Category: me

  • Things I Like

    For your reading pleasure, here is a list of 50 things that I like. This list is completely random and by no means exhaustive. Let me know which of these things you like or dislike!

    1) Mary Kay Satin Lips – this stuff is so good they sent it to the soldiers in the gulf war. I think I am addicted to it.
    2) The number 3 – just ask my soccer teams. They all know which jersey NOT to take.
    3) Automatic sliding doors
    4) Bike lanes
    5) Mounds candy bars – Mmmmm. Dark chocolate + coconut=the perfect combination.
    6) Chicken fried rice – I could eat it every day, probably. Until I had a heart attack.
    7) The Pill – caveat: not for its birth control effects. (Edit: this is very outdated.)
    8 ) Fat animals, especially when they are also furry
    9) Pedicures – or almost any service you can get done at a spa. What can I say, I like being pampered.
    10) Cruise control
    11) Babies
    12) Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue perfume – and the fact that my brother recommended it to me and my boyfriend bought it for me. (Edit: that boyfriend is now my husband!)
    13) Yoga
    14) Pandora.com – a great free internet radio.
    15) The semi-colon
    16) Caribbean Way smoothies from Smoothie King
    17) My Franklin Covey day planner – I am obsessive about this thing and have no idea what I would do without it. (Edit: I now use the planner on my iPhone. It was a sad day when I switched, but I have to keep up with the times, man.)
    18) Dogs – especially Molly, Eddie, Sydney, Teak, Riley, Susie and Kenzie. There are too many dogs in my life, I couldn’t narrow it down! (Edit: We’ve said goodbye to Molly, Susie, and Kenzie and hello to Cleo, Bentley, and Niko!)
    19) Hot Pockets – ham and cheese are the best.
    20) NPR
    21) Songs that tell a story – Ex: “The Lighthouse’s Tale” by Nickel Creek
    22) The Winged Victory of Samothrace sculpture in the Louvre
    23) Foaming hand soap
    24) Toyota Priuses
    25) Gmail – as far as I can tell, everyone should use it. My favorite thing about it is that you can keep your inbox clean while still saving as many messages as you like with the “Archive” feature.
    26) Tulips
    27) Fortune cookies
    28) Bingo – but only in the bingo hall with the serious players.
    29) The smell of air conditioner in the car
    30) Maps
    31) The dead man’s float
    32) Penguins – especially fat ones (see #8)
    33) Macs
    34) Reading on the bus
    35) My eyebrows
    36) Dark chocolate
    37) Sneezing
    38) Crossword puzzles
    39) Gel pens
    40) Tragic characters – Ex: Achilles in the movie Troy; Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities; Sirius Black in Harry Potter
    41) Singing in my car
    42) Fabric Band-aids
    43) Traveling to visit historical places
    44) Dr. Mario – only the best video game ever invented. EVER.
    45) Real Simple magazine
    46) Lucida Sans font
    47) Blue Bell dutch chocolate ice cream with Hershey’s chocolate syrup
    48) Bananas – the perfect fruit: they curve toward your mouth, they are yellow which is enticing, they are color coded (green too early; brown too late), they are easy to peel, and they taste so good!
    49) Going to the bathroom – ahh, such a simple pleasure.
    50) My wash cloth, which I dedicated an entire blog entry to at one point.

  • Ahhhh…

    I finished my last final this morning. I celebrated this evening by eating almost a whole tub of chicken fried rice and a pint of ice cream while I watched the DVRed episodes of Gilmore Girls and House. It was glorious.

    I have two weeks with no school, but I already have 11 things on my “To Do Over The Break” list, not to mention the fact that I agreed to work almost every day I can. Ah, well.

  • The Photographic Evolution of an Injured Toenail

    This is going to be your favorite post of all time, I just know it.

    Right after it got bruised:

    The bruise painted over:

    Another soccer game cracked it open.

    I didn’t want it to get infected so I took the polish off. The blood underneath had leaked out.

    This time an indoor soccer game did the damage.

    Its final days:

    The moment arrives.

    And you know what? Losing a toenail isn’t nearly as traumatic as I thought it would be. Turns out that half of it has already grown back underneath. It’s not too pretty, and it’s a little tender, but a Band-aid fixes it right up.

    Happy Tuesday!

  • Lofty Aspirations

    My family is very sports-oriented. One of the manifestations of this is that each year we are involved in fantasy teams and pools and such. For as long as I can remember my dad and my uncle have picked the NFL games, and when my brothers were old enough they joined in. Being the only girl, I wanted to be involved too. So when fantasy leagues started becoming popular, our family decided to create a private fantasy baseball league for ourselves and I jumped in. The way it worked was that whoever won the NCAA tournament that year got first draft pick in fantasy baseball. Well, we did that for a couple of years and then I WON. After that, fantasy baseball was dropped. My brother Barry cried that the draft was unfair that year, but I know he’s just having a hard time accepting the fact that I am, indeed, a fantasy baseball master.

    The way it stands today is that our family picks the college football bowl games with each other, and also the NCAA basketball tournament, which is of course going on right now. This year, my uncle won the bowl games, but I CAME IN SECOND, beating out my entire immediate family. Currently, I am in last place in our NCAA pool, but I still have a lot of points remaining and I am the only one who picked the team that I picked to win the entire thing – so I still have a chance. And things are getting serious now! There is a trophy:

    stagg-sports-selection-star
    This trophy is soon to be mailed to my uncle for winning the college bowl pick ’em, and then it will be transferred to the winner of the NCAA tournament after July 4. I have to say…I want it bad.

    My dad is excited about it, too. After he showed it to me last night, he said, “Just think, Kat. When you and your brothers get married your spouses can participate too!” And then, abruptly, “But we may have to drop you. You won’t have our family name anymore.”

    “Dad! That’s not fair!”

    “I don’t know, Kat, the trophy has our name on it, and that won’t be your name anymore.”

    “But I will always be part of the family!”

    “We’ll have to see what the jury decides.”

    I think my dad is just simultaneously dreading and elated about the possibility of me getting married at anytime in the next twenty years. It’s cute and all, but I don’t appreciate being threatened with disownment. (I think I just made up that word.) For now, I’ll just try to prove myself while I am still definitively a part of this family.

  • Bird Flu Phase One

    So I got a lot of grief from some people for enrolling in the bird flu vaccination study. People were telling me that it was stupid for me to put myself at risk, no matter how small, of getting the bird flu. Well, I wasn’t worried. And today, I got vaccinated. I found out that there is absolutely NO risk of me contracting the bird flu because the virus they inject you with is killed. So that should put all the worriers at ease.

    I was nervous about the whole ordeal because I knew I would have to get two injections and have my blood drawn. When they took my blood pressure beforehand, it was a little high. My blood pressure is always high when I’m at the doctors’ office. I know that it’s probably because I’m tense and in a new place and not relaxed and all that, but I still worry that I’m going to end up with chronically high blood pressure.

    Oh! I also found out that I indeed am not pregnant. (We were required to submit a urine sample for them to test.) Not that I was particularly worried about that due to many reasons, but it’s still comforting to know that no miracles in the vein of Jesus’ birth will be happening in my life at the moment.

    The next step after the urine sample and the vital signs was the blood draw. I don’t know why but every time I have my blood drawn, even if it’s just a little bit, I feel weak. I can’t even watch it happening at all; I try to completely distract myself. But I made it through, only to have to get stuck two more times. These vaccines hurt going in, but they didn’t hurt much afterwards. The woman who gave them to me was apparently in training, because she had another lady talking her through the procedure the whole time. I have sympathy for her because I am in training too, but when you’re the subject it’s just not the most comforting thing to hear instructions being given to the one holding the needle.

    So the first visit is over with. If anyone is interested in participating in this study (remember it pays $400!), let me know and I can get you the details.

    Also, Baylor College of Medicine has other clinical studies going on requiring healthy volunteers, and the UT Health Science Center does as well. Check out their websites if you are interested. I have already signed up to participate in a study where you play computer games while having an MRI done. This may turn out to be my new part-time job!