Rant: It's winter, so my hands are dry anyway. But I ate a couple clementines at lunch and I guess the citrus not only destroyed what little moisture my fingertips had, but also smoothed out my fingerprints as well, because I can't flip pages in a document to save my life--and it's infuriating. Of course this happened on a day when all I'm doing is research and flipping through old, dusty papers looking for information. So I don't keep licking my fingertip and eating the decades-old dust that's accumulated on this shit, I've been reduced to carefully separating the pages with a fingernail like some sort of retarded CSI agent. It takes literally seconds of my time to do this, but compounded over many hours, they are maddening, hyper-focused seconds where my sanity is hinged on successfully aiming at the nothing gap that lies between these tissue paper records. I need a beer.
Rave: Bubble bath. Rant: Left my glass of wine on the kitchen table. 3 Options: Drink wine after bath, track water and suds through the bedroom and the kitchen, or yell helplessly for boyfriend to rescue my abandoned wine and bring it to me. Decisions, decisions....
Rave: Received a check from the mortgage company to true up our escrow account which will cover our tax liability and leave us a couple of c-notes to spare. Time for a hot bath in the jacuzzi, a cup of herbal tea, and a Xanax.
Rant: Friend/classmate fucked up my neck. I told her she used too much force, repeatedly. Thanks a lot, whore. It feels like my ligaments have been manhandled and my head is literally hanging on by a thread. This is why you should stick to Hands. Strumpet.
RANT: I'm out in the field today and get a phone call from my urologist. The urologist was recommended by the lady doctor after hearing I've had three UTIs in a year. He wants to do some test that involves inserting a catheter into my bladder and injecting dye to make sure there are no issues with "voiding" my bladder. There's also going to be a renal ultrasound involved to ensure I don't have some kind of kidney infection. As for my urine sample, there's an infection that three rounds of antibiotics haven't cured, so, now I'm on Bactrim for a month. The antibiotic I can handle, the thought of being awake for the catheter insertion is provoking anxiety. RANT: What the shit? I'm 33 years old and my body is falling the fuck apart. In the last year, I've seen a gastro doctor for digestive issues, a cardiologist because I couldn't make it up a flight of stairs without my lips turning blue, the urologist for the above issue, the lady doctor for a slew of female issues (hormonal) and now, tomorrow, a pulminologist after the cardiologist said "I'm a bit concerned that your oxygen levels never rose during your stress test and six minutes of exercise got you so winded you nearly passed out. This doesn't seem like you being just out of shape." GREAT. If I'm given a clean bill of health tomorrow my next appointment is going to be with a nutritionist and a personal trainer.
Rave: Bit of snow heading our way, and the wife and I are both off with nothing to do for the weekend. Snowed in so we can just relax and play with the kiddie. Rave: Surgery in only 4 days. Words cannot describe how much I want this to happen.
Rave: Just won another $200 to go with the $400 earlier in the week. Playing the odds on the NCAA is like taking candy from a baby. Would have had more if not for an upset yesterday and the day before.
Rant: My knuckles itch. I think I'm becoming wolverine. Rave: Usually I get numbers from girls who I randomly end up talking to throughout the night. Last night was the first night in a while when I spotted a girl, thought "She's cute, I should get her number," and went and made it happen. Go me.
Rant: Oh fuck off. Rave: Two weeks away from this office after today. Hot damn. Also, best idea in the world? Booking an hour-long RMT massage for the day after I get back from 8 days in the Caribbean. Teeny tiny rant: Just have to get through three days of conference glad-handing first. Time to get my suits dry cleaned.
RAVE: The Village People are playing at the local casino tomorrow night! I hope they play Macho Man! Do people in the Navy hate hearing "In the Navy"?
RAVE? Lung doc says it's asthma. Apparently those that have a predisposition toward lung problems (like me growing up in a house full of chain smokers) get much worse in the way polluted air of Atlanta. The doctor gave me an inhaler, said I may likely feel better within a week. Which means exercising at full capacity isn't far behind, thank god. He said he may be able to wean me off the inhaler at some point, which is great. RAVE: When I told the boyfriend the breathing test showed I only had about 75% lung capacity, he said "Holy shit. I'd love to see what blowjobs are like when you're at 100% lung capacity, if they're that good at 75." Silly man. He may be put into a coma, y'know, since he's old and shit.
Rave: maybe...just maybe...something crazy big is about to happen. I'm hoping. I should know something soon... Rant: it only took 3 years to make it possible, and comes along as I'm getting ready to move on.
Rave: boxing training 3x this week. I'd forgotten how good that ache feels. Rave: the glorious side effect of doing brutally hard (for me) training is that it cleans my lifestyle up significantly. I'm off the cigarettes entirely, have swapped the greenery habit back to the vaporizer, and I'm drinking 1-2 nights a week instead of 5-6. And I'm eating better. Good times. Rave-ish: having a girl from my dancing class over this afternoon for a bbq. On the upside, she's 20 and ridiculously hot. On the downside, she's 20, and a sheltered 20 at that. Still, I might be getting ahead of myself. It's nice to have potential options though.
Rant: Board is acting wonky, and I'm doing this as a test post. If it actually posts, red dot/kick me in the nuts/etc. But when the last post in the Rant & Rave thread is 19 hours old, something has to be amiss...
Rant/rave: I had a really shitty week, mostly due to work stuff. I thought that the promotion was going to relieve me of at least some of the bullshit that had been driving me crazy, but I somehow ended up having to deal with all the same bullshit of my previous position along with all the newfound bullshit that comes with the new position. Why? Because I'm essentially being asked to do both jobs at the same exact time. And on top of that, I'm still in the probationary period so I haven't even gotten my full raise yet so I've been doing all this for a whopping one dollar more per hour. It's this weird work environment because the program I work for kind of got pawned off to this separate office that's a union for healthcare workers, so all the day-to-day management is by the people who work for the union, not PP, and they are AWFUL at it. And it really drives me fucking crazy that a UNION has such disregard and respect for their employees, and we share the floor with their political action department and listen to people doing phone campaigns to rally for workers' rights with they give so little of a shit about workers' rights themselves. Ugh. UGH. We keep telling them, in so many words, that their shitty management is running the program into the ground and give them concrete, reasonable changes they can make to stop doing that because they have no idea what the program is like and what our jobs are like and they've been continuously brushing us off. Three people who have been with the program since its very beginning have quit in the past month because they can't take it anymore, but has that opened their eyes to the fact that they are shitty managers? Of course not. And besides it being really upsetting for making my own life hell, it's really upsetting because I, unlike them, actually give a shit about the program and they're endangering its quality and its existence as a whole for what is essentially a power trip and it really fucking pisses me off. Anyway. As you may or may not have been able to tell, I too am reaching my breaking point and have pumped the looking for another job hunt up from "enh I'll look around and apply to a few things now and then" level to the freelance and/or unemployed levels that I had hoped to leave behind a year ago. I've been doing this two-pronged career path for the past five years until one of the two prongs sticks - the writing/magazine/journalism prong and the communications/management of nonprofit and/or arts organizations prong. This past week started with applying for a dream job that I'm super qualified for with a very well-known company for prong 1 on Monday and ended with applying for a dream job that I'm super qualified for with a very well-known company for prong 2 on Friday. I'm hoping that's a good sign. And also that I get one of them.
MEGARANT: My son has been playing basketball for the last few months and it's been great except for whenever we go to this one specific town. The refs are extremely whistle happy and make a lot of bad calls. Today was the icing on the cake. Until today his team was undefeated. They refs were so bad and so obviously biased even I was screaming at them. One of our coaches was ejected. A parent was ejected. One of our guys got body checked and literally went flying and sliding on the court and they called the foul on HIM. One of our guys tripped over someone and they called a foul on him. If two guys went down grappling over the ball we got a foul. 25 fucking fouls. The most we normally average is 4, which is what the other team got. At the end, 10 seconds before the buzzer, one of our kids threw a hail Mary 3 pointer and hit it to tie the game. Suddenly one of the opposing kids is getting 4 free throws and they wouldn't tell us what the call was. Nearly all the parents on our team were super pissed and yelling at them. They pretty much gave the game to the other team. Our head coach was really awesome through it all too. Totally calm and level headed. He's a great guy and was the coach of my son's baseball team last year, also an undefeated team btw. Thank God for small favors, right? Afterward a fight broke out, though not with either of the refs. Someone from the opposing team said something to one of the wives on our team and pushed her so her husband stepped in. I didn't see it because we had just left but we heard a lot of yelling and screaming and when those of us who had left heard it and tried to go back and see what was wrong, the coach on the opposing team came out and blocked the door and told us to leave. It was ridiculous! I have literally never been so angry in my life. Those refs should be banned from reffing a kids game ever again. I was so pissed off I was shaking when I left and I could barely get the key in the lock to open the car door. My son was scared. All the kids on our team were crushed and upset. It was a fucking nightmare. I will definitely be filing a complaint when I find out where to complain to. RAVE: BOOTY THREAD! Roxanne, allow me to state publicly that yours is the nicest ass of the trio, hands down. Second best part of my day. RAVE: Best part of my day is the shirt my wife bought me. It's a monkey carrying a giant banana in a wheelbarrow with a caption that reads "LIFE'S GOOD... When you have a BIG BANANA."
Rave: Finally! Surgery tomorrow. Rant: Liquid diet until midnight, then nothing afterward. Also, magnesium citrate. Ugh. I'll be spending my evening in the bathroom.
Rant: Professor just changed the due date for a research paper from 2pm tomorrow to 8pm today. That email came out at 2:30 today. I was planning on starting it at 8. It will probably be another hour before I get done bitching about it and start actually writing.