Tuesday, December 10, 2002

'Tis the Season to Be Sickly...



Ugh. Did anyone get the number of that truck? And could someone get it to come back and finish the job? Apparently running me over and then backing up and running me over again didn't quite do me in completely.

I do not have time for this. I'm supposed to be packing and moving things. I was supposed to have my entire kitchen moved by this point, and be halfway through sorting my clothes into "keep" and "send to Goodwill" piles. Instead, I'm laying on the couch playing the Hot/Cold game. I'm hot, so I open the balcony doors. I'm cold, so I close them and grab a blanket. Repeat ad infinitum. And my head's all stuffed up. I feel like that little kid on the cold commercial that tells his mom that only one side of his nose is working.

I know it's not the flu, since I got a flu shot this year. It's not the same bug that Zappagirl is currently battling. I'm not coughing, and I don't seem to have any chest congestion. I just can't breathe, am sneezing frequently, and have no energy whatsoever. Standing up makes me dizzy. And while this is a cheap high, it's not the optimal condition to be in when packing wine glasses.

So, as much as I hated to do it, I called in sick today. Now I know that's what sick days are for, but I have been guilting myself about this all day. (Well, the few hours that I was conscious - I slept a lot today.) Somewhere in my head, I decided that calling in sick for a cold was a complete cop-out, and sick days should be for major illnesses (that last for a day or two). According to my screwed up moral code, I should have just stopped at Walgreens on the way to work and spent the day at my desk in a Dayquil-induced daze. Instead I was a whiny little baby and called in over a case of the sniffles and a fever.

(And yes, I do have a fever. I just checked - I'm currently simmering at 99.6, and I'm usually closer to 98 degrees even. By the way, glass thermometers are evil. I had a digital one at some point, but it seems to have wandered off. I have a new respect for my mother at the moment, because trying to hold the stupid thing under my tongue for the required five minutes was a complete pain in the butt. Trying to convince a child to do this constitutes a small miracle.)

And to make matters worse, I wasted the entire day by sleeping. Yes, I know this is my body trying to tell me to slow down and stop stressing, but this loss of valuable time when I need it the most just makes me more stressed. Stress is compounded by more stress, and it just makes me angry and depressed.

The time of the year isn't helping matters much. I have really come to dislike the winter holiday season, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the commercialism and residual retail syndrome. All of the stores have had their decorations up for at least a month, all of the advertisements on television have been telling me that spending a lot of money is the best way to celebrate, and Best Buy keeps telling me what a valuable customer I am and keeps sending me invitations to preferred customer weekends that have neither the time nor funds to visit. And while I don't blindly buy into the "spend money and buy the love of your friends and family" thing (no pun intended), it makes me feel bad that I declared my monetary problems more important than everyone else's and postponed the exchanging of gifts until February. I'm not even going to make cookies this year, and this is another Catch 22 for me. See, I make a pretty good batch of holiday cookies, and it's become a pride thing that's ballooned out of control. It's now gotten to the point that I end up making something like 12 dozen sugar cookies and 16 dozen Russian tea cakes, and it ceases to be a fun way to spend an evening and more of a twelve hour ordeal that I can't even do in my own kitchen since I don't have enough counter space for the cooling racks, let alone the numerous cookie tins to be distributed. (Mom usually volunteers her kitchen, and after about six dozen or so cookies, we're getting on each other nerves.) But as ridiculous as the whole production number is, the thought of not making cookies is almost as bad. At this point, the cookies are like the presents: delayed until a later date.

I don't know. I've noticed I have a tendency to get depressed and discouraged during this time of the year. (You know, more than I usually am.) The weather starts to change, the temperature starts to drop, and my spirits follow suit. The majority of crappy times in my life tend to happen at the end of the year, and I've never quite figured out if this is just a random thing. Maybe it's the subconscious looking back over the last twelve months and not being entirely happy with the way things went, wondering why I couldn't have handled things differently here and there. Like I said earlier, I hold myself to a rather strange moral code, and I'm rather self-critical and self-abusive towards myself. Adding in the stress of no time, no money, and a change in residence makes matters worse. Some days I'm better than others, but with the compromised health and resulting day of slack, today hasn't been a good one. And that just makes things worse.

(This is usually the point where I diagnose myself with Seasonal Affective Disorder, simply because it has a better ring to it than dysthymia. Of course, that doesn't make sense, since I avoid daylight in the non-winter months. I'm not a licensed mental health professional, but I play one on TV.)

Ick. I almost don't want to post this because it's so depressing, but I want to feel like I accomplished something. Sleeping and making tomato soup doesn't count as productive.

Tuesday, December 03, 2002

Cleaning House



For those of you who don't know yet, I'm moving.

Don't look at me like that. I know that I had said in the past that I would probably never move. The hassle of moving eight years ago is still pretty fresh in my mind. I'd had a falling out with my roommate back then, and after a few tries to solve the disagreements amicably (one of which Rosencrantz attempted her best to moderate), she'd given me notice around Thanksgiving that she wanted me out by the end of the year. (Mind you, she was all but unemployed, had dropped the two college classes she was taking because they were too stressful for her, and was living off her parents for everything. She seldom did dishes or cleaned the litter box. All she seemed to do was lie on the couch in her grey sweatpants and chain smoke while she watched TV. But her name was on the lease, and her mother was still willing to pay her bills, so I was the one who got the heave-ho.)

I scrambled for a new place to live, viewing efficiency sized apartments that were able to be designated one bedrooms by virtue of a single well placed wall. All of the complexes listed in the glossy apartment guides were way too pricey, didn't allow pets (or wanted a sizable deposit to cover my kitty), or were particular about the quality of vehicles that might be parked on their property. (I kid you not about this. I knew someone who lived in a complex run by a particular management company, and they sent him a nasty letter when his 10 year old car started to show some rust spots.) One place I looked at was a basement apartment with tile flooring, and when I say "tile" I'm not talking attractive floor laminates. I'm talking the tiny one inch square tiles usually found in a bathroom. The monthly rent was just barely within my affordable range, and I would have been able to get maybe half of my furniture in the apartment. When the resident manager ran through the application process, complete with a hefty application fee and painstaking scrutinization of my credit history (and possibly a full review of my entire life, a blood test, and DNA testing), I politely declined and went out to my car and panicked that I would be ringing in the new year in a cardboard box under a bridge. Luckily, I found the ad for a decent-sized place in Clifton who didn't care that I had an ill-tempered cat, a car that was being held together by bungee cords, and a questionable history with credit cards. I moved in between Christmas and New Years, and have been here ever since.

But after eight years, two car break-ins, the removal of a door lock that I was never given the keys to (leading to Roger Mexico kicking in my door and leaving a big splintered dent when I got locked out), the dismantling of a smoke alarm when I discovered it went off every time I took a shower, the replacement of a toilet that was coming loose from the floor and a garbage disposal that stopped disposing, it's time to move on. There's very little left in Clifton for me anymore. When I moved here, everyone I knew lived in Clifton (or a few minutes away). Now everyone I know has moved. I've gone through numerous next-door neighbors who have played horrible music (Celine Dion) that rattled the picture frames on my walls, have fought loudly with each other on the morning of New Year's Eve (after I'd worked back to back shifts at Best Buy and the Warehouse, and was trying to get a little rest before doing all over again), and let his ferrets run loose in his apartment while he sang Metallica off-key in the shower. I've been stranded in my parking lot during the winter, unable to get up the ice-covered hill that separated me from the rest of the world. (Thank goodness for the corner store, which was open and well-stocked on the day I trudged up the hill through eighteen inches of snow because I was out of cat food and people food. And the fact that they have a good beer selection, carry clove cigarettes, and stock Ben and Jerry's ice cream is a bonus. They're all fabulous people, too. One clerk spotted me a bottle of Liquid Plum'r once when she couldn't find a price for it and I was running tight on funds.)

I serindipitously stumbled into the knowledge of the new apartment when my car was broken into last month. I'd called my mother (she also works at the Zoo), and one of her co-workers walked past after she'd finished talking to me, and asked her what was wrong. Mom explained the car break-in and her co-worker correctly surmised that I lived in Clifton.

"Do you know if she might be looking for a new apartment?" she asked. It seems that Mom's co-worker's mother (who also used to work at the Zoo - in my position, no less) owned a four family unit in the city where I grew up, and was looking for a new tenant. The apartment was cheaper than my current place, and included a garage, storage space in the basement, and free laundry. It was at least worth a look.

My new apartment isn't perfect. The carpet's pretty worn, and the bedroom is considerable smaller. But it's got charm. There are large windows in the living room and dining room that swing out from the building, a (non-functioning) fireplace, and a kitchen that is actually large enough to cook in (with a pantry!). There's a back entrance so I can access the garage without walking around the building, and I've been told that I'm more than welcome to use the yard if I develop a green thumb between now and springtime.

My new landlady is possibly one of the most laid back people I've ever met. Rather than giving me a lengthy application and requesting a fee to check my references, she simply asked if I wanted the apartment and what color I would like to have the rooms painted. Last night I dropped off the check, signed the lease (the first one she's ever had a tenant fill out), and picked up the keys. While I was doing this she showed me the china cabinet that she was giving me and asked if I wanted to put down a security deposit or not. Instead of having to pore through a ten page lease full of legalese trying to determine if I could put up a wallpaper border, I was give the verbal OK to do whatever I wanted with regards to decorating, so I get to play Trading Spaces for the next few months. (More along the lines of Vern's tastes though. There will be no "Magenta! Taupe! Magenta! Taupe! All! Around! The! Room!" in my household, thanks.)

So since I'm having to box up my life and transport it across town, I'm going to be tossing a lot of stuff. I have a tendency to be a bit of a packrat and will hold onto things for the hell of it, thinking maybe someday I might need it again. As a result, I have entirely too much stuff, and I've needed a good excuse to go through it and decide what is essential to me and what is just taking up space for no reason. I plan to be ruthless; I'm trying to be Minimalist Girl to make the move (and my life) less complicated.

And while I'm sorting through crap that I've had since stuffed in desk drawers since I was a teenager, I'm thinking about doing the same thing with me. My need to hold onto junk has long since transcended the bedroom closets and there is no more room in my mental storage space for my emotional bagage. Lately it's been spilling out and making an awful mess. It's time to get rid of some things. Of course, that's easier said than done. I've tried to clean out my physical and mental closets before, to little or no avail. Somewhere along the line I seem to have confused "getting rid of things" with "burying it in a secluded corner and pretending it never existed," and of course, those things never stay buried for long and end up in the way again.

So rather than fighting the crowds at the mall to accumulate more stuff, I'm going to be spending the month ridding my life of excess stuff so I can start the year off right. (Chrismas will be coming a bit late in the Myopic household.) New year, new place, new me. It looks good on paper. We shall see.

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

Things That Make you Go "Grrrrrr..."



You know, most of the time I try to have a good attitude about things, but sometimes I let life get to me.

This is one of those times.

To start off, I finally got the results back from my blood tests and ultrasound on my thyroid. I had been told that the results would be back by the end of the week. That is, the end of last week. As of Tuesday morning, I hadn't heard a thing, and was stressing myself out considerably over the results. Yes, I know the old adage that no news is good news, but my brain kept coming up with reasons why it was taking them so long to call me back with the results, and by Tuesday my brain had constructed this elaborate nightmare that the results were so bad that they had to fly in specialists to get a second opinion. I wasn't sleeping well, I was alternating between picking at my food and completely binging, and I spent much of Tuesday morning with a nervous stomach that rejected everything that I ate or drank for a few hours.

Now granted, I know that I'm not a big priority to Giant Health Association. HMOs are not known for their red-carpet treatment of patients. But when you have a new patient - new as in first appointment in the office - and you run tests and promise the patient you'll call with the results of said tests, then you should do it. After the complete rigamrole I had to go through to actually see the doctor and get the tests run, I didn't need the added annoyance of having to call Giant Health Association and sit on hold for twenty minutes and get bounced from department to department. And while the medical assistant that finally looked up my records was very courteous and read my results to me, she didn't have any idea what plan of action my nurse practitioner wanted to implement. She took down my name, work number, and home number and said that she would have Not Dr. Ruth call me so I could discuss the results with her.

I stressed to the medical assistant that I was at work until 5:00. Of course, she must have spoken a strange dialect where "I can be reached at work until 5" means "under no circumstances should you call me at work - leave a message on my answering machine at home, because this whole experience hasn't been frustrating enough for me!"

I finally got ahold of Not Dr. Ruth, and she explained that my thyroid levels were fine, but that I had a multi-nodular goiter (ewww... there's that word again). She offered to send me to an endocrinologist, but since the goiter (ewww) wasn't causing a problem, why would I want to give Giant Health Association any more of my money? We agreed that the best course of action was just to continue to monitor my thyroid for any changes. (So, I'm abnormal, but not dangerous at this time. Pretty much like I am in real life.)

Of course, then she goes on to tell me that one of the other tests came back incomplete, because they didn't manage to get a culture of one of the required types of cells, so I have to get another exam when I go back in for my next Depo booster in three months. This wasn't important enough to call me about either? Half the test is missing, and they figured they'd just let it slide and spring it on me in a few months? "Hey Myo, we know you're just here for a shot in the butt, but do you mind getting up on the table and putting your feet in the stirrups? We kinda messed up last time, and need to try again. Thanks!"

Um, I look upon my annual visit to the girly-bits doctor as a necessary evil. It's not my idea of a good time. I also look upon it as an annual thing.

Someday I'm going to look back on this and laugh.

And while I'm griping, I suppose I should include my laundry list of "stupid things that happen at work" while I'm at it...

I love my job, really I do. But sometimes the people I have to talk to when booking programs drive me crazy.

Today, for instance, I had to deal with a charter bus company. Now, charter bus companies don't like to give up the school's address or any other information for the reason that they are charging the school a different rate than we would charge them. The touring company is worried that the school will find out how much of a profit is being made by the "tour escorts" and won't book their services the following year. However, I've never had a bus company representative blatantly lie to me to prevent me from getting this information before.

When I asked for the school's address, the representative (let's call her BS Becky) said she didn't have that information because she didn't have the file in front of her. I explained that I needed that information, and she told me that I really didn't need it, since all of the arrangements were being made by BS Tours and the school would never again be coming to our zoo. I explained again that we needed to enter the school's information into the database for our records, she spouted off an address in a single breath. Since she had just told me that she didn't have the school's file, I was more than a little suspicious... especially when she didn't have the phone number. I went ahead and took the information, told her I would send the confirmation packet to her attention at BS Tours, and pulled up a search engine to find the school's phone number and verify the address. (Seems that BS Becky isn't aware of a little thing called the internet, or that almost every school in the nation has its own webpage, or that those webpages usually have contact information.)

Lo and behold, when I pulled up the school's website, the address I had been given was totally wrong. I called BS Tours back to verify their address, and discovered that the false school address was actually the old address of the tour company. Apparently they had just relocated their offices across town.

But none of this should really surprise me. After sending out an email invitation to some of our teachers for a Festival of Lights preview night where it very clearly stated (twice) that RSVPs were to be called into a specific phone number, I wasn't surprised to find that several of the teachers tried to RSVP by emailing me. It doesn't surprise me when teachers seem to overlook the "please call at least two weeks in advance to register your group" and call at 4:30 in the afternoon to set up a field trip for the next morning. It doesn't surprise me when home schools tell me that they can't schedule that far in advance, since they are unable to predict the weather. (Apparently home schools think that public schools have the power to do this, I guess.) And it doesn't surprise me in the least when teachers call to essentially ask me to write their zoo field trip curriculum. (I actually had one teacher tell me her school planned on bringing enough chaperones so the teachers wouldn't have to supervise any of the students.) Call me crazy, but I thought that teachers were paid to supervise and educate their students, not have me send them activities that the room mothers can distribute while the teachers sit in the restaurant and drink coffee.

Oh well. As a wise friend of mine once said, never underestimate the power of human stupidity... but don't dwell on it, either. I guess I should concentrate less on stupid things that I can't change, like teachers that can't read and doctors' offices that forget to call you back, and more on things within my power to change, like getting back up to quota on NaNoWriMo. I'm currently almost 5000 words behind. I'm such a slacker. It's going to be a long week and a half. Hope the coffee supply holds out.

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Doctor, Doctor



(Warning: The following entry is about various experiences in doctors' offices. It contains references to bodily fluids and icky girl stuff. If that kind of thing bothers you, don't read it. Go support me or Rosencrantz or Tyim in our NaNoWriMo insanity and read our novels or something.)

I hate going to the doctor. This has nothing to do with any weird phobias about needles or hospitals or anything. I used to give blood at Hoxworth on a regular basis. Heck, at one point I considered becoming a nurse, and undertook a year of classes at one of the local hopsital based schools. For the most part, most of my past visits to any doctor have been positive ones.

The main exception was Dr. Sourball, whom I visited for the first and last time a few years ago when I had a double whammy of sinusitis and bronchitis. I had suffered through about of week of sniffling and wheezing, hoping that my symptoms would clear up, and called for an appointment when it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to wait out this bout. On the afternoon of my appointment, I got stuck in construction traffic and was late. Upon checking in with the receptionist, she reminded me of this in the tone of a condescending second grade teacher. Fifteen minutes later I was called into exam room, where I waited to see Dr. Sourball for another five minutes.

Finally, he came in and greeted me by lecturing me on being late for my appointment. Dude! If I could have magically avoided the gridlock on I-71, I would have done so. I didn't enjoy sitting at a standstill in front of a Speed Limit 65 sign for ten minutes, so lay off.

So after he grumbled at me, he finally asked, "And what brings you in here today?"

"I have sinusitis and bronchitis. I thought I could tough it out, but it seems my body had other ideas."

He raised an eyebrow. "Oh, you know you have sinusitis and brochitis. And how do you know that?"

I'm sure doctors have to deal with patients who self-diagnose all the time. I'm sure it can get annoying. But it wasn't like I walked in and told him I had a brain tumor or bubonic plague. I had two rather common ailments, and I have a tendency to over-research things before I seek professional help. "Well, I've had sinusitis and bronchitis before, and I know what the symptoms are. I just took a layman's guess." In other words, Dr. Second-Guess-Your-Patient, my snot is green and I feel like I'm breathing through a sponge. You do the math.

He scoffed at my respose. "Well, we'll just see about that," and ran the necessary exam procedures and tests. A few minutes later, he returned with the results. He didn't look too happy.

"Well, it looks like you have sinusitis and bronchitis." Um, duh. He begrudgingly gave me prescriptions for decongestants and antibiotics, and told me that smoking was bad for me. Again, duh. While I don't claim to be the brightest bulb on the strand, I'm not a complete moron. It's not like I thought smoking was a good way for me to supplement my vitamin intake.

Since that day, the only doctor I've visited on a regular basis is my gynecologist. For the past few years, I had been fortunate enough to have the option of visiting my local Planned Parenthood under the coverage of my insurance. All of the employees there were friendly and top notch, and I didn't mind having to go in every three months to get my shot in the butt. (TMI alert: I switched to Depo Provera because the Pill made me crazy. It's made me gain a little bit of weight, but I haven't had to shop for "feminine products" for over two years. In my book, it's one of the greatest medical discoveries of the last fifty years.)

My insurance at the Zoo didn't cover visits to Planned Parenthood, so I found myself having to switch doctors for my annual visit. I called scheduling to make an appointment. No, I didn't care who they assigned me to, as long as they would be covered by my insurance and could see me on November 4th, when my next Depo injection was due.

On the day of my appointment, I awoke to find that my car had been broken into, and my stereo had been stolen. Oh well, I would have to make the necessary calls later that morning from work. I drove up the street to the doctor's office, realizing as I drove that I had forgotten the copies of my records from Planned Parenthood. No big deal, right? I could just drop them off on my way home from the Zoo.

Well, apparently it was a problem, and they couldn't give me my Depo until they saw my records. After offers to fax them from my office or call Planned Parenthood to obtain another copy, I was told that I would just have to reschedule. I was assured this would not mess up my injection schedule, took the next available appointment, and drove on to work.

Flash forward to my appointment yesterday. I'm back at the medical center, sitting in the exam room in a gown that doesn't fasten up the back, a big white sheet draped over my legs. I've been informed that I will not be receiving my Depo today after all, since they waited too long and have to run a blood test to see if I'm pregnant. (I could guarantee that the answer was a resounding No, but they still had to run the test. Arrrrrgggghhh.) My nurse practitioner, Not-Dr. Ruth greeted me as she came in and started the exam. She started off by palpating my thyroid gland.

"Huh."

When someone in the medical profession makes a remark like "Huh," it usually isn't a good thing. "What is it?" I asked.

"How long has one side of your thyroid been bigger than the other?"

Um. Since no one has ever mentioned it previously, I had no idea. She remarked that it probably wasn't a big concern, but just to be on the safe side she would order an extra blood test and an ultrasound. No big deal. Better safe than sorry.

Of course, the girl who was assisting Not-Dr. Ruth had a little problem with the blood draw. Apparently I inherited my mother's tiny tiny veins, and after fifteen minutes and one false stick which resulted in nothing but a big hole in my arm, she sent me down to the phlebotomy lab. Again, no big deal. The phlebotomist drew two vials of blood and sent me up to Radiation to make my ultrasound appointment.

I went home and did a little research on enlarged thyroids and what it could possibly mean. An hour later, I had learned the basics of hyperthyroidism and nodules, and had decided that "goiter" was the ugliest word in the English language. (Not to mention the fact that when I think of goiters, I think of a picture of an extreme case that I saw once as a child, where the man's neck bulged out uncomfortably. Ew. It's tube neck. It's the damned plague from The Stand.)

So here I am, sitting at work with a little more than two hours to go until my exam. I've never had an ultrasound, and I know it's nothing to worry about. But sometimes my mind, when given time to wander, has a tendency to jump to worst case scenarios. As certain as I am that the test will show nothing major, just some small anomaly that can be corrected easily with medication, there's a tiny voice in the back of my head chanting things like Grave's Disease and endoscopic subtotal thyroidectomy and radioactive isotopes and fine needle aspiration. Last night it was throwing in surgery and cancer for good measure.

I know that I probably have nothing to worry about. I know that thyroid cancer is rare, and that women have as high as a one in five chance of developing thyroid problems. But I also know that practically everything about my lifestyle can cause thyroid problems: caffeine, smoking, ephedra, hair color. And after speaking to my mother on the phone a few minutes ago, I have just discovered that my grandfather had thyroid cancer, and had to have his removed.

OK. Now I'm worried. The little voice in the back of my head is laughing at me, taunting me and shaking its finger in my face, and telling me I've brought all this upon myself. And if it's this loud at this point, before I've even gone for my exam, I'm terrified of what it's going to sound like later on tonight.

At least it's made me forget about having to get my Depo shot. I guess that's one good thing.

Wednesday, November 06, 2002

Progressing to Points Unknown



Whew!

NaNoWriMo has begun, and so far I'm managing to keep with my quota. (I hit 8413 words last night, 78 words more than my daily average requires.) So far I'm feeling quite comfortable with the pace and direction of my story. It could probably be better, but the month of December is reserved for revisions. Right now, it's just about getting the words down on paper and having them make a bit of sense and move the plot along. I really do need to pick up the pace, though. One of our graphic artists just stuck his head in the door and asked when the next happy hour was going to be, and I know from experience that I don't write well after a night out with the Zoo Crew.

If you're interested in reading my progress, I'm posting as I go. Please don't laugh at me too much when I hit the brick wall of writer's block. I might not hit the wall this time; the other night I sat down to write, and the resulting passage was not at all what I had intended to write. I typed out one simile, and it knocked me out of the way and took over. (For those of you keeping score at home, it was Chapter Four, the "gambling" chapter. I have no idea where that came from.)

Rosencrantz (writing under the pseudonym of Ratatosk) is also making progress on her novel, On the Clock. And out of nowhere, Tyim (writing under the name of Forkface) has joined our foray into high speed novelling, with his entry, Out of the Box. Why yes, we're all publishing online because we're insane. WHEEEEE!!!

Posting the chapters online has provided an extra sense of motivation to finish, as has the fact that I've already committed to the Thank God It's Over party in December. Nothing motivates like the fear of humiliation in front of strangers.

In hopes of being able to work on my novel in other places besides my home, I recently purchased a laptop computer. And it was a good thing too, since my desktop is acting funky and not connecting properly to the internet. Oh well. I'm sure I'll get it fixed eventually. My main concern now is getting the novel written on the laptop, and figuring out how to work the CD burner.

Of course, after committing myself to making payments on my new toy for the next year and a half, my finances suffered a major setback when my car was broken into Sunday night. I had to replace the window, will have to get the dashboard frame repaired, and am now minus a CD player/radio (with one of my favorite CDs still inside). Just when everything seemed to be getting better....

There's been a recent new arrival at the Zoo: a cheetah cub was born on October 17th, and was transported to the nursery soon after he was discovered. (Apparently no one knew that the mother cheetah was pregnant and, as is common in first time mothers, she wasn't taking care of the cub.) He seems to be doing fine, and I've heard that they just brought in a beagle puppy to be raised as a companion with him. Guess I'll have to take a walk over to the Children's Zoo after I run the mail across the parking lot.

I realize this is rather short and disjointed, but my brain is completely fried from writing this novel. Just thought I'd check in and keep everyone posted on what's new....

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

Countdown to Insanity



Is it Friday yet?

That's the question I keep asking myself. It has nothing to do with the end of the working week or the beginning of the weekend and everything to do with getting no sleep and going insane for a 30 day period.

Yes, it's NaNoWriMo time again.

After last year's experience, I'm surprised I didn't completely try to prevent myself from acknowledging that the site or the project even existed. Last year, I was prepared. I had 30 or so pages of notes for a novel I'd been planning to write for years; I'd been carrying them around, periodically adding to them. I had dutifully bought a copy of Anne Lamont's Bird by Bird, and read the first half of it. I had carefully outlined my interweaving plots on index cards and filed them in a flippable notebook with color coordinated paper clips. My freezer was stocked with multiple bags of coffee and a vast selection of Hot Pockets. I had a list of fellow participants with whom to compare notes and send peppy and supportive emails. I was ready.

And then... what happened?

I started out in a blaze of glory and wrote with wild abandon. And the further I got enmeshed in my plot, the worse things got. Last year's plot was fictionalized reality, which meant that when my main character started to lose her grip on reality, I went along for the ride with her. I believe the entire project crashed and burned somewhere around November 28th, when I found myself scrawling "HELP ME SOMEBODY PLEASE" in a notebook stained with red wine, spilled in my haste to drain the bottle. Roger Mexico was in town that weekend for the Thanksgiving holidays, and was out with the boys; he was probably relieved to get away from me, since I was borderline certifiable by that point.

I learned my lesson from last year's attempt. Writing a novel where your main character goes insane midplot is a bad idea, if you plan on getting it completed in 30 days without throwing yourself in front of a bus. Using a plot that you've considered to be your shot at the Great American Novel is also a bad idea, since an setback becomes monumental when the stakes are that high.

So here I am for round two. The bruises from last year have healed, and I'm more determined than ever to finish. Rosencrantz has decided to throw her hat into the ring as well, and we've been keeping each other posted on our preparations for the upcoming month. (Paisley has decided not to join us this year. I believe her exact words were "Hell, no.")

I'm using many of the characters from last year's attempt. This year's novel is a sequel of sorts, so people have moved on in their lives. Some have moved to other parts of the world, some have walked out of the narrative into their own stories. Whether those stories will be told of not, whether they will be comedies or tradgedies still remains to be seen.

I'm not sure where the story will take me. One fact that may weigh heavily into the progression of the narrative - I finally saw Mulholland Drive recently. Alternate realities in the middle of a narrative are fair game, and may serve the storyline well.

Depending upon whether I get my issues reseolved with Blogger or not, I'm still considering posting my progress online on a site I've set aside for this purpose. (Blogger has not been kind to me lately. My archives from August and October refuse to show up on the website, and the other night the site simply refused to publish my post. That problem worked itself out, but my archives are still missing in action.) If the website doesn't work, I will still be taking advantage of the new feature that the good folks at NaNoWriMo have added to their site this year: novel excerpts. In addition to the updateable word count, authors have the option of providing readable proof of their progress. I'll keep everyone posted when new stuff goes up.

(And for those of you brave souls who want to seek out my progress on the NaNoWriMo website, I've decided to write under Myopic this year. Last year, I wrote under my real name and had to reveal my secret identity to complete strangers so they could send me nagging emails about my lagging word count. And for those interested in comparing my lack of progress to Rosencrantz, she will be writing under the alias of Ratatosk. She's listed her favorite authors as James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Donald Barthelme. I feel outclassed already.)

So tonight, I'll be assembling my notes from the various notebooks I've scribbled them in. The coffee's been bought, my house is somewhat in order, and I'm approaching Zero Hour with an excited apprehension. The madness begins in just over 54 hours....

Saturday, October 26, 2002

Inside Pandora's Box



There are times that I think the world is an evil place.

When I'm at work, I occasionally read the news. And it's very seldom that you read anything good these days. Terrorism, war, campaign mudslinging, missing children, hurricanes, police dishonesty, worldwide political unrest. It's enough to almost make you give up on the rest of the human race.

Lately, the news has been filled with stories of a person with a gun. A person who kills without warning, with a frightening randomness. The lead story changed with every new victim, every press conference with the police, every new clue.

I don't know anyone in Montgomery County, in the DC area. Zappagirl's parents live in Virginia, though. She was going to visit them. My boss at work was leaving on vacation as well, first to Williamsburg, then off to visit her daughter in Maryland. Quietly, I worried for them.

A few nights ago, the news was changing faster than usual. A live announcement broke into Late Night with David Letterman, with a description of a car and a license plate number, and the name of a man wanted for questioning.

Soon, I thought to myself as I looked up from my computer. It will all be over soon.

I fell asleep with the television on, and was awakened by the news that an arrest had been made. I mumbled a sleepy thanks to the universe, and passed out until the alarm went off a few hours later.

All the next day, I checked CNN for the latest updates. And as the details unfolded, I learned about a new name in this tragic story.

It seems there was a man from Northern Kentucky, just across the river. A quiet church-going man, a loving grandfather. He drove a truck for a living, and was two weeks from retirement. Once he had lived in the area of the shootings, and still had family there.

I'm sure as he drove along towards his destination that the news of the sniper was on his mind. The news of it was everywhere; it was unavoidable. As he headed into Maryland, he probably shared the same lingering feeling of anger and apprehension and confusion as many others had.

As he listened to the radio, he heard the reports of the license plate number and the description of the car. In the back of his head, he stored that information.

An hour later, he pulled into a rest stop and saw the car. He called 911, he made the report, he blocked the exit with the help of another trucker and watched history unfold. Watched the horrible events of the last month come to a hopeful end as the police swarmed the rest stop and surrounded the car. All because of his actions.

And this man does not consider himself a hero. In his words, "I done my job, what I thought had to be done - but I'm no hero."

I tend to disagree. Because of this man, communities are returning to a normal life. Children are able to play outside again. Going to buy groceries or fill up the gas tank no longer is accompanied by a heavy fear in the pit of the stomach.

And far away from Montgomery County, in my small apartment, I read all this news with feelings of great relief. I will probably never meet Ron Lantz. Our paths will never cross. I will never be able to thank him for what he's done for thousands of people I will also never meet. I will never be able to thank him for what he's done for me.

Because of this stranger's actions at a rest stop I will never visit, the world doesn't seem to be as bad a place to be. The human race doesn't seem to be a lost cause.

Because of one stranger's courage, I have hope again.

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

Panic



"I hate to say this," said my attorney as we sat down at the Merry-Go-Round Bar on the second balcony, “but this place is getting to me. I think I'm getting the Fear." - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson


At times, I have a tendency to overreact about things. This is one of those times.

I signed up for NaNoWriMo again this year, and already the fear is seeping in. Last year, I knew what I was going to write. I had page upon page of notes, outlines, plots and subplots. I had a direction, I had a compass. I knew where I was going. And I still didn't finish.

This year, I have no idea. I had an inkling that I would write a road novel, and then I realized I didn't know which way I wanted to point my car. The only direction that looked somewhat appealing turned out to be a dead end, and driving the same small patch of road for 50,000 words seemed redundant. But now I've already committed to the project, signed my name on the dotted line. I need an idea, and I need it fast.

Rosencrantz has also signed on for the project. (By the way, she's just started her own blog. Check it out. It's wild, it's weird, it's wonderful.) She already has a title, a plot, and an outline. Not that NaNoWriMo is a competition of any sort, but I'm already feeling like I'm left behind at the starting line with an engine that just won't turn over, and the race hasn't even started yet.

Perhaps inspiration will hit me unexpectedly like a bolt of lightning, but right now I feel like I'm walking around on a bright sunny day with a nine iron, praying for rain. Nothing. No electricity in the air yet.

I leave for my visit with Roger Mexico in a few days, but even that has me overly concerned. We pretty much played email tag all weekend, and I haven't heard from him since Saturday afternoon. He was headed to New York for the evening to go to the Legendary Pink Dots show (turns out he was able to get the night off after all), so I told him to have a good time and tell me all about the show when he got back. I'm sure he got back rather late that night, but my email inbox remained empty on Sunday and Monday. I dropped him another line this afternoon. Nothing. Nada.

(And no, GeekMan, I'm not ignoring you. I just don't have any finalized plans yet on when we'll be in town. I'm just waiting to hear....)

Now, I know what Roger Mexico's work schedule is like. I know that he's probably been incredibly busy making up work for taking off Saturday night. I'm sure that he'll drop me a line tomorrow afternoon at work telling me that the show was great, and he's been working eighteen hour days since then. He'll tell me I'm freaking out over nothing, and I should just chill the hell out. But that's not helping me at 2 in the morning, when I'm hopped up on coffee and news of snipers picking off random people. (Not that he's anywhere near the Maryland/DC area, but there are crazy people everywhere, not just in the suburbs of our nation's capitol.)

Zappagirl came over tonight, and we watched a trilogy of political comedies. We'd started Primary Colors a week or so ago, and finished it up tonight. We followed it up with Bob Roberts and Wag the Dog, both of which hit a little too close to home, given the impending mess our country is about to walk into in the Middle East. Too many references to the previous Gulf War and manipulative politics for one evening - I'm a little jumpy.

Did I mention there was coffee involved? Yeah, that's not helping matters any.

And now, for some ungodly reason, my computer has decided it doesn't want to work. It can't find Google, for crying out loud. It was working fine a few minutes ago, and now all I'm getting is "cannot find server" messages. Stupid dialup. (Thankfully I was bright enough to compose this somewhere other than Blogger; when I'll actually be able to connect to Blogger to post it is another story.)

I suppose I should look for the customer service number for my ISP. They seem to like to work on the servers in the Cincinnati area late at night, since they figure no one will be online. Yeah, no one but me. Thanks, guys. No really. Thanks. I enjoy sitting here in front of my computer, unable to use it for anything except playing solitaire and mah jongg.

Just checked the phone line. It seems to be in working order, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Hmmm. Hello? Tech support?

And after calling tech support, it seems the trouble is in my computer. Great.

(OK, it seems that restarting seemed to work, but does this mean I'll have to restart my computer fifty-seven times a night? Oh well. I suppose I'll try to get some sleep, and worry about my computer's little quirks in the morning.)

At least I’m not panicking anymore. Now I’m just pissed.

Tuesday, October 08, 2002

Where Does the Time Go?



Hello? Anyone out there?

(crickets chirping)

Oops. I really had no intentions of being gone that long. (And yes, I know I say that every time I go on hiatus, but it's true.) Things have been non-stop crazy in my life for the past few weeks. And yet, not a whole lot has happened.

Work kicked into high gear and is just now starting to let up. With school starting and every teacher in the known universe trying to book a visit to the Zoo, my phone rang nonstop for nearly a month. We had a "sneak preview" special event for the educators at the end of August, and as soon as we finished up with that, we started planning for the next special event: Wildlife Discovery Days. Things were more than hectic for a while. My supervisor and I worked through lunch, stayed late, and left the Zoo loaded down with still more work to do at home.

The hard work paid off; the whole week went well, despite the fact that it rained on the last two days, and almost all of the schools cancelled on Friday. But on a positive note, most of the schools have rescheduled their visits. I spent most of my week working as a host for the Cat Ambassador Program. I have a special place in my heart for this program - when I worked here previously, the program was raising a new cheetah, and I have many fond memories of Kenya wandering through the office and falling asleep in the chair in my office. I spent most of the week of Wildlife Discovery Days shaking my head in disbelief that I actually get paid to do this. (Come to think of it, I do that a lot.)

(And as I was typing this, two of the trainers from the Cat Ambassador Program just walked past my office with Sahara and Alexa. This is not a normal job.)

When I wasn't working, I spent much of my time hanging out with Zappagirl. She's been going through a rough time lately, and I know firsthand that it's easier to manage with a friendly shoulder to lean on. And since she went above and beyond the call of duty last year when I was insane, being there for her is the least that I can do. Sometimes I'm frustrated that I can't do more for her.

Since Roger Mexico's visit in August fell through (and I had holiday time to burn before the end of the year). I had proposed a visit to see him on an extended weekend in October, hoping that we could go see Legendary Pink Dots in New York together. Alas, that plan fell through - he had to work all weekend, so I changed my flight plans to the following weekend. (Musashi, if you're reading this, I won't be at the show. Have a good time for all of us, though!) For a brief moment, we thought we were going to be able to see Underworld in New York, but that also conflicted with his work schedule. Oh well. At least I'll get to see the Beckett show he did the sound design for. Theater? Watching a show he worked on? Sounds good to me! (And I still have the Underworld DVD on loan from Netflix, so I'll bring that along with me.)

It looks like we will be visiting New York on Saturday, although we haven't made any concrete plans beyond getting coffee and visiting a book store he thinks I might like. Not that it matters. My visit is less about the plans and more about the company I'll be keeping. If I spent the entire weekend doing nothing but hanging out at his apartment watching TV, listening to him work on music, and playing with the cats, I'd still be happy.

I'm still debating whether I want to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. I'm still feeling guilty that I have yet to complete last year's attempt, although I did finally hit the 50,000 word mark. (Unfortunately, I'm only two-thirds of the way through the story.) Part of me doesn't want the stress and the hassle, and part of me is savoring the idea of trying to write a crappy novel in a month. (I'm a masochist like that.) I've been toying with ideas in my head for a few weeks now. In most probability I'll end up giving it another shot. I'm also toying with the idea of posting it so everyone can read how crappy it is. (Why, yes, I'm insane. Why do you ask?) But this time I won't try to write the Great American Novel with deep underlying themes and multiple styles and fonts and points of view. It will be complete unadulterated fluff, something that I can babble about incessantly for page upon page without a worry as to how it will fit in with the framing story.

Oh, who am I kidding? If I write a novel this year, it'll be just as weird and complex as the last one. But this time I'll be smart enough not to write semi-autobiographically and drag myself back through some of the darkest moments of my life. That was my downfall last time, because writing about being depressed made me depressed, and my main character has been stuck in her own personal hell for the last 9 months. Someday I'll get her out, I swear.

But before I start planning on writing a novel in a month, I need to get my butt in gear and start posting here on a more regular basis. I never said consistency was one of my strong points, but I am constantly striving to improve....

Sunday, August 25, 2002

Plan B



I was really looking forward to ths weekend.

Roger Mexico called me from New York City last week. He was in town for a seminar on digital recording, and had just returned from a late night on the town. We chatted for a while, and during the conversation he mentioned that he might be able to visit me the following weekend. Hooray!

Of course a few days later I started to worry if this was just wishful (and drunken) thinking on both our parts. And after realizing that the students were reporting back to his university the following Monday, I was pretty certain it was. I emailed him about it, and he still thought there might be a chance he could make it back to Cincinnati for a few days, but wasn't 100% sure. He'd let me know. So I crossed all my fingers and toes, kept my weekend plans open, stocked the freezer with Morningstar Farms products and awaited his response.

On Friday afternoon, he emailed back with the unfortunate news that he had to work Saturday as well as Monday morning, so his trip would have to be postponed. Bummer.

So rather than sit around the house all weekend and mope about not having a houseguest, I filled up my weekend schedule with things to do so I wouldn't get depressed. There was a Zoo happy hour Friday night, and I decided to stop in and make an appearance. (Zappagirl and I had planned to go to karaoke later in the evening.) However, Zappagirl finished work early and joined the Zoo crew at Daniel's. Hey, she worked at the Zoo way back when (back when I worked there the first time around) - she's still family, right? One beer turned into another and another, and before we knew it we'd plunked several dollars into the jukebox and were losing a game of pool to the guy from the Graphics department. So much for karaoke night.

I checked AIM when I got home, and caught Roger Mexico just as he was getting ready to sign off. I felt kind of guilty that he seemed to be having a crappy evening when I'd had a good time with my co-workers and had made other fun plans for the rest of the weekend.

I slept late on Saturday, and decided to watch my latest arrivals from Netflix. (I'd bumped up a few selections that I'd thought he might be interested in watching.) As it turned out, it was probably a good thing he hadn't been there to watch The Laramie Project with me, because I was a big sobbing mess. I would've liked to have had his input for comparison to the stage play, though. (He had been the sound designer for the production at Playhouse in the Park, and I wasn't able to see the show during its brief run.)

As I got up to change the disc to my other selection, I decided to take an antihistamine. Seems all my boo-hooing had kicked my allergies into high gear (stupid mold count), and I was going to run out of Kleenex if I didn't do something about it. I also decided to add a hot bath into the mix, and put off watching Underworld Live - Everything Everything until later.

One hour later, the antihistamine and the bath had knocked me completely for a loop, and I fell asleep on the couch watching This Old House and Antiques Roadshow on PBS. (It was either that or sports. Thems the breaks in a cable-free household.) Yee-hah.

The day wasn't a complete bust, though. I ended up going over to Zappagirl's house, where we decided to visit the new Old Spaghetti Factory location. For those of you Queen City residents who have been sorrowing over the loss of the downtown location, take heart. The spaghetti with browned butter and Mizithra cheese is just as good as you remembered it to be, and there wasn't a panhandler in sight. Regrettably, there didn't seem to be a station 13 either, though.

We returned to her house to watch Best in Show, yet another movie I'd managed to miss when it was in the theaters. I will never again be able to watch the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show without snickering. Or say Shih Tzu without giggling, for that matter.

So here it is, almost 5:30 in the morning, and I can't sleep. We're planning to go to Paramount's Kings Island tomorrow, and I'm just as giddy as I used to be when I was a kid. Too many thoughts of rides that go entirely too fast and too high and rattle your brain around in its skull are keeping me awake, and my insides are already jumping up and down in anticipation. I'm looking forward to the rides (I've not yet had a chance to check out Tomb Raider: The Ride), but am not looking forward to the now infamous queue lines that seem to stretch on for miles. And now I've just discovered that there's a concert at the park tomorrow night as well - Styx and REO Speedwagon. Hee. Wonder if Zappagirl wants to add some bad 80s corporate rock into the mix? Since we missed the chance to have a good laugh and go see Journey at Jammin' on Main this year? Of course, I can't ask her that, since she is a much wiser person than I am and has already gone to sleep. Oh well. I'll let her know in a few hours.

Hmmm. After reading that bit of news, "Come Sail Away" is stuck in my head. And to make matters worse, it's the Eric Cartman version from South Park. I need help, seriously.

Oh well. I suppose I should try to get some sleep, since we'll probably be getting ready to go to the park in a few hours. I doubt that I'll be able to do so; my brain has already strapped itself into Son of Beast and is slowly climbing that gigantic hill, ready to scream cathartically as the train hurtles downward at breakneck speed.

For someone whose weekend plans got cancelled, I think I did OK. I still wish I was spending it with Roger Mexico, though.

Saturday, August 17, 2002

R-E-S-P-E-C-T



I just got back from the All About Kids Expo, and I am so frustrated that I could scream.

I wasn't looking forward to working there this weekend in the first place. The idea of manning a booth in a convention center full of hyperactive kids wasn't my idea of a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon. But I accepted my shift assignment, and drove downtown, expecting the worst.

Surprisingly, it wasn't the kids that were the source of my frustration. I colored with a few children, talked to parents about the different programs that the Zoo offers, and even managed to sign up a few teachers for my department's mailing list.

The expo wasn't as busy as I'd expected it to be, so my co-worker and I took turns walking around to the other booths, checking out the rest of the displays and organizations around us. A lot of the groups left me perplexed; it was my understanding that the participating companies were supposed to be resources for parents and teachers. Why there was a window company in a booth near the entrance is still a mystery to me.

Our booth was near one of the stages, so inbetween talking to folks, we watched the shows. After sitting through a marionette show, a girl who sang patriotic tunes and contemporary Christian songs with no emotion in her voice whatsoever, and a guy with a guitar that featured characters from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood (including the real Mr. McFeely - speedy delivery!), a man in a field vest with an oversized fake king snake got on stage. He was lugging several animal carriers and coolers with him. (Coolers are generally used for transporting endothermic animals like reptiles and amphibians.)

"I think he's got animals with him," my co-worker noted.

Indeed, he did have animals. And with every animal he brought out, I winced a little more. After completing animal handling training classes for my job, I've become highly critical of other animal demonstration programs. At the Zoo, we try to lessen the stress on our program animals by handling them with the utmost respect. There are specific procedures that are followed when preparing the animal for travel, when holding the animal during the program, when letting the audience touch the animal.

This guy broke almost every rule I'd been taught in my training. He brought out a blue-tongued skink and proceeded to talk about it while gesturing with his hands. I'm sure the poor little lizard's brains were scrambled from being whipped around. He brought out a ring-necked dove and let it just sit on his hand while he talked. Well, until he grasped the animal over its upper body and "hopped" it across the children's outstretched hands.

At this point, my curiousity got the best of me, and I nonchalantly strolled over to find out who this guy was representing. Apparently it was a group called Silly Safaris from Indianapolis, and they were stationed opposite the stage area. I walked over to their booth to see what I could learn about their program, and spent a brief time talking with one of the "funologists" from the company.

After watching the show, talking to the "funologist," and watching him interact with the children in their area, I don't think I recall hearing a single educational fact about any of the animals they'd brought with them. (I do recall him mentioning something about the AZA frowning upon hands-on outreach programs, which is news to me. The Frisch's Discovery Center and related school outreach program is celebrating its 25th successful year at the Cincinnati Zoo, and I haven't heard the AZA breathing down our necks.)

Don't get me wrong; I'm sure these guys mean well. I'm sure that conservation is important to them and that they love animals. It's just their methods that worry me. Watching their program onstage gave me that same awkward discomfort I felt when parents are neglectful of where their children have wandered off to in a shopping mall. (This used to happen a lot when I worked at Warner Brothers. The mothers would turn their kids loose, and when one of the display cookie jars was broken by a curious four-year-old, the mother would glare at me for letting her child play with it.)

I know it's natural to accept the way you were taught to do things as the "right" way. It's natural to be critical of the way others react in similar circumstancs, especially when it's related to your career. Back when my sister worked in retail, she used to window shop the competing location of the store for which she worked, mentally grading them on how long it took for a clerk to greet her. Zappagirl breaks out her internal grade card whenever we enter another Best Buy. Roger Mexico is more apt to notice bad acoustics or a muddy sound mix than I am. I still find myself critically watching other bartenders and tsking when tables aren't properly bussed in restaurants.

I guess the main reason why this is sticking in my craw so badly is that it's not just a badly mixed show or a tableful of dirty dishes. These are living animals. They should be treated with care and respect. It is the belief of my department that program animals are used as ambassadors for the animal kingdom. They bear a responsibily to not only entertain, but also to educate. It's not a position to be taken lightly, and the utmost care should be taken by the human educator to ensure that the animal isn't mistreated or stressed out.

Over the past few months, the Zoo has been hosting Summer Camp programs, and my office was used as storage for the program animals in between programs. Often I'd have four or five carriers of varying shapes and sizes behind me, and sometimes people would wander into my office and peer through the holes in the crates. "Oooh! What's that?"

"An African grey hornbill (or a skunk or ball python or whatever was in the carrier)," I would answer.

"Can you get him out? Can I see him?"

"I'm sorry, but no."

"Aw, c'mon. Why not?"

"Because that animal is not signed out to me today, and just completed his program for the day. He's done with work, and is just waiting to be taken back to his home." Actually it's more like this animal just did three programs for a bunch of fidgety four and five year olds; wouldn't you want to be left alone after that too?

Some people haven't gotten past the "animals are neat" stage, and it's frustrating. Every day I take phone calls from people who bought exotic animals as pets without thinking, only to realize that they don't know how to take care of them. This is usually the point where they call the Zoo for advice (or worse yet, to make a "donation"). I cheerfully try to re-direct their calls to organizations that can help them, but in the back of my head I wonder who would buy a Burmese python not realizing it may eventually grow to 22 feet and live for up to 25 years.

Still, I suppose people are getting better. I remember back when keeping an animal in a barren small barred cage was the norm at most zoos, and people thought of lions and monkeys as novel pets.

I'm sure there was a point I was trying to make here, but I'm so irritated that I can't sum it all up in a neat little package. I guess that working in the field I do makes me a little more critical about the way other people treat their animals when using them to convey a message of conservation. It's the same way I feel about Jack Hanna when he appears on The Late Show with David Letterman. While I applaud his reasons for making the appearance, I wonder how much of his message is strewn to the wayside while the animals are running rampant across the stage, and how much credibility is being blown for other conservation groups that use animals as a teaching tool.

Sigh. Most of the time my job is very rewarding, but sometimes it's very frustrating. Guess I'll go unwind and play with the kitties for a while. I've been ignoring them while I've ben typing this this out, and since Zappagirl pointed out in her last entry where the human race stands in relation to the felines, I'm being neglectful at the moment....

So much for my big talk about respecting animals. I suppose the extra catnip won't completely atone for my sins, but it'll be a good start, right?

Wednesday, August 07, 2002

Where Everybody Knows Your Name



Last night after work, I headed out to Zappagirl's house to get some dinner and pick up my copy of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on DVD like a good geek girl. I figured the biggest of my worries for the evening was going to be assembling the storage unit that Zappagirl had, in an effort to boost her accessories sales, conned me into buying. (It didn't take much convincing. I needed a new storage rack. Actually, I need another room in my apartment for storage, but that's a whole 'nother blog.)

I was in the process of taking the shrink wrap off my new purchases when Zappagirl's phone rang. She answered, then handed the receiver to me. "It's Rosencrantz," she explained.

Rosencrantz was calling with bad news. It seems Dino, my former boss at The Warehouse, was in a serious motorcycle accident and was in the hospital. She promised to send me his room number and visiting hours via email.

An hour later, Zappagirl's phone rang again. It was Mike Dangers, calling for exactly the same reason. He had already been to see Dino, and gave me a laundry list of fractures and injuries. The hospital staff had even let him stay while they were running mobility tests on Dino; they had thought that Mike Dangers was family.

"But we are family," I replied.

And as odd as it sounds, my former co-workers from the Warehouse were, and continue to be, very much a family to me. (Nothing against my actual family, of course. I feel priveleged to have been born into such a supportive and loving clan.) Like any family, we've had our squabbles. Sure, I grumbled when my bartending partner would shirk his duties to flirt with customers and leave the dishes for me. I rolled my eyes when the owner would hold staff meetings and spend ten minutes lecturing us on how many ice cubes to put in a glass. But the good times far outweighed the petty differences.

I remember attending many softball games over the summer, sneaking coolers of beer into Eden Park and grilling hot dogs and metts. I was often in charge of the grilling, since my athletic abilities leave something to be desired. I was pretty stingy with my duties, and earned the nickname "Weiner Nazi" (after the "Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld.

I remember the yearly camping trips, held between the Anniversary party and Memorial Day. They had started as houseboat trips at Lake Cumberland, but we switched to cabins after an unfortunate incident involving a barback, a JetSki, and the side of a boat. The employees at the State Dock were always good enough to look the other way as we discreetly lugged coolers full of alcoholic beverages (Russell County is a dry county) into our rental boats. They probably didn't mind, since we usually spent a small fortune in the gift shop buying bigger and better Super Soakers as a means of protection from our manager Tomm. (I own two full sized ones, and a pistol sized one. Tomm had the model with the backpack tank.) We ate like kings, drank like fishes, and played poker until the sun came up. For several years, it was the only vacation I took. We eventually moved the excursions to Hueston Woods, where we took over the lounge at the Lodge to watch the season finale of The X Files and, one evening, video of Dave destroying the front axle of his Yukon while off-roading.

On more than one occasion, the employees stayed at the bar after we'd closed, telling stories of the night's occurences, plunking quarters into the Area 51 machine in the corner, and watching surveillance tapes of funny things that happened at the door. (Note to people who make a scene as they're being thrown out: yes, we watch those tapes. And we laugh. A lot. We especially liked the night that our duty officers made underage drinkers do push-ups on the sidewalk outside the bar at 1:00 am.)

There was one night when the bar hadn't been very busy due to snow and ice, and Dino and I sat at the bar chit-chatting until 7:00 am. We headed over to First Watch for breakfast, then did donuts in the empty parking lot in Dino's CRX.

Dino organized football outings at Tickets Sports Café every Sunday in the fall, and tried desperately to convert everyone into Green Bay Packers fans. (And he succeeded with at least one of us, although I threaten to burn my Favre jersey in effigy every year.)

We were there for each other in times of crisis. When Tomm had an appendectomy, we descended upon the hospital en masse to visit him and held benefit nights to help him cover his medical bills. When our dear friend Eric passed away suddenly, late night phone calls went out like lightning, making sure that everyone was aware. Many of us spent the entire week assisting with funeral arrangements, planning nights where the cover charges would be donated to his scholarship fund, and supporting each other in our time of grieving.

And now, with one of our fearless leaders ailing in the hospital, the calls are once more going out, seeking out the prodigal members of the family. I haven't been a bartender at the Warehouse for a few years, and Zappagirl and I haven't made an appearance in over a month, but I still know that if I dropped in at the bar tonight there would be hugs all around and concerned words about Dino's status. It would be like a big family reunion, with cheap drinks and better music.

And all I can do is worry about my bar brother, pray for his recovery, and try to figure out where to find a Packers trinket in Cincinnati in the middle of August before I go to the hospital tonight.

Wednesday, July 31, 2002

What Have We Learned?



OK, it's been a few days since the conclusion of Blogathon 2002. I've tried to catch up on my sleep, but my schedule is still kind of out of whack. Granted, this probably has a lot less to do with the event, and a lot more with me having a screwy sleep schedule to begin with.

And as I predicted, Rosencrantz called me Monday night to tell me that I was insane. She had been out of town for a few weeks and missed the whole thing. She had a good laugh reading about all the silliness that went on while she was away.

Paisley is coming into town in a week or so, so I'll be able to thank her personally for her support and for naming our Blogathon Mascot (Ignatius, the Dead Guy in Drag). We're also trying to get a group together to go to Buca di Beppo again while she's in town, although it will be hard to top the last time we went there en masse. Maybe this time we can all play harmonicas and write a blues number about pasta.

So now that I have partially recovered from the madness of the weekend, I figured today would be a good day to tidy up the mess I made of my template and compile a few dos and don'ts for next year's event. I think that Zappagirl and I managed pretty well for our first year, but we learned from our experiences, and there will be a lot of things we will do differently in future years.

DO have a kitchen timer that can be reset every half hour. There are points where you may get involved in other things, like checking your email, reading someone else's site, making dinner, or just chit-chatting. Having a loud audible DING! is a good reminder to get back to the task at hand.

DON'T forget to set it. There was more than one occasion when Zappagirl looked at the timer and muttered various profanities under her breath because after posting, she'd forgotten to reset the timer. There's less of a chance of it dinging that way. We still managed, but towards the end, we were having a hard time remembering if we had made that half-hour's post or not.

DO have several "contingency" post items. While the idea of "posting on the fly" sounds good, it doesn't always work out. No matter how clever you think you might be, there will come a point at 5:00 a.m. when your brain has turned to tapioca and you will have no clue what to say anymore. Make a list of subjects you can write about or interesting links you can refer folks on to. Otherwise you will find yourself gibbering like an idiot about childhood toys and making very little sense.

DON'T spend 25 minutes looking for a decent link about the aforementioned childhood toys. It cuts down on the amount of time you'll have to actually write something, and as a result you run the risk of sounding like a moron. And no matter what search engine you're using, the old adage holds true: you never can find what you need when you actually need it.

DO consider having a theme to tie all of your posts together. Whether it be a new song an hour, a new photo, a serialized short story, or a bunch of related facts relating to your charity, it helps to have some continuity. Spontaneity can be a good thing, but... see above comment about gibbering like an idiot.

DON'T have too many themes or ideas. Zappagirl and I had all kinds of great ideas. We could make brownies! We could post pictures! We could play dress up and post the pictures! We could make mix CDs! We could... we could... we could sit on our butts and be completely indecisive about what to do next.

DO have something to do in between posts. Toys are highly recommended. Indulge your inner child. We had a blast dressing up a toy skeleton in Barbie clothes Zappagirl had packed away in her basement. But then again, we're weird like that.

DON'T do anything too involving that demands your total concentration. Now is not a good time to play that game of Risk or challenge your blogging buddy to a game of chess.

DO make brownies or cookies or something sweet. It will keep you occupied between posts, and the sugar rush is a good thing.

DON'T preheat the oven and then forget about it for 45 minutes. The brownies cook better when they're actually in the oven.

DO hide the decaf so you don't accidentally make it. Learn from my mistakes. Nothing makes you feel dumber than making a pot of coffee, drinking it, then wondering why you're still half-asleep.

DON'T put too much Bailey's (or Kahlua or Frangelico or whatever alcoholic beverage you may prefer) in your coffee. Keyboards are very uncomfortable places to pass out, and drooling is bad form.

DO keep your email account open in a separate window. It's good to have a link to the outside world, whether it be for the latest news from the mailing list, words of support from readers, or complete strangers that drop a note to say hello or help you out with some with some coding questions.

DON'T let the emails from the mailing list accumulate. Clean it out frequently, or you'll end up with 150 or so messages from people clogging up your inbox.

DO take pictures if a digital camera is available. A picture is worth a thousand words, and adding the visual element livens up a post.

DON'T take pictures that you will regret later. If some of your readers have never seen you before, do you really want their first glimpse of you to be while you've got green goop all over your face and your hair up in a big clippie? Yeesh. (I swear we'll actually take pictures the next time we're dressed up, in an attempt to erase the frightening images we presented everyone with that night.)

DO take a shower if you feel like you're going to pass out. I personally recommend having the temperature of the water a bit colder than usual, to snap you out of your stupor.

DON'T take a hot bath. While hot baths are wonderful, you run the risk of becoming too relaxed and falling asleep in the tub. Save the bubble bath for afterwards, while you're waiting for the Tylenol PM to override the massive amounts of caffeine in your bloodstream.

DO play nice with the other bloggers. Check out your fellow participants in the webring and send them an email to let them know you like what you see. Talk to people in chat and IM. They'll help you stay awake, provide moral support, and you might make a few new friends.

DON'T join the webring and then not participate. There was a bit of a problem with this. I don't know if they were folks who had dropped out and forgot to let anyone know, or if they were just in it for the free publicity. Whatever the case, there was a lot of grumbling from the other folks who were blogging their hearts out, and I didn't blame them. Although I didn't participate in the online grumbling, I was thinking about it. The word "poopyhead" came to mind a lot.

DO get up every once in a while a stretch your legs. Otherwise, ouch.

DON'T forget to thank all of your sponsors and mark your calendars for the next year!

Sunday, July 28, 2002

And I can see by the checkered flag that this year's Blogathon is officially over.

We did it. We survived. It was a lot of fun, but I'm really glad that this only happens once a year. My brain hurts.

It didn't go as well as planned, but I think we did pretty good for rookies. Next year, we'll know what to expect.

Sometime in the next few days, I'll go back and change some of my settings and sidebar information so my site will be easier to deal with once I get back to my regular infrequent posting. I'll probably consolidate all of the photo links into one big post so the sidebar won't be so godawful lengthy. But for now, I'll leave it as it is.

The webring graphic will be staying, so everyone (including me) can check out other participating sites at their leisure. Like Zappagirl remarked earlier, it's a badge of honor, and I'm proud to be able to display it on my site.

Big humongous thanks to all of the participants, sponsors, and random folks who wandered over to my tiny corner of the 'net. Let's all do this again sometime, mmmkay?

Must go now. I've got an appointment with the bed in the other room, just as soon as the Tylenol PM kicks in.

Sleep. What a wonderful word. Sleep sleep sleep sleep sleep.
The wind-down ritual has begun.

In the last interim, I took the opportunity to change into my jammies, and run downstairs to retrieve the Diet Coke and the Tylenol PM. Well, I retrieved all that after I fed the cats, since Kemper was standing in the doorway of the kitchen with an expectant look on his face. "Hey you! Yeah, you! Lady that isn't Mom! You've got opposable thumbs! Could you please please please put some Science Diet kibble in my bowl? Mom seems to be ignoring the psychic messages I'm sending her way...."

Yes, even in Zappagirl's house, I'm a slave to the kitties.

Of course, when I wandered into the guest bedroom to change into my pajamas, I made the foolish mistake of looking at the bed. So inviting. So warm. So soft. So comfy.

One more post. And then I'm off to beddy-bye.

Kemper is now frantically meowing in the hallway, telling us it's long past our bedtimes. Soon, baby. Soon.
I've been trying to keep my mailbox cleaned out on a regular basis during this event, but there was apparently something wacky going on with the group mailing list. When I signed back into my Hotmail account, I had 25 new emails waiting for me. One of them was one I sent in somewhere around the halfway point, and it had just made it to my inbox.

The next time I do something like this, I'm going to change all of my passwords to something easier to type. I had to talk myself through logging back into Blogger and Hotmail. My fingers didn't know what to do.

I think I've reached the saturation point on coffee. It's starting to taste nasty, and the Bailey's is leaving a weird filmy feeling in my mouth. Time to switch back to Diet Coke.

Actually, all I want to do is brush my teeth, pop a few Tylenol PMs, and go to bed. Which is exactly what I will be doing in about an hour.

There were so many things I wanted to do in the last 24 hours that just got sidelined. I had hoped we'd post more pictures, but due to the problems with the host site, that didn't happen. (But Timmy was an absolute prince, and came through in a pinch for us.) I really wanted to do girly stuff like paint my nails and do silly things with my hair, but I didn't make it past the facial. And given the amount of coffee I drank, it's probably for the best. I had also hoped I'd get more of a chance to communicate with other participants, but I spent too much time trying to think about what to post and ran out of time.

I'd also hoped that I would be sparkling and witty and display occasional moments of brilliance, but that didn't happen either. But then again, I'm not all that sparkling and witty in my normal posts, so why did I think that would change today?

And of course, just as I was starting to write my post, the computer crashed. Thankfully we were able to reboot it in time to get something up by 7:30.

Zappagirl is currently apologizing to her cats for messing up their sleep schedules. I'm wearing my blue tinted sunglasses, because it's just too damn bright in here.

Four posts to go, and I still have no idea what to write about.

Paisley let me know earlier that she and her husband have become addicted to Buffy the Vampire Slayer through the syndicated episodes. Hee hee hee. Slowly but surely, all of my friends are beginning to see the light. Zappagirl and Musashi have both bought the first two seasons on DVD. Granted, Zappagirl and I started watching the episodes in order, but we crapped out somewhere in the middle of Season One. One night, we're going to get really caffeinated and have a Buffython.

Not anytime soon, though. The thought of drinking massive amounts of coffee and staying up late just doesn't sound appealing at the moment.

Oh, that reminds me. The syndicated episode tonight is "Restless," and I wouldn't mind having that one on tape. But the idea of watching a really surreal episode that takes place in the Scooby Gang's dreams isn't sitting too well with me at the moment. Perhaps I'll just set the timer on the VCR and call it an early night.
Oh, crap. I just got my second wind, and now I'm never going to get to sleep after this.

Zappagirl and I just took a couple of pictures when we were in the exhausted phase. Unfortunately, Timmy has gone to bed (like any sane person would do), so we won't get them posted until some time tomorrow.

Staying up all night is much easier to do when you don't have to do it. On any other weekend, I'd probably still be up at this hour, curled up in bed and watching the early morning news. (Oh, that sounds so nice right now. Must not linger on that thought for too long. I'm trying not to be too whiny.)

Someday we're going to look back on this and laugh. Oh wait. We already are laughing about it. But giggling like lunatics is a completely different kind of laughing.

As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move... similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle. -- Honoré de Balzac (1799-1859)


Yeah, whatever. Obviously this man never participated in Blogathon.
You know, as we get closer to the end of this thing, and I think that I've completely lost my mind, I'm really glad that I'm not alone in this. Judging from the email that's been coming from the mailing list, everyone's brains are collectively turning to mush.

Zappagirl just spent a good five minutes cackling wildly for no apparent reason. I'm shuffling around the room like a little old woman, muttering to myself. My eyes are glazing over. At least I'm not drooling yet.

A little less than three hours. I can do it... I think I can, I think I can, I think I can....

Nothing interesting to say in this post, I guess. Nothing to see, move along, move along. Maybe I'll have a sudden burst of intellect before I post at 7.

Please tell me there's still some coffee left.

My eyes are starting to hurt. I have a giant achy knot between my shoulders. My brain has completely shut down. I can't think of a single thing to talk about. Help me, CNN!

Oh, here we go. The Russian Tea Room is closing. Man, that's just wrong. First The Fantasticks, now this.

I'm having trouble typing at the moment. I just found myself staring at the keyboard, trying to figure out why I was holding down the shift key. Oh yeah, I was going to capitalize something. Duh.

The sun is just starting to come up here. I can just barely see the outlines of the trees across the street. The few functioning brain cells left in my head are screaming, "Go to bed!"

Nope, nope. Not gonna do it. I'm in for the long haul. Even if I have to drag myself slowly across the finish line, I'm going to see this through.

In an effort to find something of substance to say, I'm checking out the news to find out what's going on in the world besides Blogathon.

I'm happy to report that all nine of the trapped miners in Pennsylvania were rescued.

Just when I thought that the human race couldn't get any dumber, someone's gotta go and prove me wrong.

"They said '100 percent beef.' I thought that meant it was good for you," Barber told Newsday. "I thought the food was OK." What the hell? I mean, really. This is the kind of person they have to tell that using your hair dryer in the shower might be hazardous to your health. I see news stories like this, and I suddenly feel much better about myself.

There's a reason why the Darwin Awards were created....


OK, this is the funniest song ever written. (The mp3 is here. Especially when you actually know someone like that... but I won't go into that subject at the moment.

We have officially reached the point of insanity. We're singing along to the South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut soundtrack and doing the voices. Our version of "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" was beau-ti-ful.

I'm reaching the point where I'm having difficulty focusing on anything for longer than 2 seconds, which is affecting my ability to post coherently.

Sleep deprivation is bad, mmmkay?
Mental note to self: break returns are very very important when posting links to photos. You'd think I was tired or something.

It's my turn to pick music. I've been forbidden from playing anything grumpy or depressing. Guess that means no Radiohead, huh. Thom Yorke always sounds depressing, no matter what he's singing about. He could be singing a song about puppies and kitties and strolling in the sunshine, and it would still sound like it was time to break out the razor blades. "Knives Out," indeed.

Zappagirl's reading me questions from Bethump'd (we never did around to playing), and I'm just looking at her blankly. I'm having trouble comprehending the English language at this point. Actual thinking is out of the question.

Everything is becoming a weird stream of consciousness thing at this point. Timmy just sent her a link, and she asked me to read it to her. "Give it to me, baby," she said. And suddenly Rick James is running through my head.

Who needs drugs? At this point, the mixture of caffeine, Bailey's, and sleep deprivation are doing odd things to my head.

I've selected "Absolutely Fabulous" by Pet Shop Boys for the moment. Techno, techno, bloody techno!
The main thing that's frustrating me at the moment is not having enough time to do anything except post, update information in my template, and go to the bathroom. Even with the two computers, both Zappagirl and I have been playing musical chairs. Since the older computer is slower to update, that one's dedicated to Rants From the Queen City, while the newer computer is handling the multiple tasks of my posts, posts to For My Aunt Charlotte, plus the editing and preparation of all of the pictures, plus Zappagirl's personal (nonjournal) email.

I love the fact that there are so many people participating in this event, and that we're raising lots of money for so many worthy causes, but I wish I had more of an opportunity to see what everyone else is doing. Thankfully most people are talking about leaving the webring information on their pages, so hopefully I'll get a chance to look around once the smoke clears.

Everyone, keep up the good work. Only five more hours to go!
The music of the moment is now Vault by Def Leppard. Makes me want to have big scary 80's metal hair.

More results from the Writer's group poetry exercises...

Write a poem using the following words: boondoggle, designate, mourning, herb, plentiful, and runaway.

My attempts a horticulture have gone awry,
The herb garden a mere boondoggle.
The mint and thyme send up sickly sprouts
The parsley, once plentiful
Invaded and consumed by a rogue band of runaway bunnies.
I designate this a day of mourning,
And decide to stick to a simpler hobby.


Write a poem using the follwing words: merrymake, priceless, vicar, lance, feather, average.

O priceless day beyond compare!
'Tis no average morn.
Vicar, put aside your tomes,
Soldier, lay down lance and horn.
Adorned with feather and ribbon bright
Let us merrymake 'til it be night.


Holy crap, I actually wrote something that rhymed. Granted, it sounds like something from Shakespeare's reject pile, but remember, we only had five or ten minutes to make some sense of the random words we selected (by the tried and true method of opening a dictionary to a page, closing your eyes, and pointing).

And another haiku, this one using the words interpose, plead, and vulgar.

Vulgar words offend
Plead your case to the world, and
I shall interpose


Dorothy Parker, eat your heart out. Not.
Time for the seventh inning stretch. I'm starting to get crampy from sitting all day.

Yes, I know that the link to Ignatius in his Christmas oufit isn't working. We have tech support working on it right now.

I love the fact that Timmy's helping us from San Francisco and Paisley's contributing her bit from New Orleans. It's a multi-city effort! Next year, maybe I'll try to talk Roger Mexico into contributing some music to the cause. You can check out his stuff at Garageband if you're interested in what he's already got out there. He hasn't uploaded anything new lately, but he burned me a copy of two songs he's done recently, and played me a couple of other things he's working on. His music is experimental and not for all tastes, but I'm fond of it. I once told him that listening to it was like giving my synapses a stretching exercise.

But then again, I'm a bit biased.

I sent him the first half of my novel a few weeks ago, and haven't heard anything back yet. That means either he hates it and is trying to figure out how to avoid telling me that it sucks, or he's simply been too busy to sit down and read it. (It's 200 pages long at the moment.) From what I know of his work schedule, I'm guessing it's the latter, but the paranoid part of me is fearing the worst.
Still more about Lucky Dogs from Paisley... a picture of a cart.

More pictures, courtesy of Timmy...

Zappagirl models her facial mask




Me modelling my facial mask (ugh, I'm wincing as I type this...)




Ignatius shows off his roller disco look




Ignatius in a festive Christmas ensemble




More Ignatius, in a lovely velvet suit (but regrettable not Blue Velvet)




Look! Ignatius won homecoming queen!




And finally, for those readers who've been around long enough to know about Full Contact Poetry (the poetry group that I'm in with Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Paisley, Diamond Doug, and Citizen Nick), here's the infamous "rock stars" shot from the Volk Gallery show. Our special guest Lady Monster is in the back drinking a beer.




Zappagirl just brought up the iced coffee, which we will be spiking with Bailey's. Yep, we're adding alcohol to the mix.