Pi Girl

Since Janice has been obsessed with the Travel IQ I posted the other day, I thought I would share this one that I got from Amy B. She posted her score, so here’s my lame score.

53

Um, in my defense, it took me about 30 seconds to realize how to play. And how they wanted to name the U.S. Yeah, that’s my story …. even if I did blank out anyway for the last 14 seconds, I’m sure I could have named more.

There are lots of short nothings in my head, so you’re getting a random post. Aren’t you lucky?

- I am oddly really affected by Heath Ledger’s death. I say oddly because while I admire Heath’s talent as an actor and enjoyed him thoroughly in Brokeback Mountain and 10 Things I Hate About You, I can’t say he was my favorite actor or all that noticeable in my small world. Maybe it’s because it came out of nowhere. After all, when you hear that a young celebrity has died and drugs may have been involved, he’s not the first person I would think it would be. And maybe it’s the whole he’s 28 and really close to my age thing. Either way, it’s a huge loss for the film world and my heart and prayers go out to his family and friends. And I really like this tribute from Ellen.

- So, we had this huge meth bust in Chemung County. And the Star-Gazette put up this awesome photo gallery of all the people they arrested. As it turns out, I kind of know one of the people they arrested. And by know, I just mean she was my favorite waitress at Friendly’s. For a while, Michelle and I would go there every week after Crystal Chords rehearsal and she always recognized us and was a great waitress. I would lovingly refer to her as “crackhead” and now I know why. It wasn’t the crack she was on, but the meth. Awesome. I always tipped her well too. It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling when I know where my money is going.

- If you’re looking for gift ideas for your in-laws, I highly recommend the board game, Loaded Questions. Hilarity will ensue. It helps when Jason is playing anyway. Or Jason’s mom, who thinks she went to a place of worship 1,460 times last year and said she would go back in time to November 23, 1963 to bring body armor to JFK. I told her I wouldn’t let her live those down.

Seeing how I just got from traveling to Maryland this weekend, I thought I’d test out my Traveler IQ.

I only made it to Level 6 with an IQ of 93, which is farther than I thought I would get but I bet I could do better if I had a faster computer. I’ll try again tomorrow when I’ve woken up and gotten over the embarrassment of thinking Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago was in Spain. (And yes, the game mocked me terribly.)

I just had a planning meeting last night for the 30 Hour Famine coming up that St Matthew’s is participating in. We will be famining Feb. 22-23. And I am asking you to consider sponsoring me.

Last year, I bombarded my readers with so many solicitations for various charities, I didn’t ask for donations to World Vision. But I’m 30, the acts of kindness are done and over with, so here I am, asking for money.

This is a cause near and dear to my heart because it’s near and dear to the kids’ heart. If you’d like to read about how inspiring these kids are during the Famine, you can read about my experiences in 2007 and 2006.

Part of me feels weird asking for sponsorships because I will not actually fast myself (how many times can I mention diabetes on the blog this month?). But I will be there as a chaperone/driver/champion for the kids and help them reach their goal and learn more about how hunger and poverty can affect not just kids halfway across the world, but also in our own community.

So, please help me support this cause. Even if it’s just $1, I’ll take it. Although, if you’re feeling generous, $10 or $20 would be fantastic. According to the 30 Hour Famine site, $30 will feed a kid for a month. It’s just a suggestion. If I see you before Feb 22, you can give me money or if not, email me and I’ll send you the snail mail address to mail a check.

The starving kids for 30 hours at St Matthew’s thank you.

Apparently, my body has decided that since the last 2 Januarys were spent in pain (stupid f’ing skin infections), this year should be no different. I really need to work on convincing myself that this is one tradition we really don’t need to follow every year.

Anyway, I have been unable to walk since Friday because my heel is not a happy camper. I can’t put any weight on it and I’m limping around like an idiot. If you were to look at the foot, you would think I’m crazy because it looks just fine. But because it’s my foot and the whole diabetes thing, I figured I’d better get to the dr pronto. So, this morning she took one look at me and sent me to x-ray.

And, congratulations, I have a heel spur!

And because I’m sick like that, I thought I’d share with you the x-ray of my foot. Here’s the foot:

The spur is a little hard to see in the cellphone shot so I moved the phone closer and got this lovely shot:

As I told my physician upon seeing that image, “that is EXACTLY what it feels like.” So, yea, I have to see an orthopedic surgeon in March. In the meantime, I’ve got a heel insert in my shoe; thank God for Dr. Scholl.

This just amused the heck out of me …

How evil are you?

As I’ve mentioned about a zillion times in the last few months, I am loving the music of local artist Jana Losey. She totally rocks. I’ve even gotten to attend 2 of her house concerts over the border in Lawrenceville, PA.

And speaking of her house, I noticed the scenery is looking awfully familiar in Jana’s latest music video that is coming off the new cd, due out in March. Check it out …

Did I mention I have an in and I already have this cd? And it is on heavy rotation on the ipod.

So the blogosphere has deemed today DeLurker Day. For the uninformed, that means if you lurk around a blog but never comment, you’re supposed to delurk and post a comment, saying “hi” or whatever your heart desires.

The concept is intriguing to me because I am intensely curious about who some of you are that show up on my site meter very regularly but never comment. Obviously, you love me (or are at least not annoyed by me) because you keep coming back. And I have some educated guesses but they remain just guesses. So for that reason, part of me would like to declare that I want all my lurkers to delurk.

But, here’s the thing: I am a notorious lurker. All those blogs on my sidebar; I don’t comment on any of them. Well, except for Janice’s. And there are about 10 more blogs I don’t even link to for fear that they might find out I read them (because heaven forbid they might find me and read me or want more traffic even; we wouldn’t want that now, would we?).

I couldn’t really tell you why I don’t comment. I think it’s the introvert in me. Yeah, I know it’s the Internet and I could do it all anonymously or with a fake personality, but I guess I just assume that the me in Internetland is the me in real life. And I am horrible about meeting new people and making new friends. It’s the scariest thing for me to do sometimes and it’s bad enough my job is 75% about the networking. So, it’s easy to fall into the safe pattern of reading blog conversations without actually commenting myself. Sometimes I comment in my head, but it just never reaches the keyboard.

So I feel way too hypocritical about asking lurkers to come out on my own blog when I am a lurker myself. However, if you want to delurk yourself, I’m not stopping you. Feel free to say “hi” or “you rock” or “you suck,” it’s all good. In the meantime, I’m going to lurk on some more blogs and see who I have the courage to delurk myself to.

Since it’s a new year and all, I’m going to try this thing called taking care of myself. I’m pretty sure I say this every year, but I’m inspired by the New Year resolution thing and for some reason, I seem to think I might be able to keep this up. I also had a positive doctor’s appointment last week that indicates that my diabetes is doing slightly better since I ditched the pump and that had me feeling psyched enough that maybe I ought to take that extra step to actually get in control.

So, Amy B pointed me towards a site called Tu Diabetes. It’s a MySpace type of site, only you identify yourself as a diabetic or a loved one of a diabetic. And hey, look at all the new friends you can make who know exactly what you’re going through. I’m not really one to be a dLife blogger, but I have told my secret weight loss blog buddies that I will be focusing more on the diabetes and hoping the other health issues fade away in the awesomeness that is good blood sugar control.

In the meantime, I added this fun badge to my sidebar so random visitors who find me by googling diabetes can check it out and find the resources they were probably really looking for:

View my page on Tu Diabetes - A Community for People Touched by Diabetes

That was pretty much the mantra in my head while I wrote my column for this week.

Short version - I wrote a list about why we shouldn’t have year-end lists.