A Beautiful Disaster

The Invitation by: Oriah Mountain Dreamer It doesn't interest me what you do for a living I want to know what you ache for and if you dare of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dreams for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon... I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of future pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain mine and your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful be realistic to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't matter to me if the stor...

I am sure a lot of us have come across the "Do It Anyway" poem that was made famous world-wide by Mother Teresa. But, how many of us know where it originally came from? The original version was called "The Paradoxical Commandments" and was written by Dr. Kent Keith. Mother Teresa's version puts a spiritual spin on the ideology while Dr. Keith tends to take a more practical approach. No matter what walk of life you are from though one or the other will most likely ring true for you. So, I share them here today...   The version found written on the wall in Mother Teresa's home for children in Calcutta: People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and since...

This week is Finals Week at Ivy Tech Community College - East Central Region and most likely most, if not all, of the Ivy Tech campuses throughout the state. It's also most likely finals week at other colleges and universities throughout the state as well. Finals can be a stressful time for everyone involved with the process, but more so for the students taking the exams. I was surfing the web and came across "Ten Tips for Surviving Finals" from the Office of Academic Programs at the University of Arizona. Since this is finals week, I thought I'd share their tips with you: 1. Don’t panic (make too much of the final). The first thing you should do is to check what the final is worth in each course. Remember, it is only one component of your final grade. If it is worth 20% or less, you probably won't be able to bring your final grade up or down by more than one grade level (e.g., B to B+), unless you perform extremely better or worse than you have on o...

Got your attention, didn't it? Well, if you haven't read my previous blog  Sobering - Part 1  (click on the title to be taken to the blog) then you should probably take the opportunity to do that now so you'll understand what I'm talking about. Continued from "Sobering - Part 1" I called my primary care doctor's office the next morning and explained what was going on and they contacted the Hematologist for me and called me back and told me to expect a call from them. So, about 30 minutes later I get a call that went something like this: Me: Hello? Office Person: Hello! This is Medical Consultants. We've scheduled you for an appointment at 11 am with one of our Nurse Practitioners. Are you familiar with where we are located in the hospital? Me: Yes, you're over in the Outpatient Pavilion with the other Medical Consultant offices right? Office Person: Well, no. Our offices are in the Cancer Center at Ball Memorial Hospital. The doctor who wi...

In September of 2007 I was diagnosed with Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP), which is a blood disorder in which your immune system attacks and destroys the platelets in your body. Platelets are necessary for clotting, so symptoms of ITP include bruising easily or bruises without obvious cause or injury, bleeding of the mouth and gums, nosebleeds, petechial skin rashes (red or purple dots), and in severe cases internal bleeding and bleeding in the brain. A normal platelet count is 150,000 to 450,000 platelets per microlitre of blood. It is not known what causes ITP, hence the word "idiopathic". Although a suspected reoccurring virus might be the culprit in my case. My platelet count was 3000 and the ER doctor who admitted me said that I could have easily bled to death from something as simple as a scrape from falling down or a paper cut. I was admitted because they wanted to do an infusion of platelets, intravenous immunoglobulin treatments, and make sure I wasn't ...

Well, as you can see the idea I had about blogging at least once every day was a epic fail. It's all good. Life tends to get in the way sometimes. So, I'm not making any apologies and excuses but I am also not making any promises. I'll blog when I can... That might be every day or it might be a few days a week or it could be a few times a month. But I'll eventually blog. I can't promise intellectual stimulating conversation either. Some of the blog entries might not even make sense. But hey, it's always your choice to read or not to read...  So anyway... I'm working up a longer entry for later. Peace out until then!

So, I suppose since the last entry to this blog was on April 4th and it's now April 10th we can safely say that posting in my blog every day was an epic fail. Oh well... There is something rather huge that I could blog about but I'm not sure I am ready to blog and share that just yet. I know, I'm such a tease... It's nothing bad though. It's just life-changing, perhaps in a good way, for our family. Moving on... Someone suggested the other day that I pick a current event or article from our newspaper or any newspaper and do a commentary every day. I am still considering this idea. On the surface it seems like a good idea. But, I am not sure if I am politically correct enough to comment on such things... I have a lot of opinions that might not be shared by everyone...  We shall see... Until next time my dears...

I've decided to try posting to my blog at least once every day. Some of my posts might be short and sweet. There may be some days where I post several short entries and other days when I post a longer blog at the end of the day. There may be some days when I post a quote, poem, or song lyrics that have inspired me or touched me in some way. I hope to post something new every day unless I simply have nothing to say, which isn't often. Enjoy the ride...

Approximately 6 years ago I purchased a Dell Inspiron 1300 from a local rent-to-own store. The only reason I purchased another computer was out of necessity because my Dell desktop I had owned for 7 years decided to shit itself. All the warning signs where there, but without the finances, I tried to make it last as long as I could. I went to the rent-to-own place because I didn't have the money to purchase another machine without financing, and my credit is less than stellar. So, I ended up paying triple what the machine was worth by the time they added all the financing charges into the price. I say triple what it was worth because it was an older model, Dell was making the Inspiron 17. But it fit my needs at the time so I was happy with my purchase and it was, like I said, my only option. In the past few months it has become increasingly slower, started to develop a ticking noise coming from the hard-drive area, and checking e-mail became a 20 minute process. So, it was time for ...

It always amuses me how people tend to get their undergarments all out of sorts over free social networking sites. Some people react to changes on social networking sites as if it were a zombie apocalypse or the end of the world as we know it. Speaking of zombie apocalypses and such, I am renting out space in my concrete bunker and have extra weapons stock-piled in case you need them... You know, just in case that whole zombie apocalypse does happen and Facebook going to the new Timeline is just a "sign of things to come". First of all, Facebook is a free social networking site designed for entertainment purposes only. The new Timeline feature is not the end of the world, nor is it a life or death situation. If the unveiling of the new Timeline actually causes you great anxiety and stress and throws your Happymobile into a tailspin, perhaps you should do some re-evaluation and reorganization of your priorities. Perhaps you should do some inner soul searching and find out ...

We have heat. Yes, heat is important. I love heat. I will NEVER complain that it is too hot in our house during the winter EVER again. Even when my dad has the heat jacked up to 70 degrees and I'm sweating and sleeping in shorts and tank tops.  So, if you read my earlier blog,  Frozen Tundra , you know that earlier today our furnace wasn't working. It was totally craptastic and reminiscent of a few winters ago when I woke up to find a seriously cold house and a flooded basement. But, this time it wasn't that drastic. Apparently you're supposed to change the filters on your furnace. Yes, I knew this. I'm not entirely stupid. But,  I have no idea where the filter is and I thought someone had changed it last winter, so I thought we were okay. Personally I blame my sister. You're probably wondering why I'd blame my sister for something like this though, right? I'm about to tell you... This weekend my oldest sister called and said that her furnace had sto...

Our furnace is not working. It is 22 degrees outside and our furnace is not working. Hopefully the repair technician who is making a lot of noise in my basement right now can fix whatever is wrong with our furnace. This furnace is relatively new and was installed in February of 2008. I'm sure it's probably something stupid like a clogged filter or something of that nature... But I'm not a service technician... I don't even know where the filter is...  I have to go find some blankets to pile on my un-amused and very cold pops.  To be continued later... Hopefully with heat. Yes, heat is important...

Greetings kids! Insomnia sucks. I've dealt with it on and off most of my life. There are nights when I fall asleep within an hour or so of laying down and remain asleep through most of the nights. Other nights I fall asleep and wake up every few hours. Then there are those nights when sleep doesn't come at all, and although they are few and far in between, it's still rather annoying. There isn't much you can do when you're an insomniac and the rest of your household, including a cat that loves to run through the house meowing at all hours of the day and night, is sound asleep. Usually when insomnia strikes I lay there for an hour or so staring at the ceiling. When it's obvious that sleep desires to remain elusive, I usually either turn on the laptop and surf the web or I watch television shows On-Demand. But even then I have to be mindful of the fact that my pops is asleep in his bedroom, which is separated from my own by a small bathroom, and sound travels qu...

Greetings from the frozen tundra otherwise known as Indiana. It's cold out there. No, cold doesn't even begin to describe how it feels outside. The minute you walk outside it's like all the air is sucked out of your lungs. It's so cold it hurts to breathe and any part of your body that is exposed to the icy wind starts to sting. Your breath hangs in mid-air, as if frozen. Yeah, it's definitely cold out there. The temperature is around 16 degrees, but when you factor in a wind of 30 mph with gusts around 40 mph you get a windchill of -2. But hey, that's winter in Indiana, right? I work Thursday nights this semester with my friend Vicki. She doesn't drive and depends on public transportation to get back and forth to work so I usually offer to give her a ride home on the nights we work together. I parked on the backside of the building instead of in the main lot because there were no close spaces and I wasn't feeling the walking in sub-zero temperat...

What it is, yo?  Today was the third day of the Spring Semester. When I pulled into the parking lot at 12 pm it was full of cars and as I walked down the halls I saw a lot of students walking to and from class and hanging out in the lounges. When I walked into the Academic Support Center I was pleasantly surprised to find we were almost full. One of the English classes was using the lab to complete some assignments that required a computer. For the last few semesters we've had a lot of English and Math classes coming in to use the Academic Support Center. A lot of our classes are now using on-line resources and programs to reinforce what the students are learning in the classroom. Our instructors are also utilizing BlackBoard, our on-line learning software, in their classes as well. Even some of our face-to-face classes are now putting discussion boards, tests, quizzes, and other electronic items on-line for students to access and complete as part of their daily assignments. It g...

Inspirational and motivational words have an awe inspiring power for me. I often run across inspirational poems or quotes that brighten my day or cause me to think more deeply about my life and the environment that surrounds me. It often prompts me to take a deeper look at how I interact with the world and how it interacts with me. This morning I'd like to share an inspirational poem with you that has caused me to do just that. So, I hope you enjoy this poem as much as I have and that it holds a special meaning for you as well. Now, I'm going to shut up and post the poem (yes, I know that's what you were thinking after reading line two of this paragraph). The Invitation It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of be...

So, I have decided to start this blog. We'll see how often I actually post in it though. I've started blogs and forgotten about them only to discover them accidentally months later. Hopefully I'll actually keep up with this one though. Although I'm not entirely sure who the hell is going to read it anyway... Oh well. Here's my blog. For better or worse. Peace out people.