Carolina won against Oklahoma. Oklahoma looked slow and plodding, tired. I am somewhat shocked as I thought they would be it for us but we were never really behind the whole game. So we have another one to "look forward to". I'm not sure "look forward to" quite describes it as I feel rather tense watching at this stage in the tournament. Final four time next weekend. Of course, I'm glad we are in it but there is some tension about it.
I slept maybe 3 hours tonight before waking up wide awake. I slept well the last few nights and I took a nap yesterday after church so maybe I am just catching up on sleep from all those months of practically no sleep. Grayson has taken to wanting his breakfast at 4:30 a.m. and I need to get him broken of that habit. Yesterday I tried to make him go away and leave me alone but he just kept coming back and back and back until I finally got up and fed him. That shut him up but he wants tuna or else he is not happy with my menu choice. I bought a boatload of the stuff yesterday so I would have a supply for at least 7 to 10 days. Milo likes it too but sometimes he just walks away from canned food. More evidence that he is different.
I have my Wired 4 Ministry class in only 5 hours and 6 minutes. I might as well try and get a little more sleep if I can.
My hair is coming out really badly now. Doctors don't think it has to do with the craniotomy but I have started the process of investigating its cause. Don dialed the phone to the doctor's office Friday and handed me the phone. I had explained to him how upset I am over this turn of events and he wants it solved for the sake of my mental health and physical health as well. I may have to get a wig if they don't hurry up and come up with a cause and a cure. This and my eyesight deficiency are the only two things so far that have stressed me out about the aftermath of surgery. I am really upset about both but I did have blood tests Friday that may help determine if I have some sort of deficiency that might explain the hair loss. I will call later and ask that my referral to a dermatologist be done as soon as the blood test results come back. I do not want someone sitting on those results. I want to move it along.
My eyesight does not seem to me to be improving although I am sure the eye tests in early May will tell me more. I am getting so used to it now that I might not be the best judge of improvement. It really is a shadowy world on the outer perimeter of my field of vision. Bill was not in class today. We always compare the "results of the week" and he has been suffering with failing sight for longer than I have. He used to teach our class often but hasn't lately because it is too difficult to read the material in preparation. I told him about my Kindle 2 in hopes that might help but the thing is expensive and I don't know if he has the interest in it right now. The Kindle is great though. You can read for a while and if your eyes get tired, then switch it to audio and it will read to you. I am so grateful to be able to read anything, although newspapers are still difficult as the print is so small and sometimes not quite dark enough. I do work crosswords almost every day by shining a flashlight on the clues and figuring it out from there. I love doing those things if the words are not too exotic. I pretty much can do the Charlotte Observer ones in 30 to 45 minutes most days. I know even their exotic words as they repeat them time and again and I have learned them through years of working the puzzles.
Another week of trying to locate two suitable jobs to make application for. I actually got one recommendation from one of these career sites of a job delivering internal mail for a bank. Well, where did they come up with that one. I would have to carry around 25 pounds of mail at a time. I don't believe I will be applying for that one as I don't think I would last the first week. It is either items like this that I get or CPA jobs ad infinitum. I was a Credit Products Analyst in my last job and the computer systems that come up with important phrases to look for have interpreted that I am a CPA based on that acronym. I really don't enjoy weeding out all those job recommendations for which a CPA is a requirement. But I'll be back at it this afternoon or tomorrow. I'd like to get those two apps in by Wednesday afternoon but it is normally Thursday evening before I have made the grade on this. Cheryl says why not apply for some mortgage underwriting jobs. They seem to be out there in bulk but I don't have experience with mortgages. I might apply for one and just say I don't have experience but I could certainly learn. I doubt that would hold water but you never know.
____________
Class was good with a dynamite teacher. She is planning to do a follow-up session that lasts 2 hours. I would be interested in trying it out as well. I wish I had her delivery as I think there would be no learning disabled people if they had teachers like Carol. What a wonderful gift she has.
3/30/09
3/28/09
03/28/2009 Sat
Today, we went and got Charlie cat out of the vets. He has to go back Tuesday for a shot but at least he will not be caged all weekend with hardly anyone around most of the time. He smelled and smelled and explored and explored once he got back to Don's place. It was as if he wanted to be sure no other cats had taken over in his absence. For an 18 year old cat (nearly 19, I believe), he was doing well and even went down the steps to check out downstairs as well. He seemed satisfied that nothing too untoward had gone on while he was away and I saw him climb back up the stairs to finish checking out the upstairs areas. Dr. Green did get results from the (enema) and we are hoping nature will take over now. He did not get his bath as the people there said they were afraid it would stress him to the limit. I did schedule Milo and Grayson for a bath on April 14 and I am curious to see how Milo does with it since he seems now to think water is a good thing and he doesn't seem to mind that the tide sometimes rises while he sits at the back of the shower stall. I now have 7 squirt guns to play squirt gun with him. (Don took the 8th to see if Charlie is similarly enthralled.) Gray doesn't pay any attention to the things. He thinks Milo is weird anyway.
I spent the afternoon (from 1 to 4 off and on) doing homework for a Wired 4 Ministry class I am taking at church on Monday. The class is only 2 and 1/2 hours but I guess spending more time on homework than on the class itself is par for classes in general. I used to spend practically all of my free time on Disciple Bible Study for 4 years and the classes were only one hour per week as I recall. The Wired 4 Ministry homework was interesting but also rather lengthy to do correctly. For the class, a person is looking for his spiritual gifts and the homework starts with 240 questions with answers giving a range from 0 to 4 with 0 being Rarely or never and 4 being Very True, Consistently. You put your ratings on a chart that winds being categorizations of what the questions indicate. You add up the scores per row and voila, your answers reveal the spiritual gifts God has given you (and really wants you to use in everyday life as well as in the life of the church). My highest scores show that my gifts are Mercy, Giving, Helping, and Administration. My lowest scores were Prophecy, Exhortation (or Encouragement) and Discernment. You are supposed to pick out your 3 highest scores and your 3 lowest but my scores for helping and administration were tied and they were 3rd down my list, so I gave myself 4 top gifts. It was amazing looking across the rows how often I had consistent 0's thru 2's on the low end and 3's and 4's on the high end. I think the test is pretty good but you have to know it is going to take a while or you'll be tempted to rush it and get invalid results . And then adding up all those little numbers across 17 rows with 12 columns each. Then, of course, there is reading and spending time pondering what each gift means and how it can be used. I already asked to be put on the hospital visitation team so mercy must have been on my mind even before this. Visits meant so very much to me when I was in the hospital that I figure it is payback time and I hope I get some blessings from it as well. I was once a Stephen Minister and I think that is a very valuable use of one's time but my person was older and one problem kept being replaced by another to the point that there would be no end to it. I loved her and she loved me so I had to just quit being a Stephen Minister and care for her as one person to another. I think hospital visitation will be a better fit for me right now as you can exhibit caring with a few visits and then let it be (I hope). I have also asked to go back to Stephen Ministry but this time, I want to listen to someone with a more solvable problem. And I will need someone who can meet with me at church as I can't ask Don to carry me to their home. Stephen Ministry is about caring, listening, and confidentiality and I think having someone drive you might ruin the confidentiality part of it. But meeting at church could be done anonymously.
Ben has another blog out about animals with pictures that are just hilarious. Here is the address for this particular edition of his blog if you are interested:
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2009/03/animal-house-part-three-12-apostles.html
He does, by the way, do so much more than jokes and animals. I hope you have had a chance to read some of his other material.
Carolina won last night and Lawson looked awesome. But Oklahoma looks pretty awesome too. I am nervous about the game coming up tomorrow between them and Carolina. But I'll be watching nonetheless. One of our dear friends is a Syracuse fan and they lost the other night. Last Sunday, he told our SS class he needed to leave early so he could go set up his room for watching a game Syracuse was in last Sunday. I am sorry they lost for his sake. Don is happy as a clam that Carolina is still in the running. Hope it lasts even longer as he has to get by for a solid year on these last 3 games. It is fun and now we are going to get into baseball and golf. Don likes baseball somewhat but golf, no way.
Milo is now sitting on my Wired 4 Ministry homework and he happens to be part of one of my passions - caring for the welfare of animals. He has no worries, I think, but some do.
I spent the afternoon (from 1 to 4 off and on) doing homework for a Wired 4 Ministry class I am taking at church on Monday. The class is only 2 and 1/2 hours but I guess spending more time on homework than on the class itself is par for classes in general. I used to spend practically all of my free time on Disciple Bible Study for 4 years and the classes were only one hour per week as I recall. The Wired 4 Ministry homework was interesting but also rather lengthy to do correctly. For the class, a person is looking for his spiritual gifts and the homework starts with 240 questions with answers giving a range from 0 to 4 with 0 being Rarely or never and 4 being Very True, Consistently. You put your ratings on a chart that winds being categorizations of what the questions indicate. You add up the scores per row and voila, your answers reveal the spiritual gifts God has given you (and really wants you to use in everyday life as well as in the life of the church). My highest scores show that my gifts are Mercy, Giving, Helping, and Administration. My lowest scores were Prophecy, Exhortation (or Encouragement) and Discernment. You are supposed to pick out your 3 highest scores and your 3 lowest but my scores for helping and administration were tied and they were 3rd down my list, so I gave myself 4 top gifts. It was amazing looking across the rows how often I had consistent 0's thru 2's on the low end and 3's and 4's on the high end. I think the test is pretty good but you have to know it is going to take a while or you'll be tempted to rush it and get invalid results . And then adding up all those little numbers across 17 rows with 12 columns each. Then, of course, there is reading and spending time pondering what each gift means and how it can be used. I already asked to be put on the hospital visitation team so mercy must have been on my mind even before this. Visits meant so very much to me when I was in the hospital that I figure it is payback time and I hope I get some blessings from it as well. I was once a Stephen Minister and I think that is a very valuable use of one's time but my person was older and one problem kept being replaced by another to the point that there would be no end to it. I loved her and she loved me so I had to just quit being a Stephen Minister and care for her as one person to another. I think hospital visitation will be a better fit for me right now as you can exhibit caring with a few visits and then let it be (I hope). I have also asked to go back to Stephen Ministry but this time, I want to listen to someone with a more solvable problem. And I will need someone who can meet with me at church as I can't ask Don to carry me to their home. Stephen Ministry is about caring, listening, and confidentiality and I think having someone drive you might ruin the confidentiality part of it. But meeting at church could be done anonymously.
Ben has another blog out about animals with pictures that are just hilarious. Here is the address for this particular edition of his blog if you are interested:
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2009/03/animal-house-part-three-12-apostles.html
He does, by the way, do so much more than jokes and animals. I hope you have had a chance to read some of his other material.
Carolina won last night and Lawson looked awesome. But Oklahoma looks pretty awesome too. I am nervous about the game coming up tomorrow between them and Carolina. But I'll be watching nonetheless. One of our dear friends is a Syracuse fan and they lost the other night. Last Sunday, he told our SS class he needed to leave early so he could go set up his room for watching a game Syracuse was in last Sunday. I am sorry they lost for his sake. Don is happy as a clam that Carolina is still in the running. Hope it lasts even longer as he has to get by for a solid year on these last 3 games. It is fun and now we are going to get into baseball and golf. Don likes baseball somewhat but golf, no way.
Milo is now sitting on my Wired 4 Ministry homework and he happens to be part of one of my passions - caring for the welfare of animals. He has no worries, I think, but some do.
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