And a Good Morning to You

We decided to take a quick nap at 5 p.m. which lasted until 2 a.m., at least for me. The Hub is still in bed, dreaming of his half-day at work today, I am sure. Time off is one of the best gifts one can get, I think. The cats were thrilled when I emerged from the bedroom. Yet another reason why I’m glad we do not have children. You can’t just have a snack, skip dinner and sleep for seven hours whenever you feel like it.

I think I’ve forgotten to mention that I’m going back to school for a Computer Science degree. Two years at TMCC, then two years at UNR. It’s the best major for me, considering how it will complement my old Masters degree. I think it will also be challenging, and frankly, my psych undergrad was about as challenging as opening up a paper bag. Yeah, things are easier because you remember them to be so, and also majors that you’re good at are easier anyway, BUT…this time around I’ll be going all the way up to Calc 3 in math. Finally having a good relationship with mathematics will be a real joy. It’s like filling a forever blank spot on a color-by-numbers canvas. I’ll be able to see how well I can concentrate on school, sans extracurricular activities like my old sorority. It’s not that my grades were terrible in my undergrad years. They weren’t. My grad school grades were excellent, for that matter. It’ll be satisfying to see how I progress through this journey.

As my father used to say, “If it was easy, everyone would do it.”

I do try to mention important life events on this website. I usually forgo small, piddling activities because I can’t be arsed to blog about them, and do you really care or not what level my Lore-master is in Lord of the Rings Online? (She’s 22.) Thought not. Anyway, I bring this up because I recently caught up with an online friend who I hadn’t spoken with in a couple of months. I told him what I’d been up to. I’ve gotten very good at being pretty succinct about it since I have to give The Life Update to my friend, Heather, every few weeks and she’s only got about ten minutes to spare when she’s on the phone. He told me what he had been up to, which is what I thought he’d been doing. Work and gaming. Nothing wrong with that. Most people are not off wrestling alligators or test-driving Ferrari Testarossas every day. Or even every other day. Looking back at the post, I had spoken with him on and off for four hours. Everything that I had been up to had been covered in this discussion. Everything that I did not discuss had been posted in this blog.

Right as I was saying good-bye online to the fellow, he says this to me, “Ok, next time I catch you I want to hear how you’ve been.” What? Do people think this housewife gig I do is a ruse and a cover for my alternative Secret Agent spy lifestyle? “Oh yes, well I’ve not been around much because I’ve been trying to overthrow the government in Zimbabwe. Charming local people, though. They make this absolutely delish dish with snake.”

“Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That’s how rich I want to be.”
~Rita Rudner

 

“If you talk to God you’re religious. If God talks to you, you’re psychotic.”

So you go to the internet, the bastion of all things good and gracious in this wide world, in search of a tasty yellow cake recipe. The internet is tricksy, however. It has other plans for Ye Olde Google Searche. Instead of your goal, you get side-tracked looking in awe at this real recipe for Tufeen Hushani (Vulcan Wedding Cake). This blew my mind only slightly less than when I found out that Klingon and Elfish (from Lord of the Rings) both have complete and extensive linguistic rules, structures and alphabets.

I think I need to start updating this in the morning. In the evening, I’m too easily distracted by people or things. My brain has more momentum around 6 a.m. from morning chores than it does around 10 p.m. Speaking of chores, I still have to brush the cats.

I started on my math review project today. My major at TMCC is going to be Computer Science, which will require a good amount of math. Plus, I’m going to have to take an ACCUPLACER exam before school starts. The test is mandatory and is used to place students in math/English courses when they haven’t taken the SAT/ACT (or in my case, haven’t taken it in many moons.) I’m not sweating the English side of things at all. My math skills need work though. I’d like to place high so I have less math to take before transferring to UNR. So long story short, I’m starting back at Algebra to review what I used to know.

It’s amazing what your brain retains, especially at the mechanical level. So much information came back to me today which I thought I’d forgotten, and I felt oddly at peace doing my math problems – it was almost meditative. Since it was all review, I found myself doing my math problems back the way I used to when I was 14. Only when I started stressing about the placement exam did the process get sour. I am pleasantly surprised that my brain hasn’t completely gone south on me, and that there is still some processing power in it yet.

I think the secret to success for this whole project, and math in general, will be to embrace the subject, rather than avoiding it as I did for so long. I think that if I meet these challenges head-on, apply myself, and have confidence, I will have great success.

“A man has one hundred dollars and you leave him with two dollars. That’s subtraction.”
~Mae West

 

What a long, strange week it’s been.

Jesse and I have had an unusual week, to say the least. On my end, you never know what exactly you have forgotten to backup until you see it being deleted during your reformat. Specifically, I forgot to backup several hundred fonts and my birthday reminder list on my Firefox. Hopefully, both will not be too painful to reconstruct.

Jesse, on the other hand, knows the meaning of the word “pain”. His facial infection, which the doctors suspect started as a clogged tear duct in his left eye, grew to be so painful and swelled, that we went to the emergency room on Wednesday. As per usual with all services in Nevada, we got seen pretty much right away. (This is a tourism-based state where service is king and you may not find the people exceedingly friendly but, by God, you’ll get served faster than corn dogs at a state fair.) We had a follow-up with our primary care physician on Thursday, who said his antibiotics would still take a while longer to work, and he would not be able to work Friday. Two positive notes: his MRI came back clear and his 100 deg F fever is gone.

Now that his fever is gone, his body can begin to recover. Since his MRI is clear, it means the infection is not moving to his brain. The scary part of a facial infection is this: when you have an infection in your body, it very often moves. In your face, it doesn’t have too many places to go. Me, I’d go to Vegas, or maybe a nice tropical resort. Anyway, Jesse is out of the worst of it. It’ll just take time for the infection to run its course. In the interim, I’ve rented several films for him to watch.

The most horrible part of the process now is the fact he’s been told he can’t be on the computer for more than 30 minutes at a time, else he will strain his bad eye. That went over like a plate of veal at a vegan banquet.

Okay, better topic. I’ve decided on a major: computer science. It’ll be a good fit with my previous degrees, especially my masters. There are a vast array of fields I can work in with a comp sci degree and I’ll have a free tutor at my beck and call every night. I’m not terribly stoked about being behind a desk for eight hours a day. On the other hand, Jesse has proposed getting us a pair of street bicycles, which would help us exercise and get out and about. So it probably wouldn’t be so bad.

There was something else I was going to mention. I can’t recall now and I need to go feed the cats. I leave you now with this:

“Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.”
~Doug Larson

 

“It doesn’t make a difference what temperature a room is, it’s always room temperature.”

So…it turns out that every WordPress blog, not just mine, has an RSS feed built in. After researching this, and scrolling down to the very bottom o’ my web journal, sho’ nuff, they were right. I know I am pretty inconsistent (though I am working on getting down a schedule) in regard to my updating, so if you are an RSS-type person, like I am, try using my RSS Feed. It’ll let you know when I’ve updated and you won’t end up making a wasted trip to this webpage.

It turns out that I’ll have to take some math in the entrance examination for the community college I want to attend. At first I was like, “Pfft entrance examination – why can’t I just use my old SAT scores or my graduate school GPA or my good looks?” But then I realized all of the above-mentioned things were more than two years old, and TMCC doesn’t take anything past that. Then I realized, when I persued the sample exam, that I’d have to answer questions on *shudder* Algebra 2, Pre-Calculus and Trigonometry. Egad, my math past has caught up with me!

It is somewhat of a mystery how I finagled my way into a four-year university with only, well, one year of high school math. Some say it was my “Minority Background” (¿Dónde está la biblioteca?). Others say it was the fact that California lets people slip through the cracks in the school system. Still others say “screw it – let’s have a beer”. Really, it was all three. I was determined to avoid taking Algebra 2 back in high school, not because I couldn’t pass the class but because I refused to take a math course at 7:10 a.m., on the grounds it was inhumane. I am a free-range chicken. Let’s be fair.

I did fairly well on my SAT and ACT college exams. Most people only take one or the other but I took both just to see which would give me the best score (the ACT did). Once at the university, I did not take the normal courses of mathematics that many students pursue because I was a psychology major. Fortunately for us we got to take a series of statistics courses, which TO THIS DAY, I think were more practical. I live in Reno. When we go to the blackjack table, which would you rather have? Someone who can tell you the odds of getting that face card to come up on the next hand or someone who can find the area underneath the parabola?

I thought as much.

As per usual, my internet research has lead me on a string of wild goose chases to find good, solid math tutorial sources for me. Ones, you know, that I’ll respond to as opposed to falling asleep to or tossing out after ten minutes’ use. It’s a hard road to hoe. On a side note, I think I’ve been on the internet too long; my spelling’s getting much worse. I had to look at the word “hoe” and think hard on the fact if I spelled it right.

“Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren’t distracted by the total lack of content in your writing.”
~Randy K. Milholland

 

“Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.”

Today I went to the doctor and got a new prescription for Flonase. It is a nasal steroid that literally can change your life. I remember the first week I was on it. I was blown away by the sensation of being able to breathe through both nostrils fully and completely; I almost choked on air. It then dawned on me that was what other people were breathing like all the time. To quoth Master Keanu, “Whoa.”

I went into Costco for the first time in many, many years. Jesse and I got a new family membership, despite my years of hesitation. He assured me the Sparks/Spanish Springs location would be a reasonable, low-key venue at which to shop. I ordered our cards online but one must trade them in when one receives them in the mail for photo IDs at the store proper. I made it in the store and took a fairly decent photo – mind you, it was a tiny black-and-white shot. But I did notice that even though the store’s parking lot was full, the store seemed to be relatively calm, and not…chaotic. I think that’s the best way one could describe a Los Angeles-area Costco. You give a battery of “over-40″ housewives some super-wide grocery carts and add to that sales on just about anything in bulk packaging. In a matter of minutes, they will be converted into a pack of wild, heaving savages, careening down aisles with no caution or care for others. It is truly a sight to behold.

I happened to walk through our Costco with no cart. This was done for a couple of reasons. One, quickness of movement. When I want to go through an entire store in a matter of a couple of minutes, it is best not to be slogging along a rolling skeleton of metal. Two, there is an old phrase that I’m sure still rings true today, “You can’t go into Costo and leave with less than $300 worth of stuff.” No cart prevents that. Three, if I was going to be dodging bullets, Viet Cong, and Martha Stewart communist vampires, I was going to travel light and fast. Last and most importantly, I just plain forgot a cart.

I have picked my Spanish lessons back up. I will go into that in a future update. I have several reasons for this and some interesting things to share from this past week. See if you can spot the particularly unusual thing that I noticed about the two speakers from this podcast series.

Oh heck, it’s 10:25. Time to clean the litter box and be off to bed. Some days you rock and roll. Other days, you clean up the rocks others leave behind.

“I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.”
~Mark Twain

 

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”

It stands to reason that the day I had chosen to restart my blog afresh, Maestro messaged me on MSN. I’m much more confident now in the direction this journal will go, and what I will put in it. I’ve had several positive things happen to me in the past few months, many of which my husband had a hand in, which have helped me re-affirm my life potential. Strictly speaking, one could interpret this headline as “Woman Gets Clue, Gets Over Self”.

When we last left off from my life, I didn’t have much to say in regard to my own progress. I was so concerned about how I’d lost so much time to WoW and fretting about others’ goal setting in comparison to my own, that I was really making myself quite ill. I’ve always been a competitive person – no matter what I might have thought – and the idea that I was behind in my abilities, learning, or career just ate me up.

I felt like a failure. A burden to my husband, as it seemed he had his head on straight – which he always does – and that I was just dragging him down.

Fortunately, Jesse has more sense than I do. It took several months but he convinced me of my value and effort and self-worth. One would assume a husband wouldn’t have to do this in the first year of marriage but I have always been an over-thinker of things. Completely self-critical. And sometimes I think a slight bit of depression is inherent in my father’s side of my family. If we are not doing something that helps the situation, whether it be others or our immediate family or even ourselves, we feel lost. My father felt fulfilled most when he was teaching, and it was that which buoyed his faith even in the last years of his life.

I have had a serious analysis of myself and what I want “to do” in life. I have come to the conclusion that I am not terribly creative. Not like I thought I was, in comparison to what I see others do, but that shouldn’t hinder my own advancement. No, I realized that I was not truly happy stuck at a desk, typing away, for an 8-5 existence. Yet I still felt drawn to technology. And I reflected back on my own experiences. Some things stuck out more than others, and those were the things I considered most.

I had changed so much in the past three years. Why not a career change too? There were no jobs in the field in which I’d gotten a Masters degree. I considered going back to school and Jesse gave his approval. After all, as the sole provider for our family, he’d be footing the bill. What he said and what he thought on the subject greatly interested me. He approved the idea, as long as I was passionate about it. He didn’t want me to go back to school just to obtain employment to get a paycheck. He akined it to an itch that you have to scratch.

I decided practically, I decided passionately and I decided determinedly on the field that would suit me best. I would go back to school to become a radiologic technician. Not a doctor, no I didn’t want that. Too much schooling for too little reward. Not a nurse – the thought never crossed my mind. And I’ve always been best as a helper in a specific way. An advisor in a very narrow field. I am no manager or leader or ground-breaker, but when I master something, I do it very, very well.

Frankly, the most I was ever mesmerized in a hospital was when I was getting X-rayed, and especially when I was getting MRI’d. How fascinating the large machines were! They reminded me of HAL from 2001, though I can’t recall why. Perhaps it was the grand majesty of the technology, the large cumbersome machinery, the massive bulk of science that caught my eye. After all, most technology we encounter on a daily basis is very small – cellphone, .mp3 player, etc.

Ah I’m afraid I will have to cut this opening post short as we’re off to sushi with some of Jesse’s friends from work. Rats, I forgot to mention that I’m learning to cook and also progressing in my Flash studies, amongst other things. I guess that’s why they have you keep a journal on a daily basis. One can’t be expected to tell everything in one day.

Have a good day. I know I will.