Top Chef

I’m not sure why I like Top Chef on Bravo so much.  I don’t enjoy cooking, and given how restricted my diet is, food is not exactly my favorite thing to think about either.  I’m not a big fan of reality TV (though I did watch MTV’s Real World back in the day…) and have never seen most of the current popular reality shows.  I don’t like all the bickering and talking behind the backs on Top Chef.

But, I stumbled on a Top Chef marathon a couple of months ago, and I was hooked.  I do like the judging panel on the show a lot, and I like that they give a lot of constructive feedback and are gracious about it (most of the time!).  I also like the premise in a general sense — take people who are pretty good at something, and make them do crazy/extreme things within that realm and watch who shines!  (I guess it kind of reminds me of the Putnam Exam in math — a crazy, extreme, almost insane challenge and huge kudos to the people who thrive!)  And maybe that’s exactly it.  It’s the kind of competition that I like, where the inherent challenge comes from the task and not from other competitors.

Tonight is the season finale of Top Chef.  We’re down to two chefs.  So, you know what I’ll be doing at 10 p.m. tonight!

New Journey CD

I’ve been waiting so hard for the “A New Journey” CD by Celtic Woman to come out after seeing them perform on PBS in early December.  The CD came out today!!  I was at the store by noontime getting it!  I particularly love three tracks: The Prayer, Caledonia, and The Voice.  But it’s all pretty spectacular — a mix of Irish and spiritual and classical vocal music, sung by gorgeous voices.

Freelancing

Many times per year, I hear from someone that they need somebody to do just a bit of math for some project or research paper — or sometimes just because a problem is driving them crazy!  It’s like freelance math, but I wasn’t particularly inspired by that term, so I’ve started to say I do Random Acts of Math.  That sounds like me!

I had an opportunity today to help out some researchers in a non-scientific field who want to publish their research in a serious scientific journal, but the journal requires serious statistics to go with it, and they didn’t have the tools or knowledge they needed to do the stats.  So, they sat with me for five hours and we chatted and laughed (a lot!) while I did the analyses that they needed to go with their work.  It was a whole lot of fun.  They were so kind-hearted and grateful for the help.  And, I was so glad to have the opportunity to make a difference that brought such relief to their faces when it was all finished!

Let’s Talk about Books

It feels like things have been a bit heavy around this blog this week, so let’s lighten the mood and talk about books!

Per Jenn’s suggestion, I checked out the children’s book “Little Miss Spider” the other day — it is so cute!  And definitely a book that every adoptive parent (or prospective adoptive parent) should read.

Amie and Katy recommended a C.S. Lewis work to read — “Surprised by Joy” — and I was able to get that from the university library and am reading it now.  Lewis’ writing is not a quick read but I am enjoying getting to know his story.

I still have the Dating for Dummies book checked out, though I was mostly finished with it a couple of weeks ago.  Perhaps I think having it around brings me good karma. *giggles*

I finished up Dr. Robin Smith’s “Lies at the Altar: The Truth About Great Marriages” and will definitely purchase that book sometime because she has great communication exercises for people to do at any stage of a romantic/intimate relationship.  What a great resource.  She also has a list of 276 questions to talk about — everything from how you see gender roles in a marriage to whether you’d send a child to private school to how you feel about people just dropping by your house.  And she’s very clear that couples absolutely do not have to agree on all the answers (or even half the answers), but she strongly advocates an “eyes wide open” philosophy.  I like that idea a lot.  And some of the questions are things I’d never think to talk about but can see how they would eat away at a marriage or would come as a surprise (perhaps in a bad way) if people didn’t dialogue about them first.

I haven’t delved into the “Complete Book of International Adoption” book yet (perhaps a bit wary of how much it’s going to say about the challenges of the adoption process), but I will start that soon.

Read any good books lately?

Female Stuff

Earlier this week, I got a call from my ob/gyn’s office that my new insurance is not going to cover the Mirena device either.  If the Mirena works as it should, it would reduce bleeding (possibly by a lot) and also treat an ongoing problem with my uterine lining that has required biopsies and surgeries (and would, more than likely, require more surgery this year).  Seems like a no brainer that the Mirena would be covered!  But nope.  The office said it’s up to me, but at this point, they’d recommend just going ahead with it and having them fight hard with my insurance company to get it covered afterward.  They said it may end up that I’d have to pay for it myself.  And my first thought was that there’s just no way.  It’s too expensive.  But, I told them I’d think about it.

And then I started thinking about it another way.  How much is it worth to me to bleed less and have less risk of bleeding complications?  How much is it worth to me to probably avoid the continual menstrual cramping caused by the problems with my uterine lining?  How much is it worth to me to probably avoid biopsies and surgeries in the next few years?  And my answer was it’s worth a whole lot.  Avoiding the biopsies alone is worth a tremendous amount.

So I called them back this morning and made an appointment for February 16th.  I had to laugh at the date because I now have dental work scheduled for Feb 12th and my hematology appt on Feb 15th.  That’s going to be quite a week!  So much for avoiding getting poked and inspected…  But, my plan is that when it’s all over, I’ll curl up in my double fleece blanket with a pint of my favorite boysenberry sorbet and watch a pile of DVDs and just be thankful that the week is over.

Two

When winter decided to come to Michigan, it sure came with some gusto.  The wind chill is 2 (that is, two) degrees here right now on this bright, sunshiny Thursday afternoon.  Baby, it’s cold outside.

Teaching Thursdays #20

Every semester, I have a day when the tide shifts in class and it feels like everything gets better and it’s smooth sailing from then on.  I often refer to that as “hitting my stride” in class, like before then I wasn’t quite walking in step with the class — maybe a little unsure about if I was teaching the material effectively or if the students were getting it.  But once I hit my stride — and it’s quite obvious to me when that happens now – everything clicks.

For this semester, that day of the tide shifting happened a week ago.  I was set to lecture about standard deviation (the number that tells us how spread out data is).  About an hour before class, I was looking over my lecture and decided it wasn’t the lecture I wanted to give.  I didn’t have time to actually prepare a new lecture but I’ve lectured on this topic seven times before within the context of other courses, so it was very reasonable to just have in my mind the key points I wanted to make and wing it.

We had had three class days by then, and I felt like I wasn’t quite reaching this class.  They are so quiet.  But this day, with my lecture thrown out the window, I spent a lot more time looking at them, reading their faces, asking them questions, throwing questions from the class back at them, and it was just exactly what we all needed. 

Reality

I sometimes think that when I’m at the point where I am adopting children, I’m going to have to disown most of my extended family.  Or maybe I could just come up with some really good statements that will stop them in their tracks when they refer to biological children as someone’s only “real” children.  And adopted children are…?  It was shocking to me to hear that sentiment flow from them on Thanksgiving, and I should have said something, but I didn’t.  But I can’t be in that place of not saying anything when I have children.  It is too important.

A very long time ago, I heard about a Mom who had a mix of adopted and biological children and people would ask which ones were hers — and she’d reply “All of them!”  And they’d clarify (?!!!) that no, they meant which were hers and which were adopted.  And this wonderful Mom would say that gosh, she couldn’t remember!  I’m sure if the question had been asked from a place of sensitivity, she would have gladly given the answer they were looking for, but come on people!  I think if I were holding my child in my arms and someone implied the child wasn’t my “real” child, I would poke the child (gently) and say, “Gosh, but he/she seems so real to me!”  Or make some comment about how I always wanted an imaginary family!  What else can you say?!

Medical Update #531b

A couple of my friends have important medical appointments going on today, so I have medical stuff on my mind and thought I’d update y’all on medical stuff in my neck of the woods.

I saw my primary care doctor a few weeks ago.  He had a medical student working with him and I heard him say to the student, “Talk to Sandy for a few minutes; it will be interesting.”  Ha!  Always the “interesting” case.  The medical student asked me to tell him about my rare medical problems, and he listened to my stories and asked good questions.  I like to talk to medical students and at least open their eyes to the world of rare disorders — how long it can take to get diagnosed, how much medical stuff we have to deal with, how it’s not really a good thing to be the interesting case.  He thanked me for being so open with him.  My visit with my doctor was much shorter and consisted mostly of deciding to wait until spring to scan my kidney again (I have a little mass in there) and me saying “No really, I’m fine” because I have been doing well and have not been sick with illness at all yet this winter. *knock, knock, knock on wood!*

Next stop is my hematologist in a couple of weeks to talk about the test results that are trickling in from the NIH folks (which I’ve been dropping off to him).  And I suppose I’ll let him have some of my blood.  I’m a little pickier about being poked and inspected lately but I’m due for routine tests and we’ll probably also order a couple of specialized platelet tests just to rule out some additional problems.

One of my friends e-mailed me last week about how incredibly tired she is of deailng with medical stuff.  She was preaching to the choir here, as I never quite got over my sense of being on strike from medical things last fall.  I think maybe the next time a doctor wants to do a test on me, I’ll make them do some math first just to even things out.  *laughs*

Weekend rambling

This is a busy weekend for me, and I’m operating on a short night of sleep, but I got to dance last night, so I’m a happy camper! 

Friday night, I went to a college gymnastics meet.  I love watching gymnastics and despite having been at many meets in person now, I still can’t get used to the fact that the outcome of the meet — indeed the outcome of every single event and move — is not yet determined!  It’s nerve-wrecking, and a little scary, especially when you see a gymnast miss their hands on the vault or something.  Yeesh.  She was OK though!  And it really was a good meet for the home team.  Hooray!

Saturday night, I went to the infamous dinner-dance and debuted my pretty red top!  I danced for well over an hour straight and learned that I somehow went through my life completely oblivious to hip-hop music and am very out of touch with my generation because of this!  Not that I’ve ever really been in touch with my generation in terms of music anyway, but whatever…   The DJ did have us dance the Cha Cha Slide, so he is now my best friend forever.  *giggles*

And today, my childhood pastor visited our church for the first time in a long while.  I was somehow shocked that he didn’t look exactly the same as he did 20 years ago when I was confirmed!  It was good to see him, and I have this amazing sense of connection to voices from people I knew in childhood where just hearing them speak is very grounding.  It’s hard to explain.

I’m off to tutor some calculus shortly, but I want to leave you with two great blog reads.  One is that Andrea wrote the story of her son’s birth, which is moving and honest as her writing always is.  Also, my old friend Rob — who I reconnected with last winter after many years of having lost touch — has written a lot about his daughter Schuyler lately.  Powerful stories.