Various and Sundry

I had my 4 week weigh-in and fat percentage testing yesterday evening. I gained 2 pounds, and my body fat went up by 0.6 percent. My lean body mass, however, has increased by 0.1. I'm bummed that the numbers don't jive with the fact that my pants are getting loose.

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Claire: "Are you going to eat my brain?"
Sylar: "Claire... that's disgusting!"

I win. I told my kids he didn't eat their brains...

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I think for my future Wordless Wednesdays, I'll just put a blurb at the bottom of the picture to let you know where I took it. Or stole it from. :)

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I'm getting up the guts to talk to the Manager Who Doesn't Like Me to see if he'd be willing to allow me to swap jobs with another guy in our department. This guy wants a higher paying job, and I want to be able to do his job from home. I figure it would be worth the paycut, if I'm allowed to work from home. Since it's not currently an "at home" position, it will take some convincing. Wish me luck-- I'm going to try to talk to him on Thursday.

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And the most amazing news of all: My best friend Carol just found out she's expecting baby #4. What's so amazing about this, you ask? Well, she has some major medical problems that tend to mean you can't get pregnant. And regardless of this fact, plus the fact that birth control obviously didn't do its job, she is now expecting. The jaw-dropping component to this is that her youngest child is currently 15.

Can you even imagine???

I Did It Again

My workplace had a region-wide contest for their new campaign regarding making our hospitals all smoke-free. They wanted slogan ideas for their posters and whatnot...

I had run into a co-worker at the timeclock, and she asked me if I was going to enter the contest. I said I hadn't really thought about it, but she insisted that I should, as I always win contests at work.

So a few days later, I went ahead and submitted a slogan. I guess three other people had already submitted the same thing, and I was told I could try again and could submit as many entries as I wanted before midnight that night.

I decided to run with it, just for fun. The poor PR guy got like 20-30 submissions from me, some of them serious, some of them just for fun. (I think my favorite one was, "Every time you smoke, a puppy dies. Think of the puppies!")

I got a call this morning to go show up for some special meeting thing-a-ma-bob at 7:00am on Thursday to be presented with my award, as I seem to have placed in the top three entries.

Ah, it warms my heart. The type "A" personality part of me just got a good feeding. :)

Playing With the Boys

Kayla has been moonlighting as a keeper on my brother Dusty's soccer team. The unusual thing about this is that this is an all-men's league, ages 18 and up.

It's made for some interesting times.

Here's something from their last game:



After the crash, she seemed like she was hurting a bit. When she came in for half-time, I asked her if she was ok. She said yes, no problem. "Are you sure?" I ask. "Yes! I do have two built-in-airbags, you know." And off she went to play more soccer. :)


UPDATE: I have just found out about a contest on YouTube. If you’re interested, visit SanDisk’s Life Moves contest page and enter your video clip for a chance to win prizes (I entered this one!). Then, head over to 5 Minutes for Mom and enter their contest for even more prizes!

Yeeeessssss!

I have just found adventure!

At Applebee's.

In the kids' menu word search.

Insurance Intelligence

Yesterday I had to call my health insurance to ask about a claim. I had taken three of the girls in for annual physicals, and the benefits statements just showed up. For two of the girls, it was just the regular co-pay. For Violet, though, her urine test was an extra charge.

I asked why they paid for the other two girls' pee tests were covered, and Violet's wasn't-- they said that the visit itself had been coded as a "Preventative Exam", but that the pee test was coded with a diagnosis.

Me: "What is the diagnosis? All she had was a regular physical like the other two girls."
Insurance: "The diagnosis is for scoliosis. Therefore, it is not just a regular physical. That's why we didn't cover her urine test."
Me: "During the regular checkup, the doctor suspected that she might have scoliosis. It was just part of the checkup."
Insurance: "Then the doctor must have ordered the extra test because she had scoliosis."
Me: "Are you telling me that a doctor diagnoses scoliosis from somebody's urine?"
Insurance: silence
Insurance: "I'll send this claim back to be coded properly."

Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here

Ahoy, mateys! Greetin's from Pegleg Jackson. Batten down t' hatches, and prepare t' be boarded. It be....

International Talk Like A Pirate Day

So, be ye goin' t' join in t' fun today? Ye can land here t' search for yer pirate name. If not, jes' slink away like the scurvy dog that ye are. Arrrrr!

Ye best be learnin' t' be talkin' like a buccaneer, if'n ye know what's best for ye, ye scalliwag. Else it be Davy Jones locker fer ye!

(Yo, ho... yo, ho... a pirates' life fer me...)

You Say Po-tay-toh, I Say Po-tah-toh

My kids are always making fun of me because I pronounce the word "measure" differently than they do. I say, "may-zure" and they say, "mez-zure".

So in the cafeteria today, one of the managers was laughing because people were making fun of how he was pronouncing different words. He said, "It's because I grew up in Oregon." Hey, now... I grew up (mostly) in Washington. Maybe that's the missing link...? I asked him how he pronounced "measure". Guess what? It was "may-zure". :)

My official scientific experiment has proven to me that I suffer from "Pacific Northwesternism".

Dang... I should have asked him if he says "law-yer" or "low-yer". In the meantime, I've just resigned myself to saying "attorney" to avoid any further pronunciation embarrassment.

Wordless Wednesday

I Like It!

Black Boxing has exposed me to something in the blogging world I was heretofore unawares of... Wordless Wednesdays. I guess the idea is to post a photo of something that speaks for itself.

I like this idea.

I think I will start today by photographing something off my desk at work.

Happy Wednesday!

Working Woman

The Black Box has led me to many interesting blogs. I've been currently reading Joe's blog, who (from what I can tell) is a HR guy. This kind of sent me into thinking about the various interesting HR situations I've been in.

Like, when I was newly married, and 5 months pregnant-- "I'm sorry, but I can't hire you for this job because you're pregnant."

Or, upon giving my two weeks notice to the chauvinist computer store owner I worked for, said to me, "You know, the only reason Microsoft would hire you is because you're a woman."

My current manager wrote me up based on what someone told someone who told him what I did. This is also the same guy who tried to dictate what I could and could not do on my lunch break, and also tried to institute a dictated work schedule because I had "missed so much work". (I was off on FMLA for medical reasons, hello....?) He's also the one who delivers back-handed "compliments" like, "Suz was in charge of this project, but it turned out good anyhow."

I keep a comic strip up on my cube wall. It's in honor of the men who somehow think that my skills and knowledge are inferior, just because I'm a woman. Ha!


(Click on the comic strip to make it bigger...)