Early Thanksgiving Dinner

I'm the turkey! Today I will go into the doctor's office again to get plucked and stuffed, or at least that's what I've decided to call it. They have this nice long thin section of gauze stuffed in the open wound to keep it from healing too soon. When I went in yesterday, they pulled the piece out and worked a new one in -- even had a medical student watch the process. Tomorrow they're definitely pulling it out, and I hope they won't decide that they need to put a third piece in. It's no fun having tweezers push gauze into an open wound.

Ancient Diseases

So, yesterday I went to the doctor and had an abscess drained on my hip. Abscesses, or boils, are giant zits of staph infection that, left untreated, cause pain, fever, nausea, gangrene, and could get into the bloodstream and wreak some serious havoc. How do you treat them? Cut a hole and squeeze the pus out. What causes them? Not real sure. How do you prevent them? Again, not real sure. I know my husband brought the bad bacteria into our house (he's had 5 of these things since July), but beyond that, no one seems to know anything.

Here's the part I don't get. Wasn't this one of the plagues that Moses announced to the Egyptians? That's kind of a long time ago. It certainly sounds like something that shouldn't be occurring anymore today in such a medically-advanced culture. Why is the treatment still so barbaric? It is the kind of thing that smacks of leeches to me.

Greek Storms

So, we've officially entered the realm of the Greek alphabet-named storms. I have to say, I find this very exciting. Now that we're on Alpha, I know what comes next. All through the season, I've had to go to the website to find out the next name to be used for the next storm. Thanks to my physics education, where it is preferable to do math with Greek letters than with numbers, I know what the names of the next 23 storms will be. From memory! I'm just so glad to see that the money I spent on my education is finally starting to reap some benefits for me.

Excessive Music Replay

I found a song recently that I really like, and I play it way too much. I play it often at home and work, at the gym on the iPod, and I've been wanting to burn a CD in order to play it as often as necessary in the car and on trips. I have held off, though, since I'm thinking I'll get sick of it if I do that. This is my MO: listen casually to various songs until I find one I like; then listen excessively until I have it memorized; potentially arrange it for guitar or keyboard; repeat. It means I don't know a lot of songs, but the ones I know, I know really well. Not sure what that says about me, but it probably has something to do with OCD.

Traveling is Fun

I love to travel. My passport is half full, and I am always looking for interesting places to go. Meanwhile, my job wants me to travel a bit for them. My last employer had me go to Hong Kong, Beijing, Stockholm, Basel, Switzerland, so I jumped on the opportunity. However, this company has a smaller geographic radius. This month I've gone to Athens, Ohio, and Normal, Illinois. This week, it's Saginaw, Michigan. Nothing wrong with these places, but they don't help me fill my passport.

Cold Call Job Opportunity

When I got home today, I had the strangest message on the answering machine. Someone from a company called to invite me to apply for a job with them. They got my name from a list of their scholarship recipients from years ago, and were apparently cold-calling those people to see if they wanted to be financial planners with the company. I have to admit it was tempting (talking to other people about their money all day), but I decided I do like the job I have now.

New Levels of Affection in Football

My recent highschool football excursion also brought to my attention the fact that some football players have gone beyond the butt slap to show their affection for one another. The quarterback was injured during the first play of the game. He was back in the second half on the sideline, this time on crutches. One of the linesmen came up to him, gave him a tender hug while talking in his ear. Then he kissed the quarterback's temple. I was then entranced by the exchange, especially since said linesman was still hugging the QB. He continued to talked, gave him one more little peck, and walked off. I thought, wow -- there is so much tenderness on this team. I mentioned it to my sister later, and her response was "yeah, it's hard to get a boyfriend here because the guys are all gay." Touching, isn't it?

High School Marching Band

My little sister is in the marching band at her high school. She is very proud of this (must be cooler at her school than it was in mine to be in the band -- they even have a football player that forgoes the halftime peptalk to participate in the halftime show). So, as the supportive big sister, I took a day off work to visit her and go to a Friday night football game. I hadn't been to one since my own time in HS, and I was surprised how nostalgic it made me. I had forgotten how much fun a good drum cadence can be, and how much adrenaline is produced while performing with such a large group to an appreciative crowd. It made me wonder if there are other adults that were in marching bands as teenagers and miss it. Maybe we could get together and perform at a soccer game or something. If only we could find our horns again.

Who is Heather, and Why Do We Care?

So, I'm Heather -- a nice, young woman with no real reason to need a place to tell the world about her life. However, I am doing it anyway, and we'll see how much strangeness really can emerge in this venue. For the most part, I'm not expecting you to have a reason to care....at least not until I get some more content up here.