The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

OW.

Last night I had to go pick up a case of bottled tea from Trader Joe's, so I went out at a little before 6:00 with the granny cart I hate (it sounds like a bag of wire coat hangers falling out of a tree, but it has more capacity than the quiet one) and the empty kitty litter jugs, because as long as I had wheels, I figured I'd restock the kitty litter.

The case of tea turned out to be bigger than I thought, so it had to stand on end in the cart and take up most, but not all, of the space. It also amounted to three gallons of tea, and water weighs eight pounds a gallon to begin with, before you add bottles and a box, and before you add roughly 30 pounds of kitty litter on top of it. I left the pet store pulling roughly 55 pounds of heavy stuff. And it was still rush hour enough that I didn't want to get glared at when I got on the train with it (and I wasn't entirely sure I could dead lift it high enough to get on the train anyway). So I pulled 55 pounds of heavy stuff home from Harvard and Comm Ave, uphill, in the rain, with a cart that sounds like a bag of wire coat hangers falling out of a tree, and that SUCKED.

By the time I got everything upstairs and had lain on the floor whimpering for a little while, it was 8:00. I had some dinner, collapsed into the bathtub for half an hour, took some Advil and went to bed.

This morning I don't really hurt, but I'm stiff all over. Next time I'll take the train and live with being glared at.

I hadn't had dreams about accreditation yet before this morning, and the dream I had got the accreditation mixed up with lab exercises, graduation, and chorus rehearsals, so I was somehow in the class of 2017 and doing waxup exercises because the Dean wanted me to be a DMD student for accreditation purposes (don't ask me why), but the assistant conductor from chorus was the lab instructor. Obviously my brain is cleaning house and throwing everything from the last month into the trash can.

At least today is the awards ceremony for the graduating class. I like to go to that. I guess that means I had better fall back into Standard 2 for the next three hours, though.

On Friday I walked into a conference room at 8:30 AM and walked out again at 4:30 PM with my brain leaking out of my ears. In between, I took notes on CODA Standard 2. After dinner when I finally had enough brain to do it, I took the vacuum cleaner apart as far as possible to try to figure out why it was making a new high-pitched shrieking noise. I cleaned out everything I could get to, and the belt doesn't seem to be the problem, although cleaning out the innards seems to have helped a little. So I probably need a new vacuum cleaner, if I can't get the motor looked at. Who the hell repairs 13-year-old Bissell uprights?

On Saturday I hauled myself out of the house eventually and went grocery shopping, and took very careful note of all the other non-grocery shopping I needed to do, and didn't do it. I vacuumed the living room and the bedroom and cleaned the bathroom and hung around rotting my brain playing Two Dots. And I bought a new Kate Rusby album and discovered that learning new songs is still fun even if I don't do it in voice lessons.

Yesterday it rained, finally, and I waited until it stopped and then didn't go buy a new vacuum cleaner. I did, however, go to Star Market (for the first time in ages; last time I needed cleaning supplies, I went to Target after work) and the Super 88 (since I was in the neighborhood, y'know) and TJ Maxx because the towels I've been using since 1993 have now officially fallen apart, and bFresh because they have my favorite flavor of Epic bars (bison, bacon and cranberry). So I came home with TP and alphabet noodles and Japanese candy and towels and Epic bars. Successful trip even though I didn't do anything about the vacuum cleaner. And then I came home and did laundry, and thereby ensured that I got to put on not-dry-yet pants this morning. It's like putting on a damp bathing suit. Some day I will learn to wash those pants on Saturday afternoon at the latest if I want to wear them on Monday.

Some day I will also learn never to sync my iPod after 8:00 at night, especially if I have to be at work at 7:45 the next morning. I wanted to put Kate Rusby on my iPod so I can keep learning new songs (mostly After This and The Youthful Boy), so I plugged it into my computer at 10:00 (after charging it enough to bring it back from the dead), and it wanted a software update. So, OK, that's about 20 minutes downloading and updating. And then the fun started, because it wanted to use an Apple ID from at least ten years ago to sync old stuff. And then it insisted that my new computer wasn't authorized to sync that stuff. So an hour of arguing later, I finally figured it out (although I still haven't sorted it out, and something is still using the old Apple ID and thinks I've authorized 4 of the allowable 5 devices to use whatever it is it's using. Since I only have three current devices, and the old Apple ID doesn't exist anywhere I can get to and unauthorize anything, I gave up.). So I went to bed at 11:30 with my iPod containing everything it should.

So at 11:15 I walk into the bedroom and discover that after nine years, Lily has finally decided to attempt to sleep in the clean laundry. But she hadn't gotten the hang of it yet, because she tipped over the laundry basket and was sleeping against the stack of folded shirts. By the time I woke up this morning, she had figured it out and was sleeping on top of a blue shirt in the tipped-over laundry basket. Silly beast. It was good sleeping weather last night, at least; I myself slept in my bed, instead of on top of the blanket, for the first time in two weeks. And Snip slept on the blanket instead of on the floor.

Life lesson #9254: If a glass bottle is allowed to break into little tiny shards, you'll never find all of them unless you walk around barefoot in the area they're in. (At least I only got one in my foot.) I hope I've found all of them at this point, because getting them out of my foot is one thing, but getting them out of feline feet would be a whole other problem. (Actually, Lily would probably let me. Snip, on the other hand (foot?)...)

I've been having a lot of fairly disturbing dreams lately. I never remember them, but I do remember waking up in the middle of the night for the last couple of nights and thinking "I don't want to keep dreaming about that." I wish whatever my brain is working on would sort itself out. I know I'm ready for this academic year to be over, and the fact that it isn't over until July isn't helping.

I also wish somebody, somewhere, whoever it is, would get off their ass and do something about the position regrade I was told was starting under review last fall. I haven't heard thing one about it since, and neither has my boss as of last month. It wouldn't mean I get any more money, but at this point I pretty much don't care. I just want somebody to acknowledge that there's more work involved in this job than there was when they invented it. It doesn't really help that it's the end of the performance review cycle and I'm fighting the urge to be sarcastic about the job description that appears on the evaluation forms. "Sweeping generalities" just about begins to cover it. (Insert standard rant here about how worthwhile the whole performance review system isn't.)

Speaking of things worthwhile, I finally get to work on the Flower Duet in my voice lessons. I, of course, am singing the mezzo part, and apparently the woman singing the soprano part can't sing any note lower than the highest note in the mezzo part (which is G5. The B flat above that is as high as I go.). This ought to be interesting.

Good idea: making my cheeseburger craving shut up.

Bad idea: making my cheeseburger craving shut up in Harvard Square, today. The traffic between there and home is at least 30% UHaul trucks, and at least another 30% people who don't know how to drive in Boston. (How dumb do you have to be to run a red light and subsequently play chicken with the Green line?)

Life Lesson #5974: You're crazy if you think you can get a Zipcar on half an hour's notice on the Saturday of a three-day weekend.

I finally gave up the "buy a 48" butcher block and saw the end off it to fit the 41 3/4" shelves" idea, and bought 18 x 36" shelves and a butcher block top for those. Having bought them, I had to get them home, and I hadn't quite thought that through. I had originally wanted to get them delivered, but not for $45, thank you. The options were cab (I hate cabs) and Zipcar, and as it turns out, the chances of getting ahold of a Zipcar were Ha, and Ha Ha. So the cab cost me $10, and now I've got counter space in the kitchen in case I want to cook anything involving a lot of chopping up ingredients or messing around with dough. Yay!

I also got my hair cut this morning, and got sorted out with my new hairstylist exactly what I want, and got it this time. (And got three or four apologies for last time, too.) And then I went downtown in search of pants, and was thoroughly disappointed with Macy's, and discovered I'm exactly the wrong shape all over for Eddie Bauer pants, and stopped in the hardware store on the way home, which led to the learning of Life Lesson #5974.

And then I came home and opened the electric bill for this month, which amounts to the grand sum of $24. I can't remember the last time I had an electric bill that low. Have I mentioned lately how much I love this apartment?

Life lesson #7864: Dying one's own hair is a pain when one has a fairly large amount of hair.

Life lesson #7865: If I want to be a redhead again, I'm going to have to have it done by somebody who knows what they're doing.


The long story is, the red from last month was growing out from the top and fading out from the streak, so I decided I would re-dye it myself. I bought something that looked, from all indications, like it would come out right. What it came out with wasn't bad, but isn't red any more either. It's darker brown than my natural color, with a lot of red in it. (So basically, it's my sister's natural color.)

When I get my tax refund back, I'm going back to red again. The hair salon I generally go to here is pretty good with color, but not with style.

I'm supposed to be doing productive academic things today, but I need to do laundry and I want to do nothing.

A list, for my own reference:

-Clean up press release draft
-Find parallel texts for letter
-Clean up case study draft

Life lesson #6648: Paper is slippery when you step on it.

Life lesson #6649: Other objects can hide under papers.

Life lesson #6650: Oyster crackers fly very well.

The long version: Last night I got up from my desk, stepped on a pile of paper, tripped over either the papers or the sandal hiding under the pile, twisted my foot, and managed to toss a handful of oyster crackers all over the room. I wound up sitting on the floor thinking "Well, that was interesting." Juddging by the results, oyster crackers fly even better than Cocoa Puffs.

Therefore, I had damn well better stop procrastinating and get the piles of paper off the floor, or I had better watch where I put my feet when I get up from my desk. Or both.

Today I've accomplished a whole mess of administrative running around, making phone calls, etc. Over the last two days I've also learned the following:

25 lb. of kitty litter lasts a little less than a week.
The pet store has 50 lb. bags of kitty litter.

It's physically impossible to order office chairs because they have to conform to fire codes, so all new chairs have to be custom-built.

Laughing may be good for you, but it's hard to get to sleep after you've been laughing so hard you feel ill.

Yahoo Messenger is yet another good way to waste time.

It's a lot easier to fall into watching too much TV when you and the TV live on the same floor again.