Pupsickle

We just got back from Safeway to buy me some more night time cold medicine, because I’m still not making it through the night without it. While there, we saw a girl I’d known in high school. And she looked like a clown. Seriously. I tried to find a picture on the internet that looked similar (or at least, similarly awful), but nothing looked nearly as bad as she did. Dyed red and black (stripey) hair sticking out at all angles in semi-dreads, stripper glitter everywhere, bright turquoise blue eye shadow (from lashes to brow), lip pierced in two places, upper lip mole piercing… the list goes on and on. But the hair and makeup were the big things. What drives women to make themselves up (with obvious effort) to look like Ronald McDonald on crack? Especially on a Thursday night at 10! Where on earth could she have been going? Does anyone really find it attractive? This whole incident merely drove home the point that I’m old. In fact, compared to her, I’m ancient.

In other news, I’m officially a dog torturer. We trim the hair on Bobby’s face so that he can see, and on his feet so he slips out a little less on our faux wood floors, and tonight he ran from me when I pulled out the grooming table. Then, to make matters worse, I nicked him several times with the clippers, reinforcing his poor opinion of my skills as a doggy stylist. I feel awful. He’s been licking his feet and sending me sorrowful, tortured gazes ever since. Ugh.

Our little greenhouse has worked wonders – the sprouts came up a whole week faster than we’d anticipated, and are growing at an alarming rate. So fast, in fact, that I’m wondering where I’m going to put them when they outgrow the greenhouse, which will be approximately next week. I guarantee that there will still be snow on the ground, and I have NO idea what I’ll do with my planned garden. Oh well, I guess that I’ll worry about that when the time comes. Maybe I’ll start to decorate the house with 69 cent garden tubs… that’d be a nice, springy look, dontcha think?

I had a migraine last night, and today the effects are still hanging around. I’m seeing a little aura around every light, and the right hand side of my head is still pulsating a wee bit. Has anyone ever heard of Effexor withdrawal making the frequency or intensity of your migraines go up? This one was a doozy. I’m so thankful it’s (mostly) over.

Gardenia
Originally uploaded by Pupsickle.

The gardenia that I bought for myself has started to bloom, and smells heavenly. I’ve been having a lot of fun taking photos with our new camera, and I thought I’d post a picture of the first bud to start blooming. I’m really happy with how the photo came out, and pleased as punch that it’s blooming. But really – how much credit can I take for a flower that’s been in my house for only about 36 hours? Sadly, not much.

From the car tonight, on the way to dinner:

Ian: Did you know that the word ‘kowtow’ is spelled with a k?

Me: Yup – it’s Chinese. It originally meant to bow your head to the ground before the emperor in respect.

Ian: Wow, you really are a repository of useless knowledge.

Me: Did you just call me a suppository?

Ian: We have to get you some stronger decongestants.

Me: That’d be nice.

I hate stuffy noses and colds. I get so pissed off at what I hear, only to find out that what I heard someone say to me isn’t what they actually said at all!

We’re sneezing our way through the days and sniffling our way to sleep. And there’s not much we can do about it. Dayquil works for the days, NyQuil sort of works at night, but I think this virus will just have to run its course in the end. I am grumpy, can’t breathe, and just generally feel pissy. I’m using that as my excuse for not posting yesterday. So there.

The weekend was uneventful. Ian woke me up saying “I’m making WAFFLES” á la Donkey, in Shrek. They were good, as waffles generally are. But not spectacular. Food, all food (even a homemade waffle) loses something of its luster when you can’t smell.

Yesterday started out well enough, but then we both got tired and pissy. We had to go see The Gondoliers by our local light opera theatre, since we’d already bought tickets and I’m cheap that way. As a future warning – if the cast composed primarily of people from your high school drama department, none of whom were noticeably talented back then, DO NOT torture yourself with their newest endeavor. Suffice to say it was awful.

Today was relentlessly dull, so I left work early and went to the grocery store. I’d been eying the recipe for baked potato soup over on the Cooking and eating on the cheap, and decided to try it out. Unfortunately, I didn’t read the recipe closely enough, and ended up spending an hour hunched over a hot stove. It was good, but not worth the time and effort. Again, perhaps this is because my nose has taken a sabbatical from actually being a working appendage. Unless, of course, you consider running down my face and plugging up the top of my upper respiratory track its job. In that case, it’s working marvelously.

I bought myself a gardenia plant today – I love the smell of gardenias, and they have such delightfully dark, waxy leaves. It has 6 blooms. I’m taking wagers as to whether or not they shrivel and die before they actually open. I always buy myself flowers when I’m feeling glum, and today was no exception. I hope tomorrow snaps me out of this funk – I’m getting sick of myself.

We added a new creature to our house yesterday – a crown tailed betta named Sully. The naming of the fishes is an almost sacred event in our house. Growing up, I had a tendency to kill my sister’s pet goldfish. I always (many different accidents) managed to accidentally do it in or find that it had flopped its way out of the bowl only to learn that freedom also means desiccation. I would then replace it with a new one, and to this day she has no idea how many fish she’s actually had in her life. And the fish were always named Phinneus.

So anyway, Ian and I had two bettas in a split bowl, and I named one (of course) Phinneus, and the other Gilbert. We called them Fin and Gil. Original, huh? Well, they both died, and I decided it was time to get a replacement.

Fast forward to yesterday – I needed a new fish name. Something without such a dire history. Since we’re going to see Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers tomorrow, I’ve decided to name the new fish Sullivan, shortened to Sully for everyday use. What do you think? Is it a bad plan to move away from the anatomical names? Does it bode well for the little guy’s life expectancy?

About the names, remind me to someday write about how I ended up with a 10 pound poodle named Robert E. Lee. I’m not a Southerner, nor a states rights activist, not even a closet historian. Yet Bobby Lee he is and shall remain. But that’s another post entirely.

Well, I think I’m the very last person in the blogosphere to have seen Good Night and Good Luck. I read George Clooney’s blog over at Huffington Post last week, and put it at the top of my Netflix queue. We watched it tonight. It was amazingly well shot, and well written. It’s definitely worth watching. Our nation could sure use more of Murrow’s type of reporting in these dark days.
When we finished watching the movie, I asked Ian if he’d like to read Clooney’s “blog” over at Huffington post, because I’d found it interesting. What I found, instead of the so-called blog entry, was that she’d pieced the whole thing together from interviews with Clooney over the past several years.

My question to you, dear readers, is how, HOW can someone publish a so-called first person “blog” about a movie dedicated to journalistic integrity, that is totally concocted??? If you haven’t read about this debacle, the original Huffington post purported to have been written by Clooney is here (it’s been taken off of the Huffington Post page), and articles about why she took it down and Clooney’s reaction to her cut and paste jobs are here. I had quite a bit of respect for her prior to this, and even read her blog occasionally. But this, it boggles the mind. The irony is just unbelievable.

I know this blog probably just repeats a story that’s days old now, but I had to share. Never mind the fact that most of you are probably Canadian, and aren’t really all that interested in 50 year old American politics!

I swear – they put something in them. Especially the Samoas (or Caramel Delights, or whatever they call them in your neckathawoods)… I’ve eaten a box today. ALL BY MYSELF. My mom, as a second grade teacher, feels obligated to purchase at least two boxes of cookies, or rolls of wrapping paper, or whatever else they’re using adorable children to market, from anyone in her class. Luckily (or unluckily, as today) I reap the rewards of her inability to say no. Or not. I’m sitting here with a huge bellyache, afraid of what the new day will bring. You see, there’s still another box in the kitchen. And I have absolutely no willpower when it comes to the combination crunchy cookie, caramel, coconut, and chocolate.

In other news, my husband’s decided that blogging looks like so much fun that he’s going to give it a try. Go visit him (only one real post so far) at AK Sparky.

Work went fairly well today. What amazed me the most was that I sat through an hour and a half long meeting that was exactly the same as the one we’d had the week that I left. Seriously. We lookd at the same graphs, discussed the same research objectives, the same project… it was deja vu, but in a nightmarish way. Sort of like when you dream you’re still in high school, except it felt like I was dreaming I was still in grad school… Perhaps that’s why I can’t sleep – the dread of dreaming about the research meeting that never ends is overwhelming.

My break from being a stressed-out grad student is officially over. I went in and talked to my boss yesterday, who’s madder than hell at me. But not for being sick. Nope, he’s mad because I didn’t keep him updated throughout the whole ordeal. I just assumed that, being a hands off kind of guy, he would only want to know that I was out, and know when I felt like coming back. I was wrong. But he does want me to keep my job, which means that I’ll still be paid for 20 hours a week of finishing my thesis. Yay!

The good news is that we worked out a plan that has me graduating with my MS in environmental quality science by the end of summer. The bad news is – by the end of summer! – means I will need to work my ass off to get my thesis written by then. I’m not failing any of my classes, although I did have to withdraw from one (it was one that I was taking for the Environmental Engineering degree, so I’ve scrapped it since I decided to just get a MS in science instead). I’ve been really dreading going back, but I started to dread losing the two years of my life that I’d put into this masters program even more. So, I suppose I’m glad to be back. Kinda. Okay, not really. But I guarantee that I’ll be happy when I’m done with school in 5 months!

Recent revelations:

If asked a question about a planet (any planet) while playing Trivial Pursuit, my husband will invariably answer Uranus. He just will. I’ve resigned myself to it.

If I order a used book on Amazon because I cannot find it in town locally, it will be in the used book section of the bookstore before the copy I have ordered arrives in the mail.

If I get in the express checkout lane at the grocery, the cashiers will have to change shifts before I can purchase anything, or else the person in front of me will have to have a price check, meaning that all of the slow lanes actually finish before I do.

If I shovel my porch, it will snow at least an inch in the next twenty four hours.

If I leave a houseplant within doggie reach, my dog will dig through it like he’s escaping to China. There’s no keeping that dog from dirt, any dirt, in any container.

The thermostat will never be set at the right temperature for me. Such a setting does not exist. I’m either too cold or too hot, but never, ever, just right.

BLOGGER UPDATE: Blogger is no longer broken. Yay! It only took about 6 emails to the Blogger support group on Google to get the problem figured out. In any case, I’m back! I don’t think I realized how much I would miss blogging if it were no longer possible. It’s addictive.

In other news, I finally made it up from a multicellular microorganism to a wiggly worm in the TTLB ecosystem. This made me incredibly, stupidly happy. If you aren’t listed in at The Truth Laid Bear or Technorati, get yourself over there and sign up! It’s fun, and it drives more readers to your blog, which I know we all crave.

My boss wrote and said that he isn’t in town until tomorrow, so I had today free at home to laze about and do my usual nothing, since I can’t really go back to work until I talk to him about what I should be working on, and if he even wants me working for him at all. I still haven’t resolved the whole issue of which of my classes to drop, although I have to do that soon, since Friday is the last day to withdraw. I’m so very, very, very burnt out on school. I swear, at this moment, I’d rather waitress again. And I never, EVER thought I’d say that. Because when people ask me what made me want to get my masters degree, I used to tell them “so I’ll never have to waitress again.” I’m that sick of it right now.

We planted seeds in our little indoor greenhouse tonight, which was fun. Playing in the dirt is always fun, but I find that it’s better if you actually have a purpose. Which we did. I want to grow vegetables, especially zucchini, since Ian hates it more than other food on earth. I just like to torture him that way. Zucchini bread, zucchini cake, zucchini pasta, fried zucchini sticks… oh, the options! The possibilities!

Here’s a great picture of my parents’ dog, Rosie, playing catch with Ian – she can jump at least twice her height vertically. It’s amazing. Ian bought me a new Nikon D50 camera, and I’ve had so much fun taking pictures. I just love the fact that I’m able to capture action with it, since my old digital (a Sony Cybershot) didn’t work for that at all.