So where was I before I was abducted by aliens?

Yeah. It has occurred to me that I can only apologize so many times about not updating the blog before I start to sound disingenuous. So let me just say: it looks like the blogging is not really happening right now. I really wish I had the energy and the time to pay more attention to it, but for the time being I just don't. I'll continue to post things here and there as I feel the urge, but it won't be anything regular. Hopefully when we move to Olympia and my commuting-hell days are over with I'll get back to posting on a more reasonable schedule once again.

For now, know this:
-The wedding date is set for August 2, 2008. The ceremony will be in the Sunken Gardens on the Capitol Campus in Olympia, and the reception will be by Capitol Lake at the Heritage Room.

Bridezilla lives!

I have achieved Dress. A dress, she has been bought. The dress which will be worn to the ceremony we call "Wedding" - that dress, the Ultimate Dress, is now hanging in my closet. WHOOPEE! It was slightly more expensive than I had been hoping for, but I (or rather my mom) had to buy it, because I'm sorry, it was The Dress. The One. The dress that every woman dreams about, the dress that is half-reality, half-myth - the dress that flatters my figure, makes my ass look small and my boobs look...OK, not big, but a good size anyway--and that actually makes my back, normally a no-man's land of flab and poor posture, appear svelte and toned. Sadly, I had to let another dress go that I was for the most part in love with except for the bodice, which was strapless and therefore unflattering - I need boobage enhancement, not boobage smooshment, which is what most strapless dresses seem to tend towards, plus I have this weird issue with armpit rolls of craptacular fatness. But other than that, the whole thing was lovely lovely lovely. *Sigh* But I'm still happy with the one I have, which really was much more flattering, and now I get to gaze at it with affection for another year.

So maybe the date still hasn't been set nor the venue booked, but the dress is good to go.

I am a monster

This is according to Easy's new vet. To hear her tell it, I am a negligent asshole who shouldn't be left in charge of life forms any more complex than a begonia, much less sentient beings. Apparently I have single-handedly ripped Easy's kidneys to shreds by not getting her teeth cleaned regularly (which by the way, costs more than getting my own damn teeth cleaned, something I've only managed to do about twice in the past five years due to my crippling poverty problem), and by just in general being a lousy excuse for a human being. I have also damaged her 14-year-old joints by not feeding her special glucosomine supplements, and have made her a dumpy, bedraggled shell of a feline by not taking her to the groomers to get her matts shaved off.

Well, sorry.

And then we find out that Easy's kidney disease has progressed (no doubt because I am a terrible person), and that she will likely need to be given fluids through an IV a few times a week for the rest of her life. We've not been told yet how much this treatment is going to cost, but I can't wait to see the look on the vet's face when I tell her we can't afford it.

In other news, I am thoroughly enjoying Behind the Scenes in the Museum, and I feel bad about what I said in my last post. It is utterly charming and witty and is no less of a piece of literature just because it happens to be entertaining rather than depressing.

The post that almost didn't have a title, because I forgot to write one in

So.....here I am again. I'm finding myself with very little to say these days, partially because I don't have the chance to read a lot of other blogs anymore, which I used to do in the the past, and which used to give me ideas for my own blog. Also I don't have as much free time both at work and in life in general, so I don't sit around and compose blog posts in my head the way I used to do. And with that build-up, let's go!

Here are some things:

-I used to lament our crappy cable package in Arlington, and was elated when were able to get an expanded set-up when we moved to Tacoma. We now get several HBO channels, BBC America, IFC, blah blah blah. However, I now spend more time flipping through channels than I do watching TV, because even when I find something I want to watch, I am always convinced that there might be something even better if I just keep flipping. By the time I cycle through all the channels, I've forgotten where the shows were that I would have considered watching, and I turn off the TV in defeat.
Message: Be happy with the cable channels you currently have.

-I am becoming retardeder and retardeder by the minute. Yesterday I stopped in at a nice little used bookstore on my way back home from a walk, but promised myself, since I am currently ass-poor what with all the moving expenses, that I was just going to buy one book. I found two books I wanted: Saturday by Ian McEwan in hardback for only $5 (apparently some of the end pages were torn out), or Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson in paperback for $6.50. And do you know which one I chose? Yes, the latter. Now, I guess I should mention that Behind the Scenes was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year, so it's not like I was buying a Harlequin romance novel or something. But I think most people would agree that McEwan is the heavier literary hitter of the two. And not to mention, Saturday was a hardback and yet somehow cheaper than the paperback I chose. Oh well. My brain is dying, whoopety doo.

-I finished reading the seventh Harry Potter book a week or so ago, but I cannot record any reactions or criticism here because I don't want to spoil it for anyone else. All I will say is, now it's over. And what will I do without Harry Potter? Oh Ms. Rowling, how could you forsake us like this? Fine, just walk away with your billions and leave us. Cold-hearted bitch. *Sigh* I guess we still have two more movies to look forward to.

-I saw the movie Superbad last night. It was awesome. The language, it was so foul. The lines, they were so funny. And I hear tell that the movie is spot-on as far as the experience of a teenage boy goes. McLovin. Genius.

OK, I guess that pretty much wraps up the flotsam and jetsam of my mind for the past week. I will try my hardest to update more frequently, but once-a-week is sorta just where my life is at right now.

Um, so...I didn't die or anything

Things have just been a little crazy, what with the moving into a shitty basement apartment and the living in Tacoma while working in Olympia and the going to a friend's wedding the first weekend after moving. I've had about five minutes of down time since July 30th, not that that excuses me, I'm just saying. Also, the new job--I think I'll like it, it seems pretty good so far, and I'm slowly getting the hang of things. But, for various reasons, I can't write blog posts while I'm at work. As for commuting - if you look it up in the OED, I believe you'll find it under the definition for "BITCH." As much as I love Tacoma--and I do love Tacoma--this was quite possibly the stupidest idea I've ever had. I get up at 5:30 a.m., get home between 6-6:30 p.m., work out for an hour, take a shower, and have approximately one hour of my very own to eat dinner and flip through channels before going to bed at 9:00. This is not a life, people. On top of it all, I gained five pounds during the last month and I'm supposed to be going wedding-dress shopping in September.

So much for life getting better back on the west coast. We're already thinking that we're just going to have to bite the bullet and move to Olympia once our lease is up, which is only in six more months, thank god. However, I will sorely miss my neighborhood in Tacoma. I live in the Stadium District, which is a really odd mix of old stately homes, quaint brick apartment buildings, condos, and crazy people. And for some reason we can't quite figure out, tattoo parlors. But nice ones, with very tasteful flames painted on the sides of the buildings. From my neighborhood I also get a nice view of the Sound and Commencement Bay, which seems miraculous after the monotonous urbanity of DC. Don't get me wrong, Olympia has water views, too--they're just not quite as awe-inspiring as those of Tacoma. Our apartment is in this incredibly lucky spot where we get the comforts of a wealthy residential neighborhood--trees, sidewalks, peace and quiet, beautifully landscaped yards--and yet are near the hustle and bustle of downtown (which is mostly hustle, what with the drug dealers and prostitutes, but still), AND have water views within blocks of our apartment. These types of neighborhoods don't really seem to exist in Olympia, at least not for renters.

But, on the other hand, I really can't see living the commuter life for much longer than I absolutely have to. Oh Metro, I loved you so...

...and I'm back.

OK, here's the deal: I accepted the position in Olympia. After contacting HR at my alma mater, it became painfully clear that they were not going to interview me, so I really had no choice. Which is all well and good (and in fact it is neither well nor good, and I want to rip all of their fucking eyeballs out, but whatever). What really sucks is that THERE IS NO PLACE TO LIVE IN OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON. Let me qualify that: there is no GOOD place to live. After four solid days of searching and searching and driving around in circles through the city, we have come to the conclusion that law-abiding professional people who earn incomes and who do not beat either their wives or their children apparently do not rent properties in this fair city, because there are simply no decent places to rent. Every single apartment complex we saw was old and on the verge of collapsing, and the people going into or out of said complexes appeared to be sex offenders. And there are no houses for rent, at least not at this time, and most of the neighborhoods we looked at appeared to be the birth places of above-mentioned sex offenders.

In short, we have decided not to live in Olympia, though it will require me to commute an hour each way from North Tacoma (most of the rest of Tacoma also being replete with sex offenders). This saddens me, people. This saddens me a great deal. I do not enjoy the thought nor the act of commuting, and have sworn to myself on many an occasion that I would never be the single-car-driver-commuting-sap you see sitting miserably on the freeway at rush hour. But on the other hand, I cannot see myself living a mere paper-thin wall away from Cletus and Brandine as they whup some sense into their blended family. No thank you.

Viva la I-5!

So I guess this is goodbye

For a bit anyway. Actually, probably no longer than I would usually make you wait between posts, oh my adoring public. But anyway, just wanted to let the peeps know that I'm smack in the middle of ALA and the painful moving process (well, BF assures me it's painful. I've been standing on the sidelines working and going to conferences and getting offered jobs while he's been doing the packing and running errands. Hey, it takes a village.) Where was I? Oh yeah, going to a conference. So I won't have much free time to post for awhile. The official move takes place on Wednesday, and then the following Thursday I go up to Olympia to check out that job - if all goes as planned, we'll probably be on our way up there for good in a few weeks.

Stay tuned.

My life, and the suckage it contains

It's true, I really do never stop complaining. Wait till you hear what I'm complaining about now: I got a job offer from the place in Olympia (that's good). But the offer is for the same salary I currently make as a paraprofessional (that's bad). True, the cost of living in Olympia is cheaper than here by about a bajillion percent (that's the official number, look it up); however, as it stands now I am somewhat of a kept woman, with the BF largely taking the hit as far as rent and other "shared" bills are concerned. Which means, other than the fact that I now have to give up my feminist credentials, that my personal bills will not substantially diminish once I move, which means that I will continue to be on the verge of homelessness. Yes, I exaggerate, but it does mean that I won't be able to start saving for a house or for Canadian permanent-resident status or for retirement, all things that I had wanted to start doing sooner rather than later. As it stands now, I might be able to afford the down-payment on a house by 2040. But my children, should I have any, will just have to settle for working at the local Arco station, since I won't be able to send them to college. Especially since college tuition will be up to about $500,000 a semester, and that's just the state schools.

But seriously, think about this: I recently went to a budgeting-your-money type seminar, in which I was told that--prepare yourself, now--people our age (20-30) will need to have THREE MILLION DOLLARS saved in order to retire comfortably at the age of 65. That number is of course taking inflation into account, but still. That number scared the shit out of me. THREE MILLION DOLLARS. Just repeat that to yourself a few times and let the terror wash over you.

Anyway. Where was I? Oh yeah, the job offer. So now I'm all conflicted - do I accept the job knowing that I will be poor for a few more years at least, but at least secure in the knowledge that a job is waiting for me, and it's a job that sounds to be interesting and secure (and btw, does not include evening or weekend hours)? Or do I refuse it, on the risky hope that I will receive a larger offer somewhere down the line? And even if I do receive a larger offer, will it come soon enough to offset the broke-ness of being unemployed for however long? It's a gamble, and I'm not a gambling woman.

Meh.

I've just been looking around BookSwim (see below) and that is my official assessment: meh. First of all, their cheapest plan is $23.99 a month, which is 3 books at a time. You know what? I'm willing to take the extra 30 minutes out of my day to drive/walk/metro to the public library to avoid having to pay $24 bucks a month for my books. And the sad thing is, I very rarely read more than 3 books in one month anyway--in fact, I'd go out on a limb and say I NEVER read more than that. I'm too busy watching my Netflix DVDs.

Also, their searching mechanism sucks. I did a search for Pride and Prejudice and the actual book, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, did not show up anywhere within the first two pages of results. And when I browsed through their "British" books, the first two results were by American authors, A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Dude, hire new indexers. Books by Hemingway and Augusten Burroughs also show up in the top ten "British" books.

So browse their web site and decide for yourself, but unless you're stuck somewhere without a public library, I would say skip it for now. To be fair, BookSwim is still in beta, but I say it's probably not worth trying till the kinks get worked out.

Update on brainwave

Well, the BF (aka KILLJOY) has informed me that he read somewhere last week that someone is going to start doing just the thing I had the brilliant idea for yesterday (you know, the Cybrary). Fine. I accept the fact that I have no new ideas, and will never get rich. That's just fine.*

*OK, I just did a quick Google search and the new service, called BookSwim, is already up and running. I'm going to poke around and see how much it costs, but I think we should all take a moment and note that "Cybrary" is a much more clever name, if not terribly original.

**I guess we should also take a moment and note that a librarian, who gets paid to work in a place that lends out books for free, is now pimping what is essentially a fee-based library. Although libraries generally will not mail books directly to your lazy ass, and therein lies the genius of this service.

Forgot to mention...

I had a phone interview for a position in Olympia, WA, on Friday. While it didn't go too grotesquely awry, my hatred for phone interviews continues unabated. Nothing says "I'm your top candidate!" like awkward, blaring silences. And apparently my interview skills have improved zero percent in the past two years, since I still seem unable to BS my way through questions that throw me off balance. "Ummm..." just doesn't wow people the way I think it should.

Also, we tried unsuccessfully to rid ourselves of the automobile this weekend. We took it to Carmax and I told myself I was being reasonable to expect around $800, and really tried hard not to hope for more, even though I continued to have fantasies about getting an offer of $900, or even $1000. Because let's face it, this is no luxury vehicle we're talking about. It's about one step above a rickshaw, actually. But I have to say I died a little inside when the offer came back at--wait for it--$250. Uh. What? As BF pointed out, we could probably sell it for scrap metal and get more than that. So Carmax can kiss my ass. On to Plan B--pawning it off on an unwary stranger sometime in the next two weeks.

Brainwave!

I think someone, possibly me, should put into effect a service similar to Netflix, only with books. Because I'm always thinking to myself, "That's a book I'd like to read," and then I always forget to write down the title and the next time I'm surfing the library catalog my mind goes blank and I can barely think of a single book I want. So wouldn't it be cool if you could just keep a running queue of books in your "Cybrary" (I'm quite sure I'm the first person to ever think up that word), and so when you finish one and send it back to the library, they automatically send you the next book on your list? No? Because keeping a running list of your own would just be too much trouble.

All of which is just my way of avoiding the packing process. Damn the boxes!

New York, NY - it's my kinda town

I've been back from NYC for five days now, but I've been too busy doing things like sitting on my ass to update the blog. Actually, it's all part of my grand plan - I've been slowing down on the updates lately so as to wean you all for the time after I move, when my updates may become even more sporadic (as if). I say may because it occurs to me that after I move I will be unemployed once again, and will have plentiful time on my hands for writing all kinds of blogs. (Access to the Internet is another matter entirely, however.)

Anyway, this is all to say that I'm sorry, I know I suck for not updating more often. On to New York.

For someone who hates DC for its unrelenting urbanity, I actually really enjoyed New York, although I must qualify that by saying that I only experienced it on a holiday weekend when most of the locals were out of town, and I never had to deal with rush hour anything. The weather was stultifyingly hot and humid, which normally I find repugnant but under the circumstances I wasn't too perturbed by it. I finally see why all the tourists around here can walk around smiling inthe middle of our August heat waves, when all I feel like doing is punching someone in the face and making them drink my sweat. (Ew. That was a little over the line, eh?) I guess marinating in your own perspiration is a lot more tolerable when you're not trying to get to/from work without your melting the make-up off your face or sweating through your shirt.

We saw all the typical New York stuff, walked around a bunch, ate bagels for breakfast and pizza every other meal, saw Rent on Broadway, did the shopping on Fifth Avenue (I bought shoes at a Payless Shoe Source - yes, there's one on Fifth Ave.!). We also went to the top, actually the 86th floor, of the Empire State Building. This was the only sour note of the trip, as it became foot-achingly clear that trying to see the view from the Empire State Building at night on a holiday weekend was perhaps the stupidest plan we could have concocted. We also had the asinine-ness to try to do this immediately after seeing Rent, when I was still wearing heels and we hadn't had anything to eat or drink in several hours. Let's just say, after the first 45 minutes of waiting in an interminable line, I demonstrated some disgruntlement. The next 30 minutes became an exercise in pissed-offedness-to-the-extreme-degree, as the whole experience started to look like a facade to trap unwary tourists in a time-warp vortex where we continued to stand in line like idiots, hoping against hope that the elevators will appear just beyond the horizon, while eons pass in the outer world. Eventually, we did finally make it up, the view was very nice, and now I hope I never have to do that again.

All in all, though, I felt like I could actually fit in there - there's such an ecclectic mix of people, no one ever has to feel out of place. Plus everyone is always pushy and extremely irritable - finally, I've found a land where I could be my true self!

Anyway, so we had our nice little gut-twistingly expensive vacation, and now the real stress begins. We are now fully-offically moving at the end of June, with our plane tickets purchased and space on a moving truck reserved, so all that's left to do is sell the car, comb through all our belongings deciding what to pack, what to ship separately, and what to throw away, and combine that with applying for jobs and finishing up my last month of work on this coast. Piece of cake.

Oh the pain, the hideous pain

Where to begin my tale of woe?

It would seem that I am doomed to live a life mired in physical agony. Obviously I am exaggerating and I realize that many people live with chronic pain much worse than mine, but just indulge me for the sake of this post.

So most of you, sadly, know about all the problems with my legs, because I've chronicled them exhaustively here. Well, the problem in my hip/pelvis (in medical speak, my right sacroiliac region) has only gotten worse as the months have passed, to the point where it was almost too painful to do anything more active than sitting on my ass. So I went back to my doctor, even though I said I wasn't going to, because he's on the metro line and it's too hard to get into doctors around here if you're a new patient, so I went ahead and went back to the same guy. Anyway, he wanted me to get a steroid injection into my sacroiliac joint, and I thought this was a good idea, too, since I was tired of the pain and just wanted to get it over with.

So after a week and a half of back-and-forth with my doctor's office trying to figure out a stupid insurance detail, I finally got an appointment for yesterday morning to have the damn injection. First, the morning started off with me taking a metro train and two busses to get out to the hospital where fancy radiologist doctor gives out said injections. Then I wandered around the hospital complex for about 20 minutes trying to figure out where the hell I was supposed to go. I finally get there, have to do a bunch more waiting, and then I get to take off all my clothes, don a hospital gown, lie face down on the MRI table, and bare my naked ass to a roomful of male doctors and technicians for about 40 minutes while they figure out where to stick me. So it was a morning full of fun.

And here's how they figure out where to cause the maximum amount of pain--they take a 6-inch long needle, poke it into my bare ass, which is by the way hanging out for every male in the vicinity (about 5 or 6 of them) to see, and move me, verrrrry slowly, into and out of the MRI machine. Then they come back, move the needle approximately .2 mm to the left, and do the whole thing over again. They repeat this procedure two or three more times, then finally give me the injection. And have I mentioned that my ass, which is bare, is still naked and hanging out? To be perfectly honest, what hurt the most was the injection of anesthetic, so the pain from the actual injection of steroids and antibiotic were not as excruciating as I had feared--it was nothing compared to my latest root canal--but still, no walk in the park, either.

After the stabbing, I try to untangle myself from the sheets and hospital gown, which they have hiked up practically over my head, and they keep trying to barge in on me to see if I can walk OK, since apparently there was a chance that the local anesthetic would make my leg and foot numb, thus making me fall flat on my face. Meanwhile, my bare naked ass is still all over the place. (It turned out I could walk just fine, and in fact walked the mile from the hospital to the second bus, thus bypassing having to wait for the first bus.)

*Sigh*

The worst part is, I don't yet feel a huge relief from the pain, but it sure as hell better kick in, because I am not going through that shit again. Unless I can be guaranteed a roomful of female technicians and a female doctor this time.

[I guess I should note that, other than stabbing my ass repeatedly with a six-inch needle, the technicians and doctor were very nice, and were very concerned that I was there by myself and would have to *gasp* take public transportation "home," i.e. work.]

In other, more uplifting news, BF and I went to see Pretty Girls Make Graves on Sunday night, which was hugely enjoyable, except for the fact that it was Sunday and thus we both had to work the next day. Unfortunately it's their last tour, but they're playing their final show in Seattle on June 9th, so catch them if you can. I had never seen the band before, and interestingly, only the lead singer and keyboardist were girls. Who knew.

Anyway, the BF and I are headed to NYC tomorrow for the long Memorial Day weekend, so stay tuned for forthcoming NYC blog fodder. Hopefully fodder of the non-mugging variety. Please, let there be no mugging fodder.

Things I will miss about DC

Number one. Nuuuuumberrr one..........*chirping of crickets*

Kidding. Of course there are things I will miss, even though today I am particularly grumpy at the metro (subway system) for making me a half-hour late to work, a half-hour which I will have to take out of my VERY OWN personal sick leave, which is by the way unacceptable, but since I'm pretty sure no one who reads this blog works for metro, nevermind.

Things I Will (Mostly) Miss About DC When I Am Gone, Which Will Be Soon

1. The subway (most of the time - the rest of the time metro can eat shit and die)

2. Only having to drive a car once a week, to get groceries at Safeway

3. Having the option, not that I ever exercise it, to hear any type of live music or go to any club I get a hankering for any night of the week (and as a corollary: to have said venue be lively and full of people on any night)

4. Being in walking-distance to a number of decent bars

5. The plethora of cabs, and the ability to hail cabs on the street from most places I would ever venture, and that the cabs are mostly reasonably-priced

6. Any type of museum I could imagine within a short subway ride, totally free of charge and open every day but Christmas

7. Cool fireworks

8. Pretty much any major thing that happens in the country, I hear it first (OK, not me specifically, but the news media out here)

9. Intellectual vibrancy, and the vast amount of people who are interested in and pay attention to current events (usually because it's their job to do that, but whatever)

10. Access to nationally-renowned cultural stuff, like Broadway plays, major musical acts, author talks, etc.

11. The E-Street Cinema, purveyor of indie movies, beer, wine, espresso, brownies--things you can't get at a regular old AMC theatre--in a comfortable, well-run establishment. The Grand Theatre in Tacoma (which is neither grand nor a theatre, discuss) is not even comparable.

So now, to be fair, I must also list out the things I will NOT miss.

Things I Will Not Miss About DC When I Am Gone, Which Will Be Soon

1. The assholes. Oh my god, the huge number of assholes I encounter on a daily basis (I am probably one of them, but I don't care.)

2. Have I ever mentioned how much the humidity sucks here? I'm not sure that I have. Well, the humidity, it is SO BAD and it SUCKS.

3. The cost of living. If I told you how much money I pay to rent a smallish one-bedroom apartment (which by the way does not include utilities of any sort), you would cry. You would probably also slap me for being such a sucker.

4. Almost getting run over by ASSHOLES every single time I venture across the street. In crosswalks. With the walk-light clearly in my favor. Every. Single. Time.

5. The lack of fruit-and-vegetable markets and bakeries, which I'm sorry to say are also lacking in the Tacoma/Seattle area. Let's all take a cue from Vancouver shall we? And also, the mere fact that all berries in this city are sold in tiny little packages in grocery stores for $5.00 a half-pint. RIDICULOUS.

6. The very tiny percentage of restaurants that offer tasty food at reasonable prices.

7. The pretentiousness. Guess what? Not every one here gets paid a lot of money, so why pretend like you do? Why is shopping at Marshall's made to seem so shameful? I like Marshall's. I proudly shop at Marshall's. (Marshall's is the same as Ross).

8. There is no natural beauty. I mean, there are green pockets here and there, but you have to drive over an hour to see any sort of view, and same goes for mountains or water--they require hours of driving to get to. Meh. I'd rather step out my front door and see those things, thanks.

9. There are many, many Republicans. And they pop up where you least expect them. Think your co-worker is a reasonable person with a progressive outlook on global warming and gay marriage? Think again.

10. The great yawning chasm between rich and poor, white-collar upper class-mummy-and-daddy-sent-me-to-an-elite-prep-school-and-pulled-
strings-to-get-me-into-Harvard-and-then-they-supported-me-while-I
-took-an-unpaid-internship-and-now-I-have-a-high-paying-job-at-the-
age-of-24 types versus people who work one or sometimes two or three mediocre jobs just to pay the bills and who struggle every month just to make ends meet types. Seriously, the disparity seems so much larger here between those who've never lived a day in their life where they actually worried about making it to the next paycheck and those who either fail to make ends meet or are very close to failing. It's shocking to me. I've never encountered so many extremely wealthy people or extremely impoverished people in one vicinity before in my life.

The dizzying highs! The terrifying lows! I've got to live, Marge, won't you let me LIVE?

Hey kids. Not much new here. Except, did I remember to tell you, we're MOVING?! Yeah, but other than that, everything is just kinda boring.

I've been feeling very incompetent at work lately, I think partly due to the fact that I'm doing a brainless job anyone who breathes could perform with minimal training, so anytime I slip up I get mad at myself for screwing up something my cat could do in her sleep. I feel like yelling to myself, "COME ON, lady! You only have five tasks to do throughout the day, and you screw up ONE of them? What good are you?"

So you can see, I'm not going into the new job-hunt cycle with a lot of confidence. But on the bright side, my utter lack of skills, experience, articulation, and self-esteem should provide for some hilarious blog fodder.

Oy vey. Why am I putting myself through this again? Oh yes, because I hate it here.

In other news, did I mention I went to a black-tie event at the Ritz-Carlton last weekend? It was fun, and not as scary as you would think for a girl who grew up in Boise, Idaho, one generation removed from farmers and loggers. I was a little nervous at the beginning, though, and not because I'm from Boise, but because I was wearing a rather, ahem, low-cut dress and I was afraid that one wrong move would give away all my secrets, if you know what I mean. The dress was cut in a way that made wearing a bra basically impossible, and I didn't want to spend a lot of money buying those boob-cup things, and frankly I don't even know how they're supposed to work anyway. So I thought I would just stick on some double-sided tape J.Lo style and be done with it. But the only problem was that I forgot to buy the double-sided tape. So, in my urgency to find something to prevent slippage in the five seconds I had until the cab came to pick us up, instead I opted for doubling over some regular pieces of Scotch tape. Long story short: not the best idea.

In the end, after much frantic tugging and surreptitious boob-tape checking and hiding under my (transparent) wrap-ing, decided the hell with the tape and just took it off. Which actually worked out okay as long I kept an eye on the girls and made sure to keep my shoulders back and my posture ram-rod straight.

My hair was another story, but then my hair is terminally ill to begin with, so we can't really blaming it for looking like death. I would post a photo of the soiree, but I don't own the photos that were taken at the event, so sadly, you'll just have to leave my low-cut dress and ugly hair to your imaginations.

But yeah, other than the boob-tape debacle, I think the evening went pretty well, except for the fact that none of the BF's coworkers talked to me. I guess I probably forgot to mention that the event was sponsored by BF's work, and I don't know why no one talked to me--they weren't mean, they just weren't very talkative. But I got to dance with the BF and get slightly jiggy with it, so you know. Oh, and also there was free food and a dessert buffet and an open bar, and did I mention it was the Ritz-Carlton? Good times.

And that, my friends, was my week in a nutshell.

Stay tuned for my next post, where I will give a blow-by-blow account of vacuuming the apartment.

DC, I hardly knew ye

I guess it's now semi-official--the BF and I are moving back to the Northwest at the end of June.

Let's all breathe a sigh of relief.

I'm not quite sure what will happen with this blog after that point since I won't have DC to rail against anymore, but I'm pretty much a born complainer (no! you say), so I'll probably be whining and moaning about my life in this space for a long time to come. There might be a bit of a hiatus for a while after we move, though, since for at least a month or so we'll be living along the fringes of Middle of Nowhere. We're not exactly sure where we'll be after that, although we are thinking of going back to Tacoma for a bit. We still have friends in the area, we know it well, and it's cheaper than Seattle. And I might have a job prospect there, but it's too soon to know for sure and I don't want to jinx it by saying anything else.

This weekend has erased any doubts, if ever doubts existed, about my determination to get the hell out of here. For two consecutive nights the BF and I hung out with people from various internships he's held while living here, and since his degree involves public policy, all the people were very bureaucratic, entrenched DC-types. Not a single one of them could understand why we would want to move to, of all places, the Pacific Northwest. They know we're from there, all of our family and friends live back there, but still, they couldn't see the logic.

And this is why I want to move.

One person in particular kept asking us, "Isn't it going to be hard to find a job out there? What are you going to do for work?" (As though there are no cities or government institutions or industries in the Northwest, just vast open wasteland. And lumber.)

This is why I want to move.

When BF told him we don't like it here because everyone out here is so career-driven, he laughed skeptically, then proceeded to talk about his job for three more hours. Three loooooong hours.

This is why I want to move.

I need to be able to talk to people about more than my job, because my job a) isn't that interesting to talk about, and b) sucks. And I need to know that I am more than just my stupid boring job. I need everyone else to know this, too.

Here is my bulletin to the the little buzzing worker bees of DC:

PEOPLE. THERE IS MORE TO LIFE THAN WHAT YOU DO FOR A LIVING, OR HOW MUCH MONEY YOU EARN.

So yay! I get to move!

P.S. I guess I should also mention that the BF successfully completed his master's degree, which is why we finally get to move.

Preaching to the choir (sorry)

Since the seventh Harry Potter book is due to come out in July, and since I have nothing else of consequence to write about, let us enter into a conversation regarding the so-called evilness that is Harry Potter.

Point 1: People, please. Do you really, and I mean honestly, have nothing better to do with your time than to protest the school and/or library board of your local municipality over their selection of these books? Wouldn't it be easier for all of us if you went ahead and took your medication and got some sort of useful hobby, like knitting?

Point 2: Do you want to suck all the fun out of childhood? I guess you don't remember daydreaming during social studies or long-division, wishing you could fly or magically disappear or eat really cool candy or turn someone into a toad. Honey, we have a word for these kinds of fantasies and daydreams. It's called FICTION. If you want to protest something, protest the non-fiction books about the occult, of which I'm sure your local library is filled (actually, I'm kidding here - don't protest them. We also have words for things like that: "democracy" and "open society" come to mind.)

Point 3: Here's what I don't get: no one ever protests the Wizard of Oz anymore. Is it because we've come to accept it as part of our whimsical childhood canon? Is it because EVERYONE and I mean everyone in the western hemisphere has seen the movie about a scillion times, and has come to regard the witches and wizards and other magical creatures in the book and movie exactly as they were intended to be regarded; i.e. as figments of a writer's imagination?

Point 4: I guess what I'm saying is: CHILLAX. Unless your children are developmentally disabled, and even if they are, come to think of it, they will get that this stuff is meant to be a fun little release from reality, and not meant to be practiced at midnight with the local witches' coven.

I think the real problem here is not that people are afraid their kids will somehow get sucked into the occult by reading these books, but that those very same people seem to believe the occult is REALLY weaving an evil, book-purchasing spell around our children as we sit idly by. I'm not saying the occult isn't real--or more to the point, that people don't believe the occult to be real; what I'm saying is that people do not have the power to cast spells on other people. Get a grip. MAGIC DOESN'T REALLY EXIST. And you call yourselves Christian?

Oh, and here's a Point 5 for you: You cannot argue that Harry Potter embodies sin and bad value systems and whatever else you want to say. He embodies standing up for oneself, practicing what one believes in, and fighting the herd-mentality of society that causes people to support things they know to be bad and wrong. (I'm sure there was a more eloquent way of saying that but I'm a little sleep-deprived right now.) These are values every good Christian should stand up and applaud!

I don't get people.

What a week

We live in a sick, sad world. And that's really about all the energy I have right now to comment on Monday's horrific events. Every day at work this week has been like attending an eight-hour funeral and I'm just drained.

What makes me particularly angry about this whole thing is that it showcases to the world the most violent aspect of our supposedly civilized society. And we ARE a violent society--this country was founded by guerrilla fighters who started a war with the British because they had the audacity to tax our TEA, for crying out loud. And I won't even go into a tirade over gun control laws because I think this incident speaks loud enough for everyone to hear. (And by the way, I don't think the usual argument--"criminals can get their hands on guns if they want them badly enough, whether or not they're legal"--applies in this case, since this was a middle-class kid from suburbia with a clean criminal background. I don't for a minute believe he would have known where to get an illegal handgun.)

Violence runs through our veins, and each school shooting and Waco and Oklahoma bombing and invasion of Iraq--which I'm sorry, these things DO NOT happen on a regular basis in most other western countries--highlights to the world what we so like to keep hidden under our SUV-driving, Starbucks-drinking facades.

OK, I guess I had a little more energy than I thought.

Anyway, now I'm rambling and I don't know what I'm trying to say, other than that I really, really want to go back to Canada.

And now I'm tired of talking about death and tragedy. During my weekly Thursday afternoon perusal of the Internets, I came across this really stupid thing on the Best of Craigslist, entitled "143 Reasons I Will be the Best Girlfriend You've Ever Had". So to lighten the mood, I've made up my own, opposing list. Enjoy.

Reasons why I will NOT be the best girlfriend you ever had (and I don’t give a shit if I am or not)

1. I don’t give a shit if I am or not. Being in love with someone is not a competition.
2. I don’t like the color purple. Ok, that’s a lie, but the point is, wtf does color preference have to do with it?
3. I go to the gym, but I still have some cellulite and I don’t look like a supermodel. Sorry.
4. I like to eat. A lot.
5. I don’t keep up my nails.
6. I rarely get my toes done.
7. I drive an automatic, when I drive, and I will never learn how to drive a manual.
8. I don’t want to watch you work on your car. It will not get me hot. What I WOULD like to see is you volunteering to take the car into the shop to get worked on without me having to constantly nag.
   
9. I don’t care what kind of car you drive.
10. I drive a 1996 Ford Contour, baby! Does that get your motor running?
11. I’m short but not little, and it makes me mad that I always have to look up to you. (And why would you find it a turn-on for a woman to always have to crane her neck to see you?)
    
12. I wear granny panties.
13. My hair isn’t long.
14. I can’t guarantee you I won’t steal food off your plate. I’m fat, remember?
15. I won’t always let you be the “man” in the relationship. Whatever that means. I will assert my opinions in ways that I see fit, and I might be aggressive about it if I feel I need to be.
16. I don’t always smell good, particularly early in the morning or after I work out. There’s a little thing humans do, called sweating. I sweat.
    
17. I don’t even know what “ghost ride” means.
18. I’m 30 with the mind of a 30-year-old and the heart of a 30-year-old. If I act like I’m 10, please slap me.
19. I might “burden you” with my PMS problems. I can’t help it – it’s PMS. And if you get on my case about it, I might start yelling or crying hysterically. Or I might just shove a piece of cake in my mouth and ignore you.
20. I don’t have any of my childhood belongings with me because I’m an adult.
21. You + Me + Dancing + Outdoors + Rain = Afternoon spent being miserable because I hate being cold and wet, and you WILL hear about it.
22. If I “accidentally” leave my underwear in your bed, you have my permission to be grossed out.

There are no words.

Reasons #1 - 1,097 not to live here

This article by Gene Weingarten pretty much sums up why Washington, D.C. is the worst place on the planet. You might be surprised!

Since I am not naive enough to believe that anyone will actually click on the link and read the article, here it is in a nutshell. The Washington Post hired Joshua Bell, a world-renowned violinist, to play at a metro station, disguised him as a street performer, and watched what happened. Would people be amazed by the beauty of this man's performance, stop to listen, create a crowd of onlookers? Would the man be recognized as the musical virtuoso he is, would he make a load of cash? The answer to all these questions: no. Only a handful of people even looked at the guy, much less stopped to listen to his masterful playing, much less gave him any money. Would I have stopped? Probably not, because, as I have made abundantly clear, this city has eaten my soul alive.

This is what why.i.hate.dc had to say about it:

The other reason I'd walk right on by is that Washington gives its citizens cancer of the soul where the daily grind and death by paper cut slights and inconveniences make it impossible to appreciate anything. I thought that was just me. But this Post article seems to imply otherwise. It's everyone. I mean, check out those videos. The commuters look like cows going to the slaughter. Not even a virtuoso can brighten their day. Yeah, D.C. is awesome like that.

I tend to agree.

P.S. I've added something new to my blog, which I realize no one cares about but which I am going to tell you about anyway. It's a link to my new reading log (see sidebar), in which I will critique and/or discuss books I'm reading. It's mostly for my own amusement but feel free to read if you like.

Here's the part where I quote Wayne's World

Hey, where you going? OK, OK, I'm sorry! Come on back, come on back. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll figure something out.

Sorry to be such a downer all the time. But hey, this won't last forever - spring is just around the corner, or so I hear. I wouldn't know, since it snowed again last night. Last night being a night in APRIL. But, you know what they say, April snowstorms bring May NOTHING. I mean, I can accept snow in April if, say, I was in the mountains. However, not only am I not in any mountains, I am no where near a mountain, or even a small hill. Or I could accept snow in April if I lived above the Arctic Circle. Then snow would not only be OK, it would probably be expected. Snow in April is not acceptable, however, if one lives in the midst of a swampy plain, where half the year it is so hot I cannot walk out my front door without breaking into a sweat.

But I digress. Despite the weather sucking my ass, two very good things happened today.

1) We bought a ring. What I remember of it is very pretty, although the details are kind of fuzzy in my mind. We have to have it sized and the stone set, so it'll be about a month before I see it again. But still, ring bought=yay.

2) We just got home from seeing Grindhouse, the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriquez double feature. While it is incredibly gory, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, when I wasn't trying not to wretch. I will probably never watch it again, as it is an incredible investment of time, particularly time during which one cannot snack, since one would run the risk of puking all over strangers if one were to see it on a full stomach. Still, the ending of the second film will have you screaming "BOOYAH, MOTHERFUCKER!" and you will feel like kicking the shit out of someone, but in a good way.

Realizations

It has become increasingly evident to me that I am in the wrong field. By “field” I refer to librarianship, in particular, reference service. I do not like working with people (hence the title of this blog); I do not enjoy helping people figure things out, nor do I enjoy answering their questions, helping them find information, or explaining things in a thorough and patient manner. My ideal job would be to sit in a dusty back room somewhere and never talk to anyone. I sort of knew this was my predilection while I was in library school (ok, honestly, I knew it outright from the beginning), but I thought that I would be able to find jobs in librarianship that would enable me to work more with books than with people. I was wrong. I mean, those kinds of jobs exist, they just don’t exist for me. Most of my background, unfortunately, has been in reference services, and I have no experience doing things that would get me away from people--like say, collection management or cataloging. (And I’m not detail-oriented enough to be a cataloger anyway). I had hoped to work in an environment that would allow me to do a variety of tasks and thus take the focus off all-people all-the-time--and I believe it is probably true that in a decently staffed, normal-sized library, I would only have to work 2-3 hours per day on the reference desk, thus enabling me to keep a modicum of my sanity--but this is not the job I currently have. In the job I have now, I sit on the reference-information-circulation-help-me-I-don’t-know-how-to-use-a-computer desk 6-8 hours a day (the six-hour days are the days when I’m scheduled to be in 2 hours before the library opens). I have no private work space at all, nor any space I can escape to during the day. I don’t drive, so I don’t even have a car I can go sit in if I need to. Most of the time I’m so bored I could cry, which is no fun, but it’s even less fun to be constantly in the public eye, where I can’t even listen to music or have private phone conversations (which makes it a real blast when I have to make an appointment with the lady-parts doctor).

In a nutshell, all-people-every-day DRIVE ME CRAZY. I cannot take this anymore. The combination of the constant boredom plus the mainly customer-service aspects of this job are making me really unhappy. I never thought I would be this age, still struggling at a menial position for peanuts, and doing it in front of the whole world. I feel like my brain is dying.

Help me, Internet!

And while you're at it, check out my new and improved Shameless Self Promotion on the sidebar. OK, it's not really improved, but it is new. OK, it's not really new, but at least it's been updated.

My apologies to the Ducks

It's my fault Oregon lost on Sunday (or whenever the hell it was), because I had to go and root for them, and I know damn well that any team I ever want to win anything never ever wins. So I should have just kept my mouth shut and tried to forget that I knew of a team called the Ducks. Ducks? Ducks who? So, I'm sorry, everyone. I've let you down once again.

The only even half-way vaguely interesting thing going on in my life right now is that I've started watching Extras, the British Ricky Gervais show that's basically just Ricky Gervais being himself, only there are celebrities involved. It is of course a slice of Ricky Gervais heaven, a slice that makes you cringe and wince and bury your head in the couch cushions to get away from all the awkwardness and unbearable social faux pas. So pretty damn funny.

In wedding news, I'm trying to get all geared up for bridezilla-ness and have been reading bridal forums and glancing at Modern Bride magazine, but alas, everything is still too up-in-the-air to begin planning anything. We don't know where we're going to be living this summer, or next summer, or the fall and winter and spring preceding next summer, and we have yet to even narrow down which state--nay, which country-- we'd like to have the wedding in. So I'm in bridezilla limbo. Here's a question, though, for any of you who may be a former bride or know former brides: do you think a simple yet elegant wedding can be orchestrated from the opposite coast of which said wedding will be taking place with only minor nervous breakdowns, and with the couple getting married still speaking to one another by the day of the wedding? Or is that so far away from the realm of possibility as make getting anywhere near Possibility completely fruitless even with a map and typed-out directions?

Go Ducks!

So I see that Oregon made it to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament (notice how I sound all like I know what I'm talking about). Not that I have been able to watch any of the games, because (a) me and sports on TV don't mix, but more importantly (b) the network affiliates out here are not aware that there is a whole nuther part of the country beyond the Mississippi River, so they never broadcast any of those games. They probably think that Oregon is one of them Canadian thingamajigs, or maybe just one of those U.S. protectorates, like Guam. So anyway, even though I am not normally much a sports fan, being forced to put up with a bunch of east coast sports snobs makes me happy that our Northwest boys are representing.

In cat news today, the BF is taking Easy to the vet because of her chronic constipation. Oh, the lovely, lovely charms of elderly cats. I, of course, am working, much as I work just about EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE, so will not be in attendance. He's no doubt looking forward to the visit with as much anticipation as one looks forward to one's own visit to the butt doctor, but what can you do. My "job" (which consists mainly of babysitting the printer and copy machine and listlessly surfing the web) sucks all of my time and my life and my will to create anything meaningful. I had a moment of clarity on the subway this morning, wherein I suddenly realized that I only have a finite amount of time on this planet, and yet every moment I spend in this city in this hateful job is completely wasted.

Yeah, so I'm pretty cheerful today. Although still glad that Oregon won last night.

Senile dysfunction

A few things.

1) It seems that my 14-year-old cat is going senile in her golden years. Is this even possible? There doesn't seem to be any other explanation for her behavior, though--I mean, she's not banging into walls or anything, but what used to be her funny little foibles and quirks have lately turned into full-blown neuroses. For example, she's always been picky about her water dish - she does NOT like stray objects in her water while she's drinking, and this includes cat hairs, dust mites, and itty bitty bits of food (I guess I can't blame her there; it is kind of disgusting to have floaties in your water) - and will splash the water repeatedly with her paw in order to expel the offending debris. She has done this since I adopted her as a kitten, and it's just been one of her odd little things. However, since her kidney disease diagnosis she's gone off the deep end with the splashing splashing splashing SPLASHING. It's gotten to the point where we'll set a completely cleansed and newly filled bowl of water in front of her and she won't even so much as sniff it before the splashing commences. We wake up in the middle of the night to her splashing. We can't walk into the kitchen without wading through a pond of her splashed water, and we've had to change socks more than once because we forgot that, oh yes, our cat has gone insane and splashes water water EVERYWHERE! Of course, her brain is too small to realize that sticking her grubby, furry, dirt-and-litter-covered paw into the water only makes things worse for herself, and I often find a disgusting cement-like substance churning in the bottom of her dish from the various sand and dirt grains she's transported into her Sea of Tranquility.

Another example of her sudden-senility onset: ever since I lived in an apartment in Vancouver that housed a particularly large, cavernous, dusty-and-dark-corned closet where incidentally her cat food was kept, she has chosen one closet in my apartment with which to become obsessed, I guess in the hope that suddenly one day that same closet with the shadowy expanses of investigatory bliss will suddenly open unto her. In my current apartment, her closet of choice is the laundry closet in the bathroom where the washer and dryer are. There is nothing else in this closet except a broom, because there is no room in there for anything else. She knows this, and she has been shown the washer and the dryer many times and found them lacking in interesting features. Yet her obsession with getting a peek inside that closet continues unabated. That sort of behavior I have taken for granted as semi-normal, because she is silly and old and apparently her memory is hazy. But what used to be occasional begging for the magical closet door to be opened whenever BF or I were in the bathroom has turned into a sudden lunge for the bathroom anytime one of us stands up or moves in any direction that MIGHT indicate a visit to that hallowed ground, and she now spends much of her free time sitting in the bathroom staring at the closed closet door.

Should I start calling nursing homes?

2) Anyway. I have decided that Girl Scout cookies should be declared illegal, because 1) they are fattening and are contributing to the obesity epidemic of the nation, and 2) they are laced with crack or a crack-like substance. How else to explain how a calm, rational person can sit down with a box of Girl Scout cookies and think to oneself, "OK, I am going to have two reasonably-sized cookies and then close up the box and put them in the cupboard and not even contemplate eating any more until tomorrow," and then suddenly find oneself thirty minutes later in a fat-induced stupor at the kitchen table staring at an empty box of cookies, with smears of chocolate in one's hair and on one's clothing.

I'm not saying this happened to me, I'm just saying - those cookies ain't right.

My home and native land

I want to marry British Columbia.

California's OK, too. (But only in a strictly platonic sense.)

Sorry, haters

I apologize for my lackadaisical updating as of late, but don't worry, you haven't missed much. I had planned to go into a diatribe about the weather here, but I can't muster the strength anymore. I have surrendered to the will of the mid-atlantic climate. Which sucks. [In case you're wondering though - after the last snowfall we had about five days of warmer, mild weather; on Thursday the high was in the mid-70s, then the temp plummeted by 40 degrees Thursday evening, and it snowed/sleeted again much of the day yesterday.]

What else? I've started watching the Up series - 7 Up, 7 plus 7, 21 Up, etc. - a British documentary series that follows the lives of kids in different socioeconomic classes and catches up with them every seven years. The most recent installment, which I haven't gotten to yet, is 49 Up. I highly recommend watching the films, not so much because any of them are great documentaries in and of themselves, but because it's fascinating to see how the individuals mature and change over time. But then I'm an inveterate eavesdropper, nosey-rosey, and voyeur, so there you go. One of the more interesting facets of the series I've noticed is that as seven-year-olds, there is an obvious distinction between the upper and lower class kids, as far as vocabulary, articulateness (is that a word? whatever it is, it's obviously something I lack), and comfort in front of the camera. However, by the time the kids are 14 those distinctions have for the most part been obliterated and by 21, many of the lower class kids have become in some ways if not more articulate, then at least more self-aware than the upper class ones. And they definitely seem happier. Also, the kids from the lower classes become insulted whenever it's hinted that the upper class kids in the documentary may have had more opportunities - they are very proud of their lives and seem quite content with the way they've turned out so far. I'm really looking forward to seeing how their lives progress and am secretly rooting for certain ones to succeed and others to be taken down a peg or two.

Lastly, BF and I went to Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend just for the hell of it. It was fun if uneventful. We walked around the University of Virginia campus, which was beautiful and made me wonder why I didn't go to school there, and also visited Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home. Oh, and we drank a lot and ate a bunch of food. Good times.

Then today I bought two boxes of Girl Scout cookies even though I knew I shouldn't. But I did anyway. And they were good.

Um, didn't we just talk about this?

I give up. Winter and I are no longer on speaking terms. But you can tell Winter for me that he can shove his snow right up his icy cold butt.

P.S.S. to Winter

OK, now you're just being creepy. I thought I made myself clear last week when I said I didn't want to see you anymore. But today I get up, and whose ugly face do I spot out the window? YOURS. I see you hanging around everywhere I go, and it's just really starting to bug me. Am I gonna have to file a restraining order? Geez, JUST LEAVE ME ALONE ALREADY.

And don't even think about snowing tomorrow. I am so totally serious. Because that would just be crazy insane. Do you hear what I'm saying? Insane.

Not much going on, really

Some detritus:

1) Lately I've been feeling like starting public brawls. Mostly I get this feeling in situations dealing with the subway. For instance, when someone cuts in front of me at the turnstile, my first instinct is to punch them in the throat.* Is that wrong?

2) I've been so bored during work this past week that I've started reading all of Dooce's archives, beginning with the first post. I'll probably finish them tomorrow at work. Tomorrow being Sunday. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

3) Aforementioned boredom has gotten me depressed about my life again. For awhile I was feeling OK, since I was just happy to be away from the Job From Hell, but now I'm itching to do something with my life once again. Of course, we've already established that there are no libraries in this city that will hire me as a librarian, and if they will hire me, there is something very very wrong with them.

4) My legs have started hurting in all the same old places again, and my shin splints are worse than ever. I need a leg transplant. And today I just received a $74.50 bill from my doctor. Yeah, I got your money right here, buddy.

5) The weather warmed up this week, and all the snow from last Sunday has melted. I remain prayerful, in my atheistic way, that winter does not rear its ugly head once again. Living in the South-that-doesn't-know-it's-the-South has made me even more of a wimp than I had previously been.

*So far I've been successfully stifling this instinct. Who knows how long it will take me to snap, though.

Snow: that is so, like, two weeks ago

Views from my window, Sunday, Feb. 25

Note to Winter:

OK, I know we had a thing there for a while, and it was all hot and heavy and I really thought I was in love for a second. But, you know, that was a few weeks ago, and now it's just like you're here all the time, and you're just getting way too intense for me. I need my space. So basically what I'm saying is that I think we need to start seeing other seasons. I'm just not that into you anymore.

So, like, bye, m-kay?

P.S. And you can stop with the snow. That is so not impressing anyone.

My week in a nutshell: Sudafed and unemployment

You know what is excellent? Only having to work 3 days in one week, especially if you only had to work 4 days the week before. Last week of course was the snowy icy week, and this week I had a cold, so I took a day off, even though I felt immensely guilty about it and yet joyous at the same time. What finally persuaded me to stay home was the fact that I rarely have the opportunity to take a sick day when I'm actually not feeling well, either because I'm trying to save my sick leave for something else (like a vacation--shhhh!), or because with our vast staff of four, there's usually not enough desk coverage for another person to be gone. So I decided that since I actually had the leave to spare and enough people were around that day for me not to be missed, I may as well go ahead and live it up at home.

And what did I do with all my free yet sinus-congested time? Well, I made a semi-weekly trip to CVS, I browsed somewhat foggily through a bookstore (it's hard to focus when the right side of your head feels as though it may pop like a tick at any moment), and I made my famous cold-curing (not really) chocolate-oatmeal cookies.

Yes, I've had an exciting week!

So I finished reading Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich. Reading it made me feel both vindicated in my own anger and depression in the face of my one-year plus job search which, while currently in hibernation, has never really ceased, and also it made me feel like going on a shooting spree. What Ehrenreich really struck to the heart of was this mantra in the white-collar work force that every individual is responsible for their own bad luck and misfortune. They are told constantly by everyone in power that if they aren't finding jobs it's not because the economy is bad or that companies are consistently outsourcing their jobs; it's because there's something wrong with them. Something about them makes them inferior human beings. And you know what? I totally bought into that mindset. I thought, and still a little bit do think, that some intangible thing about me makes me unemployable, even though I have a decent education, a decent employment history, and good recommendations.

Ehrenreich also dismissed as ludicrous pretty much everything my library management professor held dear, and which I secretly mocked even as I was held in thrall by his tyranny: Myers-Briggs personality tests, "elevator" speeches, faceless and humorless managers who have no soul. I wish I could be her friend.

In summary--good book, but not especially uplifting. About the only thing you can take from it is that if you have the misfortune to be unemployed in this economy, you're fucked.

Also, I see from the lack of response to last week's challenge that either no one read the blog, which is entirely possible, or you all hate me. Fine. Whatever.

Reverse psychology never works

At some point in my online ramblings yesterday I ran across this Valentine's Day list challenge on the Washington Post's Celebritology blog. Basically it asks readers to list their perfect Valentine's Day dates, but the dates have to be fictional characters. Somehow this inspired me to think of a list of whom I would consider a perfect Valentine if I were a member of the opposite sex or the opposite sexual orientation. I think maybe what got me on this line of thinking was the fact that almost everyone who submitted a list to the blog was a straight female.

*I should just add that I am once again at work on a Saturday morning. I really need to find another job.*

List of (Real) People I Think I Would Find Attractive if I Were a Straight Male or Gay Female, All Other Things Being Equal

1. Tina Fey. She's cute, funny, and acerbic, plus she always wears those naughty so- geeky-they're-cool glasses, which I hear men find really hot.

2. Cate Blanchett. Effortlessly beautiful, but with talent and personality. She's the Colin Firth of women - hot but completely unattainable. [Aside: Have you heard about the Ralph Fiennes scandal? So tragic. I liked him so much. Too bad he turned out to be scum.]

3. Kate Winslet. So British and pretty and charming but normal-seeming. My own BF does not see her appeal, which I simply do not understand.

4. Salma Hayek. I threw her in there just because pretty much all men seem to want her in a purely sexual way.

5. Audrey Tautou. A) She's French. B) She's cute, petite, perky, quirky in a Winona-Ryder kinda way, and C) She's French.

I defy you all to make a similar list and post it in the comments. Post at your own peril! BWAHAHAHAHA!

Now I don't have a good post title

The original title of this post was going to be either "Bridge to Terabithia...NOT!" or "Bridge to TeraBITCHia," and was going to involve my vociferous objections to the movie adaptation of the beloved children's novel by Katherine Patterson. I was going to go into this rage-a-thon because from what I can tell from the trailers, it looks like the movie-makers completely ruined what is supposed to be a wrenching emotional story of friendship and loss, instead turning it into a CGI fantasy wonderland of kittens and elves, completely bypassing the nuance of Patterson's gentle yet sorrowful tale. I was going to say how this is such a moving piece of literature, how even when re-reading the book as an adult I cried like a baby at the tragic ending, and how objectionable it is that Hollywood would take such a work of art, turn it into bubblegum and lollipops, and throw it at children as rollicking family fun.

Anyway, that theme has been abandoned, since I just scanned an article on EW.com in which David Patterson, one of the writers and producers of the movie and also Katherine Patterson's son, upon whose experiences the book is based, talks about how closely the movie follows the book and how they ramped up the fantasy stuff because it was mostly left to the imagination in the novel, but that just won't really work with a movie. So I guess I don't need to go into a rant. However, I do object to Disney heavily promoting the movie as carefree fantasy romp. How are kids and parents who haven't read the book going to feel when suddenly bludgeoned with the tragic ending in a darkened theatre full of strangers? Shouldn't parents be forewarned this is a sad movie where, sorry for the spoiler, bad things happen to innocent people?

Oh well, I'm not a parent so whatever. I think this is one I'll skip, though.

Suh-weet!

The DC area has been covered in snow and ice for the past two days, which means that I have not had to work for two days in a row. Yes! Have I told you lately how much I love winter? This comes at a particularly good time for me, since I was scheduled to work six days this week, and only three of those days will be left when I return to work tomorrow (it looks doubtful the weather will hold, or not hold, as the case may be, until then). But I'm just grateful for the bounty I have thus far received. The only bad thing about all this snow and ice is that it is cold and I have no boots. I come from a land where snow and ice are minimal, and where everyone drives anyway so it's not an issue. Thus, I own no boots. I have many times contemplated buying boots during winter weather periods such as the one I'm currently experiencing, but the snow and ice make it difficult to go shopping, and by the time the snow and ice have cleared I no longer care about buying boots. But really, the boots must be purchased at some point. I realize this now.

Anyway, that's about the only thing going on in my life: snow, ice, and contemplation of boot-shopping.

Cat update: She seems fine. I guess I got all maudlin and drippy for no reason. She stills pees an awful lot and is a bit skinnier than I would prefer, but she's energetic and has a healthy appetite.

Leg update: My knees seem better for the most part, but my hip/pelvis thingy still aches, and curiously, I still have shin splints, which I had assumed would be the easiest pain to cure and the quickest to go away. Bah! Stupid elderly body. Oh, and I seemed to have inexplicably developed tennis elbow, which is odd, since I have never played tennis in my life. I don't even own a racket.

Well, since I can think of nothing else to say, Happy Valentine's Day!

Notes on a birthday

1. You know you're getting old when three drinks spaced evenly throughout the night and accompanied by copious amounts of food put you down for the count for the entire next day. The BF took me to a swanky restaurant in DC Thursday evening, where we rubbed elbows with a lot of old white men in business suits, some of whom may or may not have been congressmen. I'm pretty sure the couple at the table next to us were having an adulterous affair, as I kept hearing the woman refer to "your wife"--example:"Your wife doesn't pay attention to you." Not that it's any of my business, I'm just saying.

2. Apparently at swanky restaurants, an air of bewilderment can be mistinterpreted as an air of snooty disdain, for future reference. The BF and I went to have drinks in the bar while we waited for a table, and the BF felt it was incumbant upon him to order a whiskey so as to appear manly. When the bartender set the cocktail glass filled almost to the top on the bar, BF hesistated, eyeing the glass and thinking to himself, "Holy shit, that's a lotta whiskey." The bartender, however, interpreted this look to mean, "You call that a fucking whiskey, man!" and hastily filled the glass completely to the brim.

3. I only tripped over, and thus unplugged, one lamp during the course of the evening, thus appearing only minorly foolish.

4. I am now Queen of the Land of Hypocrisy. You know how a couple posts back I said I would never own an iPod? Yeah, well, I lied. The BF's parents generously bought me an iPod Nano for my birthday, in hot pink no less. I plan to fully enjoy the fruits of The Man, once I figure out how to put music on it.

5. My dentist is one month older than me. This alarms me a little. I would like my dentist to have some years of experience and malpractice insurance under his belt, not say things to me like, "Don't worry, 30 is the new 20!" By the way, it turns out that I didn't really break my tooth off, it was just my crown that fell off. It only seemed as though my tooth had broken because there is only a tiny shell of a tooth left after the root canal. Still, I feel like I need more calcium in my diet.

Thanks to everyone for sending along birthday wishes - my friends rock!

Tomorrow I'm 30. hurray.

I'm feeling like a ginormous tard (turd?), for the above-stated reason, among others. For one, it appears that my hastily dashed-off and really quite stupid post on Mr. Rochester, which of course I didn't expect anyone to read because I wasn't aware anyone actually read my blog, has been linked to and read by people unbeknownst to myself. Yikes. Why must I always make a giant ass of myself in a public forum? On the other hand, at least people are finally leaving comments.

In other news, to celebrate my third decade of being I am going to: go to my cycling class, meet my co-workers for lunch, go to work, come home, and go out to dinner with the BF. The other option was to lie in bed all day eating chocolates, which is suddenly seeming like the better choice. Then again, nothing says I'M THIRTY like doing the same damn thing you do every day of your life. Ah, routine.

Me and my dental adventures (aka my dentures)

Well. Get this. You know that tooth in which I had that hideously painful root canal? I broke it last night eating a cookie. Not only did I just break it, I broke it clean off at the gumline, meaning there is now very little tooth left in its place. Naturally this happened Friday evening, so I won't know what this means regarding the large hole in my mouth until Monday morning at the very earliest, and I have to say that I'm a little perturbed. I broke another tooth back in September, so this is becoming an alarming pattern for me. I'm afraid that soon I will have no more teeth left, and at the grisly old age of 30 will have to go get fitted for dentures. Pass me the polygrip.

Now, I know you all hate memes and lists and wish I would die, but I'm depressed about my dental situation today (Aside: apparently the dentist and I are now on a first-name basis, because whenever he calls me, which he has done twice, he introduces himself by his first name, like I'm supposed to know who "Pasquale" is off the top of my head). And since I'm depressed, I thought I might do a teeny-weeny little meme to make myself feel better. Also, I'm at work today, a Saturday, and I have nothing better to do. Read or not, as you wish.

My All Time Favorite Things (from TheOhReally.com)

1. Song: The Queen of Night Aria from the Magic Flute. I'm not trying to be all uppity here, it's just the prettiest song I can think of, and whenever I hear it I want to start singing, too (but I don't since I cannot sing at all, even songs that are within my range, which is about two notes.)

2. TV Show: The Simpsons.

3. Donut flavor: Maple bars.

4. Poem: That one about the rose and the limousine that everyone has to read in high school. Obviously I wouldn't know a good poem if it hit me in the face.

5. Unsubstantiated rumor that is so totally made up: Apparently I suck at gossip, because I can think of nothing.

6. Day of the week: Friday. I wish I could be all indie and say something like Tuesday, but really, the obvious choice here is Friday. Friday is all about anticipation for the weekend; Saturday and Sunday are all about spending 75% of your time doing housework and going grocery shopping, and all those other things you didn't have time to do during the week, and not doing any of the things you looked forward to on Friday night.

7. Place to vomit: Inside the toilet, naturally. I've tried the sink and it didn't work out so well.

8. Movie: This is well-covered territory and I will probably contradict myself here, but: Pride and Prejudice, 1996 version with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.

9. Writing Instrument: A purple-colored Pilot fine-tip roller ball pen.

10. Beatles album: Having never heard an entire Beatles album, nor having any special affinity towards the Beatles, I will skip this one.

11. Lunch: Ledo's pizza. It works for dinner too. Ledo's is a chain out here that sells extremely greasy yet exquisite pizza with a divine marina sauce, and it is cut into little squares. (The pizza, not the sauce.)

12. Pastry: I enjoy creamcheese Danishes.

13. Smiths Album: I like Morrissey, he's an OK guy, but I don't know that I've ever listened to an entire Smiths Album. Pass.

14. Nonalcoholic beverages: OK, Coke is my go-to beverage. However, sometimes I just really appreciate a good Dr. Pepper. You know what I mean?

15. Alcoholic beverage: I know I've answered this one before, and my answer has probably changed. Right now it's White Russians. There's this Irish pub right by my apartment that makes them with what I assume is either cream or half-n-half. In other words, they are delicious.

16. Magazine: Long-time subscriber of Entertainment Weekly. I've tried going without it, and I just can't. It's like crack to me.

17. Concert: I have not gone to very many concerts. I'm not a musical person. However, I do occasionally listen to and enjoy the odd ditty. So far my favorite concerts have been the Sarah McLachlan concert I went to in Vancouver, and the Decemberists one here in DC. Yes, I actually had occasion to enjoy myself in DC! Who knew.

18. Blog: Right now it would The Oh Really and Anything Said, probably because the banter is witty and the people who write them are women around my age in the same profession. Diversity and new points of view are dumb.

OK, I'm gonna stop here. This thing goes on forever.

Mr. Rochester: A Treatise

So I guess there are some disparaging remarks going around regarding the casting of Masterpiece Theatre's production of Jane Eyre (OK, one blog that I read contained some remarks). They generally stem from the fact that the actor who was cast in the role of Mr. Rochester happens to be both somewhat young and somewhat sexy. I happened to watch this production on PBS, and let me just say this: I LIKE SEXY. So you can all go soak your heads. And I say that with some amount of knowledge of other casting decisions regarding Mr. Rochester, having seen at least three different interpretations of Jane Eyre on film.

OK. Let me first lay out the problem for those of you who may not understand. The character of Mr. Rochester in Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre is dark, brooding, dangerous, kinda weird and wild-looking, and extremely passionate. I always got the impression that he was very masculine and muscular and rugged, in a time period when perhaps slightly more effeminate men were in fashion. At certain points, Bronte describes him as being ugly, and I guess some casting directors take this as an imperative to cast unattractive people in the role, but I have to disagree. The actor in that role has to make himself as attractive to the audience as he is to Jane. This is hard to do if you're not somewhat handsome. People can do it, don't get me wrong, it's just difficult. So let's compare the most recent Mr. Rochester to others before him, and see how he stacks up in the gosh-i'd-like-to-mack-on-him department.

I'll start off with Ciaran Hinds. Let me tell you, Ciaran Hinds, while making an intriguing Julius Caesar in Rome, is no Mr. Rochester. He's OLD. You cannot imagine yourself kissing him unless you are over fifty (for the men in the audience, if there are any: imagining yourself kissing Mr. Rochester is very important to the believability of the character). Mr. Rochester is supposed to be older than Jane by maybe 20 years or so, which means he should be around 40. Unless I'm gravely mistaken, Ciaran Hinds is somewhat older than that in his particular production of Jane Eyre, and it is palpably uncomfortable to watch him kiss a dewey 20-year-old. I think the feeling I'm looking for here is: YUCK.

Another option is William Hurt. Now, while he seems to be more in the age range for the character, I'm sorry, but he's William Hurt. He is not Mr. Rochester. For one thing, Mr. Rochester is supposed to be dark-haired, and William Hurt is not. Also, he's just not passionate enough. He's mopey and subdued. Away with you, William Hurt (but I still like you, because you were the perfect Macon Leary in The Accidental Tourist; in fact, maybe you were a little too perfect, because now I can't picture you as anyone else).

This brings us to our third Mr. Rochester--Orson Welles, pre-grotesque obesity. He is the only other acceptable Mr. Rochester, all dark and dangerous, and might I add, very very sexy. The only bad part of this film is Joan Fontaine, who is quite obviously too pretty and Hollywood to play plain Jane, but other than that major flaw, it's a good flick. I might say that Welles is a little too polished for the role of Mr. Rochester, but then it's been awhile since I've seen it. I do remember that every time they panned in on him he was swathed in mysterious shadow.

Toby Stephens, in the most recent production of which I now speak, is younger than all of the above actors and, with the possible exception of Orson Welles, is also hotter. I think this is fine. I don't see the problem here. Anything that makes me think, "Man, that Jane Eyre sure is lucky!" is perfectly acceptable to me, and in fact is to be striven for. I mean, yes, I agree that you don't want some Brad Pitt (who by the way is kind of a girly man, if you know what I'm saying) playing the role of Mr. Rochester. You want someone with a little grit to him, someone who could take another guy in a fight. I think Toby Stephens (pictured here) is bang-on for the role. He's somewhat wrinkled and world-weary; he's obviously seen his share of troubles, and really, he's not all that young. And yet you can also look at him, and say, "Damn! Give me some of THAT!"

Is all I'm saying.

Um, almost free?

The title of this post was going to be "Free at last, free at last!" In reference to my having finished, after two whole months of slogging through it, Bleak House. Alas, I still have about 30 pages left to go as of today. I'm happy that I reread it, though - the movie was excellent, but you miss out on all the little Dickensian details. So anyway, I'm almost finished with it, and I'm eager to get on to my next book which I already started reading on the plane back from Seattle. It's The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro. I wish I could be friends with Alice Munro, although apparently she's in her seventies. Seems like a cool lady, though.

The BF and I (I could start calling him the fie-ancy, but why ruin a good thing?) saw Pan's Labyrinth over the weekend and I really enjoyed it. The allegory is not exactly hard to figure out (have you noticed how many movies/TV shows these days have torture scenes?) but that's OK. It was one of the first movies I've seen in a while where I came out of the theatre genuinely happy about my movie-going experience; i.e. good overall film that absorbed me; characters that I cared about; an interesting story that was sad and scary but not overwhelmingly so; poignant but believable ending. In short: it was good.

We also saw Notes on a Scandal last week, which, while also very entertaining, was kind of like The Queen: good in a "so what?" kinda way. Basically if you see it, you see it to watch Cate Blanchett and Judy Dench act really well, and that's about it.

So about the Oscars, am I the only one who is a) almost so bored with the nominations as to not even want to watch the damn thing, and b) completely mystified about the presence of Little Miss Sunshine on the Best Pictures list and about Abigail Breslin's nomination for Best Supporting Actress? For one thing, LMS was not that good a movie. I would rate it slightly above the Chevy Chase/National Lampoon pictures in the "road trip"/"wacky family" genre of films. I think the voters must be getting tired and lazy--it's like they're squinting their eyes and mumbling as they fill out their ballots, "OK, now what movies did I see this year? Oh yeah, there was that Little Miss Sunshine thing...yeah, that was OK. I'll just put down everyone's name who was in that, rather than spend time watching quality films."

I'm not even going to list out my Oscar predictions since the winners are pretty much completely obvious and, like the hypocrite that I am, I haven't seen most of them anyway.

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have...a big pile of crap

First, the good news, which 99.9% of you already know about because I emailed you about it yesterday: the BF and I are engaged. It happened in Seattle, it was a complete surprise (to me), yadda yadda yadda. No ring, no dates set, no locations picked out. If we don't get married in someone's back yard with a potluck reception, as is my hick family's tradition, it will be a miracle. My mother, you will all be heartened to know, screamed for a full ten minutes with relief and joy when I told her the news. Which makes sense, since you would probably have the same reaction if you truly believed this turn of events would deliver your wayward child from frying in an eternity of hellfire. I'm-a comin', Jesus!

Anyhoo. The bad news. Well, it looks like my dear little fuzzyhead is in the early stages of kidney disease. But all is not bleak--apparently if we change her food and give her special (read: expensive) new food if could keep her going for awhile longer. It's been a wake-up call for me, though, because I've never really experienced the decline/death of a loved one. The only people I've ever really known who have died during my life are my paternal grandparents, though I never knew them well, and was relatively young when they passed away. I've even escaped the up-close deaths of my childhood pets - we had to give away my dog when we moved to Oregon, and my parents gave away my first cat, an outdoorsy fellow, when they sold their house and moved to Arizona. Both of those pets have since expired, but I haven't had to see them suffer or find them dead, and in both cases I only heard about it later, and years after I'd had them as my own pets. The only remaining friend from my youth is Easy, and I will be a broken hollow shell of a human when she finally does go, at least for a while. But she's still hearty, and here's hoping she's got some life in her yet.

Oh yeah. The conference. Eh. It was kinda dull - ALA Midwinter is mainly for committee meetings, and when you're not on a committee the whole thing is kinda pointless. I went to some discussion groups which were mostly not interesting, but I did give out a few business cards and engage in copious small talk, so I guess maybe I got a little of my network on. But now I'm stoked--OK, maybe that's too strong of a word--interested in going to ALA Annual, which wouldn't you know it, takes place right here in good ol' DC this summer. Anyone who wants to attend is invited to stay with me, provided I still have an apartment. Unless you get paid by your work to stay someplace nice, in which case I will be staying with you.

Swing low, sweet chariot

So I took my cat in to the vet today, and had about $640 of lab work done on her. She's been losing weight lately, not eating as much, and seems to pee a lot more than she used to. Also, she's 14 now, and I knew that this moment would be coming soon. I had just hoped she'd have at least two or three more healthy years in her. And she may yet - the lab tests don't come back until Thursday at the earliest, and the vet couldn't even say what he suspected at this point since she's old and the list of possible maladies is long.

All of which has me pondering mortality and the value of life. As I have perhaps foolishly made public on this blog from day one, I am poor. The $640 for the lab tests made me freak out a little, though I know my cat is worth every penny, and now I'm wondering how much more I am willing to shell out to keep the little fuzzhead going for what could be a only very short time in any case. I mean, 14 for a cat is, according to all the charts I saw at the vet's today, about 75 in human years. She might have a little bit left in the gas tank, but the red needle is on it's way to empty, no doubt about it.

So a part of me says: you can't afford any major procedures. She's a cat. A much beloved, cared-for and undoubtedly overly spoiled cat, but a cat just the same, and it would be silly to spend thousands of dollars keeping her alive, if indeed she is ill and needs treatment. On the other hand. I adore her about as much as most people adore members of their own family, possibly more. She is my family. And I would spend whatever it took to keep a family member alive, even if I knew it would only be for a short while, right?

And yet. There are government programs set up, Medicaid and Medicare and whatever, especially for people who can't afford medical treatment. There is medical insurance, and tax deductions and various other means of obtaining funds and reimbursements for people who are sick. But nothing exists to help out those who need to pay for treatment of a sick animal. And by the way, how telling is it that the doctor who told me all of these tests would be needed never bothered to mention how much it would cost? It doesn't help matters that the median income where I live is about $90k. I feel ashamed every time I have to ask a doctor or dentist how much a procedure will cost, because health consequences be damned, the price will determine whether or not I can have it done.

So am I going to look like an asshole if I ask how much it will cost to fix my sick kitty? Probably. God, I hate living here. And I hate having to make this choice, even if it is a bit premature. Should I be allowed to even own a pet, if I can't afford any and all expenses it may incur throughout the course of its life? I don't know. I do know that I love my kitty so much that writing this post has caused me to cry at work, and I don't think I should have to miss out on that kind of love and that kind of companionship just because I'm poor.

Westward-ho!

In case I missed letting some of you Seattle/Northwest peeps know that I'm gonna be in town next weekend, consider yourself warned. I'll be going to the ALA Mid-Winter Meeting, which is sure to be entertaining and informative, or at least better than staying here and doing nothing. I'm supposed to be networking and stuff while I'm out there so that maybe I have half a chance of getting a job when I move back, but I can never really seem to muster the energy for the schmoozing. Nevertheless, I just spent $18 getting ugly and non-official-looking business cards printed, so maybe I should at least pretend to wheel-and-deal.

Anyway. The other night I was at work and bored, a rare occurence, and so I took the opportunity to read my blog archives. Some things I've noticed: I used to write a lot more about books I was reading and movies I had seen, but maybe that was because I used to post a lot more often and needed something to write about. Also, (I)(use)(way)(too)(many)(parentheses). (I guess I'm fond of the parenthetical statement.) And wow, have I really gone off the deapend since about August or September with the memes. Sorry about that - they are the lazy man's method of blogging and I realize this. Plus, they're really ultra-fucking-boring.

I didn't really have a point to make there, I was just saying. Here's something you will all enjoy: LEG UPDATE! Well, not much is new, unfortunately. It still hurts. But I feel that perhaps my knees are slightly better, although my hip/pelvis (I have an inflamed joint where my hip and pelvis meet) is still sore and it looks like it will be sore for the rest of my life, since I don't like either of the two options I have been presented with: 1) taking steroid medication - oh good, I get to gain weight and have worse acne than I am already blessed with! or 2) get a cortizone shot. No thanks, I'll just live with the pain. As my good friend and supermodel roommate once said, "Sometimes you have to suffer for fashion." Indeed.

Also, I don't like my doctor so I don't think I'm gonna go there anymore, and besides, it's too expensive and I can't afford it. So, bring the pain!