I got into grad school!!!! Yippee! As of this January I will officially be a Master’s student. I am participating in the distance learning program at Kansas State University, which allows me to take classes online and potentially complete a thesis at the job I have now. I will be pursuing a Master’s degree in Food Science (KSU is #1 in the country for this subject). I am very excited! And as I say to Ryan… “Soon you will call me master (said in a creepy Darth Vader voice).”
Of course his reply is “very good, my young apprentice (said in a creepy Emperor voice).”
October 17th, 2006
Hey! It has been a while since I posted. Just when you think you have all the time in the world, life hits you with busy! Anyways, Ryan and I went to Minnesota last weekend. He had a business meeting at the Mayo Clinic and it was my mom’s birthday! I had a ton of fun and spent three days hanging out with one of my best friends…my grandma!!!! She’s the coolest! We took fun to a whole new level!
We left on Sunday afternoon to head back to the great Land of Lincoln. So, we’re going along and I say, “hey Ryan, it looks like we will be needing some gas, we’d better stop before it gets too low.” He just shrugs and says that we are fine for now. (PS look for his rebuttal to this story in the comments section since he will slant it in the direction away from it being his fault) So, a while later I say, “really honey, I’m getting a little worried, lets please stop for gas.” He agreed and we pulled off at the next exit. At the end of the ramp it said that there was a gas station to the left and the right even though none were visible. We took off to the right and 4 miles later we found the BP and it was closed with no pay at the pump. As we are driving back the gas light came on which meant we were really getting low. So we went back to the freeway and tried to find the other gas station which had also closed with no pay at the pump. I was really getting nervous now. Finally we to got back on the freeway and tried to find a different exit. Six miles down the freeway there was another exit, but no gas. I’m beginning to freak out. The next exit was another 6 miles away. Yes, we made it and that exit had gas, but the idea of walking in the cold down a dark freeway at 10:30pm for potentially 3-4 miles scared me. When we filled up with gas, we put in 14.5 gallons into my 15 gallon tank. Now, having that little gas in the city is not that tragic since it is only a few miles in any direction to get gas, but on the freeway where there are gaps of 15-20 miles (and construction zones) it can be a big deal!!! So that was our little adventure. We are very glad that it was not the big adventure it could have been.
October 17th, 2006
Hey! I was flipping channels last night when I start watching this show called Mystery Diagnosis on the Discovery Health Channel. It had an interesting premise since they give you all the symptoms and you kind of had to guess what might be the cause. These teenagers started having terrible cramping, fever, vomiting and diarrhea. It got so bad that some had to go to the hospital after a few days. What followed was nothing less than malpractice. Yes, I understand that this was a small town hospital but the doctors came off as completely retarded. So when one of the girls came in they thought it was appendicitis, a plausible expanation. So without doing further tests they rushed her into surgery and during which they found that her appendix was completely fine (but they took it out anyway) they also found that one of her ovaries was enlarged and took a biopsy. The biopsy was normal and thinking they may have solved some problem, sent her home. Later she returned to the hospital worse than ever. The doctors were baffled and wanted to do exploratory surgery. As they were prepping her, one little test result came back, one they had not even considered. It was found she had Salmonella along with a bunch of other people in the midwest. In the show they said “It was found to be Salmonella, characterized by high fever, severe cramping, diarrhea and vomiting.” (Note the word CHARACTERIZED) Ahhhhhh! Stupid doctors! Food poisoning should have been one of the first things they checked for. When they were telling the symptoms I was yelling at the screen and debating whether it was Salmonella or E.coli. Seriously, exploratory surgery? Put the girl on antibiotics!
Anyways, this huge outbreak was caused by ice cream sold by Schwanns. Turns out that it was not Schwanns that was at fault, but the company they hired to ship their preprocessed icecream in liquid trucks. Yup this truck company had also signed a contract to carry unpasteurized eggs and did not clean the truck before carrying the ice cream. So Schwanns took the hit in business and it was not well publicized that it was not their fault.
I must note that it was the dedicated team of epidemiologists and microbiologists at the Minnesota Public Health Department that figured out immediately when they received a sample that it was Salmonella and within a few days figured out the source. Very impressive considering they had to talk to each victim and correlate what they had in common, then pinpoint the contamination point in the production of the ice cream.
In conclusion, if you have these symptoms and its not appendicitis, have them check for good old food poisoning.
October 10th, 2006
Hey all! It has been a while since my last post. To keep you updated, Ryan and I met up with his parents and sister on Friday night in South Bend, Indiana. For those of you who don’t know, Kendra is a senior at Notre Dame and got us all tickets to the football game on Saturday against Stanford. It was fun to see them again. Notre Dame gets crazy (in a good way) before and during a football game. There is a parade through campus and everyone is in Notre Dame gear. Two guys were very drunk and in speedos (that weren’t pulled up to where they should have been, revealing more than anyone wanted to see). It was very hot and sunny during the game but there was a little breeze which kept us mostly comfortable. Notre Dame creamed Stanford! All in all it was a very fun weekend! Thats all for now!
October 10th, 2006
1. Visit every continent (yes, especially Antartica).
2. Milk a cow.
3. Ride in a hot air balloon.
4. Go on a helicopter tour.
5. See the northern lights from northern Alaska.
6. Be in a place at the time the sun never sets and at the time the sun never rises.
7. Go on vacation to Bora Bora and get a hotel that has over water bungalows.
8. Skinny dip. Or do something else that is mildly illegal but I probably wouldn’t get arrested for.
9. Write a book. I don’t care what about, but just get a book published.
10. Get in the Guiness Book of World Records (maybe for saying the word Puma the most in one’s lifetime?)
- I reserve the right to change and alter these at any time considering I just wrote them in ten minutes and how could I possibly know the top ten things in 10 minutes? But milking a cow, I for shizzle want to milk a cow. How cool would that be?
October 4th, 2006
So, I don’t know about most people, but I have a lot of fun at work! Not only do I enjoy what I do, but I find other ways to amuse myself. For instance, I love pranks and I love scaring people. One of my best scares was my supervisor. I told him in the morning that sometime that day I was going to hide under his desk and jump out. He chuckled and said “go ahead,” not believing that he would be caught off guard since I had warned him. So about an hour later I had the perfect opportunity when I heard him coming down the hall. I dove under his desk and scrunched myself up so I wasn’t visible. He walks into the room and into his cube and I jumped out and screamed. His eyes got so big, his whole body flinched, he turned white and got goosebumps. It was soooooo funny! It took him a little while to recover and I asked him why he was scared considering I had warned him. He said he did not expect it at that moment. Another time one of my coworkers, Phoebe, was eating a sandwich in her cube when I snuck up behind her and got my face within an inch of hers. She did not know I was there until she turned her head slighlty to the right and saw me face to face with her within an inch. She had sandwich in her more so she made a muffled scream and jumped. Again, hillarious! Elena I got by sneaking into her cube and crouching behind her chair where she was sitting. The chair has a high back so she could not see me. Ever so slowly I started moving her chair backwards millimeter by millimeter. She kept shifting and even looked around but could not pin point what exactly was happening. Then finally she turned full around and saw me. Classic! I also like to go into Elena’s cube and rearrage everything on her desk also one day I stuck a bar of soap in her purse before she went home and she discovered it later. Hoshin, my other supervisor was diligently working at his computer and completely immersed in what he was doing. I climbed up on the desk of the cubicle next to his and peered over the divider. He took no notice so I picked up his lamp that was close to his computer, lifted it off the desk about 2 inches and let it drop back down. He jumped for it because he thought it was falling and the noise it made was quite loud. He then spent the better part of 5 minutes chasing me around the lab with a squirt bottle of ethanol. One of our undergraduates, Jae, is kind of jumpy and him and I like to try to scare one another. This one day Jae was in one of our rooms putting stuff in the drying oven, the lights were off (there was a window) because he was only going to be in there a minute. I snuck into the room and scurried over to where he was. I had timed it so that his head was in the oven at the time and did not see me move. Then I struck a pose with my mouth open in a terrifying position and my hands up by my head like claws. I didn’t say a word but was perfectly silent until he got up and glanced over in my direction. Oh, he jumped and got all white. So funny! That silent scare I learned from my dad, he is the master! OK, just one more story (even though I have a ton more). One day after a meeting I came to my cube and somebody had crammed about six office chairs in it. I thought it must have been Hoshin because we play tricks like that on one another all the time. So I went to his cube and put 8 office chairs it, an empty aquarium, and everything else I could find. It was impossible to get in. I also put about 500 stickers that said caution all over his cube. When he got back he chased me around and then asked why I had done it. I told him that he put chairs in my cube so his cube was fair game. He then said he didn’t and my other supervisor, Ikro, said that he had put chairs in my cube, not Hoshin. When asked why he said because I had put a ton of chairs in his cube. When I replied that I had not done this, Hoshin admitted that he had. Hahahaha what goes around comes around! Puma out!
October 3rd, 2006
Some people are beyond stupid, you might even call them “galactically stupid” (that one was for you mom, she loves that term). So here I was just driving along when I see this guy ahead who is walking towards the road. I am in the right lane and he is coming at the street from the right. So I think that he is going to stop at the curb and wait till my car goes by before crossing the road but noooooooo. This retard decides to play chicken with my car and walk right into my lane just seconds before I was there. I had to slam on my brakes and swerve hard to the left. If a car had been in the left lane I surely would have hit it. Then this jerk gives me a big smile. In your head you wish you hit him because he definitely deserved it but a lawsuit would not be cool. This guy has a death wish as he should have because in nature its survival of the fittest (I would have happily gone Darwinian on his ass). I mean, this guy wasn’t sick, old, mentally ill, homeless, etc. No, he was wearing normal hip, mordern gangsta clothes and looked fit and healthy. So, in conclusion, some people are stupid, not as big of a shocker as tongue cramps.
October 1st, 2006
So I lost my voice on Thursday and recently gained a cough to go with it. Today after church we were standing in the lobby talking when I had a coughing fit and went outside. Well, I guess I coughed so hard that my tongue cramped. Yes, you heard right. I was not aware this could happen but apparently it does. I got done coughing and then it felt like someone was trying to rip my tongue out at the base. It was excruciating to talk, swallow or move my tongue in any way. It took about ten minutes to return to normal. Crazy!!!! So you learn something new every day. Today is that a tongue is able to cramp. Puma!
October 1st, 2006
I know anyone who has a dog will understand this post. I have come to realize that there are two types of people, those who are dog lovers and those who do not understand dog lovers. Who can understand some of the oddities of dog lovers such as sharing food, bed and time with these fuzzy critters. Many people see a very clear distinction between dog and man (as is pretty obvious) but somehow, someway this distinction is blurred when these cute, loyal canines find their way into your life. When the whole world seems to be crumbling around you and you are having the worst day of your life, these small (or large) creatures come to you and comfort you as if they knew exactly what was wrong. They do not blame, they do not care who was right and who was wrong, they just want you to be happy. Dogs have personalities and quirks just like humans. Each one is unique. These traits endear them to their owners and instantly they become a member of the family. As such, their loss is equal to the loss of a best friend. But not just a best friend, someone who has been living with you, in your home, who you shared endless hours playing, eating, drinking and sleeping with. Most times these humble companions do not have funerals, since “who gives a funeral for a dog.” Though there is no wake and no funeral, those who were closest to this friend go through all the stages of grieving as they would any major loss. Dogs are truely man’s best friend. If you do not understand dog lovers and hear that someone you know and love has lost a pet (of any type) please set aside your confusion and offer condolences. Shari, Dave, Mark and Paul, I am so sorry and you are in my thoughts and prayers. I love you guys!
This post is dedicated to a beautiful little dog named Bear who’s life was cut short unexpectedly.
And to Candy, Scruffy, Spencer, Minnie and any other beloved lost pet.
September 30th, 2006
So this is the second time since we moved to Champaign that a cat has selected our house (out of the 50 or so other identical looking townhouses) to beg and meow. The first time was I think last fall or spring when a huge, orange, fluffy, declawed, well-groomed cat appeared on our doorstep one evening and refused to leave. It certainly thought that this was its home. It whined and carried on all night and even jumped onto the ledge of the window in the kitchen to look in. This was particularly funny since Ryan and I were both peering out through the miniblinds to look for the cat and it was staring us in the face and immediately began meowing very loudly. It finally left and hopefully, found its home. This afternoon a black cat with bugs on it and a creepy infected eye took refuge under our bush next to our front walk and everytime we go outside it meows and tries to get in the house. Now, we did give it water but no food since Ryan says the it will think this is its home. The sad thing is that the orange cat looked like it escaped from a home where it was well loved but this cat looks like a stray. We would love to help it and take it in but Ryan is allergic, it has bugs, we can’t have a cat here (without paying an extra $50 per month) and if we call Animal Services they will put it to sleep. Ryan just went out to go jogging and is attempting to lure the cat away from the house and then take off jogging. I know it sounds cruel but we really don’t know what to do. Here comes the part where I tie in my title to this rant. So, normal people have no problem saying “shoo” or clapping and running at the cat to make it go away. Is it part of “Minnesota Nice” that we are forced to care so much and pet this cat (even though Ryan got bugs on himself, twice and had to take a shower twice and put all of his clothes into plastic bags)? “Minnesota Nice” forces us to talk to people (even crazy people on the street) if they speak to us and make conversation because we feel we can’t be rude. Does this apply even to animals? Now it doesn’t apply to bugs, this I am sure of….I hate bugs!
PS I just thought I should point out (since Ryan mentioned it) that I am NOT mispelling amuzing but since I did not include it in my common references in the first entry I will clarify now. Amuzing = amusing + amazing (For me, I am usually amused by the amazing) This is one of my words….not a spelling mistake. Ta ta for now!
September 27th, 2006
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