The Dangerous Existence of Madame Lee

+ I don't even know how I'm going to manage this weekend. I have arranged to change the oil in my car and have the power steering flushed (my car needs an awful lot of work, but this is the last of the "expensive" repairs. Well, until it's time to replace the tires in another few thousand miles, anyway). Also, it is likely that I will have to work again.

+ X-chan and I were talking about wisdom tooth removal (...in a couple of weeks, zomg how did this happen), and she was surprised that I'm not going to be put under. I said people die under that shit. X-chan said people die under nitrous, too. X-chan is a notorious hypochondriac and I shouldn't have listened to her, but due to having never had any kind of surgery, I freaked right out and hopped on Google. Most of the people who have died as a result of nitrous? Were stupid idiots who were ABUSING IT. I'm sorry, but if you open a can of pure nitrous in a small, enclosed space and start huffing away, you're pretty much asking for it. At least the dentist mixes it with oxygen first so you can breathe! (Also, I don't have contraindications--i.e., I don't smoke, I don't have long-term respiratory problems other than seasonal allergies, and I breathe through my nose unless I've been exercising or am in the throes of said allergies.)

+ I have lost about 6-7 pounds total in the past 3 weeks and now my smaller jeans are starting to be loose, which is just ridiculous. I am, of course, a notorious cheapskate who will not get smaller pants until she's out of viable options, so there we have it.

+ Guess who has Cosi fan tutte tix at the will-call window in Bloomington? MEMEMEMEMEMEME~

+ If any of you remember the heartwarming kitten story, there's a heartwarming update! Lolmom gave Rob and Lisa (the terribly sweet people who had the nursing cat) a call, only to initially get their eight- or nine-year-old daughter. Cue the following:
Lolmom: lol hi. i r teh lady who brot teh kitten? :D
Eight-year-old daughter: OMG MY KITTEN!!!!!!!111!!1!kitten!!!! :DDDDD

Well, at that point we knew the kitten wasn't coming back to live with us. I mean, there's no way you can take a kitten from an eight-year-old without ensuring a special place in Hell when you die. In conversation with Lisa, it was revealed that the momcat was something of an indifferent foster mother; she would occasionally get tired of nursing before the kitten was done, so they started supplementing with formula. The little girl would give the kitten its bottle and started calling it her baby, and although they hadn't been planning to get another cat, there really wasn't much choice once she became attached. Lisa said the kitten has a good personality and gets along with everyone (including the dog and the other two cats). The main thing is that it will have a loving home, so I'm not upset that it's not with us.

And that's all I've got, d00d.

I will go to Chautauqua Weekend this year. If I get up early, I can be in Madison by a reasonable hour that morning, have all day to wander around, and leave in the late afternoon/early evening in order to make my 7:30-to-midnight shift that Saturday. It's not ideal (what I'd really like to do, and will do one of these years when work and money allow, is book a room in Scottsburg and just drive the 15-20 miles or so to Madison on both days), but it's better than not getting to go at all (especially since the last time I went was in 2007), and it's definitely better than sitting on my ass in Evansville and moping. LOL-MART SHALL NOT CONQUER.

Also, I have almost put away the entire cost of getting my transmission flushed, which is not that much money but when you make as little as I do it is about a third of a paycheck. That said, I would way rather pay $160 now when I have it than pay a few thousand to fix the transmission later. PRIORITIES~

I am trying to feel better, but it's hard.

Okay, so I put the charger on the battery and it started like a dream last night. I drove around for about an hour to make sure it stayed charged, then came home, and this morning it was a little stuttery but started up without much trouble. Nonetheless, I drove to and from work (even coming home from lunch), then decided to do errands, on the grounds that driving to and from Mt. Vernon (about an hour away) ought to do the trick. Again, a little stuttery, but no trouble actually starting the car or driving once it did start.

I thought I might go for a walk, but there was some kind of athletic persiflage at the high school and they were using the track, so I opted against it and got back into the car--whereupon the ignition stuttered and stuttered and stuttered, but didn't start. No more than a minute or so had elapsed between the time I got out, saw the athletes, and decided to head home and the time I tried to start the car. I turned it off, figuring I'd try again; the dash lights came on, the radio and A/C were on, but the car wouldn't start. I was getting desperate at this point but decided I'd give it another try; two more times like this elapsed, and finally I was able to start it, though it stuttered for what seemed a small eternity before it finally kicked in. The high school is only a couple-three blocks from my house, so it wouldn't have been the end of the world; I could have walked home safely, and I'm glad this happened a few blocks from the house and not in Mt. Vernon, where I would have been screwed x at least 100. So I put the charger back on once I got home and will check on things in an hour or two.

If I can just nurse the current battery until I drop it at the dealership on Monday morning, I will be happy. Scratch that: I will feel as if this is a personal triumph and now I can die happy.

I have accomplished v. little this week and feel drained, although I have absolutely no business feeling this way.

[EDIT: Car now refuses to start. This fucking blows.]

Also, my direct deposit has hit my checking account, and it isn't insultingly low this time. And I want to beef up my savings and replace the spark plugs and pay a couple of bills and buy myself some shit, and I can only do a few of these things so it's probably going to be spark plugs and bills.

Man, adulthood fucking sucks.

THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT SO YOU NEED TO READ IT. My domain registration and hosting have expired. The domain is an expensive toy, and unfortunately I do not have the wherewithal to maintain it for the time being. Consequently, XFN will no longer be accessible, and I will no longer be reachable at the XFN e-mail address. My other e-mail address, likely to be my permanent one, is theninthbeauty@gmail.com. (You can also use gyaszdal@graffiti.net, but it's harder to spell.) Plz update your records.

If you know my Yahoo! e-mail, be aware that it is now rarely checked and you should only e-mail me there if you're okay with my possibly taking months to look at your message. I have an "official" Yahoo! e-mail address which I use for job-hunt stuff, but as it contains my full real name in the address, I'm not giving it out here.

Also, here is a brief rundown of the past week or so:
( Unexciting nonadventures )

Also: I went to Bloomington today. Consequently, have had some very important things reaffirmed for me, so I'm sharing them here, openly.

1.) Fuck this Lol-Mart shit. I need to find a better place to work. Based on what it cost me to go to the doctor when I was sick a couple of weeks ago, have come to the conclusion that health insurance is not negotiable.
2.) Fuck this living in the Tri-State shit. I need to go back home, where I don't have to pay attention to the societal attitudes &c. that bother me, where I am happier even when things aren't going so well, and where there's stuff to do. (A lot of the stuff that entertains me is even free or low-cost, so being poor in Bloomington isn't the Death By Boredom that it is in Evansville.) But I cannot stay here. It is killing me, and I want to live. Right now, I'd even settle for moving north and east to be CLOSER to Bloomington.

Once more into the breach, I suppose.

Plz disregard last entry. I was totally out of control last week, which was a crappy week anyway even if it did entail a record-breaking four trips to Bloomington. If I haven't discussed it with you, assume I don't want to talk about it and move on.

Happy birthday to forgottensanity! Because it's still 4 December here. Also, I got your package yesterday. I have not opened the presents, but did open the tin (because I always do what you tell me to do), and the contents thus far have proven to be delicious. :9

If you want some sort of Christmas card or sommat from me, and I haven't already extorted your mailing address from you, be sure to head here and leave it in a comment. Last day is 10 December.

Took the car to get an estimate on the repairs today. It comes to something like $1900, which entails the replacement of a headlight, a fog light cover, a lining, and I think my entire front bumper to boot, plus painting everything, plus plus my car being in the shop for like four days. Thanks to the miracles of insurance, I pay $250 and the insurance foots the bill, then passes it on to me, the valued customer, in the form of a higher premium.

Not much else to say.

A happy belated birthday to the ever-wondrous dethorats, whose birth was conveniently timed to coincide with the third installment of quarterly taxes. Anyway, Price, I hope it was fabulous and that you got lots of pr0n and whatnot. XD

Not much has happened in the past week. I took the car to get an oil change, and discovered that I'm probably going to have to buy new tires for the back wheels in the near future. Fuck. Well, I knew I wasn't getting new tires with the new car, so I guess it was just a matter of time.

Oh, and Callice went to the vet's and had her shots, and everybody said that she was such a good kitty. This is because they did not have to lure her on to the porch and then manhandle her into the Sky Kennel. When we actually got to the vet's office, she decided that she didn't want to come out of the Sky Kennel, given that people were going to stick sharp things into her and I was going to let them.

Teh m0mmy is sick. Pollen can't be friends with our respiratory systems and sinuses this time of year, so allergies have set in. I expect it will be my turn to be felled next, in which case you can all look forward to a bunch of posts where I melodramatically complain that I am DYING and my BRAINS are MELTING and SO ON and SO FORTH.

Them what's into samurai need to go out and get Stephen Turnbull's Warriors of Medieval Japan right the fuck now. It does not disappoint.

♥

So, the mundanities first: Took Callice to the vet this morning. The vet said that, from what I described, he thought it was likely behavioral in nature and would thus take longer for her to be broken of it, but he gave me an antibiotic anyway; if she's not sick, it won't hurt her, but if she has a bladder infection, it will help. (He couldn't get a urine sample from her, and anything I could bring from the litter box would be useless because all the litter would make it hard to analyze.)

Also, teh m0mmy and I saw the skinny little black cat who maybe doesn't have a home; this cat is a total spaz, though watching it is always fun. It's also fairly good-natured and once tried to follow Mom into the house: "Ooh, is there anything nice in there? Can I come in? Wouldn't you like to have a little cat like me?"

Went into work, played with Illustrator for half an hour. Bleh.

But now, onto the REAL event of today.

( Fortune favors the bold, yo )

Sorry, augustuscaesar, no pictures tonight, but maybe if you do your homework and learn your periphrastics, some will be up for you tomorrow.