Wow! Just... Wow!

The good: Early Voting turnout has been phenomenal! I mean, beyond anyone's expectations. The number of people who have committed to performing their civic duty by voting has been outstanding.

The bad: Early Voting turnout has been phenomenal! It's been completely brutal for the poll workers.

I've only given a small corner of my time to this election but the election judges at the early voting sites and the staff working behind the scenes downtown have been bleeding, sweating and crying their guts out to pull off a successful election and to make sure that everyone who should vote CAN vote.

Wow. I'm in awe of all of you. Just... Wow!

And THANKS!

Note to Self

Note to Self: Do NOT wear sexy little boy-short undies to the gym on "running" days.

Grrr....

I swear I had to un-wedgie myself about twenty times this morning...

Research

My ex is - was - an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) which basically means he's pretty good at basic first aid and gets to put a cool sticker on his car.

I'm writing a scene that requires my MC to perform some first aid on herself and I couldn't find what I was looking for on the internet so I called the Boy.

Of course, his pregnant wife answered the phone. She sounded perky and happy and I didn't have the heart to tell her that I'll be out of town the weekend of her baby shower... I chatted for a minute and then asked to speak to the Boy.

EEE: I have a first aid question
Boy: OK
EEE: How would you un-dislocate a dislocated your shoulder if you were all alone?
Boy: Um... wow. Well, first of all, don't bang it into place like Lethal Weapon
EEE: Uh huh...
Boy: I'm really not sure how you'd do it alone...
EEE: Well.. what if the only person you had to help you was really really drunk?
Boy: What?
EEE: What if you had a dislocated shoulder and the only person who could help you was fall-down drunk?
Boy: I'd call the paramedics.
EEE: Not an option. There are vampires at the door.
Boy: *pause* What?!

I found that conversation vastly entertaining.

Friday

Oy....

I'm not a huge fan of Fridays. I think they're the longest day of the week. But right now I'm so looking forward to this week being over that I'll take what I can get!

Besides, I'm working tomorrow anyway.

Happy Friday, everyone! Hope the weekend treats you well!!!!

Being bad

I've been bad this week. And NOT in a fun way.

I skipped the gym yesterday and really I should be there right now - but I'm obviously not. I'm sitting on my couch with my laptop in my lap. I see Sharon tomorrow and I dread telling her that I've been such a bad little exerciser.

To be fair, I just spent the past half hour WORKING (it is 5:15am) and will probably continue to work all day off and on until around midnight.

Ugh!!!

I'm hoping work sorts itself out soon and I can get back on track. But until then, I guess I have to suck it up and do what I know I have to do. So I'm gonna go change and hit the treadmill.

Oh! And a special shoutout to my imaginary friends. Some of you are going through really tough times right now and (at least) one of you is about to embark on one of life's greatest adventures.

Good luck to all of you!!!

Um…. Just Ignore That…

.

I had impromptu drinks and appetizers at the Midtown (formerly Mondays) last night after work. He had moved since the previous election and hadn’t re-registered to vote so he had to come to the County Clerk’s office to take advantage of the grace period (over now) and vote.

Since he was in my ’hood, he gave me a buzz and we met up to talk about work, our writing, his girlfriend, my cabana boy – pretty much everything.

Afterward, he missed the last purple line up to E-town so I offered to drive him home. He waffled a bit but accepted.

We got into my car and started driving north.

Dave: Um…. Your car is making a funny noise.
EEE: Shhh! It might hear you.
Dave: But that sounds really bad. It sounds like it’s coming from the front of the car.
EEE: Yeah… We don’t talk about that.
Dave: Have you had it looked at?
EEE: I’m ignoring it and hoping it’ll go away.

Oh, I could just hear him stewing about what an irresponsible car owner I am.

Sigh. I suppose I should take it in. Maybe I’ll call the Car Talk guys…

Crazy Extroverts

.

I am crazy busy right now. It’s mostly my own fault for goofing off through most of September. But now I’m putting in extra hours every day and I do not like it.

Add to that the upcoming election – which takes up part of my weekends – and the looming specter of NaNoWriMo (boy howdy am I NOT prepared this year!) and I’m feeling really really frazzled.

And yet…

And yet my schedule is NOTHING compared to the cabana boy’s. That boy’s got something going on every night of the week and on most weekends. Not sure how he does it. I would lose my nut if I had so little personal time.

My friend Anita is the same way. If she has a free night during the week she starts looking for a new class to take or a new project to begin.

Crazy extroverts.

Pissing Contest

Far be it for me to get political on my silly little blog, but I witnessed a distasteful pissing contest this weekend.

Early voting is in full swing. The idea being to alleviate some of the pressure on voters by allowing them to cast their votes early so they can avoid the potentially long lines on Election day. People are more likely to fulfill their civic duty if it doesn't inconvenience them.

But at the Village of Palatine, early voting was anything but convenient. The wait to vote was between 45 minutes and a hour on Saturday.

And the reason for that was quite simple: the Village of Palatine is pissed off at the Cook County Board for raising sales tax to the highest in the nation.

Do they have a right to be angry? Hell yes. It is, in my opinion, the stoopidest tax ever. Todd Stroger has no credibility and less class.

But do they have a right to take out their anger on the voters of Northwestern Cook County, including their own citizens? NO!

Considering the amazing early voting turnout, one would think that the Village of Palatine would give voters the space required to vote in a safe, private, and efficient manner. But, in a bid to thumb their nose at Cook County officials, the Village offered only one room in their largely empty Village Hall: a tiny ante-room across the hall from the general assembly room (which itself is much larger and EMPTY)

But the Village of Palatine is clearly more interested in its own little fued than it is in the democratic process.

Who loses? The voters.

I'm utterly disgusted.

The Kindness of Strangers

I was at the gym this morning – shocker! – using the pec press machine (won’t make the boobs any firmer but it builds the muscle under them so they sit a little higher…) when a woman I’ve never met, or even noticed before tapped me on the shoulder.

I pulled out my headphones and she said, “I just wanted to tell you that I’ve seen you here early in the mornings working with your trainer and I wanted tell that it really shows. You look great! Keep it up, girl!”

I’m getting all teary remembering it now. She totally made my day!

My friends, my coworkers, Sharon, everyone I know tells me that I look good – but this is the first time a total stranger has gone out of her way to say something to me.

I was chatting with her on the way down to the locker room after than and she told me she’s lost 60 pounds. SIXTY! How incredible is that?!

Losing weight is hard. (Understatement of the year, I know, but that doesn’t make it any less true!) And when it’s done right, it’s SLOW – which just makes it even HARDER!

And it’s something that so many people struggle with. It’s not just a matter of deciding: “Hey! I’m gonna lose some weight!” You have to really commit to it and it’s a CONSTANT commitment. A slip here and there is fine, but it’s a constant and continual battle – every minute of every day.

I’ve only lost 20 pounds in six months but I’m determined that those 20 pounds will never come back.

To everyone fighting that constant, demoralizing, difficult, uphill battle against your own body and mind: Good luck!!!!

Clutter

My cabana boy (“Chuck” as Terri has taken to calling him) and I have had some bad luck with our schedules lately. Mostly his schedule, really, because let’s face it: my schedule is, by design, relatively uncluttered. But that’s changing too. November is always busy for me on the writing front and October is heating up. So finding time for “Chuck” is going to get even more difficult.

It’s a bit frustrating but not unbearable.

Work is getting busy again – I’m running behind on an important deadline so I’ll need to put in some (unpaid) overtime in the next week to catch up.

I’ve let my urban fantasy novel simmer on the back burner. I wanted to finish it before NaNoWriMo so that it would be novel number seven, but that’s unlikely to happen unless I devote some major TIME to it in the next couple weeks. Maybe…

Interestingly enough, while my life is becoming more cluttered (in a GOOD way) my home is more organized than it’s ever been. I’m not a TOTAL slob but I can be lazy – I’ll leave the clean dishes in the dishwasher or the clean laundry in the dryer – I lack follow-through.

It was never a total cesspool or anything, but it would not have met Rational’s high standards. But lately, with the ever-present possibility of a studly young cabana boy stopping by for a little fun, I’ve had to keep my home clean all the time. And to my eternal shock, I actually LIKE it.

And now I’ve gotten into the habit of doing “projects” with the time that I would usually spend cleaning (or looking at the mess willing it to clean itself up…) I’ve cleared out two closets and reorganized the drawers in my bathroom cabinet. It’s oddly fulfilling…

Who’d have thought that a cluttered personal life would lead to an organized home life?

Have a great day, everyone.

P.S. VOTE!

New Math

My best friend's cat has diabetes. Poor puss! Really, it's a very managable disease in cats. He just has to get 0.025cc (1/40 of a cc) of insulin twice a day after he's eaten.

No biggie. The vet gave my friend a small supply of 1/2 cc syringes. They have 20 graduated units marked on them so he gets 1 unit twice a day.

Syringes aren't the most expensive thing in the world, but the cost adds up, so my friend went to Sam's Club and bought two boxes of 1/2 cc syringes. The only difference between these syringes and the vet syringes were the number of units. Human syringes are broken into 50 units instead of 20.

So my friend did the math. If "v" = the unit on the vet syringe and "h" = the unit on a human syringe and "v" = 1/20 and "h" = 1/50 and if Kitty is riding on two trains traveling in different directions, how many syringes can kitty buy?

Basically: she needs to give Kitty 2.5 units on the human syringe to equal 1 unit on the vet syringe.

This is really basic algebra.

But when she mentioned this to the vet, the vet argued that her math was faulty, that she was over-dosing her cat. She claimed that a "unit is a unit."

Buh???? One unit is 1/20 of 1/2 cc (0.025 cc) the other is 1/50 of 1/2 cc (0.010)

My friend was very upset about this and when she told me, I laughed. Is this vet using New Math???? They got into quite an argument about it.

Of course, my friend does not want to jeopardize her beloved pet's life just for the sake of economy, but the vet's math just does not make sense.

So, my friend and I did a little science experiment. We filled the vet syringe with the proper dose (using water) and used it to fill the human syringe.

Sure enough, 1 unit one the vet syringe was exactly equal to 2.5 units on the human syringe.

Ha!

Now, if a parking lot holds 250 cars and is 2/5 full, how many pennies will the blue-haired lady in front of you count out while the cashier flirts with the bagger and accidentally hands you $300 intended for deposit?

Dr. Dave

About a week ago the D key on my laptop stopped working. It had been touchy for a while but now it wasn’t producing its all-important letter no matter how hard I hammered that key.

So I figured that there must be something stuck under the key and I pried the key off. I blew on it, thinking there might be some dust there, even though I couldn’t see it. After struggling for a while I got the key back on and it was working again – sort of.

It was working, but I had to really hit it hard for it to take. I had to keep pausing while typing to go back and fix words that spell check missed. (“And” without the D is still “an” actual word.) I never realized how many times I use the letter D in a normal paragraph. It was beyond frustrating. I couldn’t contemplate living with that headache for long. Grrr!

My laptop has been steadily falling apart over the past six months – ever since the warrantee expired (of course!!!) And I’ve pretty much resigned myself to replacing it in the spring after I get my tax refund. It’ll be four years old by then, which is a good long life for a laptop. But with this last problem, it looks like I may have to accelerate that schedule.

Oooh! Shopping! I’m not a huge fan of shopping for clothes, but I love computer shopping.

And, when looking for a new computer, the first thing I always do is call my friend Dave, who doubles as my IT guy. He knows what I like and he knows all the latest technology and all the good deals.

EEE: Hi!
Dave: Hi. What’s up?
EEE: The D key on the Cricket is dead.
Dave: Do NOT buy a new computer.

This may seem like a strange response, but clearly Dave knows me well. Too well…

I kind of have a history of automatically replacing things when they break instead of getting them fixed. I call it my “dealership mentality.”

In grad school in Colorado, the rear defroster on my car died. I called my dad and told him I wanted to buy a new (rather: slightly newer used) car. He hung up on me. A week later I got an ice-scraper in the mail with a note: “Here’s a $3 Answer to a $10,000 Question, Love Dad.”

So, Dave’s response to me was completely valid.

And it turns out the problem was indeed easily fixed for about $70. That’s $20 for the new keyboard, $30 for a decent bottle of wine, and $20 for pizza and poppers.

Much cheaper than the $3K a new laptop would be…

Thanks, Dave!

Tulip

I love Tulip. Not the flower, though those are quite lovely too – they always make me think of Pella and windmills and my old friend Leslie who went to Central College.

No. I’m talking about the store Tulip in Andersonville. It’s a tiny little shop discretely wedged between two framing shops on Berwyn east of Clark.

Tulip is a sex toy shop.

Oh how easy it would be for it to be sleazy and cheap. But it’s not. It’s cute and quaint and the salesgirls are always tremendously helpful. (I guess they don’t have to be salesgirls, but really, the shop does mostly cater to women)

It’s very much a boutique. Tiny – smaller than my livingroom – with shelves proudly displaying sundry items from simple, sleek vibrators, to the complex and intriguing multi-action toys like the rabbit (bought mine at Tulip last year – LOVE IT!) A single rack of corsets and other snazzy lingerie, a small library of self-help and erotic fiction, and a small wall devoted to co-education items like cock rings.

I popped in there last night on my way home. I wanted some new erotica. Again – it would be so easy for this to be an excruciatingly embarrassing situation, but it wasn’t. I wandered in, smiled at the salesclerk, and started to peruse the bookshelves.

She recommended a book of short stories that I’m hopeful about. So far so good, anyway…

It was all very mature and respectful and upbeat. No silly giggles or creepy leering or awkward silences. But there was one moment of mirth. As I was paying, I glanced down and on the floor next to the register there was a bucket full of candy-colored penises (penii?) with a sign which read “Discount Dildos – 20% Off”

Hee hee!

Just the book for me – this time. Maybe next time I’ll have to take a closer look at some of the restraints or maybe buy Flawless a new cat-o-nine-tails for her birthday…

Happy Thursday all!

Sisterhood

My sister is a hypochondriac. But it’s not the normal sort of hypochondria where you hear of a disease and you suddenly have it or the sort where you’re just constantly sick. It’s not even like MY hypochondria – which is more of a hypochondria by proxy (I like to diagnose my friends….) Hers is more the self-fulfilling kind.

A doctor once told her that 1 in every 10,000 people has an adverse reaction to the Tetanus shot. Sure enough, three hours later her arm swelled to the size of her thigh.

I am convinced that if her doctor had just kept his damned mouth shut, she would have been fine.

A couple months ago she wrenched her shoulder while swimming with her kids. She bitched and moaned about it for a few weeks – because that’s what Jo does – before finally going to the doctor. Sure enough, she’d managed to do the most damage possible without her arm actually falling off. She’d stripped all the cartilage from her shoulder joint.

I always feel a little guilty when dealing with Jo. I always scoff at her when she says something hurts. (Probably because EVERYTHING seems to hurt her at some point)

My dad is no better. He has no patience for other peoples’ pain and suffering. He used to tell us that menstrual cramps were “all in your heads.” To be fair, I never had bad cramps. That didn’t stop me from happily using my period to get out of 7am Mass once a month…

But back to Jo. She had a three hour surgery the other day to rebuild the cartilage in her shoulder and when she told me that she’d be off work for a full month I was quite rude to her. I was ruder still when she told me that she wouldn’t even be able to take care of her kids for the first couple weeks because it is essential that her arm remain still.

Why am I so rude to her? Why her? Any other person and I would at least PRETEND to be sympathetic. Why am I so ready to disbelieve and belittle HER?

I’m sure it doesn’t help that Jo has a very complex relationship with “the truth.” Read: she lies. A lot. And when she isn’t lying, she’s exaggerating.

But I love her. And I don’t want her to be in pain. And I’m sorry I was such a snarky bitch the other day.

I guess that’s the good thing about sisters. Even when we’re horrible to each other, we aren’t going anywhere.

I love you, Jo. Be better soon.

And quit whining.

;P

Craziness

Oy... I've been slacking again.

Sorry. I've just had a lot going on. I've half-written a blog entry almost every day, but sometime between writing it and posting it, I get caught up in other things. Like work, Topix, the cabana boy...

Mmmmm.... the cabana boy....

I'll try to be more on the ball...