why I love vanity plates

so, I was out getting lunch today and I was driving behind a car whose license plate read: "4 GEEZUS" At this moment I don't even have anything witty to add...I will just let the license plate speak for itself.

Deep thoughts

1. On Saturday I watched Natalie, she's 11 and she is awesome. She is quite possibly the most sophisticated 11 year old that I know. She is a big fan of the Disney channel and so after dinner we watched the latest Disney channel movie. The story had two main plots. The first being that this girl who is a virtual nobody in school accidentally has her personal journal published. It becomes a best selling book and she now is faced with a new life of popularity and ends up pushing her true and nerdy friends away in the process. The second main plot line is that she has a huge crush on the most dreamy and popular boy in school. Her best friend (who is also a guy) really likes her, but she doesn't see it because she's too busy drooling over Mr. Popular. Like all Disney movies it has a predictable ending... The girl ends up apologizing to her friends for being a jerk, they in turn forgive her and they all have a group hug. She also realizes that while the cute, popular boy may be cute and popular, he has the personality of a sponge and ends up realizing that her best guy-friend is actually the guy for her! So, after the movie, I turned to Natalie and said (kind of joking), "what did we learn from this movie?" Natalie looked at me and smiled and said, "don't let your personal journal get published." While not the life lesson I was looking for, she does have a point. She asked me what I would do if my journal was ever published. I said I didn't think anyone would publish it, my life is not all that exciting. She then said the other lesson was that "cute boys are shallow." Again, not quite the lesson I was going for, but this one I could work with. I explained that message was not to judge a book by the cover, just because someone is attractive, doesn't mean they're a quality person... they can be, but there is not a 100% correlation between the two. She told me that a lot of the kids in her grade started "dating" this past year. I asked her what she thought about that. She said, "I think it's stupid". "Why do you say that?" I ask. "Because they're 11, where are they going to go on a date...it's just dumb." I was impressed by her logic in the situation, what a smart cookie!!


2.Yesterday afternoon, Liz and I hung out at panera for a few hours. She got lunch, but I had already eaten, so I didn't get anything. The following conversation happened after she finished her lunch. Liz: "If I get a brownie will you help me eat it?" Kate: "I'll have a few bites, but I have tennis in an hour and I don't want to throw up during tennis." Liz goes up to get a brownie and comes back with a brownie and a cookie. Kate(looking at the two baked good on the tray): "What happened here?" Liz (in reference to the cookie): "It just looked so lonely up there...with it's six friends." As any good friend would do, I helped her eat the baked goods. After desert was gone we both attempted to do something productive with our time. We were both working on stuff and Liz looks up at me and says, "do you ever look at bread and just think you could eat pounds of it?" She then referenced a stack of fococcia bread and said, "if you had that at home, you could always eat it and always be full." Wow... profound, I know! I just wanted to pass along these deep thoughts so that you can take some time in your day to reflect on the profound nature of baked goods and focaccia bread.

just another day at the office

Our office administrator is out today because she had some surgery on her arm, so today and I am Kate: speech therapist and office administrator. One of the advantages of sitting at the front desk instead of in my office is that I can hear what's going on in the other therapy sessions. Every other Friday my boss has 2 boys, well call them "Bill" and "Ted". They are both about 19-20 years old and they are both have significant cognitive delays. In order for you to appreciate any of this, I have to describe Bill and Ted to you. Bill is about 6 foot 4 and at least 250-300lbs. He is HUGE. You have to remind him that he needs to shake your hand because he likes to give hugs... and if he hugs you it will knock the wind out of you. So, I am at the front desk trying to schedule evaluations and I hear, from my bosses office, Bill singing "We are the champions" at the top of his lungs. So, of course, Ted has to join in. Ted is also a pretty big kid (not nearly as big as Bill), and he is much more delayed than Bill...he has much lower language skills. Bill has a very low voice, but Ted's voice is probably higher than mine. so, now, I am trying to talk to people on the phone and tune out the sound of two, 19 year old, guys singing Queen at the top of their lungs. It's never a dull moment!

To boldly go where no man has gone before...

So, if you are really my friend, you know that I have a deep love for Star Trek...and if you are REALLY my friend, you know this and still love me anyways. As a young child who was raised on Star Trek, much of my free time was spent contemplating the break in the space time continuum and the notion of being "beamed" somewhere. I always hoped that by the time I was a "grown-up" star trek would be real... that we would fly around the universe in nifty space crafts and meet alien beings. Alas, I am nearly a grown-up and the chances of me traipsing through space with Jean-Luke Picard are rather slim. This morning, I was reading the news clips on my homepage and there was a link to an article about how some famous people are reserving spots on a 2008 flight to space. The actual time in space is a mere 15 minutes (which includes 5 minutes of weightlessness). The cost for 15 minutes in space? $200,000. If we start now, we would only need to save roughly $400.00 per day for the next year and a half and we too can have our 15 minutes in space. If anyone out there is thinking, "hmmm... what should I get Kate for Christmas?" You can rest your weary mind...a ticket to space will do just fine!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060717/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_transport_virgingatlantic

An all American love story: boy meets girls from Germany on internet and goes to Germany with his mom to meet her

I have a acquired a new group adolescents from one of our therapists who is moving. I meet with them every other Wednesday evening. Last night was our first group, so we spent most of the hour doing ice-breakers and getting to know each other. I had the kids in the group write down two questions that they would want to know about someone in order to get to know them better. We then took turns choosing a question at random. On of the young gentlemen received the question, "have you ever been to a foreign country" He replied by saying he was pretty close to the boarder of Canada once, but that's it. He continued though, and said that if he went to a foreign country he would want to go to Germany. "Oh, why Germany?" I asked. "Because my brother is there and he really likes it" replied my student. I, of course, inquired as to the reason why his brother was in Germany...thinking perhaps he was in the military or something. My student said, "Well he is visiting his girlfriend." "Oh, where did they meet?" I ask innocently. "They met online." He continued to tell me how his brother and his mom were in Germany for a week so that his brother can meet this girl he met online. Our office administrator asked me today if my parents would have let a young, teenage, Kate go to Germany to visit her new online boyfriend. I can safely say the answer to that question would have been NO! Really, I appreciate that I have a lot of options in my life in terms of where I live, what I do, the kind of activities I can be involved in...how to meet people, but I can't help but feel it's all gotten a little complicated. It kind of makes my head spin to think that I could meet some nice young man from, I dunno, let's say the UK, online and end up on a 12 hour plane ride to go meet them! Maybe I'll just let my parents pick someone out for me... or maybe not...yeah, 'not' is definitely the answer to that question.