The History of the Christmas Tree

Roman Times: Ancient Romans decorated trees with small pieces of metal during a winter festival honoring Saturnus, the god of agriculture. [Insert how the Christians stole pagan rituals-- I would call it positive religious marketing. Regardless of where you sit on the religious spectrum, it was genius of them, really.]

Middle Ages: An evergreen was decorated with apples and called the Paradise tree, as a symbol of the feast of Adam and Eve and was held on December 24th each year. Should we be celebrating Adam and Eve's feast? I mean, wasn't it her devouring of one stinkin' apple that doomed us all in the first place? I would opt out of that celebration.

1500's: Modern trees appear during this century in Germany, undecorated.

1600's: 1605 gives us the first recorded decorated Christmas tree, adorned with paper roses, apples, and candies. Tinsel was invented in Germany in 1610. Little did they know Tinsel would become the Herpes of Christmas decorations--permanently infecting EVERYTHING it touches. Let's call this one of Germany's earliest major failures in a centuries-long string of worldly shortcomings.

1700's: Haha, my source for this entry says this was century that saw the first record of a Christmas tree in America. Uh, duh. . . this century also saw the first record of, I don't know, America. Decorations in this century were still of the "homemade variety," except the blasted tinsel from the Germans. Angels appear at the top of trees for the first time in this century, and little fires are lit under their butts.

1800's: Tinsel is still around, making it now the German's longest standing mistake to date. In this century, American greed first presented itself at the holidays during this century, in which each member of the family got their own Christmas tree. It was also in this century that the first Christmas tree lot opened in New York. Despite this advance, parents will still drag their young into the middle of the woods to cut down their own tree for many, many decades to come.

1900's: Christmas trees became larger, so people could put more tinsel on them (for christsake, Germany!). With the Mod 60's in full swing, the Silver Pine became trendy with a revolving light source beneath it, making decorating unnecessary for this tree (bye bye nasty tinsel!).

November 29, 2009: Every. Single. Car. on Minnesota highways has a Christmas tree strapped to it, shoved into it, hanging hap-hazardly out the trunk, or dragging behind. Seriously, even the rednecks in the truck next to us at a stoplight had a Charlie Brown tree untied in the bed of their truck. Holy bananas. I guess I just haven't gotten in to the Christmas spirit yet.

What's In an Inbox?

Once upon a time, in a barren cold land far far away--called Fargo-- I was an RA. Also known as remedial parent/adult babysitter/do-gooder. I loved my job. Loved everything about it (almost) and wanted almost all of my residents to be my best friend, and a lot of them were. So, each year we wrote a newsletter article introducing ourselves in the fall. Now, I could have just written a standard "My name is Katie, I like puppies and ice cream blah blah blather." But I'm not that girl. And I truly believe you learn a WHOLE lot more about a person by what they're not saying: the friends the keep, the way they act, and the stuff they have. So I used to introduce myself by giving my residents a literary tour of my room and highlight things that I owned that were important or significant and why, letting them get to know me that way. I thought about doing that tonight, but I think it would be cooler on here with photos so I am saving it in my idea box for the next time I have too much creativity but no real structured idea.

Not wanting to abandon the whole idea though, I decided tonight I will give you a select tour of my email inbox. I pretty much live and die by my email-- I keep all my most important documents saved there, I use it as my calendar in some ways, I prefer to send work/school communication that way and I even talk to my best friend through email more than any other way even though we only live 25 miles apart, simply because you can send an email at 3am on a Tuesday, but she would skin me if I called "just to, you know, chat" at that time.

Buckle your safety belts, and welcome to @gmail.com:

207 Total Messages

I almost never let it get this full. I love to archive my mail or sort it into the little color coded labels (which I custom made-- every single one of them). The fact that my inbox spills on to a third page is indicative of the true fact that when I am stressed the VERY first thing to get dropped is organization. This is a poor coping mechanism, as disorganization is stressful. I am developing a coping mechanism to deal with my failed coping mechanism-- it isn't refined yet, but usually involves chocolate.

7 Unread Messages

I never leave unread messages. Except it made the blog more interesting if I did just for this part. I am going to check them now.

Of the 7 Unread:

• 2 were NYTimes News Alerts. I want a job where I read the news all day/every day from sources all over the world. I would excel at it.
• 3 were spam. Deleted.
• 1 was a Facebook invite for a running event. Save and star.
• 1 was from DirecTV. It is probably most akin to a very bad dog coming home with it's tail between its legs. They were naughty, and got FULLY reprimanded tonight.

Highlights from the Other 200 Inbox Cloggers

• Subject: Happy Hour Tonight! I super loved that the time stamp on this was 9:02am. Because this week, all the SPHers are thinking about drinking as soon as we wake up. On the plus side, we are quickly sliding in to a less stressful zone (we think).
• Subject: One more thing you could try I asked my professor one very simple, benign question about median splitting when you turn a continuous variable into categorical, and 6 (SIX) emails later, she had given me yet "one more thing" I could try on my dataset that "might be kind of neat." If I do it, can I have an A? I mean, it's something you could try and it might be kind of neat.
• Three new friend requests on Facebook! I am cyber-popular. And not sure how I should feel about it.
• Two returned, graded papers. Sometimes I call these day-brighteners. Sometimes I feel like they are some higher power, channeled through red ink (yes, I have a professor who does in-text comments in red type), telling me to join the circus. And I think, too late, whatever-higher-power-you-subscribe-to, I already JOINED the circus. I am that stinkin' elephant balanced on the little box holding a bouncy ball in my tail, working for peanuts. Luckily, this week my returned assignments were day-brighteners. They were much needed and appreciated.
• Newspaper articles I sent myself to streamline reading. I think I need to learn about Google Reader, and what it can do for me, because I email myself stuff to read all the time, and it is kind of sad to see 6 messages in a row that list the sender as "me."
• 4 password requests. This one cracks me up because I should just use one password, but its hard to do. Some have to be 6 characters with 1 capital and 1 number. Some must have a special character (you know, they kind you swear with: @%I*#), some can have NO special characters. No spaces. No numbers. Cannot use the answer to your security question in your password. Cannot have repeating characters. Cannot be in foreign language. Must be reference to early childhood. Must be written in Webdings. Must reference at least one Prince song. Cannot be be written in "Elmer Fudd." Entering password is not an appropriate password. So you see, I struggle to remember my passwords, and writing them down is sort of not the point of something only you can know, so I always have to click that [Forgot your Password?] button at secure websites. So embarrassing.

Okay loves, it's tomorrow now. Today is already yesterday and tomorrow is today so I have to get some sleep so when I get up tomorrow I can go to work today.

I apologize that this was random and disjointed. I am also feeling that way. I also had 6 cups of coffee today.

I also apologize that entries are a bit biting, sarcastic, and defeatist. Of course, I know you guys know this is a phase, it is me coping with stress, and I am sort of at a point where little things that shouldn't bug me do. Stress makes me appreciate and seek to maintain status quo. I promise to return to the more positive self that I actually am (not that this isn't me). In the meantime, thanks for putting up with my "grad school is hard" pity party. I don't mean to take it out on you. Thanks, friends.

Nerd Alert in 3. . . 2. . . 1. . . BAM!

Despite the whining or crying you have probably heard me doing in the last week about data analysis, vaccine efficacy, or policy papers, I truly love the field of Public Health, and there are so many reasons to love it. But one of my all time favorite features is Public Health's unhealthy obsession with flowcharts, which mirrors my unhealthy obsession. While I have never historically struggled with learning, I am definitely a visual learner, and if there is an organization or system even better. If it is tangible I will learn it for life.*

So today, I was looking at writing a report and I could waste 4 pages and hours of my time typing, editing, rewording, adding and subtracting OR I could make a chart. I refuse to work harder, always work smarter-- chart it is. Now, on the old, dead thousand dollar paper-weight of a computer, I had a program that made it fairly easy to create flowcharts. Add shapes, add arrows, type some text, and voila! Fast forward to the infamous 2009 crashing of one grad school Dell, resulting in the bullet train that is my current computer (zoom zoom, my friends, this baby is awesome). Except, no flowchart creator. Hmmm, very interesting.

(Digging around the bullet train for a half hour or so)

And then I discovered it. Word 2007 has a chart creator. But this isn't just flowcharts, it is a SMÖRGÅSBORD** of goodies. There's arrows and matrices and relation webs and all kinds of beautiful. And of course, my first instinct was to create some stuff! And then share it with you! And it was funny stuff!

But guess what? I couldn't figure out how to get them from Word to here. I know, lameskis right? And I am sure there is a way, but the longer I try to figure it out, the less actual work I am getting done. So instead, I will share with you some of my favorite flowcharts I have stumbled across on the web in the last few years since I started collecting them.***

Okay, dudes and dudettes: I had posted a bunch of funny flowcharts here, but they didn't fit in the given width of the blog space. Even though the preview showed them perfectly. I don't know what happened. Clearly today, technology wins. I do not have the mental prowess left required to fight with Blogger. I will try to fix it or update something better later. But I figured since I had to struggle like mad-crazy with this, you will have to read a blog entry so sub-par it's killin' Tiger Woods.

Thanks, loves. Have a good Wednesday night. The roommate is making us all dinner! Do you think she and I can realistically live together for life?!

* This is why I blazed through anatomy lab in undergrad, but had to bust my butt to secure a B in lecture. Talk to me about muscles for 3 weeks, I give it 50/50. Let me shock the gizzards out of an animal muscle or put my fingers in a fresh, not preserved brain? I. Get. It.

** That's how Google told me to spell it. . . I don't know, but I never question The Google.

*** Do not doubt! They are saved in my Google Notebook. Seriously. I love flowcharts.

Horoscopes are Bogus, Except When They're Not

I don't really believe in the predictive power of horoscopes, and I figure they only relate to people because they are so vague and happen to touch on universal truths of the common (wo)man. However, my horoscope for today was so dead ringer I choked on a Kix.

Whatever the rules, you will fully investigate their flexibility.

The only flaw? That's really more my life horoscope. If I was a super hero, this would be my mantra.

I Am Typing You This Weblog From Inside a Lion

The title is a reference to the Shel Silverstein poem "It's Dark in Here."

My "lion" is a pile of homework, but I just wanted to share a little nugget with you. In grad school, you gotta rely on the little things to get you through or you will never make it. So, everyday I find something little to be thankful about, and its usually something funny because it makes my mood better to laugh at myself a bit. My 'get-thru-Thurs' thought today is:

"I bet Dr. Phil would find my life totally boring. Oh, thank god for that."

Scar Tissue (And Brief Warning: Semi-Graphic Image)

You know how you see a really great scar on someone and catch yourself staring a little longer than you should, wondering what could have happened to have left such a mark? Or better, when it's a friend and you finally ask and they kinda light up and say, "Oh, dude it is the best story!" When I think about that, it's pretty ironic. Dude, let me tell you about the time that there was such an extreme amount of energy forced against my body (whether its temperature or kinetic) that caused enough damage to the structure and cells that it left permanent sub-par tissue in its place. And energy transfer resulting in an injury to result in a scar can almost, in no physical way, not cause pain. And those of us who have our own scar stories always talk about the pain. Or the blood. Or the infection. All kinds of excellent bodily excretions and functions that go along with severe injury.

But nevertheless, people love to tell their scar stories. Over and over and over. No matter how gruesome. I, for one, turned my apartment into what appeared to be a murder scene once. Victim: left hand. Scene: Doing dishes. Culprit: broken IKEA glass. Bled for: 26 hours (this is not a lie). Medical care from Student Health Services: probably sub-par, but adequate when in a pinch with blood dripping down your elbow in the waiting room. Scar: small, triangular, pillowy, white and soft.

And while that story doesn't really fit with my thesis to why people love their scar stories (I know, right? There is a point to this), it is still my scar. My story. And sometimes when I tell it in person, it is hilarious.

People like to tell their scar stories because it's proof they made it through something. So yeah, that kind of makes mine lame and your thinking "Wow, Katie, you're congratulating yourself on completing one sink load of dishes?! What's next, matching socks?" But, you could take it in a more philosophical sense of at least I was out there, living on my own, taking care of my basic needs, which I haven't always been able to do and not everyone can/does. And think of the scuffed knees we all have. My knees are a veritable patchwork quilt of rough, scarred, discolored scars. I had many encounters with surfaces less soft than my own body as a child such as the pavement, the curb, the ball field, bricks, tree roots, walls, stairs, sharp corners, and playground surfaces. I let all kinds of foreign bodies enter my system via open wounds on the knee. And all the best/funniest/goofiest/most memorable things I did as a child? Those things earned me another scar on the knee. Because right before the scar, is when people are truly living.

And that's not to say that you aren't "truly living" if you have less dangerous hobbies* or are actually able to work the brakes on your bike (oh my gosh, Kim and Dad, please tell me you remember the time I up-and-overed the curb into the McKeon's yard riding a ten speed for the first time). But scar stories are indications of times where we pushed the boundary a little bit, maybe just a little far, and we got hurt. But it was still worth it, and eventually we pride ourselves, even just a little, on the stupid things we tried. Because, hey, at least we tried. Better than tried really, because even if the outcome wasn't exactly what we wanted, we survived it. And maybe learned from it. Or tried and failed more triumphantly later!

*I do not now, nor will I ever, consider finishing a load of dishes truly living. Unless I am hanging upside down over a riverbed filled with alligators, without the use of my hands, blindfolded, with a toothbrush, all while singing the National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation theme song (Christmas Vacation by Mavis Staples-- google it and for sure you will smile bunches). This would be a dish-doing adventure, scarless or not, worth sharing.

This was taken 2 weeks after the initial injury. If I had shown that picture, you would have puked. I share this one, just in case you are eating breakfast. It's the most important meal and I don't want to be the cause of your nutritional deficiency because you didn't take the warning in the title seriously. I know, warnings like that only make people want to look more. That's what I was hoping, after all.

Warning: This is a Bit "Stream of Consciousness-esque"

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning. And yet I am happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right? -- Charles Schulz

It's a curious thing, the measurement of happiness. Sometimes I catch a toothy smile reflecting at me in the mirror, and ask "What do you have to be so happy about?" And on the surface, it seems like maybe not much.

I have no job, and thus no income, but still have bills. I eventually will owe back to the government all of the money I have borrowed from them to be in school. The amount of money I owe them is more than the total worth of all of my possessions combined. I "work" well over 40 or 50 hours per week on school and internship things, and when I am not working on those things I am thinking about them. They stress me out, which is not always physically or mentally healthy. I do not see friends and family as often as I like, it has been almost a year since I had the chance to visit Fargo, I have not been able to see my out-of-state grandparents in a painfully long time. I eventually have to look for a real big-kid job in a crapper of an economy. I am in a class that makes me feel stupid- and that almost never happens. And the homework I am doing is researching babies dying from diarrhea. I mean, if that's not reason enough to think about new career choices, I do NOT know what is.

Ooof, that list of less than happy things is totally not short. But tonight, I shirked homework responsibilities (a little) to watch Grey's Anatomy with my roommates, who I adore. And then I made chocolate chip cookies, including one the size of my face for my roommate's boyfriend. And I don't go out often anymore, but I appreciate the times that I do a whole lot more. And I don't know when the next Sunday dinner at my parent's house will be, but I am so excited for it because it is always the perfect rest and relaxation I need, even if only for a few hours. Today, for the first time, I ran without my headphones in. The first mile totally sucked. My pace was all over, I couldn't concentrate, it was awful. But the last 2 miles-- so cool. I got to enjoy all my favorite parts of my neighborhood and tune into the dog park, and the honking traffic, and the hippie playing guitar at the lake, and kids jumping in the leaves. All while doing one of my newly favorited activities.

On the surface, I think most people would think I am crazy for allowing myself to be in the situation I am in (unemployed, nearly-broke, frazzled single grad student). But somewhere, even where I don't know, there's a secret to this because I am ridiculously happy (and I have not had a beer tonight either). That's so cool.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads. -- Albert Camus

Good night, loves.

Spider Plants Can Be Lovely

See. Told ya.

Halloween 2009

I know the photo isn't stellar because I stole it from someone's Facebook, but I just wanted to show you a few things:

1. My roommates and I were some of the best dressed costumes at our parties and did not have our butts or boobs hanging out like several women usually do at Halloween.

2. I don't look awesome in yellow, but overall my costume was awesome-- with removal parts!

3. Check out those shoes. So. Frickin'. Excellent.