Spring weather is here (for the moment)

How awesome is this weather!!! It's been taxing sitting in my office today making an effort to not find a plausible reason for me to be outside or "work from home"..it's definitely one of those too nice to work inside days. If you can, go outside and enjoy the weather!! How's the weather by you?

Brown..out!

Game day!! LSU vs Ms State

GEAUX TIGERS!!! BEAT Ms. State!!

Got my game day gear on, grill going for this early game, wishing for LESS cowbell from the State crowd! I'm saying 29-17 Tigers!!!

Brown..out!!

Oh Happy Day!!

It's friday good people!! whoo hoo!!! This has been a fast but full week for me and I'm soooo looking forward to a weekend where I'm not on the road. In the last 2 weeks I've been in Houston, Dallas, Independence, La, Lafayette, Houston again, New Orleans, and my sister is trying to get me back in Houston next week for her birthday! I feel like I'm back in undergrad again where I was going to Houston like every every week or something crazy. I'm not a young whippersnapper and don't bounce back as quickly as I used to from those random mid-week road trips. When I left Houston last weekend I told them I wasn't coming back til like Christmas or something, even tho my niece will have a birthday and my nephew will have a birthday prior to Christmas so I probably would have been back in October and November ha ha. My calendar is filling up quick with meeting next week. I swear I spend 80% of my work life in a meeting. The worst are the friday back to back to back meeting that happen every other friday of the month. I don't know whose bright idea it was to hold all those meetings on fridays, but at least they're all back to back to back and I can almost stay in the same conference room ha ha. I'm not being very productive yet on this friday. I don't know why not, I have 50-11 thousand things I should be doing. I'm hoping the afternoon brings more success.

I'm already loving the shake ups in the college football ranks and its only week 4! I can't stand the BCS because it is very flawed and each season the BS of the system gets exposed. I was soooo glad to see Ole Piss lose to South Carolina last night! #4!! really Ole Piss, they hadn't played one SEC game, didn't finish the season very well last season and got a #4 ranking, yet can't get past S.C. HA!! Of course I know all too well that college football and the SEC in general that on any given Thursday or Saturday, anybody can beat anybody! I just have a chip on my shoulder about Ole Piss because I bought tix to the LSU/Ole Piss game in Oxford and Ole Piss rescinded on the tickets so now I'm left trying to find tickets to the game. I also GREATLY enjoyed USC losing to Washington last weekend. I can't STAND USC...highly overated, much like tOSU Buckeyes who can't win a big game to save their lives! 0-4 in the big game to be exact. I don't always see through purple/gold glasses, I know that Florida and Tebow is the truth! and I want to hate on him, but I can't. Kid has great character as a man and is a beast on the field. I just hope that when he comes to Tigerstadium we roll over him. It's not personal, its LSU football! We're about to get into SEC play where we'll really see what this years team is made of. I just hope our offense can get into a steady flow for a full game and not be as sporadic as we've been and I hope I don't hear much cowbell tomorrow against Moo State U.

GEAUX TIGERS!!! beat MS State!

Brown...out!

Decisions, Decisions..

I am torn.

My yard needs some SERIOUS attention before the HOA comes knocking at my door.

OR

Grey's Anatomy.

I'm leaning towards the yard, that way I can fast forward through the commercials if I want Grey's from the DVR..hmmm..

Brown..out!

I am not my job.

I was waiting on my car to finish getting detailed during lunch today and was thinking about the friends I have and how I haven't made any "new" friends since like 2003 or something. Wait, I lied, I have 1 new real friend that is in my inner circle these days that I met in 2006/2007 I wonder if we get to a certain age and we just stop making friends. I have made new acquaintances, but not too many people that I call friend, friend. I come across lots of people in lots of different settings and it's not hard for me to have conversations with people. It's easy for me to discern who is interesting and who is faking the funk. People will go all out in some of the social settings to make themselves seem more than what they are. They'll immediately get to talking about 1) their career and/or 2) their educational background. Next time you meet someone new pay attention to the conversation, if they say something in the first oh, 30 seconds about their job and what they do, they most likely have nothing else going for them and like to define themselves and their worth by what they do. It's easy to introduce yourself and immediately say "I'm Angie and I run a consulting business" it just flows. Maybe because we spend so much time engulfed in our careers that we forget that we are not our jobs. I get caught up in that sometimes myself but I am way more than a business consultant, a grant writer, a director of blah blah blah.

My mom loves to introduce me to her friends and she dubiously ALWAYS seems to include my career, in her case I think she's just proud of me and is "showing" me off a lil bit. She knows I don't like to make a big deal about "me" in general so she takes it upon herself to do it for me in some settings. I've told her before about it, but that seems to be a never ending exercise in futility. She knows I have other beaming qualities but the "success" factor is her favorite light to shine. I'm sure if I were a fryer at Popeyes she wouldn't be so quick to announce it to the world. It's all kinda comical to me now.

Embrace it folks, you are not your job and neither am I.


Brown..out!

I'm not feeling it..

These braces today man. I'm ready to rip them out of my mouth myself. I've already called in this morning for an "emergency" appointment because some wire is trying to stick its way through my cheek. Talk about irritating and painful. No amount of wax is working. Jesus keep me near the cross. 3 more months. Let the count down officially begin.

**UPDATED** Talk about relief!! It took like 5 min for the technician to snip snip the wire and get me back in business. Folks alredy say I don't eat as it is, and with that wire attacking my jaw, it was almost impossible to do so! YaY Dr. Sherman for having on-call folks who take "emergency" appointments.

Brown..out!

True Life: I'm addicted to google

I can't help it. I can't stop it. I can only hope to contain it.

Seriously, I google no less than *mumble mumble* times a day! It's just so darn convenient. Let's see what I have googled today:

1. Google, yes, I googled goole. How do you think I got ----------->
   
2. Lincoln Aviator wheels
3. 265/35/22
4. 5 to 6 lug wheel adapter
   
5. when is daylight savings time
6. epidemiology
7. risk assessment
   
8. spa and baton rouge
9. Australia and weather
10. ski boots
11. breast cancer and mammogram and louisiana
12. breast cancer and transportation barriers
13. united nations and members
    

That's all. I think. I don't know what I did before google. I'm surely not about to "bing" nor will I "yahoo" to get my searches. I'm a one search engine gal and google has my heart. Monogamy has its perks as google has yet to let me down. Somedays I even "feel lucky" just to spice things up and keep it fresh. I just wonder how long I can keep this relationship hot and steady without getting bored with the Mr. I have a short attention span when I'm not being stimulated. I would hate to have to find another search engine to push my throttle.

Brown..out!

Toot toot!!

The last few months/weeks have been crazy at work, but I'm starting to see the fruit of my labor. Back in May I labored and labored on writing 2 MASSIVE HIV/AIDS grants for 3 of the hospitals, well, 2 combined efforts because they're close in proximity and then the other is on the opposite end of I-10, anyway, found out last week that they were both funded!!! WHOOP!! WHOOP!!! I'm so excited for the clinics who will be receiving the money. Both were funded at the maximum amount of $1.75M over 5 years. And to think, one of them almost didn't get submitted to the Feds due to some bureaucratic red tape, oh how that would have been a colossal waste of my time to get all that research done, stats researched, pages upon pages written and it all be for naught. I think the people of those regions who are being treated in the Early Intervention Clinics will now have more access to HIV/AIDs care, education and meds. I still find the HIV stats for La and BR to be SCARY and SAD. I can't fathom having unprotected sex in this day and age. The numbers don't lie. I didn't get a real chance to catch my breath once I was done with those 2 grants because I was already knee deep in literature reviews about blood pressure monitoring for another grant.

Just that quick I had to switch gears and "learn" about hypertension and blood pressure. I'm not a clinician nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn at all during that time so I felt like I was back in graduate school with all the reading I was doing and on top of it I was still kinda in HIV/AIDs info mode. Well I can now tell you about the white coat affect, the % of patient population in the state that has Stage 1, Stage 2, Pre-Hypertension and Hypertension. I can tell you what is a good "reading" and at what intervals hypertensive patients should take their pressure. Yea, stuff that has NOTHING to do with my immediate background, but that's part of the luxury with being a grant writer. I'm often thrown into areas that are not my expertise at all but I know people in different fields who I can lean on for resources and what not. And people wonder why I know about "random" things, well, it comes with the job, plus, I'm a closet nerd. I'm still waiting to hear back on whether or not that particular grant was funded, keeping my fingers crossed and guess what NOW I'm on to researching breast cancer information for a grant that is due next month.

I'm hoping to be 4 for 4 when it's all said and done by the end of the year. I got a late start on the grant writing this year because of all of the outside "stuff" that was going on with the organization, but I seem to be on a roll now. Just wanted to take a moment and toot my own horn a lil bit.

Geaux ME!!! Geaux ME!!! Geaux ME!! ha ha

Brown....out!

I'm still here...

For a while there I was contemplating moving this here lil blog because there were a few posts here that I did not properly quote to give credit to the original author and the original author asked me to remove those posts which I did per the request yet I was catching hell in my inbox about it and I thought starting over would be the right thing to do, but I'm not the run away kinda chick. I apologized to the person(s) at hand and I'm over it. I'm mad at myself for even going on that little hiatus and not having the blog open for a day or so and considering changing the blog name. Momentary lapse of confidence in WHO I AM.

I know my character because I've met ME. For anyone who stumbles to this here corner of blogger to "see" what's going on and to see what the hoopla is all about well, there is no hoopla other than what is or was being created in cyberspace. I'm very comfortable in my own skin. Comfortable in MY life. Comfortable with MY issues. Comfortable with MY relationships Comfortable with my word.

So, I'm still here.

Brown(C1)..out!