All posts by reneeinnd

Family, Games, Kids, Seasons, Uncategorized

April Fool

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One of my children is very adept at pranking me on April 1, usually with plausible texts about rash decisions or changes in career that I fall for every time. This year I turned the tables and it was satisfying, albeit subtle.

On Monday morning I sent the following text :

“In honor of today I thought of sending you a text asking you to please not play an April Fools trick since my newly diagnosed heart condition couldn’t handle it, but I thought that would be a mean thing to do, so I didn’t.”

I got the following response:

“Hahahahaha“.

Then, after a few seconds I got the following text:

“So, no heart condition I’m assuming?”

I assured the recipient (someone who is always concerned about  my health) that no, there was no heart condition, but thought to myself “Yes!! I got them!!!!”

Tell about neat tricks you played on someone or tricks someone played on you.

History, Kids, Nature, News, Science, Uncategorized

Big Splash

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We live very near to an important geologic area called the Hell Creek Formation.  It covers parts of western North Dakota, Western South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. It contains some of the richest fossil beds from the Cretaceous period, the era that ended with the death of the dinosaurs.

Recently, two paleontologists published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences  titled “A seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota”,  outlining just what happened in what is now North Dakota in the minutes following the crash of an asteroid in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. This was the asteroid that is thought to have killed all the dinosaurs.

Based on what they found in a grey/ black layer near the top of a butte on a ranch near Bowman, ND, about 80 miles from my town, they estimate that in minutes after the asteroid crashed in Yucatan, seismic waves of water and molten rocks smashed into what is now the Hell Creek Formation.  Molten glass particles filled the air, choking any living thing.  Fish (salt water and fresh water), trees, rocks, dinosaurs, and beads of molten glass were swept up into a jumbled mass, preserved in the mud and debris for the modern paleontologists to find.  The fish fossils in the KPg boundary dig  were so well preserved that they could see that their mouths were open, gasping for air.  It triggered fires within 1500 miles of the impact and formed a plume of fire that rose halfway to the Moon.  They estimate 70% of the world’s forests burned.  Almost all life on the planet died.

Well, I find that pretty awe inspiring and amazing.  I like it when scientists can make things real and exciting.  Yucatan is a long way from where I live. That must have made a really big splash when it hit.

What has amazed you recently? Would you want to be a paleontologist? Did you ever do cannon balls?

 

Business, Family, Uncategorized, work

Seymour’s Desk

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Anyone who looks at my desk at work or at home would be correct in thinking that I don’t like to file and organize my papers.   I only do so under duress, or when I want to make a good impression on a new client or house guest. I am proud to say that no matter how messy my desks look, I know where everything is.  I lose things when I tidy up. Husband tries to keep his things filed and organized, and invariably can’t find things when he looks for them.

The other day I  looked at the pile of papers on my home office desk and realized that it resembled the piles of papers I saw on the desk of one of my favorite graduate school professors.  Seymour was a prodigious pack rat, and threw piles of papers on his desk until he couldn’t see over them.  (He was an incredibly short man, so the pile didn’t have to be too high to obscure his vision.)  I was always amazed when I went to his office and asked for a paper I had written for one of his classes the previous semester, and how he knew exactly what layer the paper was at, and that he could retrieve it from the pile without knocking all the other papers over.

Seymour was a wonderful psychologist and a very funny man.  He spoke in a thick Bronx accent and a slight lisp.   Once he got flustered in court and referred to a Canadian judge of Queen’s Bench  as “Your Majesty” when giving expert testimony.   I believe he is still alive, in his late 80’s or 90’s.  I wonder how high the paper pile  on his is desk now?

What is your organizational style?  

gardening, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

Good Stewards

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Today’s post comes from tim.

i take my compost to the compost drop off spot by bush lake near my house.

i knew there was something special about this time of year and the woods but i didn’t put my finger on it until yesterday.

during the winter the woods are trees standing in a white floor that makes the woods feel like a vista of strategically placed trees in the word of white.

In the summer the undergrowth fills all the available space with things springing forth and only the path that is well worn is passable in the city scape.

up north where the canopy is so dense that the undergrowth can be filtered so effectively that the walk through the woods is a dream like crunch of leaves and twigs and a graveyard of fallen trees and broken branches left to figure out how to deal in a natural way with restoration.

from mid march til may 1 the woods are brown and gray with subtle shades of yellow rust and green that allow you to envision what could be if the buckthorns weren’t devouring the available light and space,choking out the wildflowers and ferns and grasses in their way.

i see a new creeper in the ditches that is slowly but surely covering the adjacent space with a vengeful lust. A 10 foot run three years ago turns to a 50 foot run and then an entire landscape with the nearby former plants buried by the blanket of the new invader

a while back i lived near bush lake and loved walking my dogs along the trails and paths that are there. I was aware of the problem with the invasive plants and the choking out of the native plants that comes along with it. The buckthorn issue is one i have heard about but it wasn’t until walking my dogs that i thought about it.

now i wish i could figure out a way to inspire people to work the area within a block of their house. maybe a grading system for a buckthorn collecting contest.

documented progress and maintenance reports. grading that makes the neighborhood aware of the invasion the solution and the progress realized and aspired to

i can do a 10×10 area of the woods. it feels like something that can be accomplished but a milllion acres feels like too much.

stewardship is such a admirable thing. maybe free park passes to minnesota state parks for picking up after the invasion? lions, church groups, neighborhood communities  and pta organizations taking responsibility for a chunk of the woods like they do picking up a mile of the freeway today would be a start.

if you could pick a little corner of the world to fix what might it be (take 2 they’re small)

 

 

Family, pets, Uncategorized

Animal Magnetism

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Husband is allergic to cats. Actually, he is allergic to most things airborne, like dust or pollen. He lives his life the way he chooses despite his chronic post nasal drip. He is allergic to most conifers, yet we always have a live tree at Christmas.  An artificial tree would just collect dust every year, so it is toss up between that and pollen.  We also haven’t been without a cat for the past 30 years.

Luna, our grey tabby,  adores Chris. His is the only lap she jumps into. His is the only chair and foot stool she rubs and marks. She cries at night when he is at the reservation. She senses when it is Thursday and it is time for him to come home.  Around 7:00 pm she starts meowing and rubbing up against his chair.  She jumps in the chair and sits there, waiting, until she hears his truck in the driveway. Then she runs to the entryway and waits for the door to open. She likes it when I toss paper balls to her. She likes it when I fill her water bowl.  I just don’t have that special something that makes her adore Chris.

How have animals let you know their opinion of you?  Tell about your animal relationships.

Seasons, Uncategorized, work

Funny Clothes

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It was always interesting to people watch in Winnipeg in early Spring, since people dressed so oddly.   We would see folks strolling in downtown Winnipeg wearing winter parkas, toques,  and shorts. It wasn’t quite winter, nor yet spring,  so they dressed for any eventuality.

I had the same experience the other day at work. I rode the elevator to the first floor to pick up a client from the waiting room.  I saw one man wearing a parka and a knitted, gaily colored Scandinavian stocking hat with ties and ear flaps. Next to him was a fellow with a top hat festooned with a feather. Standing by the receptionist desk was someone wearing a yarmulke.  I guess it was the day for special hats. We seldom have  such a variety of head gear. Caps and cowboy hats are the norm.

My wardrobe consists mainly of corduroy pants and sweaters.  I don’t wear hats since I think I look weird in them. I think it has something to do with the shape of my head.  I don’t like to draw attention to myself with my clothes. I wish I was brave enough to  wear a top hat to work, or maybe one of those Dutch lace caps with wings. I suppose, though, that people would say I dress “funny”.

Were you ever a flamboyant dresser? What do you wear that draws attention?  Did your mother used to dress you funny?

gardening, Uncategorized, Words

If I were I Carrot

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Husband and I ordered all our seeds for this year’s garden, but still peruse the seed catalogs to see if we missed anything. We received a new catalog this year from a place in Missouri (Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds), and we noticed they had the most delightful descriptions  of their seed varieties. You can tell they love the seeds they sell, and we thought the blurbs for some of the seeds sounded like descriptions of people. Here are some examples:

Cold hardy old variety from Denmark (Strawberry)

Earthy and spicy (Carrot)

Exceptionally sweet, tender, and above all-tough (Cucumber)

A Dakota variety,  so you know its rugged (Pole Bean)

Arrives fashionably late (Parrot Tulips)

A classic pear shape (Paste Tomato)

A reliable keeper (Cabbage)

Large and elegantly showy (Cosmos)

Husband just wants to be a reliable keeper. I like to think of myself as a rugged, Dakota variety. I want to avoid pear shaped.

Write a seed catalog blurb of yourself or someone else.

Art, Family, History, Kids, Uncategorized

Modern Heraldry

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The family crest in the header photo is that of my Great Grandmother Cluver.  The Cluvers were a very old family of knights and landowners  from northern  Germany near Bremen.  The crest shows a black claw of a bear on a golden field. The open helmet has a ball with a wreath and a column of peacock feathers.  I’m not sure what the seven flags represent. The family was in its  heyday in the 14th and 15th centuries.  You can see the crest on Cluver family memorial plaques from that time period in the Bremen Dom, or cathedral. They chose to remain Roman Catholic during the Reformation and lost most of their property and land when the region  was occupied by the Lutheran Swedes during the Thirty Years War.  By the time my great grandmother was born in the late 1800’s, they were small farmers and shop keepers. My great grandmother was a domestic servant before her marriage. That crest hasn’t reflected the status of the family for several hundred years.

Daughter rescued a hapless Yellow Lab from a busy intersection in Tacoma last week, and managed to track down the owners since the pup was  microchipped. When she told me about it I thought “well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”,  since she saw us rescue many a dog and cat and get them to safety. That is when I thought about our family crest and what an updated one would look like.  I think it would have the profile of a Welsh Terrier in the center encircled by cats. Husband said a rolling pin and a garden fork would be appropriate symbols, too, as well as the Greek letter Psi, a symbol for psychology.  We should have a violin or cello worked into the design. Of course, there would be a baboon, too.

What would be on your modern family crest?

Technology, Uncategorized, work

Change

24 Comments

I am sorry to inflict yet another tale of my work place on the Baboons, but this is something big. Tomorrow marks the end of an era where I work. We are transitioning from the computerized medical records system we have used since 1999 to a completely new one. The new one is complex, completely different, and incompatible with the old one, and is still being tweaked and altered as we speak. We go online at midnight tonight.  We were supposed to go online a year ago, but they decided it wasn’t ready. Well, it still isn’t really ready, but it is starting anyway. It will be used by all the human service centers and the State Hospital. It will be the system by which we document all our all our progress notes, evaluations, assessments, billing information–all the records of client services at our agencies.

All our old electronic records are to be transferred to the new system by midnight. It is interesting that none of the private pay insurance information transferred, so the business office folks have had to manually enter all the insurance information for all the open clients.  I wonder what else didn’t transfer. They had a trial run of the system a couple of weeks ago, and the whole system crashed when the hundreds of employees  tried to log on to it.

In 1999, many employees retired so they wouldn’t have to start using an electronic record system. We haven’t had mass retirements, but the anxiety this change is causing is palpable.

Oh, change in the work place can be hard. We are prepared for a wild ride.

What major changes have occurred in the workplace for you in the last 20 years. How do you deal with workplace change? What changes do you worry about for the future?

Business, Medicine, Uncategorized, work

Do It Myself!

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I have always been a “Do it myself!” sort of person. When I was 2, I got mad if my mom dressed me, so I would take off the clothes she put on me and put them on again by myself. I know. I have control issues.

I am currently the only full time psychologist at my agency. One person does psychological evaluations twice a month at our agency  via telehealth from her office in Florida.  Another guy comes to my agency from the Human Service Center in Bismarck once a month to do sex offender evaluations.

Once every other week, the Human Service Center in Bismarck sends a young woman psychometrist to our agency to administer and score the tests for the other two psychologists. I administer and score my own tests. My agency has lost positions due to budget cuts. With only me full time, we can’t justify a psychometrist just for our agency.  My supervisor, who works at the Bismarck agency, is always encouraging me to have the Bismarck psychometrist score my tests on the days she is here to prevent me from burning out. Sometimes that works. Usually, I prefer to do it myself, because I can do it when I need them scored and I don’t have to wait for her to come and do them.  Last week I agreed to have her take some tests to Bismarck with her to score. That was a big mistake.

The psychometrist is a bright, bubbly, and bouncy young woman who drives me crazy with her bumptous, blundering ways.  She doesn’t think before she speaks or acts, doesn’t read situations well, and often barges into my office when she is here, asking me in a very breathless fashion to do rather inconvenient things to help her and the other two psychologists out without checking what my schedule might be for the day.  “Could you do a IQ test right now on Dr. X’s patient!?  We don’t want to inconvenience him to come back to have it done another day.”  (All hands-on testing like IQ tests have to be done by me, since the telehealth psychologist can’t reach through the screen to administer tests like that).  Of course I couldn’t. I was booked solid the whole day.  It takes an hour and a half, on average, to administer an IQ test.

Last week she took some tests to Bismarck to score, and then put the scored tests in the office inbox of the psychiatrist who works at the Bismarck Human Service Center and who also comes out to our agency.  She asked the psychiatrist to transport my scored tests to me the next time she came out to Dickinson. We often have Bismarck folks transport things back and forth between our agencies. She didn’t check with psychiatrist in person. She just left her a note.

Today I phoned  the psychometrist to ask where my testing was.  She told me about her brilliant plan involving the psychiatrist. I informed her that the psychiatrist wasn’t coming to our center for another 3 weeks, and that I needed the testing immediately and that the psychiatrist  came here only once a month, not weekly, as she assumed. She then went on a wild scramble to find the psychiatrist and the tests. She called me back in a panic and asked me if I miraculously knew where the psychiatrist might be, since she wasn’t at their agency but was supposed to be seeing clients from our agency.  I told her I had no idea where the psychiatrist was. She finally tracked the doctor to her home in Bismarck where she sees clients at our agency in Dickinson via telehealth, and then got the testing from her and scanned and faxed the tests to me.

I think I will score my own test from now on. I don’t need this aggravation. I know. I have control issues.

Tell about your most annoying coworker. Tell about your best coworker. How do you cope with annoying coworkers?