Just lost my blog post- now that’s a bummer!  With no warning whatsoever, Windows Internet Explorer closed taking my blog and several other works in progress with it.  Oh, God, I think one may have been a job application!  I will reconstruct- Last night I had a bad dream; about automobile accidents and bloody bodies.  It is a dream that recurs in various forms.  This time I was neither driver nor passenger in the wrecked car, so while disturbing, the dream did not wake me.  Not only that, the alarm did not wake me for ten minutes!  I stayed up way too late to finish a novel.

Once a long time ago I had the car accident dream, and my niece died in a car accident.  I won’t say it was at the exact same moment, but I found out about her death while still shaken from the dream.  Since then, accident and disaster dreams leave me on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  And I still worry, as we did in childhood, that if I die in my dream I will die in real life. 

Do you dream?  I hope you dream; I hope you dream in color, dear reader.  I am a dreamer; day as well as night; although the night dreams are darker.  In my daydreams I am a Walter Mitty-like character*, but only at night do I face the firing squad.   I’m the only adult I know who still has night terrors; waking up screaming in terror with no memory of any dream.  Night terrors are different from nightmares, which are definitely dreams.   In my dreams, there are monsters, ghosts, and all of the creatures that most leave behind when they enter adulthood.  There are unseen assailants, gun-toting bad guys, alien spacecraft, as well as the more common falling or arriving late for a test for which I have not studied. 

Daughter Ion seems to have inherited my tendency to dream.  Recently she dreamed that I was flushing all of her clothes down the toilet, and they fit!  They flushed successfully, too, without clogging the toilet, which is how we know it was her dream and not mine.  The dream gave me pause; does she think I am that kind of mother?  I, who have never even censored what she wears to school, save occasionally begging her to wear a jacket in winter so I don’t get arrested for child endangerment?

*Credit where credit is due:  Walter Mitty is a character developed by James Thurber in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” a short story first published in 1939.  In high school our drama club produced the play by the same name.  In it, characters smoked.  Those of us with parts in the play smoked joyfully with the sense of getting away with something wicked.  I still feel that way when I have a cigarette.

January 2012.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
Henry David Thoreau

New Year's Resolution 2012: To let the song out before I go to my grave! Now, if I could just figure out what that means...

Right now I am trying to rid my life of the quiet desperation! Walden Pond, where are you? The expressions "rat race" and "spinning my wheels" come to mind. There is a sameness to life. Each Thursday is like the Thursday before, and on and on.

Last week, I watched the movie "Life in a Day." (National Geographic films.) Life in a Day is a documentary film comprising an arranged series of video clips selected from 80,000 clips submitted to the YouTube video sharing website, showing respective occurrences from around the world on a single day, July 24, 2010. The film is 94 minutes 57 seconds long and includes scenes selected from 4,500 hours of footage in 80,000 submissions from 192 nations. I really enjoyed the film; watched with a small international audience at the International Center of our local university. I laughed, I cried, I ate pizza. Such is life! I recommend it. The film brought home to me once again that we are not so different, after all, no matter where we live.

Long time no post! Radioactive girl has been one busy health physicist. Whoa, I almost wrote "one busty health physicist." OK, that is probably true for the most part, since more health physicists are male- 58% as opposed to 42% female- the odds are in my favor. I am currently working on the annual medical licensee audit for a major medical center. Last year's audit comprised of 46 pages, of interest to no-one but the state department of Radiological Health or the NRC. Some hospital personnel have been known to read those parts that pertain to them. I have been able in past years to do some cutting and pasting, but not this year. I have abandoned the NRC suggested audit form for that released by my state. We have recently become an NRC "Agreement State." That means that the State has agreed to take on much of the NRC's work regarding radioactive materials use within that state. I'm not really sure what the state gets out of the bargain, except perhaps a sense of control. I have added a picture of the new PET/CT scanner room in the New Cancer Center. Nice fake views to look at, don't you think? The PET/CT area of the new Cancer Center is just one of many areas I will audit. We use the term "survey" since audit sounds so scary. It amounts to the same thing, but is kinder, gentler.

Wow, have I been a slacker!

OK, no blogs for nearly a year! So sorry Charlie! Since I have no readers save myself, I guess it doesn't matter. It is February; yesterday was Valentine's Day. It was so warm here that it could have been May. Tomorrow my garden spots will be turned for the coming growng season, and we'll see where it goes from there. All three of them are in deep shade. This year I hope to grow some salad-y stuff that can be eaten right away.

Friday night we saw "The King's Speech." It was a great movie, however as a former stutterer, I found it a bit difficult to view at times. Ion had fun counting all of the actors who were also in "Harry Potter." (Helena Bonham Carter- Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mum) and Bellatrix Lestrange; Michael Gabon- King George V and Albus Dumbledore; Timothy Spall- WInston Churchill and Peter Pettigrew)

Nighty night.

-Radioactive Girl

It Came from the Clear, Blue Sky

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. It has been 5 days since my last post.

Yesterday we had a little thunder-boomer. It is typical for this time of year, and this storm was highly localized with 99% of the storm in the city of Charlottesville. I can’t prove it, but the storm seems to have spun off a small twister that travelled through our little neighborhood, right through my little vegetable patch and over my house. The vegetable garden is flat. Just squash. Ha ha. Daughter Ion says it will come back. The air smells like flattened herbs, especially cilantro. Yum! I smell it and want to make salsa.

Fresh salsa from the garden:

Things You'll Need:

· 4 tomatoes, diced

· 1/3 cup of onion, diced

· 1/2 bell pepper, with seeds removed and diced

· 2 Tablespoons or small bunch of cilantro, chopped

· 1 clove of garlic finely minced

· 1 jalapeno or serrano pepper, with seeds removed and diced

· 1 Tablespoon of fresh lime juice

· salt and pepper to taste

· Dice vegetables into a bowl, including juice.

· Add salt ans pepper to taste.

· Serve with chips.

Our lovely Japanese neighbors across the street, with the nicest yard, lost a maple tree. Our little elm tree is turned inside out. It is hard to describe it any other way. The limbs are all arranged differently than the day before. Out back of the house, the sycamore lost two of five tops, and there are numerous other trees and limbs down. I can’t walk the dogs through our little mini woods; it is obstructed. On the other hand, the backyard is likely to get a lot more sun. I stopped by the house at 3 PM today to see if the power had been restored. Nope. Over 24 hours without power in a hot humid climate is not pretty. I don’t dare open the refrigerator. The puddle of water on the kitchen floor tells me the ice has melted in the freezer. So much for that food.

Nighty-night.

-Radioactive Girl 2010

Origins of Radioactive Girl III

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. It has been...oh, well, you do the math...too long since my last post.

Further origins of Radioactive Girl

I can’t remember when I first had an interest in things radioactive. When do we learn about radiation? How? I think it’s something that we absorb from the culture we are immersed in. One thing I do remember is when the Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant (right) was built, in my old stomping grounds of Maine. There must have been some controversy- placing a nuclear power right smack on the coast of good ol’ Vacationland. My brother’s Physics class was going to tour the plant before it opened, and I begged the teacher to let me go along. The power plant was right on the water- constructed on the Bailey Peninsula o Wiscassett, Maine. The power plant ran from 1972 to 1996, producing much of Maine’s power. It was and remains Maine’s only nuclear power plant.

When we arrived in Wiscassett, we found that this was actually a press conference and not a tour. There was a viewing window where we could gaze at the power plant across the waters of the bay. I was a bit disgruntled about that! Time Magazine was on hand for the opening. There were refreshments and lots of videos and presentations promoting the power plant, but I really wanted to see the working guts.

To this date I have never toured the inside of a working power plant. The University of Virginia (my employer) had a Nuclear Physics program and a working reactor, but it was decommissioned before I arrived here. It’s just an empty building, now. Where will the next generation of Health Physicists train?

Nighty-night.

-Radioactive Girl

Why can't I lose weight?

Why can’t I lose weight?

After my orthopedic injury, I gained about 20 “excess” pounds. My doctor told me I had to lose them. Before my surgery, I had the perfect excuse that I could not exercise, could not even walk as evidenced by my handicapped status, and I milked that excuse for all it was worth. After surgery to repair the damaged joint, I found myself unable to eat anything because of nausea brought on by pain medications. My doctor again told me to lose the 20 pounds. Six months out, and still 20 pounds overweight, he reiterated his command. Now, one year after my surgery, I am doing famously- no drugs, and can even work out at the gym. My weight, however, continues to creep up. “Well,” said the trainer after two months had failed to take off even one pound (in fact I packed on two) “muscle weighs more than fat.” True, but I know fat when I see it! My BMI and body fat % both improved, but I can see it is going to be a long, slow road. Here’s why- I eat. And eat. My favorite food is chocolate, and I have found a way to put all four food groups into chocolate. Let me demonstrate:

Magic Cookie Bars from EAGLE BRAND®

Ingredients

· 1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted

· 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs (Grains- whole, even)

· 1 (14 ounce) can EAGLE BRAND® Sweetened Condensed Milk (Dairy)

· 2 cups semisweet chocolate morsels

· 1 1/3 cups flaked coconut (Fruits and Vegetables)

· 1 cup chopped nuts (Protein)

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F (325 degrees for glass dish). Coat 13x9-inch baking pan with no-stick cooking spray.

2. Combine graham cracker crumbs and butter. Press into bottom of prepared pan. Pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over crumb mixture. Layer evenly with chocolate chips, coconut and nuts. Press down firmly with a fork.

3. Bake 25 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool. Cut into bars or diamonds. Store covered at room temperature. Enjoy!

See? All four food groups plus chocolate which will soon have its own group- antioxidants or mood enhancers or some such. Guilt free!

Nighty-night.

Radioactive Girl.