Rants and raves Posts

Vegas Party

This past weekend was spent in Vegas for Jess and Scott’s Bachelor/ette party. We all know that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, or at the very minimum shouldn’t get posted on the internet, so I’m just going to give a summary of an awesome weekend and rate various places and services using a point system. Get ready!

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Posted by Caro in Life, Rants and raves, Travel, Weddings and tagged with

Let Me Whine For Just A Quick Minute

I hate working 3 jobs. I just want to work 1 or even 2. This needs to be done with. I’m sooooooooooo over it!

/end whining

Posted by Caro in Life, Rants and raves, Work

Marla Saga, Continued

At some point in the preferably near future, I would like for my foot to be fixed. I don’t think I’m asking too much.

Let’s quickly review the bullshit

~6 years ago: I noticed a “knot” in the arch of my foot. It didn’t go away despite all kinds of massages

~5 years ago: I ask my foot doctor about it. He tells me I have plantar fibromatosis. At the time it’s not really hurting, it’s just mostly a nuisance.

~4 years ago: I decide (jokingly) that I have a foot tumor. I name it Marla, after Fight Club.

~2ish years ago: Marla begins to cause some intense pain. It’s not horrible and mostly comes and goes with exercise/walking a lot. Being cheap, I decide to just deal with it.

This past year:

-The pain became unbearable after excessive walking or exercise
-I started getting charlie horse style cramps consuming my arch and toes
-Pain is now the norm so I suck it up and get a referral to a podiatrist (yes, I chose the HMO)
-Podiatrist tells me it’s plantar fascitis. He sends me for custom orthotics and physical therapy
-Physical therapists turn out to be sadists and I believe it is their mission to torture me. I had two of them over the course of 6 sessions and both told me they think I have a stress fracture in my foot. If the pain continues, go back for an x-ray. In the meantime, keep doing the stretches.

And now we’re at the present.

I was in a wedding on Saturday (post to follow soon!) and knew running around, especially in heels, would be taxing on Marla. I vowed to just get through it and then call the doctor the following week to schedule a routine x-ray. I called the doctor yesterday and somehow was able to get in the same day. Score!

Ok the doctor looked at my foot. Poked on THE spot, aka the CORE of Marla. Yeah, he made me cry. (more…)

Posted by Caro in Fears, Health, Rants and raves

Yesterday: A GREAT Day

It’s not often that I have days as great as this. You know those days – where everything just goes RIGHT? Not even that. It was like the best possible outcome for a variety of situations.

1. I woke up and wasn’t groggy. I actually kind of felt rested. Weird, but OK!

2. I rolled into work and was ridiculously productive. I never knew I could do that much work in that short of an amount of time!

3. I got a call from the cable guy at like 11:30. He wanted to come to my house right then to fix my DVR. Um…my appointment is from 1-3. I’m at work sir, you need to come later. He told me he’d show up at 1. I got home at like 1:05 and the dude was there. SCORE! He gave me a new DVR box, but it was taking a long ass time to set up. Impatient, he changed it out for another box. This one started working after a while. He mentioned maybe 2 or 3 times that I had a nice telephone voice. Um creepy! And strange too, cuz I was kind of pissy when he called at 11:30. For lack of anything else to say, I just said thank you. As he was leaving, he asked if there was anything else he could do. I told him the customer service person had told me to talk to him about getting a credit on my bill. After all, my TV was essentially useless for like 5 days. He told me to call customer service. Lame, but oh well. Dude left.

About 5 minutes later I got a call from this dude. He wanted to see if the DVR box was picking up the schedule yet. I looked and shockingly enough, it was actually working. The guy then told me he gave me a credit on my bill – for the entire cost of TV for a month!! Here I was hoping to get like $10 off, but I got a whole month of TV for free. That’s what I’m talking about!!

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Posted by Caro in Life, Random, Rants and raves, Work

Seasons

It is March 19, 2010.

Today is the last day of winter; tomorrow is the first day of spring.

ummmmm…..

Can someone please explain to me how it’s technically still WINTER and I’m ready to drive to the beach in my air conditioned car??? It’s hot as fuck today and I can’t handle it.

Mother Nature: I liked the cold better. Get your stuff together already!

Thank you.

Posted by Caro in Life, Random, Rants and raves

BRUTAL-ly Honest

I had physical therapy today. My usual physical therapist was sick so I got a substitute today. A brutally honest one. I guess I should talk about physical therapy in general since I haven’t done that yet.

About a week and a half ago I went in for my consult and evaluation. It was kinda odd, but based on past physical therapy sessions for other problems, I was expecting odd. She needed to observe and measure all kinds of things related to my foot, so I took off both shoes and socks. She looked at my feet while I just stood there. She had me raise up to my toes while standing on both feet. She had me stand on one foot at a time so she could look at something else. Then she made me walk up and back the room so she could see stuff when I walked. Then I laid down.

Here’s where it got really sad: she measured my calf/Achilles flexibility. When you’re laying back and you pull your toes up to a 90 degree angle (toes to the sky), that 90 degree angle is considered “0″. Pull your toes in toward your shin more, and every degree beyond 90 is +1. So you want the 80 degree angle: +10 on their scale. Ok so when I first got measured a week and a half ago, I was at -5. MINUS 5. So that’s 15 degrees of flexibility that I’m lacking. OK people, it turns out this isn’t bad; it’s ABYSMAL. Apparently the average elderly person has more flexibility in their calf/Achilles. Heck even my “good” foot is only at a +5. OK fine, my ankle and calf aren’t flexible. Whatever — fix me!!

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And It’s Over

The 2010 Olympics have ended. Sadness. I can’t say this doesn’t come without some relief though, as I’ve been forced to stay up so incredibly late to watch these things (thanks NBC!). I swear, it almost requires me, the viewer, to do some sort of endurance training beforehand or something lol. Watching the Olympics in full = a sport of its own. Now that the games are over, I can also start reading the news again. Knowing what’s going on in the world is pretty rad. Oh there was an earthquake in Chile? You don’t say. lol

I have yet to watch the opening or closing ceremonies, but I feel that I have bored enough people about the Olympics for the last couple of weeks, so I’m gonna make this my last post on the topic. And what a better way to go out than with a news article on the top 8 winners and losers of the games? No, I’m not talking about athletes. Well not JUST athletes. Some of these other things are good too. Like winner #8:

8. Safe sex
In a victory for planned parenthood, the 7,000 residents of the Athletes Village ran through a supply of 100,000 free condoms halfway through the Games. “That’s about 14 condoms per person,” notes CBC. An emergency shipment was immediately dispatched to the libidinous Olympians.

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Posted by Caro in News, Rants and raves, Sports, TV

Torvill & Dean: Still My Favorite

I love figure skating. When I was a kid I used to pretend I was a figure skater and spin around on the kitchen floor in my socks. It’s something I myself am not very good at, which makes it even more spectacular to watch. I mean they do these crazy jumps and spins and the footwork too. Even just watching them FLY from one end of the rink to the other is cool. Pairs is pretty awesome, but we already know how I felt about this years pairs competition. So in the meantime while I wait for the ladies’ singles, I had my ice dancing.

Not going to lie, ice dancing is notoriously my least favorite of the 4 varieties. Especially the compuslory dance. I think those judges have their work cut out for them. Just watching people do the same thing over and over again is too much for me, much less evaluating each competitor’s. No thank you!! The original dance can be interesting. There were a couple this year that intrigued me. Of course there was also the one that confused the hell out of me – the Russians doing the Aboriginal Dance. Take a lack of impressive/challenging moves, combined with some RIDICULOUS looking costumes and a premise that already has people offended, and you get this. Seriously, WTF?!

But then last night we got to the free skate. It’s by far my favorite. I saw a few that I liked. Even two that I loved. These of course were Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’s (Canada) dance to Symphony #5 and Emily Samuelson and Evan Bates’ (USA) dance to Canto Della Terra. Beautiful. Stunning. Amazing.

But still not my all-time favorite.

That award goes to Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean (UK), who were the first people to get all perfect 6.0′s in the artistic impression section of the old scoring system. For technical merit they were split 5.9/6.0. I’m not sure what it is about this dance, but I love it. Even though it’s from 1984 and the picture is horribly grainy, I could watch it over and over again. Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the artistry, maybe it’s the incredible synchronization. I don’t know. They start on the ground because their music was too long. Apparently it exceeded the length by 18 seconds, which they discovered they could get around if none of their skates hit the ice until 18 seconds in. Pure perfection. Here it is:

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An Open Letter to NBC

Dear Executives at NBC:

While I appreciate your coverage of the variety of sporting events at the Olympics, I have a bone to pick with you.

First and foremost, these Olympics are being held in Vancouver, which is the same timezone as the west coast. Unlike games past where the events would be held in the middle of the night for Americans, these sports are held at approximately the same time we are awake. Despite this, we are not receiving footage of the competitions until 8pm.

This is unacceptable. I cannot browse the internet during the day without fear that various Olympics results will be “spoiled”. You have multiple stations on which you can broadcast. Why not show the events, live, during the day on USA? Or MSNBC? A majority of Americans have some sort of recording device (TiVo, DVR, etc.) and could tape these events to watch at their convenience. If you wanted to re-broadcast the highlights in prime time on NBC, more power to you.

This is another issue I must raise. The prime time broadcast spans from 8pm to midnight. As a hard-working, tax-paying citizen, I must get up at 6:30am to get ready to go to my job. Staying up until midnight, or in some cases later, certainly doesn’t help come morning time. And while I have no problem rolling out of bed, throwing on some clothes, and driving to work, I can assure you that my boss is less than stoked to see yawning, grumpy, bags-under-the-eyes-which-aren’t-all-the-way-open-in-the-first-place Caro. Even moving the broadcast from the 8pm-12a slot to 7-11pm would vastly improve this situation.

Finally, if you are censoring the Olympics and waiting until 8pm to show me the clips of the competition you think I might enjoy, please refrain from broadcasting spoilers. Last night I turned on the NBC Nightly News at 6pm. After several non-gaming stories, the announcer switched gears to the Olympics. Thinking this was a preview of what I would be shown later in the evening, it didn’t even occur to me to change the channel. However, without warning, the results of the Women’s Downhill were posted. Thank you for telling me that Lindsey Vonn won gold. Thank you for sharing this with me before you showed it to me in any broadcast. If you are going to keep me in suspense until 8pm, please do not spoil the results at 6pm.

Aside from these issues, I greatly appreciate your commitment to showing me what you consider the highlights of the Olympics on a bi-annual basis.

Sincerely,

Caro

Posted by Caro in Life, News, Rants and raves, Sports, TV and tagged with

I Agree With Dick Button

After watching some of the pairs skating, I couldn’t help but notice that some of the skaters seemed to be doing a lot of “extra” movements in their routines. In particular, they grabbed their skates quite a lot. Maybe it’s the new cool thing?

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Posted by Caro in Rants and raves, Sports and tagged with