Dorkworthy non-news item

I see that I am creeping up toward 10,000 hits. I am so looking forward to seeing that number switch over from nine thousand something to ten thousand something. Call me a dork. It's how I roll.

It's also almost Wednesday which is the "official" middle of the week and then there is the progressive downward slide to Friday, which is the last Friday of this school year. Yippee!

I'm watching some Chris Rock on Netflix and chuckling every now and then. I know, I know, he's got a filthy mouth but sometimes you just need a laugh.

No one else cares but...

I love Netflix because I get to see the movies and the TV shows I miss from going to bed at 9 p.m. I also get to see some shows I missed from previous years. I've been watching Joan of Arcadia and just as it gets good, reeeeeeeeally good, the show was canceled.

That just torques me to no end. The show was a wonderful spin off from the idea of Joan of Arc with Amber Tamblyn playing the lead role of Joan as a high schooler/"chosen one" at Arcadia High School. At the end of the fantabulous second season there was a creepy cliff hanger between Joan and Ryan Hunt who showed up in just the last two episodes. Ryan was the villain, the evil doer and he and Joan were squaring up for battle when they canceled the show.

They CANCELED the show just as they were reaching the (ahem) climax of two seasons. I'll never know how it ends now although I suspect Joan would have been the winner between the two forces.

Instead, I am forced to pop in another Netflix DVD and am watching "The Other Boleyn Girl". Well, half watching and half typing.

If you read this on Sunday evening and get the chance, I highly recommend watching the PBS Memorial Day concert broadcast at 8 p.m. eastern time. Remember the reason for the holiday.

Role model: Ernie Davis

I mentioned this movie I wanted to see a while ago but I never made it to the theater. It's out on DVD now, called "The Express: The Ernie Davis Story". If you've ever watched another one of my perennial football favorites called "Rudy" and you enjoyed it, then you just might like watching this movie.

Like "Rudy" "The Express" is another football movie I liked even though I have no knowledge of football other than there are two different teams, one ball, and you're supposed to get the ball in the end zone or through those big Y-shaped thingies. I don't watch the Super Bowl and have no favorite team or player. Well, maybe now I do. I am a fan of Ernie Davis.

"The Express" is based on the life of Ernie Davis who was a black man from Elmira, NY coming of age in the late 50s and early 60s in a fractured and a separate but not equal lifestyle in the US. He was a football player courted by the Syracuse University college football coach with the help of legendary S.U. great Jim Brown. Ernie wanted to go to Notre Dame but S.U. (which is close to my home) snatched him up instead.

Yes, there is a lot of football in the movie but I managed to understand what was going on so most other people should be able to follow the plot also. There is more to the movie than just football as it sets up the kind of person Ernie was and the times of my country's "bound by color rules society" when I wasn't even alive yet.

Ernie had a spectacular college career capped with his winning the Heismann Trophy becoming the first black man to win such an honor. Ernie also gets drafted as the first-round pick for the Cleveland Browns where he is expected to play with his predecessor, Jim Brown from Syracuse. However, there is a twist in the story of Ernie's life as he falls sick. (And, yes, there is more to the story than what I have typed here. I didn't want to give everything away!)

The articles that I have looked up online and the extra commentary for the movie all show Ernie as a "gentleman and a gentle man", to steal something that I read that was written by someone else. I was appalled when S.U. played away games in the south where fans would throw bottles at the players to intentionally try and hurt them. The taunts of "fans" and sometimes even from Ernie's own teammates show how divided my country was not so long ago.

For a non-football fan, this movie brought tears to my eyes. If anyone has watched it or plans on watching it, let me know what you think. Ernie is a part of sports history often forgotten because he left his mark so young and for such a short time. This movie, though, brings his accomplishments to life and I'm proud to now have a new role model which I can use in my classroom as I try to get across to my students.

Hooray to you, Ernie Davis, for being such a gentleman and a gentle man.

Hello my name is Weeble and I watch too much TV

Part of the reason I am fat is I watch too much TV and too many Netflix DVDs. Sometimes I have the TV on, like now, just to keep me company. You see, Franklin the wonder cat doesn't put out much in the conversation department. Although I'll take him over my ex-husband.

I have the cheapo standard cable which costs less than nine dollars a month. Then I also have a Netflix plan that gives me four DVDs at a time. I watch a lot of Netflix because I have the cheapo cable. I watch a lot of movies but primarily I am watching different TV shows that I missed when they were on.

I am trying to force myself to either play Wii Fit, or do the WATP DVD, or walk for 30 minutes while watching some of the TV shows and Netflix stuff. I am also happy to report that my recent chicken wing desire has found a reasonable answer to its cravings. They have these things in the frozen section which are real chicken bites that have no bones and are coated in a hot sauce so it's like a chicken wing from a pizza place. And I am a girl who knows a lot about pizza places unfortunately.

Now that I have these chicken winglet thingies I feel a lot better about this recent craving because before I was buying either chicken wing pizza or buying pizza and chicken wings. Now I can resist the urge to dial up a pizza when I have the need for chicken.

In two weeks I am going to the nutritionist and boy will that man have a field day with me. He's supposed to be sending me a food diary soon so I can track what I eat for three days. That will be a mess.

I really, really, really need to start eating healthier. I must lose this extra weight for a kazillion reasons. I need to be able to wear my regular PIP. I want to be able to tie my shoes without almost tying myself in knots. I want to wear a skirt and not start a friction fire with my thighs. I want my organs to not be squished up against and around all the fat. I want to see one chin and not a moon face. I want to shop in the regular stores again. No more of numbers with a X after them. I want to be able to buckle my seat belt easily. I want to feel my body move with less effort.

Especially with MS, I have to be cognizant of my weight. I know I put a lot of weight on once I stopped working. When I was working I didn't eat breakfast and barely ate lunch because I was so depressed and overwhelmed with everything. Then I was home and eating three times a day after a while and making lasagna. I soothed myself with food, a bad habit I've had since childhood.

Now I am making some healthier choices. I am eating Multigrain Cheerios which taste awesome once you get used to them. I am NOT willing to eat plain blah Cheerios. No way, forget that. I am trying to eat one yogurt a day. I'm trying to drink at least one serving of fruits and veggies in my V8 Fusion. I do not have any ice cream in the freezer. Not even the little tiny ones that Ben and Jerry's make that I was eating once nightly. I am trying to move more. I am in physical therapy and will go both times this week as I have scheduled them for the afternoon so I can sleep in as needed.

If I have so much time to keep my friend the TV on, then I should make more time to get myself healthier. I might even learn to, gasp, cook for one. Then again, maybe not.

Time to stop my b!tching, comment on a REAL hero

The man above is John Bul Dau, originally of Sudan, but now a resident of the United States. He's one of my true heroes in this world and I was about shoulder to kneecap with him the other day in the hospital.


Yes, dad's still a patient but hopefully coming home tomorrow. They did a second heart catherization last night, which normally takes about 30 minutes, and this latest one took two hours. That's an indication of the damage we're talking about.


The bad news is that of the three grafts from his triple bypass 15 years ago, one had been closed and two were "gunked up with crud" during the first heart cath in the hospital. As of last night's second cath, a second graft had closed in the past twenty-four hours. I spoke with dad today and he said he is scheduled for a third heart cath and some surgery in about a month.


He's not really a viable option to survive serious open heart surgery so that presents itself as a bit of a conundrum. I'll talk to my mother about all of this later on today when she's away from him.


But back to John Bul Dau...


This man is a true hero and to see him up close, to the point where I could reach out and touch his shirt just about made me foam at the mouth and hyperventilate. John is one of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan, if you know anything about their story. The lost boys and girls left Sudan during the civil war to find safety in Ethiopia where they stayed in refugee camps until forced back into Sudan at gun-point, crossing a river infested with crocodiles. He stayed in Sudan until they were forced out again to a refugee camp in Kenya. He lived at that camp for several years until he was chosen to come to America.


Here's a man who has overcome numerous difficulties in his life, most of them as a child. He's lived through starvation, civil war, mass murder, and so many other things that I couldn't list them all and I don't want to because the atrocities are horrendous.


But, there he was working in the hospital where my dad is a patient, not as a nurse or doctor, but someone who cleans or does what we might consider a more menial position. That's just John. One minute he's working two jobs to support his family here in the US and on another day he might be travelling to talk to famous people or large groups to tell his story and raise money for his foundation.


To learn more about John's foundation, click below:

www.johndaufoundation.org

His foundation raises money for health clinics he's having built back in Sudan. This is a man forced to leave his homeland as a child who is willing to turn around and extend a helping hand back to that same place. His story is written eloquently in his memoir "God Grew Tired of Us" and there is also a DVD (available through Netflix even!) of the same name which shows what this man lived through. I urge you to read and view and then put it all back in to perspective.

Regardless, this is a man who is a giant both physically, about 7 feet tall, and in my eyes. I wish I had been brave enough to go speak to him. He is a friend on my Facebook page and there is more information about him available on Facebook under causes, if you're a F-booker. (That sounded really dirty, didn't it?)

Seeing him gave me pause to think that yes, even though there is a lot of rough stuff in the water right now I have a boat, some oars, and a compass. Sometimes I have to remember that it's not all about me.

Saturday shortcomings

I've got a lot of things done today but I have to say my hands and their weakness continue to play a conflict in this act called my life. I can barely move the giant carcasses of hand flesh around without some burning and typing is much more laborious. I guess this requires perhaps a call to the neurologist's office on Monday.

This has been going on for a good week now but the last few days its on like Donkey Kong by the end of each evening. All the more reason to be taking some time off from work. A teacher with no hands faces some struggles for sure in grading, writing notes, and planning.

A Netflix side note: If you haven't watched "Charlie Wilson's War" yet with Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, please do so. I'd be interested to read if anyone else's eyes were opened by that movie and its connection to the current war.

As Tom Hanks says for Charlie Wilson, "The ball just keeps on bouncing." Wow, food for thought.

Sleepy Saturday and Item Ordering Anonymous

I have spent pretty much the entire day in bed. I don't feel the slightest bit guilty as I needed the rest. I still feel fatigued, my eyes feel glazed, and my face seems to be pulled down into a frown but who cares? I'm now showered and I have a load of laundry in the dryer. I'm going to pay a few bills after I get off here. I am being productive. I am alive.

Nothing earth-shattering is going on at all. I finally decided to keep two of the dresses I ordered about 6 weeks ago. I look like a pregnant house in the two I kept but at least I now own dresses that fit, even if they do make me look butt ugly. The other two will be returned within the next week at local stores. I also have to send back the clock I ordered from L.L. Bean last week because the alarm part doesn't work.

I am one of those people that order things from online or catalogs. Then when I have received said item(s) I decide probably about 85% of the time that the item(s) need to go back because they just don't work for me. Clothes and shoes especially.

However, I generally don't return the item(s) so I have shoes and clothes that don't fit and other gadgets that don't work. It was really bad when I had cable TV that included QVC. I never ordered their jewelry but I was a sucker for so many items. Those "hosts" are some slick sales people. I bet they make a pretty penny working there.

In case you're worried that I don't have cable TV, relax, I just pay for the cheapest cable available. I pay something silly like $8.37 for about 17 channels or so. It works for me and keeps me away from the drug that is QVC.

I am also a huge fan of Netflix. If you haven't tried that service, it really is as easy as it sounds. You sign up for how many videos you'd like at a time. I currently have 4 at a time in my rotation and am downsizing to three at the end of October. (I have been up to 6 at a time but am taming this addiction as well.)

I have made a queue of DVDs I'd like to see and I can change the DVDs and their order at any time I want. The DVDs come as one packaged in a papery red envelope that is also the return envelope. You carefully rip where they tell you to and out pops one DVD in a white paper sleeve. You keep the DVD for as long as you want and there are no fees. Keep it for a day, a week, two months, whatever you want.

After viewing, you just slide the DVD back in to the white sleeve and put that inside your red envelope and the mail person does the rest. You don't pay for postage or late fees or anything. You get another DVD mailed out as soon as they receive the one you just mailed back. You can have 2 per month total as the cheapest rate, I think, then it goes up from there 2 per month with no limits, maybe all the way up to 8 at a time per month.

Netflix isn't just about new release movies either. There are really old classic movies from the 50s and 60s, TV shows, sports stuff, family stuff, PBS mini-series, and exercise DVDs. There's a whole gamut of stuff to choose from. I make nothing from this free promotion but I do tell a lot of people about it. I have even turned some friends and my parents on to the wonder that is Netflix.

This probably explains why I only have about three friends in real life. Netflix: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

PS: I am noticing more of the cognitive stuff now. Getting dressed today was taking out a bra and panties and putting them on the bed. Then I reached for something else and put it on the bed and turned around and did the same exact thing that I had just done. I had forgotten what I had done literally seconds before.

To cancel my LASIK surgery, which would have been this week, required me to call Canada. The man asked for my first name so I told him my last name and spelled it. He repeated it back to me. I said he was correct and then he asked me for my last name and it took me a bit to realize I had done it wrong.

Yesterday while leaving for work I put the keys in the door lock on the outside and left the door ajar. I remembered something that I should grab for school and went back to get it. Then I reached for my keys in my purse pocket where I always put them.

The keys weren't there. This sent me into a small fit of loping around and looking for them. That is until I looked at the door and saw them hanging there.

My typing on here before I fix it is horrendous. I put in words that don't fit or substitute words that are almost right but when I reread what's been done, I realize the gaffe. I know it all sounds like small stuff that we all do but this is but a few examples of my 38 year old mind. Sometimes I forget what to do when I am driving or how to lock the front door to my apartment.

That's just some of the scary stuff.

The other scary stuff is grading the remainder of my homework papers and crunching numbers for five week grades. That has to be done and in the computer by Tuesday afternoon at 3.

Sigh....