29 days of joy....

ok, so...i have been in charge for 29 days...so far...and i must say that i have been moving and shaking every moment.....in the past 24 hours i have offered a local school district a part-time school nurse, whose services we can bill to 3rd party payers.....at little or no cost to the school system.....and i have figured out that i can use tax dollars to pay for gardisil for uninsured women aged 19-25...women who have aged out of medicare but who could still benefit from this vaccine......this is huge.....and that i can send our nurses to the county schools to do dental varnish for preschoolers (a fluoride treatment) and buy carseats and booster seats with tax dollars for people who cannot afford them.....and partner with the red cross to plan for disaster rather than paying for a planner on our own....yes...this has been a big month....and i am overjoyed to have taken advantage of what one person in charge can do......

brian williams on the daily show....

ok, so...my family and friends do not seem to want to watch clips...but here goes anyway...

shelving books....

ok, so.....in my dreams i had somehow managed to extend bookshelves, quite a feat as our shelves are tucked between walls and windows or walls and doors....and i was focusing on the arrangement of books in natural groups.....i can recall sorting through to arrange all of the little house on the prairie books in one spot....only to come back and find them all missing....my entire dream sequence was riddled with the shelving of books, and the subsequent looking for books that disappeared from said shelves.....not quite like the guy who kept pushing the boulder up the hill only for it to roll back down....but close...and no explanation for why i would dream such a dream.....at least today is friday and i can sleep longer tomorrow morning......maybe something was lost in the getting up at 6:30 am that might have been revealed had i stayed abed til 8.....

random thoughts....

ok, so...at some point in the past few weeks, npr did a piece on my morning commute about animals in movies....and i only recall that very trivial detail from that entire 3 minutes of my life....that dogs/cats/animals are paid a flat rate of $35 a day to be on a movie set.....i am just saying......

Bourbon Truffles

ok, so....the folks back in Austria have asked for the recipe for the bourbon confections i sent last month... the recipe is as follows/for the record i used ground pecans to coat these luscious morsels....

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
* 3 cups semisweet chocolate chips
* 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
* 2 tablespoons bourbon
* 1/2 to 3/4 cup finely chopped pecans
* granulated sugar, unsweetened cocoa, or very finely chopped pecans

PREPARATION:
Combine chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk in a saucepan over low heat. Heat, stirring, until melted and smooth; remove from heat. Stir in the vanilla, bourbon, and 1/2 to 3/4 cup pecans. Transfer to a small bowl. Cover and chill for 3 to 4 hours, or until mixture is firm. Working with fingertips, shape into 1-inch balls; roll in finely chopped pecans, sugar, or unsweetened cocoa. Place on a tray or baking sheet, cover loosely, and chill for at least 1 hour. If desired, put each truffle in a decorative fluted paper or foil cup and keep in tightly covered container in the refrigerator until giving or serving. Keep these refrigerated, tightly covered.

lecture du jour....

ok, so...this evening were the contraception and abortion lectures......my cheeks were still burning with blush when i returned home this evening..such is my level of discomfort with the subject matter.....if i wanted to demo condom use i'd have been a nurse.....or at the very least an aids volunteer in africa....for the record i have never unwrapped the wooden to-scale model for condom demos that came with the demo kit provided by my employer/eku.....i use whatever is available....like a soda can...this day it was a large water bottle.....but i digress.....i was able to show all of my stored videos....from their source and not from this blog.....i especially enjoyed the class reaction to the golden girls condom-buying video.....a nice time to bring up life-long sexuality as well as std prevention....and i did show the snl spoof on the seasonale pills, which promise periods only 4 times a year...the snl pill offered once a year....and called it annuale.....the pms for this pill was brutal.....just too funny......the last fellow out of class turned out to be a youth minister, who told me he appreciated my information, as he has discovered that church-going kids are not necessarily virgins.....nor hip to contraception.....who knew?

scramble with a scrambled mind....

ok, so....i played a round of scramble first thing this morning, and scored poorly.....my brain is not as acute and my fingers not especially agile at this hour......i sense that those valuable 7-letter words are somewhere on the board...but all i see in my current foggy state are the cheap single point words like hog and hag....ah well.....

5037

ok, so...it seems that i passed by 5000 posts sometime in the past month.......who knew that such a feat could go by without my even noticing?......kinda like The White Album i listen to as i type.....each song blends into the next......at least i was not climbing in the bathroom window as the 5000th blog was posted....would have been embarrassing....oh yeah.....

deer in the headlights.....

ok, so.....some state folks visited us today...4-strong....to show us where we can make improvements in operations.....and though i was not at the helm when these conundrum statistics were earned.....i am in charge from here on out....hopefully in charge....and must do much better with issues like collection and billings....and scheduling of staff for the client load in question...oy...such a very lot to keep track of....yeah...well....the state folks do keep track of these things, but it appears that nobody onsite has done so.....and so i am feeling a tad shell-shocked.....not downtrodden....but certainly weary at all that must be done to make things right.....

yikes.....

ok, so...there is more snow.....hardly enough to call snow....but then this is ky and even d-ville schools are closed today and eku d-ville has a delay.....so my workmates and i are doing a 1-hour delay...just to be on the safe side.....though...i am going on in because we are expecting state auditors, and they will be mad as fire if nobody is in the parking lot.....when they descend......

late tributes...

ok, so...i came home from a hard day at work...well.....y'all know that is an exaggeration...but i digress.....from the 6 birthday cards that were in the mail...made my day-after-birth....day.....

trolls

ok, so.....let me tell you a sad tale from my childhood....about the time when trolls were the big, BIG thing.....and my parents would not buy me trolls.....trolls came in costumes, and with different colored hair....and the trolls could be purchased in sizes that ranged from keychain dangling trolls to monster trolls.....and as i type i happen to have a troll on my bookshelf upstairs....some give=away from some event i attended....and i was given grief for accepting a troll....gentle readers.....better late than never to have a troll of your own...mine has pink hair...and clothing.....no naked troll for me....

birthday blues?

ok, so...i went to bed early on my birthday, but not because i was blue or depressed or otherwise sad about being older.....nah.....i just went on to bed because i stayed up way too late on sunday watching those pesky oscars....and getting enough sleep is a good idea at any age....

52

ok, so......my first facebook walll comment of the day assured me that 52 is the new 38....I like how this woman thinks....

woo-worthy

ok, so....we stayed up really late watching the oscars....and though we were delighted at the song from once winning, and the best original screenplay award going to juno, we not only did not see the bulk of the nominated films...we likely will not when they come out on dvd......at this point in our lives the prospect of sitting down to a film that promises death and destruction across western texas is not the feel-good, hopeful film we are so looking for to help us forget just how much death and destruction there is in the real world.....or at least as reported by npr on our journeys to and from work....for the few times a year that we break down and either go to see a film on the bigscreen, or rent a new release we want some shred of glass-half-ful.....i do not see this as wanting insipid entertainment....we do not bother with reality tv as a rule because it is so very ....well...stupid....we prefer to leave the television off at night because the quiet makes reading so much more enjoyable....ah well...must get ready for work despite my fatigue.....

from jezebel

ok, so....

bitch is the new black....

ok, so this from snl

no room at the red lobster....

ok, so....we piled in the car after church and drove to lexington to meet with the eldest child for our annual red lobster birthday meal....for the record, the r.l. is far from my favorite dining choice....but grandma likes to go there and so we try to be happy with her choice.....but on this day...arriving at 1:30 pm.....there were so many in the lobby one could not stir them with a stick...and there were separate folks taking names for small and large groups....and our group, being large at 5, was told it would be as much as 45 minutes....and so we left and drove over to j.beth to take our chances with the cafe.....grandma was not pleased, but as she was not driving, and given that she was not the birthday girl, she settled down.....well....after a fashion.....i had a marvelous hot brown....and that is saying something for a person who used to make them on a daily basis for others....the sauce was superb.....the turkey was from a real turkey breast, not pressed and processed...and the toast tasted like sourdough...and the bacon and tomato perfect complements..just yummy.....a nice birthday treat.....

macaroni and cheese

ok, so...in my dreams i was living in an apartment that had the washer/dryer in a closet that was also wide enough to accommodate a stove, sink and fridge....no counter space save for the tops of the washer and dryer.....and the shelving above was taken up by broken suitcases....each and every one had a handle that was not completely attached....and i was trying to make macaroni and cheese throughout the dream sequence, which involved trying to find items lost on the subway, and trying to pick up bits if ripped paper off of the floor, and trying to hand up clothing in another wide closet. I did manage to get a pan of marinated fish into the oven...mahimahi with garlic marinade....and i have no idea if i had vegetables in mind or if maybe i had a salad int eh fridge....and i cannot recall whether there was a table or chairs....but that is how things are in dreams....there are intricately detailed things, and great gaps in other sections.....ah well.....

an artful interlude....

ok, so.....i turned the television back on for some background noise, and wandered off in search of a book i need to pass along this evening....and all the sudden i heard the voice of an artist i know (and i know only 2....) explaining the featured still life as a riot of color.....and i sat down to listen to him track the progression of his work from outdoors to photographs of outdoors to all indoors from materials brought inside.....he was working on a melon, and the camera close-up showed the moisture clinging to the melon...wow.....later on in the program (KET, naturally) he discussed a small painting by cezanne as anything but small....and went into great detail about how the apples and the plate were deliberate and intricately shaded..it takes an artist to be able to understand thr work of other artists, i suppose....and to discuss must be just as difficult as to paint...and to have such talent...the l.o. must be so very proud of her papa....