March 2009
March 31, 2009 at 9:18 am
“Furlough” is a much nicer f-word than “fired,” but it’s still one most people would rather not hear. The company I work for is making everyone take at least a 1-week furlough this quarter, which means you get a week off but you’re not paid for it. Thankfully, after having financial problems in my early 20′s, I have built up a savings account which I guard more vigilantly than any secret stash of Oreos. Some of my work friends are not so lucky and are looking for ways to make up the difference in their paychecks. Which is why I’ve been brainstorming ways to make extra money quickly.
1) Sell your blood plasma
If you’re not scared of needles, you can donate your blood plasma for about $25 a pop. I had a friend in college who did this when she was tight on cash. It does seem a bit icky to be selling your body fluids for money, but if every dollar counts it’s an option
2) Sell stuff on ebay or Craig’s list
Most people have stuff [...]
March 30, 2009 at 10:57 am
I like to do good things for the betterment of society, but like most people I don’t like going too far out of my way to do it. I recycle if a bin is nearby and I gave $20 to Keep Indianapolis Beautiful because I am a sucker for trees, but I’m not going to join the Peace Corps for two years. This is why I like the World Community Grid, which I have been a member of for many, many years. I get to help the world without really doing anything :)
The WCG is a grid computing project which uses the spare cycles of thousands of volunteers’ computers to crunch data involved in research projects. In human speak, this means that after you register and install their free software, your computer downloads a packet of information and analyzes it in the time that your computer is on but you’re not doing anything. You know, like right now, when you’re reading this blog entry. This helps scientists speed up the pace of their research about [...]
March 27, 2009 at 7:07 am
I’m happy to see that some of my online friends have submitted a proposal for a panel at the 2009 BlogHer conference. If you are a fan of Roni, MamaVISION, Steph, or Melissa, take a moment to vote for their panel, will you? It’s a bit tricky to figure out, so follow these instructions:
Log into BlogHer if you’re already a member. If you’re not a member, register here.
Go to the Blogs & Body Image: What are we teaching our kids? proposal page.
Click on the link at the top that says, “I would attend this session”
And you’re done! Thanks.
March 25, 2009 at 8:26 am
I was 21 years old when I looked in the mirror in the computer science building’s bathroom and saw the first grey hairs growing out of my scalp. It was that same year that I started to see small grey flecks of dust in my vision when I looked up at a clear blue sky or at a white wall. My eye doctor told me these were floaters, little blobs of protein that develop in the fluid in your eyeball. Near-sighted people like me get them quite frequently.
A couple years later I woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to scoop my gallbladder out with a spoon. The surgeon did it with a scalpel and a tiny camera instead, and I was only 24. Then my knees started to hurt when I climbed up the stairs. By this point I’d also lost track of how many cavities I’d had filled, caused by too much Mountain Dew and too little dental floss.
A friend my age told me over dinner she is fighting acid [...]
March 24, 2009 at 8:25 am
The images above are taken from the head MRI I had done last year. They would be at home hanging in the surrealist wing of an art museum or on the album cover of a metal band’s CD.
I was surprised to learn that MRI films come on CDs now, but my radiologist friend, Lakshmi, that I visited this weekend said most of these things are done digitally now. She flipped through my films and explained what all the black, grey, and white bits were without charging me $400 for it.
Each image on the CD is a slice of my head, as if they cut it up like bread and peeked inside. The way Lakshmi read the MRI was to sort through the images like they were a flip book, back and forth. Each time she ran the animation she looked at a specific part of the picture, like the brain stem or the sinuses, and looked for abnormalities. I have a healthy brain according to the films. Yay?
My latest tweets
"What distinguishes us one from another is our dreams and what we do to make them come about." - Joseph Epstein
