Tales from the Steppes

2005-03-11

11:34 a.m.
Saint Stephen with a rose, In and out of the garden he goes

So what am I excited about today?

Well, Under Armour has a brand new jogbra. This may seem pretty pathetic but when you have to deal with these things, you tend to pay attention to new releases from major players. And new products from Under Armour are always a good thing. I feel a trip to the factory store coming on.

My car is smelling significantly better now. I picked it up from the repair shop yesterday after the damage from one of the accidents was fixed to discover that the repair shop had cleaned and washed my car. What a lovely surprise! About a month and a half ago a glass bottle of chocolate milk exploded in the back of the car. I had cleaned as much of it up as I could and everything seemed to be ok. But then it got warm for a little bit and so my car took on a putrid odor. I tried many different ways to deal with it but had resigned myself to the thought of paying out some money to have it professionally cleaned. But now it is better. We will see if it stays that way next time the weather gets warm.

I have my training schedule worked out for doing a triathlon this May. While it seems like lunacy to try and add anything to my schedule, when you look at it on a daily basis, it is not so daunting. Famous last words.

The YM's school pictures came home this week and, as always, they are fabulous. Definitely a child that knows what to do when a camera is pointed in his direction. His teachers were so proud that they had worked on his hair and gotten it to lie down. Sort of. I am not sure why they thought I would want a picture of my son looking like someone other than himself. Fortunately they were not completely successful in their efforts to tame his hair so he still retains a bit of his own charm.

What am I not excited about?

Currently my doctors are in disagreement about the interpretation of my CT scans. My dentist, who has been handling all of my surgery for the last couple of years, says "Oh look at that infection, augmentin, some other antibiotic, drilling and cleaning." The ENT said "Gee, don't know. Looks like that mass is related to your dental stuff. But that shouldn't be causing your headache, you need to see a neurologist." I am not sure which to believe/follow. On the one hand, the ENT guy is a specialist and looks at this sort of thing all of the time. On the other hand, he has not been involved in any of my surgery, etc. The dentist has been involved and has never yet been wrong about his treatment recommendations. But, regardless of his surgery, he is not an MD.

I went to the professorial candidate's lecture last night and was completely underwhelmed. He didn't even put a decent Powerpoint presentation together and there is just no excuse for being that unprepared. He talked about some of his influences as a landscape architect - Isamu Noguchi, iconography, and a few others, as well as presenting a (very) few of his own works. It was incredibly mediocre but I thought I would at least ask a question to see if there was any depth to any of his interests. Since I am not a Noguchi scholar, I picked iconography to query him on. And I threw him a softball, to try to get him to expound upon his stated interest. But he didn't run with it. Very disappointing. I did manage to convince many of the other students to wait until all three candidates had presented before being too critical in their viewpoints, so we will see.