This and That

I want to mention a few other random things that I have crossed off the list, although not all were recent.

Last summer I met with a financial advisor (#27) which turned out really, really well.  For one thing, it forced me to get all my info together in one place.  And it turns out I have more money than I thought I did (although the vast majority of it is scattered over several retirement funds)!  I was pleased to find out that I'm not so far off track as I thought I might be, and the advisor was able to give me a lot of very good concrete advise (guess that's why he's called an advisor, ha-ha).  We were also able to set some goals and decide where I need to focus my efforts over the next few years.  He recommended that I come back every four or five years as sort of a check-up to make sure things were still moving in the right direction and to make any needed changes.  I liked that idea and, most of all, was glad that I didn't feel pressured in any way whatsoever to sign up for any services or products.  It turned out to be a great experience and one that made me feel like a real grown-up!

I did build a snowman this winter (#99).  He was a pretty sad specimen, but I realized during the building process that I actually had no idea how to build a snowman!  This is what happens when you grow up in a place that rarely gets more than two inches of snow on the ground at one time!  Guess I should have Googled that before I got started, but in all fairness, when I put it on the list, I hadn't expected to be doing it by myself.  Oh well.

I also left some notes in books for people to find (#2).  I'm smiling even as I remember doing it, because it turned out to be pretty amusing!  During my last Mondo Beyondo class, one of the projects we were supposed to do was cut out these little notes we had been given and leave them in random places for people to find.  What a perfect way to kill two birds with one stone, right?  Except that I kept forgetting to leave the notes, so I carried them around in my wallet for about three or four months!  I had even colored on them to make them extra pretty and everything!  But I finally thought about it one day when I was at Target, so I scattered them through lots of books... I think there were about twenty of those little notes!  The funny part was because the book aisle is the same aisle the employees use to go to the storeroom, so there was a lot of foot traffic in addition to all the regular customers who were wandering through the area to look at magazines and get to the DVDs.  I was trying to do it without being seen (because how do you explain leaving a bunch of notes in random books?), so it turned into this stealth thing where I would look around then open the chosen book and stuff the note in really fast before walking away a few steps and trying to look nonchalent.  I'm sure there was some security guard watching a TV monitor somewhere in the store and wondering what in the world I was doing!  But it was fun.  And I had been in a bad mood that day, so this definitely managed to bring me out of my funk.

My cell phone has finally been set up so that I can use it at work (#70).  I have a different phone from when I originally wrote this list, and having the android platform made this a cinch!  I already get free access to an awesome drug library program that is otherwise quite expensive, so I downloaded that and got it working.  Then I started searching for useful apps and found quite a few.  I also downloaded some documents specific to my hospital, so if I'm out of my department, I can still pull up the information I need.  They have our wi-fi working much much better here than it used to be, so I can also access a lot of other information if I need to.  It's all very cool, and I feel very up to date now!

I saw not one, but two meteor showers last year (#20).  The first was the Orionid shower in October.  I got up in the wee hours of the morning and drove out in the country for this one, and let me tell you it was cold!!  Plus I was on a random country road in the middle of the country surrounded by corn fields, so I admit that I was perhaps not quite in the right frame of mind for being patient and watching for random meteors.  I was at least prepared for the fact that they weren't going to happen very quickly, and I did only see about five or six over the course of about 45 minutes.  By then I was way freaked out by all the suspicious sounds I kept hearing and totally frozen besides, so I headed home.  The second experience was much better.  I happened to be visiting my family in Mississippi before Christmas when the Geminids were scheduled to appear.  They were supposed to start showing up shortly after sunset, so we drove a little ways into the country after dinner, and settled in to watch.  Wow!  There were shooting stars all over the place!!  Some of them were small and left short trails, but some were large and trailed across the whole sky.  It was amazing!  And they were coming almost one right after the other, so sometimes they were only a minute or so apart, and I think the longest we waited was maybe five minutes.  We were out there for about an hour before we got too cold and headed home.  I had been a little disappointed by the first experience, but after that second time, I can feel very confident about crossing this off the list!

I drove down to Louisville to see Million Dollar Quartet after I missed it here last season (#95).  The music was great, although that was a pretty safe bet since I like that era of music anyway.  It was sort of a fictionalized account of a true event when Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis were all at Sun Studio in Memphis on the same night.  They played some great songs, but one of the best parts was when the showed an actual photo and played an actual recording from that session.  The performers were amazing, and I was impressed that they all played their own instruments in addition to singing.  It was a fun time, and the audience really got into it as well just added to the excitement.  I would definitely see it again.

Wow, so I'm pretty close to being caught up on everything with the exception of a few posts that will have lots of pictures to go with them.  I have misplaced one of the SD cards from my camera, and with all the computer issues I've had, I'm only just now getting pictures sorted out.  So I'm hoping to get those last couple of things posted over the next few weeks.  Can you believe that this whole project will be over in about four months???