I’ve lost my singing voice. Call it devine retribution, but every day I make myself sore and hoarse making call after call with clear, cheerful enuciation. You know those stereotypes of cheerful customer service people in Asian countries screaming about how they’re honoured to serve you? That’s my job.
So now I can’t hold a tune properly because me voice cracks and the notes wobble. Drat.
So asides from one class that’s put me on the waiting list my Mcgill/Minerva woes are taken care of. Mothboy and I are in the midst of a move to a bigger space, and every time I sit down and try to write in this, something distracts me and a slap dash, half finished message is the result. You can imagine this is driving me batty, so first, about the move:
The 2.5 (two and a half room) apartment sits along Rachel, middle of the building in the back. It’s just sunny enough to be liveable without blinding me, with two big double door windows that I’m going to vover with my IKEA curtains (white) and then make an additional layer of drapes for blackout purposes. What I’d really like would be to line a fairly thick fabric with black and have a lighter colour inside (to prevent claustraphobia) but I’m not sure that’ll work. Either way, the layout is much, much better than my old place, with a small counter (instead of none) in the kitchen. Since Mothboy brought his dishwasher and I have a sturdy wooden kitchen cart, all together that should mean a delightfully assembled kitchen.
Rachel is a bit further out from the metro than I’d like, however it’s only going to be uncomfortable during the frigid days of winter. Otherwise it’s just an extra 15 minutes of sleep lost in the morning. Given that one of my classes starts at 8:30 AM this semester, and the scheduling gods have given me a full range of early morning classes next semester, if you see a brunette zombie blearily hauling around a bag of school books you know who it is.
So as long as I can get past spot # 13 on a wait list for a first level biology class I’m all set. Sort of ironic that the thing most out of my grasp is a class that’s basically a throw away “A”. I’m not sure if sharp elbows or bursting into tears would be a better lubrication, but I’m pretty set on wearing a silly hat and holding a huge bunch of flowers in May of 2011. I want this bunch of flowers to be as big and over the top as possible. We’re talking vase tipping armloads.
In other news, my mother is now on facebook, and my parents are finally part of the same social network again. This is going to be… interesting. I know I can count on my mother to behave. Graduation is going to be a bit of a trial. I’ve already got my Grandfather on notice to sit on my father, made him promise NOT to bully my mother, and now the trick is to build up my mother’s image as “shy” so my super type A grandfather won’t be offended if my mother leaves mid-graduation to go sit in a shady spot and walk playmobil on the edge of a fountain.
So I woke up with a sandpaper throat all down the left side up to my ear and a hoarse voice- I’ve been treating it via judicious overdosing on cough drops so I can do my job, but it hurts to talk. I can’t tell if this is my chimney like smoking neighbour or a virus as yet.
In an effort to tame the massive dishes backlog, both the kitchen and the bathroom sink are full of dirty dishes and fruit flies. Mothboy is trying to wash them in the bathtub. I suspect shortly there will be a row of pans soaking in the bottom of the tub and the dishpan filled with water on the bathroom floor.
Wow. That’s over half a package of honey-lemon flavoured Halls. My poor throat.
So my Gateway is in the process of giving up the ghost, stopping abruptly at complicated files like videos, with unresponsive keys, etc… I don’t want to, but I probably should, and being frugal I was deal hunting.
My friend, who prefers to be known as Crazybones McPanicPants, recommended a sweet little piece with good graphics capacity for the price, and an even nicer price tag thanks to back to school sales. I did my research into technical specs and set out to be the proud owner of a HP Pavilion G62 224CA, at the Montreal St. Catherine’s Futureshop.
After managing to convey to the sales clerk I knew what I wanted, for some reason with him acting really awkward, we got as far as the actual transaction where I ask to get the real computer, not the display model. Oh, whoops, I’ll have to wait two hours for the $100 Windows installation. I told him I can install windows myself, and he asked me if I’ve ever done it. Yes, several times. It doesn’t come on a CD? Fine, it’s on the machine? They’ll make a nice configuration CD for me. I can make my OWN CD for re-installs. At this point his technical expertise seems to have floundered and after heading into the back to deal with my request he vanished and conveniently forgot about me.
Just in case you wondered, as well as the usual bloatware, Windows 7 comes on the machine. So what he was offering me was the installation process you do at home after you hit the on button, and making a CD with a program that comes on your computer.
Look, you horrid little man. I know that Futureshop is riding you to sell bogus services so they make more money. However just give me my damn computer and take the sticker price off my credit card instead of wasting my time. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a woman, since you’ve never pulled this shit on any of my guy friends, or that I look non-tech-y, but if I get anymore of this bullshit I’m going to start taking scrotums off the boys in red polos until I have enough to make an ugly, balding fur hat.
So life is actually doing what life’s supposed to be doing. Mothboy’s birthday is coming up and I bought a pound an a half of ground almonds and a small carton of pasturized egg whites. My latest piece of (pornographic) writing is an unexpected sensation on fetlife, I had fun helping a friend move her place and I’m making progress on my school related red tape.
This morning I woke up fifteen minutes earlier to fit a shower in and stumbled around making breakfast and trying to collect the scattered pieces I’d need as part of my day. Leaving on time, at a brisk trot for the bus stop, my morning mumbling and singing to myself was innterupted by a man who wished to let me know I was pretty, followed by sexy, followed by “a big woman”, I can only assume he was refering to my butt. Yech.
I picked a bunch of wild flowers, butter and eggs and the dandelion cousin that grows in sprays with small blossoms. They’re in a glass of water on my desk now, turned to put their best features forward. Having a month at my job, I’m starting to get cozy at my desk and thinking about decorating, though as yet I’m not sure how. Maybe a square of pretty wrapping paper as wall paper?
Like most of the world who has time to waste time on the internet, when I’m not in school, I work a white collar job, which just promoted me. I’m Accounts Receivable now! More horrifying, I have trouble spelling “Receivable”
N, the previous person holding this postion and I’m getting praised lots and lots, which is making me terrified I don’t measure up. Such is life.
Time passes, scalp woulds slowly heal. This morning I woke up with a scream, as mothboy had affectionately thrown out his arm across my pillow, trapping and pulling the hair on the right side of my head so that the stitches stretched. As usual, profuse apologies, just as the other night when he walloped my nose but good when rolling over and walked on my foot.
Who needs a D/s relationship to get beaten up? Ironically enough, I’m the clumsy one.
A tropical storm was puffed up from somewhere down south, turning the city into one giant humid sauna. Ontario and the Maritimes are likewise afflicted. Me, at work, I’m typing this out on my office lunch break while my fellow employees camp out in front of the barely cooling air conditioner. Customers are all crabby or on vacation, and work decided to shut down for two weeks.
Not wanting to find myself cash short, I took their option for a promotion of sorts. I’m going to learn to do collections on accounts on Monday. Yipee.
Since I update so infrequently as to have mentioned little about my employment, I work for [redacted, let's call them Acme Telesales], selling business guides. It’s not a bad gig. Most people quit after a few days, but I’ve stuck it out and discovered a mild talent for sales. The bosses are all geeks and I need to organize a lunch time D&D campaign, which is the only nerve racking part.
And it’s hot. Oh lord, this office is making me drip from every pore. any more of this and I’m coming to work in a bathing suit.
So at 9:00 AM this morning I had two cysts removed from my head. Previously speaking Dr. V had been unable to get the surgery room, and we’d discussed the removal but had to put off the actual cutting, so this was D-day for head lumps.
For those of you not informed already, I have hereditary sebaceous cysts, which are basically big benign, ingrown hairs. The only problem with them is awkward placement and progressive engorgement, since to outside observers it’s a blind little bump the same colour and hairiness as the rest of my scalp. However lump number one had increased in size from its starting point when it grew in with puberty, to poking out of my hair like a disfiguring iceberg, and lump number two was on the side of my head, where headbands squooshed it uncomfortably. So, it was time to take advantage of Canadian medical care.
I’d laid the ground work for getting it done. Dr. Old at the school clinic, Dr. GS in dermatology, and finally one consultation with Dr. V, the actual surgeon, since Dr. GS no longer performed the procedure (I assume due to his advanced age). After checking myself in (accompanied by mothboy) for moral support, the nurse prepped me to lie on a narrow, high table by covering it with a fitted sheet so worn it had holes in it. She then gave me stern instruction not to touch the sterile equipment, and after she left mothboy wandered around the room conspicuously not touching things and pretending to sneeze on the table from about a foot away.
Dr. V showed up after a few minute’s wait lying on my back and at my request the doctor provided a narration of the procedure. Bactine swab followed by lidocaine needles that the doctor promised would be ‘a bit painful’. Which means “very painful” in doctor speak, and given a fairly high thresh hold on my part, I weighed it against the pain of a migraine and found it lacking, though each deep-ish poke was followed by a loud “Yow!”
At this point, needle phobic mothboy “had to go to the bathroom”, a fact that he maintains was the absolute truth, and he disappeared. Doctor and nurse clucked what a poor thing he was.
As I do in stressful situations, I keep up a steady stream of babble related to my interest in the procedure, making sure the doctor knew everything that was going on. She began to cut with snick, snick like sounds and an uncomfortable tugging sensation on my scalp like she was pulling my hair. When asked, she said she was cutting the skin, but she might as well of been poking me over and over again for all I could feel or see.
And that’s when we heard the whistling. Twisted Nerve, lovingly replicated enough that it sounded like someone was whistling just outside the door, the music from a scene in a film where the assassin impersonates a nurse to kill the hero. My doctor’s cell phone. So my doctor liked Kill Bill and has a weird sense of humor. I like her!
Shortly after cyst number one was out, mothboy reappeared and was duly teased. Cyst two, much smaller and on the side of my head came out. Mothboy left again, this time due to actual queasies.
And then came the cleanup. Scuttling out with alacrity befitting of a surgeon, Dr. V departed, trailing a medical student leaving only her business card and the nurse who was to clean up.
And there was a lot more blood than they realized. I proceeded to go into shock, while the nameless nurse tried to get me to sit up, making the fainting woozies worse and wash my blood drenched hair without disturbing the stitches. Blood got everywhere. “Oh shit” quoth she.
I never, ever want to have a medical professional do something behind my head and start swearing. Nameless nurse swabbed down my hair and floor. I babbled. Mothboy squeazed my icey, now yellow coloured foot and brought it to her attention that I was going into shock (or to be honest, I’d got there already and was trying to buy a local map from the gift store at the train station). Nameless nurse announced that she couldn’t tell by looking at my face, as I’m so pale.
Parked on another bed in a waiting area, I camped out for half an hour while a second identical but also nameless nurse (I think there’s a law that says that nurses have to be wiry, petite women with highlighted blonde hair) took my blood pressure and accused me of being a medical student since I could correctly use “vasovagal” and explain that my blood pressure was usually either normal or low-normal. Duly flattered, I crawled home with mothboy’s help and called in sick for the other half of my shift.
Now I have mild discomfort in my scalp and hair all spiked up from the sterile solution and spray on wound sealer I was bathed in, something I can’t wash until tomorrow. My hair is also tinted red from bactine/blood. Yipee.
Canada day, I went out with friends in the evening and played a short game of scrabble, learning new rules (apparently you can spell multiple words in a turn) and then went to watch the fireworks at the old port. As usual there were massive crowds, and we pushed through to try to get a good spot to watch. However as luck would have it, instead of shooting them off from the same location that the annual international fireworks festival chooses, we got smack dab across the water from where they were letting them off. I was so close I could see the little flaming dots as the actual firework shot into the sky.
The show must have lasted ten minutes and specialized in being big and bright. My favourite was the spiraling sparklers that whizzed up several stories into the air in a serpentine of little points of light, but they had the usual multi-coloured firework pops, and some sort of red tinted firework that exploded twice, for a double blossoming effect.
After fireworks, there was a general push to go to a Macdonald’s, and Mothboy horrified us with tales of the improperly cleaned milkshake machine. I had chicken nuggets, something I hadn’t tried for several years. Last time they were disappointing little dried out lumps, but either the health conscious rebranding phase has blown over or these ones were more fresh, and suitably moist and greasy, grey inside, rather than glaring white, and full of hot salt and oil.
I’m not sure how I feel about the hideous lime green new look that they decided to institute. Mothboy thinks it’s stylish, but the horrid lime and red colour scheme and tan-zebra patterned tables suggest cheap wood, and a sushi bar with issues, not wholesome unhealthy treat food. Perhaps it’s not helped that the biggest picture on their menu is now the enormous salad, which feels like the obvious pandering it is. Whatever, at least the mainstay of my childhood desire has been restored to its former glory. Mmmm, generic chicken parts!
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