My friend Susan sent this to me this morning and it made me laugh:

A stranger was seated next to Little Johnny on the plane when the stranger turned to the Little Johnny and said, "Let's talk. I've heard that flights will go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger."

Little Johnny, who had just opened his book, closed it slowly, and said to the stranger, "What would you like to discuss?"

"Oh, I don't know," said the stranger. "How about nuclear power?"

"OK," said Little Johnny. "That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat grass. The same stuff. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?"

"Jeez," said the stranger. "I have no idea."

"Well, then," said Little Johnny, "How is it that you feel qualified to discuss nuclear power when you don't know shit?"

May 15, 2003 -- Doctor goes lasso'ing 'cause some of them bad cells, they been a'migratin' down the pipe. A-yup.

A good program, The Nature of Things. I first saw it when the Discovery channel was new and filled with foreign documentaries. This program is a Canadian show and it's very good, covering a wide range of topics. I really enjoy seeing programs with a different perspective.

This weekend I worked on a geology project. At first I tried to combine it with Greek topography, but there is suprisingly little written about Greece relative to geology. Running out of luck, I changed my topic to the earthquake research being done at Parkfield, California. The USGS was using historical information to predict future earthquakes at Parkfield, but the expected quake hasn't happened. It's been expected since 1985.

I'm hoping the doctor will call Tuesday to let me know how I'm doing. It's in the back of my mind, wondering what the test will show.

On the bright side, the doctor doesn't think I need all my plumbing removed. She does, though, think that depending on today's test results we might want to go in there and manually wrestle out the bad cells before they get ideas above their station. Apparently she will use a lasso-shaped wire knife to slice things up, then cauterize the area to stop the bleeding.

Ouch.

She looks entirely too kind-hearted to do this sort of thing. "We numb the area first, you won't really feel anything but a little pressure," she said reassuringly. Opportunist that I am, I asked, "Will you give me some take home drugs too?" I'm not one to pass up the opportunity to legally obtain mind-altering substances.

So we get to wait a bit more for these lab results to come back. She said that if the cells look the same as they did before, that means they're not getting any worse and we can go back to quarterly exams. If they come back different, she wants to lasso them right away. Yippee ki-yi-ay.

Which reminds me: Congrats on the house, Broos! I look forward to spending the night with you again!

That is, in one of his guest bedrooms. Well, with him in his own room and me...anyway. You get the idea. It's been raining up here since Sunday night and I'm anxious for sunshine and Broos lives in a sunshiney part of the world.

Anxiety colors my life nowadays. I don't really want to be the president of the school paralegal club; I'm too busy to do it. My plan had been to take over the meeting for the night and get folks focused on setting us up for elections. But our advisor said we needed interim officers (or something like that) and so Sherry leaped up from her wheelchair and nominated me and someone else echoed her sentiment so there I was. I got back at Sherry though; she's now our treasurer :)

Anyway, just home from school, I'm exhausted and tomorrow is bizzy. School, then library research for geology, then doctor, then a WSPA meeting in Tacoma. Friday, Renee and I are in Seattle at a day-long WSPA conference, followed by bunco night at Jean's house. I'll need the weekend to recover.

He's busily trying to update his own website, Rob is. He originally offered me space there and then decided it would make more sense to put me in my own place, as it were. Right now he's cutting and pasting his old MSN pages so he can upload them to his domain using FrontPage.

I'm waiting for my copy of FrontPage to arrive so that I too can be hip and toss around some of the words I've heard Rob use as he puts his website back together again.

My doctor rescheduled my appointment from today till Thursday. That makes me anxious because I'd like to get it over with, thank you.

At today's student paralegal meeting, I was voted "interim president." Probably because I stalked into the room, handed out an agenda and said, "If George W. can do it, so can I..." and then proceeded to take over the club. Of course, our president quit a couple of weeks ago and as the last remaining voted officer (I'm the 'recruiting chair'), I felt a slim but significant responsibility. Before the last meeting of the group, I'd just gotten the message from my doctor and was near hysterical so I didn't go. Turns out they voted me president at that meeting too, but voted for me again this time around as they had more people in the room (namely, me). I just hate untidy meetings. That's why sometimes I get antsy during our little game meetings because I sense some disorder lurking and it bothers me, so I start to foam at the mouth.

Rob has got me my very own domain name, which should solve the issue of the Unpublished Netscape Blog. The new blog will be located at this domain, and since it is our very own will not be subject to the whims of passing corporations who wish to buy it and mess up my archives.

At least, that's our hope. I'm going to try to ftp this to the new location, then ftp the page to myself, then upload it to Netscape manually as I can't even ftp to it any longer. A considerable drag. And of course, it's likely not going to show up for a few days while the company doing the webhosting sets up whatever it is they have to set up.

Not sure why, but Blogger isn't updating my website. Which means, I'm not sure if it's a Blogger thing or a Netscape thing.

Eventually, I'm planning to move my blog pages to Rob's domain name. That's because once again, some entity bought our ISP and they're going to make us change our names. The poopers. This time, it's Comcast who bought AT&T, and so I'll be losing my ATTBI pages as they want the COMCAST to be the only thing you see and remember.

Which makes me wish that we'd gotten DSL through Earthlink, which through several incarnations allows the folks who subscribed to services they bought out to keep their names. So, I could've kept going with them with a Sprynet email if I truly had wanted to, as they maintain that extension.

Anyway, thanks to Lynn I now realize that nothing it getting through so I'm typing this all up potentially for nothing. :/ Oh, well. Eventually, as with a bad dinner, this too shall pass.

The other night, Rob and I were watching one of our "murder shows" wherein actual crimes are reinacted and the detectives who figured it out get to explain how they did it. In one episode, body parts were found floating in a river, wrapped in plastic garbage bags. The narrator intoned solemnly, "Now the detectives need to determine who this person was...." which made Rob say suddenly, "Bob." I glanced at him, thinking he'd lost his cookies (possibly into the monogramed blanket Jean gave us as a wedding present, which we keep on the couch to snuggle under. Then I remembered we were having ice cream for dessert.).

"They found it floating in the river didn't they? That must mean his name's 'Bob,'" said Sheepy.

Last night as he was on his way to rescue someone in EQ, Rob fell off a boat. I figured this out after distilling through the cussing what his problem was. That I knew why he's upset has never made Rob not explain why in exhaustive details in case I missed anything. "I fell off this boat, and here I am in the water..."

To which I responded, "Bob." Which interrupted the, shall we say, flow of his discourse and we both started laughing. I'm so sure the neighbors are concerned that we are too easily amused.

John Ratcliff's blog, complete with video. That's awesome. I can already hear my cherub Phil wanting to play this game (he loves this sort of thing, with guns and bullet holes. Chris prefers EQ battles.)

Go, John! It's very cool!

My brain hurts. They snuck algebra into geology and I am not happy. Who cares how long it takes you to walk at 12 miles per hour to the center of the Earth, converted to kilometers per hour? Either way it's impossible.

Spoke with the doctor. She wants to see me again, while reiterating that 80% of these things "just go away in a year." If things don't go away in my case in three months or so, she plans to do a little surgery and make them go away by force. Right now, it's only a few cells involved and so she doesn't want me to worry. Gee, is that like saying the cup is only half-full?

I've read about living in the moment although at this moment, I forget what it's supposed to do for you. Meditation or something. Yesterday I thought about that on and off through the day, wondering what joy there could possibly be in living in each moment when so many moments are unhappy and painful. Sure, there are happy moments too, but do we get to choose which moments to live in and which we speed past with our eyes shut? When I look back at good moments, why do they seem so blurry and un-relivable, while the painful ones go on and on?

There are fifteen more minute-long moments to live through until my doctor gets out of surgery this morning.

In this moment, I can hear Mittens licking a plate in the living room. Maggie is snoring on the couch, although I'm sure her ears are pricked back because she too can hear Mittens, who is probably making his tongue scraping louder than necessary to rub it in to her that he is the one lapping up forbidden plate snacks. The coffee pot gurgles because there's some steam trapped inside it trying to find a way out. The computer is humming. I keep glancing at my watch, is it 9AM yet? I should be in class, or at least struggling in the parking lot of the college to get to it, but I am not in the mind to go. So I'm sitting here, counting moments and wondering why my doctor left me a message Tuesday night that she must talk to me, but wouldn't be back into the office till 9AM today.

At 2AM Wednesday, I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep; in that moment I wrote my will.

On the bright side, she said at my exam last week that 80% of women with irregular cells clear up without needing any treatment. In that moment, I thought, "Funny, I don't remember you telling me that last time I was here." Maybe she's called me because I'm one of those 80% and now I don't need to come in to be examined in three months. Or maybe, some Thursday morning I'll be the one she has in surgery and somewhere else, someone she called Tuesday night will be living in each of their moments, a little bit of fear and a little bit of hope.

Day 361: Still no job. Legolas still prettiest member of the Fellowship, but Pippin looking remarkably sexy. Could self have been unemployed for so long that furry-footed halfling compares favorably to elf?

First quiz of the quarter today in geology.

Our state has a 'running start' program where high school students can take college classes in lieu of high school classes. The tuition for them is free, all they pay for is books and fees. If they do it right, they graduate from high school and get a 2 year degree at the same time using the same credits. It's an awesome program which students should really take advantage of, especially at that price.

The downside is that the high school students are all in morning classes and as Renee (my paralegal buddy) and I have found, they are not generally interested in an education. For example, in my geology class there are pockets of running start students who feel they have a right to talk all the way through the lecture. The teacher has done nothing so far to discourage them. She's a petite, worried-looking woman who's trying too hard to be hip; perhaps that's why she ignores their chatter. It's not like they're trying to hide it. On the other side, we have running start students in the paralegal program and they are a credit to the program. Next quarter I'll be glad to be back in evening classes; most running start students like to keep their evenings free. :)

Planning seminars for convention. I love this part. Even though I'm pretty shy in a crowd, in front of a crowd I am someone completely different. The actress in me comes out and I enjoy the experience. It's coming up with something interesting and useful that's kind of difficult. After all, I'm not likely to lead the discussion on armor or weapons, or debate the merits of combat. Combat's one area I've never messed with. When Suz was in charge, I let Kelly do the combat coordinating and I stuck to painting and events, my two favorite reasons for being a GM. When Kelly left, I still could avoid combat because I had a senior GM who was in charge of it. Then Suz left, and my combat GM left, and it's been years down the road and I still hate combat. It's all numbers and there is no joy in numbers. So, of all the things I can speak off the cuff about, combat is the one thing I will not get into. I have had good staff working on it and my current group is very handy with number crunching. We promoted our critter guru to be part of the senior staff, so all the seniors except for me are scripting types. I like that. If I can't do it myself, I like having folks who can.

Well, imagine that.

See which Greek Goddess you are.

Good news: I have no lab class on Wednesday! Huzzah! That means that I can attempt to renegotiate my intern schedule to work all day Wednesday and half a day Friday, which will make my life much easier to contemplate.

I did go through the schedule and couldn't find anything else worth taking. There is an accounting class at 7AM that I need, but again, I know my limits. I don't think I want to do that to myself :)

Yesterday I got my groceries delivered, some of them anyway, from Schwan's. When Lorie lived at Ft. Lewis, she introduced me to their ice cream (which is really awesome) and the apple cinnamon French toast sticks. While some of the items are kind of pricey, I got a nice little assortment of goodies for about $40. Today the boys and I are having chicken quesadillas for lunch. Yum! I like that you can order online and know when the delivery van will be in the area. Plus, they carry extras of the popular stuff so you can get some last minute additions to your order.

Off to work on some homework. Have a great day and may no one pull the sheep over your eyes!