FINALLY!!!

It only took me 15 years, but I have managed to get myself an AA degree in Liberal Arts. Most of that time has been used stumbling all over the scholastic chessboard trying to figure out what to focus my attention on. You see, I'm one of these exceedingly disturbed people who would be perfectly happy taking every class I can get my hands on for the rest of my life. Quite honestly I'm wondering if that's possible, because I'd love to have a BA in multiple things. Anthropology, multiple languages, History (and it doesn't matter which. I love it all), and a multitude of other things. I'm still sort of eyeballing Anthropology, or perhaps Archeology as a second choice, but I'm going to go after a BA in Japanese. Took me this long to finally find something that's got my undivided attention... at least for now. Currently I've switched from focusing on school and work, to work and finding a college that has a Japanese language program I like. Not as easy as it sounds.

Since I'm not doing classes all the time now, I've had time to read guilt free! Oh, how I've been reading... and I do apologize for not updating the page as I went, but since I had homework for a dreaded speech class, I was hiding that I was reading too. Silly? Oh yes. But we all have mental quirks, and mine tend to be stranger than average. So, here are the books I read when I shouldn't have been: "On the Edge" by Ilona Andrews, "The Reckoners" by Doranna Durgin (who I thought had quit writing YEARS ago), "Evil Ways" by Justin Gustainis, "Magic in the Shadows" and "Magic on the Storm" by Devon Monk, "Unperfect Souls by Mark del Franco, "Streets of Magic" and "Demon Bound" by Caitlin Kittredge, "Changes" by Jim Butcher, "Fahrenheit 451" Ray Bradbury, "Silver Bourne" by Patricia Briggs and "Tengu: The Mountain Goblin" by John Donohue. I think that does it... I think.... hmm. Okay this list neglects all the Manga series I re-read, and bought... and submerged in to save my sanity this last semester. I hate speech, and I almost literally became someone else in order to deal with it. Sanity saving in the same vein as when I read Piers Anthony's Xanth *trilogy*... hah. I think he's on book 38. But same sort of thing, because back then it was just after a large earthquake, and we were living in a 37 foot motor home in our drive way; our house having been red-tagged. Joyful experience I tell you. Joyful.

Today was sort of a lazy day for me, except for the hour I spent in the dentists chair this morning, where they said,"WOW! You take really good care of your teeth! I barely had to do anything!" This is the part were I beamed from all the praise. Then she said,"Except you'll probably need oral surgery to take care of that pocket near your molar." This is the part where I look like a kicked puppy. "Oh don't worry," she says catching my large fearful eyes,"they'll replace the bone your removed wisdom tooth disintegrated with sterilized pig bone, or cadaver bone." Here's were I stare at the woman in disbelief, while my overly helpful memory provides me with flashbacks to the last time I had surgery in my mouth... which was compounded by the fact that I react badly to certain antibiotics and anti-nausea medication that was prescribed... Lets just say that last June sucked. A lot.

So, in a stupor of resigned panic, I stopped at the local general store and got a nice relaxing horror movie. Yes, I find horror films relaxing. They're so damned predictable. Spooky music, que hero, que companions, que monster/nutcase.... dark setting, blood, gore... loud noises.. more screaming.. etc. No escape. I rented Pandorum, which had a surprisingly good storyline. Well acted, or rather as much as you could expect. I liked it, and would probably watch it again. Sort of like Pitch Black, which I liked as well. In fact I watched that too. Currently, I've switched pace a bit, and am watching a Goofy collection that I bought years ago, but never felt like watching it. It came in a nice silver gift case. I've always liked Goofy.

Curiosity = Octopus

Came across this on YouTube this morning while avoiding the paper I have to write. Which is dumb, because its a short paper. Its just the content that I have no real interest in writing about. Ah well. Anyway, I figured I'd just put this in for your enjoyment. Made me smile. ;)

I liked the music too. Cracked me up. ^-^ LOL!

If you'd like to watch the video without the side cut off, and all the words intact, click here and you should be able to see the whole thing.

... goofy octopus. LOL!

ps. thank you Mom, for showing me how to embed. Mom is the Grand Master of blogging.

When Teeth Wear Clothes

Today, I was up early to get to a school councilors appointment. It was not a good scene, as I felt awful when I woke up (the work of the cold-from-hell) and had a difficult time waking up, and staying that way. Luck was with me though, because I made it to school, checked in at the front desk, and got to a table before falling asleep for half an hour. The clock read 9:15 a.m. when I woke up, which was 15 minutes after they should have called me in to see the councilor. It seems their computer system was on the fritz, so the lady I was there to see never got notified that I was waiting for her. At least I was able to nap. There was a happy ending. All my paperwork for getting my AA degree has been turned in. It'll be a while before I get the actual sheet of paper though, because I missed the Spring/Summer deadline. Therefore I get to wait for Fall graduation. That's fine. There is no rush.

Afterwards, I went to a local place for lunch, then went over to the mall, which I haven't been in, in something like 3 years, to see what the remodel looked like. The place is now a rabbit warren, huge, confusing, and oddly more inviting. From there I went to work, and made the mistake of snacking on some almonds. I like almonds. I eat 5 or 6 of them, and I'm not hungry for hours. Which is good, because I'm generally so busy at work, that I don't have time to actually eat anything more substantial. Almonds are good for you anyway.

There is a downside however. Almonds have a little brown skin, which sometimes slides off the nut while you chew. Um... they're very good at getting stuck in between your teeth, in between your teeth and your gum line, and in my case, very good at adhering itself to one of the small front teeth. Not the ones right in front, but to one of the ones to the side. It must have been there for hours, because I ate the almonds right after I got to work. Yes, I feel like crap, but I did a lot of smiling today, and joking and... not one person said,"Uh, you've got a little bit of something stuck to your tooth there." Which would not have been so bad if we hadn't had a Friends of the Library meeting today. These are the people who run book sales to help fund the library. These are the people who volunteer to help shelve when we need help. These are the people who stop in just to say hi. And not on of them told me that one of my teeth was wearing a very becoming brown jumper. Even stranger, was that the Directer (yes, that would be my boss of bosses) was there for said meeting, and yes, I smiled at him too, and did he tell me that I have a little something on my tooth? Nope. I didn't find my little hitchhiker until I went to the bathroom, LONG after everyone had left and I'd closed up for the day. I was already having a bad hair day. You know, one of those days where you stuff your hair into a ponytail because everything else you've tried makes you look like you're wearing a wet rodent, and even the ponytail is a failure? I'm sure I looked like someone who'd stumbled out of the backwoods after having been hold up in a cabin for the winter. Yes, when teeth wear clothes, you know you've really reached your limits. Thank God I've got tomorrow off. I don't get paid, but I don't care at this point.

Maybe Saturday will be better. That's when I go back to work. :)

The Cold From Hell

I wish I was kidding when I say that. Unfortunately I am not. On the Friday before Easter, about halfway through my workday, I started getting a headache, which was quickly followed by tender skin, achy joints and the distinctly 'oh god, this is going to be bad' fever just to top everything else off. By the time I got home, my headache had flared to the point where I was having trouble thinking, and staying upright. Mom made tacos for dinner, and I ate some even though I was not in the least bit hungry. The next morning... okay, I don't remember much about the next 4 days or so, except that I had a fever, felt awful, and had a severe headache. When I say severe headache, I mean my entire head from the neck up. Ears, nose, entire cranium, and eyeballs all felt as if the nerve endings were aflame It was without a doubt the worst headache I have ever had in my life. You can't sleep, can't move, can't eat, can't drink. Which you eventually find is just fine, because you really haven't the energy anyway. I was positive I had bronchitis or some equally evil form of respiratory infection, and went to the doctor. He looked me over and declared that I had the worst cold he'd ever seen, and put me on some rather heavy duty decongestants to help get all the crap out of my head. (Dad would point out here, with surprise, that he'd though my head had been empty for years! Hah Hah Dad. Hah Hah.) Its working, but slowly. My left ear for instance feels like someone had jammed a disembodied finger into the canal and abandoned it there for unknown reasons. This of course is causing my throat to hurt, but overall, I am better.

Mom isn't. She caught the same thing I did, but she's got a sore throat, along with congestion, headache, probable fever and so on. She's been sleeping a lot, and drinking lots of fluids. This cold from what I've been told lasts for nearly 3 weeks. It creeps in slow and heavy like fog, lulling you into the belief that it'll burn off quickly. In reality it sinks its claws in and throttles you for nearly 3/4's of a month. I thought it was a flu, or some other such thing, but no. Its just a cold gone rogue. Forgive my language, but the damn thing is a real bitch to fight your way through, not to mention the recovery, which is NOT swift in any sense of the word. The cold is reluctant to let go of you, and fights you every step of the way. Thus my rather wimpy status. I come home, and fall asleep for an hour. Monday was really bad. I got home, sat down on the bed, went to check email on my laptop, and woke up 4 hours later. So much for getting school work done. :P

Anyway, I am on the slow road to Mendsville, while Mom is probably slowly getting better. If she's not better by the end of the weekend, I will have to force her into a car, and take her to the doctor. From what I'm hearing, not everyone is able to kick this thing before it turns into something much more ominous, such as a sinus infection, or in some cases, strep throat. Mom does not have a high opinion of doctors, so its always a struggle to make her go when she should.

Just updating. I'm not sure anyone reads this blog. I so seldom have the time or feel the need to sit down and chronicle my everyday life. But since Mom wasn't positing I figured I'd give everyone an update. And yes, our Buff Orpington is nearly healed. All the big holes are pretty close to being nothing but scars. Her feathers are even growing back in! :)

What Have You Done Now?!

A couple of days ago, I was passing from the living room to the kitchen and glanced down the hallway. And this is what I see.

Now, I ask you, would you begin thinking that she'd done something wrong? I get suspicious when she does things like this. Its like she turns on the cute switch to distract me from the fact that a couple of weeks ago she got into a garbage bag and ate chicken bones. I was not pleased. She goes and gets things out of Mom's bathroom, and cuddles with them in the hallway. Things such as ... the bar of soap, or a rubber ducky. And she loves used bounce dryer sheets. After finding one, she smuggles them upstairs to roll around on them. I find pieces of them here and there... and in her fur. I've come to the conclusion that her soul was destined for the body and destiny of a suave master British Cat Burglar, what with the absolute

penchant she has for sneaking the most obvious of items past us. She knows I'm not pleased, therefore she pulls things like this. I spend a great deal of time thanking the PTBs (powers that be) that she wasn't born with thumbs. Dear god, it would've been a disaster. Sure, she looks cute, and she'd probably get away with it, if her devilish nature wasn't also glaring at me.

Its January, therefore I'm due for a pick-me-up. For no particular reason I present you with this:

Un-Groovied

Three days ago, I noticed that on the side of my blog there were video clips which I had not asked for. They feature a guy talking to ... what I think, is another guy. I could be wrong, its hard to tell. Peering at them closely I wondered how they got there where my little cartoon songs had been. I shrugged thinking that I could just reset the cartoons, which I tried unsuccessfully to do for about an hour. I stared at it for a while. Then I went and yelled at YouTube for allowing morons to hijack my search link. And they are Morons. I clicked on the video to see what had replaced JabberJaw, Atom Ant, and My Best Friend Plank. What I got was an earful of the "evils of cartoons". ... I had to take a walk to clear my head, before my beloved laptop took the brunt of my extreme annoyance. Okay, Anger. It was anger. Cartoons aren't evil. Sure, there are people out there who use cartoons to portray horrendous things, but that is not what I had on my blog. I had rather well thought up and presented music shorts with cartoons. Which I enjoy. I do not enjoy, nor condone someone with obvious social issues blaming all the wrongs of society on cartoons such as Dungeons and Dragons, or the Smurfs.

*sighs*

Guys, go get a freaking life and stop screwing with mine.

Which is why there is no video strip on the side of my blog anymore.

... jerks...

I want my Cartoon Network Groovies back.

PS. I should have known. The minute I rant about this, it would work. We'll try this again, and see what happens. If those idiots show up again though... GRRRRRRR...

PSS (12/16/09) I give up. It keeps showing up with other crap. Back to being Groovy-less.

It All Started with that Chicken...

You remember. That one with the puff-ball head, also known as a Polish? Well, maybe you don't, because I never wrote anything here about the wandering chicken. Mom did though. You can go dig through her blog to find a photo too, because I'm just too darned lazy to go find it for you. However, I do believe that is when it really started. The animal thing while driving that is. That was the day that our neighbor called and asked if we'd seen a small black dog in the area, that looked like an Australian Cattle Dog. Which we hadn't. Apparently the dog of said description had gotten into their chicken yard and gone after their birds with relish. Condiments aside, they managed to avoid having dead chickens, which is actually pretty good, given their track record with their animals lately. In short, their luck has been hovering several miles below the ticking mark for 'bad'. Our chickens weren't out yet, and I was leaving for work early, the reason for which is now escaping me. I was bouncing along to the music in my car, and was almost to the main drag to head down the hill (hill being mountain) when my wandering eyes settled on what I thought was a cat. Until it moved. Cats don't move with William Shatner-esque jerks of the head and body. It was a chicken. A confused, not in a place for a chicken, chicken. And it appeared to be in shock, because when I went back to get it, it just sat down at my feet and didn't protest at all when I scooped it up and deposited it on the seat next to me. I drove back home, called the neighbor who had had the dog attack that morning to ask if she was missing a little polish hen. She wasn't. I needed to leave for work, and didn't have time to go door to door asking,"Excuse me sir/ma'am. Is this your chicken? Here, let me pull back its bouffant hair stylings so you can get a good look at its eyeballs." The neighbor however, would love to have a little polish hen. They're good people, and take good care of their animals. I was not at all worried. The LPH, is still doing very well with the small flock next door.

Well... that was nice for a distraction and all, but it would be nice to go back to not seeing weirdities on my way to and from work. Except I live on a mountain top, surrounded by people, their pets, and wildlife. This means eventually I will come across some other animal under odd circumstances. Probably about a month ago now, I was driving home from work, bouncing along to music once more along a road I'm pretty familiar with since I drive it at least twice a day 6 days a week. There's this curve and then that curve and then a short straight away, and gee, I could probably drive this road blindfolded. So, I will admit to being on auto-pilot to some extent when I came around the bend where the county keeps its boulder supply. Big, medium and small boulders occupy a small recess along side the road, so that the county has easy access to them, and don't have to haul them up the hill to fill in holes when we have a road fallout. Which happens infrequently, but I've got to say it does wonders for your reflexes to come round a bend in the road on a stormy, rainy, windy, foggy night, and find that there is a vast swathe of road missing in your lane. Doesn't that just beat all? Okay, back to the pet rocks. There are three largish sized boulders that stand fairly close to the road, this evening, there were 4. I figured that the county guys just added another one, and paid very little attention to it in the quickly dimming light... until it got up and waddled off into the chaparral. Ah, my brain said, That was a bear!

My brain likes to pull jokes on me. Especially when its late, foggy and raining, and I'm tired from work. Such as the night I was almost home, when I saw something jumping across the road. I slowed to a crawl to better observe the small creature leaping, landing, then pausing before leaping again. And my groggy fore-brain says,"Wow! That's the biggest cricket I've ever seen!" and my hind brain, which has always been the more logical and intelligent of the two replies, laden heavily with acidic rebuke,"You moron! That's a FROG!" At which point my hind-brain rolled over and went back to sleep. It really only wakes up to mentally slap me.

Which brings me to last week. In which I left for work on time, maybe even a little early. You can see where this is going already. I'm doomed if I leave the house early. The thought that I might be able to stop at the big store at the bottom of the long drive down the mountain is usually the cause of such foolishness, but I sadly fall prey to its allure more often than I'd like to admit. Again, it was a sunny, but cold day, and I was going slow. At work I'm something of a bartender. Everyone comes in and tells you their woes while getting a little pick-me-up. In my case I serve books, instead of booze. Lately, everyone had come in to tell me of their car accidents. Not one or two people... this is more along the lines of 10 to 15 people. I don't know whats going on with drivers lately, but I basically was driving with a good dose of paranoia when I rounded the second bend in the road on my way out to the main drag. Two dogs are standing on either side of the road, one is a lightly built brindle color pit-bull, and the other is a neighbors dog that is pretty much terrified of everyone. Terrified dog immediately disappears into the woods in the direction of its abode, and the Brindle just stood there staring at my car as I slowed so as not to hit her if she did something dumb. The next thing I know a small white puppy shoots out of the bushes to my left and races at full speed straight under the front of my car. Being somewhat freaked, I braked hard and stopped. I stayed stopped because I couldn't see the puppy, so I put on the car in park and pulled the emergency brake, then got out. I looked around and couldn't see the puppy, so I looked under the car praying to god, I wasn't going to find it smashed under my tire. Nope, he's not smashed under my tire, but he IS smashed up against the right rear tire. He's not hurt. He's hiding. Took me a good 15 minutes to convince him to come out, and once he did he turned out to be very friendly and good natured. However, every time I tried to get back in the car, he'd go back under it. Which is why I found myself driving around with him in my car trying to figure out who he belonged to for the next 20 minutes. This was becoming an issue, since I need to be to work in like 30 minutes, and it takes me 40 to get there in the first place. Which means I need to find a puppy-sitter. Luckily we've got a nice older couple living nearby, and she took him in and said she'd see if she could find the owner.

The puppy was probably about 6 to 8 weeks old, probably a Pitbull/Labrador mix, and was well cared for, so we didn't think he was a dump. People like to take their unwanted dogs deep into the hills and dump them. I have no idea why they think this is a good idea. We have bears up here. Bears like to eat dog. And if the bears don't get them, the cougars do, and if by some miracle they avoid that, we have the worst predator ever here as well. The hillbilly and their best friend Remington, Winchester or Henry. None too bright sometimes. I cannot count the amount of cats I've come across with pellets in them. Anyway, I believe the neighbor found the owner, and if she didn't, there were several people who said they'd take him. He was a very cute puppy. Did I get pictures? No. No, I didn't. Sue me if you so desire.

This concludes my animal weirdness for today. Please check in again, in the hopes that maybe I will have decided to post something else. Or not. Its fine. Whatever. *sighs*