Things on my mind:

Pace-maker implants: I got to watch a nice man named Bernard get a pace maker placed on Friday. AMAZING. I really shouldn't refer to him by name, it violates privacy issues...but what the hell... I live on the edge. Anyway, after they implanted the device they sent Bernard's heart into Ventricular Fibrillation Which is a fancy way of saying: BAD NEWS. It is a very rare heart rhythm that you usually only see right before someone dies.




They do this to ensure the device will kick in and do it's job and stabilize the rhythm. It did, whew...for Bernard's sake. The Cardiologist let me keep the strip showing the V.Fib. And I framed it and am looking at it right now. It is one of my prized possessions. Just think, your heart has it's own little electric current. I'm obsessed with the human body.

Money: I need to come up with money for school for next semester. To make a long story much shorter: I ran out of money and now I need more. Today, I'm feeling an overall humor about things, in a self-deprecating/"I give up" sort of way...but catch me on a bad day and I'll cry big worrisome tears about this issue. So to recap the money topic: I need some (like 7,000) in the next 4 weeks or so to finish my last semester of nursing school. So if you all could pray that this happens somehow I'd be grateful.

Hemingway: I'm almost done with our book of the month and without actually talking about the book let me make this bold assertion: I feel Hemingway should have stuck with his short stories. Ridiculous! You may be thinking, maybe so...but I will say this 200 pgs. later I STILL don't feel any connection, hostility, admiration, disdain or empathy for ANY of the characters. Maybe this fact speaks more to my inability to fully appreciate a writer like Hemingway, who wrote from this "bottom of the bottle" place. But, folks, I've been at the bottom of my share of bottles and I still want that connection with the person on the bar stool next to me...and Hemingway has given me zero connection. But I'm holding out, I may still end up loving it, who knows.
Hot Babes: I have lived here in the ol' Vegas for about 2-3 years now...who the hell knows? It feels like a life time. And on occasion I will still have that almost out-of-body experiences where I realize how absurd it is here. Like, if Vegas were a person it would be a very unconvincing drag queen. And I would say I see one or two of those on a weekly basis...so I know. I guess though it is human nature for us to adapt to anything and almost begin to feel a sense of normalcy about things that would have one day appalled us. Am I lowering my standards of decency?...maybe but whatev. All this to say in those moments when I am still struck by the draggy-ness of it all I feel a sigh of relief in knowing, I at least still have some autonomy. I had one of these moments today. I was driving with my fellow nursing student Anna, we were down by the school and we pulled up by one of the infamous "Hot Babes" First a background on Anna, she is from a small town called Mesquite in the middle of nowhere in the desert and has a similar "small town feel" to her as I do. Now, some background on the "Hot Babes". Hot Babes is a moving, flashing billboard attached to a flat bed truck that makes its rounds throughout the city. There must be hundreds of them though because, with no exaggeration, not a day goes by that I don't see at least one "Hot Babe". The billboards feature various underage-looking half naked (usually blond) girls in compromising positions. And that's the edited version. I think it's an advertisement for a Bunny Ranch or a call girl service. Now when I first moved here I found these trucks perverse and sad, but now I kind of don't care anymore. Maybe it's just that I don't notice as much. But today I pulled up next to one glanced at it and looked at Anna, as she had been looking at it too and I said, "Oh, those Hot Babes.." And for some reason we both began laughing hysterically. How stupid and amazing it is that we live here.