Monthly Archives: May 2006

Exciting weekend in New Orleans
Clinton and I traveled to New Orleans last weekend for my Tulane commencement ceremonies on Saturday, May 13th. Clinton’s grandmas and mom all drove down from Alabama, and my mom flew in from Washington state. Dad chauffeured us around all weekend. Be sure to check out the photo slideshow!

There was one big ceremony for all of the graduate students, held in the New Orleans Arena, with over 17,000 spectators! The big one began with the Star Spangled Banner played on trumpet by our one and only Irvin Mayfield (the best New Orleans trumpet player since Satcho, in my opinion.) Then Bush n’ (Bill) Clinton arrived ceremoniously in graduation robes. Bill had a big smile on his face, and Bush seemed to play his mousy sidekick. Bagpipes were playing, and marshals in full traditional regalia wielding heraldic gonfalons headed up the procession.

We graduates wore particularly funny-looking robes with puffy shoulders, long, pointy sleeves and ceremonial hoods with different colored borders, each color representing our various degrees and areas of study. According to the ceremony programs, university students of old traditionally wore similar robes, when the extra long sleeves and hoods were used “to carry books and refreshments”. Obviously, these students were boys, ’cause otherwise they would have used purses! Refreshments in your sleeves? Yuck!

I looked and felt like Harry Potter in my robe. Both Bush and (Bill) Clinton received honorary doctoral degrees and entertained us throughout their speeches by making fun of each other. Afterward, Ellen Degeneres made a surprise appearance in a white bathrobe, her advice to us to “exfoliate, buff and moisturize”. She wept when she was was handed the honorary umbrella to lead the second line out of the arena. Each of us graduates received Tulane Mardi Gras beads to wear and brandished white Tulane handkerchiefs, which we shook in the air to the beat of the live jazz.

Later that afternoon, we attended a smaller ceremony for my School of Public Health, featuring live music by the Rebirth Jazz Band and an outdoor reception with a great buffet. It was fantastic to see some of my old professors and hand my business cards around to my former classmates, a cathartic sort of “closure” to my Tulane experience which had so abruptly ended in August 2005. For the celebration dinner that evening, the whole family went out to Mulate’s for live Cajun music and Louisiana food. Grandma Em ate alligator!

My mom, Dad, Clinton and I walked around New Orleans’ famous Audubon Park on Mother’s Day. Aside from several of the big old oak trees having broken or sawed off limbs, it was still the same beautiful park that I remembered. Later that night, Clinton (my Clinton, not Bill!) had a special surprise appearance at open mic night at the Neutral Ground coffee shop, playing three songs on his baritone ukulele. On the day we left, Dad drove us around St. Bernard Parish and the Ninth Ward, where it still looks like the hurricane hit last week, not nine months ago. The French Quarter, where we stayed, looks mainly back to “normal”– not that the FQ ever was “normal” to begin with – but other than most businesses being extremely short-staffed, it functions, as a whole, pretty much as it used to. Eating, shopping, boozing and whoring, oh my!

Yesterday
Back in Durham: Clinton and I had a sumptuous (and very fattening!) meal last night at the Firebird Grill: sweet tea; lobster queso; fried spinach; mixed green salad; bacon and cheese smokehouse burger with “Java” BBQ sauce; apple crisp with vanilla bean ice cream and coffee. (Bill Clinton would have enjoyed dining with us, I think.) By the way, we got our dessert for free, because I mentioned to the manager what a great dining experience we were having at his restaurant!

Then we went to see The Da Vinci Code, which was excellent despite a seriously cheesy line by Tom Hanks, “I’ve never met a girl who knew so much about cryptychs before.” A very exciting movie! Also, Audrey Tatou is the cutest she’s ever been.

We see so many movies that I’m considering doing my own podcast, “Crystal Reviews!”

Other movies I saw in the last week
Voices of Iraq: an amazing documentary comprised of video footage filmed by 150 everyday Iraqi citizens all over the country (children, old men, housewives, etc). Each was given a digital video camera and asked to capture their everyday lives and interview each other about their hopes and dreams.

Murderball: another excellent documentary about quadriplegics who are training for the Paralympic rugby team. A bittersweet (and very odd) look into these players’ lives, psyches, personal histories and day-to-day challenges. I learned a LOT about disabled people and would recommend this movie to anyone.

Today
We participated in a super awesome yard sale this morning, organized by our aparment complex. To prepare, Clinton and I purged our closets, and I stayed up really late on Thursday fashioning really cute little price tags that included descriptions of each item to tie onto the items with thread, just like in a clothing boutique! Sample tag: “Beautiful blue-gray velvet tube top, great for sultry summer nights. Only 50 cents!” Yes, we sold almost everything and made $32.20!!

This afternoon was beautiful, breezy and warm, so we got our old New Orleans bikes out of “˜hibernation’, pumped up the tires and squirted WD-40 in the gears. Then we rode to the Woodcroft area to explore the trails and also to run a couple errands. The wind was in my hair and nothing could be better, that is, until one point when I opened my mouth to utter a blissful sigh and a large winged insect flew down my throat! It would have been okay, merely surprising and nothing more, had he not spent the next thirty minutes trying to come back out.

Also on our bikeride today we came across the most perfect little home for sale, with the most perfect address: 7 Rabbit’s Glen. How cute is that?! Three bedrooms, big deck, vaulted ceilings, new hardwood floors, backs up to the woods, at the end of a cul-de-sac. (sigh) Someday, soon we’ll be able to have a house of our very own. Until then, we have other good news…

Biggest news of the week
Clinton is a now an official college student at the University of Maryland!!! Books, course registration, tuition and all! His major is Computer Science. He will start online courses in just 10 days! Go Clinton!

Have a great weekend, everyone.

So far no phone calls or other consequences from last week’s incident at the doctor’s office. Maybe I got away with it after all…

Made early Fourth of July reservations for me, Clinton and Charlie to stay in a rustic cabin at Four Paws Kingdom Campground at 335 Lazy Creek Drive in Rutherfordton, NC. It’s America’s first and only dog-dedicated campground, with 2.5 miles of dog-friendly hiking trails, two dog parks, a doggie spa, and a big swimming lake just for dogs and their owners. I’m going to enter the Chili Cookout contest!

Clinton just finished a 6-week improv comedy course with his friends Jason and Remy. Lastnight I went to their first improv performance, and they were all great, especially Clinton! He is almost ready for the big time.

We watch too many movies. This week I saw Inside Man, Sky High, Friends with Money and Hoot.

I’m getting super excited about going to New Orleans for Tulane graduation at the end of this week. Never thought I’d be back in regalia again. We’ll stay at a hotel in the French Quarter and attempt to consume as many po-boys as we can in three days. I’ll get to see my dad *AND* Bill Clinton, who is one of the keynote speakers, along with George Bush Senior.

Running training is going well. We’re up to six minute intervals now, and I’m in the fastest pace group. This upcoming race should be a breeze.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think it’s weird that Costco Tire Center filled my tires with NITROGEN!? Wonder what makes nitrogen better than plain old air inside of tires? Wonder if I paid extra for that?

Have a great week, everybody!

MerleFest this weekend was truly relaxing. I got to spend nearly an entire weekend lying on the grass listening to folk music, hanging out with Peace Corps friends and roasting marshmallows over the campfire. Be sure to check out my festival photos.

I heard lots of great bands – Cheick Hamala Diabate on African banjo, The Tony Rice Unit, Slead Cleaves, Gillian Welch, The Grascals, Blue Country Heart, The Waybacks, Nickel Creek, The Nashville Bluegrass Band, Doc Watson, Emmylou Harris, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Pete Seeger, Hot Tuna, and the Alison Brown Quartet. MerleFest even put on a Woodie Guthrie Tribute concert that included a strange mix of narration and songs sung by some of the Guthrie grandchildren.

I’m definitely going back there next year.

About six weeks ago, I started having digestive troubles. I won’t go into the details, but I do have a funny story which is related.

Sticking it to the man
It’s now been over one month since my doctor sent me home with three different stool sample kits (2 for preserved samples and 1 for a ‘fresh’ one). She asked me to do the deed and then get the stuff back to her lab as soon as possible. I procrastinated and stalled. Let’s face it: who’s really keen on getting intimate with their own feces when they come home from a hard day at work?

In particular, the ‘fresh’ sample posed a real logistical problem. It needed to arrive at the lab within one hour of its production, and the lab is only open 8 AM – 5 PM Monday through Friday. What was I supposed to do – poop in a cup at work and then call the express courier service?!

Anyway, this morning I had a stroke of luck. Nature called around 8:00 AM, so I grabbed my kits and went to work. Then I quickly got ready for work and jumped in my car, bringing the poop-filled vials in labeled baggies, all inside of a paper lunch bag. I was hoping to get to work by 9:00, but it seemed that I had plenty of time. After all, the lab is very close to FHI and it was only 8:30 AM when I arrived. Also, Dr. Kraschenewski had told me I could just “drop off the samples”. This couldn’t possibly take very long, right?

I waited patiently in line at the reception desk. I asked some nurses if I could just go back to the lab and hand the samples to someone. No, they said, “there is paperwork to do.” Paperwork? Finally I reached the reception counter and explained that I had some samples to drop off for the lab, one of which would ‘expire’ in 15 minutes if they didn’t process it quickly. The lady asked me what *type* of samples they were, and I replied under my breath, hoping no one would hear.

She tried to look up my patient information in the computer but wasn’t having any luck. She called up the lab staff twice on the telephone, each time exclaiming loudly into the receiver (and to everyone else in shouting distance) that I was here “TO DROP OFF SOME STOOOOOOOL SAMPLES. UH-HUH THAT’S RIGHT, STOOOOOL SAMPLES.” My face was hot from humiliation and didn’t want to turn around and see the smirks on those other patients’ faces who were waiting in line behind me. She announced to me that the laboratory work order for the STOOOOL SAMPLES was not in my patient file, so she’d have to go talk to the lab people in person.

Again I waited, this time not as patiently, watching the time getting closer and closer to 9:00. She was gone almost 15 minutes when I asked myself, Why should I be late to work just because they don’t have their patient files in order? I slipped out of the building and drove away, leaving my bag of shit on their counter. I hope they had to open the fresh one to see what it was.

My friend Liz commented recently that she thought I was a fellow vegetarian. In reality, the thought of being one has never crossed my mind. Sorry Liz! And I saw a really funny t-shirt at MerleFest this weekend that Liz would probably not think was funny. On the front, it said, “PETA: People for the Eating of Tasty Animals” and on the back: “There is a place for all God’s creatures…Right next to my mashed potatoes!” Hahaha!

More later.