ruthie

• The Village

from The Simple Dollar – http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/09/06/charting-a-course-to-go-back-to-college/

Amanda writes:
After taking a serious re-evaluation of my life over the last year, I finally realized what I should be doing with it. I want to be a nurse. I attended college several years ago, but I majored in English Lit and didn’t finish my degree. How can I plan for this financially?

Going back to school is a pretty common goal that people have. In fact, my mother-in-law went back to nursing school when she was in her forties because, after many years working in a research lab, she realized she had a calling and a gift to interact with and help people.

Along those same lines, I have actually considered going back to school to work on a degree in political science, as I’m moving more and more towards being involved in local and state politics. I’m mostly interested in such a degree to help me build upon the connections I’m already making in the local community and get a firm grounding in how politics work.

If you’ve come around to the idea of going back to school in order to reboot your career (or extend it), here are the steps I’d take along the way.

First, do the personal investigation to find out if this new career you want is really right for you. Talk to people that are already in the career that interests you and simply tell them your story. Ask what their actual workdays are like. Ask about the education that was required for them to get their job.

If you’re heading towards a completely new career track (as I would be if I followed up on the political idea), it’s a good idea to contact multiple people at various points along the career track to get some input. For example, for a political person, you might want to talk to campaign staff, state legislators (and their staff), members of local boards, and so on.

If you can, dabble in this track in your spare time. Do volunteer work, or get involved in organizations where you can meet people who are involved in this career track.

You may find out from this alone that the career path isn’t for you. I know, for example, that I’ve mentored at least one writer who decided that the day-in day-out research and creative efforts were too much for him.

Don’t do this lightly. The decision to leave your current career and find a new one is a serious leap and likely a very expensive one. Don’t simply jump from one career that doesn’t excite you into another one. Find out as much as you can from the outside first, until you’re highly confident that this new career is the right one for you.

Next, critically evaluate the educational needs of that career track. What sort of schooling or degree do you actually need to get your foot in the door. For example, with nursing, a degree is essentially required in order to practice professionally, but with politics, a degree is far from required to get involved – it’s merely a way of building a strong base of understanding.

The way to do this is through research and also through asking your contacts what education is required. Look at job listings and find out the minimum requirements for the types of jobs you would apply to at the start of the career path. What do you need that you don’t already have?

Once you’re sure you want to follow this new path and you know what you need to do, then start worrying about the costs of education. Start evaluating institutions that are available to you and get a realistic cost estimate.

Depending on the amounts, you should start saving cash in a 529 plan set up to match the target date that you expect to start attending school. If the date is close, the cash will be invested largely in very safe investments (cash, bonds, etc.), but if you know that school is a long time off, the money will go into more risky investments with a larger upside (stocks, real estate, etc.).

There is one thing that’s more important than anything else along the way, though.

You have to get started. Now.

If you have a dream burning inside of you, don’t just let it sit there and idle. At the very least, take that first step. Find out more about what it actually entails. Find out what that career would actually be like. Then, take that information, do some serious soul searching, and figure out for yourself if it’s right for you.

If you let your dreams just sit idling on the runway of life, eventually those dreams will run out of gas and never take flight. Take that first step right now. Do some research about that dream career and find someone to talk to about it. Even if you realize it’s not for you, you’ll never regret having taken that first step.

• Superbad
• X-Men: The Last Stand

Monday (Holiday)
Tuesday, 09/02/08: 9:51am
Wednesday, 09/03/08: 9:27am
Thursday, 09/04/08: 9:42am
Friday, 09/05/08: 9:40am

Now, additionally, I have discovered that the clocks at work run 5 minutes fast, so my 9:42 is actually 9:37 and my 9:40 is actually 9:35, but it’s only 5 minutes and I see no reason why I can’t get here at what is technically 9:25.

I’ve been getting better though. I keep waking up (but not getting up) just before my alarm goes off. I should really start just getting out of bed unless it is absurdly early.

• The Godfather: Part II

• Black Snake Moan

• Marie Antoinette

by Meg Hourihan via http://lifehacker.com/software/rsi/how-to-mouse-goofy-176290.php

Women learn lots of things from their mothers. Some learn how to apply makeup, others some trick to keep blemishes at bay. Still others learn how to perfectly fold a fitted sheet or make a rich chicken stock from scratch. My mother taught me how to mouse goofy, i.e. mousing lefty rather than righty.

My right hand ached a lot from hours and hours (and years and years) of computing. One day on the phone with her, I mentioned the pain I felt in my wrist. She replied very simply, “Oh, I had that problem too, so I switched to mousing with my other hand. It took a bit of getting used to, but then I got the hang of it.” This wasn’t just an off the cuff comment from a casual computer user, this was my MIS-degreed, Sybase tech-supporting mother speaking, a woman who lived on the computer.

Intrigued, and nearly hobbled by pain when mousing with my right hand, I decided to try it out. And after a few months I too was mousing with my left hand. If you’re ready to go goofy mouse, here’s how to begin:

1) Move your mouse to the other side of your keyboard from where it normally
2) Use your opposite hand to control the
3) Laugh at yourself when you can’t control the pointer and it flies around the screen as if propelled by a two year old.

First and foremost, a switch to goofy mouse requires a sense of humor and a lot of patience. The first days of goofy were so frustrating that I wanted to quit a million times. The only thing that kept me going was the pain in my right wrist, and the knowledge that if something didn’t change I might not able to mouse at all in a few more years.

I began by learning as many keystrokes as possible for every action and app I used. By substituting keystrokes for mouse movements as much as possible, I reduced my dependence on the mouse and minimized my frustrations. Initially all I could manage were simple tasks like positioning the cursor over a button. When I had a file in Photoshop, sometimes I would break down and switch back to my right hand.

Slowly though, my left hand got better. I was making shapes in PowerPoint. I was highlighting and selecting large chunks of text. I was moving and manipulating, dragging and dropping. Within a few months, it was almost as if I’d been a lefty from the start. Nowadays it seems odd to mouse with my right hand and totally natural to use my left hand.

Here are some tips for making the switch to goofy:
1) Allow yourself more time to do a simple task You really are a beginner again, so plan your time accordingly. If you used to bang out fifteen different boxes PowerPoint in a couple minutes, expect to spend that much time doing a single box, at least at first.
2) Don’t get frustrated easily It takes time to learn the motor skills. You might feel stupid. You might even feel angry, but with practice you’ll see yourself improve. In just one week you’ll go from awkward to not so bad. In a month, you’ll wonder what the big deal was.
3) Don’t change your mouse button settings Some mice can be switched to a left-handed setting, which reverses the functions of the right and left buttons. When I went goofy I left my mouse as it was: left button for selection, right button to launch the context menu. It was hard enough to switch hands, I didn’t want to throw a different button configuration into the mix. Now I just left click with my left middle finger and use my left index finger for context (or “right click”) menu.

As you struggle, just think of the benefits that will soon be yours as a goofy mouser: all those extra keys are on the right-hand side of the keyboard, so your non-mouse hand is free to use them now. Even better: No more pain.

When teaching Pilates, I have been accused of sounding like a drill sergeant. That’s what happens when you harp on people’s posture day in and day out. Good posture is important for both looking and feeling your best. A frequently repeated “fact” is that standing up straight can make you look ten pounds lighter. Slumping adds not only odd stresses to the spine but can make a body appear heavier, not to mention shorter.

More than just looking long and lean, having good posture is important for the health of your bones and joints. Proper alignment decreases undue wear and tear on the soft tissues, ligaments and cartilage that surround and protect your joints, especially your spine. Plus, if you are slouching you are smooshing (yep, that is the technical term) all your internal organs. It is bad for digestion; your stomach and intestines need plenty of space.

Finding perfect posture is easy. First you want to think of balancing the bones on top of one another like a column starting with your feet on the floor, ending with your skull. I have a posture checklist for you, so read more.

Here’s a posture checklist:

1. Stand with your feet under your sits bones (yep those bones that you sit on that are the base of you pelvis). Your feet will only be about one or your own foot widths apart – not very wide. The weight on your feet should be balanced equally between the balls of your feet and your heels, as well as the inside and outside of your feet.
2. Align your pelvis over your feet. Your pelvis should be level. Think of the pelvis like a wide soup bowl and you don’t want the soup to spill over the front or the back of the bowl.
3. Keep your ribcage directly over your pelvis. It is a common posture for the ribs to hang back behind the pelvis.
4. Next place your shoulders right over your ribs.
5. The skull should be right over your feet. Your earlobes should be in line with your shoulders – don’t thrust your head forward.

For the supreme alignment check-in, stand with your back against the wall (take off your shoes first and try to find a spot with no baseboard) and see how it feels to have your heels, booty, upper back and the back of your head all on the wall. It might feel extreme, but use that as a guide.

Fit’s Tip: It really helps to just keep lengthening your spine up and out of your pelvis. One image that helps a lot of slouchers stand tall is to imagine that there is a golden string attached to the top of your head lifting and lengthening your spine.

(source: http://www.fitsugar.com/1673894)

take care of my body (especially when drunk) – Inside – hahahaha, nice clause.
Get Postal ID – Inside? – Not sure what this is, except I want to get my passport and need to apply through the Post Office?
perform (for anyone, on anything) – Outside – Uhhhh… maybe I just have a dirty mind
have backup dancers – Outside – ‘Cause I don’t dance. Though just having backup dancers while walking around might be funny.
keep in touch with people that matter – Inside – Yeah, I really might should devote more time to this.
return a defective pan – Outside – I’d prefer not to buy a defective pan in the first place.
Do a brown rice fast for a month – Outside – Presuming this means you eat brown rice and nothing else, it sounds like you’d be malnourished or at least bored. I do only eat brown rice when it comes to rice…
Buy a Nikon D40 (at least) – Outside – I already have a camera. ha.
learn and perfect various world accents – Outside – Nope. That would be weird.
Find “home” and go there. – Inside – I have my “home” with my husband. I do think we could use a “hometown” though.
notice when I feel good – INSIDE – Wow. I may just have to adopt this.
walk the entire mountain trail – Outside – Which?
stick to a budget for 3 months straight – Inside – Yeah, I could do this.
kiss Theresa – Outside – Who?
Maintain all 3 Blog sites – Outside – Excess bloggage.
jump to fewer conclusions – Outside – Maybe MORE.
be creative in my teaching – Inside – In terms of sharing my knowledge and ideas with others, yes.
iron my nice clothes – Outside? – I don’t own an ironing board, and even if I did I kind of wish someone else would do it for me.

So, apparently I hate sales books. I found The Little Red Book of Sales and All Marketers Are Liars to be amazingly boring, pretentious and useless.

I have a list (on my computer at work) of a few other books I was considering, but I may just give it up and shift my non-fiction focus to somewhere other than sales, because this non-intellectual drivel is incredibly irritating. I’ll review the list, and I do remember liking The Accidental Salesperson when I read it like a year ago, so maybe they’re not all bad?

Spine Elongation
from http://audioyoga.com/AY4/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=168&Itemid=79

Starting with the principle of Elongation of the Spine

Elongation of the Spine is the action of slightly separating the vertebrae, the bones, in your back. It’s what you get when you strap yourself to a Medieval torture rack and tell people to ‘Pull!’ When they’re done, you walk away taller. However, the same results can be achieved much more simply than that, with far less pain and less help from technology.

Think of your spine as a series of pearls on a string. The pearls are held together by knots in the string, but the string itself is slightly elastic. If someone pulls gently on the string, the entire string gets a little longer, and the pearls separate a bit.

The same thing happens if you stand a little bit taller. Imagine that elastic string going up the center of your spine and coming out the top of your head. Imagine someone pulling on it. You ‘grow’ a little bit taller.

With your spine, the bones that protect your spinal column have ridges. If you bend backwards, sooner or later, these bones bump into each other and stop you from bending any farther.

However, if you stand a little taller, separating the bones a bit, then you can bend backwards even farther before the bones stop you.

Normal spine bent Backwards.Elongated Spine bent backwards.

See how the bones on the left side no longer bump into each other
This elongation or spreading has several effects:

• By separating the bones in your back, your vertebrae, a little, you can fold backward and twist much more before those bones bump into each other and stop you.

• Elongation takes some of the pressure off your lower back. That means you can fold forward and backward farther before your lower back has had enough of this, thank you very much.

So, you can see that Elongation of the Spine will play an important part of, standing poses, sitting poses, forward bends, back bends and twists.

What you might not expect, is it plays an important part of reclining poses and in good breathing as well. This is because an elongated spine takes pressure off the lower back, so you can lie down more comfortable. It also opens up your chest and abdomen more, which allows better breathing.

How Spine Elongation Should Feel
Elongation isn’t about willing yourself to be 10 feet taller. It isn’t meant to feel like work. All you’re doing is feeling the very, slightest separation between your vertebrae. You should feel a fraction of an inch taller and you’ll probably feel straighter, but not like your muscles are working harder. Your breathing might feel a little looser. You head and neck are ‘floating’ on top of your shoulders.

• Get a wide-tooth comb (without seams – wood? horn? “bone”?)
• Get a silk/satin pillowcase
• Figure out what to do with my hair at night
• Consider some other hair accessories like forks
• Consider trying cassiaobovata

Inside joke with myself. Makes me smile when I see it. I figure I need that sometimes when reviewing my goals list and getting overwhelmed. :)

• Capote

• Asylum

Monday (8/25): 8:19am
Tuesday (8/26): 9:53am
Wednesday (8/27): 9:24am
Thursday (8/28): 9:40am
Friday (8/29): 9:48am

2 out of 5 days. I consider Thursday and Friday pretty close.

• Michael Clayton

make a red velvet cake – Inside – Mmm, cake.
Run the Coopers River Bridge Run (10K) in April ‘09 – Outside – No running, thanks.
be there with my son for his first skydive – Outside! – Ack! No son and no skydiving!
visit all state capitals – Outside – I don’t really imagine it would be worth it. I’d rather be more spontaneous.
skydive more and more – Otuside – I’m sorry, but I think skydiving is a waste of time and money.
finish school/ acupuncture – Outside – School for accupuncture? I don’t really want to be an accupuncturist. I don’t think my people skills are good enough to stick needles in people.
clear up my acne for good – Inside – All too inside. :(
feed my search – Outside – Not sure what this means?
learn how to dance on a pole – Inside – Just because it seems like it would be fun. And because of Philip-Lorca (see this)
sell most of my comics – Outside – I don’t have many comics and and therefore not interested in selling what few I have. Unless someone wanted to pay me a lot.
shave my pubic hair successfully – Inside – That’s pretty much all I have to say about that.
get a f cool job* – Outside – Just because I don’t believe in censorship. Or fucking cool jobs.
live outside the homeland – Inside – haha, what a funny way to phrase it. Ah, homeland. But, yes.
get into Wayne State University – Outside – No idea where or what this is, but it reminds me of Wayne’s World (and I guess it’s only fitting that if Wayne has a World he might as well have a state).
go pro with my clarinet – Outside – I never even played an instrument.
to go out with Patrick or Jermey – Outside – No, I think I’ll stick with Anthony.
buy wood clarinet – Outside – See above about not being able to play instruments.
earn money on triond – Outside – Not interested actually. Would rather go with something more traditional/self-controlled if I were to try publishing stuff.
get a tattoo on the back part of my shoulder – Outside – The one on my writst is plenty.

Use and practice NLP more – Inside – at least, I think so. I’m reading the Wiki now. It seems pretty interesting.

Own a vacation home in Santorini Greece – Outside – I’m not ready to own a vacation home yet. I should start with a regular primary residence.

Go visit my hometown & my former school… get over my past, leave this particular part behind, and go on with my life. – Inside – I was just angsting last night over not being a teenager anymore though I feel it. That it’s weird when “old” people are as old as me and teens aren’t my peers.

Speak positively about others..at all times – Outside – I should lean towards this a bit, but there’s no reason to not speak out when people deserve it.

Keep people in line – Inside – Exactly what I said above.
get emiflea.com up and running – Outside – Someone else’s site… MY sites, however. Hm.

start a portfolio of my art – Outside – Nah, I have no art, and what I do have that might be considered art isn’t for sharing and therefore doesn’t go in a portfolio.

Get through the next 4 months – Inside – Yeah, I’d like to survive the next four months…

get a few more photoshoots down this year – Inside – Grammar is funny, but I do need to convince Anthony to go take piccies with me.

shed my extra weight and get healthier – Inside – Unfortunately. Getting chubbers.

get my hair to work again – Inside – Though it seemed pretty reasonable. Very similar to my learn to manage my hair goal.

Own a BMW 850 – Outside – No car, thanks. My hope is whenever/ifever we get one, it will be 100% electric.

Be the premier graphic designer in Lake County to start – Outside – Not sure where Lake County is, and I don’t really want to be a graphic designer.

Read through all the classics – Outside – Way too broad.

Get my nice round tummy back – Outside – uhh, what happened to the the “shed my extra weight and get healthier” goal?

Post various ramblings that don’t otherwise fit into another goal—also known as SCREWED AGAIN.. – Outside – Get a damn blog or something. Post on your MySpace. Whatever.

Make a list of the concerts I’ve been to, hopefully comment on them, note the ones I have yet to see – Outside – I don’t even really like concerts.

Finished last night! Happysad, but I liked the finale well enough. I know a lot of people didn’t.

• Borat