Happy Holidays from Cedars-Sinai Medical Group December 18, 2007

Today I received this lovely “holiday greeting” in the mail from my medical group:

Come treat yourself or a loved one to a cosmetic dermatology procedure
from Cedars-Sinai Medical Group Dermatology Department.

Look refreshed during this busy festive season. Sparkle at holiday gatherings. Bid adieu to lingering sun spots and worry lines. Rid your legs of visible veins to show off in that holiday dress!

We are offering a special promotional rate of 20% off your first treatment.

Is my MEDICAL GROUP really trying to wish me happy holidays? Um, no. They are trying to make me feel bad about myself in order to spend money that I don’t have at Christmas on cosmetic procedures I don’t need. Let me just list the ways in which this annoys/humors me:

1. Treat myself or a loved one — when did botox become a treat? I can hear the children now, “Mommy, can I have a botox treat?”
2. Look refreshed this busy festive season — ok, are they missing the busy part? Chemical peels take time to recover so am I supposed to sit around not busy during my busy festive season?
3. Sparkle at holiday gatherings — are glitter injections the new rage?
4. They did succeed in making me check out my legs to see if I have visible veins. I do not. Thank God, otherwise I’d have to rush to get a treatment before I could put on a dress! Oh the shame of having veins. They only SUPPLY BLOOD to my entire body!
5. Also notice that everything is a”holiday”. We wouldn’t want to offend the Jews or the Christians. However, I did receive this after Hanukkah.

Now, maybe I’m overreacting but I’m really annoyed by this. The holidays are a busy festive season and I certainly don’t need my medical group pimping themselves for sales at this time. Actually, I don’t ever want my medical group pimping itself for sales. I think it’s just wrong.

I’m also going to guess that NO ONE outside of LA gets “holiday greetings” like this. Ah, a special holiday joy of living in the la-la land of the fake.

Fav Photo Thing: Picasa December 11, 2007

Many of you know that I LOVE taking photographs. I travel a lot, my camera is usually with me, and I end up taking many, many, many more photos than I need. For example, I took 1200 photos in Peru, using up 5 gigs of memory. Thankfully, I was able to narrow the 1200 pictures down to 150 to share with my friends.

How did I pick 150 pics out of 1200?? By using my handy, dandy, favorite photo tool, Picasa. Google has made this tool SO EASY it’s ridiculous. Oh and did I mention it is FREE? Love that!

After downloading Picasa, it will scan your computer to find all your photos. Then you can search through them in many ways and fix basic image mistakes easy. Red eye? Check. Crooked Photos? Check. Bad coloring? Check. In fact, you can fix more than one photo at once using their batch editing tools (my fav is I’m Feeling Lucky).

Now that you’ve fixed all your photos, you should be ready to share them with your friends. Join Picasa Web Albums. Once again, it’s FREE. Then you can upload an entire album to the web from Picasa.

And now, for my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE part of Picasa — you can download entire albums with one click from Picasa Web. To my knowledge, no other photo-sharing site offers this. I love this because I am tired of mailing around picture cds to my friends across the world.

Ok, by now you’ve had enough of my gushing about Picasa. If you don’t have it, get it: http://picasa.google.com

Never Look Down Upon Someone Unless You’re Helping Them Up December 5, 2007

As I was waiting to get my receipt from the receptionist at my doctor’s office, I read this hand-written quote she had posted on her bulletin board: “Never look down upon someone unless you’re helping them up.“

This quote stayed with me through my doctor visit and on my mind as I was driving into the office. I saw a homeless man on the street and realized that his being homeless affects me. I didn’t feel sorry for him but I did feel that he deserves the same love and compassion that I have been shown throughout my life. We all do.

I’d like to say I stopped and helped this man in some way. I didn’t. I could give you some excuse but really, I didn’t stop because homeless people scare me. That and I never really know how to help because I’m more afraid that I will offend someone. Where’s the self-help book for that? I’m ready to buy.

This story kinda strayed from the purpose (I know, you’re shocked!). What I realized from this quote in my doctor’s office is that if I have the energy to look down on someone, that energy would be much better spent on helping that person. And that even a little help can make a big difference. Now where is that homeless man on Olympic Blvd?