Kimberly

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

Please please please - take care of your skin, so it can take care of you!

I'm beyond crushed about losing dIon to melanoma. So as mentioned earlier, I declared today "Wear Your Pajamas to School/Work" Day - for skin cancer awareness.





• Melanoma is the second most common cancer in women ages 20 to 29
• Basal cell carcinoma accounts for about 80% of skin cancers
• Squamous cell carcinoma accounts for about 16% of diagnosed skin cancers
• Melanoma accounts for 4% of diagnosed skin cancers, and is the most lethal form of skin cancer.
• People of all skin colors can get, and die from, melanoma.

dIon is one of the warmest, funniest, kindest, most genuine people I've ever had the pleasure to call my friend. I'll sure miss him. I don't want this to happen to anyone else - so please, watch and protect your skin!

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

If you've clicked through on my twitterings, or we chat, or you are on my twitter list, you know that I'm about to lose a dear friend of ours in Australia to melanoma. Dion is one of the greatest guys ever, which seems to be how it goes - I never seem to hear about raving asshole lunatics dying of cancer, although I'm sure they must, right?

Dion is someone Aidon and I have known over a decade, from the conference we met at. He is just one of the really great ones. He is 41, and is leaving behind an 11 year old daughter, and 8 year old son, as well as his wife.

This happened incredibly quickly. He was blogging about his treatment at the end of August, and now it looks like he has days to weeks, at the most. http://www.multitask.com.au/people/dion/archives/cat_melanoma.html

*heavy heavy sighs*

Dion, who liked to type his name dIon, would often wear his pajamas to the annual Friday night pizza party. Being a big guy, he had an imposing figure with his thick Aussie accent, and his huge jammies.



So I just sent this to our email list with our mutual friends on it. If any of you would like to join in on spreading awareness, I think that would be terrific - but in any case, I can spread awareness to all of you - PLEASE protect your skin! I don't ever want to lose another friend to this horrible disease!

Hi everyone,

I've decided on a way I want to honor dIon this year, and in following years. This year I want to do it ASAP, while there's a chance Dion can actually enjoy it. So, as The Geekstress, I am officially declaring this Tuesday "The Dion Gillard Wear Your Pajamas to Work/School for Skin Cancer Awareness Day" Having it on Tuesday allows those of us who need to go BUY a good pair of jammies for work/school to do so on Monday. And you know what - if you can't do it until Wednesday, well, do it then! Make sure to have someone take a pic of you - the point of doing this ASAP is to get a photo so Dion can see it!

It is my intention to carry around a picture of Dion, in his jammies at the annual Friday night pizza party, and use that as a prop to explain why I'm in jammies to anyone who asks. I'm horrified that I'm losing someone so special at such a young age to such a dreadful, and largely preventable disease. People need to know that this is serious business!

I live in the Bay Area - so I think a LOT of people won't bother asking, so I may just put a sign on my own back "Yes, I'm wearing my jammies - ask me why!"

This has the dual purpose of spreading the word, AND embarrassing David (since we're both attending college classes at the same college - hahahhaa... the simple joys of having teenagers! Although it doesn't usually require pajamas to embarrass them, but I digress.)

And I do realize that in some situations, you really can't do jammies at all at work/school. If that's the case, you can still participate by sending in a pic of you in your jammies at home :) Everyone gets to play - JAMMIES FOR DION!!!

Post a link to your photo here on the list, and/or email a pic to me and I'll collect them.

So really - who's in? Go get your jammies, and I'll see you in them on Tuesday, Wednesday, or as soon as you can do it!

--Kimberly

Current Location: home
Current Mood: sad
Current Music: kittens playing - life goes on

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

I really REALLY need to make a post about school. I'm back full time, and really loving it. I'm taking Physiology, Sociology, Chemistry, and Spanish. Spanish I'm taking with David, the rest of each of our classes are separate.

Anyway, this is about Spanish.

Yesterday, we were writing in-class compositions. These are simple little things - several sentences about someone you know well, including what they look like, things they own/have, etc.
I picked Aidon ... and I got to where I was going to list pets/animals, so I asked her how to say "chickens". She told me it's "pollos". So I checked my intended sentence "we have 9 chickens": "tenemos nueve pollos".

She asked/said "masculine?" and I thought she meant "ah! there must be masculine and feminine forms for chicken", so thinking I'm quite clever, I say, "ah, no! Tenemos dos(2) pollos, y siete(7) pollas" - making the completely reasonable assumption that "pollas" is the obvious feminine version of pollos.

But it's not.

She, and the Latino helper of the mentally-challenged kid in class start busting up laughing. Like really, they can hardly stop. "Ha ha ... that was a good one...", the helper says.
Now I'm dying to know, so I ask what it meant, and she won't tell me. I need to wait to ask her after class.

( You know you want to know what I said... )

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: purring kitten

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

This wedding last weekend was just so fantastic, and such a reminder of the connection that Alethea and I forged nearly 25 years ago (eep!) that I thought I'd see if I could find the woman responsible for bringing us together.

I'm not sure what the interview process was like for Alethea and her family when they applied for BB/BS, but I went through quite a long set of interviews, and did talk a bunch about what was important to me in a little/relationship with a little. Nancy, the BB/BS worker who originated the program for Deaf littles, could not possibly have made a better match. Certainly for me, but I think for Alethea, too.

I've told the story more than once, and Alethea and I still laugh about it, about our first meeting. I picked her up at her home in Foster City, and took her to McDonalds and got her an ice cream cone. She wanted to eat it in the car. My new car. My first EVER new car. Alethea was 7. And signed - pretty fast already (although not as fast as she did when she moved to the Deaf school in Fremont!) so I was nearly certain that there would be ice cream where it shouldn't be. She *did* touch it ever so slightly on the seatbelt - but she was VERY careful. The next visit we spent longer together, and before too long she was spending the night with me and Richard sometimes, and we often had whole days of just hanging out, or going to various places. I remember taking her to Alcatraz - and how much it scared her (oops!) but she was also interested and fascinated - so she just hung close with me while I interpreted for her.

I remember one time I took her on a weekend rafting/canoing trip. We went down a mostly pretty lazy river in a two person kayak. I sat in front, I think... maybe not ... but either way, we couldn't paddle intensely and communicate at the same time. One time we got caught in a strong eddie at the side of the river and needed to do some coordinated back paddling, and then paddling to get out. We tried several times, and it wouldn't work since I needed to stop paddling long enough to explain what she should be doing. Finally, we sat in the eddie, and I explained what the paddling was actually doing, and how paddling on the right, vs the left, and front paddling, and back paddling, and together, and opposite, etc. would all work. I explained how she was going to have to make the choices herself, based on her understanding of where we were, and where we wanted to be. The first time, we still got swept back to the eddie, and we regrouped, and I explained what had gone wrong. The second time, we were out.

She was probably nine or ten. *beam* yeah - she was a smart cookie then, just like now :)

I have so many stories of us together ... it was actually so great to see some of the girls I knew from when they were kids at school together (I got a job at her school when she moved to CSDF and hung out at their cottage on Sunday nights pretty frequently.)

ANYWAY... I was telling a story about now! So yesterday, I sent the following email out:

Hi Nancy,

I *think* you are the correct Nancy. Assuming you are, and that you were with BB/BS back in the 80s, I still don't know if you remember me, or my little. My name then was Kim Bobrow, and my little was/is Alethea Boyer. We were matched when she was seven which must have made me just shy of 21! This past weekend she got married at a lovely ceremony on the beach, and I made her wedding cake.

I can't tell you how much it's meant to both of us to have our connection over the years. Alethea is an incredible woman (of 31 - wow!) with a BS in computer science, and an MA in health and fitness.

If you'd like to see pics of the wedding, and the cake, they are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kimberlyjennery/sets/72157607149209247/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kimberlyjennery/sets/72157607160596972/

And the ceremony is on video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVOqVmlEubA

If you aren't the right Nancy Grant - my apologies! If you are though, please do let me know this got to you and if you remember us. Either
way, you sure made a huge difference in two women's lives :)

--Kimberly Bobrow Jennery

Kimberly,

What a wonderful surprise ... I am the Nancy G. you were looking for, smile ... after all these years, being part of the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program continues to bring me such happy surprises every once in a while, when I hear from "bigs" like you ...

If I remember correctly, Alethea was the little sister who said she was both deaf AND hearing, because of the importance of both in her life, her connections to both worlds ... looks like you are still part of that ...

Let me know what you are doing now? Aside from making amazing wedding cakes ... are you still in the bay area?

Thanks so much for the gift of the pictures and wedding ceremony, and the knowledge of your continuing "sisters" relationship. Makes me very happy. Please give my love to Alethea and her family ... though don't know if they would remember me.

peace,
nancy

Nancy C. G, MSW
Cultural Intersections and ARC Associates

Current Location: under kittens
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: purring kitten

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

( twitty stuff I said today - cut for your pleasure (or not!) )

I meant to put this in the cake post, because I thought it was just a perfect girlpirate post - cakes AND betta fish! But here, now you get a post with your name right in the subject! :)

These were the centerpieces for the wedding tables. The blue fish were specially ordered, and folks got to bring them home. The roots of the plants provided oxygen, and the florist provided several days of betta food and instructions for anyone who kept a fish. I totally would have kept one if I hadn't had a 12 hour drive to get it home!