Thursday, April 28, 2011

Outsmarting The Credit Card Companies

The credit card companies make millions upon millions each year. My friend works for American Express and with all the cruises she's been on in the past year, I don't think she's hurting at all. However, this is one girl that pulled one over on them.
When I signed up for my very first major credit card, I chose one with no annual fee because I was only planning on using it for those stupid incidences when you're required to have a major credit card, such as renting a car. But when I called to activate my new card, the nice lady informed me of all the "bonuses" that I could partake in. Like 5% back on certain purchases and what not. But the only thing I comprehended was that if I spent $500 within the next few months, I would get a bonus of 10,000 points. 10,000 points also transfers to $100 cash back or other great prizes I could have chose from.
How convenient! I just so happened to be purchasing a new computer which ended up costing me that amount. Since I was going to pay for it with cash anyways, I thought I would put it on my credit card and get all those wonderful points!
What that translated into was $100 off my overall purchase when I paid off my credit card this month and didn't have to pay interest. So, thank you Chase Freedom for giving me $100 to put towards my computer!

Monday, April 25, 2011

Good Friday Fun

What do you do when it's cold, rainy and dreary oustide and looks like this?
You decorate Easter Eggs of course! I've been trying to brainstorm ideas to give the residents where I work, something to do. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like sometimes they may get bored, so I wanted to do something nice for them. When I asked my G-ma what I could do, she said God would provide me with an answer, she was right. I had Friday morning off work and thought that decorating eggs would be a good fun Easter thing to do.
Friday afternoon, after Ashley and I set everything up and pre-boiled 30 eggs, some of the residents piled into the dinning room to create their very own piece of art. We all had a great time and everyone got to decorate multiple eggs while sharing a good laugh with the other residents.
The ladies and their artwork.
Our display of finished eggs. Aren't they pretty?!
I even got to be creative and do a few for myself. I can't take the credit for the peacock egg though, that idea was my friend Kristyn Flinchum's, I just carried out her idea.

The egg decorating was a hit! And since they enjoyed it so much, we were invited to come back once a month to do some other things with them. So if anyone has any ideas they want to throw my way as to what other fun activities we could try, let me know!


Friday, April 22, 2011

Raw Fish and Good Friends

Caution: This blog may make your mouth water and your stomach growl.

A very dear friend of mine is leaving for basic training soon, and since this is his last weekend in town, we decided a few of us would get together and get dinner. And what a better dinner idea than SUSHI! I'm not sure if you guys are aware of my love for sushi, but if it could talk, provide for me and love me back, there's a good chance that I'd marry it. However, since that's not sensible, I do enjoy eating it every chance I get. So off to Greensboro the four of us went, and since our friend Miranda happened to have gotten a new car today, she chauffeured us around.

When ever we go out for Sushi, we do it big... boat sized, literally. Here's a few pictures from the night.

Miranda and Kristyn. Check out that boat of yummy-ness!
Roland and Myself

We'll miss you Roland! Best of luck to you!


Thursday, April 21, 2011

Technology

At what point did we let technology start thinking for us? I suppose a good response for this would be calculators. I can't tell you how many people out there can't do simple addition and subtraction without a calculator. But since I was never one of those people, I reckon that I let technology start thinking for me when I got a GPS. Seemed like a good idea at the time. It was tax-free weekend, I didn't have one, I traveled a lot, therefore I threw it in the cart. However, after this experience and a few other ones, I believe it would have been better to stick with mapquest and my instincts. I'm not sure if anybody else's GPS has ever driven them through water, but this is what it looks like:
Now just to clarify this picture, my car is not actually underwater at the moment. I do have more sense than that. So here is the story:

After staying the night at my friends the other night, I was going to meet my G-parents at church in Swansboro. Having never been to Swansboro from Oriental, my friend looked up the driving time on her phone so I wouldn't be late. According to her, it was only about a 45min drive, max. So I leave the house a little after 10. What does my GPS say when I enter the address of the church? That I'm going to arrive a little after 11:00. So thinking I have to make time, I RUSH down the road. And I rush some more, all to find out that I would be waiting for a ferry! So not only did I have to wait 15 minutes for a ferry but then I had an additional 20 minutes for the ferry ride. By the time I FINALLY got to church, it was 11:50. Needless to say, I pretty much missed the sermon that morning. But on the plus side, I got to experience ferry life. I can't remember ever riding a ferry, although I'm positive we probably did when I was younger. But the moral of this story is, I'm fed up with my GPS and the long and crazy routes it takes me to get from point A to B.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Chasing Tornados

Seems like everywhere I go, I'm followed by some sort of horrible weather or bizarre events. Example: I go down to Jacksonville/Wilmington in the middle of a monsoon/flood to move furniture. I go to visit the Big Island of Hawaii and a week later the volcano is going crazy, spitting lava up everywhere. Or how about the tsunami warning?
Well what would happen this weekend when I had plans to go down to the coast for the weekend for my interview? Oh no big deal... just the worst storms that we've seen in two decades. Of course I would be right in the middle of a series of tornados. By the time I left work, the rain had stopped in Asheboro. Unfortunately, that was NOT the case as I headed East. Pouring down rain -so hard that everyone was driving 35, was the case by the time I reached Siler City. By the time I got to Raleigh, I was beginning to see some signs of destruction. Blown over trees and huge highway signs -by this point I was beginning to get a bit worried. Not to mention every time I changed the radio station I heard something along the lines of "You should seek shelter immediately. Do not seek shelter underneath a by-pass. Get down in a low lying area or ditch and cover yourself from flying debris." Then somehow I ended up passing all the tornados and they then decided to follow me. Everywhere on the map that I had just passed, or close to it, seemed to be the spot where they were hitting next. By the time I reached Oriental to stay with my dear friend Katie Bunch, I was ready to stay put. The short walk from the car to inside almost picked me up and blew me away. Thankfully the next morning I awoke to a clear and beautiful sky. I'm sure everyone has seen and heard of all the devastation from this storm series, but if not you can click here and also check out some of the photos below.



Sunday, April 10, 2011

The Human Brain

One of the greatest and most complex organs of the human body is the brain. I can't even begin to describe how amazing it is, but I'm sure you all have some kind of idea. Researching it, I found a few interesting facts. Did you know that the reason you can not tickle yourself is because the brain can distinguish between unexpected external touch and your own actual touch? Or that the brain has no pain receptors and therefore does not feel pain? I bet you didn't know that there are 100,000 miles of blood vessels in the brain or that at the age of 18 it stops growing? But enough of all the fascinating facts on the brain and on to where this blog is going....
As fascinating as the brain is, it is also a sponge that soaks up knowledge and anything else that it is presented with. Sixteen years of schooling, I've had to learn a lot to graduate. But the one thing that isn't so fascinating... how quickly you forget things.
There's two things that I like to think that I excel at: Sleeping and Remembering things. Funny because sleeping is the best time for your brain to consolidate all the memories from the day. I like to say that because I like to sleep, I have enhanced my memory. The only problem is, apparently I retain moments and events and not things I learned in Radiography school. And right now that's not a good thing.
After my interview on the 19th, I'll have a test to take on things we learned in school. Anatomy, physics, patient care, and such will be on this test. Wanting to do well, I thought I'd review some of the things I learned in school. I'm not sure I'm going to have enough time... I've forgotten everything! It's also funny how distracted one can become. I got on my computer to review some more and ended up researching the brain and now writing this blog. Guess I'll get back to my studying now....

Friday, April 1, 2011

Rats and Other Fascinating Creatures

Ok so for Christmas my mother got me a really neat book entitled The Book of Incredible Information and I took it along with me yesterday knowing that I would be waiting a lot. It's full of a bunch of interesting facts and quotes and what not. Some of them are more interesting than others but I was baffled to read what I did on rats. So much so that I decided to share with you guys. Rats are definitely not my favorite animal... I highly doubt that I would ever have a pet rat, but some people do. To each their own I suppose but here's the facts:

*Talk about pet rat owners, President Teddy Roosevelt kept them in the White House.
*The average lifespan of a rat is less than three years, but one pair can produce 2,000 offspring IN A YEAR! (Quick math for you guys, that's roughly 6,000 kids in a lifetime of 3 years.)
*Health officials in China feed feral rats flavored birth-control pills.
*A group of rats is called a mischief.
*One pair of rats shed more than a million body hairs each year, and a single rat can produce 25,000 droppings in a year.
*It's a myth that rats like cheese. In fact, they're lactose intolerant and can't digest dairy.
*Some rats can enter an opening as small as a half-inch wide.
*Each year, rats cause more than $1 billion in damages in the US alone.
*Some rats can swim as far as half a mile in open water, dive through water-plumbing traps, travel in sewer lines against strong currents, and stay underwater for as long as three minutes.
*Rats constantly gnaw anything softer than their teeth, including bricks, wood, and aluminum sheeting. (If brick is softer than their teeth, just how strong ARE their teeth?!?)
*A rat can fall 50 feet without injury. What's more, rats can jump 35 inches vertically and 48 inches horizontally.
*Rats use their tails to regulate their temperature, to communicate, and to balance.
*Rats are intelligent and have excellent memories. Once a rat learns a route, it never forget it.
*Rats are colorblind and cannot vomit or burp.

Kinda makes you dislike rats even more huh??

I also found a page on other interesting creatures. Check out these facts:

*When some types of frogs vomit, their entire stomach comes out. The frog then cleans out the contents and swallows the empty stomach. (Gross!)
*Pacific Island robber crabs love coconuts so much that they have developed the ability to climb trees to satisfy their cravings.
*The water-holding frog is the greatest survivor in the animal kingdom. When it rains, the frog absorbs water through the skin. It then burrows into the sand, where it can live for up to two years off its water reserve.
*The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head 360 degrees.
*A chameleon can focus its eyes separately to watch two objects at once. This lizard also has a tongue that is longer than his body.
*The eyes of the ostrich and the dragonfly are bigger than their brains.
*The electric eel can produce 350 to 550 volts of electricity up to 150 times per hour without any apparent fatigue.
*Spider silk is five times stronger than steel, but it is also highly elastic- a rare combination in materials. Silk stretches 30 percent farther than the most elastic nylon.
*A large parrot's beak can exert 500 pounds of pressure per square inch, enabling the bird to feast on such delicacies as Brazil nuts with a simple crunch.
*The extinct Madagascan elephant bird laid eggs as large as 13 inches in length and 9 inches in diameter. Today ostriches lay the largest eggs, up to 8 inches in length and 6 inches in diameter.
*Wasps can make paper by mixing wood pulp with saliva to form a paste, which dries stiff.