So I had my period this week and it was bad. I won’t go into the details so as not to disturb the men but I will speak on it generally because it was a significant event in my week. See recent studies have suggested that it isn’t necessary for a woman to bleed every month. This does seem a little strange even to me since we tend, without medications control, to naturally bleed every month. That’s what girls do. But anyway, studies have shown it isn’t harmful to skip a few months and I even asked my Frauenartz about it, and he said it was cool. Therefore as I had travel planned at the same time my ‘woman’s day’ was suppose to hit for three months in a row, I skipped it, three months in a row. And this month, it is AWFUL. We are talking nausea, back pain, irritability (ok that could have just been my general disposition perhaps but as a woman it is my prerogative to blame it on my period, so f#@k-off) and general yuckiness. The question is this…was it that I haven’t had it for three months and so it was saving up, so to speak, or was it that after three months I have forgotten how awful it really is? Like maybe it really does suck but we women get use to it because it is our lot in life and we have a higher threshold for pain than men? I don’t know. It was awful. Funny thing is, once I actually started, you know, bleeding, I felt infinitely better. It seemed to be the buildup that was so bad. Enough said.

Applying to Grad school is a pain. The paperwork and stuff, I am not all that worried about. It’s finding the right program and getting everything in by the deadlines, I worry about. There are LOTS of school that have Operations Research Ph.D. programs, but which ones emphasize that I am interested in? Being that I want to enroll for Fall ’03, I have to start applications like yesterday, but need to spend time exploring the programs and talking to the faculty. It is interesting, Ph.D. programs seem to be oriented to people that are still in school and NOT people coming out of Industry. They all want Professor recommendations. I can get the heads of Operations and IT Europe as well as a Group Controller to give me recommendations but most schools want professors to prove that you can study.

Soon I will be starting a ‘Heather’s Secret Matt Page’. Matt is one of our Engineering/Computer geek friends from back in CRV (and that is an affectionate tag as I like Engineering/Computer Geeks quite a bit). At the all night network gaming events, of which I only observed feeling a little like Jane Goodall at the beginning of her Ape observations, he was all around Hardware/Windows guru. He was, is, will always be, the Alpha-Geek. But Matt’s real talent lays in how he sees the world and relates it back. You all think I am entertaining? Matt is just as amusing and understands Calculus! Patrick and I are constantly trying to convince him to write technical manuals because he describes technical things so well and in such an entertaining manner. So, periodically we get these incredibly long Matt messages. The last one was entitled: ‘tinky winky: the flash dance sessions’. It had such great stuff in it that I decided I must share his brilliance with the world. I told him I was going to do this and he thought it was cool but then he thought a bit more and now he wants to do a little editing. After he and I hammer out the details, hopefully this week, I will pass it along to you all. Here is an example of what to expect though… (btw he is single)

‘As we were walking down the east side of the river, a Portland fire boat, the “Willamette” (ironically the name of the river it was on at the time) came motoring up river. As it passed abreast of us, smoke started pouring from the engine compartment. Strange, that a fire boat, in the middle of a river, should itself be on fire….

So, I got to thinking….How, exactly, do you put out a fire on a fire boat, when the only fire boat the city owns is now on fire? Oh, if the fire boat were at a dock, you could use a fire truck to put out the fire on the fire boat. However, the fire boat was in the middle of the river, where a fire truck cannot get to a fire on a boat, even if it is a fire boat. Perhaps you could use a fire bomber to bomb the boat; the fire boat that is on fire. Or perhaps a fire-copter could drop water on the fire boat which is in the water and presently on fire (the fire boat, that is…). Or, perhaps a bucket brigade could dowse the fire on the fire boat with water from the water the fire boat is floating on when fire boat floats under the bridge that spans the water that the bucket brigade used to fill the buckets full of water?’

Isn’t he great? I wanted to share the section about the ‘more fun'(tm) birthday party he went to while visiting his sister but I think I need to check that one in case, you know…some people, might not appreciate…his particular take…on the events. There will be more…

Integration testing is going well. Thanks for asking. Cheers.

p.s. the IPG (my division) IT mgr comes to our site tomorrow. two managers have already asked me, as in made sure, I would be at the coffee talk, to ask questions…hee hee.