suppppper

Last night The Hater and I were invited to Unequovical Prowess' house for supper and the Super Bowl. She made some fabulous taco soup with turkey meat. She made some chili, too, but it was too hot for me; The Hater said it was great. She had chips and salsa and guac- and a fridge of beer -- it was good times! Oh, and she made a homemade cheesecake, too, which was also yummy. She's such a little Martha Stewart.

We ate and watched the game -- but I had taken a benadryl before I left home -- and promptly fell asleep before half-time. She said it was okay because I had warned her earlier... but you know how great it is to get a tasty full tummy and want to sleep? I zonked. During the fourth quarter I ended up just going to the back room and sleeping there.

After the game The Hater brought me home. I fell asleep in the car during the ten minute drive back to our apartment. Then I came home and fell asleep in the bed.... and slept all night long. This morning The Hater reminded me that Peyton's team didn't play - and that the Seahawks were only winners in their mamma's eyes.

Today I'm thankful for antihistamines that keep you from itching -- and friends who don't mind when you fall asleep at their house -- and for Peyton Manning being the greatest QB ever -- and always for my husband, who directs me to bed every night after I fall asleep on the couch.

suuuuuper

Truth be known, I'm for Peyton today. I want the Colts to win. The fact that he's not playing is only a slight complication.

Since I can't be for my team, or my other team (the Titans), I'm going to be a Seahawks fan today. Three cheers for the underdogs!

The Hater is going to be a 60% Steelers fan and 40% Seahawks fan today... He likes to complicate the complications.

epistaxis

This is a fancy medical word for a nosebleed. I learned it in nursing school and wondered if I would ever really use it. Remember this word because it will come back up later.

The truth is that I had typed out a really long post that just died. Actually, I've got a really low internet connection in the hotel room and tried to open up an Adobe file in another window -- that killed both of my windows. Such is life. This post will attempt to be the sum-up...

I've enjoied the conference. I've both gotten to see people who I've not seen in a while, and also learned a few things, which in my book count towards a productive learning experience. Our hotel room is snazzy. The Hater's been taking advantage of their poker room. You might think that we have no complaints about the weekend.

But there wouldn't be a post without any complaints...

I do understand that casinos and gambling and drinking and smoking all go hand-in-hand. I know that the world shouldn't bend over backwards for any group of people. But the smoke here has been awful. Even their "nonsmoking" rooms have reeked.

We sleep with a humidifier at home, which has probably made me more sensitive to the dryness here. My eyes are like sandpaper and my nose aches. Tonight I've had two nosebleeds from the dryness... I've tried to hover over a sink of running hot water with a towel over my head for some ease, but it's not really helping. I anticipate at least one more nosebleed before the morning.

So I'm feeling rather pitiful tonight. I'd like to be downstairs where the action is -- people watching, looking for poker tells, loitering at the piano bar -- but I'm up in my room instead, trying to will myself into a more hydrated state. So far I'm breaking even with the house...

The point of this post was to whine, but not at smokers -- just the smoke. If you're a smoker I'm not going to play like I'm your mamma or the Surgeon General. If you're not aware of the health risks of smoking, you can look here for more information. If you'd like to blame your mamma for smoking, you can look here at Freud's psycosexual theories about oral fixation. If you'd like more information about lung cancer you can look here, here, or here. If you'd like to hear a good story sometime, ask me about why I wear a clear ribbon pin on my nametag at work.

edumacation

Tonight after work The Hater and I will be heading here for a fantabulous weekend getaway. All day Saturday and half of the day Sunday I have an oncology conference. The Hater plans on taking other people's money in the poker room.

We're both excited about the trip. I've not really had an out-of-town adventure since we went home for Christmas. And although we had a great time, the drive-a-thon takes away some fun from the trip, not to mention always being on the go to see one more person before we leave. I'm hoping that this won't be as hectic.

The conference has two tracks -- one for nurses and another for physicians. I'm planning on going to some of both of them. Come Monday I should be way smarter.

I don't know if we'll have internet access, so be strong in my absence. I fare thee well.

Punxsutawney Promises

According to this website Phil, the groundhog with the inside knowledge about meterology, has been making weather predictions since 1887. It also says that 90% of the time he sees his shadow, predicting six more weeks of winter. They did not have any figures to prove how accurate his shadow-viewing method of determining spring actually calculated.

So I'm going to assume that the woodchuck institution has a significant margin of error, including this year's promise of more winter. Ergo, you're wrong, woodchuck!

We need spring showers. And if you think I'm whining now, give me a few months until when the Bradford Pears bloom and people start to mow their lawns -- and my allergies come of age.

state of the union

Last night the news people said that George, and, yes, we're on a first name basis, spoke for about an hour. If you had seen or heard the address, you'd know that this simply can't be true. He may have spoken for twenty-five minutes in mostly sentence fragments because the assembled would not stop applauding, standing up, sitting down, shaking fingers across the aisle. It reminded me of singing The Noble Duke of York in VBS (pun intended) -- or being confused in a foreign church service as to when you're supposed to stand or kneel or stand and speak. In general it seemed awkward and forced.

Meanwhile, The Hater would talk back to George. He'd argue with him. He'd shake his finger at the screen. He'd gasp and poke me, saying, Did you hear that? Did he really just say that? This brought back memories of being very young in Summertown, TN, and looking at the green shag carpet as Daddy yelled at Ronald Regan on tv. Some things never change.

The Hater's brief objection: George Bush decieves people. Example from his speech: Bush proudly claimed that we have, in the last two and a half years, created 2.5 million new jobs... which sounds good. It's actually true, but he neglected to mention that since the beginning of his Presidency (five years ago), counting the new jobs that have been created the last two years, there's still a net loss of two million jobs. This means that in the first two and a half years of the five years W Presidency, the economy lost 4.5 million jobs. If you've ever been to Vegas, that sill means you're down. He presented the info like he had done something astonishing with the economy, but that's simply not true. The Hater says there were many, many other misrepresentations, but he's not feeling like a line-by-line now.

Back to the green shag carpet... It really upset me when Daddy would yell at Ronald Regan. I was too young to understand why he was upset, but I knew that he was the President, and there's an element of magic to the Presidency. You're the boss of the whole country, you get to live in a big white house, there are people around you whose whole purpose is to take a bullet for you, and you interrupt very good television shows to give boring speeches.

There's a part of me that wants to believe in the magic. I want to believe that the President has secret information in a big manilla enevelope marked CONFIDENTIAL that he needs to know to do his job. I want to believe that the decisions that are made that I percieve as stupid are really smart decisions -- and I'd agree with him -- only if I knew what was in that envelope. I sincerely want to believe in the magic.... that there's secrets behind the idiot smirks and dumbass decisions. I want to think that you should sit on the green shag carpet and not yell at the President on tv because he's THE PRESIDENT, and therefore part of the magic.

But this Presidency, George, this Presidency is really making it hard for me to believe in the magic. I need to see the flash of a manilla envelope marked CONFIDENTIAL or TOP SECRET or THE GREATER MEANING TO LIFE or THE ANSWERS... I need a sign that you know what you are doing.

Call me Mulder; I want to believe. Unfortunately, my inner Scully wants the facts... and the facts I've seen lead me to believe your Presidency has been disappointing. And this time? This time, George, my inner child sitting on the green shag carpet isn't crying because someone's yelling at you on tv.

She's crying because you deserve it.