News

Two quick updates:

1.) Kaiser had his eye surgery and it was cheaper than I thought and his eye looks amazing. You can't tell there was ever a big pink gland sticking out.

He also has to wear the cone of shame for 10 days, which is just as much fun for him and us as you can imagine it would be. I'm pretty sure I have half circle bruises on my ass from when Kaiser sprints past me without allowing clearance room for the cone. It's annoying but it is hilarious too.

2.) I got into the design program at OSU!!! Whee!! There were 70 candidates this year, so I beat out at least 52 other people. It sucks though because some of my friends didn't make it, and one person was wait-listed. What a kick in the ass. But anyway, I'm in, so now I know what the next three years of my life are going to be. Woot woot! I'm really excited :-)

One of Those Mornings

I don't even have to explain, you already know what I'm talking about when I say, "One of those mornings." This one occurred because of a meeting.

Generally I try to avoid meetings.... I never have anything I can add because I'm not directly involved in the projects they're covering and I don't really need any of the information being exchanged in it. I think my boss has caught on to my general distaste for them because he stopped asking me to go to them on a regular basis. Or maybe it's because of days like Wednesday.

I will be the first to admit that I've let myself go a little at work. I used to wear nothing but stilettos and dress shirts with matching accessories. Now I shlump in wearing brown uggs under my black dress pants and I have a hoodie on every day. I'm going to say that a huge reason why I look dumpier is because I freeze my fucking ass off at work (unable to maintain body heat + sitting under vent + near window = frozen Cake). I'm old enough now and get seen seldom enough since I no longer do customer service that I'd rather just be warm and comfortable and get more sleep than get up and do my hair every day. Most days this doesn't matter because I see the same five people every day.

Wednesday I got a text at 9:50am from my direct boss, asking me to "bring a sign in sheet to our 10:00 meeting." Now, the meeting was on my calendar, but he never asks me to go to his meetings anymore, so I didn't know I was supposed to be there. And I looked like shit. Really. But, it should be fine, probably just the normal crowd.

WRONG. Not only do I get in there 10 minutes late, there are about 20 people in there including my boss, the head of our department, and the head administrator for the city.

There are engineers from other companies there, discussing our biggest project. The head of our department had told my boss before that I needed to dress a little more appropriately (because at one point I was wearing a hoodie that was five sizes too big and supplementing that with a pink fleece Scottie dog blankie), so me looking bad has been an issue before. And I roll in looking like I'd just crawled out of a burlap sack of fighting cats... in front of the three people who are most critical to me keeping my job. Guess where the only empty seat at the entire table is?

It was terrible. I was so embarrassed. My hair was a grease bomb, I had on a maroon hoodie that probably wasn't really work appropriate and I was covered in dog hair because I had to take Kaiser in for his eye surgery that morning.

I told myself I was going home after school that evening and doing my nails, my hair, changing my makeup, ironing some dress clothes, and *gasp* shaving my legs. I was going to clean up and never embarrass my boss again.

I'm sure you can guess what happened. And just in case you can't.... I took a picture in all of my full, no makeup, unadulterated morning glory. Happy Friday!

My First Blog Award

 Guess what I got? You probably can figure it out by the title of this post. I got this award from the lovely and charming Goofy Girl at There is Grandeur in this View of Life. She's currently overseas visiting Scotland and London (are you back in London?) and has a lot of great pictures and cute stories. You should totally check her shit out right meow.

*Edit - Way to go Tara, post the damn thing without actually posting the award. Who's going to nominate me for a 'Special' Person award? 

There are also some rules that go with this award:

1.      Thank and link back to the person who gave this award to you. 

Thank you miss, and her link is provided above.

2.      Share 7 things about yourself 

- I would eat nuclear waste if it had melted cheese on top of it. 

- I always wanted to be a lefty. I used to practice writing with my left hand. I even started a left-handed journal in a notebook made for left-handed people. Eventually it got old and I abandoned that quest, but I always thought left-handed people were cool. Weird?

- I have a tendon phobia. I can't stand to be touched on the backs of my knees, the insides of my elbows, on the top of my hand by my thumb (if I make a claw hand I have a huge dip in my thumb where the skin stretches over the tendon), or on my wrists - anywhere tendons are visible. It gives me goose-bumps just thinking about it.

- I can still do cartwheels.... if I stretch out for like 15 minutes. I made the mistake of doing a cartwheel once without stretching..... painwow. When I was little we'd spend all recess doing cartwheels and handstands and headstands. I can't imagine popping up on my hands like I did when I was 7. That'd be a great party trick today.

- I used to be really painfully shy and introverted. Now I love meeting new people and making new friends and hanging out with just about anyone. I still find this new personality aspect strange and blame my father who says that he's shy but makes random friends everywhere he goes. 

- I want to learn to the play the violin. I think it's amazingly gorgeous. The only thing I would want more is to be able to sing (well).

- A single nice comment on my blog will make my day. Seriously.

3.     Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers 

Okay, I don't want to purposely break this rule, but here's the thing: I follow a lot of blogs by people who have a million other followers and don't give a rats ass if I follow them or not. I don't feel like it would be appreciated if I gave these people awards. I'm just common folk, ya know.

Lin @ Linny's Vault

Midwestern Mama @ Are You Serious

Chi Town @ Chi Town Southerner

Pat @ Patrick Tillett

Maggie @ From Monarchs to Ladybugs

Brooke @ Learning the Language of Brooke Farmer

Miley @ Musings of a Confused Woman

Kristy @ She Just Walks Around With It

Rambling Hutch @ Sporadic Sporkitudes

Rachel @ The Rachel Chronicles

So I only came up with 10 people that I follow that I think might actually communicate with me and/or appreciate an award. That's it folks. I'm always looking for new blogs to read to pass the time at work the day so if you read my blog and you have your own blog, leave me a comment! In fact, leave me comments anyway. I lurves them. And you. 

4.         Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award.

And..... scene.

More Family on Family Violence

I was pretty surprised by the amount of people that liked my story about my dad stabbing me in the hand. I thought, "Is there another incident of familial violence I can spin into a funny story?" And then I remembered the time I hurt my sister Rachel. I was maybe 11 (read: old enough to know better) which would have made her 6. Here's a possible child pornography picture of Rachel and myself at what I assume is that age:

Rachel flashing her panties... I'm sure when I said pornographic everyone that knows me assumed  I was the one being indecent.

It started out innocently enough; Rachel and I were in the kitchen, and I was balancing a can of Dinosaur Spaghettios on my head, you know, like you do.

I had gotten into this phase where I was super intent on balancing things on my body. I spent a lot of time in the garage and driveway learning how to balance a broom on one finger, and this also translated to balancing things on my head. No, I'm not joking. I was damn proud of the fact that I could hold a broom on my finger in the air longer than anyone I challenged.

Anyway...... So I'm balancing this can, feeling pretty awesome, when mom comes in to make sure I'm not having any fun at all. She doesn't want me balancing that can on my head because it could fall off and hurt Rachel.

Who cared about Rachel?? Couldn't she see I was working on my balancing?

Of course as soon as she left the room I went right back to my stupendous can balance. And not even thirty seconds later that can slid off the top of my head, and of all directions it could have gone, it went directly into Rachel's face.... and broke her nose.

We actually didn't realize her nose was broken at the time. We didn't realize it until five or six years later when she had grown some more and her nose developed an ever-so-slight hook on the top. And she discovered she couldn't breathe out of it properly. Whoopsies!

Last year it was confirmed that it had been broken and she had to have surgery to open her nasal passages. Here's an awesome picture of her with frozen coconut on her face after the surgery.

She looks THRILLED to be able to breathe again!

I'm pretty much the best sister that ever existed.

You know though, I feel that my actions were just carrying on a tradition that has been upheld in my family for two generations now. When my mom was ten, her sister Ellen (who was eleven) broke her nose by hitting her in the face with the heel of a shoe. At least I didn't actually hit Rachel... I got a can to do my dirty work.

And one last closing question: Did you ever do stuff like this to your younger siblings when they slept?

Kaiser Update

I've talked about our Great Dane Kaiser before and all his medical problems and expenses. Despite what a pain in the ass he is, we both love him to pieces and he's basically our child. He seems to require the type of attention a child would need (vs. a dog) and we do a fair amount of worrying about him. If he gets sick or throws up we're both watching him like a hawk, just waiting for the day when his stomach bloats or his hip pops out of socket.

Last week we were in bed when I was slightly woken up by the sound of coughing/retching. I wasn't fully awake yet until I heard the sound of puking, and I immediately flew out of bed and ran into the guest bedroom. As a reward for getting older and more mature and trustworthy we've been letting him sleep in the bed in there instead of his cage at night. Anyway, throwing up is one of the first signs of bloat, and you have only hours to save a dog who has bloated. So we take upset stomachs very seriously.

As I rounded the corner this is what I saw:

Kaiser was lying on the ground, instead of on the bed, in a huge puddle of foam. I assumed a few things in that second: that he had bloated during the night and crawled off the bed to try to get to us or downstairs but hadn't made it very far. He'd been puking foam or whatever it was and I hadn't heard him until now. And with that amount of stomach contents on the ground, I thought we were too late and he was probably not going to make it. This is at 12:30am.

I woke Justin up with my "OH MY GOD" and he jumped out of bed. It was at this point I flicked on the lights, ready to jump into action and save him.

I was a bit premature in my half-asleep state. He had actually gotten wrapped up in the blanket, somehow gotten to the floor with it, and had really only tossed a few pieces of dog food that he had inhaled without chewing. He was totally fine, and excited to see me at this early time of the morning. Needless to say I was relived, but my adrenaline continued to pump for another thirty or forty minutes before I was able to go back to sleep. Add that to Fun with Kaiser.

Speaking of expensive, I scheduled Kaiser's surgery for his cherry eye. I starved him the night before like you're supposed to and my Mom drove to Columbus to drop him off since I had to work. They put him under and started to work on his eye when they realized that it wasn't normal cherry eye. He has something called a "Prolapse of the Third Eyelid". What they told me was the cartilage that holds his eyelid in place is actually growing up and out (instead of in?) and is pushing the gland out of his eye.

Cute Xmas pic, huh?

Soooooo we have to schedule another surgery with an eye specialist at OSU. I'm sure that'll be cheap, right? Then he'll have to wear a collar for a few weeks. I can't WAIT!

The Time My Dad Shivved Me

This is a ridiculous story from my childhood. I can't remember why I was discussing it but I remember asking my mom last week, "Remember when Dad stabbed me?"

I should probably preface this by saying that my dad is not a mean, cruel, or hurtful person in any way, shape, or form. Ironically enough my dad was all about safety when I was a kid (I had the bike helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, etc and I was forced against my will to wear them). So much so that my friends nicknamed him "Safety Sam" even though his real name is Steve which would have been another perfectly acceptable alliteration and actually preferable... but whatever. 

Anyway.

One night when I was about six we were sitting at the table eating dinner when dad picked his fork up and held it above my hand like he was going to stab me.

Thinking this little game was hilarious I quick pulled my hand away before the fork hit the table.

Haha! Look at me and my lightning fast reflexes!

Haha! This game is so much fun!

How was it even possible that I failed all my reaction-time tests at the science fair in our gym? I'm like quicksilver!

You know where this is going. In all my infinite wisdom I decided to see what he'd do if I didn't move my hand at all.

I still think this story is hilarious, and I remind my dad about it once every few years. To be fair he didn't actually hurt me very bad, maybe just broke the skin. I'm pretty sure I screamed like he had driven the fork through my hand and into the table though and made sure he felt guilty for it for a long time afterward. 

Worst Question Ever

You know how when you meet someone or are getting to know someone, you ask that person questions about himself or herself to get a feel for that person? Generally I am okay with this Q&A, but there is one question I absolutely abhor:

What kind of music do you listen to?

I know some people are all about this question and can't wait to tell you who their favorite bands are. They like music, they identify with it, it shapes their world and speaks to them. They want to express themselves through the music they listen to and love. And if you haven't ever heard of their bands or the music they listen to you, you are OUT. I call these people music snobs. I think Justin is a borderline music snob. I asked him to provide me with exactly how much music he has in technical terms, and how much that is in layman's terms because I'm not a computer geek like he is and that stuff doesn't make a bit of sense to me. Here was his response:

I have 301.98 Gigs of music.

This is approximately 51,545 songs

which would take approximately:

4,690.6 hours, or 195.4 days, or 27.9 weeks, or a little over 1/2 a year of consistent listening, 24 hours a day, no repeats to listen to.

Justin can easily tell you about his favorite music and he can name off bands that are "good" bands, that will let people know he is "deep" and "intelligent" and "artistic". I'm going to let you in on a secret - I am not in to music. I listen to it, I like it, I'll sing along to it in my car. But I don't really seek out new music, I can never remember who the name of the band is, I think live music at a bar is a snore, and I update my iPod maaaaaaybe once every four months. I have extremely shallow taste in music. If I can sing to it, shake my ass to it, or it gives me good vibes, then I like it. This means my tastes tend to fall mostly into pop and indie music.

I hesitated to even ADMIT that! My fingers paused on the keyboard while I stared at that sentence wondering if I was making a mistake. I feel like you all have just judged me right now. "Pop and indie music? JEEZ, what a shallow talentless whore. I bet she barely passed third grade and her deepest conversations are about Jersey Shore and what outfit she's wearing to the club this weekend!"

I don't think that I am a shallow person. I don't think I'm a person that is easy to peg into any one 'category' either. My tastes and interests are far flung. I always say I'm like Walmart - I know a little bit about everything but not a whole lot about any one thing. And I tend to think that most people feel that they are complex individuals as well. That's why I haaaaaaate this question. You are automatically pegged into a category based on what your answer is. In this case, I don't feel like my honest answer would convey me in the way I would like to represent myself based on the way I think people will respond.

The reason I bring this up is because classes started last Tuesday. The first thing the teacher asked us was this stupid question. Wonderful. Just wonderful. That is exactly what I wanted to do this morning - be judged by a whole classroom full of my peers!!

And you know I'm right. Everyone makes judgments on what kind of person you are based on your response to this question. And just in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, here is the kind of person you are going to be judged as if you tell someone this is your favorite kind of music and they are not in to the same music as you:

1.) Pop - e.g. Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Rihanna, Enrique Iglasias, Bruno Mars, etc.
I feel like this is tantamount to admitting you are unable to think for yourself.

2.) Techno - e.g. Freaky Goes to Amsterdam, RA, Alexey Koltar
I'm not quite sure that anyone ever says they like Techno anymore (am I dating myself here?) but they're out there. And they're tryin' to touch their face or yours.

3.) Rock (or Shlock Rock as we call it)- Hinder, Creed, Tool, Nickleback, etc.
Because you're probably still living in your mom's basement thinking you're simultaneously bad ass and deep.

4.) Metal - e.g. Slayer, Slipknot, Megadeth, Lamb of God, etc.
You probably haven't bathed in a while and you might look like a child molester.

5.) Indie - There is no example for this because all the best Indie bands are bands that no one else has heard of.
Hipsters might be one of the most hated groups of people I've come across in a long time. They don't care though, cause they've got their 80's shades, their ironic tattoos, their flannel shirts, PBR, and disdain for everything.

6.) Country - e.g. Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, George Strait, Rascal Flatts, Lady Antebellum, etc.
Because how many songs can you write about your girl leaving you and taking your dog, your tractor, your pick-up truck, or your man cheatin' on you?

7.) Gansta Rap - e.g. Das EFX, ODB, Ghostface Killah, Wu-Tang Clan, etc.
You probably just shot someone in the hood for frontin' on ya game. Or you want everyone to think you did.

8.) Alt Rock - U2, Dave Matthews Band, Coldplay, Rage Against the Machine, etc.
You are passionate about any causes these bands tell you are important and you know how much better a place the world could be if everyone would just, you know, listen to the music man!

You can easily spot other people who hate this question and don't want to be judged because they look uncomfortable for a second and then say: "I listen to everything but country."

Because there's just no cool way to admit you like country music.

My next class was right after that one and the teacher asked everyone what their favorite restaurant in Columbus was. I had plenty of answers for that.

IT'S FINALLY DONE!

My exam! I finished it! It's over! And here I am in my messy house eating it!

Notice how there are still Christmas decorations up on the left? And in case you were wondering, yes, that is Justin's cage.

Back to regularly scheduled programing soon.

2010 Wrap Up

Hey Ever-buddi.

Once again I'm going to pull that "I'm super effing busy" line on you guys, and I apologize, but I am super effing busy. The holidays were insane combined with the fact that I was working like a mad woman to get my Design Exam completed, buy last minute Christmas presents, make plans, bake and decorate, and see friends and family without losing my mind. I honestly don't even remember the week between Christmas and New Years. Classes started back up yesterday and I'm doing that part time plus 35 hours of work and finishing the exam, which is due Monday and frankly I'm a little nervous. If you read my blog regularly you probably already know that. Keep your fingers crossed for me if you will and I'll let you know the results (whether you want them or not) by late January or early February.

I was feeling pretty guilty about not having posted anything in like two weeks (I swear I've got some coming down the pipes though) and then I stumbled across this idea on Learning the Language of Brooke Farmer. Brooke writes a fantastic blog - check her out.

She actually stole this idea from someone else, but the idea was to post the top ten posts determined by stats. I say screw that, I'm going to post six of my favorites because a few of you folks (if you're still reading by now) are new to my blog and may not have read some of the older shit that I got a chuckle out of writing. So here it is in no particular order, feast my new friends! And to my dear tried-and-true friends, I wubs you, I'll be working on new posts ASAP.

1. The Different Types of Assholes
2. Adventures with Crackhead Bum
3. Fun with Kaiser
4. Open Letter to Shamansky Real Estate
5. Family Christmas Letter - I was so busy this year we didn't have time to make a 2010 letter :-(
6. One of the Top Five Reasons I'm Going Back to School