Jeanne Calle

Maybe I’ll update my vacation travels, but for now, something that’s been on my mind.

In February of 2009, I came to work and saw several coworkers crying and found out that the head of our department, who had retired a couple of weeks earlier, had been murdered in her condominium in midtown during a robbery… It was a very trying and emotional time for everyone and it was incredibly sad … especially witnessing as each new person was told the news upon his or her arrival into the office …. I didn’t know Jeanne that well- I had just started working as she started transitioning out of the American Cancer Society so I only had a few interactions with her. However, her loss was very hard for a lot of my coworkers.. she had been at ACS for 20 years and had developed close relationships with a lot of the people on staff. Fortunately, the man who murdered Jeanne was arrested the day after Jeanne’s body was found- he had returned to the condominium to attempt to steal more things but was stopped by security and was later apprehended by police.

I learned a couple of weeks ago that the killer was finally going to be tried starting on August 23…. I couldn’t believe that it takes over a year and half for a trial to occur!! And my heart was hurting for all of my coworkers because I knew the trial was going to be very emotional for all of them. I’m sure many of them would have attended the trial out of respect for Jeanne, and I know that that would have been really really hard……. So I was praying that God would wrap his comfort around everyone, bring some peace, a reassurance of his presence… and I was worrying about it a lot.

In a surprising turn of events, we found out yesterday that the murderer was going to go ahead and plead guilty, with no pre-agreement on his sentence, and waiving all rights of appeal- meaning that there was no longer any need for a trial. The judge sentenced him to life in prison. This is good news as it is the same sentence he would have received if convicted by a jury, without everyone having to go through the heartbreaking ordeal of a trial. So I guess it ended as best as it possibly could, even though that seems weird to say under the circumstances.

Jeanne was an amazing researcher (just go to google scholar and type EE Calle…!!) and a great friend to many here at ACS. I’m sure her legacy will live on for many years to come…

Here’s an article written in her memory that was published in Cancer Research:

http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/69/7/3238.full

-Chrissy

digital piano!

Chad and I just ordered a digital piano.... should come in in a few days.. I'm so excited!! I grew up playing piano but haven't really had easy access to a piano since I started college, so I'm anxious to get back to playing and see how hard it is to pick up where I left off!

I would love to have a real piano, but we don't really have the space. The only way to make it work would be to put a flat screen tv over the fireplace to free up a space big enough to put a piano... and that would mean buying a flat screen tv since chad and i havent upgraded yet (yes i know, we live in the stoneage) and dealing with a hard installation process (since I hate wires, they would have to go into the wall somehow.. and we would also need to lower the mantle so the TV wouldnt be too high... which is a large task we're not ready to tackle at the moment!) So we decided to get a digital piano instead, which is much smaller and can easily fit on one of the walls without having to drastically rearrange our den or make things look too crowded. Other advantages of a digital piano- no tuning required every year! and I can still play if chad's watching tv bc I can just plug in my headphones!

Chad and I have been shopping around for a month or so and we made the mistake of trying a top-of-the-line digital piano, even though it was way out of our price range.... after that, none of the basic digital pianos which were in our price range sounded good to me... but then we found a great deal online (50% off...!) on one of the nicer digtal pianos (a roland piano that has all of the specs that I really wanted..!) The website said it was an 'open-box' item and we called and they said they couldnt see anythign wrong with it, so we ordered it on tuesday! I'm crossing my fingers that everythings going to look/work right when it comes in! If not, its no big deal since we can just return it... I just hope nothing is wrong with it bc I'm so excited about getting such an awesome digital piano! Chads excited too, although I think he's going to annoy me to no end by experimenting with all the different 'voice' options the piano has.  I'm very grateful to have such a sweet husband though who would rather me have a digital piano than to buy a fancy new flat screen tv or some other cool technological gadget :)  Chad says he wants to learn how to play piano.... we'll see how good of a piano teacher i am and how much patience I can muster... :)

In other news, I'll be in France next week!! My parents and sister are going, and they invited me to tag along! Sadly, Chad has to stay behind bc he doesn't have enough vacation days, but in my absence, he gets to watch Bella as well as my parents 3 dogs. It should be a fun and hilarious time for him since Bella and my parents 3 dogs combine to form a veritable mess of craziness.. I laugh everytime I think about poor Chad coming home from work and being greeted by the goldendoodle, the golden retriever, and the two dachshunds ready to play.. they are going to drive him bonkers, and i can't help but smile when i think about the look of amusement mixed with exasperation that he's going to have on his face...  sorry Chad!!! :)

a bientot!

grand canyon & las vegas!

so.. I keep wanting to post pictures to the blog to recap what Chad and I have been up to lately, but it seems whenever I think about updating the blog, I dont have the camera with me. and then I don't end up writing. well, I don't have the camera this morning either, but I'll go ahead and write about whats coming up and then I'll recap whats been going on later...maybe...?? so.. stay tuned for a recap later on- (i know yall are waiting in suspense....)

whats coming up.... Chad and I are super excited!! We're going on vacation to Las Vegas and to the Grand Canyon in a few weeks! .. We'll spend some time in the Grand Canyon hiking and enjoying nature and then a couple of days in Las Vegas doing who knows what (any suggestions??) I've never been to Nevada or Arizona so I think it'll be a really neat experience- traveling is pretty much my favorite thing ever.

I realize that I'm not the easiest person to travel/vacation with, but thankfully Chad likes that about me (or at least he tells me so...haha) Whenever I go on vacation, I have to always be doing something.. I can't just sit around and relax. So no sleeping in late or lolly-gagging around. I'm pretty spastic about it actually-if Chad wants to sleep in, I poke and prod him and call him a lolly-gagger until he finally gives up and agrees to join me in whatever thing I want to that morning. (after-all, if all you wanted to do was sleep in or sit around relaxing, you could have just stayed at home.. right?) I just hate the thought of missing out on something or not taking an opportunity to do something that I might never get to do again! so.. we're going on vacation, but it might not be all that restful.. :). and in addition, it seems when we go on vacation, we have to cram it all in in a short amount of time because Chad gets woefully less vacation time than me (2 weeks as opposed to 5 weeks), so that makes me all the more spastic... :)

I blame my parents for my spastic nature- thats how we grew up doing vacations. Chad's family seems to chill out and relax more, so Chad definitely had to get used to the Clements way of vacationing (he's vacationed with my family a few times). Chad also had to get used to the "Clements pace"- apparently we walk a lot faster than anyone he ever hung out with growing up- I think we've built up his leg muscles/endurance enough now though that it doesnt even phase him, and he can keep up with the fastest Clements in the bunch- (sorry for the digression...)

anyway, all of the rambling to say that we're going on vacation in a few weeks and we're super excited!!! :)

Update!

So… ivy is 80-90% pulled up, but right now I think we’re in the ‘origin’ of it all… the vines are thicker and harder to pull up and are crazy intertangled…. This is where the granddaddy vines live. And they are not giving up their claim on our backyard very easily…..thankfully chad and I haven’t gotten too much poison ivy this past month and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel… now if we can just finish pulling it all up before all of the bugs start emerging! (ive warned chad that once this starts, I’ll be MIA and he’ll have to finish the job all by his lonesome!) We’re piling up all of the ivy that we’ve pulled so far into a huge mound right over our fence line. When we’re all done, I’ll have to take a picture of the mound and post it so you can see the extent of our work.. its insane!! And we have to figure out what to do with the hhhhuuuuuge pile… maybe pour tons of gasoline on it and torch it all…..

In other news, last week I started noticing that my Civic was acting a little weird- when it would switch gears, it would rev up before sticking and I had a sneaking suspicion that it had something to do with the transmission- I figured it wasn’t really that big of a deal though because my car only has about 70k miles on it and it’s a Honda- supposed to be a reliable car, right? And I know nothing about cars, so I was probably wrong anyway and my car was perfectly fine- so I just put it in the back of my mind.

....So… I absolutely hate putting gas in my car. (I guess I inherited it from my mom who refuses to put gas in her car- she’d rather run out of gas than pump gas so my dad has to stay on his toes and make sure that he fills up her car when it starts getting low!!... but I digress…..) My car was on empty, so Chad switched cars with me so that I could drive his car to work and he could fill up my car on his way to work. I am super glad that Chad drove my car to work that day, because while he was driving it, my Honda all of the sudden went kaput (well I’m not happy that it died on chad, but im glad it didn’t happen with me driving bc I would have become a major stress-ball- especially if it happened on I-85.. I don’t think it would have been very pretty to say the least …). It wouldn’t accelerate at all and he had to coast to the side of the road (highway 74) and call a tow-truck to take it to a repair shop. A tow-truck!!! My poor Honda Civic that has never ever given me any trouble at all had to be towed!!

So the verdict is, my car needs a new transmission (well actually its going to get rebuilt). Did you know that transmission work is EXPENSIVE!?! It hurts to think about what we could have bought with the money we’re spending on the transmission!! (not that we would have, but still, you know?) We could have taken an amazing vacation, or bought some awesome furniture, or paid for someone else to deal with all of the ivy! So anyways, I’m trying not to think about how much it is and to just acknowledge it’s a necessary part of life- part of owning cars- part of growing up. Thankfully, Chads dad is away on business this week so we can borrow his car and we don’t have to worry about getting to work at the same time with one car when we work in completely opposite direction!

On that note, happy spring! Wasn’t Saturday beeea-utiful!!!??

Poison Ivy. An enemy of mine.

Poison ivy and I do not get along. 25 years of a hate-hate relationship that doesnt seem to be getting any better as time goes on... Ive been horribly allergic to poison ivy for as long as I can remember, but a particularly bad incident happened during a summer in college when my brother and I went to visit my cousin in San Francisco. We went on a hike through some woody terrain in Big Sur and although I rinsed off in a creek near the end of the hike, I came back to Atlanta with an oozy rash all over my inner arm (one spot I guess I didnt rinse off well enough). You couldnt see any skin on the majority of my inner arm bc the rash was so huge (I’m not exaggerating at all). I had to go to the doctor and take steroids to finally get the rash to go away, but it was a month of awfulness- I was itching and oozing over everything - it was disgusting. (i'm sure youre getting a beautiful image in your head right now....)

From my many itchy experiences with poison ivy, I'm very good at spotting it, but somehow, that tricky poison ivy always manages to leave its mark.. I can be 50 ft away from it and boom, I'm covered. So, when we moved into our house and I noticed some poison ivy in the backyard, I knew it as going to be trouble.... and boy has it been trouble….

Our poison ivy is particularly hard to eradicate and avoid bc its mixed in with the English ivy that covers half of our backyard, so oftentimes you cant see it until you’re literally standing in it. Chad and I are trying to get rid of the English Ivy bc its taking over the yard, choking our trees (sad I know) and also creates a haven to many wonderful creatures that we want get rid of (snakes, ticks, spiders, etc). Much to my dismay, in our attempt to remove the English ivy, we noticed that the poison ivy was growing up the majority of our trees, some with vines as thick as my thigh (and even comparing it to my thigh, that’s pretty thick)! We even spotted a tree that was actually dead but looked like it was alive because the poison ivy had grown up it and had tons of leaves hanging off of it… (just what I always wanted.. my very own poison ivy tree!) To further complicate matters, our dog loves running through the ivy and then when I pet her…, another way that I can get poison ivy.

We’ve been able to get rid of some of the English ivy and Chad has sprayed all of the poison ivy that he can find, but until we are able to totally get of the English ivy, I guess I’ll have to resign myself to being itchy :(. Today I’m sporting a few rashes on my arms and a nice spot on my eyelid that looks like I haphazardly applied some red eyeshadow.

Unfortunately, I’m not the only casualty in this war with poison ivy. Chad, who has never gotten poison ivy in the past, has been able to share in my itchy experiences- a few months ago, Chad and I had matching poison ivy rashes around our wrists just above our glove line and wonderful splotches on other places from where Chad accidentally weed-whacked some poison ivy and sent the juices flying . What a wonderful way to bond with each other….

Check for updates in the future on how our Operation Ivy Removal is progressing…

In the meantime, here are my tips on how to relieve the itching associated with poison ivy without actually scratching the rash- (bc scratching inevitably turns the rash into an oozy mess, which is best to avoid) All of these tips have been tested and proven by me to alleviate the itch- at least for a few minutes…

(1) Slap the itchy area as hard as you can
(2) Pour scalding hot water over the rash
(3) Apply duct tape to the rash and quickly remove (this method works but is discouraged as oozing can soon follow duct tape removal)
(4) Scratch in the immediate vicinity around the rash (this tricks your brain into thinking you’re actually scratching the rash, buying you a few seconds of peace)

And my personal favorite…

(5) Put the hair dryer on the hottest setting and blow-dry the rash for as long as you can stand it. In my experience, this method works the best and doesn’t necessarily result in oozing.

After doing any or all of the above methods, quickly apply calamine lotion. Although the lotion might not alleviate the itch as successfully as you would like, at least you look cool with random pink patches all over your skin.

Snow!!

so in the spirit of non-MARTA related posts.....

It snowed pretty intensely all afternoon here in Tyrone! I would venture to say it was around 2-3"- maybe more? I was constantly watching the radar at work to see if I needed to duck out early because I have no experience driving in snow....luckily, our office decided to close at 2pm so I made it home before snow started to stick on the roads. Bella loved the snow and played in the backyard for around 3 hours before deciding she wanted to come back inside and get out of the cold!! The snow was really awesome... not the normal slushy snow that I'm used to getting in GA, but solid snow that you could pack down and make into some really awesome snow balls! Playing in the snow was a great way to kick off Valentines/Presidents Day weekend :)

 

 Bella chilling in the snow

 

Bella displaying the numerous ice/snow balls that formed on her legs!

 

Our front yard looking beautiful covered in snow!

 

Chad trying to sled in our front yard- didnt work too well.. haha :)

  

Chad putting the finishing touches on Frosty!

 

Frosty close up! In case you were wondering, his eyes are made from pieces of a chocolate bar and his mouth is a rotten banana. Chad and I were joking that the carrot is going to get eaten tonight by some of the deer that like to destroy our plants... we'll see if Frosty and all of his body parts survive until the morning...

2 more marta encounters

I really should just name this post 'Adventures on MARTA'!! :) When I'm sitting in front of a computer, it's normally right after I've ridden MARTA so its fresh in my mind... maybe in the future I'll actually post about my life outside of public transportation. but that day is not today.

1) So this morning, I said goodmorning to the newspaper man (mentioned in the previous post) and he walked towards me, which is weird bc he knows by now that I never buy a newspaper. He proceeded to hand me an envelope that said "you so sweet" on the outside. When I opened the envelope, there was a hersheys bar inside! So I guess I now have a MARTA valentine.

2) Yesterday on my ride home from work, a short gray-haired man stood up and stood in the middle of a very crowded train and asked 'does anyone have a cigarette?? I'm nic-ken like a chicken'. It made me laugh- I've never heard that phrase before.

In other MARTA news, have yall heard about the controversy of the naming of the 'yellow line'? Apparently the route takes you to a large Asian community, and some people living in that community were offended that they decided to name the route 'yellow'. MARTA has caved and will now rename the line the 'Gold line'- which will cost xxxx amount of dollars to do. Awesome.

Happy Valentines Weeekend!