Brianne Blogs?

Don’t you love it when your school work/reading applies nicely to your life? Well, I do. And thus, imagine my joy when I stumbled across something in my psychology book that explains a very real problem that I have. In order to fully understand, we have to go back a few years:

Picture it, Brianne is a senior in college and is challenged to drink an entire bottle of Absinthe. (you know, the sort of illegal green substance that Jack the Ripper drank before killing?) And, being the extremely competitive person that she is, she accepted the challenge and drank it all. And it was not a small bottle. It was about a liter of this green beverage. Needless to say, later than night, terrible nausea, vomiting and blacking-out occured. (In fact, I can only tell you these facts because John has told me, not because I actually remember any of that day). Since then, the taste or smell of anything like Absinthe (black licorice, star anise, fennel) makes me suddenly very nauseated. It was once so bad that I thought I was going to throw up on the subway and had to change cars at the next stop.

Now, back to the lesson at hand. Yesterday I was reading about conditioning and Pavlov’s dogs and learning theories and came across a section entitled: Conditioned Taste Aversion. This section talked about how strong a stimulus nausea is for us that we immediately and almost forever will associate it with what we percieve caused it and stay away. The theory being that even if that is the only time that particular taste/smell made me throw up that I will be conditioned for the rest of my life to avoid it. They did research with animals and learned that the same thing is true of rats. If they do something that makes them nauseated, they will avoid that at all costs and they learn to do so quickly. They think it might be evolutionary in origin: “Animals that consume poisonous foods and survive must learn not to repeat their mistakes. Natural selection will favor organisms that quickly learn what not to eat”.

I like that my aversion to black jelly beans, fennel salads and some peoples gingerbread cookies is not the fault of my excessive drinking, it’s evolution’s fault. I am a sad victim of the products of natural selection. What can you do, I ask?

For years, if you asked me my least favorite month, I would have said April. It’s rainy, it’s not quite summer, not quite spring. Nothing exciting happens in April. It’s blah. However, in recent days, as I await the month of April to arrive, I have been reconsidering my April opinion.

First, the Masters, my favorite golf major takes place in April. The Final Four and NCAA Championship game are played in April. Baseball season starts in April. All in all, a great month for sport.

Aside from the rain, the weather is nice. It’s nice to get to phase out the heavy winter coats for the lighter spring coats and denim jackets. It’s also nice that the sun doesn’t set at 5pm anymore and it’s daylight when I walk to work or when we got out after 6pm. Also, people start to plan flowers in all the little boxes around the trees on our blocks and it starts to get pretty again. So, there are clearly worse weather months-like August, don’t get me started on August!

So, I think I’ve reconsidered and am going to take April off the worst month in the year list and give it the credit it deserves. I apologize, April, for thinking so poorly of you in the past and here’s to a great 2009 together!

The strange title I gave this post is the title of the book I just finished. It’s by a neurologist and tells strange clinical stories of the odd things that neurological disorders can do to you. There were some pretty interesting, funny and sad ones.

1. The man who only remembers things before 1945 and thinks he’s 20 when he’s an old old man.

2. The man who thought his wife was a hat had lost the ability to process faces. They meant nothing to them. He couldn’t even tell you it was a face.

Sadly, I can’t really recommend this book to people who aren’t nurses or doctors. This book is written in such a way where the reader is expected to have a certain amount of knowledge about neurological disorders and the function of the brain and if you don’t, I think you’d be pretty confused.

I don’t have any great quotes since doctors telling case study stories don’t often say quotable things. I will instead, distill for you the lesson that I took from this book which is, I’m sure, not the intended lesson: The brain is a giant jumble of who knows what and we have no idea why things happen to it or what causes things to happen to it but if things happen to it you’re going to be an absolute nut job. Protect the brain. Don’t bounce it around. Don’t let anyone touch your head. Try not to think too hard about anything that is/will/could happen to you. Wear a helmet.

Yep, pretty sure this wasn’t the intended lesson. But, after reading a book like this, you start to wonder if it’s possible not to have a neurological disorder. Luckily, I have yet to mistake Meghan or Lisa for a hat, so I think I’m okay so far. I’ll keep you posted.

Recent random info from our cool calendar:

1. “There was no punctuation until the fifteenth century”.

2. “One in every four Americans has appeared on television”.

3. “Every citizen of Kentucky is required by law to take a bath at least once a year”.

4. “A full 7% of the entire Irish barley crop goes to the production of Guiness beer”.

5. “In the US, more frisbees are sold each year than baseballs, basketballs and footalls combined”.

6. “Vegetarians make up 4% of the US population”.

Picture it: December 2007. It’s 15 months ago and Brianne is happily wearing a black pashmina scarf all over the place. She loves it. It keeps her warm, it doubles as a covering when she’s cold in movies and it goes with all of her coats. She and it spend a lot of time together that early winter, enjoying the lovely city they call home. It’s the best scarf ever! And then, one fateful day, she wears it to Ezra’s 5th birthday party at his house; both scarf and Brianne unsuspecting of the tragedy soon to befall them both.

Her coat and scarf get taken to the master bedroom. When Brianne goes to leave, she goes to master bedroom for her coat and scarf but, alas, can only find her coat. Okay, she thinks, there are lots of coats and scarves here, it’ll turn up later and I’m here all the time, I’ll just get it in a few days. And so, with a heavy but hopeful heart, Brianne leaves the party assuming the scarf separation will be short-lived. Little did she know how very wrong she was….

A few weeks passed and the scarf had never turned up, much to our heroine’s dismay. New Year’s Eve came and she went out with her friend Zak and on her way home what did she find in the middle of the cross-walk at 75th and West End Avenue? Well, not her missing scarf, but a very close approximation of it. And so, she took in this orphaned scarf that night and started the crappy year of 2008 with this imitation scarf. In retrospect, she wonders if perhaps it was so very bad because of this scarf situation…something to consider…She digresses…

Days passed…weeks passed….months passed…a year passed…And yet, our faithful Brianne still believed that one day the scarf would return to her. She frequently checked the many closets at the Ezra’s home in the hopes of finding it scattered among their winter belongings, but each time she was unsuccessful. She looked for it in all the rooms and kept up the search in spring, summer, winter and fall. She even closely examined the scarves of all the people who worked, visited and lived in the home in case someone had mistakenly taken it. And still, no scarf was found.

As 2008 became 2009, she started to give up hope of ever finding her long-lost friend. After all, the scarf had now been missing for longer than she had owned it and perhaps it too had been adopted and was in a better place. So, she stopped looking for a while. After all, 2009 was going very well and sometimes lost friends just stay that way. And then, one fine day in March, our friend Brianne opened the winter coat closet on a whim and looked to her left and who was there to greet her? You guessed it: her long lost, much missed and greatly loved original black scarf! After a tearful reunion, Brianne and her friend have been together ever since, enjoying the city they love and vowing never to be apart ever again! The End.

Friends, in these trying times, it’s often nice to hear a heart-warming, miraculous story and I think it’s safe to say that this is exactly what I have just relayed to you. No parts of this story were exaggerated or made up. It’s not based on a true story, it is a true story. And therefore, and I think you’ll agree, It’s a Scarf Miracle!

Yesterday, Zak and I got together to “plan our Europe trip” and then to go see the movie The Watchmen. So, we went to Bourbon Street on 46th and proceeded to get extremely drunk and then went to see the movie The Watchmen. This is the second time we have gotten together to “plan” and have instead gotten drunk. There seems to be a breakdown in our planning system that leads us to drink rather than plan. We were both prepared to plan. We both brought travel books. I brought a pen and some paper and we talked broadly about what we wanted to do but no specifics. Certainly not enough specifics given the fact that we won’t have phones or internet access while there and need to know where we’re going before we go. Ah, well. What can you do? We have another planning session scheduled later in the week which we are planning to do at Barnes and Noble. They don’t sell alcohol, right? If so, we may be in trouble. Below is a list of what we had to drink the 1.5 hour planning session yesterday:

Hurricanes (2)

French 75 (2)

Jalapeno Martini (1)

Mint Julep (4)

While it may be sad to find such a breakdown in our planning abilities I think it’s reassuring to know that even as we age, our ability to drink like fish is unimpaired. Such a warm, fuzzy feeling.

I finished the 3rd book that made me a “fabulous reader” from our ski trip earlier this month. (Aren’t you all pleased to see that my pace of one book that I set in the month of February was just a fluke? Me too!) It was called Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier (the lady who wrote Girl With a Pearl Earring). I have now read all of Tracy’s books and must say that the most famous one is my least favorite. I didn’t really like Girl With a Pearl Earring but have loved all the others. Funny, right?

Sadly, as this book was mostly dialogue and story, there weren’t many quotable things. Just this one:

1. “He married the daughter of his fathers closest friend, a woodcutter, and except for the fumbling they did in bed together, it was like being with a sister.”

Yep, that’s the only thing I found funny enough to quote here for you fine people. But I really liked the book. What this author does is take something from history and make up a story to go along with it. Girl With a Pearl Earring is based on a famous painting. The Lady and the Unicorn is based on some famous French tapestries and this one was based on the stories behind some of William Blake’s poems. Very interesting.

While I enjoyed reading this book and it didn’t take me but a few days, I’m so excited to be done with it because I can now start reading some of the bounty of books I got for my birthday. I am so excited! I wish I could cozy up into a nice soft chair by a fire with a warm beverage and some cookies and just read until I have read them all. Sadly, a girls got to work (and watch basketball) and thus it is not to be. But I am sure I’m going to love all the books I got and I’ll keep you posted.

Happy Birthday to:

Tina Marie Genow

 (she’s the one in the middle, in case you weren’t sure)

And

 (he’s the one who is a boy and is not maren)

I hope you both have a kick ass day and enjoy your gifts!

Jeff Scott Perrett!

1. The brackets! Oh the brackets and the fact that for the last three years (and the first three of her life) Meghan has filled out a bracket!

2. The fact that two games went into overtime last night and cbs was flashing back and fourth like it had tourettes syndrome making it 2 parts fun and 1 part confusing to watch the games.

3. The awesome basketball inspired commercials:

4. The fact that i told my employer to expect my presence at work but not my active participation as i would be bringing my laptop to watch the b-ball action.

5. the great upsets and comebacks and the way you get emotionally involved

6. speaking of emotional involvement, i love it and nearly tear up with them when the players on the losing team cry. seriously, how great is that? i love sports-related tears. they really are the best.

I hope you are all enjoying the great basketball action. This really is a great time of year. And, just when you start to wonder what sport you will watch after the b-ball is over, the Yankees first game of the season is the day of the b-ball championship and the masters is the next weekend. Sport rocks! If only football was year-round!

Sorry for no blog post yesterday, I got caught up in the Madness and couldn’t tear myself away!

So, as for the birthday:

I was alone at the house when I woke up so I got to start my day off right with a shot and a drink. Then I was on drink #2 when the others showed up for cupcakes and presents.

After I racked up a ton of books (thanks all) and some movies and tripoly (nice, Maren) and had another shot, we headed out for dinner.

In case you couldn’t tell from the photo, we also did some drinking there. At the end of our dinner, as we were casually chatting, we realized that our Broadway show did not start at 8 but at 7. Only a slight problem given that it was 7:30. Crap-it. So, we booked down to the theater and watched the end of the first half of the show standing in the back of the theatre. Luckily, if you’re going to miss half an hour of a show, Guys and Dolls is clearly that show. None of the good songs are in the beginning and you can get caught up with a brief explanation.

The best thing about the show was that Lauren Graham, aka Lorelai Gilmore, was the star of the show and rocked the house.

Anyway, we had a good time and I’m glad it’s over. Thanks to you all for the gifts and cards and e-mails and calls.

Rest of b-day stats:

first shout-out on my blog: Amber

First shout-out on her blog: Meghan

First birthday hug: Lisa

 (we also learned that neither meghan nor lisa can wink. how sad)