AND DIE AT ANYTIME NOW! No, no. If it were completely random guy from off the street just decided to walk down A-Walk at noon on Tuesday and spray the campus with bullets, then I'd be peeing my pants. But these guys were at a big dance in the Union because one of their girlfriends must go here and they shot for a very specific...albeit ridiculous...reason. So calm down, people. The stupid girls in really pointy high-heeled shoes have a better chance of tripping in one of the missing brick holes on A-Walk, falling and breaking their necks than about 99% of the campus has at getting shot.

Hurrah!

I'm so excited! Phi Eta Sigma thought my suggestion of holding an Alex's Lemonade Stand was really awesome, so we're going to definitely do one during homecoming and try for another sometime in the spring. w00t! And since it was my summer questionaire suggestion...and no one else has any idea what it is...I get to be in charge. Yay for being involved! Pssst, see that medical school!

Hopefully we can raise lots of money since there's this big festival thingy during the football game. And lots of people come...and being the Duquesne people they are, I'm sure many of them are loaded. So hopefully we can guilt a few extra dollars out of them. And I'm thinking I can make my dad get me all the supplies for free. He pretty much owes me his soul after all the football stuff--seriously, you should see My Documents on this computer, its ridiculous--he's made me do. Plus, he gets all sorts of free stuff from people for the team, so he's already got connections. If nothing else I'm thinking we're going to have an "Undo's & Alex's Lemonade Stand."

And oh yes, I get to give a little talk about it at our next meeting. So I'm most likely going to freak out. Talking in front of people, AHHH! Or they're all going to think I'm nuts when I ramble on about pediatric cancer and such... Sorta like when I talk about babies...

I Hate Stupid People.

I think the title sums this one up: Stupid people suck. Now they particularly suck when #1 you're in an HONORS class, #2 they're trying to argue against the point you just made and #3 the points are ridiculous.

Yesterday, we talked about 9/11 in theology. This kid, whose name I don't know, went off on some tirade about various terrorist-related things. For instance, I had no idea that the Palestinians actually sold Israel all that land. Yep, happily sold it to them and now they've just changed their minds. Also, surveys show that Iran LOVES the United States. I don't know about you, but countries that threaten to blow mine off the face of the earth are always on my top 10 list. And finally, my absolute favorite: We are obviously safer now than we were five years ago since THERE HASN'T BEEN A SINGLE ATTACK SINCE 9/11. Riiight...

I did enjoy my professor's respone though: "Hmm, you certainly have an interesting interpretation of the history there."

Broken

Currently, two things are broken: my new digital camera and my immune system.

The camera was working wonderfully until all of a sudden, it told me it had a "focus error" and while I could view old pictures, I couldn't take anymore. Also, the lens doesn't zoom back in and fold into the body of the camera when I turn it off. So its getting shipped off to the repair people. Thank goodness for warranties.

Now for my immune system. Ty was getting a cold on Saturday and was pretty snotty all day Sunday, and well, being the pseduo-mommy that I am, I wiped a great deal of those boogers for him. And now it seems that he's given me his sickness. Except I also have a fever and feel like death. Hopefully he's not as sick since for him, fever=trip to the hospital. Now who wants to be in the hospital the week after they got all sorts of cool new birthday toys?!

Happy Birthday, Ty!

I went to visit Ty this weekend for his and Nate's birthdays. It was so much fun! We played monster trucks for about a million hours, gave all the stuffed animals check-ups with his new vet kit, went to the zoo, and had their birthday parties in the park! And there he is painting a beautiful picture for me with the paint set I bought him.

I was sad to leave this afternoon but I think the boys were worse. Ty wanted me to stay and play, of course, while Nate was mostly just depressed for me. He thinks that living at school must be the worst thing in the world. Of course, I'm pretty sure he imagines little cots getting rolled into the classrooms or something. And Lexie, one of Ty's friends, was terribly confused as to how I got there without my mommy, especially since I live 4 Batman's away. (That's two hours, aka 4 half-hour shows, to all the grown ups.)

And finally, I'm so happy that they--especially Ty--missed me and were so excited to see me. We had to sit in the very back of the van since its the only seat with 3 seat belts so I could sit between them on the way to the zoo...and we rearranged the place settings at dinner 100 times to make sure they could both sit by me. I feel so loved, lol. Only three weeks until the camp reunion!

Boycotts

Justin has his
Boycotts, and now I have mine.

1. Facebook: New but certainly not improved. I don't want to know that George is now friends with Joe...who I don't even know! And seeing the wall posts, that's a little strange.
2. The fancy Duquesne D: Improved internet service? Nope. Better bathrooms? Also, no. What we did get new this year, however, were new chairs in Towers. Now why did we need new chairs, you ask. Because the old ones didn't have our precious fancy-smancy D carved into the back. God knows it must be on everything. Even our stop signs. -tear-
3. Nickelodeon: Yeah, I know Nitza is boycotting it too, but really, Nick sucks now. Jimmy Neutron?! Pft! Any network that gives Britney Spears' sister a show just because she is Britney Spears' sister, yeah, you suck.
4. Tom Cruise: What have you done to Joey?! E! had some "Where are they now?" feature on the other day about Dawson's Creek kids the other day. It made me sad. Everyone else is living a nice, NORMAL life. Joey's been brainwashed. You love Pacey, not Tom! Also, their baby, whose pictures we released today, isn't all that "beautiful, breath-taking, yadda yadda yadda" looking.

Hmm, well I guess that's it until something/someone pisses me off.

The Week In Review

Classes started this week. That wasn't so thrilling but at least nothing seems like its going to be tooooo bad.

Monday: Four classes in four hours. My statistics professor looks like Barry and wears very tight pants. This disturbs me. Theology is AWESOME, however. We got a new professor (the other guy was supposedly really awful) and there are no tests or final. Just a couple paters. Then there's ochem. I think Karpyk actually did a decent job with that so I'm not terribly worried. I'm just pissed we had to buy our lecture notes...for $35, rawr! And finally, Arts & the Human Experience, ugh! Looking at naked statues/paintings and memorizing crap about them is not my idea of a good time. Damn core classes!

Tuesday: Only one class, Cell and Molecular Biology. Nothing special to say about the class itself other than we get 100 points...thats 20% of our grade...for just going to recitatio. Hurrah, easy grade padding! The highlight of the class, however, was one of our professors (we have two) telling us that the acoustics of the lecture hall are amazing. So amazing that we probably should think twice before telling our friend next to us about what/who we did last weekend or what/who we're doing this weekend. Even the slightest whisper is quite audible from where he's standing and well, he doesn't want to know that about his students.

Then I went over to Pitt to see Duane. I did not miss public transportation this summer. :( Oh well. I did find it rather humorous that Duane has to swipe his card and punch in his "PIN number" like 3 times to get to his room...its like a super-secure hotel.

Wednesday: Repeat Monday and add ochem lab in the afternoon, yucky! I got one of the non-English, reeeeeeally hard-grading TAs I had last year and that makes me sad. Luckily the other one is very American and from what I can tell, not terribly interested in having lab. So on weeks when the experiment is pretty short, we're going to do two (that day's and the next week's) thus giving us the next week off. I love her.

Thursday: Just bio again. Yay for one class days....except it sorta feels like the day didn't even happen so I was all messed up. The one class thing works out well for work though, so I did a 4 hour shift that afternoon. My patient had no legs and only one arm so needless to say, he wasn't going anywhere. But I still had to watch him like a hawk b/c his gf enjoys passing drugs to him..or so they think.. And who say's Weir High doesn't teach you anything? I can spot a drug deal from a mile away, haha.

Friday: Repeat of Monday. Stats professor's pants are still tight and disturbing. :\ But then Duane came over for the night and we ordered Chinese food. It was wonderful. Unfortunately, before I went to bed, Tyler's mommy got ahold of me to say she was having contractions (not due until October 20) and that perhaps it'd be better if I didn't come up this weekend. :'( I'm going to shoot for next weekend though. I miss my buddy!

What do you suppose comes in a "Plan B Purse" from the Pittsburgh rape prevention people?

If you're me...or pretty much the rest of my floor, the answer is the morning after pill. The lady holds up her shiny little purse and all I could think was "omg, they're giving us the morning after pill...I'm not sure that's Duquesneable.."

Turns out, its a little case for extra money for a cab, a list of important phone numbers and "anything else you might think of." Much to everyone's disappointment, no one suggested a condom when asked what that anything else might be.

Also, we got a list of "101 Things to Do in the 'Burgh," which reminds me a lot of Miss Block's "101 Ways to Say NO" poster. "I have a sunburn..."

Back to School

I'm all moved in now. And not a moment too soon. I think I would have killed my mother if I had to spend another second with her today. She suggested putting our dressers in the MIDDLE of the room so we could have an island. Yeah. Luckily Jamie's boyfriend found a better, LOGICAL way to arrange the room. Yay!

And well, no experience would be complete without me injuring myself in some ridiculous way. Unbeknownst to me, the "On" button on my straightener was somehow pushed. I plugged it in. About ten minutes later, I attempted to move it. I straightened my palm. OUCH!

In other news, I went to the Weir game last night since no one was around and I was bored. While the band still sucks ass, WE DON'T HAVE A DANCELINE!!!! The world is a better place.

News 9 has problems.

So I'm 99% sure that good ol' Natalie Pasquerela just said "problemsome" while talking about a TROUBLEsome intersection in Steubenville.

But hey, why be surprised? This is the same woman that said -ahem- "Parishoners from all of the Valley gathered in area churches today to celebrate Easter Sunday on which Christians mark THE BIRTH of Jesus Christ." Resurrection was probably too complicated for her to say.

And finally, a few weeks ago, equally retarded John Paul was talking about an ATV accident in Monroe County, OH. MONROE COUNTY. Remember that. Segment's closing sentence: "This latest accident brings the total number of ATV deaths in Ohio County to 34."

Gaaah!

I don't wanna....

• 1. PACK: I'm too OCD to pack. For some reason, I think my junk has to be packed in a certain manner. And I like things to be even, categorized and if possible, in some sort of pattern. Yeah. I need tranquilizers.
• 2. GO BACK TO SCHOOL: The second half of summer went too fast. I feel like I just got back from camp yesterday and would rather like some time to lay around and rot. Stupid work.
• 3. LEARN STUFF: Thanks to our favorite cranky old men: Carey, Colabrese and Caritis, I didn't actually learn much last year. Chem was the only exception, of course. College isn't big on the Methane Mamba. Mythbusters is, however, it was on there the other day!...and Pringle Can Rockets and launching stuff with liquid nitrogen. I was pretty much reliving AP. Anywho, I actually have to learn stuff and -gasp- study (maybe) this year. I am not looking forward to this.
• 4. BLOW AWAY, SCALE A MOUNTAIN FOR FOOD, SLEEP 5FT OFF THE GROUND, ETC: Our campus is extremely windy, I like being able to walk 10 ft to the kitchen for food and not taking a running start to leap into bed is generally desireable.

I do, however, want to live at college...its just the school part that's most of the problem. There are no parents, dishes to put away, wailing dogs to feed or brothers to take up useless space at college. There is, however, art class. -vomits- I'm pretty sure that's why I don't want to go back.

Fourth Amendment, what Fourth Amendment?

Chelsy and I once wanted to play the "Banana Game" on the phone but substitue bomb for banana. So bomb every bomb sentence bomb would bomb sound bomb like bomb this bomb....and then see if we FBI/CIA/NSA came a-knocking.

Well today PNC Bank called me to report a "suspicious increase in account activity." That is, of course, if you count large charges at Barnes & Noble (my books for school, duh!) on a Student Plus Account...or whatever the heck it's called...suspicious. Now it's nice to know they're watching out for me and all, making sure no one steals my identity. Why anyone would steal a college student's identity, I do not know... But the fact that my PNC representative, who I'll call Raj and who's probably sitting in a nice little cubicle in Bangalore, India, is sitting there watching what I buy...and then probably telling our oh so wonderful government about it, sorta irks me. But whatever. "Raj" said Ruszkowski correctly so he can stay.

Sweet, SWEET Rewards

Today was quite possibly the most bipolar, yet best, day ever.

I woke up bright and early because I had to take 10 more pages of ads to the printer. I had to work last night but got sent home early since my dude got shipped to psych. Good thing. Those ads were waiting for me when I got home. Apparently, dropping everything off at the printer yesterday morning is meaningless... Oh well, whatever, I did those for a few hours last night and thought I was finally done. Finished. The fat lady had sung.

Incorrect.

As I was about to dry my hair, my dad knocked to inform me that he just found another two pages' worth of ads laying under his stuff downstairs, musta missed them last night. Grand. But I'm pretty sure I love whoever sent them since they had the Newbrough file number I needed, thus making it a fairly quick process. So I made those, made a new disc with the updated program and dropped everything off at the printer.

Then I went to Duane's for a while before we went to Tomlinson Run to get a boat. Well, the place was closed so we just walked on a trail. Almost got eaten by a few giant spiders and threw rocks over the hill since apparently, boys never grow out of that. :-p So that made for quite a nice afternoon.

And now for the best part... My dad just got home from the booster meeting, where they voted to give me $1,000 instead of $500. Oh yes.

I Own the Boosters' Souls

About this time last week, my dad knocked on my bedroom door, looking a touch panicked, and said he had a question for me. Kris Taflan, the woman who was supposed to be designing the program since MAY, has come to the conclusion that she can't possibly get it done in time to be at the printer by Monday morning. -Ahem- MONDAY MORNING! So, Kailey, could you please, please, please, pleeeeeeease do it for us?! And well, I can't say no to people in need...or $500 and a whole bunch of random presents from people whose asses I saved...I said yes.

My dad had a few business ads at the house already that I worked on until I got the bulk of the stuff from Kris on Tuesday after the Booster meeting. Now, the woman has had this stuff for months--MONTHS--and 99% of the businesses use exactly the same ads every year so all she's gotta do it hit the copy button and she's done, so I find a disc she's made and assume that it probably has all the ads she's already done. Oh I wish. It contained one ad...that I already did..and the rest of the stuff was in complete disorder. And so begins my program-making hell.

I spent most of Wednesday afternoon and evening with Duane, so I didn't really start until that night. I worked on it until about 2:30am. Then I spent ALL of Thursday, save a two hour Eat-N-Park break, on the damn thing. Around this time is when my dislike of Newbrough Photo progressed into a deep, seething hatred. It's always a fun time when you open the picture file that's supposed to be Jeff Quickle, a nice little freshman that lives by me, but get Vance Miller, a very large and somewhat scary looking senior. Nevermind that all the pictures pretty much suck. Gah, Brownie could take better pictures!

But now the program is all printed out. My printer is still crying, lol. And in order, so I just have to drop it off at the printer on Monday morning. And oh yes, the best part: Tony's back is hurt again and he can't play, so he just quit since it's too depressing to just stand there and watch. So while my dad is still president and all that jazz, we don't actually have a kid playing football...

Family...

My cousins from Harrisburg are here. I want to shoot myself. Frankie is a touch insane and starving for attention. Oh well. At least he finally learned how to swim so Sandcastle didn't suck...except for the really itchy sunburn on my chest now. Bleh! Then we went to Kennywood for the evening. The Swing Shot= not so thrilling. And oh yes! It was cheerleader day. Duane thought some little middle school whores' shirts said "I'm cheap," which from how they were dressed is an entirely reasonable mistake to make. They actually said "NH Cheer."

Today we had a cookout with them and did such exciting things as rip branches off our birch tree to build a bird nest hotel, throw rocks at tadpoles and try to catch the shark that lives in the pond that's now back by where the old hospital was (Tony's creation...3 kids used to live next door, 2 of them were eaten by the shark though). And then they left..WOO!

The Worst Day of Work....EVER

I was propositioned/proposed to several times by a crazy man. He also decided to start playing with himself in the room full of people. No further description of my day is necessary.


In other, much less disturbing news, I do not have mono. Hoorah! But, alas, I still can't breathe.

Adventures in Acute Care

So I had to go to the doctor today since, well, I finally decided to stop ignoring my inability to breathe....for the last six months. Oops? And since I have no plans to leave Dr. Surray and her adolescent medicine goodness until they heave me out the door on my 22nd birthday, I was tagged a "sick visit" instead of a "well visit" and sent upstairs to the Acute Care Clinic with a nice bunch of puking, ear-infected toddlers. Thats ok, minus the one girl who was wretching into a bucket, it wasn't so bad and Michael Buffo was there with the cold that never ends so yay, I wasn't the only one 3x's older than the rest of the patients, lol.

Anywho, the NP, Lisa, thinks I'm either anemic for some reason or I have a latent virus...like mono or strep...since I have big lymph nodes. And that means blood work and an EKG. Much to my surprise, however, Weirton Medical was FAST! Like it only took me about 25 minutes, which in my experience there neeeeeever happens. We'll chalk that up to who wasn't working. -cough, Jessica and lab girl who takes lots of breaks but whose name I don't know, cough- Yeah, so I still have some pent up rage from my Info Desk days.

Hopefully, the bloodwork comes back saying I'm anemic and she tells me to take a vitamin or something. Otherwise, I gotta get all sorts of fun lung tests, argh. In the meantime, I'm eating coco wheats and drinking orange juice, what lovely medical advice, lol.

Over-sized Loads and Shotguns

I had to work today. As I was driving through the boonies--curses to 22 construction!--I came upon some stopped traffic. This was no ordinary "Over-sized Load"...it was like twice the size of my house and looked something like a nuclear reactor part....and it was trying to make a 120º turn. Yeah, that took a while.

Then when I when I got to work, chaos ensued as they sent me to Neuro but no body seemed to know which patient I was supposed to get. I ended up with this kid named Chris, who's about 3 weeks older than me, but he's been shot twice and has a 4 month old. Yay for working in the ghetto! Anywho, one of those shots was to the head, so you can imagine he's in a lovely state of mind. And oh yes, when he was coming to in ICU, he ripped his breathing tube out so now his throat is extra scratched up and he can't talk at all.

Chris ended up being pretty good though. His family, however, was quite another story. His mom only came to visit after his girlfriend...or "baby mamma," if you will...called to say the hospital needed her since Chris got transfered to ABI and that requires signatures and stuff. Oh boy. She gets there and starts telling him how Melvin, apparently the dude that shot him, was in front of the house and she "was trippin'," went inside and got her shotgun and ran him off: "Ain't no *bleepity-bleep* messing wit' my boy, runnin' me outta my house!"

Oh. Then the best time for his mom to purchase/smoke some "stuff" was determined so she can come visit in an acceptable state tomorrow.

Blogathon

Too bad I didn't find out about Blogathon 2006 sooner or I probably would have tried to do it. Put my crazy-watching staying up all night skills to good use, lol. But anywho, to any random person that reads this...are there any?...you should go sponsor Nikki who is raising money for the Children's Neuroblastoma Cancer Foundation in honor of Christi and a bunch of other kids. Linkage: http://bloggingforchristi.blogspot.com/

It's a bad sign when...

A. Your day starts with a panicked call from work, saying you're desperately needed a few hours early.

B. Your walk in to find your patient tied to his chair, which he eventually learns how to scoot around the room.

C. That patient has likes to get a death grip on anything in reach...and his nails are reeeeeally long.

D. All of the above.


Now, of course, the answer is D, making for two rather crappy days at work. Monday started out with the panicked call, which woke me up. I showered, ate and finished getting ready in about twenty minutes and then drove to work really fast. Luckily for my extra few hours, I was in ABI with a kid that was about to get discharged so he was only mildly goofy. But then -tear- they sent me to 12E, which I was hoping meant overdose patient--they're usually pretty docile...or totally unconscious. But alas, I walk in to find this creature tied to his chair--SCARY looking guy, which it finally ocurred to me last night just what he reminds me of: an oviraptor. He ended up not being so bad. I'm good at avoiding the grab since Julie used to do that a lot when we were little and Sarah and I pretty much lived at each other's houses. The only thing that ended up being not so cool was that to calm him down at night, he required a nice, long ride in the wheelchair. So I put him in the chair around 7:00 and didn't stop pushing until around 9:00. About 12 laps around the floor is a mile; I'm pretty sure I walked about 5 miles. Hopefully he'll be gone tomorrow when I work again.

Q: How do you kill a zombie?

A: Play country music, of course.

One of the on-going activities at camp was movie making. Some producer guy came and helped the kids write and shoot little movies. Ty wasn't particularly interested in this but two of our boys, Kellen and Harrison, signed up. Their movie was "Camp Quality Under Attack!"...or something like that...and of course, it featured zombies attacking camp. But just when all seemed lost--camp with be doomed forever!--it dawns on them! Zombies hate country music! So the scene went something like this: Five or so little boys and their companions have zombie facepaint on and are attacking one of the lower girl cabins, walking in the arms-out, very monstrous way, when the music starts. They then collapse onto the ground, tongues sticking out b/c they're dead, of course.

There was also "Prom Date with an Alien"...the aliens mind-warped their dates with little toy speaker thingies that made fart sounds.



And now for something completely different...I went to the Italian Festival in Wheeling with Duane and his parents today. Yay for good food; boo for extremely hot weather. But then we went to his Aunt Deb's house for a random cookout. That's always a fun time, especially since my family sucks³ and we never do anything like that, and well, there's Jenna, lol. And, of course, there's spending the whole day with Duane, which is just about the best thing ever...but, I'm pretty sure no body wants to read mushy stuff so I'll just leave it at that.

Playing Mommy

As could be expected with a 4 year old, I definitely had to play mommy all week at camp. And what better time is there to play mommy than bedtime.

I'm pretty sure I only slept Wednesday night. Sunday night, I was unaware Ty wheezes in his sleep so I thought he was dying..oops...Monday night he wet the bed and was understandably upset for a while...Tuesday night he rolled outta bed and did a face plant onto the floor, ouchies!...Wednesday night=sleep!...Thursday night he had a bad dream and made me lay by him because he was "afwaid!"...and Friday night, it was hot and sticky and I was crying b/c I didn't wanna leave in the morning. :-(

But what's playing mommy without a good poop story, lol. On Monday night when we were lunar bowling, Ty yells that he's gotta go potty so I'm like ok, let's go and he goes into the guys room. Well, like ten minutes later, he's still in there so I get a guy companion to check on him. His message: Ty says to tell you he's done. Oh great, I think, I gotta go in there now. So I retrieve myself another male companion to stand guard...don't want other little boys in there while I'm in there!...and I proceed to go in and help Ty out, meanwhile the bowling alley guy is looking at me like I'm insane. Oh well.

Oh, how I love my job...

So I had to work tonight and well, never a dull moment in the hospital, but for once, the nut wasn't my patient. He was quite docile. His roommate, however, oh goodness!

I got up to the room just past 3:00 to find my patient being a good boy and not escaping while his roommate is moaning and groaning about his pain...between violent hiccups. EIGHT HOURS LATER when it was time to go home, he is STILL HICCUPPING! Now he can't just hiccup to himself, of course, that's not what pain-in-the-ass patients do. About every fifth hiccup, he yells that he has cronic hiccups, ya know, and someone should really help him. And then, due to his negative memory, he yells that he hasn't gotten any of his meds even though the nurse is in the process of leaving the room after giving him said meds. And oh yes, one more tidbit to make this guy even better, he was aiming for the little "pee jug" but missed and went aaaaaaall over the floor. Now Mr. Hiccups realizes he's peeing all over the place but does he stop?! NO! thus leaving a rather large and unpleasant puddle on the floor and his clothes all nice and wet.

And this, my friends, is why I want to work with children.

I have a scary monster face!

Touching Camp Story #1:

For the first few days of camp, Ty was REALLY shy. He pretty much didn't talk to anyone but me until Tuesday, especially if we were in a large group of people. So sometime Sunday afternoon, we're all hanging out outside of the cabin and the boys are making scary monster faces and roaring and such because, well, that's what little boys do. Skipper, the camp director, also happened to be there on his golf cart and noticed that Ty wasn't making any scary faces or anything so he got down and asked if he could show him a really scary monster face. Now is where I wish I had a picture of Skipper...let's just say he's a fairly big guy, so to your average four year old, he's probably pretty imposing. So poor Ty is probably scared out of his mind and just shakes his head no!!! really fast.

All was not lost, however, lol, because about twenty minutes later when the roaring monsters and Skipper had dispersed, Ty taps me on the leg and whispers: "I have a scawy monster face now," and then he makes some adorable little contorted face and roars. Too cute!! I felt all warm and fuzzy inside...this is totally why I LOVE children, btw...knowing that he already felt comfortable with/liked me.

-sigh- I can't wait til I can go visit him!

Yay, its my first post!

Me and Ty in our official camp photo

So I'm bored and thought "hmm, what the heck, I'll make myself one of these." after needing to register to leave a comment for Christi Thomas (http://christithomas.blogspot.com). She's nine and has neuroblastoma. I met a close family friend of her's at Camp Quality this past week...you should all go and give her some encouragement.

Anywho...so yeah, I was at camp last week.
GREATEST EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE!!!
If I haven't already cornered you and made you look at my pics and hear me ramble about what a great time I had, it works like this: Camp Quality Ohio is a camp for kids with cancer and their siblings. The kids can be in active treatment or have been in remission for years. Each camper is assigned a companion (thats what I was) that's like an insta-best friend for the week. Well, due to the lack of male staff that I'm sure every camp in the world experiences, the littlest boys get female companions, so I had a little boy. His name is Tyler and he's four....and also, quite possibly the most adorable kid I've ever seen!!! And thats not just b/c I generally think all children are adorable; everything about him was so sweet and cute! He's so full of energy that if it weren't for his scars and peach fuzz hair, you'd never know he's sick (brain tumor)...although the same applies to every other kid I met there. It takes all of five minutes to forget that they have/have had cancer and just see them as normal kids, so I've sorta stopped referring to it as "cancer camp" b/c its really not. Its normal camp...the activities are the same, if not better, as any "regular" camp...for kids who just happen to have been affected by cancer, plus nobody cared/asked why Jack and Shelley only had one leg or why -insert 75% of the kids here- has that big scar on their belly or heads, which definitely would happen at "regular camp."

Since nothing else exciting happens...save the obligatory ridiculous work story...look for more fun camp stories to come. I think I should be able to fill at least a week up with posts about that before people lose interest.