sometimes at the gym i think, "thank god i have eyebrows."

sometimes at the gym i think, "thank god i have eyebrows."

i am often in amazement these days about how little i really understand and how thankful that so many people before me have gone through the same thing. most importantly, my parents.

spring, yes! i love you.

instead of getting your moms/grandma's/mother-in-laws a box of candy or flowers this year, giving them something that will change the lives of others and last a whole lot longer than a a week!



http://www.oxfamamericaunwrapped.com/home.php?xid=4b802b9638867fa30141a677d13939b6

oxfam, a non-profit group, gives a gift to communities in need of education, food and a sustaining income (goats, chickens, irrigation) and a card explaining the donation, goes to your mom! think about it!

it's so good to be back but so sad to be gone.

2 more days until i board a plane to florida!

and i don't.

i'm going to wish upon a start that i get into suny oswego's free graduate class this summer. it's a graduate drawing class. FREE.

wishing wishing wishing!

i'll worry about how this affects my job after i figure out if i made it in...

3 weeks of 9:30-2:30, plus 40 hours of work? hmmm.

there are a lot of things that i wish i could change about myself but my smile isn't one of them. praise jeebus for my straight shinin' teeth.

i'm getting an IUD on monday and am curious if any of you females have ever had one and if so, how much it cost? i have insurance.

OH, SNAP. NKOTB TODAY IN SYRACUSE.

so i've been having some face break-out issues which i think are mostly due to stress (my job and lack of monetary funds) and a severe winter climate my body was totally not expecting. i'm doing the dermatology, topical deal, which has helped a little but not 100%. i did pro-active for about 4 years but it just lost its luster and stopped being effective. i'm searching for a make-up that won't make me break-out further and is sensitive enough to stand all the medicines i'm using.

i was also wondering if any of you ladies or drag-queens have ever tried bare minerals and if you think it lives up the hype?

i really need a less stressful job, for rlz.

every day this week it's been like pulling teeth getting out of bed to come to this. i'm sick of listening to depressed, angry people all day.

for rlz. ::huge sigh::

Gov. Jindal Follow-up: What Is 'Volcano Monitoring'?

President Obama's speech on the economy last night, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal criticized government spending in the stimulus bill, citing examples including "$140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring.'"


The $140 million to which Jindal referred is actually for a number of projects conducted by the United States Geological Survey, including volcano monitoring. This monitoring is aimed at helping geologists understand the inner workings of volcanoes as well as providing warnings of impending eruptions, in the United States and in active areas around the world where U.S. military bases are located, such as the Philippines.


Among the scenarios in which the USGS's monitoring can assist - the catastrophic eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, which killed 57 people (including a geologist monitoring the mountain) and was the deadliest and costliest volcanic eruption in U.S. history ($2.74 billion in 2007 dollars). This event was preceded by thousands of earthquakes in the two months before the volcano blew its top; some of these prompted the Governor of Washington to declare a state of emergency and many residents were evacuated from a designated danger zone.


About 50 volcanic eruptions occur around the world every year, according to the USGS. The United States ranks third, behind Indonesia and Japan, in its number of historically active volcanoes (those for which written accounts exist). Most U.S. volcanoes are located in the Aleutian Islands, the Alaska Peninsula, the Hawaiian Islands, and the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, with the rest distributed around the West.


About 65 volcanoes in the United States are considered active; most of these are in Alaska, where an eruption occurs almost every year. Hawaii's Kilauea volcano is one of the most active volcanoes on Earth and has been erupting continuously since 1983.


The USGS has three volcanic observatories - in Alaska, Hawaii and the Cascades - set up to monitor volcanoes for signs of impending eruption.


USGS scientists are currently monitoring Alaska's Mount Redoubt, which has been threatening to erupt since late January. Seismic rumblings from the volcano have alerted geologists that magma might be moving around underneath the surface, preparing to make a potentially explosive appearance. Redoubt last erupted on December 14, 1989, for the fourth time in the 20th century, creating large ash clouds that clogged the air around Anchorage for days.


In addition to listening for rumbling of the Earth, researchers survey the surfaces of volcanoes, map volcanic rock deposits, and analyze the chemistry of volcanic gas and fresh lava to detect warning signs of eruptions and to determine what type of eruption is most likely to occur.


The USGS has issued several warnings over the past 10 years, though predicting the timing and size of eruptions remains a difficult task.


Volcano monitoring likely saved many lives - and significant money - in the case of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines (where the United States has military bases), according to the USGS.


The cataclysmic eruption lasted more than 10 hours and sent a cloud of ash as high as 22 miles into the air that grew to more than 300 miles across.


The USGS spent less than $1.5 million monitoring the volcano and was able to warn of the impending eruption, which allowed authorities to evacuate residents, as well as aircraft and other equipment from U.S. bases there.


The USGS estimates that the efforts saved thousands of lives and prevented property losses of at least $250 million (considered a conservative figure).


Volcanoes, of course, aren't the only potential natural disaster that scientists monitor to give people warnings of imminent danger. Hurricanes, tornado-producing storms, earthquakes, tsunamis and flooding events are also watched and forecast.


While those predictions can result in mitigating the damage and losses that result from natural disasters, the research is only useful in a practical sense for residents if authorities pay heed to it. For instance, in the case of Hurricane Katrina, the Natural Hurricane Center was watching the situation like a hawk, but the subsequent preparations and responses by authorities was insufficient to prevent wholesale destruction of large parts of New Orleans and the loss of more than 1,800 lives.


Jindal's comment comes at a time when President Obama has pledged to return science to the White House, an effort widely applauded by scientists who felt shunned by the previous administration.


The criticism of government funding of scientific research was similar to remarks made last fall during the presidential campaign by vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who was dismissive of fruit fly research.

i hope i know what it's like to one day have a job that i look forward to in the morning. a job that pays me enough to LIVE.

i'm operating on a level that works a bit like this: receive paycheck, pay rent, electric, internet, car insurance, buy gas, buy groceries. and that's it. no extra, ever. on a good week i have 10 dollars left over to buy myself a cup of coffee or a treat for lunch every two weeks. i don't have money for winter clothes, work clothes, to fix my car, go out on a date, buy a beer once and a while with some people from work. last night i was invited out but didn't go because it made me so upset that something so simple is completely out of my reach. i'm behind on rent so i could buy groceries. i'm behind on electric so i could pay for rent.
it's absolutely daunting. i'm just exhausted! lots of exhale with very little inhale. i'm applying for some social service help with my electric bill, hopefully that's fruitful and i qualify.
behavioral/mental health isn't exactly the easiest field to work in. i would be able to justify the urgency, the 30 voice-mails to return every day, the terrible stories that i listen to (i'm depressed, i don't sleep, i don't eat, i see my rapist in the corners even though he's dead, my father raped me all the time, i see things, i hear things, i my boyfriend beats me, i drink, i feel like i'm going to die, my kids are autistic, everything is out of control, the ever crippling effects that poverty has on our clients...) if i was actually able to go out of my house once in a while--to a place that's not work, grant's work, or the gym, because i'm stressed.

i crawled into bed with peanut and harvey and just sat still, all evening. getting the heartbreaking blow i got last week from grant was hard enough to deal with. i'm lucky i've got my head above water on that issue. i'm not sure how but i am.

it's no wonder people in poverty have shorter life expectancies.

Girl hurt while sledding at Westcott Reservoir
by Robert A. Baker / The Post-Standard
Saturday January 10, 2009, 4:33 PM
Li-Hua Lan / The Post-StandardSyracuse police investigate the scene of a sledding accident at the Westcott Reservoir today.

A girl was injured when the snow tube on which she was sliding crashed into a parked car. The girl was taken to University Hospital.
SYRACUSE, NY-- A 12-year-old girl snow tubing at the Westcott Reservoir was critically injured this afternoon when she collided head-first with a parked car, Syracuse police said.

The girl suffered a head injury and was taken into emergency surgery this evening, Sgt. Tom Connellan, speaking for Syracuse police, said.

"A kid was flying down and somehow couldn't stop," witness Mark Gasowski, 12, of Marcellus, said.

The girl slid into a parked Hyundai Sonata parked at the bottom of the reservoir hill on South Orchard Road, striking it in the left front quarter panel just in front of the driver's door.

"She hit her head," Gasowski said. "It was the loudest noise. It sounded like a hammer hitting wood only 40 times louder."

The tube she was sliding down the hill on "just popped" on impact, Gasowski said.

Gasowski said the girl began her run at the top of the hill by the fence surrounding the reservoir itself. On the fence are posted signs that read "No Sledding" and that are readable from the bottom of the hill. There were about 100 people sledding on the hill about 15 minutes after the 3:30 p.m. accident.

Syracuse police are investigating the accident. Police on the scene declined to give any information on the crash.

The girl lost consciousness after hitting the car, according to a 911 Center radio broadcast and was taken by ambulance to University Hospital.

my grandma is hurting. she slipped and fell outside getting from her car to the front door yesterday. i'm assuming it was an ice slip up. she broke her hip and had to lie there like that until her neighbors found her. i just keep thinking about her in the snow, freezing and helpless. i feel so guilty about it. she broke her right hip.

my grandma's such a fighter. she refuses to reveal her real age but my mom and i have deduced 85-86? based on her childrens ages. she has lived in the same house since her children were born. my dad is 56 and he is the middle child. she still shovels her own drive-way. she takes care of her ageing sister (she is the youngest of 13, mostly dead) every weekend. she refuses help from anyone and only recently was on any medication her whole life. she had breast cancer, had her breast removed and told absolutely no one-not her husband, siblings or three young boys knew.

the words "nursing home" were uttered. i want to cry just thinking about it. my grandma and i aren't particularly close in the way that my mom and i are. she's critical of me but i know she loves me. she is that way towards everyone. she's stalwart and reserved and it's often hard to gage what she's thinking.

her concern is my concern: independence. my aunt and uncle are searching for places for her to rehabilitate. her house contains stairs and she wouldn't be able to get up and down. my grandma may be old but her faculties or in tact. she's not incompetent. i could slip on ice just as easily. the difference being that her bones are more brittle because of age. i certainly think a house aide would be a better solution than putting her in a home. it just makes me sick to my stomach and i'm willing to fight on this issue.

every time i pass the blown-out neon sign that read "le muffler" it makes me giggle.

who knew muffler repair shops could be so...french?!