Monday, February 27, 2006

Quote of the morning:

"You know you're a med student when you're type A about your TV shows, too."

-a classmate after a discussion about how we both can watch DVD's of our favorite shows until like 5 in the morning, stopping only when Blockbuster is closed and we can't go get the next disc-

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Gah!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/02/21/toilet.paper.ap/index.html

Makes any fight I ever had with any of my roommates seem pretty insignificant, now, even the one roommate who threw my friend into the wall over the thermostat. *shudder*

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

*throws up a little*

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/02/21/meat.carbon.monoxide.ap/index.html

This is really freaking nasty. I'm so sorry for the poor meat industry, losing money when meat goes bad that they have to fool us into thinking it's okay! Actually, I as a consumer will pay for this, since I am the kind of person who will buy discounted meat, so long as it looks okay and the date is fine (I freeze it immediately, quit looking at me like that!). Now, there won't be cheap safe meat, only artifically red meat that I could leave on my counter for days AND IT WOULD STILL LOOK OKAY. Tyson's is one of the companies that is FDA-allowed to do this, so watch out. Of course, I haven't knowingly purchased a Tyson's product since I read Fast Food Nation, but still, ugh. (For more info on why Tyson's is the DEVIL, go here.

Sorry for the rant. My fiance and I have become all tree-hugging hippy types after I read that book. We only buy organic or free-range, antibiotic-free meat products at the store, and we avoid Con-Agra products like the plague. I still eat meat because I like it, though. Despite all the E. coli O157:H7, the mad cow and the Campylobacter jejuni out there, I likes me some meat. Mmmm, meat. And eggs. I LOVE eggs. I have to buy the "vegetarian-fed, cage-free" eggs because of a video a friend of mine made me watch last year, but I still love them. I know practices like this have made that same friend go vegetarian in protest. For me, I have still "voted with my dollar" away from the companies that have the worst practices; I just can't give up my meat.

Although I may think twice about it for the rest of the day, and regret the beef stew I made last night for dinner.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

My Laptop!!!!!!!!!

I can't believe this, but I'm actually typing this from my laptop! It may never work again, but by golly, it is now and I'm enjoying it. My fiance worked some kind of voodoo magic on the router, or something, and voila! it works now. Maybe I won't have to call Dell after all.

Other than becoming an aunt this week, it's been pretty boring. I don't have any wild, funny stories about hairy locker room ladies, or anything similarly hilarious to share today. I'm watching the first Harry Potter movie while I study, but I've been too enticed with this fabulous "Inter-net" device to do much studying. *sigh*

Seriously, bus driving has never looked so good. Sure, the hours suck, but not as badly as my hours will next year. I'm sending my fiance to a class for "parents and spouses of clinical-year medical students". It's a support group for the unfortunate loved ones who have been bereaved by the jealous lover, Medicine.

Ooh, Malfoy just gave Harry the LOOK that says "You're mine, bitch!" I must get back to my fangirl activities... I mean, rewatching Harry Potter for the 1000th time. Man, I'm sad.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

This Just In

As of yesterday morning, 2/15/06, at 7:45 am, I became an aunt for the first time. He was born weighing 6 lbs, 9 oz. Mom and baby are doing well, and apparently his daddy is smitten.
1 down, 2 to go!

Monday, February 13, 2006

What Happens to You When You Get up at 5 am

So this morning in the aforementioned locker room, I pulled out my carefully-picked outfit of the day and received the shock of my life: I forgot to pack a bra. I've only been wearing one since I was 10 years old. For 14 years, I've had to wear some form of breast support every day, yet today I forgot one. After my shower, I put on my rather tight shirt and prayed that I'd be able to pull it off, but no such luck. It was saggingly obvious that I was braless. I heaved a sigh and headed out to meet my fiance, ready to ask him to take my home so I could correct my mistake.

As I get out to meet him, he says "we have to go home." Phew for me, but why?

"I picked up the wrong pants this morning."

I looked down, and I started to wonder, why did those pants look so short? And flare-legged? And strangely like a pair of jeans I bought at the Gap a year ago?

Yes, friends, my fiance was wearing my jeans. We officially wear the same size pants, just in strikingly different lengths.

So it's 8 am, and the high point of my day has already come and gone.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Mi Padre

So my dad is in town, and the other night he was over until about 11 pm, talking with the fiance and I. 11 pm seems to be the witching hour, the time when he MUST go home and talk to my stepmother on the phone or risk serious punishment, so he asked if we could take him to his hotel. That's when the following conversation ensued:

Me: "Okay, just let me go to the restroom before I explode." (I drank 2 large "2 and 3/4 lb" iced teas that evening, I'd like to add.)

Dad: "Uh, that sure was graphic."

??? This is the man who told me his grandmother used to say "Didja get any on ya?" after someone would loose a particularly heinous belch. This is the guy who, last night, said "Maybe it meant something different where I came from" when my fiance sweetly explained that his talent at tying cherry stems in knots with his tongue "meant he was a good kisser."

I guess my stepmother is wearing off on him, after 15 years of marriage, and that first night away was still under her influence. I have learned to accept some of her idiosyncrocies (and hopefully, she some of mine), and one of hers is that she was raised as a modern-day Southern belle. Women don't discuss certain things. She claims never to have, ah, passed gas in her entire life. When I was younger and would have to burp, she would look appalled and say "ladies don't do that!" Well, dammit, I guess I'm just not a lady. Shucks. My chances of marrying a rich man and being well-cared for are OVER. It's so funny because she's actually a fairly independent woman, successful in her job despite having to go to school part-time to get the college degree she couldn't get as a young adult. She just plays this role of being helpless, easily offended by things (she left during "Saving Private Ryan"; it was too gory for her), and totally submissive. Which is great for my dad, who likes to pretend he's in charge, but actually be led around. So it works for them.

Thank goodness I can burp in front of my fiance.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Random Thought From a Few Weeks Ago...

Locker rooms are the great equalizer. Where else would you be able to get naked in public and be (almost) totally unashamed? Today, I actually heard another woman fart in the locker room bathroom. I can probably count on both hands the number of times I've heard such a thing. (This is more impressive if I emphasize how often I use the bathroom, since I consume large quantities of iced tea and water and am constantly having to pee). I was proud of this faceless woman! For daring to fart in a bathroom! Audibly, even! Women are taught NOT TO FART, EVER. If you must do such a thing, do it quietly and alone (kind of like masturbation). I also realized that no matter how fat I felt in my workout class (I'm the fat slow girl), I didn't feel bad in the harsh lights of the locker room, totally naked except for my shower flipflops. In those lights, everyone has a little flab or unwanted hair, except for the swim team girls, who are totally inhumanly skinny and who need to eat a cheeseburger NOW. (Then they need to tell me their hair-removal secrets, so I don't feel like a gorilla next to them). *ahem* Aside from the swim goddesses, I don't usually feel like I'm comparing myself (badly) to the other women in the locker room. It's maybe the only place that the constant comparison and subsequent poor measuring up ends. Now, if only the floors weren't so covered in other people's hair...

Evolution Takes Its Course...

The other day I saw a man fishing out of a local bayou. I was horrified.

So why did I care that the man was fishing out of the bayou? For starters, it's a body of water usually less than a foot deep, so perhaps he was fishing for frogs or minnows, but I doubt any serious fish were present. Second, it doesn't have a great reputation for cleanliness of its water, but hey, neither does the Gulf. Third, and most importantly, the man was fishing about 100 yards downstream of a sewage treatment plant so foul that I have to roll my windows up and hold my breath as I drive by most days. Downstream of the drainage from the sewage treatment plant = this man was fishing in sewage. Can you say "fecal-oral transmission"?

I wonder if he got cholera from the truly enormous fish he caught.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Turn on the Mush-O-Meter, set it to High

My fiance wrote this about us the other day:

On a board I frequent, the question was asked... "Are you the best for your SO?" My answer:
I am certain that no one has and likely ever will love me as much as she does. I know that she sees me as being the best of all things for her... which is what makes it so hard on the rare instances where we do fight or I do something stupid. It's weird for me to be the one on the pedestal sometimes.

I know that no matter what disagreements we may have or problems we encounter, there is that core of "us" that we always go back to. We keep each other balanced in ways that we've never had before with anyone else. And we survived two-and-a-half years of [long-distance]. If we can endure putting ourselves through that, I think we can endure anything together.

We help each other be the best possible versions of ourselves that we can be. She's a part of me as much as anyone could be and I am the same for her. We have the kind of love that grew out of crazy passion and lust and sustained itself into the stuff that lifetimes together are made of. We're a family. A family in the way that I always thought two people should be and that I never really saw in my parents.

There may statistically be someone out there that's better for either of us... but I'm not holding out for that. We've made a commitment to each other. We're going to get married, have a home, have careers, have kids, and everything that comes with that... and we're going to do it together. I can't imagine it being any other way.
_____________________________________________________

In other news, my friend Basia found me the most incredible t-shirt ever. It really is too bad it's (not its) sold out, as I am totally, utterly IN LOVE (with the T-shirt, of course)!
This rivals one of my other favorite T-shirts of all time, which I have yet to purchase. This one also describes me rather well, I think... Available only at www.questionablecontent.net, since my birthday is coming up (in December...)

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

My Sister's Keeper

Last night, my dad called me on his way home from work. I've taken to answering all his calls recently, as my stepsister is expecting her first child and is due any minute. Here's a summary of our conversation:

Me: Hi, Dad, what's up?
Dad: Have you heard from your sister lately? I've tried to call her and I sent her an email and I can't seem to get ahold of her. **insert panicky tone of voice**
Me: Uh, no. She updated her blog today, though.
Dad: What's a blog?
Me: Uh. It's this online thing. Anyhow, she's on IM right now.
Dad: Okay, because I haven't heard from her in a couple of weeks.
**types to sister, "Dad thinks you fell off the face of the earth"**
**sister types back "What??? I talked to him like 3 days ago!"
Me: Dad, she's online right now. She's alive and she's fine.
Dad: *trying not to sound so worried, but not quite succeeding* Oh, okay, well, I'm working on your bookcase tonight...

Oy. My sister is 22 years old and I am still the official go-between. I can't believe she ever let Dad figure out she screens her calls--we've had no peace ever since.