I Never Want to Climb Mt. Everest

So today I was watching Oprah and it was Her Favorite Things episode. I've never seen it before but the audience went WILD when it was announced. And I mean WILD. People were jumping, screaming, and crying. I was seriously shocked to see so many women (of all ethnicities, and even some men) going crazy, literally CRAZY. I saw women who looked just like....... I guess you had to have seen it. It was nuts. Apparently Oprah talks about her favorite gifts for the holidays and then gives out one of each to every audience member. It was quite a number of things and afterwards I found out the total value was like $8,000. There was a lot of pretty cool stuff: expensive soaps, body creams, gourmet sorbets, a fridge, a camcorder, books, Ugg boots, a Kitchen Aide mixer, a panini press, lots of DVDs, clothes, just all kinds of stuff. It makes a trip to Chicago just to see Oprah worthwhile. Anyways, what shocked me was just how crazy the audience got when the title of the show was announced. It was kept a secret until that day I guess. But then again, I would have gone crazy too with all that stuff she gave away. Hello, a fridge!

It's like, some people go crazy over Oprah and then other people don't like her. I figured, she gives aways lots of gifts, that's good enough for me!

Sorry, I really had to mention it, I really was shocked, lol.

Anyways, yesterday I had my CT scan! I was so nervous I couldn't sleep the night before and then literally had to drag myself out of bed in the morning. This time I put my foot down and refused the barium (makes me....... you don't want to know) but they gave me some other stuff which wasn't that bad. The barium is a liquid suspension they make you drink an hour before and it helps to highlight the stomach area in a CT scan. Necessary but totally gross. But the new stuff they gave me wasn't so bad and the scan went well. I'll get the results when I meet with my doctor Dec. 3rd. I've decided to try really hard not to stress about it. It just doesn't help and I'm not throwing myself anymore pity parties. So............. I guess we'll see Dec. 3rd! Oh and I have soft fuzz growing back in on my head! It's light but it's something.

However, one tiny tragedy. I lost some small gold hoop earrings that an aunt of mine gave me over 4 years ago. I wore them all the time but I had to take them off for the scan and I tossed them in the plastic bag they gave me for my belongings. When the scan was over, I took my stuff out of the plastic bag but I forgot about the earrings in my rush to just get out of there and then threw the bag in a trash bin. I didn't realize they were missing until late at night when I touched my ear for some reason and realized I wasn't wearing them. I was pissed at myself. Of course it has nothing to do with value, it's that my aunt gave them to me so I almost never took them off. But I always do this. I just seem to lose things really easily, whether it's my own stuff or a gift someone gave me. It's not like I do it on purpose but I've been told that my carelessness comes off as not caring or valuing someone's gift. It makes me feel bad because I can't help it but I realize how the other person might view it. I've lost so many meaningful things over the years and it's not that I don't value the gift, the majority of the time it's something that I value so much, I use it all the time (like my earrings). It's like, I carry it everywhere safely and then one time, one time, I take it off or put it down and poof! Gone. Seriously, I've been told more than once, "Is that how you treat gifts people give you?" I just always lose it, drop it, break it, forget it..... something. But I do it to stuff I bought myself too! I just have to be more careful. It just sucks, I really liked those earrings.

On Sunday I'm going to go watch Cirque du Soleil with my friend Erasto. I'm super excited because we got really good seats and I've always wanted to see one of their shows. This one is called Corteo and I read the description for it online but it was kinda weird so I'll describe it after I've seen the show.

My friend Marty mentioned in his blog something that I had thought about a couple of months ago but never wrote about: how different life is now with cell phones. About 6 months ago I convinced my dad to get my brother Diego (when he was 13) a cell phone because I felt that he needed it for emergencies. Although he has a nasty habit of leaving it off after getting out of school, it feels good knowing that we can reach him after he gets out of school. Granted he's older and in high school now but I think even younger kids need cell phones nowadays. But when I was growing up, I couldn't even convince my parents to get me a beeper (according to them, only doctors and drug dealers carried beepers). My parents controlled our phone conversations by only having one landline in the house (not wireless), by keeping it in the kitchen, and by not having call waiting so that when my mom tried to call for 2 hours and kept getting a busy signal, she could come home to scream at someone (usually me) for being on the phone for 2 hours. I didn't get a cell phone until I was 21 (and a half) years old. I lived before it but now I can't imagine my life without it. Seriously, how did I ever meet up with people? How did I ever make plans? What if I had to cancel at the last minute? Did I really do all that through a landline only? It seems almost unbelievable to me. Maybe the reason I was always late before was because no one was calling me on my cell phone to tell me to hurry my ass up! I had the luxury of taking my time without anyone calling me constantly like they do now if I'm even 5 minutes late. My cell phone made me punctual, lol! Anyways, it does make me feel like a grandma on the rocking chair. Remembering a time before cell phones, wireless phones, Call Waiting, Caller ID, 3 Way Calling...........

And while we're on the subject, I also remember a time before CDs, when we would want to kill our stereos for eating our cassette tapes. And look at that, even CDs are going down now because of MP3 players. I remember our first Nintendo system, when all it had was Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and that Olympics game. It came with the gun and the mat. A time before computers, now that's wild! How did we live! Even halfway through high school, only the most important essays had to be typed, most were just handwritten, 5-8 pages of handwritten work. And my handwriting was so bad, I would write it out once, and then write up a final draft carefully, in my best handwriting. By the time I got to college of course that had changed. We still have the first Encyclopedia set my dad bought from a traveling salesmen. Now I just look things up on Wikipedia.

It's crazy how fast technology has advanced just in our short lifetimes. Can you imagine what it'll be like when we're 50 or 80? Once, Diego and I mapped out a hypothetical person's life, like, what did this person live through in their lifetime. We said, ok, if this person is 85 years old right now in 2007, that means they were born in 1922. Assuming they lived in the US, they would have lived through the Great Depression, WWII, desegregation, the Vietnam war, the Cold War, the moon landing, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Gulf War, the Internet, and now the war in Iraq. They also would have lived through Elvis, the Beatles, disco, Madonna, Micheal Jackson, U2, the Spice Girls, etc. This person saw the change in clothing, cars, music, architecture, interior design, movie making, communication, social norms, everything. How different was the world when this hypothetical person was born and look at all the changes (plus everything I forgot to mention) this person has witnessed. Isn't that crazy?

I love making to do lists because it's the only way I remember everything I need to do and I also love being able to cross things off my list. I made a to do list a few days ago and I'm happy to say that almost everything got crossed off. The only things that didn't were the things that involved me calling someone. Hopefully those will be crossed off tomorrow.

So I just finished reading this book called Into Thin Air. It was about a guy, Jon Krakauer, who climbed Mt. Everest in 1996, the year of one of the deadliest climbing seasons there. It was a great book, pretty crazy. He talks about the extremely debilitating effects of the cold and the high altitude. I was amazed that so many people still make the climb considering all the very real risks. It amazes me that any of those climbers make it not just to the top, but also back down alive as well. So many people died that season (12 I think) and the author talks about how those deaths have haunted him, how if things had been different, there wouldn't have been so many casualties. This made me wonder about how complicated our view of death is.

Back in the old olden days (Medieval times), death was an accepted part of life. In fact, it had a very real presence in the lives of people back then. There was the plague, wars (fought with more human contact), high infant mortality rates, shorter lifespans, and then the fact that animals were killed daily for food (not like it's censored version in the grocery store). Death was everywhere. Nowadays, even though the news tells you that we have become desensitized to violence, I think that is definitely not the case. Over the centuries we've created shields that have hidden death and violence from our sight, more so especially in developed countries. Go to underdeveloped countries now where death and violence have a constant presence in everyday life. Those of us who are lucky to live in developed countries have been spared that. But then when death and violence does enter our lives, we are surprised, shocked, outraged, or traumatized. But it's not unusual, abnormal, or out of the ordinary. We just never think it'll happen to us.

Anyways, yeah, Jon Krakauer, loved your book! I started another one he wrote called Into the Wild but this one is not based on his experience. It's based on this guy Chris McCandless who ends up dying of starvation in Alaska. They made a movie with the same name that isn't out on DVD yet.

On another note, I just saw Paris Je T'aime and I loved it! It's a collection of short films about love in Paris. They took I think 20 directors and had them make short films no longer than 5 minutes. Some were so so but the majority were really good for only being 5 minutes long. I would definitely recommend it. Plus it's just a lot of short films so you can start and stop without worrying about losing the plot line.

Well, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Clay is coming over for Thanksgiving at our house this year, I wonder what he'll think of our Nicaraguan turkey day? I hope he doesn't expect cranberry sauce or candied yams. We like our turkey with Mexican rice and a salad. Sometimes we have mashed potatoes, sometimes we don't. I'm looking forward to it.