a handsome giraffe

oh my blog. 

here's some stuff that's happened since boozeday: 

1) my face got so ill; 

2) i had to get over my continual crippling fear of dentists and... go to the dentist; 

3) got prescribed these pills:

(now, i know they are not to scale, but rest assured they are roughly the size of a small RV)

a) which i have become obsessed with because they make me feel like my life is ruined. seriously i feel like i probably understand what it is like to be pregnant, i am so continually nauseated; 

b) i am really dramatic, and a big baby, but this shit sucks; 

4) i have to have oral surgery on monday, which i have to pay six hundred dollars out-of-pocket for, 

a) which makes me want to die a little bit, because: 

b) I HAVE INSURANCE 

c) that no medical professional can ever understand so it always has to get figured out after-the-fact. 

you know, maybe i would have gotten all of my hereditary dental problems fixed a long time ago if i had good dental insurance! now i have a little bit through my dad again (because i am in school), and that is so much more than most people have, but my fear/hatred of dentists really just stems from how most of them are jerks that do not understand that no matter how stellar some people's oral hygeine is, they just have terrible teeth. i have terrible teeth! i know about it! don't be a jerk to me! 

though i will say that the dentist i went to here in this town was really dreamily perfect and sweet, and all of his staff were honestly the best i have ever encountered, and it is not their fault that the insurance i have is difficult and i have to give them so much money at once. 

can i also briefly mention that this upcoming week is my finals week? i had strengthened my resolve to go to the dentist for the first time in two years, and was honest to god planning on doing it just recreationally "for funsies" after finals were over, but then i had this emergency. luckily my work is very understanding about my concurrent life crises, and so now my life mostly consists of me, my dogs, and my collection of library books/EBSCO printouts and how we have each made ourselves a comfortable little nest in separate corners of my bed. 

blog! i never intended to enumerate my personal problems to you in such detail! whatever though i guess. if you are reading this, you probably already know how i am 

today i did leave my home for a reason other than vegan soup and saltines (an important aside: did you know that it is impossible to find vegetarian canned soup? every kind of vegetable soup is made from chicken or beef broth. so then, if you ever want such a thing -- and by "want" i mean "require" because you are on gigantic organ-melting antibiotics and cannot even think about anything more than semi-solid food -- do not go staggering around the campbell's soup aisle at 11pm, go straight to the "natural and specialty foods" and spend many dollars on a thing without salt or animals inside of it), and that reason was IT training! i would not have gone if they would not charge me $71 if i didn't show! so i showed. from 8:30am to 12:00pm. 

it is a pretty enjoyable thing, though. i learn and am interested and feel better about myself for knowing these things. today i forgot a pen, however, and i am definitely a Note-Taker, but everyone else in the class (all four of them) made me feel weird, even though one of them was wearing a romper. so i felt like i could not ask to borrow one. 

hmm, what else is there to talk about on the internet besides my medical problems and the four hours i was out of my house this week? television, probably.

listen. party down, the starz! original series created by rob thomas (and directed by fred savage), starring many people who were on veronica mars, has again become very important to me. mostly because i keep forgetting that i have STARZ included in my cable for some reason, and can watch any of the episodes on demand, and also they are just real good. let me talk for a second about the TV comedy series in my life that i have felt 95-100% confident that they were specifically targeting me and my very particular sense of humor: arrested development (of course). better off ted. parks and recreation. party down. these are the shows where i will laugh at most of the jokes, instead of not laughing at most of the jokes, like all of the rest of tv. 

now so, i have spent a lot of my sickbed time thinking about party down's place in my heart, and wondering how truly close it comes to usurping parks and recreation in there, and then today i learned that adam scott, the lead in party down, is leaving the show to be on... parks and recreation. CAN IT EVEN BE TRUE? when did the world become such an okay place? 

boozeday

already i am so mad about the world! mostly at buses. i got up almost an hour early today, intending on coming to work 30-45 minutes early, and then... the bus i was planning on taking did not come. so i walked and got there at the same time i usually do every day anyway. i feel like this is the reason i follow the transit system on twitter (and have an internet phone), to prevent things like this from ruining my day, but you know it just never seems to happen that way.

oh god, i didn't even brush my hair! DEAL WITH IT.
currently i feel tired and mad and am waiting for the line for coffee to dissipate so i don't murder myself or others.

THE REASON i needed to get to work early was that i am starting to take "IT training" classes, which means that the university will teach me how to not be a dummy about making websites and PHP for free. i feel like this is normally not a thing i could commit to, even though the classes are held inside my workplace (because of my crippling... laziness), but i feel determined to do it. also, it costs $71 if you don't show up. motivator!

mission: learn PHP by the end of the summer is well underway. today's class: what is a internet.

while i am raging, i will speak briefly about the lady at the dog park who was very excited that i had pugs (she had a pug puppy, and pugs are pretty rare at the dog parks in this town). she immediately asked if they were "boys or girls," and then hinted around josie's UTERINE STATE while mentioning that she was going to "stud out" her dog when he got old enough. i ended up kind of forcefully mentioning that in fact, i rescued my dogs from breeders and i am certain that their sterilized lives are much better now.

i hate this more than anything, especially in this state, where puppy mills are worse than anywhere else. call me crazy but i do not think a good solution to this is weirdos breeding expensive dogs for profit at the expense of their dogs' health AND IN A LARGER WAY the expense of many other dogs suffering in puppy mills and shelters.

NEUTER YOUR DOG!! take care of your dog! only own a dog if you can keep it for 10-15 years, even if you move! only get a dog if you can afford to take it to the vet (even if it is at the expense of your own lifestyle for a little bit)! if i ever run for political office, this will be my platform.

um anyway. i bought my first KINDLE VERSION of a book yesterday, because the book i wanted was only out in hardback and had a million holds at the library. also, i am trying to live within my means (another way i am cutting back: not eating a burrito every day). i do not have a kindle! BUT amazon has a program for PCs for reading kindle items, and it works pretty well. because i have to use it on my tiny computer (netbook) i kind of secretly think i do actually have a kindle.

so, i like it! it only shows me like 300 words at a time, so i can feel like i have read so many pages and accomplished so much. it also saves my place and the percentage of the book i have read. it feels a lot better to have read ten whole percent of a book, rather than, like... 30 pages. also, i appreciate how i can fall asleep reading without waking up in terror at all of the lights in my bedroom still being on.

i suppose i could mention that the book is ash by malinda lo. it is fantasy week in my teen lit class, which is just... really not my thing, but amongst the choices of weirdo demon and "FAERIE" stories was this book, which is about fairies a little bit, but is mostly a lesbian cinderella story. i think that now you might understand why i needed it so badly.



it is also a little refreshing to read a young adult book written by someone who... can... write.

i always get so excited about the papers i am going to write, and then do a bad job of not waiting until the absolute last possible second to write them, but this finals time i am going to do it better! i have meticulously planned my time from now until due dates, how many words i am going to write what days and about what, and not have any freakouts. RIGHT? ok!

now i am going to go back to obsessively thinking about cafe berlin's menu and why they are only open until 2pm most days.

springtime is making me obsessed with nature

funeral blues

recently, a terrifying baby-fist-sized wasp and i were peacefully cohabiting for a few days. i was okay with it because it kindly limited its range of influence to my living room curtains. i hate killing bugs (they really do very little to bother me, except ants, which i tend to see as actively trying to ruin my life). but... when it appeared in my bedroom i had a sincere moment of panic and KILLED IT while kind of yelling "I'M SORRY." my problem is that when i was searching for the murder weapon, i considered my copy of how to cook everything vegetarian (but landed on a shoe), but now every time i look at the cookbook my trauma reemerges.

the ultimate point of this story is: what should i make for other people to eat at a potluck? i have a difficult time with these things, especially when my brain is really insistent about there being wasp guts on my favorite cookbook.

today feels like a bummer because i guess my body has suddenly become sensitive to pollen -- the counts are astronomical, so i can't blame myself, but i feel a tiny bit dead inside. also, josie is beautiful and she is great, but last night she was being the worst kind of asshole and waking me up every half hour by running laps around my bed. she usually has the sleep schedule of a normal adult human, so i was worried she was sick or something, but her totally normal behavior this morning led me to believe that truly, she just hates me. i feel like an allergy zombie and she did not even barf to make me feel okay about it.

but i guess it is ok because she is indeed the cutest dog alive

the job i do every day is, in theory, very simple and seamless, but these problems keep mysteriously happening with only the things in french that have nothing to do with them being in french. oh, my god, the french, give it a rest already

naruto situation

let's see if i have more room in my life today to yell at the internet! the answer is always yes.

i am going to talk about tina fey for a little minute here, but i feel like i have said everything i want to in general, and the obvious and eloquent has been already stated by ladies more capable than i. but in reference to a kind of argument (discourse?) that happened earlier today on a different internet, let me address this thing that gets thrown around very often:

"it is anti-feminist to be unsupportive or upset when successful, powerful women have views that disagree with yours, you hypocrite!"

this happened with sarah palin and now it is happening a little bit with tina fey. fitting!! both these women are self-described feminists, and truly it is pretty wonderful how successful they have become in their lives. but it is okay to be upset and even angry when you realize that oh, hey, sarah palin trampled on the reproductive rights of women in her state!!! or oh, hey, tina fey slut-shamed and cruelly criticized the body of a woman on national live television!!! you know, if i was saying that these ladies' toothpaste choices or even their broad political leanings are shameful and worthy of at least a little vitriol, that would be stupid and anti-feminist. but, hey, exerting "feminism" by actively expressing and perpetuating toxic anti-woman ideas is... not feminism. and the assumption that i should pretend like it is, just because it's expressed by women, is totally repulsive to me.

i have so many opinions.


IN OTHER NEWS, it is beautiful outside, and so here is a list of obvious reasons why springtime is wonderful:

• not-yet-sweaty walks across town to work
  
• flowers everywhere!
• freckles
• sleeping with the windows open
• THE LOWEST UTILITY BILLS OF ALL
• cheerful peers
• baseball
• iced coffee

this morning it was so difficult for me to wake up. i was having wonderful dreams about designing women, julia sugarbaker specifically, which i suppose is due to my marathon viewing of youtube clips of that show immediately before bedtime last night. i had really forgotten what a key part of my childhood/development as a lady and person that show was!

after work today i have to go to a doctor and then to the public library and pick up some TEEN MYSTERIES to read! i'm pretty excited about this, but i realized that some anime-loving teen probably stole my library card and that is why there are so many MANGA ITEMS checked out on my account, and that it is not just a hilarious library fluke.

finally, there is no cardinals baseball game today, which means i will feel set adrift, aimless in my own evening time tonight.

cuyahoga

i guess i will have to admit that to a certain extent my interest in libraries overtakes many of my other interests, and probably the ones that most internet frands would want to hear about, but LOOK at this beautiful library website

cuyahoga county library system

i had to review this library site for the internet reference class i am taking and got many thrills from it. cleveland! who knew?

for the very first time

dear internet, i have had so many blogs on you! but let me try it this way.

my life is a series of gchats, bus rides, cameraphone pictures, episodes of "parks & recreation," burritos, library experiences, youth-oriented media, dog parks and sports games. this is probably what i will mostly talk about on the internet now, and forever, until the day my heart shrivels and i die.

before i went to work today, i went to starbucks, because let's face it, when i drink hot coffee now (considering the weather) i feel like the most uncomfortable human alive, and at this point in my i refuse to make myself iced coffee. just because of laziness, and because it will never be as delicious. also the ladies who work at the starbucks by my house are so wonderful! let me say why: they talk about my dogs as if they are people, but not in an unacceptable "this dog is my baby" way. just the right amount of anthropomorphizing tendencies will always endear me to anyone.

also they talk about coffee like it is important (of course it fucking is) but do not make make weird sitcom-style jokes about "caffing up" or "getting a fix."

anyway, i cannot wait to leave the library today because i won an award a while ago and it was published today in some kind of staff newsletter? (that i do not get) and so people keep talking to me about it and i am never, ever going to be able to graciously accept a compliment without feeling insane.

now here is a very important picture of my dogs.