Catching up and Other "FUN" Stuff

Once again I am lacking in the “stuff to do” department here at work. I shot off an email to my boss reminding her that “who hooo, I’m here! And I’m a little light on stuff to do!” Not that I can’t find anything to do, (like blogging! And shopping!) but I just don’t want her to get upset later when she asks what I’ve been working on and I say, “my scrapbook.” I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that would not go over hugely.
Like in all Dilbert cartoons she wrote me back as soon as I went to lunch telling me to “come on over”. And she asked one of my co-workers to pass along some of her stuff to me to work on, only the co-worker is confused about how and what to pass off to me. And when I got back from lunch and went to meet with my boss, she was gone, of course. So back to my blogging.

FUN MONDAY
Why Yes, it is Fun Monday. Thank you for asking. Only I’m at work and the topic today involves pictures of pets, which I’m totally excited to write because, “hey I love my pets.” And I love my neighbor’s pets too, but without a cute pix to accompany said post it would be pretty boring. So I will add the pix when I get home and then post everything together. Yes, that does means TWO posts in one day. Contain yourself.

UPDATES
The first part of this weekend kind of sucked. Beside the neighborhood now looking like a war zone from the weather I was sick on Saturday. It was nothing major, just a rotten cold. Daddyspeak got up about an hour after I did on Saturday and I declared I was going to go lay down for a little bit, I was just so worn down. I slept until 2:30 in the afternoon. Guess I needed it, huh? The only reason I woke up right then was because he’d taken DD1 out to run some errands and DD2 woke up from her nap crying/screaming. The bummer was I had all these things (putting away all my Christmas décor) I wanted to get done. Guess what, other than showering at 3, that was about all I got done on Saturday. Wooo! The crazy life I live.

Yesterday I took Daddyspeak on his Christmas gift; we went to an exhibition at The Tech Museum in San Jose, BodyWorlds 2. The idea of this might gross you out, but DS is a biology guy. He wasn’t into human biology so much, but still I figured it was something he’d dig. He said he did, and I have to admit I really did. It was fascinating. I went to a science magnet high school and was in the senior level physiology class (supposed to be the exact same everything as the freshman pre-med physiology class at Stanford) so I got to take apart a cadaver in high school. But this was so much cooler then that. It certainly smelled better. They approached the body in layers and had different layers in different areas (i.e.—there was a room on the nervous system and they had a body with just the skeleton and nerves.) They also had “slices” (cross sections) of people; some were perfect & healthy while others might have cancer or other well known issues with that organ. So you could clearly see what would be considered normal vs. unhealthy. If you ever have the opportunity to see one of these exhibits I highly recommend it. It isn’t gross. It’s mesmerizing. When I walked into the first room it suddenly hit me how much could be gleaned from these bodies. How much could be learned and studied. The education that these people have helped provide is immeasurable.

At the end, they had a small area about how the people came to be used in the exhibit and then how you could sign up if you were interested. DS and I joked about signing up. (“We’re here for your liver.” “Umm, I’m still using it.”) We both agreed we’d rather help by being organ donors. However, if by studying my body they could figure out the whole Fibro thing then I would pony up my body right away for that. But I don’t think you really get to say what science would do with your body so much.

There were two things about the exhibit that bothered me a little; the first was that you could tell that the people whose full bodies were used were typically young and seemed to be in excellent shape. There was no evidence of how they may have died, but it seemed apparent that they had all died well before their time. The second thing that bothered (made me emotional) was that they had a room just on babies and pregnancy. In this room there was a woman who was 5 months pregnant w/the baby in her womb. She was cut and layered so you could see the baby in her womb and how everything fit together. The baby’s foot was sticking up and it was about the size of my thumbnail. They had fetus’ from 1 week to 8 weeks in small tubes (which magnified them so you could see them better, they started out about ½ the size of my pinkie nail and ended up about the size of my thumb nail.) There were also babies who had died at various points in the pregnancy; 14, 20, 32, weeks, etc… I was fascinated with this whole section of the exhibit, but also extremely sad. When viewing the woman who was 5 months pregnant, I couldn’t help but think, “Someone out there is still mourning the loss of these two.” Each of the full body exhibits had a year attached to them. I assume that this meant that the person died that year or the year before. The oldest one I saw was 1996, the newest 2005. The thought that there are families who are still mourning the loss of these individuals was something I couldn’t shake.

However, all that being said, these people died regardless of what was to happen to their bodies after, and I think it speaks volumes of them and their family to allow their bodies to be used for this type of education. It was an amazing exhibit and like I said before, if given the opportunity, I highly recommend you go see it.