C’est Moi

Still waiting to hear everything about the Peace Corps. I am waiting on medical clearance, which is endlessly frustrating. Last Tuesday, my medical assistant said my nurse hadn’t yet looked at my file (I thought it had at least been started). Her reason was that they are still working to clear people leaving before me. Well, okay…but everyone leaving in July had been cleared, and since I’m supposed to leave in August, and they work by month, it really should be my time, since they’ve had my file for a month or so and I am supposedly leaving in 2 months. Thus, how are there people “leaving before me”? Also, while she said that, I’ve seen multiple people who have September, October, and November nominations be cleared. So if they can’t clear me because they are working on people before me…why can they clear people leaving after me. Hrm? Hrm? Frustrating. It has to come soon, it just has to. And after that supposedly I’ll get my invite. Ever since the e-mail from her last Tuesday I’ve just been frustrated with it all. Grrr.

Saturday, I drove to Indy to pick justin up from the airport on his return home from WWDC. I also visited the Apple store. I no longer have the educational discount since I graduated a year ago But I claimed it as my sister Caitlin’s discount, that she couldn’t come up and get it herself due to work. Anyway, I got a new MacBook and iPod Touch (that my youngest sister Ellen now had). I’m still adjusting to the computer change, getting used to the keys and mousepad mostly. I haven’t yet come up for a name or determined if it is a boy or girl. Hopefully that’ll come soon. Either way, I desperately miss my iBook Sophie. She’s just in my room, but she’s been a good girl and I am sad to retire her! Though she may be sold to Caitlin’s fiance, Cory, so she’ll still be close. It makes me sad to think of her not being my lovely computer anymore But still, yay for my new computer. I’ll let you know if its a girl or boy and what its name turns out to be

Justin with Second Gear built a little piece of software called Today. Basically, Today is your little day planner converted to the computer. It syncs with the Mac program iCal: everything you insert into iCal or Today syncs with the other and automatically is in that program as well. The difference is that iCal is in the dock and is a large program you have to pull up, while Today is small and floats on the screen or docks up top in the apple bar.

Today also got reviewed in MacWorld. Yay!!!

I really really really cannot get enough of this…especially the last long “hiss/choke”

http://www.evo.hr/cat/

This isn’t Tom Doosey, but it is really closer to what he looks like. A month or so ago, Ellen and I went to the park and saw a duck that was very different. We couldn’t figure out for anything what it was! I had initially thought it was a turkey, but closer look it has a goose looking body, but dark colors like a mallard duck, yet a very red area on his head. I finally looked it up today, and it turns out that he is a male Muscovy Duck.

We named him Tom Doosey, and he’s been our park-pet ever since. I went back to the park today to eat lunch. I was leaving when I spotted Tom laying in the grass with some geese. I had a couple fries left, and tore the soft ones up into little pieces and started to give them to him. I stopped. I realized that he had something around his neck. But the second he saw me peering at him like that, he got nervous and started backing off. I wish I had had scissors then, because he had a hard time getting going so I could’ve grabbed him. I looked more and thought it was a rubberband, but the more I looked, I realized that it was wide and thick, and pretty much strangling him, digging into his neck. I had scissors in my purse and went to my car to get them out. I tried to catch him, and was pretty much on top of Tom when he took flight….across the lake. I followed, but he must have been eyeing me, because no matter where I was he would cross to the other side.

I finally had to give up, but I plan to go back tonight with my dad and sister to get him and cut the plastic from his neck. I hate that it is there and I don’t know what it is. I wish I knew who left it in the park or put it there because whoever did that is an awful person. Why do people do things like that when they KNOW the risk and can easily stuff something in their pocket til later or find a trash can? sigh I hope I can get it off Tom Doosey neck….its really really tight and he is having a really hard time breathing.

I’ve been working for 3 weeks on my Medical Kit the Peace Corps sent me. You have to have a full physical, eye exam, and dental exam. Lucky for me I’d had an eye exam a month and a half before, just had the obgyn exam, AND my dad is a dentist. So the only really big thing I had to do was my phyiscal. That being said, it seems like I’d be able to have sent it in by now. Not so. Unfortunately.

I had to have forms filled out by my pulminologist, past counselor, and neurologist as well. There were also some forms that may have been a single form that multiple doctors had to fill out. (ie. 1 particular form has been filled out by Chavez, Brown, and Hambidge.) That alone tied up the works a little bit, having to go back and forth. Also, one blood test (I had about 8 of them) took about 2 weeks to come back. Another had to be redone, so Jan had to write a note about that one. And my neuro, just flat out took 3 weeks despite multiple phone calls. I finally just stormed in the office; result? It was done the next day.

My last feat will be the counselor. I have spent these last 3 weeks looking for her and her name. Finally, today my dad found her name in some old files. So Monday I will give her a call and then go down there to have her fill out the forms. I hope hope hope to send the MedKit out by Wednesday, although I do realize that it’ll be hard for the counselor since she quit her private practice to work else where and that the file is from 2002. Hrm.

Other than that I am on track. I expect to be medically cleared relatively quickly, it seems everyone who’s nominated for the next few months like I am and has sent medical in has gotten cleared 2 weeks tops. Its unusual, but since its getting down to deadline, they have to put us in front of others with later nominations. There are 2 possibilities here, (1) I get cleared right away and only have to wait a week to a few weeks for my invitation, or (2) I did something wrong or didn’t include something and they send me more stuff to fill out which could potentially make me miss my nomination. Obviously, by far, I’m hoping for number 1.

Also, my nomination is still for Central or South America leaving in mid-August 2008, working in Youth Development. Right now, if it stays the same, it seems like I will most likely end up in Belize! (leaving Aug 18) Of course, nothing is certain and for all I know I’ll end up in Mongolia. Another option, simply because it is still in the same department that handles Latin America, would be the Eastern Caribbean (ie. including St. Lucia, St. Kitts, Dominica, Nevis, etc etc etc) (leaving Aug 25th). Again, like I said, you never know, they could ask me to leave earlier or later, or send me to somewhere completely different. I find that exciting, you may think you know, but you never really know, not even until you leave and arrive in your country, you just never know with the PC.

Um, yeah, so there was definitely an earthquake last night/this morning…at 4:45…..so they say it was a 5.4 in magnitude and its epicenter was 44 miles away from here on the edge of Illinois and Indiana, near Vincennes…..eitherway, I thought I was sitting smack on the epicenter!

All 4 of us woke up yelling to each other “What the hell is going on!?” “What the hell???” “Is this an earthquake????” while the cat is running up and down the hall freaking out and we think the dog peed from fear. Basically, our beds were shaking very strongly….and I jumped up and stood in the doorway and my youngest sister jumped up and I told her get in the doorway just in case. The noise from the earthquake was the most unnerving and eery thing ever. You hear it, but then you aren’t even sure you are hearing it…yet at the same time it is loud, very loud, and very deep. The whole house was shaking, I thought for sure the walls were crack, especially since it was built in the 60s…..you could hear stuff rattling on the shelf and as it picked up, a picture in my dads room fell off the tv and broke.

When it first started I had no idea what was going on–seizure? am I in trouble and someone is shaking me? did I over sleep and someone is trying to wake me up? am I falling? am I dreaming? oh shit! it’s a big earthquake! They say it was 10 seconds, but it was definitely more like 30, and scary. Deep rumbling noise and your entire house shaking–including you. Today we are checking over the house to make sure nothing fell or cracked that we didn’t realize at the time.

Crazy, and scary.

Update: this morning around 10:15 there was an aftershock that was 4.5 in magnitude. I was actually in the chair at the oral surgeons office waiting to get my 4 wisdoms out. My dad (a dentist) had left the room with the doctor to look at a ct scan to see where a nerve in relation to my tooth was. The nurse was out of the room. All the sudden my chair, the tv, and some little tools started shaking! Definitely scared me, but I sorta expected it. I had said last night and this morning that the aftershock would naturally come while I was there. Luckily, they hadn’t started but my face was all numbed up. I almost asked the nurse about it when she came back in, but I wasn’t sure it was real since they had just taken me off about a 5 minute spin on the laughing gas mask, also I was too numb to really talk well…so I didn’t ask. But at 11:30 when I was finished, I definitely had multiple texts about the aftershock.

Picture: up top you see a picture from USGS. The star is where the epicenter was, where it happened, and Evansville (SE) is where I live….so overall we were really pretty close, hence why it was still sooooo strong (we are actually in yellow too, its just not yet updated)

From seeing the constant fights about nothing between my sister and her fiance. I’ve come to realize that they concentrate on so many small things and can’t just have free fun a lot of the time. They always end up fighting and angry. Justin and I have our little arguments every now and then, and they nearly always last 5 minutes. I just feel like we work better and have more fun and fight less because we don’t pay so much attention to the small things and are willing to poke fun at each other and love every second of it. Hrm.

Since my nomination, I have received my Medical Kit in the mail. Since I’m an anomaly in illness, I have many extra forms to fill out. Most people tend to have some, but I seem to have many. I have the standard physical, dental, and optometry forms. In addition, I have 2 counselor forms, a pulminology form, and a neurology form.

My dad is mostly finished with my dental and my optometry is finished. My physical forms are finished except for a few labs that they haven’t gotten back yet, but the nurse practitioner has done a great job. She’s reviewed the forms multiple times to ensure she has filled everything out, and when I got funky findings back on a lab, she ordered extra tests to get it straightened out now so that the Peace Corps med office doesn’t freak out. I really appreciate how she’s working so hard.

I still have to get my other forms back and find out who the hell my counselors were so I can get them filled out. Hrm, also next week my wisdom teeth are being taken out. Oh joy joy joy! Can’t wait.

I’m pretty committed to the Peace Corps, but not 100%, so I have applied to a couple jobs out in San Diego at UCSD and ITT Tech. You never know what will happen in the end!

This past Monday (March 24th) I received a called from my Peace Corps recruiter, Hazel, from up in cold, windy Chicago. She had my nomination! She gave me two choices:

–Youth Development in Eastern Europe leaving in March 2009
–Community Development in French Speaking, Sub-Saharan Africa leaving in July 2008

Hands down I chose the Africa one!

However, not very much to surprise (since I’d heard of this happening to applicants with this nomination), Hazel called me back an hour later saying we were going to have to change the nomination. The program I had been nominated for was full–apparently there was a glitch that was not showing it was full until all the information had been input and stuff. So, we talked about other programs. She offered me the same Europe program, as well as a different Africa program leaving in February 2009.

Problem. Due to my sister’s wedding being in June of ‘09 (month 6) and there being a rule that you cannot travel your first 6 months in the Peace Corps, that meant I had to leave in 2008 if I didn’t want to miss her wedding. I explained to my recruiter that I really wasn’t trying to be picky, that I really want to do this, but …>tells of wedding situation<. To my great relief she said she understood and was really great about it. She immediately began searching for other 2008 programs I was qualified for. At first, it seemed like it wasn’t looking so good, while a lot of ‘08 programs are still open, most the ones I’m qualified for are filling up quickly.

But luckily she found one, and so I am proud and excited to announce to you that I am an official Peace Corps nominee! My nomination, meaning “if everything checks out, you may go here and do this, but we may change it,” is:

Youth Development — Central/South America — Spanish Speaking — August 2008

If you are interested in reading more about my Peace Corps process, I have another site devoted to just that. Right now it details my application process and thoughts about it, but it’s a good read I think Especially if you are interested in the PC.
Leaping Into It Headfirst