What’s with today today?

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  1. I’m allergic to work.  Like the physical building, not the work itself.  I got in this morning and my head exploded.  I felt fine (not achy or sick or anything), but I couldn’t stop sneezing, my eyes wouldn’t stop watering, and my head stuffed up.  I left around one to go home and take Benadryl, and as soon as I got in the car, I dried up.  Just like that.  I didn’t take anything when I got home, and I’ve been fine since then.  We’ll see what happens tomorrow.
  2. The dogs stole a tupperware lid out of the sink.  Did they chew on it?  No.  They just stole it.  They must do it for the thrill ’cause they never eat what they steal, even when it’s food.
  3. I slammed the very tip of my finger in the car door.  Hurt SO much.  I shouted some not nice words and then called my mommy.  Not to shout not nice things at her, though.  She distracted me long enough for the pain to fade.  Thanks, Mom.
  4. John is on the phone with his dad, and I think he’s forgotten that we haven’t had birthday cake yet.  (It’s his birthday.  We had pancakes for dinner.  Can’t complain.)  We’re not having birthday cake, but he doesn’t know that.  (I didn’t buy him a cake.  Or make him one.  Yes, I know how.  Out of a box.  🙂  Not the point.  I got a mini peanut butter cream pie for him.  Which we may or may not eat tonight.)

Time for pie!  Gotta go.

Remiss

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I could tell you a cute dog story, but I’ve been talking about them a lot lately.

I could talk about what’s going on at work, but I don’t want to dooce myself.

I could go on and on about how tired I am, but that’s boring.

I bore myself.

Sometimes.

Other times, I crack myself up.  We all know I’m easily amused (I LOVE the sound the Roku makes when you make a selection.  DEE-doop.), so it’s not very hard.

John drew a picture of a house on the fridge whiteboard.  There was a sign in front of the house that said, “Stay away, fool!”  Name that song and win a free tote bag.

Where the grass is labeled

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I want SO many books.  John and I ran a bunch of errands today, and one of them was a trip to Borders (33% off coupon – yay!) where I got the new Connie Willis book (love her).  I walked through the science fiction section and saw at least two books on every shelf that I want to read.  And own.  And keep on my bookshelves forever.

This is a problem.

I don’t have enough time to read all these books.  And I haven’t read at least 30% of the books I already own.  Maybe only 20%.  Hm.  I should figure that out.  Later.  How do I convince someone to pay me to read what I want, when I want to (which is all day and all night)?  If any of you have the answer, please share.

Wait.  Wait!  I’ve got it.  Jess, hire me to be your editor.  (You know, with all that spare cash you have lying around.)  Put me on retainer and, in between editing the chapters of your book (which is going to be fantastic), I’ll read.  No, I have no experience as an editor (other than editing college papers for John, Erik, and my roommates), and no, I don’t have any contacts in the publishing world, but wouldn’t that be fun?

(Jess, this is not a serious offer.  Well, it is, but I wouldn’t expect you to pay me until your second book, after you’re rolling in cash from the first book.  🙂  )

Can’t stay away any longer

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Not that I was trying to.  I was able to slow down around mid-morning today.  I can breathe again at work, I don’t have to rush anymore – everything is under control.  Mine.  As it should be.  I’ve  hardly slept in two days, though, so this’ll be a short visit.  I need rest.

Riley flipped out tonight.  I took them to the vet for routine exams and shots, and he went nuts the second we walked in the door.  He’s usually a little nervous (he pants a little, gets extra slobbery, stays under my feet), but tonight he whined and cried, paced and drooled, tried to get into my lap and then back out the door – he was a wreck.  I tried to calm him down, but nothing I did was working.  Roxy pretended she didn’t know us.  She stretched out on the floor at the very end of her leash, facing away from us.  Riley didn’t calm down until we were checking out, and from then on, he was back to normal.  I don’t know why this visit was so traumatic for him.  We were the only ones there, but maybe he was reacting to a lingering odor of fear from some other animals.  Or something.  Who knows.  He’s crashed out on his dog bed now, like nothing ever happened.  So’s Roxy.  And they’re making me tired.

I’ll continue my re-introduction to the Internet tomorrow, hopefully, with some visits to my blog friends.

Pet photographers have more patience than I do

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We bought new dog beds a few days ago, and the dogs LOVE them.  They’ve never seemed to care about dog beds before, but over the last couple of days, we’ve hardly seen them anywhere else.  They haven’t traded yet, either.  They used to not seem to care which bed they hung out on, but this time, they’ve each claimed one.  It’s cute.

They were being awfully cute most of the day, but now they’re in trouble.  We left a couple of short glasses of milk on the coffee table for a few minutes, and Riley DRANK THE MILK while we were in the other room.  The glasses were upright but mostly empty when I went back in the family room, and there were tell-tale drops splattered near the glasses.  We’re pretty sure it was Riley.  Roxy would have knocked the glasses over.  I don’t understand how we didn’t hear him drinking, though.

Car stuff

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We’ve gone through a lot of car-related trauma lately.  A month or so ago we had the issue with John’s car not starting sometimes (resolved), and then John had a run-in with a parking garage while leaving work on Thursday.  There was a concrete pillar at the front left corner of the spot, and he was paying close attention to it as he backed out.  He got clear of it, turned the wheel, and CRUNCHED his front left fender into the other concrete pillar, the one at the back left corner of the spot.  There’s a big dent just in front of the wheel well on the driver’s side.  We’re taking it in for an estimate tomorrow morning.

My car is mostly fine, but during my last safety inspection, the guy pointed out that my brakes were on their way out.  This was in May.  John is good with cars, likes working on them, and has replaced brake pads and rotors on several of our cars (among many other, more impressive things, like transmissions), so we finally set the date and decided to do it this weekend.  The front ones, anyway.  That’s what he’s been doing most of the day.  It’s never as easy as we think it’s going to be, but that aside, it’s always worth NOT paying nearly $1000 to have someone else do it.  This job cost us a little over $100 and an afternoon.  And while John worked on the car, I spend a few very pleasant hours on the front steps with my laptop.  I mowed the lawn, front and back, and then I stayed nearby to hand him a tool here, apply a little pressure there, here a rag, there a wrench, everywhere a breaker bar.  The first wheel gave him a little trouble (took over two hours), but, true to form, the second one took less than one hour.  John’s cleaning up, and I’m about to test the brakes.

You may ask why, if John’s so good with car stuff, he’s not fixing the rather large dent in his car himself.  My answer: that’s what insurance is for.

I don’t get barefoot running

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This morning I saw a guy running in those weird barefoot running shoes.  The guy looked super uncomfortable and sort of like a duck.  Flat-footed.  Or like he was wearing flippers.  (Flippers?  Those things scuba divers wear on their feet are flippers, right?)

You know, these things.

Googling…Vibram Five Fingers shoes.  They look ridiculous and uncomfortable, and while I understand the idea behind the whole back-to-nature thing, I’m totally okay with the engineering that brought me my running shoes.  While I was googling these, I found a bunch of websites about running barefoot for real, no shoes at all, with or without toes.  (With or without toes on the shoes, I mean.  The people running barefoot have toes.  I assume.  Maybe some of them don’t.  I shouldn’t make that assumption.)  CRAZY.  Hot pavement, rocks, broken glass, HARD pavement – not for me.  If I could arrange to do all my running on nicely mowed grassy lawns, I might consider doing it barefoot.  Anything else?  No way.

More free time please

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I finished The Power of One tonight.  Really liked it, but I thought the ending was too abrupt.  I want more!  Good thing there’s a sequel.  Too bad John wants to read it first.

I would really (REALLY) like to have a lazy weekend, but I don’t think that’s in the cards.  What would I do with my lazy weekend?  Weeds marathon.  There are five seasons available on Netflix Instant, and John and I are in the middle of the second season.  Maybe we’ll take breaks from replacing the brakes on my car and other chores and have a couple of mini-marathons.  Maybe.  And Arrested Development.  (Did you follow me there?)  We’re still in the first season on that show.  There’s just too much TV to watch!

A pattern

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I just read my last few posts and I noticed a theme.  A pattern.  An everyday happening, if you will.  (Oh, you won’t?  Hm.  Too bad.)  I always have a song stuck in my head.  It probably isn’t unusual.  I think anyone who likes music (and believe it or not, that is NOT everyone.  I can think of two people off the top of my head who don’t really care about music and never pay attention to it.  You know who you are.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) is likely to have some song or other rattling around in there.  I just happen to be mentioning it a lot lately.  Right now (and since this morning – I was singing it in the shower), I’m humming Ingrid Michaelson’s “The Way I Am”.  I really like that one.

Don’t rush me, sonny

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I don’t like deadlines.  I’ll admit that they’re necessary, and if I didn’t have deadlines I’d never do anything I didn’t want to do.  There are lots of things I do want to do that would never get done, either.  They’re important, deadlines.  But they make me nervous.  Anxious.  Not like before, but I’d rather not have any anxiety at all.  I suppose it comes with responsibility.  And I know myself; if I didn’t have work deadlines to worry about, I’d find something else.

But let’s not worry right now, okay?  Now is for relaxing.  Now is for winding down, for reading this book I haven’t been spending enough time with, for breathing deeply and counting backwards on clocks and other things that Greg said in yesterday’s comments.  We’ve been watching Weeds (we’re in season 2), and the theme song is on a loop in my head (there’s always something).  Maybe I can meditate to “Little Boxes”.

Deep breaths.

Blind meditation – great name for a band!

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Good news!  My eyesight hardly deteriorated at all over the last year.  Most of the issues I’d been noticing (eyelashes aside) seem to have been due to a not-so-great fitting left contact lens.  So, you know, yay for not going blind as quickly as I thought.

I bet you’re wondering what song is stuck in my head tonight.  I knew you were.  It’s Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish”.  Great song.  Not so good for winding down, though, or meditating.  Not that I’m meditating.  But maybe I should try it.  Might like it.  I only ever think about it at night, in bed, and when I try it (without reading anything about it – I just go for the whole breathe-deep-and-empty-your-mind thing, not that I’m ever successful with the empty mind thing, but I think it’s close enough if I concentrate on one thing instead of twenty), I fall asleep.  If the point is to relax, I guess it works.

Meditation and yoga.  There.  Two things I’d like to try.  Someday.

Must. Tell. Someone.

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I’m bursting with news, but it’s all about work, so a) the Internet at large doesn’t care (not that the Internet at large cares about anything I write, reads me regularly (or at all), or even knows I’m here (Goodness.  Pity party much?  Move along, please.)), and 2) I will NOT go into detail about work stuff here.

Also, with a little perspective, it’s just not that exciting.

So.  Other stuff to talk about.  Thanksgiving plans?  Don’t have any yet.  All we’ve decided for sure is that we don’t want to have a big gathering (last year took a lot out of us), and traveling for the holiday may be difficult since John doesn’t automatically get the day after Thanksgiving off from work.  And we’re saving vacation days.  Big trip coming up.  And we like running that 5K on Thanksgiving morning.  That’s the extent of the discussion so far.

The band is practicing tonight, so I let the dogs come upstairs with me.  Roxy curled up on the floor next to my side of the bed.  She either fell asleep immediately or she’s faking it so I won’t make her go downstairs once the guys leave.  She might really be that tired.  She had two seizures yesterday, one around noon and one around 11 last night.  She’s fine now, but I think she could use a little extra love.  We may try letting the two of them sleep up here tonight.  I’m sure they’ll only make it an hour or so before one of them decides to stick a cold nose in my face.  That’s when I’ll shoo them back downstairs.  Happens every time.

What was I saying?

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I had some half-formed ideas about what I was going to post today, but I can’t focus on them, so they’re out.  Maybe they’ll return some day, but if they don’t, it’s no great loss.

Same goes for this post.  Barely deserves the name.

Why is it that the song that gets stuck in your head is never one you like?  Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” is in mine, and I really don’t like it.  Maybe not never.  I was okay with it when “Hey Soul Sister” was the song I couldn’t get away from.  If I try hard enough, maybe I can replace Katy Perry with Train.

Everything’s going my way

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(oh) What a beautiful day.  This morning was perfect, in every way, and when I went for a run, I was so happy to be out doing just what I was doing and seeing just what I was seeing that I nearly cried.  The sky was this perfect September blue, the trees were still green, the morning light was clear and the air was fresh, and even though I’m sore and tired now, that feeling this morning makes it okay.  Better than okay.

That paragraph makes me sound ecstatically happy.  I’m too tired to be ecstatically happy.  I’m worn out happy.  With a dehydration (I think) headache.  John and I went to Waterford this afternoon for the Waterford Fair.  Happens every year, but we keep forgetting about it, so this is the first year we’ve gone.  They’ve got tours of historic homes, LOTS of exhibits and vendors selling all kinds of crafts, live music, and lots of food.  A couple of residents are selling their homes, so they took advantage of the crowds to hold open houses.  NICE houses.  And they’ve come down in price; both of the houses John and I looked at were only $695,000.

Tangent:

John Scalzi is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, both for his novels and his blog.  Check out his latest post.  The idea came from the two previous posts.

Back to the fair.  But really only for pictures (all taken by John, used with permission 🙂 ).

John and I decided this was a re-enactment of that time a squad of soldiers got lost and wandered down Main Street in Waterford during the Civil War.

Look! Baby lambs! According to the sign on the pen, they're only two days old. The white one is a boy and the black one is a girl. Super cute.

Anyway, the fair was fun, but Waterford has some major hills (okay, one major hill), and we got a little too much sun, and we’re both very tired.  Tomorrow will probably be more restful.

The Fibonacci Quarterly

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Google is amazing.  John is reading Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra (I know, right?), and he asked me to google the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences.  Google listed that as the first choice by the time I got to “the online enc”.  No kidding.

There must be thousands of other online encyclopedias.  Hundreds, anyway.  How did Google know I was looking for THAT one?  (I’m aware that that there’s a real answer to that question, that it’s mostly about statistics and possibly about the sorts of things I google, ’cause if everyone else tracks what I search for and buy and spend time on, why wouldn’t I expect Google to, but I’m not looking for it right now.  Mostly I’m interested in the fact that John’s reading a book about algebra and I spent about an hour today putting together a spreadsheet to track the TV shows we’re watching, when each show is on, what episodes we’ve seen, and how far behind we are, since we no longer have a DVR to keep us on track.  I’m not sure what that says about us.  Let’s not dig too deep.  Also, let’s get out of parentheses.)

Happy anniversary, Corey and Candy!

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I’m a bad sister who didn’t call.  I’ll call you tomorrow.

The forecast for tonight and most of tomorrow is torrential rain.  I’m lying in bed, hoping to hear it.  I really want to be asleep right now (today was a good day, but long.  I’m worn out.).  I want to wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of rain beating down (I love that), and then go back to sleep knowing I have a few more hours before I have to go out into the rain to get to work.  I need a covered walkway to the car.  Parking in the garage is not an option.  I don’t trust people who actually park their cars in the garage.  What are they trying to hide?  Besides their cars?  Maybe belonging to the Secret Society of Those Who Park Their Cars in the Garage gives you access to secret underground hideouts, hidden from view in those very garages, only accessible by weight sensor.  There has to be a car parked in there to get in.  What do they keep in there?  I may never know.  Wait!  I do have a car parked in my garage!  I don’t have a secret entrance to an underground lair.  Maybe the cars have to be operational.  The secret entrance trigger is related to actually driving the car into the garage, not using it for long-term storage.  Someday John will get the Camaro back into shape so we can join the Secret Society of Those Who Park Their Cars in the Garage and find out what all the fuss is about.

Follicle wars

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I have rogue eyelashes.  They grow in weird directions and attack my eyes in the middle of the night.  When I woke up this morning (you were on my mi-i-i-i-ind), my left eye was tearing up like crazy and it was kinda swollen.  Putting my contacts in was impossible, and it didn’t get better after a shower, so rather than fight it all day long, I worked from home and made an appointment to see my eye doctor (who is the wife of my dentist – they share a practice).  She said my eye was irritated because my eyelashes are poking (and scratching) my cornea (again – this happened about six months ago), and there really isn’t anything I can do about it other than see her every six months or so.  She can pluck eyelashes I can’t even see.  I don’t get how this happens overnight.  What about yesterday?

Also, I feel a little like a wuss for staying home from work because of my eyelashes.  A lot like a wuss.