purposely cryptic

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K, my friends...

What, you haven't seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure? What kind of person are you?

Stay tuned...

3 little pigs

If the recent care of my 3 guinea pigs is any indicator of what kind of mother I will turn out to be, I should probably not be allowed to procreate.

For those of you who don't know, I have a history of occasionally acquiring pets on impulse. Usually these are rodents. Pastor Mom and KelBel will certainly remember the days of Lloyd, the pet rat I had in college. Then there was the rabbit I had in grad school for about 2 days before he chewed all the buttons off my remote control and I returned him to the pet store with the excuse that my [non-existent] boyfriend was allergic (I don't think they bought it but they took the rabbit back anyway). I bought a guinea pig named Wilson who died of diarrhea. Then came 2 more rats, which had unfortunately been reared as snake food, not pets, so they weren't very friendly. I had to handle them with leather gloves on.

2 or 3 years ago, I decided I wanted another guinea pig. (At this point, mind you, we already had a dog and 2 cats in the house). So I brought the pig home and started doing all the research I could about guinea pigs. When I found out that they are social animals in the wild and that they are not happy being alone, well I just had to go out and adopt another one, and since the one I wanted was up for adoption with his brother, I couldn't possibly go and separate them, and then there were 3.

I promised J that if he would let me have the pigs, I would be in charge of their care. The first few months I was the ideal pig momma, letting the boys out to play on the floor encircled in a miniature fence and not letting the cages get *too* disgusting. Well, things have gotten a little out of hand. The other day I looked in the cages and thought, oh, did J put little fake palm trees in there for the pigs? Only, when I looked closer, they weren't little fake palm trees. They were mushrooms. Because I hadn't cleaned the cages in like 3 weeks and I guess that's the secret of a successful mushroom farm. Now mind you, my pigs are very healthy (miraculously) and I am not a terrible person, I just got a little behind. I would be beside myself if my negligence ever caused real harm to those animals.

So anyway, yesterday I went to give those cages the most thorough cleaning they've had in months. I thought, hey, it's nice outside, I'll bring the cages outside and let the boys have some time in the grass under their cage tops while I hose down the bases. So, I struggled with both cages down the stairs (they are big cages because, obviously, only the best will do for my pigs!), and headed outside. The 2 pigs in the bigger cage were a little freaked from the bouncing and tilting trip down the stairs. But I went ahead with my plan, which was to put the pigs in the cardboard box that normally serves as a temporary cage while I'm cleaning theirs out, only long enough to remove the wire top from their cage, place it on the grass, and put the pigs back into this great new little pen where they'd be free to eat clover and frolick. Well, the frolicking began a little sooner than I'd anticipated, because those nervous pigs spent about 2 seconds in the cardboard box before jumping right out of it and sprinting in opposite directions. Did I mention that we live in the woods with the wild animals and that we have no fence?

One pig sprinted into the small stretch of trees and bushes that separates our house from the neighbor's; the other sprinted into the ground cover growing around our red maple tree. I went after the one in the woods first, and did he ever give chase! I ran straight through, hunched over and probably yelling, only to emerge on the other side in plain view of our neighbor and the work crew that was doing work in his yard. "Sorry, my guinea pigs are running away!" He laughed, thankfully keeping his dog from running over to help me in my search. I finally managed to peg pig #1 to the ground and snatch him up. I headed back to my yard certain that pig 2 was gone for good, but luckily he had only gotten about a foot into the ground cover and then froze with fear. I was able to pounce on him pretty quickly.

I left the pigs outside in the grass while their cage bottoms dried. The one pig who actually behaved himself enjoyed eating clover and frolicking. The other 2 sat huddled in the corner in fear. I hope they learned their lesson, that living in a cage with mushrooms growing in it sure beats running around as potential hawk food.

Friday Four (unfashionably late)

I was tagged by Pastor Mom but unfortunately didn't know about it until today. Better late than never, right??

Four jobs I've had:

-Receptionist at a tanning salon
-Bouncer at a bar in Greencastle, IN
-Graduate research assistant in a biology lab (in other words, grad student)
-Medical writer

Four movies I can watch over and over and over:

-Monty Python's Holy Grail
-Monty Python's Life of Brian
-The Princess Bride
-This is Spinal Tap

Four places I've lived:

-Greencastle, Indiana
-Urbana, Illinois
-Paris, France
-Connecticut (small enough that it doesn't matter what city!)

Four places I've vacationed:

-Belize
-Hawaii
-Maine
-Italy

Four of my favorite dishes:

-Stuffed spinach pizza (from Chicago)
-Cheese enchiladas
-Stuffed shells made by my mom
-General Tso's chicken

Four sites I visit daily:

-PerezHilton.com
-Go Fug Yourself
-Blogger
-comcast.net

Four places I would rather be right now:

-Belize
-in the forest, anywhere
-on an African safari
-on a secluded tropical island

I'm not going to tag anybody seeing as it's no longer Friday :)

alarming finding

The mullet seems to be making a comeback among the Spanish youth. Only it tends to be of the mini-mullet variety, typically curly, and often with the sides shaved. So, basically a broad faux-hawk/curly mini-mullet combo.

Folks, it wasn't pretty.

adios amigos

They're shipping me off to Barcelona for a few days to attend a conference, so I'll be MIA for the rest of the week, as I have this silly policy of not logging into blogger from my work computer...

So wish me sun, tapas, and sangria, and I will promise not to wet my pants in the street like the last time I visited Barcelona.

Hasta luego!

and you thought you were weird?

My mother-in-law, never having had any daughters until I came along, is fond of picking up little trinkets here and there for me. Things not appropriate for sons, like jewelry and flip flops and scented hand lotion. Recently, I was the lucky recipient of this handy gadget:
Yes, I'll admit it, I like to tweeze, and these tweezers actually have a little built-in LED light so you can locate each and every stray hair.

But I never should have stuck those things into my belly button, as it resulted in a half-hour ordeal of viewing things I never knew were in there, and then attempting to find the proper implements to remove them while still managing to keep the lighted tweezers in place to pry open and illuminate my little belly cavern. I finally gave up when I realized I was at risk for hurting myself, and besides, who's ever going to rate the area one inch into my belly button for cleanliness? Besides me, that is.

Last night I saw Ween in concert. They played a ton of stuff, including "Piss Up a Rope", "Voodoo Lady," "Spinal Meningitis," "Waving My Dick in the Wind" and "The HIV Song" (to which the only lyrics are: HIV! AIDS!). Needless to say, it was awesome.

And this afternoon? At the moment I am watching "Krush Groove", the days-in-the-lives dramatization of the early days of rap, featuring Shiela E, LL Kool J, and Run DMC and produced by Russell Simmons. This movie has some of the best outfits ever (and just now as the credits roll I see that the Beastie Boys were in there somewhere?? My god, I will have to watch this again sometime). And up next? "Breakin' 2, Electric Boogaloo." It's gonna take a lot to get me out of the house.

At least no one can ever accuse me of not enjoying a little variety.

I will randomly click on BlogHer links more often

Have you heard of the BlogHer network? I don't know a ton about it, but I think I'll find out. Today I had one of those random clicks...you know the ones...those times you're done checking your email and your regular blogs and you just want that one more blurb to read before you log off and actually get any work done? And anyway, it led me to this nice, interesting little post about arranged marriages and then I was, of course, reading the comments and in one of the comments the author of the original blurb wrote:

I want to mention here that I am neutral to the system, as long as I have a choice. Arranged marriage doesn't feel alien even to many of us who haven't played by its rules. If I hadn't found my husband when I did, I may have agreed to go through the process, as long as I had a say in it.

It's similar to choosing the clothes I wear. I love wearing saris and other Indian dresses. I don't think wearing jeans is liberating simply because that's what my sisters in the West wear. But the sari will start feeling oppressive if I don't have the freedom to wear jeans.

And wow. I just really liked that last part.

Go here to read the whole thing.
And here to get to the author's entire blog page.

a propos

I can't wait to see this movie. I had to post this clip after my experience yesterday. Seeing as we just moved to the area, I hadn't yet found a primary care doctor. So when the fourth day of high fever rolled around, I ended up at the only local walk-in clinic available, which happens to technically be an emergency department. They submitted to our insurance, but I am just waiting to find out how much we will owe when they deny the claim. All I wanted to do was see a doctor because I was sick. I shouldn't have had to spend an hour on the internet trying to figure out which provider was in-network or how to find out before the visit whether or not the insurance company was going to pay.

Anyway, Michael Moore's 'Sicko' comes out June 29th and has earned a lot of praise already, from both sides of the aisle. I hope you'll go see it.

sicko

I've been running a fever for 2 days now. I only have the energy to write this right now because I pumped myself full of acetaminophen which has brought the fever down temporarily and stopped my muscles (mostly) from feeling like they've been invaded by a tiny battalion of vicious hermit crabs.

Yesterday for lunch I ate potato salad out of a plastic baggie. This morning I had leftover cake for breakfast, a cupcake for lunch, and chips and dip as an afternoon snack. Apparently I cannot be bothered with nutrition at a time like this. I haven't had much of an appetite anyway, so I figured I was justified in eating whatever I wanted, as it's better than not eating at all, right?

This afternoon I had a violent case of the chills--even my fingertips went numb, which I thought was odd, considering I had a temperature of 102. This episode was immediately followed by a sweat that soaked through my nightgown. I'm pretty sure I don't have malaria but with the number of mosquitoes we've had around here lately, I wouldn't be surprised.

---

Update: I wrote the above yesterday and I still feel like shit. Still having massive chills (we're talking about episodes an hour long) followed by massive sweating. I don't particularly mind not having to work but I don't enjoy the feeling of wanting to crawl out of my skin. Plus I have slight hypochondriacal tendencies so I've already googled West Nile Virus to see if I have it. J suggested Lyme disease, so I'll have to look that up next. Send me some healthy vibes, please!

no good deed goes unpunished

Poor Jay. I thought I was doing a nice thing, sending her a little good luck charm from Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo in New Orleans. Well, I guess Madame Laveau knows the extent of my non-belief in any kind of religion, voodoo included, because she went and put some kind of stalker-attracting hex on that thing. [Yes, I realize the blatant contradiction within that last sentence...] Check out Jay's blog to read the hilarious yet frightening results (the hilarity part mostly comes from the fact that Jay is an awesome writer, another reason to check her out if you haven't already).

Her story made me think of something that happened to me when I first started grad school. I had just moved into my first "place of my own"...in an apartment complex off-campus. Because parking on campus was ridiculously expensive, I was relieved to find out that there was a bus line that stopped right in front of my apartment complex and went straight to the building where I worked. One day that first fall of school, I was on my way back to my apartment when a man on the bus struck up a conversation with me. Despite the fact that I was not the least bit interested in continuing any kind of relationship with this guy, casual or otherwise, he managed to wrangle my phone number from me. (Was he just that persuasive or was I just that much of an idiot? Probably a bit of both). As a further testament to my stupidity, when I went to exit the bus and he asked "do you live in those apartments?" I believe I told him that yes, I did. (I am cringing thinking about how DUMB I was!) He responded by telling me that he lived across the street, and pointed at a complex of buildings that I had been wondering about. They were clearly not apartments, but I hadn't seen a clear sign so I wasn't sure what they were.

Well, I found out what those buildings were that night...when the guy from the bus called me and told me that he had been in prison (for nothing that was really his fault, of course), and that he was currently living in a halfway house, where he was permitted to have a job but had to be back by curfew. Great, not only was I unknowingly living across the street from a halfway house full of ex-cons, but now one of the residents was sweet on me AND knew my phone number and where I lived. I don't know how I did it, but I did manage to blow the guy off successfully. I probably just stopped answering the phone (or maybe that was when I decided that caller ID would be a really great thing to have?). I do know that I didn't ride the bus for a LONG time after that.

Of course a year or two later I was semi-stalked by the drunk garbageman who moved into the apartment above mine, but that's a story for another time.

imaginary pictures

Since returning from The Big Easy, I haven't had a chance to upload my pictures...so I thought I'd give you some verbal descriptions of my time there (also, I don't have pics of some of the very best bits)!

Imagine:

1) Two married couples in their 40's--possibly swapping wives for the night, in the audience at a blues show. Both women had blonde 80's poodle hair and kept disappearing into the bathroom for long periods of time. At first we thought, coke? But then after one trip they returned with a third poodly blonde and we thought--recruiting for some kind of little orgy? As you might guess, we spent the entire show watching these people rather than the musicians on stage. Blondie #1 (fake tits almost spilling out) proceeded to get more and more intoxicated as she and Blondie #2 (tall & horsey-faced) groped each other to the great delight of the 2 men. Blondie #1's man did a lot of ass groping, even sticking his hand right into her pants a number of times. The Poodle Girls followed us into the bathroom at one point, where I was sure I would find out more about what their group was up to. Unfortunately, the only action I got to witness in the bathroom was Horsey-Face holding Fake Tits up and leading her into the stall to puke. Post-puke, the action in the audience got even better, as Fake Tits demonstrated her love of licking Horsey-Face's armpit (NOT accidentally, I can assure you), and Fake Tits' man continually poured water into her mouth, grabbing her chin for stability. Whatever their plans were for later, I'm pretty sure nobody was sober enough to make them happen.

2) Things are in full swing on Bourbon Street as we stroll past tranny hookers and bachelorette party groups. Just as we pass some street blockades, some drunk guy lets go of his stomach contents about 2 feet from the cops on duty. They ignore him completely, and he just keeps on drinking.

3) At Jazz Fest, we spot a guy wearing a shirt we'd chuckled at the day before in a gift shop: it had a large picture of a rooster and said "Ask me about my cock." He was spending his day at the Fest roaming with a sharpie marker, asking women to sign the shirt. By the time we saw him a second time, he was passing through the area where we were sitting waiting to hear John Mayer play, seeking out new autographs, though the shirt was getting full of comments. I started reading some of them--some women had played along, while others were obviously more half-hearted in their efforts. I was thinking about what I might write if asked, when a girl seated nearby unknowingly took up my mission. She signed the back of his shirt with "I checked--it's tiny!"

4) This one can't be communicated in a picture anyway...our last night in town, after a day spent drinking at Jazz Fest in the 90-degree heat, we had a huge dinner at Paul Prudhomme's restaurant, K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen. We scored a great table on the balcony, and enjoyed wonderful food while a little brass group played traditional N'Awlins music on the street below. After dinner, we were all too full and too tired to go do any more drinking, so we retired to our rooms. J and I were sharing a room with my aunt, and [because other activities were off-limits in this situation] we decided to rent a movie. It was after 2 am when the movie ended and we finally turned out the lights. Perhaps as one last compliment to the chef before going to sleep, J let out a huge, long, loud fart. Just as the fart came to its conclusion, we heard a perfectly-timed "woo hoo!" from a reveler on the streets below. I guess there's always something to celebrate on Bourbon Street.

poll

So, J and I have been invited to some kind of fancy dinner thing with his parents tonight. I love getting dressed up, but almost every nice dress I own is SOOOO 10 or 15 pounds ago. So here's the dilemma...do I wear:

-the cute dress from the plus-size store that I just wore to a work meeting on Tuesday (provides ample coverage but I'm a little bored of it at the moment and because I wear it to work things, does not seem very sexy to me right now)

-a very hot number that shows off the curves (one of those black lace over tan fabric types...sizzling!), but that is dangerous in terms of displaying a belly pooch once I consume any type of food or drink

-an even hotter chiffon tiger print dress that is flowy enough to eliminate any stomach worries, has total cleavage exposure (which, if you were wondering, is a plus in my book), but is just snug enough around the top to create a bit of back fat overflow behind the arms

--a burlap sack

What's a girl to do?

I'm off to New Orleans for a few days of drunken revelrie, music, gumbo and voodoo. Not necessarily in that order...

queen of procrastination

Yesterday's procrastination techniques included several outdoor excursions to see what's blooming. Can you blame me?



I mean, it sure beats what I end up doing when I'm stuck inside:

it's so nice to be needed.

[to me, with sarcasm]: "I'm so glad you came home..."

[and then, on a serious note]: "Well, I am glad you came home. I was hungry."

I hear the secrets that you keep...

...when you're talking in your sleep.

Saturday night we went to our friend Crysanthemum's birthday party, and of course I consumed a good amount of wine. After sleeping through the hour-long drive home, I pretty much crawled right into bed when we got back into the house.

I must've managed to get into an interesting state of sleep by the time J came up to bed, because as he was fiddling with his new iPod alarm clock I asked him, apparently very clearly, "What kind of expertise in abstract patterns do you need right now"?

Thank god he had the sense to write my question down. This is the first time any sleep-talking on my part has been documented, and I was as puzzled by the content of my ramblings as J was. The funniest part to me was that the next day he was telling me about this with the expectation that I might be able to explain what the hell I'd been talking about.

Goodbye Kurt.

"Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be."

"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why."

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."

"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."

"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors of all time, and he passed away yesterday. I think it's time for me to go back and re-read his books. If you've never read any Vonnegut, you don't know what you're missing. Click here and enjoy.

I love you but now you must die.

I really, really like bugs. I enjoy looking under rocks to see what kind of bugs I might find. In most cases, if I find a spider in the house, I am more likely to catch it and release it outdoors than to squash it (exceptions: if it's night and the spider is in my bedroom, or if it is in the shower with me). As a kid, I dug up worms and twirled them around the axles of my upside-down plastic shopping cart to play "worm circus". I once caught a praying mantis and kept it in a cage. I don't freak out when a bee is flying near me in the yard.

There are only a couple of bugs that I actively dislike. Silverfish, because they are just gross, and earwigs because they are both gross and scary. To me, the worst horror movie ever would involve an invasion of giant earwigs. In our old house last year, we had a big earwig problem and I was thoroughly creeped out.

Now, because I am a geeky scientist and also a bug lover, I happen to be really

fascinated by social insects, and ants are some of my favorites. A lone ant can do some pretty cool stuff, but as a group, an ant colony is capable of amazing things. Leaf cutter ants are probably my personal favorite--they forage for leaves, which they bring back to their nests not to eat, but to use as a medium for growing fungus, which they do eat. This means that leaf-cutter ants have developed agriculture--they actively grow their own food. Pretty neat.

Now, appreciating ants in the wild is one thing, but nobody likes it when they invade your home. Last year in the old house, on top of the earwigs, we also dealt with a minor ant problem after my brother-in-law and his friends watched the house and left chex mix crumbs all over the living room. They were those small black ants, and a few of those little poison baits took care of them.

Currently, in our new house, we are facing a new vermin problem: carpenter ants: They are a problem for me for a different reason than they would probably be bothersome to other people...I really don't like killing them but I don't like having them crawl around in my dishwasher or in my cupboards. In case you didn't realize, these ants are pretty big. So to me, squishing one of them is almost like squishing a toad. They really are more like little animals to me than they are bugs. Maybe it's the way they sit and groom themselves like cats, or they cute way they carry big food crumbs or their dead friends around, but I really feel bad when I have to hear their little bodies go "pop" beneath my thumb and a paper towel.

I've put the poison baits out, but they haven't seemed to have had much of an effect. So I keep on squishing and cringing to myself. I did discover that squirting them with Simple Green or my Lysol kitchen cleaner also kills them, but they do flail around a little before they die. Today I got so frustrated when one crawled around while I was heating up my soup that I took the pot off the stove and shook the ant onto the burner. It seemed to do the trick pretty quickly, but I felt kind of sadistic about it.

The good news is that I just read something that suggested they are more of a nuisance than anything (an exterminator's ad made it sound like they would eat your house) so we certainly won't have to resort to fogging the house or doing anything so nasty. I *have* always wanted an ant farm, after all...

I am not making this up, I swear.

Last night I caught him masturbating on the La-Z-Boy...AGAIN! I will have to check the blanket for stains. I felt bad interrupting him--I mean, you should have seen the look of dopey pleasure on his face.

At first I wasn't sure what he was doing, I thought maybe something was wrong with him. But the second time I caught him, I decided to check more closely and, sure enough, his arousal was physically evident.

I googled the problem, and they say this can be an obsessive-compulsive kind of thing and that sometimes medication helps. But I figure, as long as it's not hurting anybody (and not leaving stains on the crocheted blanket we received as a wedding gift--he really seems to like that blanket A LOT), then what's the harm?

Could you deny this sweet face a few moments of carnal pleasure?