Mutant

Apparently, I am a mutant. I am here in Colorado Springs visiting with my sister, Erika. My sister, Heather, a registered nurse, is here visiting as well. The subject of sleep apnea came up and we were talking about weight induced apnea (when you get it when you are excessively overnight) and how my brand of apnea has nothing to do with weight.

Several months ago I went to an ENT doctor that told me I have an extra flap that is most likely the cause of my sleep apnea (it covers the airway while I sleep). Heather's medical curiosity got the best of her and she used Erika's odoscope (it is the thing that doctors and nurses use to look in your ears) to look down my throat. The words out of her mouth: "You're a mutant!" Gee, I knew there was something....

After year end, I will most likely get a surgery to remove or snip this flap.

I would include a picture of my throat but I wouldn't want you to run screaming from the computer. It's not everyday that you come across a mutant.

Food Drive Results

The Food Drive is over! My team won with 1,222 cans out of 7,014! I was excited to see that we surpassed the goal of 5,000 food items! The results are going to be announced on Monday during the Thanksgiving Luncheon. I won't be there since I'll be in Colorado. Here I am in the storage room with all the food items.
Here's more food that was collected:

I hosted a celebration for my team and gave out the prize for the most cans collected in the Cranberries Team. Oscar (probably the most competitive person in the company) won--he collected almost 600 cans! He won a 2 night stay in a hotel (donated by my sister, Erika).
Today I also prepared the prizes for the big contest. It is a Blockbuster gift card, a bag of microwave popcorn and two candy bars.

I am bummed I'm going to miss out of the luncheon, but I am glad everyone can get together and celebrate giving to charity!

No Strep Throat

I've had a sore throat the last couple of days and yesterday I had the same cottony feeling in my throat that I had when I had strep throat a year and a half ago. You may not know or remember, but what started out as strep throat for me turned into a re-infection of strep throat, laryngitis, ear infections in both ears and bronchitis (all at the same time!).

I went to the doctor this morning to nip this in the bud, if in fact it was strep throat. I was even willing to go through the test (which involves a throat swab). I have a very strong gag reflect (runs in the family) so it is a difficult test for me. I learned today that doing this test while lying down is much more manageable, although uncomfortable just the same.

The doctor came in to give me the great news: I don't have strep! I do have a viral infection, nothing big. It will go away on it's own. The doctor started talking (very passionately) about how you can't treat a viral infection with antibiotics. Okay, I said. He really made me feel like I had to defend the fact that I came in early to check on my throat! I told him just that. I told him that I am normally the type of person that waits until it's really bad (like the last time I had to force myself to leave work to go to the doctor even though it was like swallowing knives every time I swallowed). I did not appreciate being made to feel bad because I came in early--I am not a hypochondriac and I am not the type to want a prescription if I don't need it. He gave me one to treat strep just in case I get worse, although he said I didn't have it. I just don't get it--he seemed very passionate about the fact that doctors over prescribe, but that's exactly what he did!

I decided to stay home today just in case. I'm still working from home as I'm not too bad, but at least I won't deal with the stress of work and potentially getting someone else sick or worse--be a grouch around the office (mainly because of that argument with the doctor).

Food Drive

Last year, I organized a food drive contest for the accounting department at work. I came up with the idea when I noticed that very few people actually contributed cans. I figured it would be successful since most people at work have a competitive nature. I was right--last year we collected over 1,700 food items! Not only that, but everyone really got into it and had fun with it.
This year, my company reluctantly agreed to do the contest company-wide. It was a VERY hard sell. This year there are 9 cross departmental teams. Each of the teams have a Thanksgiving related names. Most teams created team signs and they got really creative with them:

For my team, I gave everyone a can of cranberry sauce because my team was called "Cranberries".



The team captains also put effort into decorating their offices. This team captain's girlfriend is a kindergarten teacher. She had her class say what Thanksgiving means. Tom's team is "Pumpkin Pie" so he put "Put Your Food in Pumpkin's Pie Hole":

This is my boss, Arcy's team window. Her team is the Indians:

Mark Domash is Team Gravy's captain. His office had this tower of food displayed:

On the front of his window, it says "Top This!" As you can see, Team Gravy will "Top" the competition!

Almost everyone is having a great time with it--and we've already collected over what we collected last year! The contest ends on Friday...we'll see which team wins. My team is in the lead, but not by much!

California Fires

California is again experiencing a group of wildfires. Montecito (near Santa Barbara) was the first area hit and hundreds of homes have been destroyed. The storching heat we've been experiencing aided in starting the Corona fires down in the Southland. The Corona fire has spread to familiar places to me: Brea (I lived there from 1994-1997), Diamond Bar, and Anaheim (home of Disneyland).

There was even a fire in Palos Verdes, only a few miles from where I live. Saturday I met my friend Angie, who lives in P.V., so that we could go for a walk. We actually walked pretty close to the fires, geographically anyway, but there was a hill between us and the fires. Our breathing was a bit labored as we took in the smoke filled air. Probably not the brightest thing I've ever done, but what do you do?

This morning you could smell the charred embers in the air and you could see the white pieces of ash fall through the sky and land on your skin. Each one of those fragments of ash represents a piece of someone's home. These fires are the most devastating when you look at the number of homes that have been lost. Thank the Lord that no one has lost their life.

Sharefest Fundraiser 2008

Friday I left work early to help set up and work registration at the Sharefest Fundraiser. Every year they have a dinner with silent and live auctions. Sharefest is a non-profit organization that does an annual workday throughout local communities (I was helping our South Bay organization) and our Sharefest also puts on youth camps.

The evening was a lot of fun, although registration can be a bit stressful! But I always feel that I've made a difference by the end of the night. Sharefest is a great organization that helps thousands of kids (as the community help generally focuses on schools) by showing that the community cares. Here is a link to a video that shows last year's work day: http://www.sharefestinc.org/media_and_publications/video/1

National Politics and 911

Well, most of you know I am not a big fan of Obama and was not very happy to hear that a socialist was voted in as president. However, I am trying to look at the bright side--although I may not like it, a good number of Americans seem to crave new leadership direction. Even though the stock market went down after hearing the news of Obama's election, this hope that some have in our next president may help encourage them to have faith in the economy and pull us out of the recession.

Don't get me wrong, I do not think that is the only thing that needs to be done to help boost our economy. Those citizens that find themselves in a housing bind need to seek legal counsel to make sure the loans that they signed do not go against regulations that were already in place. If they find that the lenders were using illegal loan requirements, they may be able to stay in their homes. For others, I believe they need to tighten up their spending and those others include our own governments--local, state and federal.

Another positive outcome of this election was the turnout of more voters. I pray that the new voters remember the pride they felt when including themselves in the process. I pray that these same people realize that they have a role to play and for some, I hope it encourages them to have an even greater role--local school boards, council members, etc. I know it's encouraged me to get more involved (not sure how just yet!). Of course, I would also encourage these new voters to really look and see what the democratic and republican parties really stand for. At this point, most are immediately claiming to be democrats without really knowing what that means.

Now to the reason why I have 911 in the subject line. Last night at exactly 2:43am I was woken up by a blasting car horn that gave out a continuous ear-drum popping sound for 8 minutes before I decided to call 911. I had never heard a car alarm sound like that and I was afraid that someone had come home late and collapsed in their car, slumping over and putting their weight on the horn.

Police car #671 was dispatched to investigate the situation. The officer found the offending car, which was parked in the driveway of a house right across from my bedroom window. The police officer took out his flashlight to check the cabin of the vehicle to discover it was empty. I was astounded when he knocked on the door of the house and there were people in it! How could they not have woken up? Well, the only thing I could think of was that the speakers in the car were pointed in my direction and therefore the horn sound was muted a bit for the residents. Thankfully they figured out how to turn it off so that the whole neighborhood could get a good night's sleep!