Hey, at least it's not Monday!
Yesterday was just annoying. A long string of annoying things. Definitely a Monday.
First, my car's check engine light flashed on when I started it and it was running really rough. So, figuring that the car is all run by a computer, I turned it off and started it again. Everything was just fine after the "reboot". Fired on all 4 cylinders and no light flashing. It's run like a top since. Perhaps one spark plug didn't wake up with the rest of them. I'll keep and eye on it though.
All sorts of people wanted me to be driving >15 mph to work and chose to drive about 6 feet off my back bumper. Of course, what this really makes me want to do is slow down a bit and drive even closer to the speed limit.
Right as I got to work, I realized I left the chocolate chip cookies at home. *DOH!*
Discovered that the wrong account number on the bottom of the checks I ordered is actually correct. It's a randomly assigned dummy number. Would have been nice if they'd told me what that number was for when I opened the account and/or when I asked about ordering checks. I'm curious what would have happened if I'd ordered checks from an outside vendor and had my real account number put on them.
Paid bills, not my favorite activity. Now that I'm getting "real" paychecks, I'm trying to get a handle on my budget. It looks like ends will meet with even some overlap! That hasn't happened in a long time. I'm thinking about paying off my motorcycle to save myself some interest and cut a payment out of my budget.
Spent the first half of the day fighting with data and getting it imported into SAS. Finally got that done about lunch time. Gotta love running SAS code repeatedly and changing things incrementally. FOR FOUR HOURS! I like programming, but there's a limit to my patience.
At lunch, I ate the lunch I brought (roasted pepper, onion and cheese samiches with a pear and some yogurt), then went for a walk around the parking lot. I've been trying to get 20-30 minutes of walking in at lunchtime. There was a Hispanic man sitting in his car in the parking lot, presumably on his lunch break from the hospital construction site. Toward the end of my walk, one of my co-workers, worried about my safety, came out to tell me that she'd walk with me if I wasn't ready to come in, since this guy was sitting in the parking lot. Grrrrrr. I was mostly ready to go in, but not quite and I really hated going in because someone else decided it wasn't "safe". I couldn't come up with a good way to explain to her that I not only took, but also teach a number of self-defense courses and had, in fact, been skirting the occupied car at a distance my entire walk. Not to mention that this guy is unlikely to be a criminal, since he's gainfully employed at the construction site across the street and probably makes as much money as I do.
The perception here seems to be that women must/should rely on men to save them. Well, that's not going to work well for me, being a single girl. Now, I do have to admit that there was a strong-arm robbery at the eye clinic next to my office building last week in which an older woman was knocked to the ground at the front door and had her purse stolen about 10am, IIRC. I wish there were RAD instructors here besides me cuz my co-workers desperately need to take the class. The woman who came out to check on me (which I appreciated, don't get me wrong) said that although she "couldn't do much to save herself or anybody else, she could yell". You don't know how much I want to prove her wrong and have her see what she *can* do.
Spent the afternoon compiling data files and trying to get my SAS code to run. No luck. Finally figured out that all the data needs to be in a single file. That's gonna be a honking big file with six hospitals of daily ER visit data. Since March. I spent a whole day banging away at the computer and didn't get anywhere.
In an end of day brain fart, I managed to e-mail exactly the wrong information sheet to a client. Not a big deal, but I left work feeling fairly stupid and dissatisfied with my day. I *hate* that.
Started cooking dinner and managed to mess up the recipe. Didn't have my brain focused, so didn't end up with nice enchiladas. Ended up with gloppy refried beans. Still really yummy, but not enchiladas and too liquid to make into burritos. So I had a bowl of beans with cornbread for dinner. Still tasted good, but not what I was aiming for.
I also discovered that I've been air conditioning the neighborhood. I left a window open in one of the spare rooms. Probably for two days.
Well, at least I didn't spill anything on myself, trash my hard drive or stub my toe. (Small consolation at the time.) But today was much better.
Super Tuesday:
Called the John Deere dealer to ask about a filter wrench. The parts guy said the filter is only supposed to be hand tightened. I said "Yep, but the hand that tightened it at the factory is much bigger and stronger than mine and I can't get it off." He laughed and said any old filter wrench at an auto parts store would work and be less expensive than anything JD sold. On either Friday or Saturday I'll stop off at Auto Zone or some similar place and grab a wrench.
I still brought my lunch to work (Kashi Black Bean and Mango frozen dinner). And I walked for about 30 minutes at lunch, for 6 or 7 laps. No interruptions.
Got a phone call asking about the WNV cases I worked on in the past two weeks. She was checking up on whether or not CSF samples were being sent to the state lab (they are). The voice mail she left me says I'm doing an excellent job and to keep it up. That felt really good. I made major points with her on Friday when I tracked down a non-reportable tularemia case from last year. I needed a break from the stats programming, so jumped on the chance to dig it out of the files.
Rant and Rave:
If you're going to hate yourself and/or God, do NOT decide to do something about it by shooting school kids, then killing yourself. Either deal with it or shoot yourself. Leave the rest of the world out of it. Obviously this is not a good week to be a school GIRL. At least the governor of PA has stated that all the gun laws in the world will NOT stop someone who is bent on commiting a gun crime. Hooray for common sense! One Mennonite woman who was interviewed this morning said that this proved the Amish were right to withdraw from the world. Of course, one thing she forgot is that just because you withdraw from the world doesn't mean it won't come after you.
EMS/Public Health Rant: A retired Congresswoman died today on a rural Nevada highway in a car accident. She was thrown from the vehicle while holding her 5 month old grandson. Fortunately the kid survived and wasn't hurt. Grandma wasn't wearing her seatbelt and got ejected good and far from the car when it wrecked. It amazes me the number of folks who don't wear seatbelts all the time. I have very little sympathy for people who are ejected from cars and I've treated half a dozen folks who got themselves killed being ejected. It's frustrating because it's so completely and utterly preventable. If you are ejected from a motor vehicle in an accident, the odds of death go up dramatically. That's why the seatbelts are mandatory equipment in a vehicle and why there are laws about wearing them!!! I don't care how short the trip is or how slow you're going. You wear a seatbelt in a car whenever it's moving. It's not to protect me from my own good or bad driving. It's to protect me from the bad driving of all the other drivers on the road.
Knitting News:
I am definitely going to apply for the job of Guide at knitting.about.com. I'd have to write an informational article once every two weeks and update a blog a couple times a week. I'd also be encouraged to write original patterns to be posted on the site. The idea is to be an educational, informative resource specifically for newer knitters. I think it would be fun. I've got the writing sample about half written. I should finish that tomorrow and send it in.
Personal Fitness:
I'm at least waking up at the appropriate time in the morning, even if I'm not actually working out yet. Part of the problem is motivation to get out of bed, especially when it's cool. Part of it is my right knee being unhappy with me. I apparently twisted it up pretty bad last week when trekking around catching mosquitoes. It's swollen, but not sore. Range of motion is reduced. I can't kneel on it or bend it completely. Of course it's the same knee that I damaged running hurdles in high school. I'm hoping I don't need more surgery. I'm making a point of taking my chondroitin regularly. I don't think it will fix this problem, but it can't hurt. (In other anatomical news, my right thumb seems to be working better now and my elbow has recovered from having to fight with the oil filter.)
I have decided that I will walk for 20-30 minutes a day at lunch time. I may make a point of walking for my morning and/or afternoon breaks too. Today was a bit hot out to really walk fast, but I got in six laps and it felt good. I don't know that I'm losing any weight or gaining any muscle (or toning up existing muscle), but I feel better on days when I get *out* of my chair and walk a bit. It gets the blood pumping, my energy level goes up and I might even think more clearly. I know my attitude is better.
On the eating front, I've been cooking dinner at night. I'm working my way through several of my vegetarian cookbooks. Usually what happens is that I cook for the next day. Tonight I cooked "Spanish Millet", a variation on Spanish rice but using millet as the grain and I'll have that for lunch tomorrow with a tossed salad. I like the crunchy, nutty taste of millet and I happened to have some in the pantry. I've also got some quinoa to use up, but first I want to cook up more of the greens I bought last weekend. I really liked the greens with mashed potatoes. As a back up plan, I've got some frozen dinners and still have Morningstar Farms Chik Patties too.
Elsewhere...I think I have another small bit of poison ivy on my left forearm. I think I got myself contaminated while removing leaves/grass from the de-thatcher last weekend. I tried to be careful and washed with the poison ivy soap when I got inside, but there's a silver dollar sized spot that's all lumpy, bumpy and ITCHY! And just when the last of the lesions from the first episode were just fading away. Dang it!
First, my car's check engine light flashed on when I started it and it was running really rough. So, figuring that the car is all run by a computer, I turned it off and started it again. Everything was just fine after the "reboot". Fired on all 4 cylinders and no light flashing. It's run like a top since. Perhaps one spark plug didn't wake up with the rest of them. I'll keep and eye on it though.
All sorts of people wanted me to be driving >15 mph to work and chose to drive about 6 feet off my back bumper. Of course, what this really makes me want to do is slow down a bit and drive even closer to the speed limit.
Right as I got to work, I realized I left the chocolate chip cookies at home. *DOH!*
Discovered that the wrong account number on the bottom of the checks I ordered is actually correct. It's a randomly assigned dummy number. Would have been nice if they'd told me what that number was for when I opened the account and/or when I asked about ordering checks. I'm curious what would have happened if I'd ordered checks from an outside vendor and had my real account number put on them.
Paid bills, not my favorite activity. Now that I'm getting "real" paychecks, I'm trying to get a handle on my budget. It looks like ends will meet with even some overlap! That hasn't happened in a long time. I'm thinking about paying off my motorcycle to save myself some interest and cut a payment out of my budget.
Spent the first half of the day fighting with data and getting it imported into SAS. Finally got that done about lunch time. Gotta love running SAS code repeatedly and changing things incrementally. FOR FOUR HOURS! I like programming, but there's a limit to my patience.
At lunch, I ate the lunch I brought (roasted pepper, onion and cheese samiches with a pear and some yogurt), then went for a walk around the parking lot. I've been trying to get 20-30 minutes of walking in at lunchtime. There was a Hispanic man sitting in his car in the parking lot, presumably on his lunch break from the hospital construction site. Toward the end of my walk, one of my co-workers, worried about my safety, came out to tell me that she'd walk with me if I wasn't ready to come in, since this guy was sitting in the parking lot. Grrrrrr. I was mostly ready to go in, but not quite and I really hated going in because someone else decided it wasn't "safe". I couldn't come up with a good way to explain to her that I not only took, but also teach a number of self-defense courses and had, in fact, been skirting the occupied car at a distance my entire walk. Not to mention that this guy is unlikely to be a criminal, since he's gainfully employed at the construction site across the street and probably makes as much money as I do.
The perception here seems to be that women must/should rely on men to save them. Well, that's not going to work well for me, being a single girl. Now, I do have to admit that there was a strong-arm robbery at the eye clinic next to my office building last week in which an older woman was knocked to the ground at the front door and had her purse stolen about 10am, IIRC. I wish there were RAD instructors here besides me cuz my co-workers desperately need to take the class. The woman who came out to check on me (which I appreciated, don't get me wrong) said that although she "couldn't do much to save herself or anybody else, she could yell". You don't know how much I want to prove her wrong and have her see what she *can* do.
Spent the afternoon compiling data files and trying to get my SAS code to run. No luck. Finally figured out that all the data needs to be in a single file. That's gonna be a honking big file with six hospitals of daily ER visit data. Since March. I spent a whole day banging away at the computer and didn't get anywhere.
In an end of day brain fart, I managed to e-mail exactly the wrong information sheet to a client.
Started cooking dinner and managed to mess up the recipe. Didn't have my brain focused, so didn't end up with nice enchiladas. Ended up with gloppy refried beans. Still really yummy, but not enchiladas and too liquid to make into burritos. So I had a bowl of beans with cornbread for dinner. Still tasted good, but not what I was aiming for.
I also discovered that I've been air conditioning the neighborhood. I left a window open in one of the spare rooms. Probably for two days.
Well, at least I didn't spill anything on myself, trash my hard drive or stub my toe. (Small consolation at the time.) But today was much better.
Super Tuesday:
Called the John Deere dealer to ask about a filter wrench. The parts guy said the filter is only supposed to be hand tightened. I said "Yep, but the hand that tightened it at the factory is much bigger and stronger than mine and I can't get it off." He laughed and said any old filter wrench at an auto parts store would work and be less expensive than anything JD sold. On either Friday or Saturday I'll stop off at Auto Zone or some similar place and grab a wrench.
I still brought my lunch to work (Kashi Black Bean and Mango frozen dinner). And I walked for about 30 minutes at lunch, for 6 or 7 laps. No interruptions.
Got a phone call asking about the WNV cases I worked on in the past two weeks. She was checking up on whether or not CSF samples were being sent to the state lab (they are). The voice mail she left me says I'm doing an excellent job and to keep it up. That felt really good. I made major points with her on Friday when I tracked down a non-reportable tularemia case from last year. I needed a break from the stats programming, so jumped on the chance to dig it out of the files.
Rant and Rave:
If you're going to hate yourself and/or God, do NOT decide to do something about it by shooting school kids, then killing yourself. Either deal with it or shoot yourself. Leave the rest of the world out of it. Obviously this is not a good week to be a school GIRL. At least the governor of PA has stated that all the gun laws in the world will NOT stop someone who is bent on commiting a gun crime. Hooray for common sense! One Mennonite woman who was interviewed this morning said that this proved the Amish were right to withdraw from the world. Of course, one thing she forgot is that just because you withdraw from the world doesn't mean it won't come after you.
EMS/Public Health Rant: A retired Congresswoman died today on a rural Nevada highway in a car accident. She was thrown from the vehicle while holding her 5 month old grandson. Fortunately the kid survived and wasn't hurt. Grandma wasn't wearing her seatbelt and got ejected good and far from the car when it wrecked. It amazes me the number of folks who don't wear seatbelts all the time. I have very little sympathy for people who are ejected from cars and I've treated half a dozen folks who got themselves killed being ejected. It's frustrating because it's so completely and utterly preventable. If you are ejected from a motor vehicle in an accident, the odds of death go up dramatically. That's why the seatbelts are mandatory equipment in a vehicle and why there are laws about wearing them!!! I don't care how short the trip is or how slow you're going. You wear a seatbelt in a car whenever it's moving. It's not to protect me from my own good or bad driving. It's to protect me from the bad driving of all the other drivers on the road.
Knitting News:
I am definitely going to apply for the job of Guide at knitting.about.com. I'd have to write an informational article once every two weeks and update a blog a couple times a week. I'd also be encouraged to write original patterns to be posted on the site. The idea is to be an educational, informative resource specifically for newer knitters. I think it would be fun. I've got the writing sample about half written. I should finish that tomorrow and send it in.
Personal Fitness:
I'm at least waking up at the appropriate time in the morning, even if I'm not actually working out yet. Part of the problem is motivation to get out of bed, especially when it's cool. Part of it is my right knee being unhappy with me. I apparently twisted it up pretty bad last week when trekking around catching mosquitoes. It's swollen, but not sore. Range of motion is reduced. I can't kneel on it or bend it completely. Of course it's the same knee that I damaged running hurdles in high school. I'm hoping I don't need more surgery. I'm making a point of taking my chondroitin regularly. I don't think it will fix this problem, but it can't hurt. (In other anatomical news, my right thumb seems to be working better now and my elbow has recovered from having to fight with the oil filter.)
I have decided that I will walk for 20-30 minutes a day at lunch time. I may make a point of walking for my morning and/or afternoon breaks too. Today was a bit hot out to really walk fast, but I got in six laps and it felt good. I don't know that I'm losing any weight or gaining any muscle (or toning up existing muscle), but I feel better on days when I get *out* of my chair and walk a bit. It gets the blood pumping, my energy level goes up and I might even think more clearly. I know my attitude is better.
On the eating front, I've been cooking dinner at night. I'm working my way through several of my vegetarian cookbooks. Usually what happens is that I cook for the next day. Tonight I cooked "Spanish Millet", a variation on Spanish rice but using millet as the grain and I'll have that for lunch tomorrow with a tossed salad. I like the crunchy, nutty taste of millet and I happened to have some in the pantry. I've also got some quinoa to use up, but first I want to cook up more of the greens I bought last weekend. I really liked the greens with mashed potatoes. As a back up plan, I've got some frozen dinners and still have Morningstar Farms Chik Patties too.
Elsewhere...I think I have another small bit of poison ivy on my left forearm. I think I got myself contaminated while removing leaves/grass from the de-thatcher last weekend. I tried to be careful and washed with the poison ivy soap when I got inside, but there's a silver dollar sized spot that's all lumpy, bumpy and ITCHY! And just when the last of the lesions from the first episode were just fading away. Dang it!
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