The very necessary venti latte, Starbucks Cup #90, Beth Israel Deaconess, Boston

The Way I See It #90

If we really want to understand
innovation and collaboration, we
have to explore shared space.
Consider Watson & Crick: How
many experiments did they do to
confirm DNA's double helix? Zero.
Not one. They built models based
on other people's data. These
models were thier shared space.
Their collaboration in that shared
space powered their Nobel Prize -
wining breakthough. If you don't
have a shared space, you're not
collaborating.

--Michael Schrage
MIT design researcher
and author of Serious Play.

Lately I've been all pessimisstic and embittered by Starbucks Cups. I've been like 'shut up you' and 'who died and made you Jesus.' Just as I started to write a snide remark in response to Michael's comment, some ponderance about how if you don't communicate well or hate your coworkers you have the antithesis of collaboration, I took a second to think about my job.

Now I don't love every minute of my job. If I did, I wouldn't blog at work. Ha. No it's no great secret that I am not the hugest fan of my job, and in the very beginning it used to break me down to a blubbering sobbing mass (oh, not AT work, after work, late at night while talking to boyfriend). Maybe after a year my senses have been dulled, but I think the year that has passed has allowed me to understand that my work is actually valuable and is useful. And it's really all about collaboration. My job is to enter people into an anonymous non-hodgkin's lymphoma database. Big deal, right? That's what I thought. But then I realized that there are doctors throughout the country that depend on my data to write their papers. The papers, in turn, are presented to conferences throughout the world. They talk about who has what cancer, who got what treatment, and what their outcomes were. So technically, I am setting up a framework. That framework is used by doctors and researchers. Maybe someday the framework I set up will lead to the key that's needed to find the cure to lymphoma. It's all about collaboration, people.

Signs You Are on the Verge of Having a Nervous Breakdown (not really, but still)

1. you wish the Poland Springs dispenser in the office was filled with vodka
2. you fantasize about standing on the seats of the train and screaming "shut the f*ck UP" to everyone making the least bit of noise
3. you wish there were more hours in the day so you could do all the crap you need to do AND sleep
4. you get pissed off that the dryer takes nearly 40 minutes to dry clothes and bust out a hairdryer to speed up the process
5. you have major deadlines at work but all you can do is google celebrity gossip
6. people ask you to hang out the next night but you tell them you can only plan in hour time blocks no more than 4 hours ahead of current time
7. you actually consider selling all your sh*t and running the f*ck away, but gas is too expensive
8. you actually consider selling all your sh*t, asking your boyfriend to runaway with you and elope, but gas is too expensive. Oh, and that's just silly ;)
9. you have this psychotic urge to tear up all the calendars in view. with your teeth!
10. you consider leaving work 4 hours early to wander aimlessly through Boston Common
11. your eyes won't close because they have been trying to focus on work on a screen for WAY TO LONG
12. you go to the cafeteria at work just for a change of scenery
13. you go to the bathroom just to have a quiet place to sit
14. you blog about your issues
15. you talk to your pets - they're the only ones that "get you" anyways, LOL
16. you talk to your plants. They are the best listeners ever
17. you wear a skirt to work not even realizing you have hairy legs (I thought that day would never come. sigh)
18. you make an afterwork to do list that has 20 items that must be completed in 4 hours and include such monumental tasks as "7. compose symphony" or "13. make lobster thermadore for dinner, baked alaska for desert" or "19. detail car" Insanity
19. you spend an hour at work looking up good places to stay in Iceland
20. while sitting in your desk chair, you throw your head back and see if you can find hidden designs in the ceiling tiles

William Steig is Brilliant

From "C-D-C"

why I will see this movie even if every critic in the world says it blows

Sir Ian McKellan (currently starring in The DaVinci Code):

"I'm very happy to believe that Jesus was married. I know the Catholic Church has problems with gay people and I thought this would be absolute proof that Jesus was not gay."


Awesome.

black and white make grey's anatomy

So.
I was procrastinating by looking at photos from the season finale of "Grey's Anatomy" because I think I am still recovering from it two days later. So the photos lead me to seek out truth to the rumor I heard that Ellen Pompeo doesn't like her character. I found an interesting interview about that here After reading the interview, I stumbled upon a Grey's Anatomy fan site that had a link to the Nightline interview with certain cast members. I found this one of the single most interesting things I have watched in a long while.

So they're talking about race on TV, specifically about race on Grey's Anatomy. Maybe I'm clueless or maybe my thought processes are different than most people, but I find it funny that I never once looked at the cast and thought "black, white, asian, white, white, black, black." My thought processes were more like this: "oh wow, YES Dr. Burke KEEP taking your clothes off" or "Meredith, tell him off. TELL HIM OFF!" or "If you say "vagina squad" one more time, Alex, I will come through the TV and smack you myself" or "Thank you, I am now adding the term "va-jay-jay" to my everyday vocabulary." Nightline, however, explores the racial aspect of the show, as does Time, but what I love about Shonda Rhimes are her interviews talking about how she wrote the characters as having their own unique flaws and quirks and never as a specific race, ethnicity, etc. I love that! I never really thought about it, I guess maybe because the shows I tend to watch faithfully have a somewhat diverse cast, as in not so glaringly one race (except Most Extreme Challenge where they are all Japanese, hahahahha).

No seriously though. I mean, yeah, Lost is kinda unrealistic in the fact that it looks like the UCLA volleyball team crashed on the beach, but then you kind of look more closely and see that there are unusual characters on there. Yeah, you got a lot of white people but you got some black folks, asian people, a fat man, a latina (ok HAD, she's totally dead) ummmm oh oh! the iraqi dude, a brit addict, a nigerian drugrunner turned priest, etc etc. Oh and NOW Dr. Clue. Frickin Dr. Clue. You even have a biracial couple rocking out. And then there are the reality shows. America's Next Top Model, where half of the girls are white, half are black, asian or like Jade, a biracial butterfly, LOL. And "Everybody Hates Chris" is the FUNNIEST SHOW ON TV RIGHT NOW! WATCH IT! But like I said before, I don't tend to notice these things. I don't watch Grey's Anatomy and think "Oh my God the chief of staff at the hospital is BLACK!" or "Oh my GOD Joanie and Danielle on ANTM are two different races but they're FRIENDS! How shocking!" But apparently people do watch TV with a little internal mental label maker going "black.....asian......white, and BLONDE!..........asian.....black....black.....black....what is with all the black people here??"

I am happy that Shonda Rhimes decided to defy the rules and just write a show. Just write a show where the character's paths were predestined and did not depend on a certain prototype. In the case of Grey's Anatomy you can seriously argue that the show is colorblind in the fact that it was written without "color" so anyone could've landed the roles. Shonda did steer the boat by demanding interesting actors during casting. So interesting. Nightline even called it "revolutionary" or something along those lines. I basically think it's great. But maybe it's cause I try not to be a racist person (ha ha yeah, I know I should've given some white guy a chance, but I'm happy with my black man thank you very much, LOL) the reality of it all is that I watch Grey's Anatomy every week because it's fabulous. The fact that it has given actors the chance to play what is for them an atypical role (Isiah Washington as a surgeon and not a thug, though imagining him cast as a thug is perhaps one of the most ridiculous and hilariously absurd things I've ever heard. Dude, do casters just look at him and go "great, black man, you're a thug" I mean COME ON PEOPLE! He's Dr. Burke! He plays the trumpet! He's ELOQUENT DAMMIT!) but I don't watch it because it's making any sort of statement. No way. I watch it for ten bajillion other reasons. It's got drama, romance, weird medical issues, people with issues, people with more issues, people with serious issues, and SEX. And hey, let's face it, we ALL know it's the biracial sex that really gets me hot anyways, so to Shonda Rhimes and Grey's Anatomy I say "BRING IT, BITCHES."

why if I liked girls I would want to hook up with Potes from televisionwithoutpity.com

How hilarious is this:

Jade is next. She says that Danielle is a little ill, but when you model and travel you have to do well on shoots no matter what. Jade is ready to rock. She is ready to rock you with her stupidity, as well, as she says that she'll never forget shooting on the elephant, which reminds her of an ancient dinosaur. She adds, "'Cause they are in the dinosaur family." Yes, and birds are blind. And my cat, Miss Itty, pees apple juice. Is there some sort of National Geographic For Dummmies that we could buy from a charity drive, and then send in bulk to the show? Jade does not do a spectacular job and has trouble taking Jay's direction. Jay tells her that she's thinking about it too much, and notes that Jade becomes instantly stiff when he gives direction, and perhaps thinks it's a critique. Joanie agrees that Jade was stiff and looked uncomfortable with what she was doing. Sutan, the makeup artist, lies to Jade that she did well. Never trust a man who dresses like Tyra Banks, mostly because it means he shops at Victoria's Secret.


I generally like the reviews on televisionwithoutpity.com. They're funny, the people who write them have a great sense of humor, BUT mostly I just skim along for a few pages and then abandon ship because they get boring after a while. Maybe because you don't need to read a detailed review of Grey's Anatomy. You were there. You watched it. And you like McDreamy, so when you read an entire page dedicated to how much he has been sucking lately, even if you agree you're kinda like "yeah ok, know it, don't need to read it." The one exception to the rule would be Potes' s reviews of America's Next Top Model. First of all, ripping apart a reality tv show is great because you get to rip apart REAL PEOPLE without them EVER knowing (unless you know them. which would suck, cause then there would be all this bullshit and guilt about hating them and you would hold back in your real enraged criticism of their suckage). Anyways, I read Potes's thumbnail sketches on Wednesday morning after the episode and eagerly await her full length reviews later in the week because they are that hilarious. And because she hates Jade. And so do I. Maybe, just maybe, the ugly biatch will be eliminated tonight. Grrrrrrrr.

Evil has a name: JADE

Meanwhile on Amazing Race, we are also down to the last three after the glorious elimination of MoJo. I'm thinking it's the season finale, though the strategy may be to squeeze one more episode out next week, I'm not sure exactly.

So we're down to:

BJ and Tyler.
Personally, I like BJ and Tyler. Yeah, they're hippies, they have long disheveled hair and look like they do not bathe, but they're FUN. Everyone is always ranking on them (both on the show and in life) People are like "they're hippies, they're creepy, they're loud, they're annoying, they say that lame catchphrase "TTOW" all the time." That is jealousy, my friends. Why? Because twice they have been almost eliminated and had all their money taken instead in the non elimination round, and you know what? They were actually better off! Yeah, yeah, you can claim it was because other teammates gave them money and clothes, but seriously, it's cause they got mad skill when it comes to collecting money, begging, performing WHATEVER! I have different personal reasons for liking them. One is that they actually make an effort to embrace their surroundings. Yeah, there are people who accept their surroundings and make due, but most teams are kind of distant. Like Ray and Yolanda are awesome (I think) and they seem nice, but their attitude is very much get in, do it, get out. BJ and Tyler, even if they only speak a few words of the local dialect, will make an effort to communicate. They are respectful of local customs and habits. Basically, they don't act like freaky Americans in a foreign land. Which is not to say they don't act freaky, they do, but people seem to like it. Maybe because inside they are saying "lookit those freaky Americans" which to me is wwaaaaaayyy more desirable than "lookit those rude Americans." I'm not sure if I'm being clear, but quick examples of stupidity:

Lake (hick accent): Woman I should've made you do the challenge where you had to dive for the clue in the pool
Michelle: Laaaake....would you have really wanted me to? In front of Russian men? In a bathing suit?
MoJo: Can we get tickets to Palller-moe? Paller-mo? Palomino?
Airline ticket counter man: "Palermo"? (said "Pah-lairrrrr-mo" with a very italian rolled "r")
MoJo: Yeah Paller-mo
Airline ticket counter man shoots them look of death

Fratboy 1: hey we need a ticket to Palermo
Fratboy 2: hey ladies
Alitalia ladies: hello, ciao
Fratboy 2: hey ladies, uh, you got hickies?
Alitalia ladies stare bewildered: wha?
Fratboy 2: y'all got hickies? is that why you're wearing scarfs around your neck?
Alitalia ladies shoot them looks that says "please die now"

Fratboys:
Well the above comment spells it out for you. They suck. They think they're the shit. When they did an underwater challenge and came out in speedos (shudder) they were like "good think this beach is empty, otherwise there would be ladies all over us." They've told both Yolanda and Monica that they were lucky to have men with them otherwise they would've been in "trouble" several times. Ha. Monica may have liked that comment, I'm not sure, but Yolanda's look in response to that comment was like "I would not touch you with a ten foot pole. ps. seen my boyfriend Ray? I guarantee you his dick is twice the size of yours, maybe even THREE times, bitch." Heh. I hope they do not win, though I am not sure that they have the best chance. Yes, they are actually pretty good players, but they've made some pretty damaging tasks in the past, especially when it comes to reading maps. They may be doomed because they can't read. Maps, I mean, they can't read maps. Though if they were in fact illiterate, I have to admit, I wouldn't be shocked.

Ray and Yolanda:
Nice folks I think. I mean Yolanda even got ahold of BJ or Tyler's purple pants when they lost everything in the non-elimination round. That is so chill. But that is Ray and Yolanda to a T. They are chill. Almost too chill. They need to get fired up if they are going to win, and their chill-ness makes me want to take a lighter and hold it close to their skin and be like "yo does this burn, cause you two are slightly bot-like." Well, except for that time they were fighting. Maybe they need to fight again? That way, Ray could get all pissed off and be like 'You didn't drag me here for nothin' bitch, I'm gonna get that million dollars even if I have to share it with you" He would actually show emotion. And we know Yolanda's not gonna pull a Monica and get all weepy and shit. She will get vengeful and be like "Fine Ray, I'll show you exactly what I can do and how much better than you I can do it." Ha. If that happened, I think they would win.
Time
will
tell.

Starbucks Cup #109

The Way I See It #109

What you do to others you really
do to yourself. So when you do
good to others, you're doing good
to yourself. Alternatively, when
you do bad to others, you're doing
bad to yourself. So in thinking of
others, think of yourself, for to love
and to do right by others is to love
and do right to your own self.

--Leela James
Musician. Her songs can be heard
on Starbucks Hear Music station,
XM Satellite Radio Channel 75.

Tell me something, Leela: who died and made you Jesus?
PS. The reason why you can be heard on Starbucks XM Radio is because no one else plays you.
The end.

hahhahahahahaha my mood today is clearly BITCHY? The good news? Season Finales tonight of Amazing Race and Top Model. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT

SWEEEET

Question: is taking sex quizzes more fun than doing productive work?
Answer: yes. yes it is.


You prefer Passionate sex!


You enjoy passionate sex. You're the kind of person that has tons of fun in the sack, and you can really get into it. Not necessarily rough and lusty, passionate sex is the kind that satisfies both your lovin' and horny needs.

You are 62% kinky



You are kinky. You are always up for trying something new in the bedroom... or wherever else you chose to.

You have a sexual IQ of 120



When it comes to sex, you are a super genius. You have had a lot of experience, and sex interests you so you know a lot about it. You pride yourself on being a source of information and guidance to all of your friends.

I wish you would just shut the f*ck up and die

haahhha a little aggressive, the title is. But you know what? That's how you feel when you have an anorexic coworker who is not just anorexic, but also a grade A #1 bitch. I have gathered some of my favorite Anorexia quotes from the past year of working together so I can share my miserable coworker with the rest of the world. I know some people have it worse, absolutely, but this right here, is pretty bad in the most passive aggressive way possible:

"Yummy"
Anorexia says this about everything I eat. It's mostly because she is so hungry, everything looks yummy to her. The annoying thing isn't the word itself, it's how she says it. It's delivered with this tone of "it looks tasty but is so incredibly fattening I would never allow it to pass through my lips." Example "That looks like yummy bread" "That cookie looks yummy" "oh what a yummy snack, does it taste good?"

email 6/28/2005:
PLUS my COWORKER (anorexia) was supposed to have a 10 o'clock meeting...I thought "perfect, I can eat my food in peace." Then it gets moved to 11....now it's moved to 1pm!!! I'm like F*CK!! And then she turns and says, "I thought you wanted more food" and I wanted to say "I do, but I just don't wat to eat it in front of you!" oh welllll.
It's hard to eat in front of her. This is because she is analyzing every piece of food that comes within a 20 foot radius of your mouth. No doubt she is watching you to count your caloric intake and then looks at your body to assess exactly where the fat deposits are headed. Plus she's hungry, so when you are eating, it's hard for her to take her eyes off you...

6/30/2005

No news except ANOREXIA IS ON VACATION FOR TWO GLORIOUS DAYS AND I CAN EAT AND EAT AND EAT AND NO ONE WILL GIVE TWO CRACKLING SH*TS WHAT I"M EATING AND HOW OFTEN I"M EATING IT

someone will probably turn that phrase into something dirty, no doubt. It's ok though, i don't even CARE I am just busy plotting what I am having for lunch :) satisfied smile
Isn't my joy in this email actually sad? Now I do eat in front of her because binging at the end of the day made my stomach hurt, but I was in a dark place a year ago, LOL

email 7/12/2005
also. Anorexia is being a paranoid b*tch today. Like schizo paranoid...she's like 'they hate me so much here that they're just looking for reasons to fire me, but my work is really good, so that can't be an excuse, and I show up here on time, so that can't be an excuse, so they're auditing all of my work to try to find the tiniest mistake so they can have a reason to fire me BLAHHH"
Not eating food makes you paranoid. The end.



You should threaten to feed her.

Secret Confession

:

"It's All Coming Back to Me Now"
is on the radio
and I remembered that I totally love the song
Yes, I did play it on the piano while my cousin Andrew mocked it
and yes, it was the funniest family moments ever
and yes, it IS Celine Dion singing
BUT
I love it.
And my old Celine Dion tape is TOTALLY coming with me on my drive to Virginia.....
THE END

I'm not an addict it's cool I feel aliiiive

So.
I thought I was being a hypochondriac on Wednesday when I started to feel under the weather.
I sat at my desk thinking "oh, yeah, see what working in a hospital will do to you? It makes you completely irrational about your health. You have symptoms that aren't really there! You start to become CRAZY!!"

Now the day before my coworker and I had been joking about how working at a cancer hospital had made us absolutely psychotic about self-screening constantly for symptoms. I work with lymphoma and I'm always giving my nodes a once-over. My one swollen tonsil makes me FLIP the FUCK out every so often, even though I know perfectly well that I just have tonsil stones, which are completely foul, but also completely benign. For a long time I worried about them so much that I gave myself cricopharyngeal spasm. Of course, once I read what a cricopharyngeal spasm was and realized that the lump in my throat was not because my lymph nodes were slowly spreading to take over my entire throat, slowly blocking my esophagus so I wouldn't be able to eat and then blocking my trachea so I couldn't breathe leading to a slow and agonizing death, the damn thing went away, since all of the was IN MY HEAD. I read a few articles on hypochondria and was like "ok. I just sort of have it in one area, but I need to get a grip. It's a case of too much knowledge about one specific disease. If I didn't have this job, I probably wouldn't have these symptoms and I certainly wouldn't think I had lymphoma!" I was further comforted by the fact that my coworker who works with colorectal disease had started panicking about the disease to the point where she asked her physician for a SIGMOIDOSCOPY! They don't just give those out, but she said that she was spazzing so much that the nurse practitioner who saw her was like 'fine, here's a referral for one.' Of course she lost the referral and hasn't had it done, but she was like "if I didn't work here I would not be spazzing about having my colon checked for polyps! I wouldn't even be thinking about polyps! WHY DO WE KNOW TOO MUCH INFORMATION!!!"

So needless to say on Wednesday when I started feeling a little off I was like "It's all in your head." I had woken up with this horrible, unslakable thirst. Upon waking up I drank a 16 oz lemon dasani that my dad had gotten for free somewhere. I followed up with a 16oz revive Vitamin Water, then another lemon dasani, then a liter of crystal lite lemonade. I was still thirsty! I thought "I might be coming down with something" but then chalked up my thirst to either the salty meal I had the night before, OR adult onset diabestes.....Ha! By three o'clock I was like 'shoot, I feel bad. I'm gonna head home.' As soon as I got home I changed into pajamas. I didn't even think about it, it's like my body just voluntarily made the motions to get into my pajamas. I was shivering and hot at the same time and my body HURT, like weird tingly hurting on my back and legs and my head was pounding...I realized that I was not being a hypochondriac then, I realized that I was coming down with whatever my mom had two weeks ago.

Yesterday I took the day off work and slept for most of it (see: picture of me looking ill). When my mom came home at 3 I rallied and decided to go to Wal-Mart to get medicine and then to get bird food and gas (and craft supplies, but shhhhhh, no one has to know that's really why I wanted to go out). I went to Wal-Mart after gassing up and getting crafty supplies so I was feeling pretty drained as hell. I went to the cold aisle and looked for the magical pills boyfriend told me about so long ago: Advil Cold and Sinus. They were gone! I was like "oh great, and my other options are? TYLENOL??? No way, not gonna cut it" As I leaned closer to the cold and flu shelves I noticed that in the space for Advil Cold and Sinus there were cards that said "take this to the pharmacy register" I was like "hunh. ok. wait...........wait...........oh shit, this has pseudophedrine in it, doesn't it?" I had heard somewhere that if a OTC drug has pseudoephedrine in it it was going to be kept behind the counter because pseudoephedrine is one of the base ingredients for meth. So, already feeling like a criminal for wanting to buy medication with an illicit ingredient in it, I take the card to the pharmacy register. The pharmacist leans over from the other end of the pharmacy and goes "Can I heeelllpp you?" As soon as I flash the Advil Cold andSinus card he is all business. "Um you need a license to buy that" he says, and turns away, as if I did not have a license with which to buy it. I said "oh that's NO problem" about to say "I'd give you my first born for this right now" but then I thought "No, that would probably indicate to him not that I had a flu/cold thing and had a fever and body aches and mucus blocking my nasal passages, but that I had a meth addiction and needed to buy some pseudoephedrine for my supplier because the police were already watching him." So instead I just handed over my license. The pharmacist looked from me to my license picture no less than 6 times and then said "This is gonna be a few minutes" While he took my license away, I started reading the yellow paper they had posted by the register, which listed the regulations of Public Law 109-177, and understood exactly what the pharmacist was doing with my license. He was entering how much Advil Cold and Sinus I was buying, along with my name, address and license number! THEN I had to submit a digital signature! HOLY SHIT INVASIVE was what was flashing in my mind at that moment. I wanted to be like "so you need finger prints and a mug shot for your file?" But I felt so violated already that by the time the pharmacist handed me my license and as-legal-as-nearly-illegal-drugs-can-be Advil Cold and Sinus, I just backed away slowly, grabbed some cough drops and fled before the hidden cameras could get a clear shot of my face.

The irony of it all? I live in a state where they won't pass a primary seatbelt law, but they put your life's history in a database when you go to buy some advil. F*cked up, that's all I have to say.

Starbucks Cup #100, Beth Israel Deaconess Boston

The Way I see It #100

What if, in addition to filing a tax

return every year, we had the

chance to decide where our tax

dollars would be used? Programs

and government departments

that no one likes would simply

go away.

--Bart Jarman

Starbucks customer from

Gilbert, Arizona.

Well Bart from Arizona, I am indeed very glad that YOU do not get to make these decisions, because it's dumbasses like you who think that we can live in a utopian society without organizations and government and programs who would choose not to give money too.....hmmm. examples, the police, because they're "so aggressive" or "too authoritarian" or "mean" or "rude" and then when I'm in a car accident on the side of the road, no one comes to help me cause a bunch of assholes decided not to pay for police. Or the DPW let's say, because what do they do but "sit around parked in an empty lot sleeping" right? yeah, so a sinkhole opens in the road and swallows my car. Not only is it stuck there with me in it because you decided not to put up the money for the police, but now it's never gonna get fixed, and you're gonna have to close the road forever because no one there to fill the gigantic, gaping 7-foot wide, 5-foot deep sinkhole that's hanging out in the middle of the ROAD.

BART!

YOU HAVE BAD IDEAS!

hahhhaha clearly pessimism today!