Parts That Define The Edges Of Things

You know. Borders.

I went to Borders today for the first time in exactly six weeks. The one closest to my apartment is no ordinary Borders - it's like the super-deluxe, fancy version. I was a little disappointed the first time I saw it because I was hoping it would be just like my beloved Borders in Augusta and it turned out to be this two-story, sandwiched-between-Macy's-and-The Cheesecake-Factory, palm-tree-landscaped, upscale Borders. Maybe that's why it took me over a month to go.

Anyway, so I went in, had a shufti to see where things were located, and climbed their uppity (ha...ha...) curving staircase to the cafe. Five minutes later, I took stock:
Refreshing iced chai? Check.
Comfy leather chair? Check.
Oversized medical textbook? Check.
Witty, comic-book-reading, ipod/portable-cd-player-swapping, flip-flop-and-funky-glasses-wearing, guitar-and-drums-playing, music-and-entertainment-loving, Borders-addiction-initiating friend? Absent.

Moving 2000 miles away from all your friends is no picnic. Unless we're talking about a picnic where you get rained on and attacked by ants and later get food poisoning because your poultry wasn't properly refrigerated.

Anyway, long story short, while sitting there studying for my CMI exam, I ended up meeting and talking with a guy who, turns out, works at the same place I do, moved to Phoenix and started work the same week I did, and lives in the same area I do. Plus, his girlfriend is originally from Boston and he gave me some tips on places to go and things to see while I'm there this week. Small world.

Then I went to Target and found an awesome pair of shoes that cost me a very reasonable amount of cheddar.

Love.

When CD's Make You Think

I went a little nutso the other day (you know, more so than usual...) and ordered 5 cd's off of Amazon. A couple were ones I've wanted to get for awhile:
Counting Crows - August and Everything After
Muse - Black Holes and Revelations Limited Edition CD/DVD

and the other three are ones I've stumbled onto over the past few weeks of spending copious amounts of time by myself:
Athlete - Tourist
Rachael Yamagata - Happenstance
Ray LaMontagne - Trouble

Inside the front cover of the Ray LaMontagne album, there's this translated quote from The Last Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kaztantzakis that really struck me when I read it. So I'll share.

"And you, liar, teller of tall
tales: you trample all the Lord's commandments
underfoot, you murder, steal,
commit adultery, and afterward break
into tears, beat your breast,
take down your guitar and
turn the sin into
a song. Shrewd devil, you know
very well that God pardons singers no
matter what they do,
because he can simply
die for a song..."

I read that and said "...wow." Anyway, this guy has a great...I don't know what to call it...I guess "earthy" voice and sound and his lyrics are amazing. And Sarah Watkins from Nickel Creek plays fiddle and sings on a couple of his songs. Great cd.

Missing you guys.

Weird Arizona Mystery #1

What's up with the creepy cactus sprouts?

The first of what I am sure will be several installments in the "Weird Arizona Mystery" category.

The first weekend after I moved to Phoenix, my mom, sister and I went to Ikea. Towards the end of our mammoth trek, we discovered these tiny cacti (cactuses?) for sale. I thought it would be cute and humorously kitschy to have a little pot of cacti in my apartment now that I live in Arizona, so my sister and I bought an assortment of the teensy succulents. Not ten minutes later, I had 20 or 30 teensy needle-like spines stuck in the fingers of my right hand; a bad omen if ever I saw one.

Wikipedia claims that the prickly pear (or Opuntia ficus-indica) is "armed with two kinds of spines; large, smooth, fixed spines and small, almost hairlike spines called glochids that easily penetrate skin and detach from the plant." No kidding. I, however, have evidence to the fact that the prickly pear may in fact be armed with another kind of weapon. A weapon no one ever talks about.

I hadn't really thought about my cactus since I bought it. It simply sat on the shelf next to my couch where, I would later discover, it was spawning its evil progeny. Not until my sister mentioned in passing that her cactus had begun to sprout strange green things did I look closely at my cactus. Sure enough, three alien-looking stalks had emerged from my cheery little prickly pear.

As I mentioned, I have evidence of this fact. Unfortunately, due to not knowing up front that I had purchased a cactus destined to produce sinister offshoots, I do not have a documentary image of the dormant plant. However, please find below an artist's rendering of the appearance of the cactus before the unfortunate sproutings:



And here is what it looks like now, with a close-up inset of one of the malevolent buds.



Is it just coincidence that both my plant and my sister's should sprout these degenerate shoots? Is it some sort of genetic mutation common to the genus Opuntia? Or is it something darker, some great desert mystery shrouded in secrets and intrigue?

Or maybe it's normal.

Strange Wikipedia Fact: prickly pear fruit is called "tuna." Uh, ok.

Do youKEA?

IKEA. I sooooo KEA.

...wow. Sorry, I had to take a minute to get over the sheer awfulness of my pun and ponder my overwhelming nerdiness. Notice I'm not utilizing the Backspace key right now. I'm not entirely sure why. Anyway.

So I went to IKEA today and remembered why I like that store so darn much. They have cool, cheap, mass-produced stuff that I can mix and match with my other not-so-mass-produced stuff, thus transforming my apartment into a homey (like cozy, not like, you know, ghetto buddy) little living space. Today I found drapes for 50% off. Neato.

I'm still looking for artwork to add a little color to my very, very blank walls. You'd think that being an artist, I would have lots of my own, free artwork to choose from. Sadly, I don't really fancy hanging a framed step-by-step illustration of a cholecystectomy on my living room wall (although, the red of the new drapes I bought really would nicely complement the crimson sheen of the human liver). I'll keep looking.

I saw the movie Hero tonight. Beautiful, amazing movie. See it.

Fact: Chuck Norris puts the laughter in manslaughter.

Top 5 Reasons This Week Kicks Last Week's Ass.

In no particular order.

1. Chinese food
2. Payday
3. Chair massage
4. Blog response
5. Chuck Norris

I'll elaborate:

1. One of the neurosurgeons felt bad that we are putting in so much work on his upcoming surgical atlas so he bought lunch for my whole office. Yesterday, he had his secretary give each of us a photocopy of the menu from the nearby Chinese restaurant, we circled what we wanted, and it was delivered to us, hot and plentiful, at noon today. Awesomeness.

2. Duh.

3. So apparently my job has some nice perks...like this one. On Tuesday they told me it was time for our free monthly chair massages. "Um, what?" I replied. Turns out we get a free 15 minute massage each month from a professional masseuse (not named Ikea, unfortunately). Sign up for a time, go downstairs, get massaged, go back to work. Uh, NICE.

4. You guys are great. :) Especially if your nickname is Beatrice.

5. Chuck Norris’ hand is the only hand that can beat a Royal Flush.

Hugs for you all.

PotatOH! or PotatOH-NO?

Let's find out.


So I was at Wal-mart on Sunday afternoon doing a little grocery shopping for the week. Near the end of my food-finding foray, I ran across a peculiar and intriguing sight: Individually packaged, microwave-ready, shrink-wrapped potatoes. A potato that requires no scrubbing or stabbing with forks before it can be zapped in the microwave? My curiosity was piqued. Was the potato somehow genetically engineered to cook to perfection? Was the trademarked SavorSeal wrap as revolutionary as they claimed? Most importantly, was this really a potato, or just some manufactured potato-like substance formed into the uncanny likeness of a true potato? I had to know. For $.50 apiece, two of these starchy enigmas were mine.

For dinner tonight I made Italian baked chicken and garlic mashed potatoes. As the chicken baked away in the oven, I began making my mashed potatoes using - you guessed it - one of my questionable PotatOH!s. Things with exclamation points in the name kind of weird me out to begin with. Anyway. The directions for preparing my PotatOH! read as follows:

- DO NOT poke holes in wrap!
- Microwave in wrap for 6-7 minutes on HIGH.
- PotatOH! may whistle in microwave. [WTF???]
- Carefully remove from the microwave.
- Locate "PULL TO OPEN" strip and pull in direction of arrows to remove wrap.

Whistling aside, I figured I'd give it a shot. So I put my PotatOH! in the microwave, set it to 7 minutes and stood back to watch.

Minute 1: Uneventful.
Minute 2: PotatOH! begins to rock violently back and forth. [?]
Minute 3: PotatOH! begins bouncing, catching air of half an inch to an inch.
Minute 4: Bouncing settles down into a vigorous vibration.
Minute 5: Vibration becomes increasingly frantic.
Minute 5:30: Whistling begins. Sounds eerily similar to the shrieks of a tortured woman. There were even brief pauses where the tortured woman in my PotatOH! would catch a gasping breath and then begin screaming again even louder.
Minute 6: Things get quiet. Too quiet.
Minute 7: Microwaving complete.

When the beep signaled the end of the "baking" process, I uncurled myself from the fetal position, put away my helmet, and removed this no-longer-shrieking beast from the microwave. Other than being hot and very, very soft, it seemed innocuous enough.

As per the instructions, I located the "PULL TO OPEN" strip and released this alleged potato from it's transparent cocoon. I transferred the PotatOH! to the cutting board and made a mid-sagittal incision. It looked like a potato.

I added the proper accoutrements to make garlic mashed potatoes: milk, sour cream, and minced garlic. It mashed like a potato.

I placed the mashed conglomeration on a plate with my Italian baked chicken and a leafy green salad. It sat next to my chicken like a proper mashed potato should.

The moment of truth had come. Using a regulation dinner fork, I introduced the garlic mashed PotatOH! to my taste buds...

Well WHADDAYAKNOW - it TASTES like a potato! Contrary to what its microwave antics would lead one to believe, the PotatOH! is neither demon-possessed nor the trapped soul of a woman forced to spend eternity in perpetual torment.

I recommend the PotatOH! to anyone looking for a fast and easy addition to their dinner lineup. For a mere $.50, you get a tasty potato and, let's face it, a damn good show.

(...I think, I think, I may have too much time on my hands. Please, someone, come visit and save me from myself. I love you guys. And PotatOH!s.)

It's a sign.

It's most definitely a sign.

I heart "Auto Recover." This oft overlooked function of Microsoft Word has just claimed its own little spot in a corner of my heart (a fairly low-profile spot; usually reserved for small things like getting cotton candy at the fair or the sight of all my books together in a neat and orderly arrangement. But a spot in my heart nonetheless.)

A couple posts ago I mentioned my recent search for all things awesomely Chuck. I had copied and pasted the fruits of my endeavor into a foolishly unsaved Word document that I kept minimized at the bottom of my desktop window. Yesterday, disaster struck.

Due to a freak copying and pasting incident totally unrelated to Chuck Norris , my PC decided to flash that evil proclamation: "Microsoft Word is Not Responding. Would you like to End Now? All unsaved documents will be lost." Let's not kid ourselves by pretending I actually had a choice in the matter. All efforts to save my awesome Chuck files were useless. In the end, I was forced to click that fateful rectangle. Chuck was defeated.

Or so I thought...

Enter "Auto Recover." I opened up Word not 20 minutes ago to check the spelling of a...well...word. And lo, there was before me a box announcing "1 document recovered. Would you like to save this document?" THAT'S RIGHT. Not even neglecting to save and the abyss of a frozen PC can keep Chuck Norris down.

So I'm taking this as a sign. A sign that I should share my Chuck Norris factual wealth with you fine people. For she/he who is rich in Chuck Facts...well, they live longer and almost never die of roundhouse kick-related incidents. Here is your first fact:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is based on a true story: Chuck Norris once swallowed a turtle whole, and when he crapped it out, the turtle was six feet tall and had learned karate.

You're welcome.

Hey, guess what? I don't suck!

Who knew?

So today was the first day I actually had to show a neurosurgeon drawings of a surgical procedure. My drawings of his procedure. Um, scary? I had these elaborate scenarios playing through my head before he showed up at my office to go over the sketches; most of them involved me (and my drawings) being either laughed at or mercilessly scorned by the towering, fearsome neurosurgeon.

Luckily my overactive (and self-deprecating) imagination isn't to be relied upon. Dr. Chang was neither mocking nor scornful (...Nor towering - I kind of towered over him). We introduced ourselves, he looked over the sketches and seemed really pleased with what I'd drawn, gave me a few suggestions and told me to have at the finals. Sweet. AND, on an even cooler note, apparently he stopped by my boss' office on his way out and said "she's really good!" (insert mental image of me breathing on my fingernails and polishing them smugly on my shirt)

Everyone needs a little validation now and then.

It's 115 degrees out and I'm making chili for supper. Mmmmm.

The Quickest Way to a Man's Heart

is with Chuck Norris' fist.

I'm on a Chuck Fact kick lately (roundhouse, of course); looking for the obscure and the awesome. I might even do an entire post with all the best ones I've found. Or maybe I'll spread out the joy over many mirthful days. I haven't decided yet.

I miss my friends.
Love.

Nomber Forty-seeks!

First off, a big HEY THERE to Will and Sarah! Hearing from you guys made my day. So thanks. :-)

Now, to explain today's title. My office peoples eat lunch together every day (awww, aren't we a cute little office family). Usually we eat in the hospital cafeteria; it's just four floors down and has decent food (for a hospital cafeteria), and, as a bonus, there's actually a big refrigerated cabinet filled with nothing but various and sundry flavors of Jello that makes me snicker inwardly every time I see it. Could they BE any more cliched? However, Friday's are special.

On Fridays we walk across the street in the blazing heat to eat at one of two places, Sacks Sandwiches or Pino's (this is my educated guess based on the three Fridays I've been here). Today was a Pino's day. They have awesome authentic Italian food. The display cases are magical: pizzas the size of sea turtles sit amongst glistening bowls of pasta and dancing red and gold lights reflected off the marinara sauce and olive oil. (Rachel: Wow! My whole mouth just filled with saliva!) Anyway, when your order is ready they bring it up to the counter and holler out the order number as loud as their big Italian lungs can go:

"NOMBER FORTY-SEEKS! PEP-PERONI CALZONE! NOMBER FORTY-SEEKS!"

And at the tables all around you, you can hear people parroting in good-natured undertones, "forty-seeeeks!"

It's good stuff.
Hugs.

Moneymoneymoneymon-nay

Mon-nay!
(two points if you actually sang along)

Today is a historic day. HISTORIC, I tell you. Today, I was actually given money for 40 hours of medical illustration services rendered. That's right. Six years of upper education have finally paid off (pun most definitely intended). The cruel irony, however, is that I haven't had time to set up a bank account, so, until Saturday morning, all I really have is this temporarily useless piece of paper taped to the back of my toilet tank...wait, I didn't say that, it's, uh, it's in a bank, guarded by robots.

Dueling Fireworks

I went to my office's managing editor's house for a 4th of July party tonight. She and her husband live in this fancy schmancy gated community that borders South Mountain State Park on the southern (duh) edge of Phoenix. Wow. Talk about classy digs. Anyway, after dark, we climbed a little way up the foothills behind her house to watch the city fireworks.

Phoenix and its surrounding suburbs lie in a bowl-shaped valley that is ringed by desert mountains. Well, being up in these mountains afforded us a spectacular view of not only Phoenix's (that plural looks funny...) fireworks, but the fireworks of all the surrounding cities. We counted no less than 14 different major fireworks shows going on in the valley below us. There was even one show that we could just see the tops of the explosions peeping up over the mountains in the distance. And if that wasn't enough, God threw in a little desert thunderstorm spawned heat-lightening off to the west. What a show!

Also, as a side note, Shelley has three dogs. There is a beagle named Izzy and two little mixed-breed dogs named...wait for it...Bits and Pieces. That's so. freaking. cute.

A is for Awesome Boss!

Ok, Shelley, the manager of my office, is awesome. She let me go home at 4:00 today when I was supposed to have to work until 7:30 or 8:00. She said she was sure they were going to get their money's worth out of me during my years of working and I might as well start the holiday early. ...!!!

I have been productive with my surprise freedom. I hung some pictures, watched me a little Sports Night (mad props to Pyeahtriuck), made cookies for Shelley's 4th of July party tomorrow, and am considering ordering a pizza.

I saw Superman Returns yesterday. Go see it. And plan in advance to go see Spiderman 3 when it comes out - it looks flipping awesome!

Check out The Hush Sound. They're a little Ben Folds meets Eisley meets...something. I dunno. Just listen.

PS - Hey Pat, blogger's spellchecker flagged your Kyeathy-name and wanted to replace it with Beatrice. Um. Ok.

D is for Disappointment

Why do I do this to myself? I'm so bad about getting this idea in my head of what something is going to be like and then, inevitably, it always ends up being nothing like what I'd imagined and I'm left dealing with major disappointment.

I visited a new church today. And it was nothing like what I'd imagined. In fact, after I'd participated in worship and sat through two minutes of the message, I knew it was all wrong. And I'm so disappointed. What I had to leave behind at VCC - the worship and community and spirit - it's so rare and wonderful. I can't even describe how much I miss my church family right now.