Fav email forward that will probably make you say "Really?"

I know, forwards are a waste of time and usually stupid. That's why I'm just putting this one up here so I don't annoy you with an email forward. I saw this one several years ago and thought it was so funny that I saved the picture as my desktop background. And now, here it is again, making me laugh all over again. Here you go....

Subject: Stress

I am not sure exactly how this works, but this is amazingly accurate.

The picture below has 2 identical dolphins in it. It was used in a case study on stress levels at the Mayo Clinic and later at Fletcher Medical Center in Burlington.

Look at both dolphins jumping out of the water. The dolphins are identical. A closely monitored, scientific study revealed that, in spite of the fact that the dolphins are identical, a person under stress will find many differences between the two dolphins.

The more differences a person finds, the more stress that person is experiencing.

Look at the photograph and if you find more than one or two differences you may need to take a vacation.

Happy Belated Valentine's Day!

For Valentine's Day, Eric and I made chicken kabobs (very fun meal to make together!). We made 11 and ate......all 11. And then ate this lovely gigantic cookie (made by yours truly). Don't worry, we didn't eat the entire cookie in one sitting. It took all weekend to eat it. Aren't you impressed with my decorating skills?

A random update and a movie review

In response to my sisters' harassing comments, I thought maybe I should update. Not so sure what to update with, though.

My life lately has consisted of the following:
1. Wearing leg warmers or long underwear to ward off the damn cold weather. Yes, "damn" is necessary. It's that cold.
2. Not yet working out cause it's cold. I don't like treadmills or exercise bikes, but I'm starting to think that might be a good idea.
3. Watching a lot of movies (again, too cold to do anything outdoors). I'll give you a movie review below. These are all rentals.

"Joshua" - crazy creepy movie. See it if you never want to have children. It creeped me out. It's about a boy of genius level who turns into a "bad seed" and does evil things to his parents and others. I had no idea what it was about before seeing it, so that made it even more crazy and weird.

"Zodiac" - another suspenseful movie, but this one was good! It has Jake Gyllenhal and is about a serial killer, and it is a true story, which I always enjoy. Very suspenseful, but not gory. I did not have nightmares or weird dreams after this one (like I did after "Joshua").

"Rocket Science" - good movie that won some artsy awards (maybe Sundance?). It's about a boy with a stutter problem (of course I liked it, as a future speech-language pathologist, right?) who falls for this girl on the debate team. The story just follows him through his different attempts at solving his problem, and it also deals with different types of relationships. It's not a typical "feel good" movie; it's different, and that's why I liked it.

Those are the most recent ones. Well, I also made Eric watch "Love Actually" last night for Valentine's Day. His commentary: it was goofy. My commentary: still a favorite movie of mine and I'm very glad that I spent $7.50 on it at Target the other day while bday gift shopping for my brother.

8 Things

Okay, so I got to work early this morning and figured I'd do this little thing I saw on my cousin Katy's blog. Thanks Katy!

8 Things I’m Passionate About

1. Helping others
2. Speech-language pathology
3. My family
4. My friends
5. Trying new things (food, experiences, etc.)
6. Taking responsibility to train your dogs so they are nice and friendly and loving
7. Traveling
8. Being open minded about the world (other cultures, religions, political views)

8 Things I Want To Do Before I Die

1. Learn another language (and/or maybe improve my French or ASL)
2. Be a mom
3. Travel to more of the countries of my ancestors
4. Travel to Australia (and probably many other places in the world I haven't been yet)
5. Go to the boundary waters for a long canoeing/camping trip
6. Own a house (and a cabin!)
7. Potentially have my own private practice for speech path
8. Ride in a hot air balloon

8 Things I Say Often

1. I like it
2. Indy, off
3. Indy, want a treat?
4. It's cold
5. My roommate had people over again last night and woke me up between 2:30 and 4:30.
6. Bitches
7. I love you
8. Really?

8 TV Shows I’ve Recently Watched

1. Democratic debate
2. Friends
3. Two and a half men
4. Scrubs
5. American Idol
6. News
7. CSI
8. The Office

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over

1. Rollercoaster by Kimya Dawson
2. 100 Days, 100 Nights by Sharon Jones
3. Free Fallin' by Tom Petty (anyone who attended the 2003 Lakehouse trip knows exactly what I'm talking about here :) and I'm sorry....not really)
4. Cold, Cold Heart by Norah Jones
5. Dear Mr. President by Pink and the Indigo Girls
6. Peace Train by Cat Stevens
7. All I Want for Christmas by Mariah Carey
8. The entire "I am Sam" soundtrack

8 Things That Attract Me To My Best Friends

1. Sense of humor
2. Genuinely good character
3. Laid back/easy-goingness
4. They think I'm funny
5. Their singing voicemails
6. Their voicemails left in French
7. Intelligence
8. They are all very fun and unique individuals who I love for different reasons!

8 Things I’ve Learned (or been reminded of) This Past Year

1. Life is short
2. Family and friends are sooooo important
3. You never know when great things are just around the corner
4. Being far from good friends is hard sometimes
5. It is possible to pick up right where you left off with some friends, even if it's been 8 years since you last saw them.
6. I can sing some pretty high notes (learned after having to sing soprano in choir....I still like alto or soprano 2 better, though)
7. Living with random people can work, but can also be sucky. I miss my one-bedroom apartment.
8. Being a student in a subject you're truly interested in is amazing! (I am a dork.)

8 People I Think Should Do “8”...

Really, respond if you want in a comment or post it on your blog if you have one! But if I had to pick 8 people, they would be: Mom, Laura, Alyse, Stacy, Kate, who else reads this regularly???

Haiku of the day

Negative wind chill,
You make my bones freakin' cold.
When will Spring get here?

Divacups?

All I can say is REALLY?

My friend Emily sent me an email with this link today. The name reminds of me Dixie cups, with little cartoons on them or pretty little flowers. However, I'm not so sure these would have such designs on them.

Check it out: http://www.divacup.com/.

Red Ribbon Ride 2008

It's official. I registered to participate in the Red Ribbon Ride, a four-day, 300-mile bike ride that benefits seven Minnesota-based organziations that help those living with HIV/AIDS. I'll be on my bike from July 17-20, and sleeping in a tent or high school gym each night. As you probably remember, I had an awesome time volunteering last year, and I was pretty much decided that next year I would ride. And here we are already -- six months away! I hate fundraising, but if you're interested in donating, riding, volunteering, referring a friend, etc., click on the links below. Thanks!

Visit my personal page: http://www.redribbonride.org/goto/heidi.gehrman
Visit my team page: http://www.redribbonride.org/goto/umslp
Watch a video about the ride (warning: you might need a tissue): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SG4bWThfMw

Photo of the week: Scary Hillary

No matter if you want to vote for Hillary or not, you cannot deny that this is a bad picture. If there were a photo of me like this somewhere, I would want to tear it up. However, it seems the news reporters found Hillary to be very "real" and not as stoic last night. Personally, I don't have anything against Hillary, but I was getting annoyed with her weird faces she was making at people in the crowd before she began her speech. I called it her "making babies cry" face.

PS Thank you, Eric, for emailing this to me. That really means a lot.

WWI blogger

I just saw this article online and thought it was pretty cool. A grandson is posting his grandfather's letters that were written while he was a soldier fighting in WWI. That is a really creative way to read/share history. I'm a dork, I know. But I'll probably add that to my daily websites to check in on.

Holiday photo extravaganza

I seriously took about 142 photos in Albuquerque. Since the blogger site would probably collapse if I tried to upload them all on my little page, I will just post a few here and then post a link later on to the kodakgallery website (once I get them all up on that site).

Anyway....why was I in Albuquerque? My dad and Beth moved there last summer, so Christmas took place down in the southwest this year. I spent about nine days down there and had a great time. We did a lot of hiking -- they live one mile from the trail head of the foothills of Sandia Mtn. I also tried snowboarding for the first time, thanks to my brother-in-law Taylor for teaching me and being soooo patient. (Side note: I went for the second time last Saturday with Eric for his bday and felt like I was improving. I love it.) Other than outdoor activities, there was also a lot of eating, laughing, passing gas (Alyse, Beth...), driving through pretty scenery, exploring new cities and towns (Santa Fe and Madrid) and playing my new fav game (The New Yorker Game). I would highly recommend taking a trip down to New Mexico sometime. I want to go back in the summer time to see what it's like in the warmer months. During my stay, the temps varied from the 20s to the 50s, and the sun is very hot since it's in the high desert, so it warms you up pretty nicely even if it's cold. The top of the mountain is another story -- the night we took a tram up to the top, it was 8 degrees at the peak, with negative windchill and 40 mph winds. The pic below shows me looking like an eskimo and my dad pretending it's balmy and warm. I was prepared and thankful. He was cold and headed straight for the restaurant/bar located at the peak.

Here are some more pics:

Yup, it snows in New Mexico. It snowed the second night I was there, and it was so pretty. This is my dad and Beth's house -- it's smaller than it looks. Eric thought this was a mansion. It's a nice house, but definitely not that big. With 8 of us, we felt kind of cramped, or cozy. The desert plants look funny with snow on them, by the way.

The girls posing on top of a soda dam (sulfur spring is running beneath where we are standing, I believe). This was during our day of scenic driving, which also included some car sickness and bowel problems (people's names will not be included to protect the innocent...).

This was taken at Proex -- you know, using one of those fake screens... No, seriously, this is a REAL background. Beautiful.

The kids (minus Rob). We were all dressed up for church so they made us take a picture before we changed back into our sweatpants. :)

Me, Taylor and Stacy hiking around some volcanic rock that the Pueblo Indians once drew pictures on (to communicate? teach? play? we don't know). This was the day o' Petroglyphs. We also saw a roadrunner! Stacy chased it. I'm not kidding.

Jeff and Taylor snowboarding. Jeff was resting. Taylor was teaching.

Proof that I snowboarded. Taylor took us immediately to the green runs (skipped out on the bunny hill entirely), so I got really tired just going down one run. It took 1.5 hours to get down one run. I only got in three runs total in about 4 hours. My muscles would get so sore that I would stop/fall on purpose and sit there to rest. While resting, sometimes I would take some pics, like this one. I call it "Boots Overlooking a Mountain" or "Boots Over Santa Fe."