update

Jun 21:  91 degrees with isolated T-storms

argh!

Fox Forced to Address Michelle Obama Headline

June 12, 2008,  5:20 pm

Fox Forced to Address Michelle Obama Headline

By Jim Rutenberg

For the third time in less than three weeks, Fox News Channel has had to acknowledge using poor judgment through inappropriate references to Senator Barack Obama.

The network has released a statement saying it should not have referred to Mr. Obama's wife, Michelle, as "Obama's Baby Mama,'' as it did on Wednesday in an on-screen headline commonly called a "chyron."

"A producer on the program exercised poor judgment in using this chyron
during the segment," Bill Shine, a Fox News senior vice president, said in a statement.

The chyron appeared during a discussion between the conservative columnist Michelle Malkin and the Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly about political attacks against Mrs. Obama. It read in full, "Outraged Liberals: Stop picking on Obama's baby mama!" It was first publicized on Wednesday by Alex Koppelman of Salon.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as one "chiefly in African-American usage" that refers to, "The mother of a man's child, who is not his wife nor (in most cases) his current or exclusive partner."

Earlier this week, the Fox News anchor E.D. Hill had apologized for raising the possibility that the Obamas affectionate fist bump during the senator's victory rally in St. Paul on June 3 was "a terrorist fist jab.'' Two weeks prior, the Fox News analyst Liz Trotta said she regretted making a joke about a possible assassination of Mr. Obama.

Her mea culpa followed that of former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas a week earlier after he made a similar crack at a gathering of the National Rifle Association.

In other news, Fox News Channel announced today that it was hiring Mr. Huckabee as a contributor.

Going to the chapel..

Today was 10 days, tomorrow is 9 days!
I've gotten over that 'how is it so soon?!' feeling and now it's just a reality that we're getting married in about a week.  We basically had a dual-meltdown earlier this week, but I feel like we might be over it now. 
Tomorrow we are going to wake up early and actually go get our marriage license!  Then to the church to deliver it, along with my baptismal certificate, to the priest so he can do all this paperwork.  They need my baptismal certificate because it serves as proof within the church that I haven't been married before because they record every sacrament you receive on it, including the sacrament of marriage.  What we're not telling him is that this one was sort of legally forged... the church had no record of my baptism :-(  But we have photos and the vivid recollection of my Aunt (and godmother) Reenie who says I screamed the entire time.  So, based on our claims (they didn't even get to see the photos) they wrote me up a new baptismal certificate.  Who knew it was that easy!  (Apparently a lot of documents from that time period under that priest are missing, so it made sense to them).

Then we're going to get Glen a wedding ring!  I am going to use my great grandmother's, which I am very excited about.  Not only is it a family heirloom, but she and my great grandpa were so in love their entire lives that it's got to bring some good luck with it.  She was a redhead too!  We're talking about getting her wedding date along with our engraved on the inside -- June 21, 2008 and April 11, 1917 :-)

Then to another dance lesson.  Don't get excited people, we're just learning to not fall all over each other.

Then three hours of class.  Ignore that part.

OK, also, if you're reading this, you should join Twitter.  It's just like updating your away messages, but it get aggregated for people who are 'following' you kind of like a news feed.  You can update via the web, IM, or text message, and you can choose to have specific other people's updates sent to you those ways too.  You can have your twitter updates become your facebook updates so you don't have to do it twice.  You can update every five minutes or every five days.
The best part is your updates appear on my homepage!  That way when I log it, it's not just alternating updates from me and Glen.  (OK, and occasionally from Nate, Geoff, and Echo)  Come on, do it for me!  As a wedding present, even!  :-)  When you join, just look me up under redheadmed, 'follow' me, I'll get alerted and then I can follow you. DO IT.

Look how good the forecast is for the end of the next week!
...it just has to stay that way between now and then...

We are sooo close to having June 21 on the 10-day forecast!
http://www.weather.com/outlook/events/weddings/tenday/19147?from=36hr_topnav_wedding

Right now, Thursday is supposed to be 81 and sunny! Wouldn't that be perfect? (Anything below 95 sounds perfect after this week)

I haven't been writing a lot lately because life has gotten so insane. There is so much work to do and 99% of it Glen and I have to do ourselves.
I had my final fitting today and I thought it would be a lot more exciting... I think I was just stressed and really I was just trying on the same dress I tried on last week, not even fully hemmed. I still don't know what to do with my hair and as of this morning I am doing my own makeup, so I have to figure that out too. We really want to be enjoying this last week and a half before we get married, but there just isn't much going on to enjoy! Maybe it makes you enjoy the first weeks of your marriage all the more.

Social Studies Lesson

This is the coat of arms for the territory "British Indian Ocean Territory"

Multimedia message

Check this out... Isn't that the cleanest workspace you've ever seen? I'm almost officially moved out of my desk!

My computer is insulting me

My current targeted advertisement at the top of my inbox is a link to "Shop for Flat Chested Bras!"

Screw you, Gmail.

Sunny days are here again

oh my gosh look at the Philadelphia forecast!

http://www.weather.com/outlook/events/weddings/tenday/19147?from=36hr_topnav_wedding

90's and high 80's for all of next week!
I wonder if it will stay that hot through to the wedding?
It's amazing... you can already see June 11 on the 10 day forecast... the day when the wedding day will show up on the 10 day forecast!
Or will it be the 12th?  Well that's on the 10 day forecast too!

oh my god it's coming soooo soon!

Traditional (and logical) food pairings

http://www.culinate.com/mix/dinner_guest/nutritional_combinations

You Can't Hide That Tiger Pride

For some reason I think this is hilarious:
http://www.writeonpencils.com/cgi-bin/shopper.cgi?preadd=action&key=PNCL-SCND

You can buy other people's personalized pencils... some were overprinted, others have mistakes! If you weren't doing this for the humor, I'm not sure of the point. It does bring the cost per regular pencil down to 4 cents, but they're only 8.2 cents at Staples to begin with.

Anyway, what I'm saying is, this is what I want for Christmas.

IT'S FREAKING JUNE!

Holy Crap!  We're getting married in THREE WEEKS.

A little birdie said...

I thought I'd try Twitter to keep my blog a little more alive. I guess those updates won't go out to the two people who get emailed my entries or anyone who has me on a feed (does anyone?) but it will add some interest for anyone who makes the effort to click on the link in my GTalk profile.

I read this epic article from the NYTimes Magazine from this past weekend about this blogger who went on to gawker.com or something and how blogging ruined her life... it was very dramatic but the whole article read like another blog entry. Anyway, something she said stuck with me -- you write your blog and pretend that it's only your friends reading it. I know I had a mini freakout a few months ago when my blog was coming up on Google. But other than that, I pretty much assume that it's just my GTalk friends that make it here. I think I'm going to put a little survey up for a while to get a feeling for whether this assumption is totally off the mark.

Red Tape, White Dress

http://secureprod.phila.gov/wills/marriagelicense.aspx

It's an additional $10 to get a marriage license to wed a minor. 

I was supposed to have a kind of a bad day, and instead I chose to have a really good day :-)

So here I am, sitting up late doing this project with very sunburnt shoulders.

But, it was so worth it.

Today Glen and I went for our wedding cake tasting. I think it is one of the best wedding planning activities, especially if you don't happen to get stuck in two hours of Memorial Day weekend traffic on your way out to the burbs. (I left the good directions at home and instead we had to rely on our GPS which sent us probably technically the shortest way, but had us wait at about 1058 traffic lights instead of jumping on the Turnpike.)

In a nice juxtaposition, I also went to the dentist this morning. Let's just say I have more than one cavity. I'm kind of pissed off because I went to a different dentist in Philly last year and pointed out this one tooth that I thought had a cavity (excuse me, carie) in it and that guy said, oh no. This new guy showed me the X-Ray and it's taken over half of my tooth (some how it doesn't hurt at all). It was there already when I went to the last dentist and he didn't find it. I could have had it fixed a year and a half ago AND while I had dental insurance. Anyway, I'm not that upset because I'm rid of the dentist I didn't like and I've found a dentist I really like, so I'll all be taken care of in a couple of weeks for less than I spent on my wedding shoes.

Today is the 21st!  One month to go!  We're tying up the loose ends, but most of the planning is done.
Today is also the day that the response cards are "due" back... yet almost 80 guests haven't responded.  A bunch of people have told me that they are going to come, but I also need your dinner choices because we have to give them to the reception site sorted by table.  So if you're reading this, stick that card in its pre-stamped envelope!!!

I'm finishing up my lunch of a home-made turkey wrap.  There's a sandwich place by work, Tuscany Cafe, that Glen and I really like.  Everything is so fresh there and I actually feel good after eating instead of stuffed.  However, their wraps are $7.99 which makes it tough to stick to our budget.  So, I decided to make my own wraps.
First of all, the turkey cost $6.50 for the two of them.  Then, Glen and I bought two baggies of chips for 90c each that would have come free at Tuscany.  So I'm already up to $8.30 for two and I have yet to price out the rest of the ingredients... a scoop of guacamole from the batch glen made, fresh basil from the plant I bought, baby spinach, a tomato, dollop of garlic ranch salad dressing, and two slices of cheese.  So I'm not sure I saved any money at all.  And secondly, I had to wake up early to stand in the kitchen in my robe making these wraps before work.  They may only pay me $12/hr before taxes at work, but I value my sleep time at at least $50/hour. 

So my lesson learned is not that I should eat at Tuscany every day, but that I really can't afford my taste in food.


Some recommended reading:

I'm going to try to follow this over the summer:
http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/the-grand-tour-send-off/

Watch this crazy video, and then the New Yorker article if you have a lot of time on your hands:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/trapped-in-an-elevator-captured-on-video/

And I heard Lucian Leape, who is quoted in this article, speak at Jefferson on this topic a few weeks ago :)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/us/18apology.html?ref=health

Multimedia message

My days-until-the-wedding chain is down to its last bow.

How are you spending your next 14 months?

First, writing this May entry means that my archive will now have two Mays in it, and maybe it's time to change it so there are two year folders!  Very exciting.  Proof that I can jabber on for years at a time.

Second, we got our clinical schedules last week for next year.  At first I was really unhappy that my order was all screwed up, with Family Med and Internal Med at the very end of the year, after I will more or less have to choose between them.  But I've grown to appreciate that I got almost all of my first choice hospitals, let alone didn't get sent to Pittsburgh or York for a rotation.  Most of the people who are looking for people to switch are trying to get out of having to move across the state for a block. 

Then after we took the time to compare my schedule with Glen's we realized a miracle had occurred!  We requested a lot of rotations outside Philly... not so far that we'd have to move but definitely driving-only spots, like in DE and NJ.  Except, we only have one car between the two of us so we were taking the chance that we would have to drive in two separate directions.  It worked out that we alternate rotations that we need the car!  It's really perfect, and has convinced me not to try to mess with moving internal medicine and screwing everything up.

So here's my schedule so you can keep track of me for the next 14 months:

May 12 - Aug 8 - Summer Semester of Business School (overlaps Block 1 of med school that I did last year).
Block 2 - Psychiatry at Jefferson (I want to do the Geriatric Psych rotation)
Block 3 - General Surgery at the VA in Wilmington DE (no weekends and no call!)
Block 4 - Anesthesia and ENT at Jefferson
[Winter Break]
Block 5 - Ob/Gyn at Virtua West Jersey (the ppl I know who did it there are the basically the only ones who had a nice OB rotation)
Block 6 - Family Med at Jefferson
Blocks 7/8 - Internal Medicine with 4 weeks at Christiana in DE, 4 weeks at Jefferson, and 4 weeks back at Christiana.
That finishes up on Thur June 18, 2009.

Maybe Glen and I can go away to celebrate our first wedding anniversary :-)
Or, maybe we can start studying for Step 2.... that's way too far away for me to have to start worry about yet.