Under the Skin

“Just because other people think something, that doesn't make it true. Maybe there's some truth in that, but it's unsatisfying, bitter-tasting truth.”  I have mentioned before how I had always wanted to read this book.  When I finished Spellcaster , I didn't have any more books to read.  I found out that the Tooele "County" Library is only available to residents of the City of Tooele.  Since I live in Stansbury Park, that didn't really help.  But, it turns out that residents of the rest of the county can have a library card for $20 a year.  If I borrow two books in a year, that will make it worth it.  So I have obtained a card of librarihood.  And I borrowed Rules   While reading Rules , I had a serious case of deja vu for one of the chapters.  And then, I realized why.  One of the chapters was a reading passage on a WASL I took once.  For those of you who don't know, WASL is the Washington Assessment of Student Learnin...

Today at work, I made an observation.  A little background:  my current rotation in the lab has me in charge of two machines.  I run the Abbot Architect i, which does hormones and therapeutic drug monitoring, and the Ortho Vitros 5.2 which does all the chemistries and drugs of abuse.  I also run the Vitros 5.1, but that is just a back-up machine to the Vitros 5.2.  It can do the bit important things, but we have only calibrated it to run the things that we would absolutely need no matter what was happening with the 5.2 and forever long. Every day, we have to run QC on all our machines.  We have it analyze a specimen that we know the value of, and it has to be within a certain range of the value we know it to be.  This morning, I was running the QC on the Abbot Architect, when low and behold, the FT4 (a thyroid hormone) readings were all over the board!  Darn it!  That means that 1) We can't run any FT4 until it's fixed and 2) We can't run a...

I couldn't find any good quotes in this one, so I just put the funniest ones: “No men ever, you said." Verlaine leaned across the table, peering at him. "Mateo, are you maybe-well-transgender? Intersex? No prejudice here. Just support." Mateo would have started thudding his face against the table in frustration if his pizza hadn't been in the way. "I'm a guy." "We'll take your word for it.”    "Except for that Cabot kid--Mateo Perez.  But he was just one big ol' ticking time bomb of crazy."  "Apparently the cafeteria was completely devoid of magic.  This would come as no surprise to anyone who had eaten the meatloaf." Let me tell you a story.  I learned that apparently, when a book is being published that is from a relatively unknown author, they hand out advance copies to random people, hoping that they will read it and tell their friends to read it, and then they sell books.  One day this past Oct...

" It's not better to die. Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there from the grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong."  (Note:  I have instituted a new practice in book reviewing, where I include a quote from the book that I think exemplifies said book.  I have added quotes to my old book reviews accordingly) Now that I have responsibilities and stuff, I can't just read books all the time.  But I will continue to review them as I read them.  And, today, we have a classic book.  I know I don't review those much, but a lot of that is because I have read a lot of classic books.  I first heard about this book when I read on the "get to know your teacher" thing in 11th grade that my History of the Americas teacher's favorite book was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn .  When I was readin...

A few short weeks ago, I moved in with my grandfather.  I am finishing my school by being an intern.  For a lot of reasons, it worked out best for everyone involved for me to live my grandfather.  At my grandfather's are my two, childless aunts (one a "spinster" as they say, and the other a childless widow).  This just sounds like an Austen book.  The only thing that would make it more of an Austen book would be if I weren't already engaged and found my true love through this. On the other hand, if I end up in a not-so-conventional type story and there's ghosts and no humor at all, I guess this could also sound like a Bronte novel.  I have learned a lot about my family and I have quite enjoyed it.  I have got to learn about people that I have known my entire life and yet have never really known. Stay tuned on whether or not I end up being in an Austen novel or a Bronte novel.

“Just like when there's a time that a smart person knows enough is enough, there's a time when you know you've got to fight.”  I thought that I was having a dry spell for the blog writing, because I couldn't think of things.  I am working on settling into my routine at Primary Children's Hospital and haven't gotten to the point yet where I am relaxed enough in my mind to have thoughts for a blog.  My mind is still too scattered at the end of the day.  However, I recently found that I still had a few blog posts left unwritten from my time in New York.  One of the blog posts left unwritten was about another children's book I had read, Bud, Not Buddy .    Bud, Not Buddy is about an African-American orphan in Flint, Michigan during the Great Depression who is off to find his "father."  He is sure that that is the jazz musician, Herman E. Calloway.   The story is powerful, and does approach the question of race in the 1930s North...

I am starting to really think of home as a very fluid term.  I moved a lot growing up, and now I have redefined home three times in this year.  I have heard that Americans are a restless people.  And that may be true.  Mormons are also restless.  And college students are forced to move a lot.  So what does this mean for me? It makes me somewhat sad, because I am a homebody.  I would really rather do something quiet at home than go out and do wild stuff.  This is a difference between Brian and me that we are currently reconciling, by the way.  I consider myself to be an energetic person, and most people would agree, and even if I'm being energetic, I would prefer to be at home and achieving and accomplishing there.  But even as energetic as I am, I have never actually seen Brian tired.  And he likes to be out and about.  I have really digressed.  But I suppose the point is, it's weird that a homebody like me would have ...