Tiffany’s Corner

First I would like to apologize to everyone who has been waiting for me to post a new blog. I’ve been majorly slacking…Hopefully this blog will give you something to comment about. Cause guess what?! Anyone can leave me a comment now! Yippee!!

These past few days have been really busy, I know tomorrow is already Thursday and I’m thinking, where did the time go?! Geeez.

I guess the reason it feels like the time has just flown by is because I’ve been waiting for this week and next to get here and up until now I feel like time has been DRAGGING!

Tonight was fun, we had guests over for dinner! Some friends of James’s Matt and Christie (and their toddler daughter Lisa) came over for dinner and American Idol. It was a really fun night, but a little crazy. I work until 6pm and James usually gets home just before me, and M & C were scheduled to arrive at 7. See why it was a little hectic?! Needless to say I did plan ahead and had a really yummy beef stroganof/pot roast in the crock pot all day. So when I got home from work all I had to do was cook the noodles and warm up the bread. Voila! Dinner is served! We had a great time chatting and watching Lisa, always a delightful entertainer. I am sure we will see her name in lights someday. We concluded the evening by watching the EVER-predictable American Idol. Of course, it’s down to the two Davids. Who didn’t see that coming?! Geez

So I know I mentioned that I’m looking forward to this weekend, but I don’t think that I told you why. James and I are going to Redmond to see Steven Curtis Chapman! Yay! He’s a really great Christian singer that we both really admire. He’s performing in Redmond at Overlake Christian Church with two other groups, Bebo Norman and Temple. SCC music is very dear to us especially since his song “I’ll be here” was what I walked down the aisle to in our wedding. (Ah….how romantic!)

So…the concert is Saturday night at 7pm and Redmond is a few hours away. So I booked us a hotel so that we can kind of make a short weekend of it. I’m really hoping that we can spend some time at Alki Beach in Seattle on Sunday. James just got a new camera and I know he’d get some good pics there. And really, I don’t think I’ve ever been to Alki. It should be fun! (Plus it’s supposed to be near 80 degrees!)

Ooooh, here’s the grand finale. Memorial Day weekend James and I will be staying a cute little B & B in Pacific Beach, just outside of Ocean Shores. I’m really excited. I’m busy trying to find local places for us to visit and things to do. Mainly I’m just looking forward to the mini-roadtrip and the vacation on the beach. We’ll be staying at the Beach Avenue Bed and Breakfast, I’ll be sure to post a review after we get back!

Well, I’m COMPLETELY exhausted after such a long day…and there’s still so much to do before this weekend. (James doesn’t know it, but I want to go clothes shopping before we go to the concert. )

Thanks for reading my blog and PLEEEEZ leave me a comment so I know that I have friends! Love you all, God Bless!

So, It’s Sunday night and the weekend is pretty much over. Boy, it sure was a busy one! Saturday was a really nice day here in the PNW. It was forecasted that it was supposed to get near 70 degrees, so almost everyone was out trying to enjoy it.

Me? I enjoyed sleeping in and had just finished getting dressed when I got a call from my husband (who regretably has to work on Saturdays) telling me that his father was in the hospital.   So most of my Saturday was spent in the waiting room of the ICU with my in-laws. I don’t really have much of an update on my father-n-law’s condition, except to say that he is resting and that we plan to go and see him again tomorrow.

Saturday night James and I had house-guests. Two of my bestest girl friends, Katie and Ang came up from Des Moines and crashed at our place. They say they were here to see our Pastor friend be offically installed as head of First Baptist Church downtown, but I know they were really up here just for ME!

Here is a pic of Ang, Me, Becca, and Katie (clockwise):

Anyway, Saturday night we went out to Billy McHales for dinner and a few drinks. I had a very bitter yet strong Lemondrop with my BBQ pork sandwich. And yes, after a long stressful day it went straight to my head! Boy, did it feel good!

The evening was capped off by returning to my humble abode where the girls and I endulged in some A++ cinema in the form of JTT’s performance in Man of the House. Long live the days of Teen Bop magazine and posters of boys on your bedroom walls!

Sunday morning we went to FBC to see Pastor Jeff preach, great as always. I was suprised to see that the flowers (mostly pansies and daffodils) we had planted last September for my wedding were out in full bloom. It was beautiful, too bad I didn’t have my camera!

Lastly, we went to On Rice with a few of Katie and Ang’s guy friends and had a great time. Nothing better than deep fried veggies and plum sauce to bring an end to a very busy weekend!

I like to keep up to date on new developments in Psychology. It’s a subject that has always interested me.

All spiritual beliefs aside, I try to keep an open mind regarding how scientists try to explain our existence and how we came to be. I came across this article from Psychology Today and after reading it, decided to share it with you.

After taking note of the fact that my right hand index finger is 1/4″ shorter than my ring finger I regret to inform you that I am a hyperactive autistic Lesbian.

Believe me, my husband was quite shocked!

(Please note that I edited this article, ommitting some of the less interesting details. If you’d like to read the entire article please visit the URL at the end of this post.)

Sexuality: Your Telltale Fingertips
How your hands are a marker for behavior. Relative finger length—or digit ratio—is a marker for brain differences molded by hormones.

By: Willow Lawson

Look down at your right hand. Is your ring finger longer than your index finger? Or vice versa? To be certain, take a ruler and measure from the bottom crease of each finger to the tip.

The measurements tell you something about the environment of your mother’s womb just weeks after your conception, a time when your fingers, and more importantly, your brain, were developing. Because of the influx of sex hormones at this prenatal stage, men tend to have ring fingers that are slightly longer than their index fingers. In women, these fingers are usually the same length or the index digit is just a bit longer.

Digits are subtly affected by testosterone and estrogen produced in the womb by the fetus (not by the mother). Between weeks 8 and 14, tiny fetal testes, ovaries and adrenal glands secrete the baby’s own supply of sex hormones. These chemical messengers, particularly testosterone, cause chain reactions in the body, spurring the growth of the genitals, encouraging and inhibiting growth in brain regions and causing changes in the fingers. Many scientists believe relative finger length—or digit ratio—is a marker for brain differences molded by hormones. Like a bit of prenatal graffiti, a longer ring finger says, “Testosterone was here.”

John Manning, a biologist at the University of Liverpool, first identified digit length as a sign of prenatal hormones eight years ago. He believes digit ratio is an important, if indirect, tool for studying the fetal brain and the womb, an environment that’s off-limits to scientists except for analysis by amniocentesis…

“Early sex hormones have an organizing effect on the brain that’s permanent,” Manning says. But the differences between the sexes aren’t all that interesting to biologists. More telling are the variations within each sex. Females with masculine digit ratios have more masculine behaviors, he says. Likewise, males with a typically female ratio exhibit more typically feminine behaviors.

A study of digit ratio in Scottish preschool children between the ages of 2 and 4 found strong relationships between digit ratio and gender-normative behavior. Girls with masculine-type finger ratios tend to have higher hyperactivity scores and more problems relating to their peers than do other girls. The same study, published in Early Human Development, found that boys with female-type finger lengths are on average more emotional than other boys. “They tended to be very sensitive,” says Manning…

“Everything you see as far as sex differences in the behavior of toddlers is an aftereffect of prenatal testosterone,” says Dennis McFadden, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Manning and others have linked finger length ratios to aggression, left-handedness, heart disease, autism and attention deficit disorder, all traits that are more common in men. (Studies indicate they are most common in men with longer than average ring fingers.) A “masculine” finger pattern seems to similarly mark girls predisposed to hyperactivity and autism.

Some scientists believe prenatal sex hormones are also part of the puzzle of homosexuality and that a high level of testosterone may wire the brain for attraction to the same sex. Intriguingly, research shows that a prenatal testosterone level is most strongly linked to homosexuality in women, according to an article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Lesbians are more likely than straight women to have a masculine finger ratio, says McFadden…

Even as digit ratio research flourishes and more behavioral links are established, the relationships will remain mere statistical correlations until researchers fully understand how sex hormones physically affect the brain. The reigning hypothesis is that testosterone encourages growth in the right side of the brain, while inhibiting growth in the left. Animal models using rats, mice and sheep show that testosterone boosts growth in a part of the hypothalamus involved in sexual behavior and fertility. In sheep, males with hypermasculinized brains are sexually attracted to other males…

Psychology Today Magazine, Jul/Aug 2005
Last Reviewed 31 Mar 2008
Article ID: 3791

 http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-20050614-000004.html

 This may make me sound like a snob, but I hate meaningless conversations. I get easily irritated when I walk in to a room and every single time am greeted by an obviously overly fake “HI, HELLO, HOW ARE YOU?” This would be okay if it happened once in a while, but lately it’s been happening to me a lot at the office. When I come back from an errand or my lunch break there is no need to say “THERE YOU ARE! OH LOOK, TIFFANY’S BACK, EVERYONE!” It’s obvious that I’m back, you don’t need to announce it to the world!

I really am a nice person, I swear. But I don’t enjoy being forced to make pleasent chitchat with anyone and everyone just because we make eye contact. If I wanted to or was interested in having a conversation with you, I would initiate it.

If you’ve ever watched The Office, you might consider me a female version of Dwight K. Schrute. I like working, and I like being at work. I like rules and I like to enforce them. I am somewhat of a suck-up and sometimes go a little too out of my way to make my boss like me. That being said, I would like to share something from Dwight’s most recent blog:

“We, as a society, have gone backwards when it comes to interpersonal communication. Neanderthals communicated using only grunts and gestures. As time passed on, humans began to overcomplicate language to the point where it is now difficult to accomplish anything because there are too many stupid people and they use too many stupid words. This is why I am proposing the use of a basic universal language for all human beings regardless of race, culture, or physical location.

This language will not take the place of conversation between people you know and trust. It will merely be used for the casual daily interactions with strangers that can become so difficult when words are introduced. If I sneeze, I don’t need to have a conversation about it. Thank you for your blessings, but please stop wasting my time. Also, it’s more polite to say gesundheit.”

P.S. If you would like to delve deeper into Dwight’s rewriting of the human language, feel free to visit

http://blog.nbc.com/DwightsBlog/2008/03/thoughts_on_interpersonal_comm.php#more where you can read the rest of his rant.

Wow! How time flys by when your out havin fun! We had a very busy last few days.

Friday night started right after work ended at 6pm. James and I went to a  pizza resturaunt in town. Kind of a hippy place, but it was fun. I’ve only been there once before, so it was a treat. We dined on a very interesting pizza concoction of roasted potatoes, chicken, and balsamic vinegar syrup. Yep, I said syrup. Then we went to a local improv/comedy club and watched a somewhat funny show. I mean, I’d say it was 80% very entertaining. There were only one or two sketches where I was like, um, that’s not funny.

Saturday James had to work. I sat at home and watched the snow fall for about 4 hours. It was ridiculous! Who let’s it snow in March! Nonetheless, the end of March!! It’s spring for crying out loud! Anyway. So it snowed. I was sad because I had planned on going out garage-saling that day. Yes, I like to go to garage sales. I’m an old lady in disguise. Someday I will find a treasure in someone’s pile of junk! I just know it!

After the BLIZZARD OF TWOTHOUSANDEIGHT subsided I gathered myself up and headed to the mall for a hair cut and some birthday present shopping. James and I spent the evening with some friends (one of which was celebrating his bday). The majority of the night was consumed by the hosting couples’ adorable toddler daughter who proceeded to walk around the room stuffing little bits of paper and confetti between everybody’s crisscrossed legs. When she realized we didn’t find it as amusing as she did, she moved onto the stuffed animals. It was cute, you had to be there.

Sunday I was greeted by a voicemail message from my Dad giving me permission to meander my way out to my parents’ house in the woods to spend time with my little doggie brothers and sisters. You see, with 4 inches of snow on the ground, getting out to their neck of the woods can be a little tricky. But all was safe and clear, so as soon as church let out, I hit the road!

OH BOY! What a day! 7 little puppies, not to mention Sam (daddy dog), Dallie (mommy dog), and Jake (big bro) were all happy to have someone there to crawl over and drool on and most importantly give lots of wet sticky kisses to. What a wonderous 6 hours of puppy love. I wish that they would stay little and adorable and innocent forever. But alas, they are going to grow into their big dog feet in no time. So I am glad that most of them have future homes and families to go to soon!

Well I guess I will leave you with a few pics of my adorable babies. Yes, they are mine. I know they are going away soon. But until that I will claim them as my own!

Take care and may God bless you in your journey today.