If you listen to public radio and want to kill some time listening to some interesting demos, click on this link to vote in NPR's quest for a new radio host. They are looking for someone with that ineffable, intangible quality called "hostiness." It's some good listening if you are looking for a diversion.
NPR
Friday, May 04, 2007
Fear The Haboob
This photo just blew my mind:
From Britain's Daily Mail:
"These bizarre images show a gigantic cloud of dust billowing over an African city - just like a scene from the movie The Mummy. The dust storm - known as a "Haboob" - gathered over Khartoum, the capital of Sudan in north east Africa yesterday. It lasted for about two hours, carrying dust and sand from the Sahara across the city. Haboobs - which are a type of seasonal storm - are formed in summer months."
From Britain's Daily Mail:
"These bizarre images show a gigantic cloud of dust billowing over an African city - just like a scene from the movie The Mummy. The dust storm - known as a "Haboob" - gathered over Khartoum, the capital of Sudan in north east Africa yesterday. It lasted for about two hours, carrying dust and sand from the Sahara across the city. Haboobs - which are a type of seasonal storm - are formed in summer months."
Dana Farber: Gentlemen's Club
Today was a long day at D to tha F. I got all my "pre-testing" for the transplant done. Pulmonary function, heart function, etc etc etc. As does any hospital procedure worth the name, each of the tests involved either some kind of needle or some kind of nudity. The real fun ones required both. Not X-rated nudity or anything. More like Girl's Bone Marrow Gone Wild-style nudity. A boob flash here, an a** cheek there. You know, nothing that would get the joint closed down by Vice or anything. Just some good old-fashioned American T&A.
My favorite part of the day went like this:
DF Lady: I'll be doing your chest x-ray today.
Me: Nice to meet you.
DFL: You can go in here and remove your clothes from the waist up, then put on this robe so it opens in the front.
Me: Okay.
DFL: Have you ever been x-rayed here before?
Me: No.
DFL: Well, in that case, (goes to small closet, pulls out small piece of paper with two--stickers?----on it) put one of these on each nipple, please.
Me: (Looking at the round silver/metal things in the center of each sticker)--What? No tassles?
DFL: (No reaction). I'll be in the room across the hall when you're ready.
Me: (Alone in the room attaching my pasties and laughing at the bizarre hilarity of it) "Dontcha wish your girlfriend got a transplant like me?! Dontcha?! Dontcha!?" [for our older readers, that is a cheeseball stripper song made famous for reasons we will never know].
I could not stop laughing. I must have looked unhinged to this woman, but I literally could not stop thinking the entire time she was x-raying me that I had STICKERS ON MY NIPPLES for reasons I could not begin to fathom. Would the person looking at the x-ray have some additional knowledge of my lungs and pulmonary capacity as a result of being able to say, "Oh yes, I see the alveoli now that I've located the nipples..." Like, without pinpointing my...er...pinpoints they somehow would lack an essential baseline measurement of my...lungs? I guess I don't have enough of that there booklarnin' to help me understand the desperate importance of Nipple GPS to the transplant process.
Anyway, as I said, I was laughinglaughinglaughing. Until, of course, it came time to remove the stickers. If you've never removed a sticky object from your nipples (and those of you who have, you know who you are you dawgs), you ought to try it sometime. Be sure to take some Tylenol first. Because (and here is the first of what will I'm sure be many Public Service Announcements throughout the course of this transplant) nipple skin is not meant to meet an adhesive. Really.
Next time I'm gonna demand the tassles.
My favorite part of the day went like this:
DF Lady: I'll be doing your chest x-ray today.
Me: Nice to meet you.
DFL: You can go in here and remove your clothes from the waist up, then put on this robe so it opens in the front.
Me: Okay.
DFL: Have you ever been x-rayed here before?
Me: No.
DFL: Well, in that case, (goes to small closet, pulls out small piece of paper with two--stickers?----on it) put one of these on each nipple, please.
Me: (Looking at the round silver/metal things in the center of each sticker)--What? No tassles?
DFL: (No reaction). I'll be in the room across the hall when you're ready.
Me: (Alone in the room attaching my pasties and laughing at the bizarre hilarity of it) "Dontcha wish your girlfriend got a transplant like me?! Dontcha?! Dontcha!?" [for our older readers, that is a cheeseball stripper song made famous for reasons we will never know].
I could not stop laughing. I must have looked unhinged to this woman, but I literally could not stop thinking the entire time she was x-raying me that I had STICKERS ON MY NIPPLES for reasons I could not begin to fathom. Would the person looking at the x-ray have some additional knowledge of my lungs and pulmonary capacity as a result of being able to say, "Oh yes, I see the alveoli now that I've located the nipples..." Like, without pinpointing my...er...pinpoints they somehow would lack an essential baseline measurement of my...lungs? I guess I don't have enough of that there booklarnin' to help me understand the desperate importance of Nipple GPS to the transplant process.
Anyway, as I said, I was laughinglaughinglaughing. Until, of course, it came time to remove the stickers. If you've never removed a sticky object from your nipples (and those of you who have, you know who you are you dawgs), you ought to try it sometime. Be sure to take some Tylenol first. Because (and here is the first of what will I'm sure be many Public Service Announcements throughout the course of this transplant) nipple skin is not meant to meet an adhesive. Really.
Next time I'm gonna demand the tassles.
Not Staying The Course
Unlike our president I have seen the error of my ways. I admit to having made the decision with little input from my advisors. I perhaps relied on faulty reasoning. I certainly didn't anticipate the work and complications involved in my decision, nor did I fully take into account its effects on others.
I speak, of course, of my post last week about putting transplant info on Fantastic Aplastic and only Haggis-type stuff here.
That, as one trusted advisor warned me, was a quagmire waiting to happen. And so it has come to pass. I just don't have the time to be all "so is this a Haggis or a Fanta post?" So, forgive me my original error, and just know that any news you need will arrive here at SSHaggis.
At the end of the day, I just don't have the time or the inclination to flip between blogs (how lazy does THAT sound?!), and I suppose you don't either.
Call it cutting and running if you like. I call it Less Work, More Info.
I speak, of course, of my post last week about putting transplant info on Fantastic Aplastic and only Haggis-type stuff here.
That, as one trusted advisor warned me, was a quagmire waiting to happen. And so it has come to pass. I just don't have the time to be all "so is this a Haggis or a Fanta post?" So, forgive me my original error, and just know that any news you need will arrive here at SSHaggis.
At the end of the day, I just don't have the time or the inclination to flip between blogs (how lazy does THAT sound?!), and I suppose you don't either.
Call it cutting and running if you like. I call it Less Work, More Info.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
A Fitting Send-Off
I'll post a photo tomorrow, but I have to share the details of my last few moments in DC with you now.
Can you guess how it went?
Well, as if God himself were telling me that moving on is a good thing, some crackhead (no doubt) smashed my car window and stole my suitcase. I went to bed at midnight, and by 6am when we were leaving the house, someone had done a Smash and Grab on my car.
The f&*%ers got all of my underwear save the pair on my butt, all of my favorite T-shirts (Scottish Mafia: Frugal But Deadly, Needs More Coffee, Nerds Are Cute, etc), all of Bambina's first aid supplies, all of my jammies, and a damn good pair of shoes I was so looking forward to wearing. I'm sure some other things were in there too but I can't recall them all at the moment.
So here I sit, ordering underwear online, hoping I can get away with one pair for two days (don't tell my mother...), wearing a random shirt, an outdoor fleece and some surgeon pants instead of jammies, and alternating between furor at the total violation of not only having someone take something that is yours, and annoyance, wondering where my underwear is and who is touching it. Like, are they going to sell my purple thong for...pardon the pun...crack money? Who is buying used underwear and some Old Navy pajamas? Who ARE these people?! Why not just bring it back when you realize there is nothing but drawers in the suitcase? Not, I suppose, that I'd be wearing any of them again anyway now that Drunk High Dude has handled them...
But anyway. My point: sometimes a place or an experience leaves you with the lingering joy of good memories, warm feelings, and a soul-deep ache in the moment of departure. Other places kick you in the (naked) ass and send you on your way in a cacophony of shattered glass and the flapflapflap of taped-up plastic blowing in the wind.
Can you guess how it went?
Well, as if God himself were telling me that moving on is a good thing, some crackhead (no doubt) smashed my car window and stole my suitcase. I went to bed at midnight, and by 6am when we were leaving the house, someone had done a Smash and Grab on my car.
The f&*%ers got all of my underwear save the pair on my butt, all of my favorite T-shirts (Scottish Mafia: Frugal But Deadly, Needs More Coffee, Nerds Are Cute, etc), all of Bambina's first aid supplies, all of my jammies, and a damn good pair of shoes I was so looking forward to wearing. I'm sure some other things were in there too but I can't recall them all at the moment.
So here I sit, ordering underwear online, hoping I can get away with one pair for two days (don't tell my mother...), wearing a random shirt, an outdoor fleece and some surgeon pants instead of jammies, and alternating between furor at the total violation of not only having someone take something that is yours, and annoyance, wondering where my underwear is and who is touching it. Like, are they going to sell my purple thong for...pardon the pun...crack money? Who is buying used underwear and some Old Navy pajamas? Who ARE these people?! Why not just bring it back when you realize there is nothing but drawers in the suitcase? Not, I suppose, that I'd be wearing any of them again anyway now that Drunk High Dude has handled them...
But anyway. My point: sometimes a place or an experience leaves you with the lingering joy of good memories, warm feelings, and a soul-deep ache in the moment of departure. Other places kick you in the (naked) ass and send you on your way in a cacophony of shattered glass and the flapflapflap of taped-up plastic blowing in the wind.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Movin' Out
Tomorrow early AM will begin the road trip to Boston. It will end almost ten years here in DC. There are so many things about DC that I will miss: the Capitol view every day, the constant hum of politics in the air, not having to drive anywhere, having one of the first things Bambina knows how to say be "Thurgood Marshall Federal Building..." Living here provides you with an education and an atmosphere that you can't get anywhere else. It's fun, it's very serious, and it's very fun to watch other people being very serious about moronic stuff.
I'm going to miss seeing the female Hill interns crossing the street in their tits-out shirts and flip flops, as if they think that attention equals credibilty. I'll miss seeing the male interns wearing suits with baseball caps. Or, more accurately, I'll miss laughing at them. I'll miss the motorcades, the minor political celebrity sightings (Oh my god! Look! It's Tim Russert!), and most of all the sense of history and patriotism inherent in living in DC...Not that Boston lacks for history and patriotism, of course.
I won't miss the random crime that always occurs just one block too close to my house to let me shrug it off, the reassessment of my property taxes that now rivals communities where they can actually send their kids to the schools those high taxes are funding, and--of course--not having representation in Congress. Now when someone says, "Call your Senator!" I will actually have someone to call.
Aaah. A little change might do me good.
There She Goes, Miss America
Here's an article on Miss America helping the police to catch online sexual predators. Seriously. The current Miss America. She pretended to be 11 years old for an episode of America's Most Wanted.
Perhaps Miss America needs a new booker? A new agent? I'm certain there were some mall openings or car shows going on that day, so why she ended up talking to pedophiles on a TV show is beyond me. Is this really the next step for this franchise in its attempt to be more relevant? Surely a classroom reading of The Pet Goat cannot be far behind?
CNN
Perhaps Miss America needs a new booker? A new agent? I'm certain there were some mall openings or car shows going on that day, so why she ended up talking to pedophiles on a TV show is beyond me. Is this really the next step for this franchise in its attempt to be more relevant? Surely a classroom reading of The Pet Goat cannot be far behind?
CNN
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