Brook Of Awareness.
I'm alive. Not doing much. Working. Enjoying my job. Getting better at it. I never thought I sucked, but I'm catching harder abnormalities and learning how to do various other cases. I primarily work on bone marrow cases. But when the challenge has arisen, I've taken other cases such as high resolution blood cases (which are like bone marrows, but the chromosomes are about 3-4x longer and have many many bands to analyze, they give me a headache), POC's (stands for Product Of Conception...miscarriages and such. I check the chromosomes to see if maybe the fetus had a genetic disorder that caused the mother to self-abort), Baby Bloods (these are newborns who have symptoms of cancer. Like regular bone marrows, but there are certain abnormalities I look harder for on these), and Amnios (when docs draw amniotic fluid from a pregnant woman, we can get some chromosomes from the fetus. Can check for things like Downs Syndrome and various other ones. These are a little taxing on the mind because if I see that the baby has Downs, sometimes the mother decides to abort. That kinda makes you feel like a bastard a bit.) And that's work. The last few days in particular have been very long, but very good for me. I've had some difficult cases, but performed well on them and got the praise from one of the docs and a couple coordinators. Here's hoping they remember this come review time. ;) OK, that's enough of tooting my own horn.
Been reading a lot. Reading and "reading." I listen to audiobooks a LOT. But I always have a real book going as well. Recent REAL books include "P.S. Your Cat Is Dead", which I thought was pretty damn good. Very easy read. And currently about half way through "The Professor And The Mad Man" about the Oxford English Dictionary. It's not bad. Not spectacularly written, but informative.
Audiobooks are all over the place. Haha. 'A Lion Among Men' (the third in the Wicked Years...I'm kinda sorta over it), 'The Graveyard Book' by Neil Gaiman (not bad), '20th Century Ghosts' by Joe Hill (loving this guy. Excellent short stories. Reminds me of Poe meets Palaniuck. And when you know who his father is, you'd expect nothing less), Volume 1 of 'the Bible, Genesis' (umm....maybe God commanded this book be written. And if he did, I'm sure that he read it and saw that it was good), 'Terrorist' by John Updike (good...I plan to read more Updike), 'Welcome To The Monkey House' by Kurt Vonnegut (I love Kurt), 'Too Fat To Fish' by Artie Lange (was surprisingly touching in parts), 'The Adventures of The Thunderbolt Kid' by Bill Bryson (very good, made me think of what it was like when my parents were growing up), 'The Three Musketeers' by Dumas (was long and tedious in parts, but overall...it was good), 'A Tale of Two Cities' by Dickens (Not to be a spoiler, but they're London and Paris! I've always been a Dickens fan), The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (good stuff. A shame he didn't write more novels.) And there were many many more. I can't recall them all at the moment.
Have been working out 3 to 4 times a week. Did this diet for two weeks. Lost 9 pounds, but then gained 2-3 back, lost it again. We'll see where I end up. I'm currently down 8 pounds from when I started a week and a half ago. I've always struggled with my weight, and it's always been a sore spot for me. I just finally got to the mindset where I had to do something because it was depressing me. Not working at the bar for a year has made me a bit more lethargic, and I don't really go out much. I go for a walk everyday at work, and probably 2 or 3 times a week, I walk to the library. But with the weather pushing a 110 degrees here, I have to stop soon. I got a bit of heatstroke the other day, and in combination with my bare bones diet and working out, I found myself puking. And when you don't have anything in your stomach, puking hurts. Enough so that I burst blood vessels in my face. I was red and splotchy from the sun and the blood vessels. But I'm 8 pounds lighter!! Haha. Woop-dee-freakin'-doo. ;) I'll be smarter in the future. I would like to lose another 10 pounds over the next couple of weeks. Baby steps. Small victories for now will keep me going. It's easier to say 10 pounds in a couple weeks than to just casually say, "I wanna lose 45 pounds." I'm hopeful, but I'm also realistic.
Been saving up my vacation time and hope to take a nice vacation soon. Will report more on that later when details are available. Been chatting with my buddy Tom a little bit here and there. I miss him from the bar. He and I went to see The Offspring a few weeks ago. I really need to reconnect with old friends from the bar. Tony and Little Tony have disappeared. Little Tony moved to Atlanta. Manager Tony is just somewhere. It's been a tad depressing since the bar has been closed. New rumor is that it will reopen the end of July. I have no official word from the owner. I've heard these tales dozens of times in the last year, and I take them all with a grain of salt. We shall see. And if it does reopen, I don't know if they will want me to work there or if they will get a whole new staff. Time will tell.
Speaking of bars, I almost forgot. I got a fancy trophy and a very gay medal for darts! :) My team placed second in the C division. Mike (tazz602), is our team captain. He rocks. This season, I saw him get another Hat Trick. Some day, I shall aspire to his greatness. Thanks for all you do, Mike. :) At least this past season, my temper wasn't so bad.
OK, is that enough? I wasn't super witty, but you fine folks know I'm alive. I hope you are all well. Smile. Laugh. Be good to one another.
Been reading a lot. Reading and "reading." I listen to audiobooks a LOT. But I always have a real book going as well. Recent REAL books include "P.S. Your Cat Is Dead", which I thought was pretty damn good. Very easy read. And currently about half way through "The Professor And The Mad Man" about the Oxford English Dictionary. It's not bad. Not spectacularly written, but informative.
Audiobooks are all over the place. Haha. 'A Lion Among Men' (the third in the Wicked Years...I'm kinda sorta over it), 'The Graveyard Book' by Neil Gaiman (not bad), '20th Century Ghosts' by Joe Hill (loving this guy. Excellent short stories. Reminds me of Poe meets Palaniuck. And when you know who his father is, you'd expect nothing less), Volume 1 of 'the Bible, Genesis' (umm....maybe God commanded this book be written. And if he did, I'm sure that he read it and saw that it was good), 'Terrorist' by John Updike (good...I plan to read more Updike), 'Welcome To The Monkey House' by Kurt Vonnegut (I love Kurt), 'Too Fat To Fish' by Artie Lange (was surprisingly touching in parts), 'The Adventures of The Thunderbolt Kid' by Bill Bryson (very good, made me think of what it was like when my parents were growing up), 'The Three Musketeers' by Dumas (was long and tedious in parts, but overall...it was good), 'A Tale of Two Cities' by Dickens (Not to be a spoiler, but they're London and Paris! I've always been a Dickens fan), The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (good stuff. A shame he didn't write more novels.) And there were many many more. I can't recall them all at the moment.
Have been working out 3 to 4 times a week. Did this diet for two weeks. Lost 9 pounds, but then gained 2-3 back, lost it again. We'll see where I end up. I'm currently down 8 pounds from when I started a week and a half ago. I've always struggled with my weight, and it's always been a sore spot for me. I just finally got to the mindset where I had to do something because it was depressing me. Not working at the bar for a year has made me a bit more lethargic, and I don't really go out much. I go for a walk everyday at work, and probably 2 or 3 times a week, I walk to the library. But with the weather pushing a 110 degrees here, I have to stop soon. I got a bit of heatstroke the other day, and in combination with my bare bones diet and working out, I found myself puking. And when you don't have anything in your stomach, puking hurts. Enough so that I burst blood vessels in my face. I was red and splotchy from the sun and the blood vessels. But I'm 8 pounds lighter!! Haha. Woop-dee-freakin'-doo. ;) I'll be smarter in the future. I would like to lose another 10 pounds over the next couple of weeks. Baby steps. Small victories for now will keep me going. It's easier to say 10 pounds in a couple weeks than to just casually say, "I wanna lose 45 pounds." I'm hopeful, but I'm also realistic.
Been saving up my vacation time and hope to take a nice vacation soon. Will report more on that later when details are available. Been chatting with my buddy Tom a little bit here and there. I miss him from the bar. He and I went to see The Offspring a few weeks ago. I really need to reconnect with old friends from the bar. Tony and Little Tony have disappeared. Little Tony moved to Atlanta. Manager Tony is just somewhere. It's been a tad depressing since the bar has been closed. New rumor is that it will reopen the end of July. I have no official word from the owner. I've heard these tales dozens of times in the last year, and I take them all with a grain of salt. We shall see. And if it does reopen, I don't know if they will want me to work there or if they will get a whole new staff. Time will tell.
Speaking of bars, I almost forgot. I got a fancy trophy and a very gay medal for darts! :) My team placed second in the C division. Mike (tazz602), is our team captain. He rocks. This season, I saw him get another Hat Trick. Some day, I shall aspire to his greatness. Thanks for all you do, Mike. :) At least this past season, my temper wasn't so bad.
OK, is that enough? I wasn't super witty, but you fine folks know I'm alive. I hope you are all well. Smile. Laugh. Be good to one another.