Overly Verbal

I know, you were hoping for an entry about banana-something. Instead, I’m going to tell you all about my new vacuum! (I bought it for my birthday, because I am a dork.*)

Mouse is not fond of this new machine, and I have tried to explain to him that if he would simply keep more of his fur on his body, instead of leaving it lying around all over the place, I would not have to use the vacuum as much. (He just glared at me, and then I think he shed a little extra, just to really make his feelings known.) I, however, am perhaps overly fond of this machine. I managed to overcome my natural tendencies, and did not buy a Dyson, even a little one, and about that I am proud. Given that I live in just over 500 feet of space, my cheap new little vacuum cleaner serves me just fine. And, as I’m sure you can imagine, it’s cute, and has a HEPA filter, and a telescoping wand, and just as soon as I find someone especially skilled in the art of pimpin’ rides, I’m gonna have someone paint some flames on it, I think.**

I’m afraid that nothing else is new, but boy is my house clean!

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* You might remember that last year I bought myself a file cabinet for my birthday. Whether a vacuum cleaner is more or less indicative of my obsessive-compulsive disorder I will leave to you to judge.

** Unless I decide to just get it some mudflap men stickers.

So this morning I woke up and went to the DMV. I did not get my haircut first, and so my driver’s license photo is not as cute as it might have been, but so be it. And nothing of any interest really happened at the DMV. I brought my knitting, anticipating a very long wait, but I only had to wait an hour between the time I got my number and the time I met a clerk. I showed her enough documents to confirm that I am in fact me, she typed some information into her computer (very, very slowly), tested my vision, took 16 of my hard-earned dollars, and, while telling me where I was supposed to wait next, handed me a receipt. So I looked at it, and said to her, “Um, see those two semi-colons there, in my last name? Those are supposed to be Ls.” “Oh my!” she said, and then we got to start all over again with the typing. Finally, after only twice as long as it should have taken, I went to have my picture taken by a surly young man.

I certainly didn’t think that was going to happen. I knew something annoying was going to happen, but I didn’t think it would involve punctuation. But I’m not going to write a long paragraph about how maybe the DMV ought to set their data entry software up so that it won’t allow clerks to put semi-colons in people’s last names, because I think we can all agree that that’s a given. Fewer mistakes are made when people are prevented from making mistakes in the first place, and it is not all that hard to design software to help the people who need help. Doesn’t really matter, I suppose, since I don’t need to go to the DMV for another four years (unless I move to a different state or buy a car or something), but it was still annoying.

In other news, I once again have no other news, but I like my boring life just fine. I think I’m reverting into a regular staying in to bake muffins, knit, and talk to my cat period, and I really don’t see anything wrong with that, except insofar as my blog gets really boring when it’s all about the baking.

There’s an awful lot of overripe bananas in my freezer, so tomorrow will likely be all about delicious banana muffins, delightful banana pancakes, or delectable miniature banana bread. Consider yourself warned.

Just a brief update.

First, I don’t have consumption, or mercury poisoning.* Really, I think I’m fine now. I have a bit of a cough, but I can almost breathe like a normal person again, which is keen. (And thanks for all of your well wishes - particularly, you, Goethe. Next time I’m on my deathbed and need someone to call and yell at my answering machine about how hyperbolic I am, I’ll turn to you first.)

In other news, well, you know, I’m sort of happy I don’t have other news. I might have news tomorrow, if I actually get off my ass and go to the DMV, but I might instead decide to sit on my couch all day reading and knitting, in which case nothing at all would be new.

Don’t you have something better to do than read this anyway? (I thought so.)
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* The purported fever might be a sign of Naegleria fowleri, though. I also have a stiff neck! (It’s either a brain-eating amoeba or the way my desk is set up at home. I’ll let you know when I know.)

If your fever is getting higher, does that mean you’re getting better, or worse? (Don’t tell me if it’s worse, okay? I’m already feeling weak.)* Really, though, if it wasn’t for the fever, I would be convinced I am simply suffering from allergies. Debilitating, monstrous allergies, sure, but it’s not like this would be the first time.

Goethe tells me, however, that I don’t have a fever. He thinks that just because it’s hot outside, my temperature is well within the bounds of normal. And when we got into an argument about this, because I am convinced that it would have to be greater than 98.6 degrees outside in order to raise my body temperature above 98.6 degrees (and because, I don’t know, I haven’t been taking my temperature while I was outside), we turned to the Internet, to figure out what the margin of error is on a mercury thermometer. But that proved too difficult, because no one uses mercury thermometers anymore, so we gave up.

So if Goethe’s correct, and I don’t have a fever, I just have allergies enough for two people. Whether or not I do have a fever is probably immaterial, though, because I’ve been taking my temperature with a mercury thermometer, and am therefore probably dying of mercury poisoning, instead of consumption.

Since I don’t feel well and should probably simply stay in bed all day tomorrow, I think I’ll avoid driving a car, which makes me angry even when I’m perfectly well, and skip going to the DMV too. Instead, I’ll just work from home in the morning, and then convince whoever’s taking me to lunch to drive me to the apartment leasing place.

So, who’s taking me to lunch? I don’t think mercury poisoning is contagious, is it?

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* Also, am I disappointed that I publicly admitted to having a fever and no one left a comment telling me that I’m hot all the time? A little.

I believe I am dying of consumption. It was bound to happen eventually.

No, really. I have a fever. It’s 99.2, which for a normal person wouldn’t be that high, but since I run cold to begin with, that’s at least like 100.8 in normal-person degrees.

So Monday when I left work my throat was tickly, and I thought it was just allergies. Tuesday my throat started to hurt, and I naively insisted that it was just allergies. Today, I have been suffering with a horrible cough. I don’t feel sick, exactly, but I did leave the office early (because I was making a lot of noise, and our walls are thin). I tried cough drops that are alleged to have cough-suppressing properties, and drank some tea, but it just wouldn’t stop. When I arrived home, I took some cough syrup, and now I am not coughing, but I am also not likely to be awake much longer either. (Even though the cough syrup I took has no alcohol in it, I believe that cough syrup should make you sleepy, and belief is a powerful thing.)

Oh well. At least if I do pass, I’ll join a long list of luminaries. (If I never appear here again, it’s because I finally got in touch with my inner Keats.)

I suppose I ought to make some arrangements now, though, shouldn’t I? Entrust someone with my passwords so they can delete the incriminating e-mail before the publication of my “Selected Letters”, choose a photo for my obituary, put some cash in a fund for Mouse’s upkeep. First I think I’ll take a nap.

You know what you do when you’re trying to bury a tiny piece of new information in the middle of an entry, so people will be less likely to flip out because you’re brash and impulsive? Maybe it’s just me, but I’m going with pictures of shopping carts.

Earlier, I was just wandering around the Internet, as people do, when I came across this: Rotten Neighbor. Never mind the fact that the maps are painfully slow to load, I’m just glad I don’t have to do everything myself anymore.

And then I thought, oh, my neighbors aren’t so bad. I mean, they only pee on things, and leave beer bottles under bushes. It’s not like they’re throwing their dogs out the window or stabbing people in the bus shelter or anything. (Then I realized I was wrong. They are that bad.) Anyway, there are at least four shopping carts on the grounds at the moment (maybe more, I got tired of walking around). But here’s something good: only three of them are in the creek! See?

Also, today I quit my job. I do not yet have a new job, and some day I will probably learn that it is not actually a good idea to quit your job before you have a new job lined up, but I gave a month’s notice, and therefore have six weeks to find a new job before I start missing my paycheck. And I’ve led a charmed life so far, so I’m not too worried. (Although if this turn of events comes back to haunt me, I’m sure you’ll enjoy the innumerable “I told you so”s.*) So Friday, I’m going to take the day off, rent a car, go to the DMV, apply for a different apartment, and visit my favorite employment agency, in hopes of becoming a more gainfully employed person. (Okay, not more gainfully employed. Just as gainfully employed as I am now, but without that whole wanting to actually harm my co-workers bit.)

And if I were really going to bury that information in the middle of an entry, I’d need to write something else here, wouldn’t I? As it happens, someone we know just started a new blog: you can find Goethe here. And I’m not going to go so far as to say that I give meaning to his life, but I will assert that I’m the inspiration. Go visit. It’s got everything you want in a blog (which is really just to say that he takes pictures of his cats, just like I take pictures of mine. Basically, Goethe and I have a lot in common, most notably that we’re both now engaged in making the Internet a better place, one gratuitous cat photo at a time).

That, as usual, is all.

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* And also, all the times I’ll say, “Dude? Lend me a fiver?” ‘Cause that’s gonna be amusing too.

Since the very moment I woke up this morning, I had Kenny Roger’s The Gambler stuck in my head: if you’re gonna play the game, boy, you’ve gotta learn to play it right.

So I tried a number of things to make it go away, and none of them worked.

But then I went to Best Buy. If you were to visit Best Buy today, you would find that St. Elmo’s Fire is on sale for the low, low price of $5.99. And you might think, “Gosh, I really don’t need to buy St. Elmo’s Fire. It’s not even that great a movie, even though I secretly wish Andrew McCarthy was my boyfriend.”* But then you might notice that this DVD includes the video for John Parr’s “Man in Motion”. Needless to say, I had to have it, and watch it immediately, because if there’s one thing that is sure to make me happy (especially on a day when I’ve had a song stuck in my head that includes the lyrics “And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep”), it’s cheesy 80s videos.

So that’s good, eh? And while I was out I also picked up a number of other things I needed: blank rewriteable CDs, so I can actually back up my blog; a 2008 calendar, so I can decide whose birthdays not to remember anymore; and a hamburger, which has restored not only the iron levels in my blood, but also, somehow, my faith in humanity.

All that, and it’s only 3:00. Wow.

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* Or maybe that’s just me.

Is it really the fourth day of me not being negative? Wow.

So last night I went dancing, and had just about as much fun as a person can have dancing. No one spilled anything on me, a reasonable number of the people there were dancing as if they had actually heard music before, and I only had to flip one person off.*

And so today I was late for work, and when I finally did show up I was pretty tired, and then I left early. And so my workday was therefore shorter than it otherwise would have been, and if anyone did anything really, really stupid I didn’t notice.

And earlier this evening I spent more time wandering around my hard drive, and found even more inexplicably not properly organized music, and everything will soon be in its proper place, and in the proper format, and organization makes me happy. (Frankly, I don’t know how I let my hard drive become quite so disorganized, but I am not even going to talk about all the half-written blog entries and pictures of my cat, because that’s not positive. (Unless you spin it and consider that I really am very productive, it’s just that no one knows it, because all of my photographic and verbal brilliance is trapped in a seemingly never-ending series of zeros and ones inside a box under my desk.))

(And while I was doing that, I ordered a pizza, and a nice man brought me a pizza. Delivery of things to my home makes me happy, and I might just order some groceries online later, so I can spend part of my weekend waiting for someone to bring me my groceries. I am so very easily pleased.)

And tomorrow, I may very well go to the DMV. That would be positive because a) Captain Ghettolord** calls the DMV the “world’s largest multi-lingual insane asylum”, and I will therefore get to steal one of his catchphrases, instead of the other way around, and b) before I go to the DMV I intend to get my hair cut, because I’ll need to have a new photo on my driver’s license photo. And then I’ll have cute hair again, and be able to cross one thing off my list of things to do in 2007. (Which I am not linking to now because this is Positive Week, and I don’t really want to get into what the hell I was thinking when I wrote that list.)

And now I’m going to bed, probably earlier than my parents are, but that’s not negative, because if I actually manage to get enough sleep, I might wake up in the morning with the ability to remain positive. Wish me luck.

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* I was merely crossing the street outside when a man yelled out his car window at me. What he said was somewhat unreasonably impolite, and involved what he’d like to see me do with my legs. I will admit that the skirt I had on was maybe a little shorter than was strictly necessary (and my shoes were approximately the cutest shoes in the history of shoes), but I still don’t believe that’s an invitation to shout vulgarities at me. (Granted, neither is shouting vulgarities at me necessarily an invitation for me to flip you off as I walk away, but I really didn’t have time to stop and chat with him about the error of his ways, because the light changed.)

** CG? I guess they’re not teaching you stick-to-it-iveness in the Army, eh?

I’ve only got one thing today, but it’s pretty good. Silly, but good.

So the other day I’m looking on my computer to figure out who sings “Bust A Move”. Perhaps not the most important question ever, but someone else said it was Young MC, and I wasn’t believing him (for no good reason whatsoever, because Young MC is in fact the artist responsible for that song). Anyway, it wasn’t there, even though I was sure it was, and the question was resolved using other means than my personal music collection.

So today I’m goofing around on my computer, because HWNaC* made me a CD that has MP3s on it, and in order to make iTunes recognize that I own any given MP3 I have to go through a convoluted process that involves importing, and converting, and chanting in Sanskrit, I think. Anyway, not only was Bust A Move on my hard drive, but a whole bunch of other stuff too, not the least of which is two Tone Loc songs. (What was I doing, precisely, on July 5, 2006, that required my putting two Tone Loc songs and one Young MC song on my hard drive? I’m not sure, but whatever it was, it also included “Bitchin Camaro”, because I’m just like that.**)

Anyway, that’s happy-making, no? Whew!
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* HWNaC? Never mind trying to find something else. It’s stuck.

** Luckily, I have a blog, so I can tell you that I was writing imaginary letters to people I saw while I was on the bus, and also had a song stuck in my head (which I will not mention now because a) I called a moratorium, and b) I mentioned the exact same song the day before yesterday. It won’t be long now before my blog consists solely of links to things I said before. That’ll be easier, no?)

The Second in a Week-Long Series of Lists of Things That Are Not Negative

Three things that make me happy:

• Barnum’s Animal Crackers
• Barry Manilow
• Beer (specifically, Brooklyn Lager)*

That, I’m afraid, is all. (I will redouble my efforts tomorrow, but please don’t hold your breath.)

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* Hey Goethe, remember that time we were at that restaurant and I ordered a beer, and, being a moderately educated person, pronounced lager correctly, and then the waitress, while reading our order back to us, carefully pronounced it “lodger”, as if she were teaching me something? That remains somewhat amusing, doesn’t it?