No, I’m not talking about the movie The Island of Dr. Moreau…  Many people thought it was awful, but I actually liked that movie, last time I saw it anyway over a decade ago.  Scared the heck out of me though; I saw it in college and had to walk home from my friends’ dorm all by myself late at night afterwards…  I was so freaked out that I ran all the way home, prompting some other college-aged jerks to jeer at me, “Run Forrest, Run!”  See what they did there?  That’s a reference to the great movie, Forrest Gump.  Clever kids, weren’t they?  I will have to try that Dr. Moreau movie again; even though I bet nowadays the special effects would appear outdated and it would just be dumb, but I’m not about to try it any time soon with all the nightmares I’ve been having…

Anyway, I was just looking for a way to tie in my latest activities, that’s why I called the post The Island of Dr. Moreau.  I went to the Dr. today, and watched the movie called The Island last night.  The Dr. visit was routine…  but I do have to mention how I just sat there waiting for the Dr. to come in with nothing to do but stare at the walls because after reading the CNN article called “Don’t Let a Hospital Kill You”, I was too afraid to touch any magazines in the Dr.’s office.  See one of my previous posts of that title if you would like to experience the same paranoia.  Dr. told me we’re going to induce me a week before my due date because I have large babies…  thank goodness for that, except that I’m ready NOW – do we really have to wait until July?!?

Now for the movie…  The Island is a sci-fi movie about a factory that manufactures humans.  It is set in the future – but not too far in the future, 2015 or something like that – there are monorails, flying motorcycles, and human clones aplenty.  It’s funny how in one scene, they thought they were being clever by showing gas prices to be over $4 / gallon, but I guess our 2008 society is a bit ahead of them, not in a good way either 🙁

So anyway, in The Island, the general public is under the impression that their “insurance policies” – as the clones are known – are simply organisms being grown for spare parts and will remain in a vegetative state.  The “insurance policies” however, are living, breathing, thinking, feeling humans who are housed in a self-contained facility within the factory.  They live from day to day with the hope of winning “the lottery”, which will send them to “the island” – supposedly a place of bliss where they will live happily ever after.  Ewan McGregor‘s character accidently finds out however, that winning the lottery is fatal, and “the island” is really what happens when a customer needs their insurance policy – ie, the clone is killed for its spare parts.  I’m not normally a fan of sci-fi, but this movie has a very interesting premise that doesn’t go too over the top, and I enjoyed it.  Without giving too much away, I would trade a scene in the middle (too cheesy!) for 2 at the end – scenes I thought should be added with things I’d like to see in the movie…  if you see or have seen the movie, I’ll tell you what I mean.  But I did like it, and like I said, I am not normally a fan of sci-fi, so I would recommend this one to sci-fi fans or action movie enthusiasts.

While we’re on the subject of politics, I was reading about Jenna Bush’s upcoming nuptial’s today, and I discovered an interesting article about the parallels of opposites between Bush’s daughter and former President Roosevelt’s daughter Alice, both of whom will be married while their fathers were Presidents of the United States; Jenna’s wedding taking place over a century after Alice’s. 

From CNN.com:
Doug Wead, a former aide to President George H.W. Bush and author of a book on presidents’ kin, calls Jenna’s ceremony “the anti-Alice Roosevelt wedding.” Former President Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter was married in 1906.

“That wedding took place during a time of prosperity and peace; this one at a time of economic struggle and war,” Wead said. “The Roosevelt family was outgoing, flamboyant; this is a private family. That was one of the most popular presidencies in American history. Even John Adams didn’t go on Mount Rushmore, but Teddy Roosevelt went on Mount Rushmore. This is an unpopular presidency. Alice had no bridesmaids. Jenna has 14.”

And one more little tidbit about Presidential offspring:  Jenna is the 22nd child of a United States President to marry while their fathers were in office.  Not that money is usually a problem for a president, but I wonder how many of those were daughters whose daddy’s were expected to foot the wedding bills?

While I am a current events junkie, I am most reluctant to follow politics for some reason. Give me true-crime stories, entertainment news, or natural disaster tales any day – I can’t get enough. But when it comes to politics, I have trouble even forcing myself to follow the news, even though they talk about it on one of my favorite channels (CNN) nonstop lately. You’d think it’d be enough motivation for me to follow politics just to be “in the loop”, but it’s a natural instinct of mine to tune out political news. How interesting then, that my husband is really ONLY interested in current events involving politics… I guess you could say we compliment each other that way. So while he had on CNN following some of the last of the primaries tonight, I heard an interesting story developing… it seems poor Hillary Clinton, who lost horribly in North Carolina today, couldn’t even get a break today at her wrap-up party after the primary… They had 2 confetti machines ready to shoot confetti over the crowd, and they malfunctioned, only to shoot the confetti a pathetic 4 feet from the machine… just not Hillary’s night, I guess…

This is my 100th blog post!  What a long way I’ve come from my first blog post, aptly and boringly titled, “First Post” – it was a description of me learning to blog!  And what a variety of subjects I’ve covered, from retractable sharpie pens, to kids’ blankies…  from movies and tv shows to animals, trips, and family life…  It seems like forever ago that I was taking you all through the 11, 572 snow days we had, and it’s been fun to share all these aspects of my life on the internet while learning things about my friends and family who read and/or comment on my posts.  So thanks to all my readers, even if you just read because I make you, thanks anyway…  I truly appreciate each and every comment I receive – written and spoken, keep it up!  And might I add that I’m the first tangents.org blogger to achieve this milestone…  hope to have others join me soon!

Since this is my fourth pregnancy, I’ve experienced a wide variety of the symptoms that go along with being “with child”.  It’s amazing to me how every pregnancy is different, even when they are experienced by the same woman.  Pregnancies are as different as the personalities of the children that result.  Is it possible then, that a child’s personality can actually be displayed through the symptoms of the mother’s pregnancy?  For example, my aunt told me that when she was pregnant with my cousin, she craved spicy food after not really liking it before.  My cousin, the result of the spicy food pregnancy, is now 31 years old and has always been a fan of spicy food!

When I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, my husband would blend a huge glass of juice for me every morning with lots of fruits and veggies in it.  My oldest daughter now prefers snacks of fruits and vegetables to junk food.  I didn’t really crave the fruits and veggies, so that’s a different example, but it’s still an illustration of how womb behavior may affect the child throughout life. 

My second daughter was, for lack of a better word, crazy in the womb.  She was the last thing I felt before I fell asleep at night, and the first thing I felt in the morning, and let’s not forget all those middle of the night bathroom trips…  she was kicking and rolling during those too.  I would often joke that I didn’t know if this baby ever sleeps.  Once she was born, I got the answer:  she doesn’t ever sleep and never did apparently.  It felt like she was tearing me apart from the inside out with her strong movements in the womb, and to this day, she is our strong-willed, “spirited” child.

My third daughter was very gentle as a fetus.  She rarely moved – compared to her older sister at least – and when she did, it was always in one spot.  As a toddler, she has a very sweet, patient, and obedient demeanor.  So, as for #4…  so far she moves a lot.  I don’t want to jinx anything here, but her movements remind me of our second daughter – the spirited one.  But I’ve also experienced some strange symptoms with this pregnancy that I haven’t felt before.  First, I’ve been having nightmares.  It’s common in pregnancy to have more vivid dreams, and I’ve experienced that, but lately I’ve had lots of nightmares, ones where I actually wake up too creeped out to go to the bathroom…  Strange.  And with this pregnancy, red fruit has been especially tasty.  I don’t crave it, but things like tomatoes, strawberries, and especially red grapes (I’ve always preferred green to red until now!) taste extra yummy to me.  It’s so weird to me how tastes can change during a pregnancy.  I’ve never liked bologna and still don’t, but during my first pregnancy, I liked it and ate it quite often.

There is probably some scientific research out there that speculates about how much a mother’s pregnancy symptoms impact the resulting child, but rather than research it, I think I will just wait and see what my girls are like when they enter adulthood and we can sit down and read my pregnancy diaries together, compare their personalities with that of their womb behavior, and share some good laughs.

This is the THIRD time I’ve gotten this email forward, so I thought it was worth mentioning in my blog.  The subject line of the email reads:  Fwd: Dangerous Spider Bite – Brown Recluse Spider (Graphic pictur…
The body of the email shows some awful pictures of someone’s infection on their hand that they supposedly got from a spider bite.  Since I am a skeptic of ANYTHING I get via email forward, I looked up this warning on snopes.com, the website that investigates possible urban legends and their origins.  Actually, while I was at it, I looked up snopes on snopes.com, seeing what they’d say about their own site being an urban legend, but that’s another post…

Anyway, back to the spider bite warning.  Instead of posting the pictures of the infection here, I will just provide a link to the snopes.com entry about it since the pictures are pretty gross…  Click here if you have a morbid curiousity and you’d like to see what the inside of someone’s hand looks like.‏  So anyway – and I find myself saying anyway again, which means lots of tangents in this post :).   Anyway, when I looked up the brown recluse spider bite warning on snopes.com, it said that the status of this legend is undetermined, which means that they don’t know if it’s true or not.  Evidently, the photos are real, and it’s really an infection in someone’s hand that is pictured, but the origin of the infection is not necessarily the spider bite.  Here is a description of the incident by the victim her-(or him) self:

 I suspect a spider bite was the cause.  I was out in
the wood at Caddo Lake and noticed a bite on my thumb.  The doctor I was
seeing thought it was a spider bite.  Other doctors told me it was a brown
recluse bite.  It was also a MRSA infection.  It became so infected
because the first antibiotic I was on was not doing any good and I tried
to finish the semester before going in to see the doctor.
It was a very interesting experience and I no longer wait to go in to the
doctor.  Whether or not it was a brown recluse bite or not I can’t say.  I
saw some very good doctors who specialize in spider bites and they thought
it was.  But you have probably seen the latest info on MRSA infections
being misdiagnosed as spider bites.

Umm…  this person described this experience as “interesting”?  Wow, what a mellow personality one must have to possess a wound that looks like that and describe it as interesting… 

So, the moral of the story is, be careful with spider bites.  Be even more careful with email forwards, and most importantly, (especially if you’ve read my post called, “Don’t Let a Hospital Kill You) take good care of skin infections before they become as serious as the one pictured in the spider warning email, or you will have an “interesting experience” of your own!

In the town where we live, I’ve noticed a weird phenomena:  there are many houses with second floor doors that lead seemingly nowhere.  Well, they lead outside, but that’s it – no stairwells, no balconies, no screened-in porches.  Just random doors on houses.  Perhaps there used to be something there, maybe a staircase, etc.  It would be one thing if there were only a few houses like these, but in my town alone, there are at least 10, one being next-door!  In a town this small, that is a lot.  Actually, they aren’t all second floor doors.  The church down the street has one that is about 3-4 feet off the ground – enough to see that it’s a door to nowhere, but not enough to be on the second floor.  I wonder what the purpose of these doors are and why there are so many?  Maybe it’s something to ask the library historian about, or maybe some of you fellow NW Ohioans who read this blog and have lived here longer than I can enlighten me – people didn’t waste doors in Chicago!

There’s been lots of talk of this number on my blog lately, but this time I’m referring to the movie 21, not the tv show.  I have to admit, I was a little reluctant to see this movie because the previews reminded me of Ocean’s 11, and I was not a big fan of that movie.  I also thought I might have trouble following the movie 21 because I don’t know how to play many of the popular card games prominent in Las Vegas; like poker, and most importantly Blackjack.  But I didn’t have trouble following the movie, and I actually enjoyed it from start to finish.  It was a good mix of action, thoughtful dialogue, good acting, and plot twists; all of which add up to a well-balanced and entertaining film.

The movie revolves around a college professor, played by the enjoyable and versatile Kevin Spacey, who trains a “club” of gifted math students to excel at the game of Blackjack.  They develop a system and take trips to Las Vegas to win lots of money.  Enter student Ben Campbell, the club’s newest recruit, who only wants enough money to pay for his dream of attending Harvard medical school.  He gets caught up in the lifestyle, however, and it’s interesting to see what happens next…  I won’t spoil it – it’s a good movie, go see it!

What a time for me to stumble across this article on CNN – Don’t Let a Hospital Kill You

I visit the doctor’s office monthly, and it’s time for me to start visiting every 2 weeks already!  Also, I will be a resident of a hospital in about 2 ½ months!  As I’ve written before, I try really hard to put my faith into the doctors and nurses who care for me, however, my husband is a born skeptic of the medical community.  Sometimes it’s difficult to cast his doubts and concerns aside, especially when I read something like this.  Also, since I grew up in a huge metro area, even though I love our small community, I have to be honest and say the small hospital here scares me a at least a little.  I haven’t shown my husband this article yet…  maybe I’ll wait until the baby and I are home and healthy in July?

Well, the Cubs lost their second series to the Brewers this season, but equally upsetting is what happened today during the 7th inning stretch.  Taking place at Wrigley Field, today’s game was the “rubber game” of the series.  Someone decided Bob Ueker, aka ‘the voice of the Brewers’ would be a good guest to come and lead the crowd in ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’.  Nevermind for a minute the events that took place during the song today; this decision doesn’t seem very wise to me from the get-go.  Bob Uecker was born and raised in Milwaukee.  He grew up watching the minor-league Milwaukee Brewers, and the first team he signed with in the major leagues was the Milwaukee Braves.  He’s been doing the play-by-play announcements for the Brewers on the radio since 1971, and still holds the job.  Why then, did someone deem it a good decision to have him come to Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, to lead the crowd during the 7th inning stretch?  If we pretend the Chicago White Sox don’t exist 🙂  – the Cubs have their biggest rivalry with their neighbors to the north, the Milwaukee Brewers.  So why invite someone who has obviously been a lifelong Milwaukee fan to do the 7th inning stretch during a Cubs / Brewers game on Cubs turf?  I just don’t get it…

Here is a play by play of today’s incident.  Bob Ueker comes out to sing the 7th inning stretch.  Nothing seemed amiss, until the part in the song that goes, “root, root, root, for the Brewers”.  He actually said ‘root for the Brewers’ at Wrigley Field.  He was immediately BOOED LOUDLY by the crowd, of course, so then he sings, “you do the same for the Cubs” to the tune of the song, but by this point, the organist just gives up because now he’s out of tune and has lost the organist in the song.  In order to get back on track, he then proceeds to skip ahead, or maybe it’s because he realized it would be an even worse decision to say something like “if they don’t win it’s a shame” about the Brewers in Wrigley Field.  Either way, he skips ahead to “for it’s ONE, TWO, THREE (organist comes back into the song, hardly missing a beat except for the made-up lyrics) strikes you’re out at the old ball game!”  I had kids to tend to, so I didn’t see the entire fallout from the fiasco, but I did get back to the tv just in time to hear Ueker say, “I’m rooting for the Brewers, what do they want me to do, root for the Cubs?”  YES!  Of course the Cubs fans want you to root for the Cubs, especially at Wrigley Field!  And if you can’t do that, pretend!  And if you can’t pretend, then stay in Milwaukee!

Well, forget Bob Ueker and whoever invited him to Wrigley today – that person was probably fired before the beginning of the 8th inning anyway.  The Cubs are off to a great start this year, and I can only hope I get less busy so I can see more games because they are playing some great baseball, and it’s fun to watch!  I can only hope they beat the pants off the Cardinals who are in first place in the Cubs division by only a half game…  That series begins tomorrow and I will be watching – in between kid duties, of course!  GO CUBS!