Six months to go!!!

Big Brother

I had been treating this blog as if it were mostly between friends -- I've only posted the link on my Google talk away message and only people whom I email personally can see that. But, I've always tried to write knowing that anyone could read it. It is public, and at the very least there's a "Next Blog" option at the top that takes you to a random blog. They're usually in another language, but I'm sure people have gotten taken to mine. So I thought it was close friends and random strangers, two parties you can say mostly anything in front of. Or even be completely boring in front of.

However, this week I discovered that if you google my name, my blog is the top hit. This is a new thing. It really bugs me out. We had a discussion at our staff retreat in September about how googling is now the most common way to find out about another person even in the business world... and we talked about how you should be aware of what comes up when someone googles you and how you can attempt to manage and manipulate what Google will rank highest.

I google my friends, family, coworkers all the time just out of curiosity. I figure their achievements are most likely to be posted on the web and I want to see what they're famous for, what got them published per se. But now, it's not that I was a National Merit Scholarship Finalist in 2001 when I graduated from high school that's the top hit anymore, it's this blog... my boring ramblings to my closest friends when I don't have time to contact them directly, or when I need to get something annoying out of my system or share an interesting or outrageous article. That is what is getting presented to all the world as the best match for me. Haha, kind of deep I guess.

(I'm actually not even sure how this is matched to my name because I don't have my last name in my profile and I try to hardly ever use my last name in my writing. I guess because Blogger is a Google feature and this account is registered under my gmail which is registered under my name. Google is scary. I wonder if I used a different blogging service if it would still come up...)

So now I have to go back and reconsider whether I've really been writing as if anyone might read it. Would I want one of my bosses reading this? I wrote a little bit about stuff at work and although I didn't use any names, if you worked in our office you would obviously know who I was referring to. I might take down the picture of myself in a bathing suit from my vacation to Florida in June. I feel embarrassed about all the whiny stuff I've written -- I don't think a potential employer would hire me based on these ramblings. This blog could be a professional liability.

We might be going offline for a while. I'll keep you posted. Probably not here.

AAHHH!!!

Less than 200 days until the weddding!!!!!!!!!!


An interesting tip from Brides.com:

Let perfume dry on its own after spritzing—rubbing it into the skin changes the scent.

Two of the three of my bridesmaids who I'm "friends" with on Pandora, have the same most-recently-added radio station -- Justin Timberlake Radio.

Just an observation. Bringing SexyBack, ladies?

Finals period + craziness at work means I have my full range of stress symptoms back:

heartburn
GI trouble
heart palpitations
shortness of breath
hiccups
hives

I feel like my old boards-studying-self again!

As soon as I re-develop dermatographic urticaria, then it will be like being back in my clinical rotation. Oh, memories...

Stand back - you don't want to catch my CV.

The way I wrote, "because of my CV" in the last entry makes it sounds like some sort of chronic illness.

I think CV might be used more in the sciences, I'm not sure, but it stands for curriculum vitae, in case you didn't know. It's a résumé.

Wikipedia just taught me that curriculum vitae is Latin for "course of life" and résumé is French for "summary."
That makes CV sound pretty deep.

A rose by any other variety of its name?

A coworker just called me "Al!" and then added "-yson" because he didn't know if he could call me that.
I introduced myself as Alyson at work because that's what everyone was calling me before I got here because of my CV.
When I started med school I decided just to introduce myself as Aly to everyone because a lot of people end up calling me that anyway and at least it would be homogeneous then.  But now Mindy's at Jeff and she calls me Alyson so that mixes everyone up, but it would be weird to me if she called me anything else.
I never introduce myself as Al, but it works.  My sister calls me that much of the time and Lisa called me that through most of high school.  I also had a friend in the 6th grade named Maxxzina (a teacher asked her if her parents were playing Scrabble when they named her) who called me Al out of the blue.
I think of myself as Alyson, I think because that's what my mom calls me (when she's not calling me Gee, Scooch, or any of a variety of other nonsense words).
So Glen starts work in the office tomorrow and it takes a lot of work for him to not refer to me as Aly, so we'll have to see how the distribution changes over the next few weeks.

Now that it's December, time for a some Christmas decor on the blog.

I also bought some Christmas lights at CVS for the apartment... 20 lights that were supposed to be over 7 feet long, actually only have 4 feet with lights on them -- there's another 3 feet of just cord. So those aren't enough to decorate around the fireplace; I might bring them to work and light up our window. It would be nice to have something there when I gets completely dark out at 4pm.

Spent

When I first made my blog, it was because I was spending all day reading, studying, taking in as much as my brain could handle, and I needed an outlet and some place to generate something instead of just absorb. I needed to use my creativity.
Now, I spend almost all of my time writing and filling in spreadsheets (with enough reading to fill up every other free moment, let me assure you). But when it comes to the end of the day, I just don't have any more to give, writing wise. I often stay as far away from my computer as I can when I get home at night just because I'm sick of staring at a screen after 14 hours, which is very unusual for me. And whether it's trying to write an interesting introduction to entice someone to read the most boring article ever or just trying to remain social in my shared workspace, I am exhausting my creativity too.
I've been posting more of the articles I'm reading to the facebook because it's easier -- at least with the NY Times, there's a simple button. I think there might be something like that with Google Toolbar for blogger... If I can find that, more might start going up here.

I so want to live in a retirement village.

Coffee Crotch

This morning I had to go up to the hospital and bring Glen something so I stopped at ABP (that's Au Bon Pain, but Glen and I can't pronounce it even though he took like 4 years of French so use the abbreviation - thanks Mindy!) and got some coffee.  Back at my desk, I go to take my first sip and all of a sudden it's all over my pants.  So I figured a little must have spilt (I think that's a word) on the lid so I wipe it all off and try again.  AGAIN before the cup reaches my lips, I have coffee on my lap.  So I went to the sink and tried pouring some and low and behold, before it reaches the little sippy hole, it pours out from between the lid and the cup!  Even though it's tightly secured!  So I gave up on the lid and it's all good.
Then twenty minutes later my coworker comes back into our cubicle area and complains that she spilled coffee all over her pants this morning, there was something wrong with the cup.  I say Me too! and then all of a sudden she points over at my desk and says That same cup!  She had also gotten a large coffee from ABP this morning in the same Christmas themed cup.

So, beware of the large Christmas cups at ABP!  They will give you Coffee Crotch.  Or I guess Coffee Feet if you are standing.  The end.

Here's a map of honeymoon possibilities I've been working on... it should be interactive:


View Larger Map

216 days until 6/21!

http://www.attwheredoyoulive.com/index2.html

So disappointing...

How the Democratic Presidential debate last night in Las Vegas ended:

MODERATOR: Maria, would you stand, please?  Give us your full name.
AUDIENCE: Maria -- (inaudible) -- and I'm a UNLV student.  And my question is for Senator Clinton.  This is a fun question for you.  Do you prefer diamonds or pearls?
CLINTON: Now, I know I'm sometimes accused of not being able to make a choice.  I want both.
MODERATOR: Do we get to ask any of the other candidates or, I suppose, just Senator Clinton?
AUDIENCE: It's the only shiny thing up there.
MODERATOR: Okay, thank you so much.
MODERATOR: All right, so on that note, diamonds and pearls, I want to thank all of the Democratic presidential candidates for joining us here this evening.  Let's give them a big round of applause.

oh sorry, I should probably follow up to that Widener post...

I actually don't know very much, but it seems there was an anonymous threatening message written on a bathroom wall in one of the dorms.

Later that evening, they re-opened the campus with no explanation.

Glen thinks it was staged so they would have a reason to try out their new notification system where they email and text message everyone. My text message read:
SUBJ: EMERGENGY WARNING --- THREAT OF VIOLENCE
MSG: Report all suspicious individuals and activity to Campus Safety at 610-872-1392. Check email/web.

I'm not sure that was super helpful, since I would have to make it to a computer to find out I was supposed to stay where I was. But I guess it was a step in the right direction.

How do you get to be the artist in residence at a resort on St. John, in the U.S. Virgin Islands???

http://www.caneelbay.com/activities_watercolor.cfm

www.caneelbay.com

Main Campus of Widener University is closed Friday afternoon, November 9, 2007

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Public Relations Office <proffc@mail.widener.edu>
Date: Nov 9, 2007 2:08 PM
Subject: Main Campus of Widener University is closed Friday afternoon, November 9, 2007

All classes and activities scheduled for Friday, November 9, are cancelled.

Resident and commuter students should go home or stay in their rooms until further notice.

All non-essential personnel should go home or remain in their offices until further notice.

Widener University has closed the entire Main Campus on Friday afternoon, November 9 due to a threat of violence against university studetns and faculty.  The university issued an e2campus alert to the entire campus community.

Chester police are conducting an investigation including a sweep of campus.

I had some really odd dream about that chrome kaleidoscope.
It showed you something if you pointed it at... a light?  I can't remember :(

Addendum

also,
a tape measure
and 11 cents