Week 15 -- Halfway There!

Well, I had my Jenny Craig meeting yesterday, & I've passed another milestone -- I have officially crossed my halfway point. No, scratch that -- I didn't just cross it, I broke through like a Mack truck going through a picket fence. Another 3lbs gone puts me JUST under 156 -- officially where I was when I went into college. It occurred to me that, in 6 more pounds, my driver's license will be telling the truth for the first time in . . . well . . . ever!

I literally had to pin the waist of my skirt today, to keep it from falling off my hips. None of my dress pants fit -- even the new ones I bought just a few weeks ago are kind of loose.

I have to buy new shoes for winter -- I put on my trusty black pumps this morning and promptly stepped right out of them.

My checking account is going to be screaming by the time this is over, but that's okay.

I'm more than halfway back to being ME!

Yay Me!

Well, I had my Jenny Craig meeting yesterday, and after 14 weeks -- and for four of those I was sick, & pretty much let myself eat anything I wanted -- I have officially passed two milestones:
(1) I passed the 20lb mark. I have lost 20.4 pounds.
(2) I crossed the 160 threshold -- I am 1.8lbs away from my halfway point, and right about where I was when I went into my sophomore year of college.

Whoo hoo!

Read This Article

So, I've been thinking lately about the attacks made on the president & how "George Bush doesn't care about black people," (according to rapper Kayne West), and I'm not sure that's the case. I don't think the problem is that Bush doesn't like black people -- I mean, he has Colin & Condoleezza, right? My personal opinion, take it for what it's worth, is that perhaps he doesn't like poor people. I say "perhaps," because I'm not completely sure that he even SEES them to begin with, and it is difficult to have an opinion on something you don't even recognize.

So, I encourage you to read the article The Other America, from msnbc.com. It makes a lot of good points, and includes the following immortal quotes:

From GWB's momma, Mrs. Barbara Bush: "So many of the people in the arenas here, you know, were underprivileged anyway. So this is working very well for them." Umm, yeah, like being crowded into a hot dark hellhole with 10,000 other people would work well for ANYONE. I mean heck, the Audubon Zoo didn't even cram their animals into "safe" rooms during the hurricane -- and the animals apparently fared better than some of the folks in the Superdome. Sure, Mrs. B, I'm sure it's working well for them, I mean, it's not like they're human beings or anything.

The best quotes of all, however, come from Illinois Senator Barack Obama (& to quote my friend Jonathan, "I will quit my job to work on that man's presidential campaign" when it happens), and read:

"I hope we realize that the people of New Orleans weren't just abandoned during the hurricane," Sen. Barack Obama said last week on the floor of the Senate. "They were abandoned long ago—to murder and mayhem in the streets, to substandard schools, to dilapidated housing, to inadequate health care, to a pervasive sense of hopelessness."

and even better,

Obama, the only African-American in the U.S. Senate, says "the ineptitude was colorblind." But he argues that while—contrary to rapper Kanye West's attack on Bush—there was no "active malice," the federal response to Katrina represented "a continuation of passive indifference" on the part of the government. It reflected an unthinking assumption that every American "has the capacity to load up their family in an SUV, fill it up with $100 worth of gasoline, stick some bottled water in the trunk and use a credit card to check into a hotel on safe ground." When they did focus on race in the aftermath, many Louisianans let their fears take over. Lines at gun stores in Baton Rouge, La., snaked out the door. Obama stops short of calling this a sign of racism. For some, he says, it's a product of "sober concern" after the violence in the city; for others, it's closer to "racial stereotyping."

So, again, read the article The Other America, from msnbc.com. No matter what your socioeconomic status, it's eye-opening; but if you've never had to think or worry about your status, it's even more important.

GRE News

First, let me apologize for being incommunicado, I've been fighting a nasty stomach virus for the past month, but it's almost gone.

I took my GRE (Graduate Record Exam) Saturday -- three little letters that will impact the next 5-7 years of my life, as I attempt to get into a PhD program in Biology.

Since the test was computer-based, I got my verbal & quantitative scores right there. Keeping in mind that (1) the minimum requirements for admission to, say, Washington U here in STL are 400 on each section (scale of 200-800) and (2) the average scores for folks intending to do graduate work in Life Sciences are 464 verbal & 568 quantitative, I got....

drumroll please...

610 verbal, 710 quantitative.

1320 total -- I'm not unhappy about this.

In addition, the first section of the Analytical Writing part required me to choose one of two topics to write an intelligent mini-essay about. I signed a form saying that I wouldn't tell you what the topic was, but I can tell you that it was directly related to my undergraduate degree. Major ego boost! I'm pretty sure that I rocked on both parts of that section (Thank you, Mehlville HS English Department!)

That's all -- just wanted to share.