Two nice products

In the recent weeks I've tried these two products and give both favorable reviews:

Glacéau Vitamin Water
Am not a big fan of their site, but Vitamin Water is da bomb. I discovered it one day in my never ceasing quest for a low carb alternative to juice. (Let me tell you, it's been hard to give up my Tropicana Pure Premium) I was heading to class and wanted the taste of juice but not the nearly 40 grams of carb per cup. The only viable option was vitamin water, with 13 grams per serving. That day I tried a flavor that was described as "orange orange" (I thought it was called essential but that one is listed on the site as orange carrot). It was very light yet still nice and quenching. I was hooked! Since then I've also tried stress-b (lemon-lime), revive (fruit punch), power-C (dragonfruit), and energy (tropical citrus). They are all good except for the dragonfruit which we named "dragon urine". We are now splitting a bottle of this at the gym every morning (1.25 servings each). Here's the best part: for all you messy people out there, if you spill Vitamin Water on you you do not get sticky! I was on the train the other day and had a little mishap all over my hands. I panicked because I had no tissue on me. But lo and behold a minute later the water dried up and there was no stickiness at all. It really is just water! Oh, I guess the vitamins are a good thing too. :-p

Bioré Blemish Fighting Ice Cleanser
They had a sale of these at the local Pathmark and in a moment of weakness (PMS) I picked up a bottle. Boy am I glad I did. This stuff did wonders on two permanently clogged pores I had with just one application. It kind of smells like rotten grass and it tingles quite strongly on your face, but those minor inconveniences are worth it. My skin looks much better now. Since the active ingredient, salicylic acid (check it out, we're learning all that stuff in Chemistry right now!), is the same thing which removes warts, I try not to use it every day so that I don't dry myself out. But for now, I am a very big fan. I wonder: as long as I am acting like a teenager will my skin continue to do the same?

Voices in my head

Ok so I found this site trying to figure out if I was spelling veinticuatro correctly.

Go into the program and then scroll your mouse really quickly over all the numbers.

Doesn't that sound freaky as all hell?? "Mami, the voices are telling me to kill people . . ."

Next time I'll find a dictionary, thanks.

Good news, bad news

Bad news: I got food poisoning from my arroz con pollo on Tuesday.
Good news: I lost 4.5 pounds in a day.
Bad news: I am now obsessed about keeping as much of that water weight off as I can.

Moral of this story:
Do NOT eat chicken that has been thawing in the fridge for more than a day.
Do NOT misread the recipe and use three times as much oil as you needed.
Do NOT make tostones with old, reused oil.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Actually, this post will have nothing to do with the book. Ok, I will mention that they are filming a movie about it! It's about time. I guess there will be life after the Lord of the Rings movies. I thought I'd never look forward to a film again.

Anyway, so I found out this weekend that I'm a hitchhiker. Well, I've at least got good thumbs for it. Kind of like these:


I also found out, the hard way, that while these thumbs may be good for some things they are BAD for clarinet playing. It makes positioning your fingers correctly extremely difficult since your right thumb tends to contort under the weight of the instrument. ARG!!

It was quite discouraging when my husband who is straight thumbed was able to better finger the notes I was trying for. He had never even touched a clarinet before! I was going to use this as an excuse to play oboe instead since it's a bit lighter and the holes on the keys are smaller so you can get away with less than perfect fingering. However most everyone has said that whatever advantage I'd have in terms of fingering with the oboe it would be countered by how much harder the embouchure is on it.

I won't give up on my clarinet just yet. Besides I think I was getting ahead of myself by trying to go for those clarion notes anyway. So I will continue to practice my lessons for now and think about this more over the next few months. Yesterday I found a little music school in the city that has private lessons and they're actually a bit cheaper than the school in Westchester. Or maybe I should just go to Boy's Harbor. Well for now I'm going for a trial lesson at Bloomingdale and will keep studying with my friend as well. Decisions, decisions. Why do I suck at thee so?

In response to my fingering frustrations on the clarinet I decided to dust off my alto sax. Ahhhhhh, what a relief. No wonder people say that it's easy to go from clarinet to sax. I've only been on the clarinet a week and when I had my sax in my hands again I couldn't stop oogling over the big, beautiful keys that perfectly cover all the tone holes. It's a miracle. I blew into it and I got notes, not squeaks from top to bottom. YAY! It was like coming home. My fingers felt slow and clumsy but I was happy that the sound was still ok. Honestly I think I had been avoiding my saxes because I was afraid what would come out of them after the long hiatus. Well now I'm going to try to play them at least a little bit at the end of my clarinet sessions. I've been called for a gig!! I will get to play tenor next to a dear friend in an all girl group. I hadn't wanted to be in an all girl group before, but I don't mind now because it will be entre amigas. So pretty soon I might be able to be here again:


More info to come . . .

There's hope for me!!

I realized today why I've been so conflicted about my career choice. And I now know what I was supposed to be. Bad news is that it is realistically too late for me to really achieve it. For years now my career dilemma has featured a science vs. music component. I've always said I have three (academic) loves, my three M's: math, medicine, & music. I've delved in the Math bit through my Computer Science experience and have come to learn that I love Math in its pure form more than I do in its applications (unless we're talking Physics). So I've been focusing on the remaining two, both of which I recall being interested in since at least age 4. It's taken me nearly a decade to get involved in pre-med stuff again. And always when I'm about to get really into it, Music starts pulling me back. This story has played itself so many times I can't remember anymore.

Anyway, so I realized that if things had been very different, if I had grown up in a different environment I would have been a concert musician (as in, Classical music). Maybe a concert oboist. The uplifting experience I had this weekned kind of put it all together for me. That is a career that I would have been passionate about forever.

That being said, the possibility of it working out for me asymptotically reaches zero. I should have begun on that instrument 20 years ago. And even if I were to drop everything and begin a regimen of 8 hour/day practice sessions I doubt I'd get into a major orchestra. I have taken this blow surprisingly well. I think that I can get good enough perhaps to join a community orchestra and I am pretty sure that it will satisfy my desires. Now to find my niche within the medical science community. One that will allow me time for my precious music.

Good news is that this guy thinks I can do it!!

Shopaholics

I would really love to know what percentage of women are obsessed with shopping. The media would have us think that it's something like 95%. I am disgusted by how often this backwards stereotype is used in advertising. Sometimes when I'm listening to the radio or watching TV it doesn't feel as though we're in the 21st century. Not when the typical woman is portrayed as an incurable shopaholic. It seems like every other commercial is a variation on this theme.

This phenomenon has been upsetting me for some time, but the latest Kohl's ads have really brought it to life for me. They have this new stupid TV commercial where the woman is removing useful things from the garage in order to make way for Kohl's new sale weekend. A similar ad on the radio has the woman waking up really early on a weekend. Rather than using her time productively, she's dragging the man to the Kohl's sale. JC Penneys and Sears have similar commercials where the women want to spend entire days at the store shopping. Visa is partaking in this as well. Their new ad about some contest where you can get all your '04 purchases paid for features a woman who's been buying tons of (useless) stuff behind her husband's back.

I think I'm going to boycott Kohl's. Not that I ever shop there, but still. It's the principle that counts.

Maybe it's the feminist or the tomboy in me, but I can't imagine that I'm the only one that's bothered by the constant use of the woman-as-manic-shopping-machine image. What is the new generation of girls supposed to look up to? We're teaching them that all they have to look forward to as adults is shopping! Forget about getting an education girls. All you'll be doing is begging your husband for money to go shopping. This seems so 50 years ago!

Perhaps it's not even a women's issue. Maybe this is just a reflection of the value that our society places on materialism. Are people so vapid that all they look forward to is acquiring goods? The thought is utterly disheartening.

Thoughts from the weekend + a "sick" day

I'm in the mood to ramble. So here goes.

Last week at work seemed interminable. Geez. It was probably due to my deciding to stick it out here until June. These are going to be some interesting 7 months.

Anyway, so on Thursday night I decided to give my lovely husband a present. I've forgotten to mention that we're both avid gamers. As in computer/video games. He used to be mostly into action games but now I've managed to turn him onto role-playing type games as well. I got him this one. It's actually really cool because the premise is that there's this other story going on alongside the main story and occasionally you even interact with the protagonists. The game started off a little slow and for a while I was nostalgic about the Final Fantasy Days. But, thankfully it picked up quickly and we had loads of fun with it on Saturday.

Saturday was my first day as a volunteer at a Manhattan hospital. The ER can be kind of boring on Saturday mornings. I heard that all the action takes place Friday and Saturday nights. So for the first two hours or so I was just standing around trying to not be in the way and observing the environment. They're like a well-oiled machine. Everyone is busy constantly. The pace is sooooo different from my job. There's a lot more motion and person interaction. One of the more interesting things was when I looked on as the ER attending and some residents were doing wet reads of some X-rays. I listened on and it was kind of interesting how they look for abnormalities. So my tiny glimpse of Radiology was quite positive. I can definitely get into that. It's not that I'm not a people person, but being able to diagnose (i.e. problem solve) sounds like the most fun.

I got bored of standing around and went to the Pediatric ER. I figured there would more of a need for an interpreter there since people without insurance or private doctors tend to take their kids to the ER for regular stuff. And if they're working full-time I figured they'd do it on a Saturday morning. Sure enough within 15 minutes I got my first interpreting experience, and thankfully it was with a fellow Dominican. I did ok but fumbled a little bit due to nerves. And of course I forgot about the formal form of you, Usted, until the very end. Yikes! Peds ER has much more potential so I think I'm just going straight there next week.

One thing I learned: scrubs do NOT look good on everyone! *shiver*

I called in sick yesterday because I had a ton of errands to run. I ended up putting in a 15 hour (non-work) day.

7AM woke up
8AM was at my car dealer for our Toyota's 45k service. I figured I'd splurge on this one since it was the first major service since we bought it. I waited around for 2 hours and paid way too much money. That will be the last time I do that. My car will just have to go to Jibby Lube or wherever.
10:30 AM headed to the assessor in Rye. Was informed that I needed to go to the Rye Town one. So I asked where I was and they said Rye City. UGH. How annoying. Managed to file our application for the Star Rebate credit (a full 8 months AFTER our closing date since I haven't had time to visit the assessor). Was informed that the darn thing wouldn't take effect until the 2006-2007 school year. Thanks!
12:00 PM ate a nice brick oven pizza slice in New Rochelle and headed to school.
01:00 PM decided to stop by JC's job to see his new office. Spent some time with him and his boss.
01:55 PM Oh shit! Am going to be late for my appointment with the financial aid guy at school.
02:10 PM Am running up the stairs in Lewisohn hall and managed to drive to 116th, park at a meter, and make it only 10 minutes late.
02:50 PM Had a good conversation with financial guy and he outlined a plan for us to be able to survive through me quitting my job next year and becoming a full-time student for 9 months. Long live loans!!
02:55 PM Oh shit!! Am going to be very late for my appointment with my OB/GYN at Cornell on the upper east side!!!!!!!
03:20 PM After driving like a maniac, I finally pull into a parking lot and leave the car there. I then jog three blocks to the hospital. Go me! I couldn't have ever done that before. By the way, Columbus avenue, is THE best way to go downtown fast. The lights are arranged very favorably for speeding :-p
03:30 PM Am 30 minutes late for my appointment and end up having to wait an hour and a half as an evil twist of fate.
05:00 PM Doctor finally sees me and deems my baby making mechanism completely normal! YAY!
05:30 PM Am back in my car. Oh shit! I might be late to class! Drive back up to Morningside and thankfully found parking right away.
05:55 PM Nice I even have time to pick up something to drink before class. I get some Vitamin Water. After several months of limited juice drinking I can now appreciated watered down flavors like that.
06:00 PM As I am speeding up the steps diagonally (fastest path between two points is a straight line) I come to think how easy it is for these young-uns to study compared to me. They don't have to worry about their mortgage, their car payments, their fertility, cooking dinner, cashing out of their 401(k) plans, and laundry. Nothing competes with their studying. Damn. If someone had told me that before I would have NEVER gone to the real world and just gone directly to grad school. *sigh* Better late than never.
06:05 PM Take my seat in class and take off my coat and sweater to everyone's amazement since it's COLD in the classroom. I'm so hot from all the running around I feel like I'm going into menopause or something.
06:10 PM Class begins and I devour my balance bar within the first 10 minutes.
06:50 PM My first clock glance. It's so cool that she's an interesting professor and I don't get ansy in class.
07:25 PM Class is over. I follow her to her office hours to ask a question about molecular orbitals and wave functions. I need her to get to know me since I will be requesting a recommendation from her shortly.
07:45 PM The day is not yet over. I'm now driving up to the heights to meet my good old friend for my first official clarinet lesson. Long story.
08:15 PM I got JC lucky today and was able to find a parking spot in under 10 minutes. We begin our lesson.
09:00 PM It has become evident that I will *not* be an immediate virtuoso on the clarinet and that it will be MUCH harder to pick up that then saxophone. Darn. But I won't give up despite my fingering issues and intonation problems.
09:30 PM Lesson is over and overall it went well.
09:40 PM Head over to the International buffet to pick up some dinner. I neglct to see how much money I have before going in there. When my stuff is weighed I start panicking. I was able to pay by using all the spare change in my purse. Damn. Who knew that pollo guisado and rice were that heavy?!
09:55 PM Finally driving home.
10:10 PM Low fuel light goes on! Will have to stop at the cheap gas place in New Rochelle to fill up. This will add at least 5 minutes to my commute home. @#(*&(*
10:30 PM Arrived home, tired and hungry as hell.
10:40 PM Enjoy a nice late night Dominican dinner.
11:30 PM Some well deserved sleep.

Ok maybe I am a tad bit overextended. But hey, I want to embrace life and all it offers. Carpe Diem!

Disappointments

It's not been a good couple of weeks for me.

First there was that whole baseball thing. Pero ya eso es agua pasada so I won't go into that.

Then there was all this craziness with my job. As I've alluded to before I really can't stand my job anymore. I've been here for 7.5 years and my time has been up for a while now. After ten years of deliberation I decided that indeed my calling lies in the health care field somewhere. So at least now I'm in school part-time retaking my pre-med requirements. In the meantime I am still here though, continuing my existance as a corporate cog. Over vacation this summer I decided that this would be last year of dual citizenship and that I'd say goodbye to the corporate world for good Summer of '05. Well, deciding that has made things any easier. In fact it's made things harder. I hate coming in here more than ever. Anyway, so I signed up to be a volunteer interpreter at a local hospital (one of the things you should do to prove your committment to medicine and the community to the medical school admissions boards). I attended two training sessions in early October. Two weeks ago, on a particularly bad day at work where I was about to just walk out (again . . .) I received an interesting phone call. The trainer had called me up to offer me a job as an interpreter. That's right! "Here, have this job." I can't begin to express how I felt at that moment. It really felt like a divine experience. God had answered my prayers and come to deliver me from this hell. Hallelujah! So I go into the city and meet with her and slowly things start to turn their true colors. While the interpreting would be wonderful experience, there was some undesireable clerical work associated with the position. And the big bomb: the pay would be less than half what I make now. I was so desperate to leave that I barely flinched at that. I was going to take this job even if it meant postponing school for another year. Then I started thinking about that. A lot. I realized that I liked school more than anything and suddenly the idea of postponing school seemed utterly absurd. So I call her up and say "no, thanks!". I mean to stop working next June and it wouldn't make sense to just take this job for 7 months. She calls me back 15 minutes later and asks if I could please take the job for just 7 months then. UGH!! It was hard enough to decide *not* to take it the first time. By now this has been a week long drama which will end up being nearly two weeks by the time it ended today. So for days I am going back and forth between yes and no. It became an obsession. I was constantly thinking about it, worrying about it, and writing up countless versions of my budget. Should I go into something more interesting now but lose a lot of money? Or can I just hold it out for 7 more months? After much deliberation I finally decided I would not take it. And this morning I finally got a hold of her to tell her the bad news. Thankfully she was very understanding and agreed that if I was pulling myself out of the workforce shortly that I should try to save as much as possible. And so gang, I will stay in this perverse world of corporateness for another 7 months. Projected liberation date is now June 3, 2005.

Last huge disppointment for the week: the election. We've managed to re-elect the American Hipolito. Damn. I am at a loss for words about this. I just can't imagine how so many people actually voted for this man. It's against my morals to vote for someone with a sub-100 IQ. I had no idea there were that many rednecks and religous zealots in this country. I am angry at the way he manipulated God for his own political agenda. And saddened by all the people, especially Latinos, who fell for it. Who will all those people run to when their kids get drafted? Hmmm.

I just hope that after I quit this job and go to school for forever that there are actually some research jobs out there. Maybe we'll have to move to California!