ASK before you touch!

I have a deaf-blind friend. Let's call her A. I met her in high school, but we were never really acquaintances because we ran with different crowds. As fate would have it, I bumped into her years later and she helped me land a job. I'm forever grateful to her.

Since I've been working with her and getting to know her, I've been learning more and more what it's like to be deaf and blind. It's a tough world out there when you're deaf. It's even tougher when you're blind too. Sometimes it's funny.

The stories I love to hear from A are the ones where she can't identify odd-looking things. Things that are gross. Things that she would never ever have touched if she knew what it was. Even if you have perfect vision (or close to it), your eyes could still play tricks on you and you'd be right in the same boat as A.

A’s biggest threat is the water hose. To her – it looks identical to a snake, no matter if it’s coiled up or flattened out. So whenever she sees a green thingy, she very carefully steps around it. I can imagine what other people thought about that. It must be funny to see a girl tip-toeing around a garden water hose. Better safe than sorry, eh?

A was in Galveston a few years back and stayed at a hotel/beach house with some friends and family. One night, she encountered something weird in her bed. It was touching her. She felt around for it, picked it up, squished it, and rolled it around in her hand before deciding that it wasn’t anything of much importance. She tossed it away. A little while later, she woke up with some pain. That little squishy thing attached to something hard had bitten her. She called for her mom and had her mom turn on the lights to see what was in her bed. Here’s the funny part. When her mom realized what it was, she started laughing at A. Nice, huh? What A had in her hands earlier that evening was a little hermit crab that the previous tenant must have left behind. They knew it wasn’t a random crab from the beach because that crab had a painted shell, the kind that you see in the stores. If it were me, I would have NEVER felt around for it, picked up anything like that in the dark, squished it then tossed it away!

Here’s something that happened to a normal-sighted person and probably the most disgusting. A girl went into her mother’s shower stall and noticed a big black gunk in one of the bottom corners. She took a close look at it and tried to figure out what it was. She was stumped. She kind of panicked and thought that it was a big nasty bug. She called for her mom and sisters to come check it out. All the ladies in the family trampled into the bathroom to see what the fuss was all about. After a few seconds, the mom became red in the face and started laughing. That big black gunk wasn’t a bug, but actually a mass of pubic hair. Who did the hair come from? The girl’s step-father. I bet that girl was thankful she didn’t poke at it.

At work the other day, I had a rude (but dead) visitor. It was Monday so little critters had the whole weekend to explore the office. Whenever A is out sick, I take over and work in her office (while juggling two of my other responsibilities). At first I didn’t notice. I don’t know how, but I didn’t. My usual morning routine is this: I sit down, clock in, check what’s on the yahoo front page for interesting news, sign into Yahoo chat, sign into all my emails, go into the kitchen to drop off my lunch and then come back to the office to start working. That morning, my routine was the same – except that I stepped over an icky bug and worked right next to it for a while without noticing. I left the room to do something and when I came back, I noticed a big, dead brown tarantula that was right next to my chair. Ick. I called the only male employee into the office and asked him to toss it out for me. He did, minus one of the legs. It must have broken off when he picked it up. Double ick. I tried to ignore it and kept working, but eventually I got sick of just knowing that a leg was right next to me so I ended up vacuuming the whole office.

A came into work the next day and I told her what happened. She laughed and said that she was glad it wasn’t her who found it. Yeah right. Would she have found it? She probably would have stepped right on it, and if she noticed it, she might have just picked it up and threw it away. A said that after a lifetime of touching icky stuff without knowing what it was, she has learned one thing….

The moral of all this: If you don’t know what it is, ask before you even think about touching it. You’d save yourself a lot of grief and icky moments.

Just blogging... Just because

I sat down to blog. I tried, I promise. But I don't think I can do it. I'm exhausted. Oh well, better luck tomorrow I hope.

At least I came on and posted about something other than the Biggest Loser (ha!).

M's Thoughts

Ever wonder what goes on inside my head? Ok - I hear a joke coming on here - I can faintly hear L or J say "nothing!" Ahem. Like everybody else, I have random thoughts that'll pop in my head out of nowhere. Just recently, I've started to take notes. See… it's not all that scary inside...right? Some may be silly, but at least I’m brave enough to admit what I’m thinking.

How come I've never seen a bird drop dead from the wire?

Is time travel even remotely possible (with all silliness aside)?

If pandas could communicate, what would they say about being the mascot/spokesperson for Panda Express?

At your local grocery store, did you ever realize that you might be touching the same food that people touch after peeing and not washing their hands before/during shopping? Yeah - you might want to think twice about that.

We all know about mail-order brides. Where are the mail-order husbands?

What does deja vu really mean? Depending on your beliefs, it could be the exact same moment from a previous life, uncanny ESP, or just that you've had the exact same conversation (or activity) before. So what does it mean when I have deja vu feelings at a restaurant that was just built last week (and I get the feeling that I've been there before, had the same conversation and took a bite out of my food at the exact same moment)?

Speaking of deja vu, what if we DO repeat our lives again and again. Each time we experience deja vu just proves that we take the same paths over and over again - otherwise, we wouldn't be having that. Right? Maybe not. Whatever.

Do some birds have a fear of heights? I got this from a friend and have been wondering about it since.

It's amazing that how in this recession Americans are still getting bigger. Burger King has changed some locations to be open 24-hours (not just the drive-thru). If fast food places were only open like 5 hours a day (or how about none at all?), I'm willing to bet that our total weight as a country would drop dramatically.

I realized that because I hear the word "recession" all the time now, I actually forgot (briefly) what the economic term was for the opposite of recession. How sad.

Will we ever run out of water? Like, ever?

Every time I see a Ford Escort, I think "I really miss that car." I'm still furious. Just months after I paid off my car, a stupid idiot wrecked it. It was never a powerful car, but having "sports" on it made it very cool in my book. It was my first brand-new car. I bought it and paid it off all by myself with my own money. I was so proud and I felt like such a grown-up.

What would be worse - dying on the first day of war or dying on the last day of war?

Is it really better to have loved and lost than never loved at all? Sometimes I don’t think so.

Seriously, has anybody ever seen a large dog like a Saint Bernard have sex with a teeny dog like a Chihuahua? What would their puppies look like?

What if there really are friendly vampires living among us? Would you want to be one of them?

Why must all good things come to an end?

People can die from all kinds of things... has anybody died purely just from stress (no heart attacks, no strokes, nothing - just falling asleep and never waking up due to stress)?

When will the world get sick of worshiping celebrities?

When will I die and how?

I can relate to the people on Lost. They're stuck on an island and some of them don't want to leave because it's all they know. Sometimes I feel that way about some situations in my life.

Will Wal-Mart ever go bankrupt?

With so many people out of work and watching their spending habits, how is it that there are new restaurants and retail stores still being built all over the place? Thought they were all suffering?

Wouldn't it be nice to have a deaf version of the Bachelorette?

Living in a deaf town would be hell, wouldn't it? No privacy (you can't just meet someone in public and sign whatever you want - people will know what you're saying), constant drama and eventually, you'll lose your sanity.

And my final thought for the day - this is the best blog ever. Right? Right!

Biggest Loser, Season 9 - Episode 8

Usually the opening of each episode is pretty somber. It’s sad for the person whose partner just left the show. It’s sad for the viewers as well, because by now, we’ve grown to like these people. However, this time around, the opening was a little bit silly. Because the blue team lost, they had to decide who would be leaving and in other words, who O’Neal would be replacing. Sunshine was on the Blue team and O’Neal was sitting at the table right across from the door waiting for sunshine to come thru the door. One by one, members of the blue team filed in and each time, it wasn’t Sunshine. This was major manipulation by the producers. That was NOT nice! Sunshine was the last one to walk in (again, not nice!). After O’Neal calmed down, he turned into a big motivator. He started to rally up the team with a pep talk. That reminded me of Coach Mo.

The Biggest Loser wouldn’t be complete without something new to freak the contestants out with. This week, the contestants were given a full time job, where they would be working 8 hours a day for 5 days. They would be learning how to fit in workouts before/after work, bring healthy food to work, etc… just like the rest of us. Michael wasn’t looking forward to the new routine… wake up, work out, work, work out, sleep and start all over again. Who looks forward to that? Not Me. I may not work out as much as they do but I have stuff that keeps me busy to the point where it’s almost the same thing – always constantly doing something.

At this week’s challenge, the prize was free groceries for a year. How cool. The game was to pull semi-trucks down a road and collect crates with puzzle pieces along the way. The puzzle pieces spells out the prize. I felt so bad for black, they could not get started. It was all women with just Sam. This fueled the distaste I felt for Michael when he first organized the teams. Eventually black caught up and was moving through it well. Their biggest problem is actually getting the truck moving again once they stop to load the back with puzzle pieces. Once they can get the truck moving, they do pretty well and they are able to keep semi-caught up.

The black team gave up a good fight but ultimately, they didn’t make it. The blue team had to try so hard to stay ahead and to actually win the thing. While strength isn’t black’s forte, they could make up for it with determination and a mind-set to do whatever it takes to stay in the game. They were finally catching up to blue while doing the puzzles. It got to the point where blue was starting to panic. When they did win, they were so thrilled and celebrated loudly like beating black is a difficult thing to do. This just proves that it doesn’t matter who’s on black and who’s on blue. Granted, black might have an easier time with the challenges if some of the people were switched around, but the fact that they still put up a good fight was satisfying to see.

While the blue team celebrated, all I could do was think bad thoughts. I kept reminding myself that it was Michael that did this, not the entire blue team. During private interviews, Koli was talking smack saying that the blue team should watch out. During Sam’s interview, he said that they better get out the popcorn because the real show is the weigh-in. I definitely agree. They proved themselves last week and I’m hoping they prove themselves again this week.

I’m proud of Sam; he gave a great pep talk. It certainly helps to have someone lift your spirits when you’re down. He was saying that it doesn’t matter who’s winning during halftime – what matters is who’s winning in the 4th quarter of the game. He also said that anybody watching the show is probably thinking that they can’t do it and that they should prove everybody wrong. Well Sam, hate to say it but you were wrong. I’m watching and I think you CAN do it. I’m rooting for you guys.

Watching them go to work was funny. Koli was smart and volunteered to do the heavy outdoor work because he could get a good workout in. Daris partnered up with someone to do inventory. While reading off the labels, he mispronounced vegetables and said “veggie-table.” That was cute - who says that!?

The contestants spent their week working at a food bank. They organized inventory, moved food and handed out food to the less fortunate.

*Disclaimer: I absolve myself of any responsibility for this next comment.
I am merely a messenger. It is funny and definitely makes sense (I’ll
admit to that), but I’m not taking responsibility – just because I can :)

“Isn’t it ironic how a small, skinny starving person would go to a food bank only to be given two bags of food from an obese person?”

Watching them wake up every morning at 5:45, get on the bus at 7:30, arrive to work at 9, eat lunch at 12:30m, stop working at 5, get home at 6, work out until 7:30…. that sounds a lot like my life minus all the working out. Just watching them go through the routine made me feel irritated. How can anybody stand doing that every day!?

On to the weigh-in...

It’s starting to irritate me now when people get disappointed with losing just 5 pounds. Anybody would give to lose 5 pounds in a week… most of us take weeks to lose even that. They have to remember that they had full time jobs this week and worked out less – living the life just like the rest of us. 5 pounds is still pretty damn good.

Lance looked like a very giddy little boy just waiting to break through that 300 pound wall. It would be SO awful if he lost zero or gained weight. He ended up losing 10. Good job.

After blue was done weighing in (nothing exciting happened with them except for Lance breaking through the 300 pounds), it was determined that black needed to lose a little more than 38… a little over 6 each person to make it. With a team of 5 women, it is still doable. Drea ends up losing 7. Ashley loses 8. Cheryl lost 5. Sherry lost 5. Stephanie only lost 3. Sam needed more than 10 to keep his team out of the elimination room. That is certainly doable under normal circumstances (normal for the Biggest Loser), but this week, everybody had to work. It seemed that black was on a roll and then suddenly, it went downhill. Sam only lost 4. Bummer.

Sherry lost the most percentage out of the black team so she’s safe from elimination. Watching it, I have no idea which way it’s going to go. Anybody was pretty up for elimination. It was bittersweet for blue because they have to watch their partners on the black team face elimination. They had their little moments where they said good-bye to their former partners, not knowing whether they’d see him/her again.

After watching the black team discuss about who needs to stay and who needs to go, I had basically figured out that it was down to either Sam or Cheryl. The voting was what surprised me. One went to Stephanie because Cheryl felt she was strong enough to do it at home (and Stephanie voted for Cheryl – uh, why?). Sherry voted for Sam because he was strong enough to do it at home. Ashley voted for Cheryl, her own mother’s closest friend on campus! Was it a strategy to keep the younger people on campus so she’d have more allies? She certainly wouldn’t vote for her own mother, that was a given. With three votes, Cheryl was booted out. While that itself isn’t surprising, I was especially surprised that Cheryl would vote for Stephanie and that Ashley would vote for Cheryl. Things people will do….

Stay Tuned!

Biggest Loser, Season 9 - Episode 7

Oh boy! Bye-bye Olympics and hello Biggest Loser! How I missed you! When I was starting to teach my class an associate pastor showed up, sat down and said “I’m ready for your class.” I knew he was joking so I waited while he paused and he goes “haha, nope, I’m going home to watch the Biggest Loser!” Even though I knew I was recording it, I was still jealous.

Just when I thought I was done with seeing anything Olympic-related for the next two years, the show opens up with a review of what happened during the last episode. I’m all for short reviews. Anybody who knows me knows that I have bad short-term (and probably long-term) memory. A little refresher never hurt anybody, but this refresher was kind of annoying. Two weeks of Olympics is enough for me.

Remember what happened at the end of the last episode? Orange n Black was battling it out for the spot to stay on campus….and they were both in trouble. Crooked torch versus tense pain in the knees – who will prevail? Orange made it when Black dropped the torch in just under 10 minutes. I don’t think I could even do it for 5 minutes.

Yay! Next came the Temptation Challenge… my favorite challenge of them all, mostly because I get to see Jillian and Bob freak out over who ate what. Food challenges always come with a very nice reward – and that never ends well. This challenge involved eating chocolate chip cookies. Sunshine commented on how much she loves chocolate chip cookies…. who doesn’t? However, too much of one thing can never be good for anybody. Ali announced that now everyone would be split into black and blue. Surprise, surprise – winner of the temptation chooses who’s on black and blue. This person would also choose who gets immunity, even themselves, and there’s a catch….

Ali announced that before they know what the game is, everybody’s gotta decide if they’re in or out. Ali counts to three and only two people decided to play. Michael and Drea (white and black) were the suckers who decided they wanted the power – how nice. The game is Memory – match up the artery-clogging treats that are behind each square. Inside there somewhere, there are two golden cards to match up – the “pick the teams” card. If you match any of the treats, the other person has to eat a cookie and you keep playing. If you don’t get a match, you eat a cookie and 100 calories that goes with it. Once someone matches up the golden cards, the game’s over.

If you have played Memory before, you’d know that like any game of memory you don’t get a match during the first few turns unless you’re extremely lucky. I figured that they’d be going at least 3 or 4 turns before they even start to see the 2nd match of anything. This is funny – my roomie is sitting with me playing right along with the contestants and pointing to where all the matches are. It might be easy on this side of the screen but imagine all the pressure that’s put on you to choose the right squares.

Lance (red) pointed out that he was extremely happy he didn’t volunteer to play because of all the cookies and food that Michael and Drea are eating. Yeah – duh. Anytime there’s a temptation challenge, you do not play! All those calories aren’t worth it. About 6 or 7 rounds in, Drea is whipping Michael’s butt and has found 3 matches. She has also found one of the golden cards that give the power to choose teams.

Michael finally gets a match and Drea ends up eating a PB&J sandwich. The game still hasn’t ended and at this point, Michael is just praying that Drea finds the ticket just so it’ll be over. But then he says that he has to find the ticket or otherwise this would have all been for nothing. Yeah, you think? After all those calories and after all the matches Drea has made – Michael found the last ticket and matched them up.

There might be lots of but kissing now….or maybe not. Michael said he wanted to be fair but at the same time he needed to protect himself. He hasn’t done anything off the charts thus far; he did have great power in the past and was fair.

Now came time for Michael to announce who is going to be on what team. First order of business: splitting up Koli and Sam. Whoa – splitting up Tongan cousins. Smart if you want to play the game but not smart if you want to stay friends with them. Next, he split up the orange team. Drea mentioned to Michael that she wanted to stay with Bob but Michael put her with Jillian. The only thing he honored was putting red with Bob like he wanted. At least he has one ally. It seems that he’s building one team up against the other … strong versus weak. Did he even think that after the losing team loses a contestant that he’d be joining them (IF he chose himself for Immunity)? Most likely he’d be stuck with the weaker team. Not smart. Or maybe he’s betting that he’d lose the most out of everyone each week and have immunity each time (if they still do immunity for person who lost the most for that team). My head is spinning with all these different game tactics. So many ways to do stuff – and so many ways to make enemies.

Michael kept pink together. I figured he’d keep yellow together and give himself immunity. Right? But wait!!! Michael didn’t give himself immunity. He gave it to O’Neal (yellow) and put himself on the blue team. He’s betting that black will lose weigh in and that O’Neal will end up there and thus Sunshine up from her father. That’s horrible. Black looked so tiny versus the blue. There’s no way that they’ll win the weigh in… however, Jillian was faced with that challenge before. She was given a black team back when there was a red and blue team. Jillian got stuck with the outcasts and eventually the outcasts kicked red and blue’s butts. I really hope this is what happens this time around. This would make for excellent TV!

Enter Jillian. One pissed Jillian. Sprinkle in a little bit of peeved Bob. The end result: a lot of yelling. Jillian was yelling at Michael about giving everybody a fair chance. Why can’t everybody stay based on hard work and not manipulation? Michael said that he couldn’t make it even and increase the risk of sending himself home. Well maybe if he made it all even, he’d kick himself into overdrive and lose all that weight.

Bob tells blue that regardless of them being stacked against black, there’s still no time to slack. It would be funny to see Bob say “you know what? I don’t agree with how the teams are set up” and just walk off. Michael had the gall to tell Miggy “if you don’t lose weight for my team, you’re gone. You’re no use to me.” This isn’t the Michael that we came to love. Greed will get the best of anybody, huh?

Here comes the first challenge for the black/blue teams. This is their first test of seeing how well they all work together. The task was to pull your banner up a tall building by pulling them up from the roof. Blue had a strong start but eventually, they started to fall apart and black was creeping up on them. I’m rooting for the black – I’ve always liked the underdogs. In the end, blue won and they received letters from home. At least black gave up a good fight.

At the weigh in, Michael felt that he needed to lose a lot of pounds to prove himself to his team. He ends up losing 15 and breaks Rudy’s record from last year of 101 pounds in 7 weeks. He lost 107. Way to go… I guess… I like Rudy a whole lot better and would have liked him to keep his record.

Lance’s personal record was to get out of 300 and he needed 6 pounds to do it. He lost 5 and got to an even 300. Hopefully he’ll break through that wall next week.

Blue team pulled two big numbers (13 and 10) and the rest were average. Nonetheless, they put up a big number for the blue team to match. They need to lose a little more than 39 pounds. It came down to an average of about 6 pounds each person. I’m hoping that if a few of them fall below 6 pounds, that Sam could make up for the difference. But it just might be too much of a job to carry. Drea played the food temptation game and lost so she was the first up for the blue team. She only lost 5. Cheryl only lost 4. Sherry lost 6. Sam loses 8. Stephanie pulled 8… it was the first time she lost that much since week 1. Ashley needs to lose 9 to keep her team safe….do I feel a commercial break coming on here? Yep. Go figure….After the commercial break; we saw that Ashley lost 10! TEN! Eat that, Michael! I’m taking an early bet that Michael would be the one to go home, but let’s see.

I spoke too soon. Ali announced that Michael has immunity because he lost the most percentage of weight out of everybody on the blue team. What a bummer.

I’m curious, who decides the order that they sit in at the elimination? Before and during the elimination, Michael kept saying that it shouldn’t have been them. Uh, right. Hey Michael, that’s another backfire. Maybe you should have learned your lesson after that big backfire during the string challenge. Playing games isn’t working out for you, you should stick to just losing weight and staying on campus by pure heart and determination.

In the end, it came down to Miggy and Lance because they were the two lowest percentages. Miggy ended up going home because everybody figured that Lance would be a better asset for the challenges (they have O’Neal coming in and he can’t do challenges). By now, everybody has learned the challenges could make or break your week. How sad for Miggy – but she won’t be missed. She tends to be stressed out a lot and she passes that on to the people around her. I have a good feeling that she’ll do well at home. After all, she’s got that fire in her that we saw during the first episode.

I’m up for another exciting episode of the Biggest Loser. Why must we wait another week!?