arieswytch

Recently, FedEx created a website which is supposed to tell you that UPS is seeking a bailout from the government. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. ( Cut because I realize that not everyone wants to read political shit )

 There is a bill currently in the House of Representatives that needs your help.  It is HR 741, Lyme & Tick-Borne Disease Prevention, Education & Research Act of 2007.  This bill was introduced into the US House of Representatives on January 31, 2007 by Congressman Christopher H. Smith (NJ). The bill is identical to last year's House bill (HR 3427) except for updated dates in the bill.  Lyme disease desperately needs the $100 million over 5 years that this bill provides for research, physician education, prevention, and task force formation.  Click on the link to get information on the Smith/Stupak bill, (history, co-sponsors, who to contact).

http://www.lymediseaseassociation.org/HR741/HR741.html

the Romantic Test finished!

you chose BY - your Enneagram type is FOUR. "I am unique" Romantics have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive. How to Get Along with Me Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me. Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself. Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision. Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little. Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting! What I Like About Being a Four my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level my ability to establish warm connections with people admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor being unique and being seen as unique by others having aesthetic sensibilities being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me What's Hard About Being a Four experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved feeling guilty when I disappoint people feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me expecting too much from myself and life fearing being abandoned obsessing over resentments longing for what I don't have Fours as Children Often have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original game s are very sensitive feel that they don't fit in believe they are missing something that other people have attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc. become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce) Fours as Parents help their children become who they really are support their children's creativity and originality are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings are sometimes overly critical or overly protective are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele The Enneagram Made Easy Discover the 9 Types of People HarperSanFrancisco, 1994, 161 pages You liked the test? so please RATE it :-) You are not completely happy with the result?! You chose BY Would you rather have chosen: AY (EIGHT) CY (SIX) BX (NINE) BZ (FIVE)

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 27% on ABC You scored higher than 52% on XYZ

Link: The Quick and Painless ENNEAGRAM Test written by felk on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

You Are 22% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well. In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

arieswytch took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Needs release from stress. Longs for peace, tranqu..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

You are the Hermit card. The Hermit has chosen a
solitary spiritual path. He shines light on his
inner self and, by this means, gains wisdom.
The Hermit's home is the natural world and it
is by being in tune with that world that he
learns the laws of nature and learn how they
operate within himself. His path is a lonely
one as he lives in silence and has for
companionship only his own internal rhythms.
But those crossing his path are touched by his
light and wisdom. Though often alone, he
manages nevertheless to instruct those who meet
him and guides those who chose to follow him on
a path towards enlightenment. Image from The
Aleister Crowley Tarot deck.
http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/thoth/


Which Tarot Card Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Well, I just got home from my very first golf lesson. A guy at my office volunteered to teach me. They have this whole golf club/tournament thing at work. The guy who's teaching me actually just started last year and everyone says he learned really fast and he should be a good teacher for me. I guess they were right, because I didn't do half bad my first time out.

We started by going to a golf shop where they sell used clubs and old store demos. I got a 7 iron for $15 and a glove for $10. The club has the name "Big Bertha" on it :) So, then we went to the Darlington golf course to hit a few at their driving range. We split a medium bucket, which lasted us about 1/2 hour. That was enough time the first time out for me :) I was using muscles I didn't know I had, and my right elbow is a little sore, but it was fun. I didn't get a lot of distance, only 2 went out to the 75 yard marker, but most of them were pretty straight. My friend says that in the beginning, straight is more important than distance. He also said that I was doing very good for my first time out.

I'm finding out that golf can be a very expensive sport. The club I got was a used demo from last year's line. The current line full set of irons, which is about 9 clubs, runs $900. A medium bucket of balls cost us $9. I can see this adding up very quickly. At least it gets me out of the house, though :) We'll see if I stick with this one.

Your brain: 45% interpersonal, 25% visual, 20% verbal, and 10% mathematical!

Congratulations on being 100% smart! The above score breaks down what kind of thinking you most enjoy doing. It says nothing about how good you are at any one, just how interested you are in each, relatively. A substantial difference in scores between two people means, conclusively, that they are different kinds of thinkers. Matching Summary: Each of us has different tastes. Still, I offer the following advice, which I think is obvious: Don't date someone if your interpersonal percentages differ by more than 50%. Don't be friends with someone if your verbal percentages differ by more than 60%. Don't have sex with someone if their math percentage is over 50%. Update, April 2005: Try my new test, the 3-Variable Purity Test.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 88% on interpersonal You scored higher than 38% on visual You scored higher than 22% on verbal You scored higher than 11% on mathematical

Link: The 4-Variable IQ Test written by chriscoyne on Ok Cupid

Now people have to believe me when I tell them that I'm "sweet and innocent" :)

Mostly Innocent You are 79% pure

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 93% on purity

Link: The 100 Point Sexual Purity Test written by ocicat on Ok Cupid

Your Brain is 46.67% Female, 53.33% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

OK, I haven't updated in a while, so this it going to be long. I've separated this into topics so you can skip what you want :)

Surgery:

I'm healing very well from my surgery in August. I still have some occasional soreness from the incision, but it gets less and less every day. There seems to be a bit of a ridge in one section of my scalp along the incision line, but that is going down. I still don't have complete feeling back in one area of my scalp, but it's getting better. I was told that I may never get complete feeling back there, but I'm still hopeful. The surgeon did say that it could take 6 months to a year to get all feeling back. I'm at the 6-month mark today, so we'll see how things go. I did end up buzzing my hair after I got the stitches out, but it's growing back in nicely. It's still too short to actually part, so I am not sure yet whether the shaved area is fully growing in yet, but it seems to be from what I can tell. My hair seems to be growing at an average of 1/2 inch a month. At this rate it will take about 2 years to get it back to where it was before the surgery.

Work:

Well, the system I support went through a major upgrade in October. It didn't go very well, to say the least. We're still dealing with issues from this. It's not as hectic as it was for the first 2 months, but there are still a lot of issues to deal with. Luckily, I now get paid for overtime. I am still on salary, but if I work more than 40 hours in a week, I do get time and a half. Of course, I'd rather have the stock bonuses that higher-level management gets, but I'll take the overtime since I can't have the stock bonus.

School:

Well, another semester over and a new one just begun. Last semester was tough. I only took 2 classes, but it seemed like a lot of work. I didn't do quite as well as in previous semesters. I got an A- in my Networking class and a B+ in my Social Psychology class. That dropped my GPA a little, but I'm still on track to graduate with honors. This semester I am taking 3 classes, Computer Law and Ethics, Marketing Principles and Practice, and Civil Rights. It's going to be a lot of work again this semester, but I think I'm up to it. At least the classes all seem like they're going to be interesting. That should help. Hopefully, if all works out as planned, I should graduate in Spring of 2006. There's finally a light at the end of the tunnel. Most of my life has been put on hold to an extent because of school, but it will be worth it. At this point, I just want to be done.

Well, that's it for now. I have to go and do a lot of reading for school now.

I went to see the surgeon yesterday (Friday) and my stitches all came out!!! YAY!!!! The stitches in my head were a very large gauge. They hurt coming out, and they looked like springs. So, I was allowed to shower today. That was WONDERFUL! I don't realize how much I take showers for granted until I can't take one for a week. I was using baby wipes all week to clean up with. They worked okay, but the shower today was really nice. So, I'm going to have my head shaved tomorrow. There is a very obvious shaved line in my hair, so I'm just gonna make it consistent and let it grow in even and healthy. I'm gonna try to save the hair so I can send it to Locks of Love. So, it's back to work on Monday (yuck). I've been enjoying lounging around this week. I really need to hit the lottery so I never have to work again :) But, until that day, it's back to the daily grind. Oh well, I'll live.

My Inner Hero - Wizard!





There are many types of magic, but all require a sharp mind and a cool head. There is no puzzle I can't solve, no problem I can't think my way out of. When you feel confused or uncertain, you can always rely on me to untangle the knots and put everything back in order for you.



How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.

OK, so here is my first official post :)

I went in for my surgery on Friday. For those of you who don't know what was going on, I had to have a frontal sinus obliteration done. This was a result of an incident in February. I had a sinus infection that abcessed into my left eye socket. This could have killed me if it had not been caught in time and had gotten to my brain. As it is, at the time of surgery there was still a 50% chance I would lose my sight in that eye. Luckily that didn't happen.

So, the first surgery, and eye decompression, caused the muscle on the side of my eye to shift so that it is now blocking off the passage that the frontal sinus uses to drain. So, the sinus has no drainage path and was completely full. In order to prevent another abcess, I had to have this second surgery. Basically, they turned it into a non-functioning sinus.

If you're squeamish, you may want to skip this next part.


I went into the operating room Friday morning at around 8 a.m. They sliced my scalp from ear to ear, pulled down the skin, and sawed into the bone in front of my sinus. They emptied it out and then used a drill to clean out all of the tissue that makes the mucus. They took a little fat from my belly (I tried to convince them to take extra, but that didn't work) and packed the sinus cavity so I don't have an air pocket in my skull. Then they put the bone back and attached it with a couple of small wires and sewed my skin back on.


I was in recovery at around 1 p.m. but I had a bad reaction to the anesthesia and didn't get to my room until about 4:30. I had a male nurse named Rich that afternoon, and he was very nice. There was a med student in the surgery, and she was there all night, too. She checked in on me several times overnight.

I got to go home Saturday afternoon, and Mom is staying with me 'cause I can't put the bacitracin on my scalp myself. I'm still sore and swollen, but the stitches are healing well. They may come out on Wednesday when I have my follow-up with the surgeon. So now it remains to be seen how much of my hair they had to shave. I can't tell right now with the bandages. If I have a very obvious shaved line in my hair, I will probably just shave it all off and donate my hair to Locks of Love. We'll see.