Healthy in the health business

Today, I had the fortune (good or bad...who knows?) of having to visit Kaiser Permanente, the place where I have my health coverage. And as I was sitting in the lab, waiting for service, I started thinking, and here's how my thought process went:

1. I've been working hard on getting in better shape. I weigh a lot less now than I did a few years ago, having gone from 204 (some years back) to 180, not that long ago, to 156-7 today. So, I'm proud of what I've done because I've been working hard on becoming healthier.

2. My doctor at Kaiser emphasizes health all the time, talking about how it can save your life.

3. I remember my friend Jason who a few years back really got into a healthy lifestyle, and he looks great these days. A great inspiration for all.

4. I remember lots and lots of people at Spectrum Health hospitals in the admin departments, constantly asking him how he lost the weight, which diet he was on, and all sorts of similar questions that never resulted in a "I think I'm going to do that, too".

5. I remember a lot of people in the admin departments of Spectrum Health being in really bad physical shape. I thought nothing of it at the time.

6. So, here I was at Kaiser, watching all of the employees, and most were admin people, but what I discovered was that 80 percent of all the employees were grotesquely out of shape. I don't mean a few pounds over, but unhealthy and dangerously close to situations that might put them in a very bad situation.

7. I looked at all the signage at Kaiser explaining how to become healthier. I remember the same signage at Spectrum. I then looked at both the customers and the staff, and I realized many more were way out of shape than were in shape.

8. I concluded, from my recent dabble in marketing communication, that Kaiser (and possibly quite a few hospitals) need to start really focusing on their own staff's health (not just recommendations) but actually do something about it, because I started thinking to myself that if the staff who are telling me to get healthy are less healthy than I am, what kind of message is that actually sending?

Stumble It!

Our national nightmare is over

Yes, the national nightmare is over. Paris has been freed. But you know what really gets my goat about this whole thing, aside from the overstated "why is this a story?"? What bothers me is the inability of the news media to come up with a title that's original.

Fox News: The Liberation of Paris
CNN: Paris Liberated
MsNBC: Paris Liberated, and then Paris in Summer.

Stumble It!

Revisiting a crush that never went away

There have been about 3 women in my life who I have had crushes on that really never went away. Well, the women went away; the crushes didn't. One of them was a woman I was around almost every day while going through junior high and high school. Her name was Lisa, and I had the largest crush on her. She was so perfect, always saying the right thing, wearing the perfect thing, smiling just so perfectly....

The second one was a woman named Anne Fong, who I knew while working at the Hilton in San Francisco. I spent YEARS having lunch with her in the cafeteria, and we talked about all sorts of things, but not ONCE did I ever tell her I had the strongest crush on her. Well, that was until I realized I was about to quit and go back to school. She was wandering by the location where I worked in the hotel, and she stopped by to say hi, and I finally got around to saying, "I've always had a crush on you. Would you like to go out?" But then, I got nervous and added a stupid addition that amounted to me offering her the chance to think about it and then asking her to get back to me. Why not just write her a note saying, "Do you like me? If so, please check this box." No, actually, that would have probably been better than the wimpy way I chose. In the end, she never got back to me, and I quit. So I never saw or heard from her again.

The third one, well, I'll just leave that one for the ether. Everyone has to have a bit of mystery in his life.

Back to Lisa. I was perusing a horse training site (no, don't ask why...sometimes even I don't know why I do things), and there she was. I saw her picture and couldn't believe it, but it had to be her. Then I followed a couple of links into it further, and yep, there was her name as well. It had to be her.

So, I wrote her. I asked her if this was the same Lisa that went to the same schools I did, and she responded back stating that yes, she was. She really didn't remember who I was, but after a few emails back and forth, I decided that after all of this time, I had to say something. I had to let her know that she's been somewhat haunting me for about as long as I've been alive. So, I told her about the crush and expected to never hear from her again. But that didn't happen. Instead, she actively went to find the yearbook and figured out who I was, and she remembered. So, now she knows, and we had a nice little exchange about that.

Nothing will ever come of it, other than some nice conversation, but I'm so glad I actually did it. The last one I had a crush on wasn't really interested in me anyway, so this is probably the last time I'll ever have to revisit one of those critical moments in my life with the benefit of hindsight and history.

Stumble It!

What's going on?

Yes, I'm still looking for a job. Summer's halfway over, and I'm still looking for a summer job. How's that for ridiculous? I really only need to figure out how to pay for one more month (August), and I should be fine. I've managed to scrape up enough to make it the months prior to that, and let's just say that it hasn't been fun.

Relationships. Well, the one with Rhea ended, mainly because it wasn't going anywhere. In the beginning, it was suffering because she felt I wasn't committed. I became committed to the relationship only to realize that she wasn't. So, we let it just fade away. Currently, I'm starting to see someone who is a lot younger. Yes, I'm breaking my rule of NEVER dating someone younger than 27, but we'll see where this goes.

I have an appointment Monday with a temporary agency that specializes in computer work placement for long term work, so let's hope something good comes of that. I did manage to get through the whole process of SFO for the job I wanted, and as I mentioned previously, I scored 1000 points and was Number 1 on the list. Subsequent attempts to contact human resources have resulted in friends with no benefits with their voice mail system, and no one has called me in the two or three weeks since I received that notification.

That's mainly it. Haven't had a lot of time to play World of Warcraft, which was becoming my major passion, but I'm thinking that's probably a good thing overall.

Stumble It!

Weight-Smart multivitamins

I've been taken this multivitamin for several years now because the point is that it is supposed to help you maintain or set up your system for better weight loss. Hasn't worked. It's not a diet pill, but I took it just because I thought it might help because the ingredients were the right ones. My eating habits have been decent for the last year or so, so I really felt that something was wrong because my weight was still a bit higher than I wanted (not outrageous, but we all feel the need to lose a few pounds...I mean, that's why we read Cosmo, right?).

I ran out of the vitamins a month ago, and rather than rebuy them for another year, I just decided to stop taking them. Since then, I've lost 10 pounds. Who'dathunk?

Stumble It!

Sometimes Yahoo really creeps me out

On Yahoo's main page is an article titled, Women Prefer Men Who Look Like Dad. The article goes on to talk about how women, because of childhood experiences (um, okay), are looking to "hook up" with, um, someone like, um, "dad". Okay, that's understandable in a whole Freudian slippish kind of way, but then the article right under that one is titled: "Looking to Meet Someone Like Him" and "Shop For Dad." Now, I believe the articles probably aren't making a point by being together, but it sure feels like they are, and to be honest, I'm really creeped out by it. I'm now anxiously looking forward to the next holiday (now that Mother's and Father's Days are respectively going to be finished with), which I'm assuming is "First Cousin's Day", and we all know that we want to sleep with our cousins, and to use an overdone joke, if you live in Alabama, you might trade up for your sister.

Stumble It!

Got a steroid shot today

Yes, now I talk like zee Arnoldz, and suddenly my muscles have grown into mountains. I have this immediate desire to weight lift and ride my bicycle at really rapid speeds.

Okay, not really. I finally broke down and arranged a steroid shot for my arm. It's been killing me for months, and let's just say that I was moving into a very dark place where even Obi Wan couldn't bring me back, because I went to bed every night in pain from my arm, not able to sleep in most positions. It is supposed to take a few days to start healing, so we'll see. I really need to feel better again.

Anyway, that's all.

Stumble It!

POST test

I took the police officer state exam today. It was pretty easy, but there was an entire half of the exam that I'm concerned about, and it's for a reason that one probably wouldn't suspect. The second half of the exam consists of paragraphs about a topic, and you have to fill in the blank spots with words that fit the conversation. There are not hints. You just fill in what makes sense from your own vocabulary. Then you take the first letter of that word and bubble it out on the scantron. Why this bothers me is that if you're someone with a very rich vocabulary, you're probably going to be getting a lot of these wrong because where someone might think a simple word, I found myself running through a whole bunch of different words in my head that ALL fit the context, but only one of them was going to be right. It was very frustrating, and personally, I think that part of the exam is designed badly. But I took it, and now I wait for the results. I have no idea on the turn around time.

Stumble It!

Continuation of my struggle to find a job

I have an examination I'm taking this evening for one job, although it's going to be some time before that one ever has a chance of happening (as the turn around time for a lot of these government jobs are atrocious). I passed all the examination processes for the job in San Francisco, and I'm listed as number one on the "list" (whatever that really means), and I scored 1000 points (out of...I really don't know, but hopefully 1000). Yet, no one has contacted me about an interview. I called human resources, and I get voice mail, and I get no response.

That seems to be the case a LOT of the time. Voice mail hell. No one answers their phone, and they don't actually return phone calls. It's like human resources departments are now working to put as much distance between humans and their departments.

I even talked to the reserves about the possibility of doing that as a part time job, although we all know that in this political environment, there are no part time military jobs anymore. Funny thing, though. The person I spoke to who was looking into information hasn't returned my phone calls either. I did, however, reach his voice mail. In the phrasing of old BASIC programming:

10 CALL VOICE MAIL
20 WAIT FOR CALL BACK
30 GOTO 10

I'm getting really concerned because I don't think I have enough to make it past the first of the month of July. If I don't find something really, really soon, I'm kind of screwed.

Stumble It!

Very productive day

Yes, it was extremely productive. Today, I managed to wash my tennis shoes. I had debated it for days and days, but finally I decided that it was important enough to finally just buckle down and do it. They were really dirty and I don't think I've actually ever washed them before. They are now very clean (white again) and I am currently wearing them.

So, when you start to realize that things just aren't getting done, we should think back and reflect on the few days where we have completed monumental tasks, like washing our sneakers. I'm also going broke and in dire need of a job, but I figured the sneakers thing was much more important to talk about.

Stumble It!