Friday, December 18, 2009

Spark of Love

I met Garth Kemp today. I remember when he used to be a d.j. over at KQRS in Minneapolis, so I am a huge fan. I am a serious fangirl, in fact.

Garth Kemp, for those not in SoCal, is the weekday morning weather guy for our ABC affiliate. He is a big burly former blonde (his hair is gray now). Every year around Christmas, he dresses up in this goofy elf costume on Fridays and goes to various locations in the area to "stuff buses" full of toys (think Toys for Tots, but not really, because I believe CBS does the Toys for Tots thing here). It is a huge deal. He works from 5:30 AM to 6:30 PM on those Fridays.

Today he was at the Honda Center (formerly the Duck Pond) in Anaheim, so K, K's friend A, and I headed up there to help stuff the bus.

I was wearing my Brett Favre jersey (by design, I figured he would notice his former market!), I took a photo of K and A with Garth and one with the girls on one of the toy buses. Garth said, "Hey wait, I want you to meet my cameraman, he is a HUGE Green Bay Packers fan!"

So the three of us adults stood around talking about the Vikings chances in the playoffs. Garth appears to be a Vikings fan because he said he can't even get his hopes up until the Vikings win the NFC Championship. OMG he is SOOOO COOL!

He was super super nice to us, and everyone else there. It was refreshing to meet someone who is obviously in the media who was genuinely nice and interested in people.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Some Good Things, Some Not So Good.

First off, the not so good.

K came home from school with an infestation of head lice. I am guessing she had them for a few days, so we have been super cleaning, we washed her hair with RID, did the whole nit comb thing (so far 3 times), washing tons of laundry, etc. Well yesterday, she still had some of the nasty beasts living in her hair, so I took her to urgent care last night we got a prescription for stronger stuff. We are going to do the whole shampoo and lice cream thing later this morning, when I get ahead of some of the laundry.

Met with the haematologist on Wednesday. I was really nervous, but everyone in that practice was sooooo wonderful. They ran an initial CBC with differential, and it was weird. My platelets came out at only 157 (when they were 666 three weeks ago). Seems like a rather large swing to me. The phlebotomist took like 8 tubes of blood so they can run all kinds of tests. Then I had my consultation with the doctor. This consultation happened in his office and not in an exam room (HUGE deal, in my estimation). Dr. S. spent 45 minutes with me, going over my health history, planning out what to do next, and talking with me about what the high platelet thing means and why it might have happened. He explained that because my spleen was removed back in 1987, that my platelets may always run a little high, because it is the spleen that breaks the platelets down. VERY informative. And a bonus was finding out that he did his haematology residency at the University of Minnesota!

Yesterday, K and I went to Barnes and Noble to spend her gift card. It was also K's school's Barnes and Noble bookfair day so a percentage of what we spent went to her school's library. We chose three of the "Little House" books - "Little House in the Big Woods", "Little House on the Prairie", and "By the Banks of Plum Creek". We also chose "The Giver" and "Number the Stars". After we got home, K started reading "Little House in the Big Woods" and she discovered that the main character in the book had the same name as the author of the book. We had a discussion about the difference between autobiography and historical fiction. She understands that the "Little House" books are more historical fiction, even though the stories are based upon Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood.

And I found my sunglasses, which had been missing for almost a week.