Gung Ho!

I absolutely LOVE my new job, and the whole practice! The staff was friendly and truly acts as an efficient team. The flow was smooth and ran on-time. I had one job--x-ray--and the state-of-the-art equipment made it easy and fun. The patients were all pleasant. I'm sure there'll be hectic days, but my first day was like silk. They've got a great staff and a great system. I still miss my old office, but coming into one like this is really nice.

I'm looking forward to today. I work a half day today due to a light schedule, and I'm going to take Joe to get his license right after school. We were 14 minutes late last time we attempted.

Anyway, just a quick update to let you all know that my first day went really, really well!

Big Day!

I finally start my new job today!

It feels so great to prove the losers who claimed for months that I was "unemployable" and that "no one would ever hire me" wrong yet again! Lol!

And it's my dream job to boot! How great is that? It feels great to be in orthopedics again, doing the job I love, in a practice that's already strong yet still growing, with a young energetic staff and personable doctors.

That's something I'm really thankful for. Doctors sometimes have reputations for being...difficult. Lol. But this group, literally every doctor has an easy going and friendly personality. I can't wait to be a part of this team!

Other good news: I spoke with the founding national director of the Student Diplomacy Corps Joe got the scholarship from, and he was so enthusiastic about Joe and the program. He made me really wish I was going, too. Anyway, he said he had just had an hour Facetime with Joe, and he was so impressed. He said that in his many years involvement in the program, he'd never seen a kid with Joe's caliber. Wow. I am just so proud of that kid. Anyway, the guy is flying down here in April to meet with us about the trip. Apparently, acceptance into this program is a very big deal. And they're paying for it, too! I guess Joe will technically be going to Aeotearoa, to participate in the daily life of the Maori. One cool thing they get to do is float through glow worm caves. I cannot even describe how much I would like to experience that! What a unique, once in a lifetime adventure that will be for Joe!

Well, I've got my black scrubs on (no more purple for me!), and a new pair of dark blue and pink New Balance sneakers, and I'm ready to x-ray my heart out.

Have a great Monday everyone!

Catching Up

Catching up on what’s going on around my wonderland. I told you all about Joe’s great news. He’s got more, too.

He’s involved in several clubs and doing well in all of them. His teachers love him and he seems well-liked by his classmates. His self-confidence is slowly climbing, and he’s a different kid than he was three years ago. He’s also going through a rapid growth spurt. He’s grown about three inches in three months and may be slightly taller than I am. And I think he’s still got an inch or three left to go. Tomorrow, I’m taking him for his driving test for his permanent license so he will be taking over my Rav and driving himself to school every day. That’s exciting but still a little terrifying. I think all mom’s can relate to the first time each child strikes out alone on the road for the first time.

Aidan is doing well in her role as kitchen manager in the new restaurant she’s working for. She had a big scare a few nights  ago, though, when someone attempted a home invasion while she was sleeping. They smashed her bedroom window and glass sprayed onto the bed she was sleeping on. Thank goodness Kodak, her rescue dog, was there. He started barking ferociously and the guy ran away. Aidan called the police and thankfully, the landlord replaced the window the same day.

Callie is doing well, too. She’s so responsible and mature. She’s been busy applying to colleges,but her two top picks are Brown and UCLA. We might go tour Brown this summer. She’s got a few scholarship opportunities, and I’m excited to see what career path she ventures on.

Yesterday, Joe and I got haircuts, and Joe practiced some of the things he has to perform for his driving exam. Today, I’m going to the practice’s office in another nearby city to meet the physicians and staff and to sign the last paperwork. I’ll also meet the MRI tech who’ll be cross-training me to MRI.

Monday is my first official start day for the Naples office. Finally! Woohoo! I’m excited.

A Little Bit O’Bragging About My Boy

UPDATE: I just got off the phone with the guy who’s in charge of the scholarship and he said Joe was their number one choice by far, so he gets to go to his first choice country— NEW ZEALAND! So proud!

I’m so proud of Joe! He interviewed for a scholarship and opportunity to be an “ambassador” to a foreign country over the summer, and he won!! So, he gets to spend a few weeks this summer with a host family in New Zealand or China and have the opportunity to do many one-in-a-lifetime things!

I am a super proud Momma right now!!

Which Reality Do You Live In? Or One Aspect of Quantum Physics Dumbed Down...A Lot

DISCLAIMER: I am not an expert in quantum physics. I just thought it was amateur day or something. And although I’m not an expert, don’t consider this imitation. Consider it a lesson. But really, a lesson in class and tact and overall grace and manners is what needs to be taught amongst certain circles.

Did you know that a possibility of alternate realities exist? Since the beginning of the age of science fiction, there has been endless speculation about the possibility that the world you live in right at this moment, can change in the blink of an eye by a sudden quantum shift of electrons that make up the existence you now live in.

Wait, what?

Imagine you're looking into a seemingly infinite mirror in a mirror in a mirror. Now imagine taking a step forward so that you're nose to nose to nose to nose with your reflections. Close your eyes--or don't--then take another step forward.

What if the solid mass of the mirror, for an incalculable tiny fraction of a second, disobeyed all the known laws of physics, and you stepped through into the next mirror. You spin around, and the mirror that was behind you is no longer there, but there still seems to be the same amount of infinite mirrors ahead of you.

You decide there are better ways to spend your day than looking in the mirror, even though you like to fancy yourself as God's gift to humankind. So you put on your hiking boots, grab your credit card, and buy a plane ticket straight to Montana.

You sit back, rather stiffly, in your main cabin seat, and pull out your favorite book-- The Berenstein Bears.

Reaching in your Chic-Fil-A bag, you pull out your chicken sandwich and take a bite, then immediately gag and spit out the ketchup-laden hunk of lightly battered fowl onto your fold-down tray. "Since when does Chic-Fil-A put ketchup on their sandwiches?"

But you dismiss it as some crazy fluke, although you'd like to cry because you don't get to enjoy your sandwich while looking at those silly bears.

You land in Montana, excitement bubbling inside you as you picture the singularly unique rock formation you're sure holds the answer to the location of a fabulous treasure.

Out on the trail, your feet are sure, heading for a spot you've been to a thousand times before.

But when you get to "the spot," it's not there. Instead, you find the lair of a giant unicorn. And it's not a pleasant, silky-white unicorn of fairy tales and Scottish Highlands, but a ferocious coal-black unicorn with blaring red eyes that burn into your soul.

What has just happened? Where are you? Certainly not in the world you once knew, where the picnicking Berenstain Bears frolic in the grass, or where Chick-Fil-A's sandwiches contain nothing extra but a little butter and perhaps a pickle.

The reality you woke up to this morning, is not the reality you're facing right now, and you just peed your size 22 jeans.

When you stepped through the mirror, you stepped through at the exact moment the electrons that formed your world intentionally decide to alter their normal behavior and do something different.

Wait, what? How can electrons decide anything? Physics tells us that there are rules or laws -- motion, force, and all that, right?

Well, no, not really. It's pretty weird actually, but it appears that electrons know when you're watching them. And when they realize you're right there, nose to nose with them, they can decide to act in a different, more unpredictable way...in mid-stride.

How can that be? How can something without a conscious, without a real "brain," know when you're watching them? How can they change how they move at the precise moment when they discover they're being watched?

Heck, I don't know. But they do.

In what's called the "Double-Slit Experiment," physicists expect that electrons move toward and through a slit cut into a screen onto a detection screen behind it in a predictable fashion--the electrons will be detected on the screen as a single band. When a double-slitted screen replaces the single slit screen, the electrons move through each band and form not the expected two bands on the screen, but a wave pattern, where the band in the middle is the most intense, and the bands radiating out from it are less intense. Now, that's sorta crazy in itself. Physicists theorized that the electrons somehow passed through the slits, bounced off each other after they passed through the slits and created the characteristic interference wave pattern. 

But, dang, when they thought they could predict what would happen when they fired electrons one at a time, it would make interference impossible, and surely the electrons would go through one slit or the other, and appear on the screen as the two bands they initially expected.

Nope! To their amazement, the matter still created an interference pattern and appeared as a wave on the screen. Mathematically, they'd just witnessed something theoretically impossible--each electron somehow went through both screens while at the same time going through neither screen, and at the same time going through one slit while at the same time, going through the other.

How in the world (or worlds) is that possible? How can a single electron interfere with itself? And how do the single electrons know where to land on the detector screen to form a final uniform wave pattern? How do they know where the previous electrons have landed, and how do they choose where they will land? How can single electrons land on the screen as particles, but as each successive electron is fired, form a final wave pattern? They call this wave-particle duality, but how can that be possible?

I don't know. It's a problem, though. And it gets more complicated.

When the physicist placed a measuring device to observe the electrons, the electrons changed their behavior, and all the electrons hit the screen as particles, appearing on the screen as two bands! It appeared that the electrons were aware they were being watched, and purposely wanted to startle the bejeebus out of the physicists! It's like when you approach a dead body in the woods, and as you get your face right up to theirs, they snap open their eyes and rip off your face.

Well, probably not that startling, but still...disconcerting.

And that's not even as spooky as it gets! Physicists again tried to predict what would happen when the observer didn't watch until the electron had already passed through the slit...of course, the electron wouldn't be able to change it's motion after it went through the slit, right?

Well, wrong.

As the electron passed through the slits in a wave pattern, once they were observed, they again changed their behavior to hit the screen in a particle pattern. The implications are just plain crazy. It suggests that once the electrons know they're being observed after passing through the slit, they can travel back in time to correct their already set motion!

Physicists could come to no other conclusion but infinite potentialities. That's freaking amazing, because it opens up the possibility that there is a black unicorn out there...somewhere.

I think my alternate reality would be more pleasant, though:

Double Charmed

He was shot down twice. It was said that being shot down once was hard to survive, but being shot down twice and surviving was a miracle. 

We Map the World in More than One Way

Update: To Ricky— check your email.

This is very awesome and may offer a fresh way to look at treasure hunts!