I Heart Peanut Butter

Thanks for the bike routes that were left as comments or in my email. I love to think I am not the only one that loathes the hills here in Worcester. I have not ridden daily in a few years and it is hard to get started again in a place where one hill after another kicks my butt.
I have lost 11 pounds in the last month, which is great start to getting back to where I was not even two years ago. I was in the best shape of my life and with the drama it all came back.
So I hope as I get more active again I will get back to my exercises regimen that I was once in.

I wish there was a nice tennis court at the park and that would be wonderful. Here is another question. I have seen that a school near Elm Park has tennis courts and on a website I found it stated they were accessible to the public, is this the case?

In Clinton, Neil and I used the really nice courts at Clinton High School, and I would love to get back into playing. Maybe ask my neighbor who plays in tournaments to teach me a few things.

Also is the YMCA the only gym with a racquetball court? Neil and I played a lot while in Clinton and that is one thing I was finally getting good at. Would take a lot of my built up anger and put it to use. There is no LOVE in racquetball.

Other than that I do everything in my power not to have to get on an elliptical for an hour, seriously I can not deal with the boredom of such things. When I was hitting the gym everyday i had to go at 5am while I was still half asleep as to not get to bored too quick…

So as not to draw attention to the crazy citizens of University Park lofts I will write here. I should have kept the blog here, where it is safe from scrutiny of people who do not matter to me, but seem to matter enough to Neil to make me write here versus the UPL’s blog.

See I will state it here it isn’t HE&PG LLC or Strata Bank for the biggest reason I hate where I live, it is the noisy-can’t-mind-their-own-business people in this building. I would not buy here again strictly because of a few other owners in the building. You have the one that is never around and only speaks when he can follow on the skirt tails of someone else that is making an asinine comment. You have the Alpha male who thinks he knows everything but is sadly mistaken. He whines and bitches about his past and it is always “Whoo is me”. Nobody wants to hear it anymore. And a new guy that is 100% trying to intervene and start a gang here of people that rebel but have nothing better to make of a situation. But these people just add to the fuel as far as this being the worst place I have ever lived. The banks complete lack of tact in coming in and changing all the locks and taking over the building before it was theirs to take over only added to stress.

There are a few people in the building that want me to stop (want us to stop) posting on the University Park Lofts page because they are scared that letting people know the truth of the building will keep them away. Never mind the economy, the location of the lofts, the fact that every unit is a studio, the graffiti and vandalism. It has all to do with the blog.

Give me a fucking break. One said that it is not up to us to warn people of the building, it is up to their Realtors and lawyers to tell them. In that case all the lawyers and Realtors we worked with should be fired ….CORRECT? How would the lawyers and Realtors know of the buildings defects, financial standing etc…. without us here to tell it.

I feel shame for people in the building that only out of SELF INTEREST want me to HUSH about the building. Well when you google the UPL’s you get a lot and mostly from here, there and newspapers.. But I would never lie to people, nor would I want people to not know what is going on in the building.

How genuine would it be for all of us to plaster fake smiles on and go on that the world is GREAT. When this place is a constant battled with the bank, with the city and within the building. Shame on the liars in the building. We write the good, the bad, and the ugly. We put when something great happens in the building and when something shitty happens.

So maybe I will move my post back to here just to appease the nice people in the building, in which there are only a few.

By the way there is graffiti on the building backside again. But this time I am DOING NOTHING ABOUT IT. Fuck everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would love to meet people that agree with this method of hiding all the happenings here to maybe make a couple sales. I think that by putting it out there it will make certain that the bank does what they should with the building.

So I am planning a “yard” sale here at University Park Lofts. I know I have mentioned it in the past and I know of some other lofts in Worcester that do a community yard sale for their building. My view is that we all moved into these small studio lofts and we all seem to have more stuff than we have space.

So here is what I am gonna try.
Hopefully I am not the only one doing it, but non the less I have some great stuff for sale.

July 12th 2008
Saturday 8am until 1pm
21 Illinois St. Worcester, Ma 01610
It will be no early birds… Rain date would be that Sunday.

It will either be on the front walkway or the lower parking lot.

If anyone is interested in setting up a table and selling things please let me know. That way I can update what types of items will be sold.

I think I will get away soon one of these weekends. I think I need to, just to forget about life and this building. To forget about all the drama that occurs. I have been wanting to go down to Deleware for the last year or so to see my cousin and I have been way to busy and way to poor. But hell why not go anyways.
I figured I could take a train into Wilmington, DE on a Friday and come back on a Sunday. I wanted to drive but I figure maybe for a truly relaxing weekend I will let someone else do the driving.
Bring my laptop, ipod, and a book and really just let myself relax. Maybe he will bring me to the beach with his friends and I can just chill.

A good bike trail in the area that is sort of flat…..besides the trail at Blackstone in Millbury…

I want to go riding but I am not ready for the hills here in Worcester

I am a bit on the underwhelmed and overwhelmed cycle of life. Somethings have me going crazy to keep up with and others I wish would move faster.

My biggest headache right now is these damn lofts that we are stuck until the market gets better and we can sell. This all can’t happen fast enough. Off the record this was the biggest mistake of my life. Buying into a place with no established condo association and broke. Now with the bank telling us to join as if we were a functioning condo association but we have some who have no idea what direction we are coming from so how would they know what direction we need to go. Trying to get anything voted on and working seems like a very unorganized mess. Neil and I have offered up to be the “cleaning staff” for the building since we know money will be extremely tight for us in the next year with condo fees plus a mortgage that went up due to inaccurate estimate of taxes due. So we figured we could do the work for less than a cleaning team, a cleaning team that wanted to offer their services to individual owners and there “sign” was in bad English and made no sense. But the whole process of doing so has turned into a HUGE headache and we are being asked if we are insured as if there is something we can break or steal in our own building and if we will get on out hands and knees and clean the garage floor. Again no idea where we started how do you move forward. It feels like when I was working for a company that got acquired and the new management has no friggen clue what they are doing or never did research on the company they just bought. I am about ready to say screw it and let them find a real cleaning company to do the job we can for twice as much money.

School is kicking my ass this mod, I have been ok this whole year but right now…A&PII and CPT are both tough, time invading classes. Plus I have a lab on Mondays and Wednesdays that goes until at least 5pm. I have 3 more classes and 11 more weeks of school. I hope to start my externship in 6 weeks. I am nervous as hell about finding a good job in my field once I am done and I am nervous about being good at it… So the stress from this is driving me crazy.

I have a few sick relatives right now that I can’t seem to not worry about them. But I have already went into this in a previous blog. All I can say is if you smoke, please stop….To see what my family members are going through there is no way possible that those little cancer sticks are worth anymore than your life.

Right now I would do anything to get away and not have to deal with any more drama and issues here at the home base.

As a few people know that read the University Park Lofts blogspot a few of us in the building attended the Public Safety Meeting for the neighborhood. It is held everything 3rd Thursday of the month @ 875 Main Street for people in the Main South neighborhood. There are agenda items but some topics can be brought up. Here are some of the major points:

1. NARCAN-Naloxone discussion. The city has the ability to get this drug in the hands of Worcester City Police Officers. The city was recently awarded a 300k dollar grant to implement this opiate blocker. This drug would be given to individuals that overdose on heroin and other opiates, this as was stated “brings them back from the dead.” I have learned a bit about this in school and what it essentially does is block the neuron receptors in the CNS. With Worcester having the 2nd highest amount of opiate overdoses in Massachusetts, this could really help out. Some speculate that it would cause more drug usage if people thought they could do more and still have a way not to die from a overdose. On June 27th from 9am until 12noon there will be a public brainstorming session held by The City of Worcester’s Department of Health and Human Services-Public Health Division at 25 Meade Street, Conference Room 109. To R.S.V.P please email or call Karyn E Card @ 508-799-8470 /karync@ci.worcester.ma.us
2. The CSX and University Park Lofts. Seems that they have been working on a plain to make this building safer. They have received grants to help with keeping people off the tracks and from breaking every window on the 2nd and 3rd floors on the back of the building. Barb Haller will be working with a few of us to plan the best method of action for installing cameras that are not pixalated and would have ability for the police to log in and see what happens. This is great news. I also brought up that an extension to the fence on the other side of the tracks may help prevent kids from jumping down to the tracks.
3. Worcester Royal Apartments at 45 Grand Street seems to have some issues with the quality of the residence that are occupying the building, with the increase of prostitution in the area, the President of the CDC William C Breault has noticed a certain couple “woman of the night” frequently entering the apartment complex.
4. 115 Illinois Street which has been a public nuisance for some time, will be receiving a demo notice next month. The building was burned back in the winter, a large triple decker that has been standing there without any movement in either to demo it or repair it. It was stated that it would become a complete redo is they were to keep it standing. It was mentioned that it may become an “Adopt a lot”.
5. There was talk of the closing of the Phoenix bar down in Webster Square due to drugs, an incident involving a pistol whipping and owners who has disappeared or are in jail.
6. The parking lot across the street owned by Ralph Dorman is still being used for illegal dumping and people living in the trailers in the parking lot. Lee Hall the Senior Sanitary Inspector told us to contact her with more details and that the lot needs to be gated at all times.
7. 95 Grand Street has had bids on the building but the individual wanted to do a complete demo of the building, this was denied and the city is looking for other options.
8. 93 Grand Street the CDC owns and will be sitting on it for 2 years. They will be cleaning the asbestos out the building but with the downturn in the market they will not develop it for 2 more years. The original idea for 190 units of apartments or condos will be brought up at that point.

I will be attending the meetings more often. It is good to put faces to names and see what the neighborhood is doing to improve. They are making sure problem properties do not stay that way. The inspectors seem to be overloaded now with the amount of foreclosed properties, Lee Hall stated it was easy to keep up when there was only 150 foreclosures but now it is tough.

To report problem properties or any other city complaints : 508-929-1300

Until I am done with Salter……

Sorry this year has been crazy. I have been working my tail off to stay on Dean’s List and I have not even missed one hour of my 30 hour a week in class time. Maybe inside I am just trying to have it the way I should have when I was in high school. My perfectionist self is only out to prove to myself that I can do anything.

I have 12 more weeks of school. 12 that is not much at all.

Hopefully I will be able to line up a good externship… Anyone that knows of a place that is willing to take a fresh blood, medical records-biller-coder extern….Please let me know.

I just may just end up at Fallon or Umass. But I was hoping to set my own externship up and not let career services do the work for me. I am 100% able to look for it myself. But running out of ideas…

Maybe I am just scared shit less… because I have known sales the last 8 years and here I am switching careers, with the end of school approaching I am nervous. I need to be working and making the money.

So I forgot because I have so much other things going on…

I was accepted to Fisher College for Health Information Technology. Which makes me happy! I am able to complete most of my program online and they should take a large portion of my credits from Salter. I pray that I do not need to take some of my classes again.

I finish at Salter College in September and I start with Fisher in November. Hopefully with enough time to find a job and be settled in.

This is only one of about 15 schools that offer this program that is accredited with AHIMA, this way when I am done I am able to sit for my RHIT. How exciting!!!!!

AHIMA

Fisher College – HIT Associates

I have always been very lucky in my life, no one in my family has died a horrible death (except a great uncle that thought a gun was the way out of this world) and no one has been terribly sick.
Until the last couple years, maybe that is just that I forget when I am getting older so are my family members.

My grandmother is in the hospital again.. She was diagnosed with Emphysema in the spring of 2005, and this year she has been in and out of the hospital. With infections that spread to the blood system, thrombocytopenia, and now pneumonia. All to me are very scary and I know more about these conditions then most because of school. I live, eat and breath medical diagnosis and procedures. Pathology is a daily aspect of my life. Maybe if I was naive I wouldn’t worry so much.
My grandmother has always been an anchor in my life, she gives great advice and she seems to understand me, never to judge. I really hate to think she is sitting in the hospital once again this year.
Jim’s mom, Meme has Renal Disease and is tied up to dialysis for half the day. She has went thru enough in the past couple years with the issues that come alone with having only one kidney functioning at 5%.
Meme’s husband now has lung cancer and they are pretty sure it has already moved to his lymph nodes. He has such little lung capacity now that they are not able to operate or take a lung in order to stop the spread of the cancer.

It seems this has all happened in the last 2 years. All of a sudden all the people I knew to be healthy are no longer. Scares me. Like I mentioned I have been lucky all my life, the only grandparent I have lost is my father’s mother who just did not take care of her self, plus I never really knew her. So a couple years ago I attended the memorial for her, but felt nothing.

The more I know about the human body the more scared I am of anything and everything happening to me and I now see how medical school could breed false illnesses. I have become very aware of my body and made steps to improve my own health. The foods I eat, went back to being vegetarian after years of eating meat, I am more active and really watch myself.

But sooner or later I will be 70 and who knows what happens then.

What happened in Worcester last night?
Seems that Neil stated rain, hail and wind.

The Neighborhood is a mess, huge full grown trees down, uprooted and all. The light post on our walkway are down on their side. The RMV’s window is blown out, Clark University is a mess. The trees and limbs down on Cambridge Street makes me think one thing…..

TORNADO’s or at least Dust Devils.

Anyone see anything???? Worcester Telegram has not said anything about last nights weather.

There were tornado warnings in Connecticut, so I wonder, could it be????

I mean when I was in Oklahoma, we would saw a few tornado’s that started with excessive winds and hail.

So yesterday as luck would have it, the power went out at Salter and they called it a day as early as 10:15 am. So my brothers GF was induced yesterday morning and started pushing around 12:30…
I made my way down there once hearing of my baby neice being born, Ms. Aubrey Jennifer Gerow, 9 lbs 13 oz, 21 inches long, dark full head of hear. What a doll.