Good thing babies don't hold grudges

It's been a blood bath around here lately. Ok, blood bath may be a bit strong, but I have managed to make our child bleed twice in the past week. A few days ago I noticed a dark speck at the corner of Tabby's eye. In her bath that evening I wiped and wiped at it with the washcloth. Turns out it was a tiny scratch, which I rescratched with my rubbing, thus making blood run out and almost into her eye. Then yesterday I was cutting her nails and accidentally cut one of her fingers instead when she moved. Apparently that one hurt, she started screaming right away. She was smiling and playing on her changing table again within about 5 minutes, so no permanent damage there. Her onesie might not be so lucky though, there are little specks of blood all over it.

Just for the record, I'm not the only one around here making babies bleed. Tabitha has discovered how to get her right hand up to her mouth to suck on it. Unfortunately, she misses quite a bit, and will end up poking herself in the eye or rubbing her nose instead. And when she does get her hand to her mouth, she often ends up sucking on her wrist with her fingers in her eye/nose. So she's now started scratching herself in the face and occasionally drawing blood, hence the nail clipping attempt. Too bad I only got 2 of her nails cut yesterday. She might be channeling Michael Jackson and rocking one mitten for a few days.

In other news, happy first birthday to Louisa, Tabitha's future Cornell classmate! I can't believe she's 1 already!

my poor car

As I was attempting to leave for work this morning, I made the oh so pleasant discovery that I had not one, but two flat tires. Tires which were brand new, by the way. Hurray! Luckily I was able to take Alfred's car so I could get to work. He investigated after I left and found slash marks in both of them. So apparently someone came by our house last night and slashed both of my driver's side tires. Alfred had a suspicion of who it was, but he talked to the guy and , so I guess it's just a random occurrence. I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.

Luckily I have a wonderful husband who took care of everything for me and got me some new(er) tires, and (most of) the people I work with are pretty awesome and cheered me up. (The situation put me in a pretty bad mood this morning, as you might imagine.) So first my car gets broken into by that dude who tried to break into our house last fall, and now this. It's been through a lot. Poor thing.

a little something for the ladies

I wrote an open letter to the young gentlemen of the world awhile back. I'd find that post and link to it here, but the keyboard and mouse I'm using suck far too much to go through that much effort. I'm using the internet on our tv! It's rad. Anyway, here's a little message to the young ladies so that they don't feel left out.

Girls. I know you're only trying to help. I'm sure there's no other reason for your behavior in public restrooms. I know that you're trying to save the environment by not flushing the toilets, saving water and whatnot. Or maybe it's because you've been trained not to touch public restrooms and don't want to touch the flush lever either. Well, I'm here to tell you that neither you nor the whales will die because of flushing the toilet. It's ok, trust me. I do it all the time. Hell, I apparently do it more often than you do, because I'm constantly having to flush after people.

There's also that minor issue with the toilet paper. In the toilet works best, ladies. And I know it's super fun to spin the dispenser to get to the next roll, but it's best if you wait until the current roll is actually gone before you spin it. Otherwise you end up with three little mini rolls that run out too soon. That's no help to anyone.

Then we have the sink area. I'm sure you're just trying to keep things clean by pouring soap and water all over the floor, counter, and sink, but we have these things called "old ladies" who like to slip and fall. Oh, and that round thing under the paper towel dispenser? That's where the used paper towels go. It's called a trash can. It's where all the happy used paper towels go. Send them home, girls. Send them home.

In closing, people of all ages and sexes are disgusting. The End.

open letter

Dear men,

How are you? I am well. Now that we've exchanged pleasantries, do you mind if I get a little personal? Lovely, thank you.

Now, I'm a girl, so I pee sitting down. But I hear that most of you tend to void your bladders while in the standing position. I also hear that you have a nifty little appendage that you can aim towards the toilet, which presumably makes it easier to hit your target. So why, pray tell, do I find myself cleaning up puddles of urine on the men's bathroom floor at work on a regular basis? Maybe it's just the younger members of your species. Today, for example, I went into the men's restroom after several classes had eaten lunch. There was a large puddle on the floor, directly between the urinal and a toilet. It was such a large puddle that I actually used paper towels to push the fluid into the urinal instead of just soaking it up (I was wearing rubber gloves). In other words, it was disgusting. Unfortunately, today was not an isolated incident. The men's room regularly reeks of urine from the young men visiting our fine establishment. And I can always tell when some of them have been in the unisex, wheelchair-accessible stall. Puddles, puddles everywhere, cause they've had too much to drink. I'll save the non-urine messes for another day. And to be fair, those aren't always the boys.

So, gentlemen. If it's really that far of a distance from you to the toilet, or your aim is really that poor, perhaps you should consider taking a seat. There's nothing to be ashamed of. Parents, please feel free to teach your young charges the fun in aiming for the center of the toilet bowl. Yeah, the rim can be fun, and the floor's always a blast, but hey, why not the water? Peeing in the toilet: it's the gift that keeps on giving.

Thank you for your time.

what a day

The day started out great. My bosses are out of town for a wedding, so we ordered lunch at the main downtown office and I managed to kill 2 hours there. The problems began when I left work. I wasn't more than 2 miles away, stopped at a red light, when I got rear ended. Luckily my Hyundai is a freaking tank, so the bumper isn't even dented, just a couple of tiny scratches. She hit me hard enough to knock all the stuff out from the little storage area under he dashboard and make the sunroof cover slide open, and dent her SUV's bumper, but my car's just fine. We exchanged info, I gave them directions to the place they were trying to find (which is why she was distracted), and continued on my way.

The next issue came about 5 minutes after I got home. The doorbell rang, and by the time I got downstairs to open the door there was no one there, just a bike in the driveway. I went back upstairs to look out the windows and see if I could see anyone, and heard someone knock on the back door. Then they tried to open the door. Then I heard a man on the phone, telling someone to meet him down the road. By this point I was freaking the F out, considering grabbing Alfred's shotgun, but instead called my neighbor's house. His daughter in law answered, I asked her to look and see if she could see anyone, and then saw from the bedroom window that the garage door was open. She said she and her husband would be right over. They came over, he knocked on the window of the garage to get the guy's attention, and this weird dude came out of the garage with a paint can. Long story short, he said he was supposed to give someone a paint quote and thought this was the house. He finally left, after giving us a business card and saying that we should call him if we needed any work done. When I went into the garage to close the door, I saw that my car door was ajar and stuff had been moved around. So I decided to call the police. They came pretty quickly, which was nice, and the neighbor and I filled out statements. They found his bike and said they had an idea who it was. Hopefully they find him.

All I know is, they say bad things come in threes, and I've had 2 so far. So everyone just take care of yourself tonight, ok?

getting back into the swing of things

So we've been home and back at work for a couple of weeks now. It still kind of sucks. I keep waiting to settle back in and for everything to get back to normal, but it's not quite happening. We were gone for so long that it's been really hard to go back to everyday life. At the same time, it's like the trip never happened, like someone else just told us about it. For 6 weeks we were constantly on the move, seeing new things, always doing or planning something exciting, lots of adrenaline and stress. Now we're back to grocery shopping, cleaning, going to work every day, and sitting at home watching TV every night. We've both been kind of depressed, which is apparently a fairly common thing after a vacation. We also unfortunately gained a few pounds on the trip, so it sucks having to go back to exercising and watching what we eat after, well, not for so long. It's really just no fun overall. In addition to all that, we've had to back out of going to our friend Katie's wedding in Germany next month. Between money (or more accurately, lack of it), Alfred's passport being about to expire, and my bosses not being too thrilled about me taking another week or so off of work so soon, it's just not going to happen. So not only can we not go, I also feel rotten for having to miss the wedding. Ugh. No, we're not happy to be home, in case that hasn't come through clearly enough. At least we have lots of good pictures to look at.

Alfred's Antics

What has he done this time?

Apparently he looked down to read some directions while driving and looked up about 2 seconds before hitting the car in front of him. Oh, Alfred.

Luckily he's completely fine. Also good is the fact that his engine is in the middle of the car, behind the seats. So the car still runs, although it's probably not going to last too long because there are other vital car parts in the front. This means Alfred gets to start doing car research again. The other car was fine too, as was the other driver. The crappiest part is that we had just paid off his car a few months ago. So really, the timing was about right, I guess.

Oh, and who did he hit? Turns out it was a guy in his company car, so they had to call the police and everything. And what does this guy do for a living? He's the driving safety instructor for his company. Ah, irony.

quick thumb update

Cause I know you've all been concerned about it. It's been almost 3 weeks since I smashed my thumb, and I'd say it's finally almost healed. As healed as it's going to be anytime soon, I would guess. The bruising is gone, the scab fell off, and there's just a tiny bit of swelling left along one side of the nail. Also, the nail has started growing again! It freaked me out when I noticed it hadn't grown since I hit it, but late last week I noticed it was a little longer, so that's good. There's still some bruising or something under the nail, but at least it's not going to fall off. Oh, and all the skin peeled off of it last week. It was weird.

Most importantly, I can finally use my thumb a little more now. It still hurts to put much pressure on it, but I can use it more than I have been able to. Opposable thumbs really come in handy. I'd go take a picture and upload it, but there's not much to show, and I'm far too lazy. I have to start getting ready for work in about 10 minutes so I'm trying to stretch every last second of relaxation out of this morning. I have to work until 10 tonight, but luckily we didn't have any groups this morning so I didn't have to go in until the afternoon. I've been catching up on blogs that I haven't read in probably a month. Where does the time go?

Sorry this is a little lame. I'm going to try to remember to bring the camera to the new museum and take a few pictures to show the new stuff. I had it yesterday but forgot to being it over. My bad.

this is post #199

Today sucked. Of course, since today was the first work day of the first full work week after 2 weeks of holidays, it was bound to suck. There was no hope of non-sucking for today. Nothing particularly bad happened, it just existed. I had to wake up and go to work and know that I'm going to have to do the same thing for the next 4 days in a row. Also, I seem to have fallen off the wagon really, really hard and I can barely see it rolling along ahead of me. It's going to take some real work to get back on. But I need to. I feel disgusting. I'm pretty good at home, it's just work that kills me. I'm all alone all day long with nothing to do but think about all the food I have there to eat. Alfred made me take the box of chocolate macadamia nut clusters that Maureene brought to work, and with no one else there, guess who's eating them all? Kara, the new girl I hired last fall (I'm not sure I've ever mentioned her name, but now I can call her by name and make it easier on myself) was supposed to be back last week but with the whole breaking-up-with-her-fiance thing is apparently not feeling up to coming back to work yet. Must be nice to not need the money. At least she's coming back, I was afraid she was going to move back home and screw me. That would have sucked. Also, is that how you spell fiance? Or is it fiancee? I think one's for the man and one for the woman but I don't really know for sure. I probably made that up.

We had a super lazy weekend. We were planning to take down all of our Christmas decorations and lights and pack them all away and then I was going to reorganize all the stuff in the closet under the stairs where we store everything, since we have no closet space, but it didn't happen. Instead we watched a bunch of movies, some tv, and ate. Just the kind of weekend I love.

critters and stuff

Last night we had quite the little menagerie in the house. Ok, that's a little dramatic, but we did have a roach and a gecko. Alfred saw the gecko in the office and said we should leave him inside to eat the bugs. He (the gecko, not Alfred) was running all over the walls and ceilings. He was a twitchy little thing. And kind of big.

I guess he's still in here now, but I haven't seen him today. He obviously was not doing his job with the bugs though, because there was a smallish roach in the hallway last night. He was half dead already, and Alfred beat him into the carpet to finish him off. I had to pick little roach bits out of the carpet, it was really gross. But it's dead!

So Alfred's not home tonight, he's staying at his parents' house to help them out. Robyn had surgery on her eyelids this morning to help with her peripheral vision. He said she's in a lot of pain, which is understandable, considering they lasered her eyelids all to pieces. She can't go up stairs for 2 or 3 days, so she's camped out in the dining room now. That must make it so much worse, not being able to be in your own bed. She can't read, watch tv, or use a computer for I think 10 days, then can't drive for like 6 or 8 weeks. I can't even imagine. That's why we celebrated his birthday last weekend - it's not until this Saturday, so Katherine, you're not late!

One last thing I just remembered, totally random but here goes. I heard on NPR last week that the FL supreme court ruled that a law banning gay couples from adopting kids was unconstitutional. So, good job FL, way to not be the most ass-backward state in at least one way!

NC Part 2: The Adventure

No, I didn't forget, just had to give my favorite nephew his props!

So, it all started Saturday as we were out for our first rhino ride of the weekend. We were buzzing around, I was taking lots of pictures. I asked Alfred to stop as we drove by a lake to take this picture:

And that's when it happened. We got stuck. Really, really stuck. Apparently the ground was not as solid as it looked, and the rhino was not all-powerful after all.

So we walked back to the house (luckily we weren't too far away) to get the truck and some straps and rope to try to pull it out. Within about 2 minutes, we got the truck stuck. Of course. It didn't have 4 wheel drive. We got it out after only minimal suffering, then hooked up a bunch of straps to try to pull the rhino out.

Didn't work. We snapped 2 of the straps. Now we were starting to worry. So we headed into town, which was about a 15-20 minute drive. We found an Auto Zone and bought a winch to try to winch it out. Perfect, problem solved. We stopped at a grocery store to get some supplies and headed back out. Which is when we discovered that the winch was about 3 feet long. Not long enough to hook to the tree nearby. Figures. So we wrap a couple of straps and a rope around the tree, connect them to the winch, and winch it out about 2 feet. Detach, tighten straps and rope, repeat. It's not happening. We decide to admit defeat. I head back to the house in the truck to call the caretaker and ask him to come help us. I'm in the bedroom when all of a sudden I hear a motor roar up the driveway. Alfred, through some magical powers that could not manifest in my presence, had gotten it out.

We did sort of ruin the nice pristine lake. Never a dull moment.

I suck

Yup. I am.

I didn't get to attend the recruitment fair today after all. I had received an email about a week and a half after I registered saying I was cleared to attend. I submitted my online application, sent in my transcript, and got myself sort of prepared. Yesterday I was looking through the website to make sure I had all the info I needed for the fair and came across a list of eligible registrants. My name was not there. So I called. Turns out there's another person with my last name who also registered, they mistakenly sent me his email when he was cleared to attend. It also turns out that there was a deadline to turn in my transcript and application, and I missed it. Now, in my defense, this deadline was not mentioned in the confirmation email I got after I registered, or anywhere on the website. Apparently it was on the registration form. Which is no longer available online, since registration closed over a month ago. Which means I didn't read it, or pay enough attention to it. So, I suck. And, the day I received the email saying I was cleared to attend was the deadline to submit my other stuff. So even if I had figured out the problem that day, I still wouldn't have been able to get it in on time, since I wouldn't have had my transcript with me.

There was also the slight matter of my transcript being filed under my maiden name and not credited to me at all. Seems they didn't pay any attention to the paper I put in there explaining that this was under my maiden name and giving my current name. But that's straightened out now, at least.

I even went there this morning, hoping someone stupid would be there and would just let me in. No luck.

I'm really, really angry at myself for screwing this up.

exciting night, and Katie's craptastic morning

So, first things first. Last night I made a key lime pie with meringue. It's my first meringue pie, so I hope it's good. It looks good.


I also made a loaf of bread, but it wasn't pretty enough to take a picture of. And we made granola. It's like crack to me. Sweet, crunchy crack.

The other accomplishment: I beat the Legend of Zelda! Yes, I took a picture. We didn't get a picture of the last screen when I won cause it scrolled by before we grabbed the camera. I guess Link and Zelda had to go make out. No, I didn't have a mouse in my pocket, Alfred came downstairs to watch my victory. And offer some tips.


I started the second quest, but it's hard again cause I lost all the cool weapons and power I had from the other game. I'll probably start looking for websites for help/to cheat. Or give up.

And now for the exciting-in-a-bad-way news. Katie called a little after 10 last night: her car had died on her way home from work. So Alfred went to pick her up, and we drove her back there this morning (she got to sit on my lap, since our only car is a 2 seater) so it could get towed.


Turns out the timing belt is shot and with the potential damage she's looking at at least $2000. Not worth it, considering she/we bought it for less than that. So, Katie has no car. Luckily her classes are over, but 2 of her friends were supposed to be flying down next week and all three of them were going to drive back to NY for Katie to spend the summer up there. Not anymore!

The best part is, Katie called me a few minutes ago. Right after she got off the phone with my mom, her phone died. She was right next to a Radio Shack, so she went to try to buy a new charger, but of course they didn't have any. So she had to go buy a phone card, find a phone book, look up the number for the mall she works at, call to get the number for the store she works at, call there, get phone numbers for a couple of her friends, and then try to find someone who was able to pick her up and take her back home. I was just laughing. I mean, what else can you do? It could be worse, she could have broken down in the middle of West Virginia on her drive home. West Virginia sucks.

a lesson for the day

There once was a man who started his own business. He was an ambitious man, and times were good for his particular business. He was very successful, made lots of money, and attracted a national company who ended up buying his company for lots of money. He personally made about $15 million on the sale. He was only in his mid thirties, I believe. Now this man was still ambitious, and times were still looking good for his industry, so he started a new business. Since he had plenty of money, he was very aggressive in pursuing deals and making purchases to further his business. Unfortunately, the good times ended. Sales dried up, and his large workforce and inventory kept his overhead very high. Sadly, this man has now had to lay off the majority of his employees, is on the brink of closing his business and declaring bankruptcy, and may end up in jail for certain business practices employed recently as he struggled to stay afloat. How much does that suck? If he had only taken the money and run a couple of years ago, he could be sitting on a beach sipping margaritas right about now. Moral: quit while you're ahead!
(and no, this is not anyone I'm related to, or even know very well; I've met him once and just happen to know the story)

When I make my millions, I am totally retiring and living a life of complete laziness. You know how you're supposed to imagine what you would do with your life if you won the lottery, and that's what career you're supposed to go into? I'd do nothing. I have no ambition. Sit on my ass, watch tv, read, drink. I wonder what kind of job I can get like that.

bad luck

I had all sorts of unfortunate things happen yesterday. First, I went to buy plane tickets to go to MN and the prices had gone up by freaking $80 apiece! From the day before! So waiting 24 hours would cost us $160. Sucks. So now I'm not sure when we're going or what's happening, which sucks because we had just finally managed to nail down a date and pick exact flights. Back to the drawing board. So frustrating!

Second, my computer will no longer turn on. It worked fine Monday night, Tuesday evening it won't respond at all. I'm hoping it's coincidence, and not that Alfred is systematically destroying or getting rid of my things when I do something to piss him off. First we sell my car, then my computer breaks. Whatever it was, I'm sorry! :)

Third, (this was technically this morning, but it can still count) I was at my lowest weight in about a year Saturday morning. I've gained 3 pounds since. Not that much, but considering it took almost a month to lose those 3 pounds, it's kind of discouraging.

But luckily I had this last night to cheer me up:


Seriously, the most delicious cake ever. (no wonder I gained 3 pounds, right?) It's a really dense fudgey cake, not a normal fluffy frosting type cake, very rich and chocolatey. You don't need a very big piece. Coming from me, that says a lot. I made some ganache to pour on top, which was really good, and some whipped cream, which was not really necessary but still ok. The recipe for the cake is here if you're interested. I highly recommend it.