ACH NEIN! DAS SCHMUTZIGE WASSER!!!!!

Alright, once again, i apologize for not posting. Not being at work gave me less time to sit around and think about stuff to write about. However, I think today I've got some good stories.

First of all, I've been packing to head back to school. By packing, its more like I decide what to bring and what I don't need to bring and my mom magically fits it all into boxes. She's like the Michael Phelps of packing minus the pot. Regardless of her packing abilities, I still have like 7 boxes to bring, most of which is filled with cooking stuff. My Dad says that him and my mom didn't have that much crap in their first apartment, he's probably right. Every time I look at it all I'm like, "I need help."
I've also received like 12 e-mails already from school which is a little annoying. However, one was the list of first week activities going on and I learned that Bo Burnham is the comedian this year!!!! I was super excited until I realized I have about 2 friends left on campus. Hopefully I will find some more friends and someone to go with. All the other events also made me a little sad thinking of how many people have either dropped out, transferred, graduated or moved off campus. Then again, I won't be on campus next semester either . . .


Now for the highlight of today's Blog . . . dun dun dunnnn

THE GLOUCESTER WATER CRISIS OF 2009!

As some of you surely know, Gloucester has been under a boil order for about 12 days now. It's a long story but levels of coliform bacteria are much too high for the state's approval. For those of you who do not know: coliform bacteria are harmless bacteria that naturally show up in water. However, too much of it can be an indicator that e-coli could also be in the water. Therefore, when coliform bacteria levels are high, precautionary boiling needs to be mandated in case e-coli does show up and people get POed that they weren't warned. However, even after intense chlorination the levels of coliform bacteria are not going down. In fact, they have gone up recently. People in Gloucester are super POed because they are terrified to go near the water. There were problems with the way the city handled this issue but I won't go there for now. This blog is about how the wonderful people of Gloucester are responding.

I get these awesome Gloucester opinions from my daily perusal of the Gloucester Daily Times online.
A popular opinion seems to be that people are under the impression that stomach problems did not exist before the water problems. People are posting about how they got sick from the water . . . to which I typically can't stop myself from replying and reminding them that the water can't get them sick right now and that other things in the world can create stomach problems. My favorite variation of this is the claim that they had heartburn once the boil order began. For any of you who may have ever experienced e-coli, you can probably vouch that heart burn is wonderful in comparison. I promptly reminded these folks that it could also have been their dinner that caused their heartburn. I tried not to get involved in posting, but I just can't help it.

Perhaps my favorite and least favorite is a person who comments on every article having to do with the water problem and always mentions how the water made their dog sick and they had to put it down. Sounds like a victim . . . until you find out this dog was 13 years old with cancer OH and then you remember that dogs have way better immune systems when it comes to these types of bacteria. Of course the cancer that was killing this poor dog probably destroyed its immune system . . . still it's EXTREMELY unlikely that the water had anything to do with the death of this poor dog. I try and keep my mouth shut with this person because loosing your dog suck and I'm not a very sensitive person when it comes to these types of people. I didn't want to offend them and make them even more upset, but really. I lost it today and responded something along the lines of "I'm sorry about your dog, but the water didn't kill your dog. Dogs naturally have better systems to deal with these bacteria and they are meant to eat raw foods that can expose them to these bacteria anyway." Some one agreed with me and mentioned that their dog eats poop. That person is rawrsome.

Most people rant about how terrible the mayor is for this whole thing. They have a point, it wasn't really handled correctly but they make it seem like no one is trying to fix the problem. The water is currently chlorinated more than a pool and still the bacteria count is growing. They shut down the Babson reservoir to clean the entire thing. You can't say they aren't trying.
We still wash our dishes in it and no one here has gotten sick. Sassy drinks out of the sink and she hasn't gotten sick. I understand the importance of the boil order and think it is the right thing to do. E-coli can be quick to follow in these numbers of coliform bacteria. However, I'm not freaking out right now. There was an article today that said most other people aren't really freaking out right now either. Luckily, for our enjoyment, those who are freaking out are posting it on the GDT's website.
Oh Gloucester . . .


Today's recipe!

This is getting a little difficult because i keep forgetting which recipes I've posted . . .OH Schnitzel!

Schnitzel is one of my favvvvvorite foods!

Basic schnitzel is quite easy!

4 thinly sliced veal or pork cutlets
flour
2 eggs
breadcrumbs

Season the cutlets with garlic powder. Dredge the cutlets by putting them into the flour, then the eggs, then the breadcrumbs. Place them into a frying pan with 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil and cook about 2 to 3 minutes on each side.

mmmmmmm


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* update! I received a ridiculous response to my post and I just need to share . . .


Me: we are required to boil the water as a precaution in case e-coli gets into the water, which it hasn't. I'm sorry to hear about your dog, but the water didn't kill your dog. Dogs naturally have much better immune systems than we do when it comes to such bacteria. Remember that dogs are naturally meant to eat raw foods that would expose them to these types and more serious bacteria.
I've been washing my dishes in the water since the boil order started and no one in my house has gotten sick. My cat drinks from the sink everyday and she is fine. My dog drinks out of the toilet sometimes, he's fine.

Rawrsome Person: I agree. I grew up w/a dog that loved to eat 'actual poop' from the yard, and she lived to the ripe old age of 14, which is 98 in human years 4 those counting. I loved that dog (I didnt' "love it" when she licked me tho...)

Annoying Person: that is ridiculous to say we are boiling water as a "precaution to e-coli". In every water-related news article, they have always stated that we are boiling water due to the "coliform contamination". There has never been any positive test for e-coli, so why then the boil water order ??? I'm sorry...that doesn't make any sense.

Me: the coliform contamination is an indicator that e-coli can also easily infect the water. The coliform itself can't cause that much of a problem. Therefore, we are boiling the water because there is high chance that e-coli can also infect the water right now.

Me getting more annoyed looks up total coliform: "Total coliform bacteria are commonly found in the environment (e.g., soil or vegetation) and are generally harmless. If only total coliform bacteria are detected in drinking water, the source is probably environmental. Fecal contamination is not likely. However, if environmental contamination can enter the system, there may also be a way for pathogens to enter the system. Therefore, it is important to find the source and resolve the problem."

-http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/dw/programs/coliform.htm (my source)



*Another classic convo!

Person who boggles my mind: "the type of coliform bacteria we're dealing with won't get you sick like that."

Really? And what about people who have low immune systems, people who are HIV, people on chemo? Like Grimmy stated, the powers-that-be have known about this since Aug. 4, and let's remember that the public wasn't notified until Aug. 21. Knowing that, do you really think they're going to admit to illness stemming from this "problem"?

"If the water were to get you sick, it would likely be from e-coli which we don't have."

After all that's gone on in the last month, how can you be so positive about that?
I've lived in this city for 55 years....I wish I could be so optimistic.

Me: Because there are worse things that can happen.

Person who boggles my mind: Such as?

Me losing my mind: seriously!? What's worse than having to boil your water for a few weeks!?

How about a hurricane wiping out your entire city, you probably have pretty bad water and OH you probably don't have a house either!

Maybe a wildfire destroying your entire city, again, no house!

How about finding our your 20 year old daughter was killed in a car crash. I don't have kids, but I'd rather have e-coli. And NO, this can not be compared to losing your dog. I have lost dogs before and I know people that have lost children, it is NOT the same!

Those are just a few things that are worse than having to boil your water.

Suggestions and Stories

Today I have another random post. I have collected some stuff over the weekend and beginning of the week to share with you. Luckily, most of them are leads to help continue to treat your boredom.

First off, I saw Inglorious Basterds on Friday. Good movie, go see it. However, be warned that there is not as much action as you may think from the previews. Brad Pitt is hysterical in it and Eli Roth is a major BA. There is a kind of long stretch of not-so-exciting in the middle, but the end is worth it.

On Sunday I watched the first episode of "What Would Brian Boitano Make?" on the Food Network. EXCELLENT show. Brian Boitano is so fabulous!!! He was super entertaining. The intro was of course the infamous "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" song from South Park which is part of what makes this show so awesome! The show airs on Sundays at 1, I insist that you all must watch it!
After I watched his show, I became a fan of his on facebook and left him a comment telling him how awesome the show was. Today I looked on his official website and he had a section for the show. On that page, he had displayed some comments that he had received about the show and one of them was mine!!!!!!! It was sooooooo exciting I didn't even know what to do!!! He is just as awesome as South Park promised he would be.

Another source of infinite entertainment is gloucestertimes.com. This is the website for the Gloucester daily times. You can read the articles if you want, but I just like the read the comments on the articles. Most of them are so typically Gloucester its almost disgusting. Once in awhile someone makes a good point too. Usually they're just great for a rofl or an lol.

Today at work I took a trip across the street to the hospital to pick up something for the office over inRadiology and it reminded me of some other trips that I have taken over there. Every time it amazes me how far you can get into a hospital without anyone questioning you. Today, I went into radiology and asked about the package and they gave it to me, that was normal. However, I then proceeded, in normal clothing, to walk right out of the main entrance with a cart and two boxes from radiology and no one questioned me. I then walked across the street and dropped them off and went back into the hospital with the cart and brought it back. The people in radiology knew what I was doing but you would think maybe someone would wonder why some random girl is leaving with a cart of boxes marked "Radiology". Another time I went in a back entrance, again in normal clothing. First of all, no one stopped me from going in that random back entrance that went into the labs. Then I couldn't find where I was going nor could I find someone to ask. Therefore, my plan was to stand around until someone came out. For about 5 minutes I looked at a rather strange picture in the hallway. There were people in the labs that could clearly see me, but I could not get to them to ask them for help. If I were one of those people, I would have thought that I had escaped from the psych ward. I just stood there looking at this picture, but no one came out and questioned it. I began to feel really awkward so I left that hallway, again no questions. I then walked down another hallway all the way until I got to a loading dock. Even on the loading dock, I had to ask the two people out there, they really didn't seem to bothered that I was there. . . wtf?? Another time, Jon and I went to go see my grandmother in the hospital. We walked in the main entrance and all the way up into her room and no one seemed to mind. This is very concerning for me. I guess today's PSA is "Watch out for random people in the hospital"

Here is a recipe from Brian Boitano's new show!!!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/brian-boitano/cappuccino-panna-cotta-recipe/index.html

A rather low-dose treatment for today

Unfortunately, I am back to either not posting or posting random, rambling posts.

I haven't posted in quite awhile because I have been on vacation. I went to New Hampshire with my family, it was fun but yielded nothing truly blog-worthy except a great picture of Jupiter and a story about my utter lack of control. We visited the world's longest candy counter at Chutter's in Littleton, New Hampshire. It was great but now I have nearly $50 worth of candy to eat and I'm growing tired of it . . . oops. Clearly, I was unable to control myself in such an environment. The rest of the week was mostly outlet shopping, card playing and dairy queen runs. Jon came with us too which was fun and we had some AWESOME food. Our wonderful neighbors from home came up the first weekend with some fresh lobsters and we had some delicious surf and turf. Unfortunately, I had to leave a couple days early to bring Jon home since he had to work but it was still a great vacation!

I only have two weeks of work left and it is as boring as ever. I've stopped tracking the number of phone calls I get each hour because I wasn't getting paid enough to do all that extra stuff . . . long story . . . well, I have time and if you don't then why are you reading this? When I came back to work this summer I was offered this new position answering the phones. The first question everyone asked me when I told them: "Are you getting a raise?" my reply "I hope so" did I? NOPE. I continued to do my original job of faxing the transcription plus answering the phones which is actually half of someone else's job (who gets paid much more than I do) and I was tracking the number of phone calls I got and putting them into an excel file and making a number of charts each week for the doctors to review as they had requested. I also fill in for the secretaries or receptionist when they are away. All for the original price. Apparently, I am quite the package deal. So after review of my bank account, I decided that doing all that extra work was getting me nowhere. But anyway my original point was that I have not had a lot of calls today at all which makes my being here rather pointless. I have no idea where this paragraph was going . . .

I go back to school in 3 weeks which I have mixed feelings about. I'm excited to go and see my room and some friends and be closer to Jon but my house is much more comfortable and I will miss everyone here and I'm not looking forward to going to class and this is a major run-on sentence.


Today's recipe is more of a suggestion. We had it in New Hampshire and it was delicious!

When making corn on the cob . . .
take the corn and before you cook it put some butter on it then sprinkle it with salt and lime zest then wrap it in tin foil and grill it. It was soooo good.


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If everyone is the brightest bulb, then who's to say we aren't all dull?

Today I have another special edition rant blog where I force you to indulge in my opinions. Today's topic is much more opinion based than my last rant on the swine flu which I was able to back up with some facts but it is a topic that I feel quite strong about.

Yesterday at work I was working the front desk and I overheard a conversation between two women in the waiting room. They were discussing their children and quickly got onto sharing names of good tutors. They continued to discuss their children's bad test scores and how they can improve them. At one point one woman said something along the lines of "When I went to school, you knew you had to pull those A's or you weren't going anywhere." I found this hard to believe because it is only recently that we have implemented such high standards for every student. I'm guessing she simply had parents who told her that she wouldn't go anywhere without all A's.

Here is my problem: Most parents and pretty much everyone have begun to tell their children this false statement that they will not go anywhere in life without a perfect GPA, perfect test scores and a college education.

I am a firm believer that not everyone has to go to college. In fact, I believe that college has become nearly useless because of this notion that everyone must attend college. This has forced college to dumb down to accommodate everyone. College was supposed to be for the elite who wanted to continue their education.
I always did well in school and I always planned on going to college. However, now that I'm there, I have realized that it is essentially high school all over again. I am forced to take classes that I don't care about just to get credits and I'm really not learning all that much. Now, I'm not talking about general education courses. I understand the purpose behind those and they have been some of my most interesting courses. However, now that my gen-eds are done, I still have to take random classes because I need so many credits to graduate. This I do not understand. When I have to write a ten page paper in German, I don't want to have to worry about these other classes that I don't really need.
Another big problem I have found is that I am once again in classes full of people who don't want to be in school. College is supposed to be for those who want to be in school so they can learn more. This doesn't just hurt those who want to be there but it ends up hurting those who don't. These people are wasting their money. They could have just gone into whatever trade they wanted to be in after high school and started making money but instead they are paying tens of thousands of dollars a year to go to more school. Many of these people do not excel in college and end up dropping out which makes them look worse now that they are labeled as "college drop-outs". Now that everyone has to go to undergrad, graduate schools are becoming a necessity for those who truly want to distinguish themselves, something they could have done years ago as an undergrad. Now these students are being forced to spend even more money to continue their education because they are essentially wasting their time for four years going to what may as well be high school again. Graduate school was supposed to be for those who needed it for a profession such as medicine or law.

Today there is this huge emphasize that only people with a college degree can get goods jobs. Sure people with college degrees do generally make more money but it will soon become obsolete since everyone is being pushed through college. Soon you will need a graduate degree to get any sort of good job. And frankly, I don't really buy this statement. From what I've seen, acquiring a job is mostly luck and knowing the right people. Most people don't even have jobs that have anything to do with their undergraduate degree. College isn't for everyone and there shouldn't be a problem with that, it's not supposed to be for everyone. Everyone wants a smart and successful child, but it just doesn't happen. Not everyone can be super smart and successful at everything.

Along these same lines, test scores aren't everything either. I took the SATs once and did alright and I was able to get into college during the early admission period because I had good grades and plenty of extra-curricular activities. I did excellent on my MCAS because I was lucky. I'm typically ok at math but I got an above-average score for my math MCAS. This doesn't mean that I'm above-average at math, it means I did well on a test. Another interesting quote I heard from one of these women in the waiting room earlier today was "It's just a test, you can learn how to do well on it." I'm not sure that's true. Some people just can't take tests. They can still be smart and they usually know the information, they just don't test well. And some kids just aren't good academically, that's the way it goes.

I keep emphasizing that some kids just don't do academics. I have a huge problem with parents who claim their child has a disorder when really they are just misbehaved or they just aren't good in school. I know people who really have ADD and autism and they have a serious condition that truly hinders their performance and there are some drugs that help these people. However, when you look at the recent numbers for these conditions, they are out of control. The majority of those kids are not sick. Those kids need discipline or they just are not talented in academia. Not every kid is a good student, get over it. When you treat these kids for medical conditions that they don't have, you're essentially just getting your kid high.

When I was in high school, I tutored a 5th grader. (I know this may sound strange to those of you who know of my child phobia, but I was doing it for community service for national honors society and he was a Yankees fan so he was fine by me) Before I started, his mother told me that he struggled with ADD and he couldn't concentrate on homework and it was always a chore. I never once had a problem with him. I would come over and we would sit down at his kitchen table and we'd go through everything he had to do and we'd do it. I had to help him a lot, but he never lost concentration or acted out. I'm guessing the problems they were having were that he was not doing things as quickly as they wanted him to and they got impatient or he would get something wrong a few times and they would get frustrated which would make him upset. I felt bad for this kid because his mother was going around telling people he had all these problems that he didn't have. I also feel bad for people who actually have these conditions because the seriousness of these conditions is being over-looked and dumbed down.

I'm not saying "Don't go to college" but I'm also not saying that you absolutely have to. Graduating seniors that don't feel they are ready to go to college shouldn't be forced to. If they want to go to community college for two years to figure out what they want to do, then there is nothing wrong with that. They end up saving tons of money but often get ridiculed by friends and family for their choice. If a kid knows what they want to do and a degree really isn't necessary, then let them do it. If they want to go to a specialized trade school because they know what skill they want to learn, then they are probably better off then most college graduates. You can always go to school later in life when you know exactly what you want to go to school for. Then you can go to these accelerated degree schools that let you skip all the crap you don't care about it. Now-a-days, you will probably still end up taking one of these other courses after you receive your traditional undergraduate degree anyway. If you truly do want to go to a regular four year college, then do that. But do not let others push you into it, it won't be worth it.


As school starts up again, be expecting more posts on how I feel about college. I have a lot to say about how the money you pay is spent.

Annnnyway . . .

Here is a recipe that will make you happy if you have ever been to P.F. Chang's.


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