I'm tagged!

A friend of mine, Annalise, tagged me in one of those taggy things. Man, that line is just seeping with intelligence. Anyhow, I can't remember the last time I was excited to do one of these (I truly think never), but it must be the season! So I'm gonna have to think about it. Topic: 10 things that make me happy.

I'm officially certifiable

You thought I was gonna say crazy, didn't you? Don't deny it. I know I wouldn't.

I took my national boards to become a Physician Assistant, and good news! I passed with above average flying colors! Woot woot! I love being above average. It's just enough to feel like you've got a little more than your neighbour, but a little less than the Pope.

Point is, I passed.

A little touch of Garland

I love this time of the year when the air turns crisp and the smell of firewood wafts through the sky. Love it! And I especially love take a few moments to knit a stitch here and there while watching Judy's best. Such favorties include The Man that Got Away, The Trolley Song, and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Yep, I'm officially ready for retirement.

I heart Sesame Street

In celebration of the 40th birthday of the most beloved street I thought I'd find a few recent clips. Though they might not be the classics from our time, they are just as entertaining and educational.

I'm officially skilled with counting to the number 4 thanks to Feist.

I love this outtake with Elmo and Ricky Gervais.

Shakespeare just got a little bit better

I love the theater, but it's sometimes tough to go every weekend because the bank account is looking mighty thin as of late. BUT! All across America tomorrow you can get into a show for free! You can even sign up to see a show over the weekend if tickets are still available. Simply visit the Free Night of Theater 2009 website, browse shows in your area, click and reserve. And tada! You're on your way to watching Hamlet's famous soliloquy or hearing Ichabod Crane's heart beat loudly from his chest.

I suggest yo hurry since tickets are going fast!

next to normal

I'm sure you've heard of this musical, but just in case you haven't, take a look. As of late, it's the music that gets me up in the morning. I'm so excited because next weekend I'm taking a little trip up to the big city and this is top of the to do list.

Here's a link to the prelude, and you can see in the related videos on that page you can listen to the entire musical. Favorites include Who's Crazy/My Psychopharmacologist and I, Everthing Else, Aftershocks, and Light. WARNING: swearing may be present.

Overview found at Wikipedia . Here's a video of when they were on the Tony's in June.

Let me know what you think.

you know it's time for a break when...

Tonight in the shower I shaved an entire leg before realizing that I still had the guard on.

a moment to relax...

I'm going to the Georgia Aquarium wit my folks after graduating the end of August. Preview to something I might see.

la cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar

We've all got phobias. Whether it be a wide-eyed china doll whose gaze always seems to follow you or the creepy clown/weather man on channel six, in some fashion everyone has that one thing that upon seeing it immediately causes a TIA.

That thing that gets my amygdala going is the forsaken cockroach. Even as I write this, I'm controlling my gag reflex and trying to keep the instant stress headache at bay. I truly hate the bugs from the underworld.

As an example, when I was in high school I remember one night I was taking a shower and as I stepped out I saw two evil ones staring at me from the counter. Well tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum were much smarter than their names imply, for they knew I was terrified of them. They could sense it. Frozen in my place, with barely a towel, I screamed for my father. He, thinking someone was attacking me, ran up the stairs to find me in my statuesque Venus de Milo pose, and that's when it happened. The little buggers FLEW AT ME! I, of course, ran down the stairs and exited my house, all the while screaming with nothing but my tiny towel on. Let's just say I was the entertainment for the neighbours that night.

My story brings me to last week. I just moved to Reading, PA to finish up my very last preceptorship, and the hospital provides housing for the students in one of their older buildings. I, wanting to save a penny while substantially increasing the amount of nap time I'd get from cutting out a commute, concede to the plan. First week no problems. Second week, I get a new roommate who is a med student from PCOM. Well, make that two new mates. The second came two nights after the first moved in. Sitting in my chair, studying the night away, I see something in my periphery, and low and behold there aroseth from the fiery depths the spawn of Satan himself crawling up my wall.

Again, I'm frozen in my place. Yet, this time the rational part of my brain kicks in, and I actually start to move for the shoe resting next to my foot. And then the dance begins.

Sensing danger, the roach freezes from his course, and I immediately follow suit. Barely breathing, I hold my position till he pushes on. For the second time, I slowly reach for the shoe, and now have it in my grasp and start to slothfully stand. He stops. and I. He starts up again, and here I gather all my strength to move into striking position. I work up the nerve to get mere feet from the bug, and start to swing, when the power of his stare completely deflates my attack attempt, and I gutlessly swing to make direct contact with the wall a good foot away from the target. And that's when he flew at me. F.L.E.W. A.T. M.E.

Oh no you didn't. I'd like to note here I did not scream, but rather doubled my efforts to attack by taking one last pitiful swing before fleeing the room.

And that's when I walked down the hall to get the toughest guy I knew on the floor, Al. He once was a football player for the Miami Dolphins who now happens to be the Chaplin for the hospital (I know, talk about career change). I needed the power of God on my side. Well, he and his friend come down to discover for themselves that the fourth sign of the Apocalypse just arrived in Reading.

They walk in, the bug immediately kamikazes Al, and I'm not even kidding, the two literally dive for cover. The bug makes a bee line for my closet, and the boys quickly recover and take action by digging out my luggage and laundry on the closet floor to see the roach crawl into a crack in the corner.

HE'S LIVING IN MY CLOSET. Well, I should say the wall between my closet and my pansy med student neighbour who didn't have the guts to open his closet door to see where the roach had gone.

Let the nightmares begin.

you seriously need to check out the awkward family site... look for the choker

Woot-Off-Killer Killers: Our Favorite Wastes of Time

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i need this

wax on, wax off

The days are getting longer, the weather warmer. Soon shorts will be popping up like the bulbs in my front yard. And nothing makes a girl feel sexier during this season than smooth, beautiful legs that are ready for the beaches. Wanting to feel a little more sassy, I bought a waxing kit from Wal-mart complete with tongue depressors, sheets of paper, and paraffin wax.

b.a.d. i.d.e.a.

I started with my underarms since I thought I could muscle through two strips without chickening out. First one.... RRRRRIIIIIPPPPPP. And the words still echo in my mind, for though they came from me, I never knew I could speak in tongues. it was something along the lines of Oh Holy Night mixed with By The Power Of Greyskull.


Okay, that's a scorching red right there, as I stare at my sad, hurt armpit. But I thought I can quit now or power through. Just power through, Jackie.

Underarm torture take 2: and ACTION!

Dip, smear, apply strip.





Pause.





"You can do this, you can do this, you can do this," I chant to myself as the piece of paper starts to quickly fasten to the hair and work its way down to the live layer of skin. As I move my free hand into death grip position, I notice something. hmm. I can't lift up my arm I just waxed. What the... oh no.

no.no.no.no.no.

In my hurry, I forgot to use the "soothing oil" after the first strip, and it hits me that I didn't get all of the wax off from the first try. my right armpit is NOW GLUED SHUT.

Panicking, I hop in the shower as I tear off the second strip (MOTHER!) and start dumping the body wash all over my underarms, which seems to loosen the skin stuck together, but now the wax is melting under the heat of the warm water, and spreading and is not coming off at all with vigorous scrubbing and soap. Towel, I think.

nope, not the answer. As the wax cools off from exiting the shower, the towel now becomes one massive furry paper strip. Towel glued to armpit x 2, I finally read the directions to discover that the oil is the way to remove extra wax. I dig through the box, towel draped across chest and securely fastened to body sans safety pins/clips/buttons, to discover this ity-bity bottle of oil, and I just start pouring. worked like a charm. in the aftermath I could somewhat recognize the remnants of what should be the skin under the arms, along the thorax, and even part of the skin around the biceps.

and now I'm pissed. No way in hell some smart-a box is gonna win this battle. I reheat the wax and start on the leg, determined to finish.

Well 3/4 of one leg later, I finally had enough. And since I used the entire bottle of oil during the arm fiasco, I resorted to PAM cooking spray to remove the stubborn tidbits of dried wax sculpted to my poor red leg.

AND SCENE.

bear attack

When I feel I need a break, I somtimes go to Howcast to fill in the void. and I always seem to find myself watching something like this, thinking just in case.

Hershey: the scariest place on earth

So you may be wondering where Jackie has hibernated to, and that lucky place is the great city of Hershey. One sentence describes my entire experience here: I've seen things that will stick with me for the rest of my life. And at the top of that list is the singing cows at Chocolate World. During one weekend after a snowfall I decided to get out of the house and head over to the locally recommended hot spot, all the while operating on the assumption that it's one big candy shop. Heads up, it is not. It is so much terrifyingly more.

As I drive over on the overcast afternoon, I turn into the entrance to see massive empty parking lots covering acres of land and a vacated amusement park looking old and dingy in the poor light, and it honestly feels as if I'm passing through a bizarre ghost town. I park next to the main entrance, which brings the total car count in the lot to a dozen, and as I head toward the faded multi-colored entrance I realize I'm virtually alone.

I walk through the doors and past dimly lit doorway openings to the nearest signs of life, and I enter into the back way of the gift shop. So there I am stepping into this massive labyrinth of chocolate, whose walls consist of 10-16 feet high walls of Reece's and Hershey's milk bars and kisses, and at the top I can see giant pieces of candy fully equipped with eyes, legs and toothless smiles all staring down at me.

Opting to distance myself from the glare, I weave my way to the front where after 10 minutes have passed, I see my first human. The cashier. Wanting to make sure I just didn't fall down the rabbit hole, I ask about the empty place to find out that most things are closed, but that there is a indoor Hershey's ride still open for the day.

Well, not wanting the trip to be a total bust, I waltz my way over to the giant "Hershey's Great American Chocolate Tour" entrance where yet again I walk through to find myself alone. In a dimly lit hallway. Come on, I think to myself. side note to Hershey: has the economy hit you that hard that you're cutting back on lighting? Please.

You can tell these vacant hallways are meant for herding massive amounts of people, and each is peppered with TV sets playing a video on the process of cocoa bean harvesting. I pause a moment to watch, but again I start to notice the void of life made clear by the utter silence aside from the TVs. So I book it through hallway after hallway to find the entrance to the ride all the while thinking to myself that a few of the patients on my psych rotation would have lost it by now. As I reach the pinnacle I find a flight of stairs descending to a circular moving floor with the carpet in the design of a multi-colored brown pinwheel. And on the border of the wheel I see bucket seats in groups of three moving by the edge and then breaking off into the entrance of the ride. Two people were taking their time exiting the ride, so the worker directed me to sit in the second bucket. I climb in and cozy myself down, and after a moment my seat glides me into the opening, and it's obvious that there is no one joining me in my bucket. or my group of three. or the groups in front or behind me.

At this point I consider busting out a few lines of "All By Myself" when before I knew it someone beat me to the singing. Well, I should say something. Three cows, that it. Three massive cloth covered cow heads sticking out from a wall start to soulfully sing three words over and over again, that being "Hershey's milk chocolate!" Thinking that I want a better view, my bucket turns me toward the blasting music to face the cows head on (hardy har har).

My cart continues to carry me on to the next room, which is really a room starting the explanation of how chocolate is made. So from room to room my cart shifts me from left to right to stare at massive equipment used during each step of the chocolate making process (along with actual footage from the factory displayed on large TVs). And all the while a wanna-be spokesman for Rogain with background music from the Milk Chocolate song blasts me away. I went through many a room, and even through the inside of a massive heating oven to finally find myself in the last room. The best way to describe the room is one giant LCD screen with iconic images from cities around the US flashing before my eyes with jazzy music from the 1980s adding the finishing touches to the nightmare I'll be having later on that night. As I exit, a pubescent teen hands me two pieces of chocolate, and looking on the ground I notice carcasses of empty wrappers and even unopened pieces haphazardly tossed on the floor. I imagine that's the chocolate that was chucked away from patrons fleeing the scene.

You know, I completely understand now why small children spontaneously start screaming on amusement rides. I wondered if people who've been abducted would use this as an adequate description of their experience.