The Giant

I had a giant sighting today. The giant man who works in the hospital walked past my coworkers and I as we passed through the tunnel at lunch. It was very exciting since you never know when you'll see the giant. It's been at least two weeks since I've seen him last. I have noticed in the past few sightings that the giant has a rather small head. Not to a freakish level, unlike his overall size, just a bit noticeable. Kind of reminds me of those 'Don't be a pinhead' posters by Scholastic that show giant basketball players with teeny heads due to the fact they haven't been studying.

The first time I saw the giant was on the elevator. There was an almost uncomfortable silence as he stepped on. I noticed the size of his hands and shuddered in horror to think of the size of his other extremities. Glances of awe were exchanged between myself and an older gentleman who stood on the other side of him. We made small talk about the giant after he'd stepped off the elevator.
"Wow."
"Yeah, I think that's the largest human being I've seen in my entire life."
"Me too."
"Well... have a nice day."
"You too."

I wondered today if seeing a midget character sporadically around the hospital would be more exciting than the giant. I can't decide.

Pic 1: After the fall
Pic 2: He's a climber!


It's a slow work day here and I've spent at least an hour drooling over a world travel blog posted by some old friends. I went to their wedding about a year-and-a-half ago, but they are more friends of friends so I had no idea they were spending 8 months traveling around the world together. Truly, just traveling AROUND the globe! They flew from their home in Raleigh, N.C., to New Zealand to Australia to China to Vietnam to Cambodia to India, etc. They'll eventually end up in Athens, Greece visiting our mutual friend, then off to the Netherlands, Iceland, and back to Raleigh. Amazing. They are currently in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan -- definitely need to mapquest that one. The pictures are amazing - anything known as 'golden city' should be impressive, and it is.
Have a look:
http://www.danandandie.com/worldtour/index.html

Back here in West Virginia us graduate students have to quench the thirst for travel on tighter budgets. Which usually means staying within the state, unless your cute BF can tote you along on one of his trips, which is always nice.

Last weekend the cute BF and I checked out some parts of West Virginia that we've never been. To get there we drove through Grafton, a bombed-out town that we think of quite fondly, but that's a post for another day. We kept driving, winding up up up the mountains with roads so curvy that the switchbacks had arrows pointing towards each other. We drove past gorgeous farms, a virgin forest - J was intrigued - and then, of course had to pull over when we saw a sign for the tiniest church in 48 states. We happened to meet the caretaker, quite a tiny man himself, who must've been like 90 and very proudly told us of his impending 61st wedding anniversary, which was the next day. I teased him about not having a gift for his wife, so he promised he'd take her to out to eat on the big day. Which means he'd actually have to drive somewhere and that he still had his license - eeek! Hopefully i wasn't the cause of their 'premature' deaths or anything.

That night we ended up in Davis and Thomas, West Virginia, two reeeally small mountain towns that are right next to each other. After checking into our B&B in Davis, which was more like a quaint mini-hotel, we backtracked to Thomas to hang out at the Purple Fiddle. I had read and heard some good things about the Purple Fiddle a few months previous and it did not disappoint. The food, the beer, dessert, coffee, atmosphere and most importantly – the music – was awesome. That night it was Celtic bluegrass. Two nights later it would be our new favorite band, Steppin' In It, playing a mesh of old timey country, Cajun and swing band music. The age range of people dancing, including us!, was from 4 to 60.

The next day we mountain biked from Davis to Blackwater Falls State Park. The forest looked enchanted -- so lush, with a thick carpet of pine needles and boulders and moss. The falls were gorgeous, but J neglected to tell me until later that day that he'd heard if you look at them the right way, you could see the T Model Ford that's buried at the bottom. Eager to show off my athletic prowess, I only had one wipe out on the bike. J said it was the slowest and most ungraceful fall he'd ever seen. Sweet! Just what I was shooting for. On the way back to the B&B we got an impromtu tour of another B&B that was for sale by the owner who used to live in the South American rainforest amongst the Maroon Indians!

After driving through Dolly Sods on a dirt road and winding down deeper into the state, we passed an RV and bus village on the way to our campground. Yes, bus. People living, however temporarily, in buses! We passed a pickup truck that had a wooden box in the back with coon dogs sticking their heads out through the holes - very cute! That eve after a half an hour of trying to put the tent together (very bad instructions) the camp owner felt sorry for us and put it together in about 5 seconds using only one hand while he chained smoked with the other. Then we tried to start a fire using damp firewood. The, yet another, 90-year-old man (good ole Shreve) who sold it to us said it should be OK once we threw some cardboard on it. It never worked and after ceremoniously burning up my notes from last semester we gave up and retired to the tent to drink a bud light and eat some smores. We decided we suck at camping and resorted to reading to each other by flashlight and snuggling.

Next day, I'll make it short. Rain, rain and some more rain. Driving on kiss your butt turns. A tour of caves with really cool stalactites and stalactmites (sp?). Driving on kiss your butt turns. More rain. Seneca Rocks in the rain. Spruce Knob, the highest point in West Virginia with white out conditions. More rain. Napping in the Jeep. Analyzing the lyrics of Baby Got Back. DWD - dancing while driving. Driving on kiss your butt turns. Yummy hippie pizza joint in Davis and back to the Purple Fiddle!

With all this, who needs Jaisalmer, Rajasthan? We had an awesome time.

Workout Hell

I just got back from the gym this morning and was subjected to what no man, woman, child or dog should ever need go through. I forgot my ipod and you know what that means. I am now at the mercy of of whatever's on the radio at 6:30 am. And, unfortunately, you know what that's going to be . . . your good old, local morning radio show.

I believe that there's a special place in, well, let's say purgatory since my mom may read this one day, yeah, a special place in purgatory for these people. It will be there that these once-upon-a-time local, yocal radio announcers — 95 percent of whom are named Billy — will be strapped down and forced to listen to incredibly dull conversation for hours. They'll reeeeeally want to hear a song, just one song!!! Even a bad one! Even PART of a bad one! But instead, they'll be forced to hear celebrity news that's so old even your grandma who has alzheimers and has lived in a nursing home for years knows about it. They'll hear really boring details of their own personal lives and will hear spectacularly dumb advice being given out to call-ins. And, of course, there will be extremely annoying and incessant laughter following all of this. This cycle will repeat over and over and over....

Then comes the WORSE part. The worst punishment of all for the local yocal radio announcer who quite possibly might be more in love with the sound of his own voice than an opera singer or politician in the middle of a filibuster.
When they open their mouths to speak they'll hear nothing. Not a peep. Not a sound. nada.

The rest of us will be in heaven jamming out to Nelly, Bon Jovi and Parliament. Non-stop music and no interruptions as there will no no radio announcers to ruin the vibe.

The local news continues to not disappoint

Last night while catching up on some much needed 'veg' time — time spent laying on the couch watching gosh I almost forgot what it was called, television! yes, that's it — the local news had their top-of-the-hour update. I was sort of half paying attention when I heard the anchorwoman say, and this is verbatim, "the man belonging to the missing fingertip has been found." (whaaa?) A locator map pops up on the screen with a pointer box that reads, 'Fingertip Found Here.' I rushed to grab my camera that never works because it perpetually needs fresh batteries. Is this for real? Perhaps the Onion has bought out the network! She continues with, "The man, who lost his fingertip while operating a snow plow has come forward, does not wish to be identified. The fingertip was found along route 7." And that was it! Fifteen seconds of your latest missing fingertip news. Man, I couldn't have lived without it-

You've experienced snow delays, but...

sun glare delays? Yes. Sun glare delays. Apparently, this stopped traffic coming into Pittsburgh this morning on I-79, as well as causing bump-and-go on 705 and other troublesome spots. This freak of nature, act of God, whatever you want to call it, was part of the daily traffic alerts on the local news this morning. It was mentioned very casually, as if sun glare delays were an ordinary occurrence in the surrounding area. I know this is not true because as a devoted sun worshiper, I've kept track of all the sun's appearances since mid-November and I could count all of these on one hand. Ok, maybe two if I didn't exaggerate. Anyway, be careful out there and, above all, don't forget the shades.

A trip to the county health department equals fun, fun, fun

Today I experienced the county health department for the first and hopefully last time. I will say this, the types of people I saw there surprised me and are a testament to the state of health care in the U.S.

There were nicely dressed couples, young women in suits, even women in scrubs for crying out loud --- doesn't ANYONE have health insurance anymore!!?!? I'm a fulltime student so I don't really count. But what about these other people? I had to make my appointment a month and a half in advance to compete with them. Only one person matched my expectations. You know, the 'my baby's daddy' type who apparently had just tested positive for a second pregnancy and had a very sad, scared looking 3-year-old following her around who could barely see for all the blonde hair in her eyes. This person looked to be about 17. Other than that it looked like a gathering of representatives for middle class America. Which was great because I could worry less about contracting some freakish STD if any of the instruments weren't washed properly.

But on to the fun. First, a nice nurse who looked to be in her 40s gathered up all the new patients so we could collectively fill out paperwork and watch educational movies that we had all previously viewed in the seventh grade. We learned about all the different methods of birth control and I mean ALL of them. I was making fun of it at first, but I have to admit, I've always wondered how the sponge or diaphram actually worked. There were diagrams and everything. The graphics were top notch with very realistic looking penises ejecting clouds of semen. I learned there's a type of device called the, well I forget what it's called, but it's basically a cervical cap. You stick it up inside yourself and it surrounds the bottom part of the cervix. Owie!!! Lord knows how you pry the thing out. After watching the video all the girls in the room maintained that yes, they still just wanted the pill. Only interested in the pill, for sure now. Then came the mountains of paperwork where along with our name and address, we had to answer if we were bisexual, our partner was bisexual, had we had sex in the past 24 hours and how many partners had we had in our lifetime. I swear, you could literally see everyone freeze up when they got to that question. They concentrated hard, thinking about how they could lower the number....'let's see, that one time with Billy doesn't count because it only lasted like 5 seconds... and that time with Bobby, hm...' If guys were filling out that form, they'd be doing the opposite for sure. They'd add partners based solely on fantasy.

After our papers were collected our prim 40-something-year old nurse described condom usage while flopping a giant, what looked to be used condom around in her hands. Then we got weighed – 116 with shoes on, woo hoo! – blood pressure taken (108 over 72, good) and the other usual doc office stuff.

Then on to the real examination room. The one with, uuuugg, the stirrups. I was under the impression that a med student would observe, not perform. Well, I was wrong. Really, there's just nothing like having a nervous, chubby 3rd-year med student feel every inch of your boobs, then request that the grandmotherly nurse in the room raise your chair so he could get a better angle at your vagina. Things got more tense when he couldn't get a sizable enough swab of cervical tissue. I swear, the student, the nurse and the real doctor were all leaning forward collectively looking at a giant cutip of my cervical tissue deciding it wasn't enough. He'd have to go back in. Fantastic. I had a feeling the way he was fumbling around my vagina during an exam was exemplary of his performance in, well, other areas. Sensing the tension, the grandmotherly nurse began asking about my socks. (Yeah, I left my socks on. I wanted to feel like something was covered, plus my feet tend to get cold.) I told her I got them at Target. Aah, finally the instrument was out. Then, no joke, the med student and doc started to go over the whole thing as if they were analyzing a football play.

The student: 'Yeah, I just couldn't really get a good shot at the tissue.'

The doc: 'You were real close. Sometimes you've just got to go around the....'

Oh geez. Are we done here?
And then the grandmother gave me my pills and asked me if I'd like her to throw in some condoms for good measure. I said sure.
Now as I sit contemplating all this, a few week's worth of condoms and a year's supply of birth control pills lay on my kitchen table. I suppose it's all worth it to save at least $450 on pills alone — that doesn't even count what the office visit would cost. Which brings me to, oh god, please let me have health insurance next year...