The GirlAlive Blog

A song for all the astronauts and pirates.

Okay, so there’s something bothering me this morning.  That thing is "Arthur’s Theme" by Christopher Cross.  In case you don’t know, that’s the song about being caught between the moon and New York City.

The chorus is as follows:

When you get caught between the Moon and New York City
I know it’s crazy, but it’s true
If you get caught between the Moon and New York City
The best that you can do ……
The best that you can do is fall in love

Let’s look at this logically.  "When you get caught" implies that it is inevitable that you will be caught between the moon and New York City at some point.  In reality, how likely is this? 

Given that the earth rotates once on its axis every day, the moon and New York City lining up so anything can be between them can only occur twice a day.  When the moon is directly above New York City, one would need to be in a geo-synchronous orbit above NYC in order to "get caught".  The other way to be between the moon and NYC is to be on the other side of the earth with the moon overhead.  I calculate this to be somewhere near the McDonald Islands in the southern Indian Ocean.  Also an unlikely scenario.  

Is this a song merely for astronauts and pirates?  And what does the alignment of the moon with a major North American city have to do with falling in love?  And if the singer is just poetically trying to say that he’s standing in New York City and the moon is overhead and he is thus between the two objects, this would be an occurrance that happens pretty much every day.  Does he fall in love with whoever is nearby when the moon is overhead?

Frankly, I find this song easily as questionable as the Pina Colada Song.  And don’t get me started on What You Waiting For by Gwen Stefani.

Alana 

Random thoughts occuring on thanksgiving.

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving.  I could have had dinner with an American expat group here, but half of them are vegetarians, and I really hate spending thanksgiving with vegetarians and their inevitable tofurkey.   Instead I’m cooking dinner here.  We’ve got part of a turkey in the oven and I’m planning stovetop stuffing, sweet potatoes and crescent rolls from a can. 

I dyed my hair red the other day.  Bright cherry red.  I’m pretty happy with it.  I still wish my hair wasn’t curly and falling out, but now it’s at least a more interesting color.

I have a terrible cold.  I didn’t sleep at all last night because I couldn’t breathe.  

My husband keeps saying he expects a blog post about a thing we saw on late night tv the other night.  Wouldn’t want to disappoint him.  It was a show that seems to focus on bizarre fetishes from around the world.  I saw what has to be the weirdest porn video ever.  It was a woman wearing a normal shirt, but just underwear below the waist, and she was sitting on her living room floor with a vacuum cleaner and farting into the various attachments, then sniffing the attachment while commenting on the fart.  The scariest part?  It was a clip from her fourth full-length video.  She has made not one, but FOUR videos of herself farting.  And people buy them!  There are people who are terribly turned-on by a mostly-clothed woman farting into her vacuum cleaner attachments. 

In other news the guinea pigs are fine.  Spike still has bladder problems and Homer had a mild respiratory problem earlier this week, but he seems fine now.  Fudge is a chubby little blob of piggy and Elvis is still a twitchy little spaz.  We stuck Fudge and Spike in a cage together a while ago, and it turned into some bizarre rodent gay porn.  Fudge wouldn’t stop humping poor Spikey.  We went to the pet store for more hay, and they had a bunch of little baby guinea pigs, and there was one there that was humping everyone in sight, so it isn’t unusual.  At least Fudge wasn’t humping Spike’s head.

Alana 

Another niece

So, my husband’s sister finally had her baby.  It was a few weeks late and she was pretty darned sick of being pregnant.  She had a girl (which is nifty because she already has a boy who is about a year old).  She was nine pounds, thirteen ounces.  (Insert grimace and "ouch" here.)  She has named her Elliot.  Yes, it is a girl and yes, Elliot.  Like on Scrubs.  My husband thinks it’s a weird choice, but I kind of like it.  And it could be a whole lot worse.  Kat is a big fan of Buffy.   Could have been Buffy.

Alana 

Best guinea pig ever

So the award for the best guinea pig ever goes to Homer.  Neil was clipping Homer’s nails and Homer has dark brown paws where it is hard to tell how far back the clippable part goes.  He accidentally nicked a blood vessel and Homer was bleeding all over.  But Homer is so sweet and easygoing he didn’t even squeak.  Right now we’ve got him wrapped in towels in half a piggy carrier on the couch enjoying a carrot snack for being such a good boy.  When the bleeding stops we’ll put him back in the cage.

People have asked me to go a bit beyond "ehn" to explain the job interview.  It was fine.  I did a good job, but I’m not sure that job is the right match for me.  It would be a lot of talking on the phone and I might just be too naturally introverted for that.  I’m sure something else will come up, and in the meantime, I still have a job and a paycheck.

Back to keeping an eye on Homer.  Not that I really need to.  He’s such a good boy he hasn’t even tried anything mischevious while he’s been on the couch.

If anyone thinks they have a really great guinea pig, it’s just because they haven’t met Homer.  He’s the best.  (Not that I don’t love Elvis, Spike and Fudge.  But Homer is still the best.)

Alana 

interviewage

So, how did my interview go?  Ehn.  I’d put my money on me not getting the job.  But we’ll see.  Might not really be my idea of the perfect job anyway.

Alana 

Interview

I’m frustrated with my job.  The management is appalingly bad.  For instance, the main head of coding decided we needed 10 new coders.  None of the hospitals wanted them or even had room for them.  They all got stuck in the hospital I work in.  Six of them don’t have desks.  Three of them are in a room with no network access, so they don’t have computers either.  And the manager (the same one who decided we needed these people) refuses to release the money it would take to wire that room.  So for several months, they’ve been sitting in a windowless room doing nothing.

This same manager decided we need to have everything done within 6 weeks of the patient being discharged.  She won’t tell us why.  There is no urgency in coding.  We’re just collecting statistical data.  Most of the patients don’t have discharge summaries in the system within 6 weeks, and in the stuff I do a lot of the casenotes are still with the pregnant women if their admission was for something pre-natal.  So we’re making stuff up.  We have to use the "first impression" notes from the emergency room and whatever one-word descriptions we can find in the ward admissions books.  None of it is right.  In a job where accuracy has always been more important than speed, our moron of a manager has dictated that we need to sacrifice all accuracy for the sake of speed for no reason.

I hate people who can’t think logically.  Because of this, I’ve been looking for a new job for a while.  I don’t like working in health care.  It’s not what I always wanted to do.  It’s what I did because I couldn’t get a job as a software tester or web designer, and I needed to pay my rent.  I don’t enjoy medical paperwork and the thought of doing it for the rest of my life makes me want to jump in front of a train.

The good news in all this is that I have an interview on Tuesday.  Today I took the bus to where the interview is and saw where I’m going.  I also got a nice new shirt to wear.  I want this job.  It’s a position as a researcher and editor’s assistant for a financial magazine.  It would be a creative job working with intelligent people.  And I’ve always wanted to work in publishing.  It would be ideal.

I’ll let you all know how it goes.  I really need a new job.

Alana