Wall-E Totally rocks

Last night I saw Wall-E at the midnight showing. It was funny, poignant, a little sad, and visually AMAZING. I will avoid spoilers in this because you just have to go see it.

We went to the El Capitan theatre in Hollywood and if you have never been there it is worth the price of admission. Because we had to be there early to stand in line to get seats, they had pre-show entertainment.

There was a radio station there giving out t-shirts, blankets and other toys (all Wall-E of course). They had the audience yelling and screaming. It was fun and a reminder of the level of stupidity people will stoop to in order to get a stupid t-shirt. We had a blast. I was glad for the external stimulus because I am not really a night person.

The theatre was built in the thirty's and was refurbished several years ago by Disney. It has a stage as part of its construction and when they refurbished it, they restored it to its former glory. Theatre is amazing. There are all these ornate touches on the sconces, pillars, and ceiling. It is a gilded wonder.

Before the movie began they had a stage show that is a Disney character review. They guys next to me were just as enthusiastic about singing along as I was. This really made me happy. We happily sang along at the top of our lungs and giggled like little kids. It was great fun.

I was really worried that the movie would not stand up to the hype or that I had seen all the good parts in the previews and commercials. I had nothing to worry about. The movie was amazing, and they manage to keep the best bits in the movie rather than in the commercials. And I really liked the commercials too. So if the commercials and previews have you thinking that you might want to see this movie, I recommend that you do.

Sex talk and Occupational Therapy

I learned in class last night about creating online surveys. These are trickier to design than you might think. Take the simple act of requesting demographic information. Researchers really benefit from getting demo info. (Nielson makes a ton of money on demo's alone) Anyway, in my pursuit of developing the best Occupational Therapy focused website, I will need to know about the demographics of my constituency (my prof keeps insisting I call it the frame, but that is just confusing to me... so I am sticking with constituency).

So we were sitting in class discussing the development of an online survey that includes demographic information. So, the first think we talk about is sex (ahem, gender). This one should be easy right... wrong (mind you we were getting a bit punchy) but he said there are only two genders so the type of question should be nominal (where you just name stuff) and have a setting where you can only choose one. Someone then pointed out (correctly so) that there are some people who are both sexes. Then another person said, 'oh like cross dressers'. The conversation shifted to discussing how there is a difference between gender and sex. (um... yeah, one is way more fun than the other... ---oops must maintain G rating... anyway I digress) The conversation explored how people are born with a sex and they choose a gender. That is all well and good until you recognize that some people are born with all the mm... 'parts'. The class continued to banter on this distinction and I lost interest in what they were saying.

My mind started to wonder and I found myself having an internal discussion about how people focus much of their lives around how they define themselves. We are sexual beings and anyone who denies this is just not thinking in broad enough terms. As an occupational therapy student, we had a class session devoted to the discussion of how we can help our clients with needs that arise around sex.

Not only to we as OT's have to be sensitive and responsive to our client's needs we need to also recognize that as an OT we might need to help someone say for example a transvestite re-learn dressing. This population may have a few very different needs than a traditional male/female dressing components. I don't know much about this, as I don't have any friends who are transvestites. But if I did, I might ask them about the challenges they might face if they were hurt in such a way that would make dressing difficult. I see the topic of transvestitism occasionally on TV, but that is my only experience and we all know you can't blindly trust what you see on TV. Regardless, I think that there are other sex/gender issues that may be at issue for a client/patient of an OT. We as OT's need to be aware that these are real issues that real people face.

As for my class... we then moved on to culture/ethnicity... you guessed it... we then had a half hour discussion (where some very good points were made) about defining culture vs. ethnicity…

And I was already tired and a little sad from the sex (or is it gender... I am still confused) talk.

This is my first blog in a while. I am sorry to those who have let me know they were waiting for a post with baited breath. To those I say... BREATH

It is funny. There was a day several years ago when I was preparing to take my first karate test. I was very nervous because I had no idea what to expect. A friend who was a brown belt at the time, came to me and asked if I wanted some advice for the test. I was eager to obtain his words of wisdom. He then quietly leaned over and whispered very seriously into my ear, "When everything seems to be hard and everything is all confused and you can't remember which way is up, remember to breathe! Just BREATH!"

I've remember those words and applied them to my life on more than one occasion. Now for instance, as I quickly tried to finish my paper before it's due tonight, I keep telling myself to just breathe. It's funny how something so simple can be so meaningful. This little tidbit of advice is useful in lighthearted situations as well as very serious situations.

As occupational therapist. I hope to apply this little gem to my practice both in reminding myself, as well as helping my clients. as is true of a lot of occupational therapy, it's reminding people of the obvious things that are so difficult to see.

So I send you for with this little piece of advice, "when everything seems to be hard and everything is all confused and you can't remember which way is up, Remember to breathe! Just Breath!"

Wendy on Netvibes

Well I have succumbed to the pressure and I now have a Netvibes.

http://www.netvibes.com/wendykeller

note that it is full of all kinds of crazy stuff. I have my private one too. But this is a fun place to have all your community inputs aggregated. Take a look at it and if you like, you can try it out yourself. It also helps if you have accounts in some of the more popular online communities like facebook and myspace.

Enjoy.

Online bill payments

OK, you know you have spent to much time online when you are willing to transfer money through a bunch of accounts just so you don't have to drive the 3 minutes to the bank.

It is an interesting phenomena, this online banking. I have been using it for years and I am at the point that I will not hold a credit card or open a bank account unless I can access the information online and download it into Quicken. For that matter, I will not even write a check unless I can print it out from Quicken. Financially I am a slave to technology. And yet, for the most part I am alright with this fact.

I have a copy of the program safe and sound in the pile of computer software that I would need WHEN not if my computer crashes. I have a copy of the data on a flash drive that I keep in my fireproof safe. Which means that anyone who is devious enough could find out pretty much everything about me financially if they can get through the layers of passwords and encryption I have added beyond what is offered by Quicken.

The biggest problem is that I have to remember about 20 different passwords. That can get a bit frustrating when I can't remember one of them. I am so paranoid that I won't write them down. Sure, most banks will let you rest the password but often they want you to wait for the new temp password to arrive via snail mail. Ahg. So I guess that is incentive not to forget the passwords.

All in all, online banking ROCKS! I am never past due, I know exactly how much money I don't have, and I can tell you exactly where I spent that last $100.00 because Quicken will be happy to create a report, build grafts, and even scold me for going over budget.

So, who needs those debt consolidation/repair people. Just get Quicken and put in all your numbers. It will be happy to make you feel stupid for over-spending.

Cheers.

New Priorities

I've often thought of writing blog entries as a form of torture. It's not so much that I can't write a cohesive message in a short entry. But rather it is because I find it to be physically painful. One would think that it would be easy to just use voice recognition software. However, I have found that it is not as easy to use voice recognition software as it sounds like it would be in theory. As a result I have been very resistant to online blogging.

A funny thing happened last night. I found myself finally understanding why it is that blogging is so very important. A friend of mine called me on the phone and told me that she was worried about me because she hadn't heard anything in a while. I assumed that this was because we hadn't spoken on the phone. But then she commented, “You haven't written any blogs lately”. This is true because I haven't written a blog since my birthday and ever since that time, I have been in significant pain.

Chronic pain is not like acute pain. It acts in a completely different way. Chronic pain comes with a bunch of baggage such as; bemoaning the fact that it hurts or compromising what things get done and what things don't get done. I had chosen to focus on research for papers, and coordinating and presenting findings for my fieldwork presentations. As a result, I simply didn't have enough energy or pain tolerance left over to use for writing a blog.

It's never easy to make choices about what you're going to do and what you're going to let slide, especially at the graduate school level. Unfortunately, there is only so much time and there is only so much pain I can tolerate. As a result, I had to make a difficult choice. I chose not to focus on blogging. So this is my makeup blog. I don't expect for it to make up for missing entries, but since I actually have readers, I offer you my apologies for my absence.

All that being said, with one phone call I was reminded about how online communities function on an emotional level. My friend was concerned for my well-being, because she hadn't heard from me. Although we also know each other in real life, it was my absence online that led to her concern. This emotional umbilical that occurs between community members through online entries is powerful. Without a steady stream of entries it is impossible for community members to maintain an online connection. That may be very obvious, in theory, but this was an occasion where it became very real to me.

So I thank my muse, Liz, for calling me and reminding me how my missing blogs were noticed by someone. Not just any someone, but rather a member of my community.

Socialized Gambling?

There is this nifty new product I just found out about called ShuffleUp Cards where you shuffle the cards in a candy dish. Sounds a little wacky when put like this, but I really think this is genius. My hat goes off to the inventor.

Why? you might ask do I think so highly of this product. Well, let me tell you. As an occupational therapist I work with kids that do not have great socialization skills. I have also worked with 85 year old vets that just want to remember the good old days. A friend of mine works with people with recent brain injuries. These cool little chip like cards are fun for the kids, easy to get a hold of for arthritic or hands that need a little extra coaxing from the brain. Not only do they not need shuffling, it would defeat the purpose. I have just ordered a set so I will have to get back to you whether or not they perform as advertised. I will also give my 7-10 year old clients an opportunity to destroy them. I figure if they are hardy enough to take it this will be a permanent addition to my OT bag of tricks.