I've sorely neglected posting as of late. This is mainly because last week was filled with complete morons at work, and I came home a few times all annoyed and pissy and just couldn't wait for the week to be over. The weather has been frigid and I absolutely can't stand being cold, which meant that from last Friday until Monday I was just shy of being considered an ice cube.

We did have some excitement last week. On Monday we had wicked strong winds and rain, which could have been really much worse if it wasn't almost 60F outside. The fun part was watching the wind blow the front doors off the store. The store has your typical drug-store entryway, all glass with an automatic door. The winds were so so strong that they were blowing apart the windows at their seams, so after a few calls to the DM and loss prevention, the supervisor on duty was told "call the store manager and get him to come fix it."

Because when you have customers walking through a death trap, you want the store manager to jury-rig the very heavy, steel and glass doorway with a few 2x4s from the Home Depot down the road.

Which is exactly what happened. While he was jamming wood into place, the DM and loss prevention showed up, and then a "professional" showed up, who promptly told the DM that the store should have been closed down as soon as shit started coming apart, because it should have been obvious that someone could have been killed (which it was very obvious - we were told not to let anyone park in the "fall zone" but yet still let people go through the entryway).

We did our taxes over the weekend. We're going to be using the federal refund to buy our tickets to Las Vegas this weekend. Eddie is sitting behind me looking through the menus of various places to eat while we're there. At this point it looks like we'll more than likely be staying at the Luxor, and I've managed to convince Eddie that I really, really need to upgrade the room to a spa suite, because I'm going to take an hour or five in that bubbly spa tub after the race.

Some of the state refund will be going towards fixing our windshield, fixing Mal, and our vacation next week.

Around Christmas I decided that to avoid having to do the same thing that I did last year around this time - trying to use up my vacation time before it expired by taking one day at a time off here and there - I'd take a whole week off at once. Eddie decided that he'd take the same week off, so we'll be home all next week doing nothing at all that we don't need to do. Which means that we'll be hitting up the Olive Garden for their soup & salad lunch special, getting our hair cut, going to a burger place that we've been told is AMAZING, and the highlight, a trip to into Boston to visit the Boston Museum of Science, where we'll check out the Harry Potter exhibit up there and the giant Imax theater. I'm wanting to go up to the Wrentham Outlets to pay a visit to the Nike outlet up there and try and weasel my way into a pair of new birthday running sneakers (did I neglect to mention that MY BIRTHDAY IS NEXT FRIDAY??), since the Garmin Forerunner that I'm covetting is too far out of my price range for something that would be classified as "gadget I want but will use 4 times a week for an hour or two." There's also going to be running every single morning we're home, and hopefully that will get my ass back into the routine again.

While we eagerly await the return of Glee, Lost, Doctor Who and the latest from Survivor, Eddie and I have been watching a few other shows, just to see if we like them. Some aren't too bad, some... some are really, really cheesy.

First up, we've got Spartacus: Blood and Sand, which is the latest offering from Starz. Imagine, if you will, a basement full of 16 year old boys, who decide to remake Gladiator in the same visual style of 300. Russel Crowe gets to act in front of a green screen digital landscape where epic battles produce equally epic amounts of bloodshed. All of the battles feature the same jerky slow motion effect that was used in the oracle scene of 300 as well as copious amounts of Matrix-style bullet-time.

Now, imagine that among that group of boys, someone chimes decides "There's too many half-naked men in this movie, people are going to think that we're making gay porn! WE NEED BOOBS!!!!" Thus, every other scene involves a shot of nipple. And then you get to see some dude's ass. And then when you expect more battles, you're treated to a full-blown orgy. Oh, and there's a string of plot, involving a warrior who needs to leave his wife behind to go do battle. Because that's what happens to gladiators.

On BBC America we've picked up 2 new series, Demons and The Inbetweeners. Demons follows the life of the teenage boy who also happens to be the last of the Van Helsing family line. Imagine Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but British, and with a penis. Boy meets monster of the week, boy smites monster, boy deals with love and family. Not the greatest show around, but it's good for when you want something that you don't need to think about.

The Inbetweeners, however, we're loving after just one episode. Awkward teens, hormones... so far, so good to us.

The ear is doing fantastic. No pain when I sleep or use the phone (and due to the fact that I'm deaf in the other ear, I can only use the phone on the ear with the piercing), no crusty shit, NOTHING. I picked up a pair of over-the-ear headphones at the beginning of the week, and while I miss the noise canceling properties of my beloved purple Skull Candy ones, if I turn the music up higher I wont hear the treadmill.

Happily, Eddie's septum has decided to be happy. It took a post-dinner trek back into Providence on Wednesday night to make it happy, but since then it's settled down and isn't so angry anymore.

The low point of the work week was the fat woman who came up to the counter, lifted her shirt up (OMG I SAW UNDERBOOB!!!!!) and told me "See this rash? IT'S ALL OVER MY BODY AND YOU NEED TO GIVE ME SOMETHING TO FIX IT!" The high point of my week was telling her, "Hold on, let me get the pharmacist for you, she should be able to tell you just what you need" and seeing her repeat the whole underboob-revealing process for poor BossRPh. We've also decided that when Supertech leaves us in June (bitch is moving to FLORIDA because it has no snow or something like that), we're all going to mouth off at patients as though it was the last day for all of us. Then, when people start complaining about it, by the time our district manager confronts us we can just say, "Oh, that must have been Supertech, we got so many complaints that we had to fire her."

I ran 5k this morning. Pity that it wasn't a race because it would have been a personal record for me. I'm really, really wanting to get outside more, but sometimes I just can't get out the door. Once I'm out there, I'm fine, but the actual getting up and going is the hardest part of morning runs. It sucks because I really need to get out there and run if I'm going to do anything in Vegas this year.

Eddie bought me a small $20 mp3 player today. It's got 256mb of space on it, but you can stick an SD card into it and get more space. I happy stuffed a 2gb card into it filled to the gills with Lady GaGa, Paul Oakenfold remixes, Girl Talk, and The Kleptones. Nothing like a monster beat to make running great.

I have 2 more weeks - that's 10 more work days - before Eddie and I are on vacation. Any bloggers in the area want to meet up for lunch or something? I'm sure we'll be bored out of our skulls by Tuesday afternoon.

Daith [d·aw·th]
-noun

1. an ear piercing which passes through the ear's innermost cartilage fold.


2. OMFG THAT HURT

Eddie had decided a few weeks ago that he really wanted to go and get something pierced. He really wanted his septum done, and not being the type to go into the piercing shop and not get something done I set about to figure out what I wanted to get. As much as I love the look of a monroe, and as much as I absolutely adore the medusa, I can't have either of them at work. He didn't want to wait until our vacation in February and I figured that a weekend is not enough to re-learn how to speak, so the tongue was out (which I wouldn't get anyway, because I'd probably manage to break half my teeth and choke on the shards). I decided to get an ear piercing, specifically one that I fell in love with a few years ago, the daith. I love how simple and how hidden it is. I loved the fact that it wasn't going to get snagged on a hair brush or stuck in my shirt when I get undressed. Then I read some of the background on it and decided that I had to get it done.

"...rings left in an orifice of the body act as a 'Guardian of the Gate'. They can be magically charged at the moment of the pierce to act as a 'filter' to what goes into and out from that orifice. In the case of the ear, an appropriately placed and charged ring could filter out all that is nonsense or bullshit and let pass that which is intelligent."

I'm now the proud owner of my very own bullshit filter.

We got everything filled out and paid for and were waiting on the couch at the shop, when a woman and two teen girls came in. The woman was the mother of one of the girls, and I give her some credit, she'd done some research and knew what she needed to bring to prove that the girl was hers so that the daughter could get her navel pierced, and what jewelry they were looking for to put in it. The girl's friend was asking if she was scared more of getting pierced or of getting a tattoo when she turned 18, to which the girl replied:

"I'm more scared of the piercing. The piercing goes through your skin and flesh, the tattoo doesn't."

Oh. My. GOD.

Eventually we did leave the waiting room, and after Jason marked my ears, I was asked to lay down on the examination table. Time does funny things in a piercing shop, or at least it does in Rockstar. You can sit there and everything will be normal, then you'll get to the aftercare lecture and things start to slow down, like when the flight attendants start to demonstrate how to use your seat belt when all you want to do is get up in the air. Your piercer will get everything set up and say "I'm going to put this tube in place, so you're going to feel some pressure." And it will seem like he's got his hands in your ears for roughly 10 minutes as he maneuvers that tube into just the right place. Once the tube is in place, he'll say "Ok, I'm going to just start to line things up a little; you might feel a pinch." That's the point where time speeds up, and it takes somewhere between a millisecond and "two shakes of a lamb's tail" before you're told, "Take a slow, deep breath in, and then let it out just as slowly." Everything at that point runs at light speed, your heart races and the blood roars through your skull and you feel every single thing.

I'll be the first to admit that I've done some painful shit to my body. I had a giant bar shoved through my ear. I've pierced my nipples. I've pierced other parts. I've tattooed my freaking chest. But this was probably the most painful out of all of it. I said as much when it was done, to which Jason replied, "Yup, that one... she's a stinger." Plus, it's the only piercing I've gotten where I was actually able to hear the fabled cartilage "pop", but I attribute that to the fact that I just had a needle shoved into my ear canal. I'm going to see if I can find some head phones that go over my ears rather than into them, at least until this thing is healed up some.
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Originally published at for pictures, visit the real site.

I think that I've lost my running mojo. This displeases me greatly. I haven't been out running at all this week, and I can't pinpoint exactly why.

For one thing, it's been shitty weather. It's cold, it's gray, it's just not pleasant. I don't want to be outside when it's like this. Cloudy, overcast skies make me want to do nothing more than just burrow under the blankets and not do anything until I absolutely need to get out of the bed. I have to force myself to go upstairs to shower, let alone get my ass in gear enough to use the treadmill.

Another problem is that I don't have any goals at the moment. Sure, I've got the BIG GOAL, the trip to Las Vegas and the ginormous race out there, meeting people I've become friends with online. However, that payoff is a year away. I need short-term goals, and at this point, I just don't have any, nor do I even know what to set as a goal in the first place. I don't know if I want to reward myself for meeting a goal, even if I could figure out what to set.

It's annoying as hell.

Tomorrow morning, Eddie will be waking me up before he leaves. He usually does this on the days when I need to go into work earlier than usual because it makes me less likely to go back into a 90-minute coma. I can't decide if I'm going to go out running immediately after he leaves, or if I'll get up earlier than his departure time and just have him drop me off a few miles up the road so that I can run home. Saturday morning we'll be running before we head out to Providence pay a visit to the guys at Rockstar. Sunday, we plan out some goals for me.

And then Monday I start all this shit over again.

It looks like it's National Delurker Day, so if you read me and don't comment, then leave a comment, mmmk? I mean, how am I supposed to know who the hell you people are if you don't let me know that you're here?

Some days I just want to crawl under the covers and not do anything. The bed is warm, it's cozy, I've usually got a cat or two sharing the bed with me... there's really nothing better, in my opinion. Today was one of those days, but I had to get up and go to work. Not fun, because so far this week has sucked. And it's only Tuesday.

Yesterday was insane; people kept coming in and wanting to wait, or were coming in and having no idea why their insurance wasn't working. I had one patient who got snarky at me because his insurance screwed something up with his account. I explained it to him twice, and explained that Supertech was working with the insurance company to try and resolve it but that we had no idea how long it would take to fix it. What does he do? He walks to the other end of the pharmacy to ask Supertech what was wrong with his insurance. At that point, she told him almost word for word the exact same thing that I'd just told him.

We're starting to save up for the trip to Las Vegas in December. We're hoping that we'll get a decent tax refund this year, and if it's big enough we'll finance the trip with that. I'd prefer to do it that way, since we absolutely suck at trying to stick to a budget. Unfortunately, neither of us has received our W-2 forms and Eddie can't find a year-end pay stub, so we can't even get started filing our taxes yet, and can't even begin to estimate what to expect as a refund.

I hate the beginning of the year. It's pretty much a 50/50 shot when we process a patient's prescription whether or not their insurance will work.

Why?

Because people seem to think that there's some magical database, hidden beneath our counters in the pharmacy, dutifully maintained by pixies and sparkley beings that has all of every patient's information in it. This magical database is probably some ancient, leather-bound tome that we stole from Hogwarts, that smells like Adderall and Vicodin and sweet, sweet Xanax, and holds the answers to their every pharmacy query, the answers magically appearing on the parchment as soon as their question escapes their mouths.

"What's my copay on these 7 scripts?"

"What's my deductible?"

"I have a deductible???"

"I have to pay for this?"

"Yes, I have new insurance, you didn't know this? Do you need to see the card?"

Lord love a baby duck, people. This is shit that the insurance companies want you to know. In fact, I'm willing to bet that they sent you a ginormous envelope at some point in December, and it was just chock-full of the answers to these questions (and more!).

I'm also willing to bet that you used it to line your bird's cage, without bothering to open and read the contents.

Eddie had picked out 3 movies for us to watch with Mom and Brian the other night: Paranormal Activity, Jennifer's Body, and District 9. I didn't really think that either of them would be interested in District 9 (although Mom liked it when we did watch it), Brian would enjoy Jennifer's Body for the nubile girlies but Mom would probably hate it, and we'd only rented Paranormal Activity and Mom really wanted to see it, so that's what we ended up watching.

I'd heard mixed reviews of it before we watched it. Some people thought it was stupid and didn't live up to its hype. Some people thought that the hype was well-deserved and that it was the scariest thing ever.

Me? I didn't think that it was the scariest thing ever. It had its moments where you'd jump a little in your seat, but scary? No. But creepy? Oh hell yes.

I'm one of those people who will replay a movie's creepiest moments in my head, and things that didn't seem that bad while sitting in the living room with the lights on are suddenly magnified while I'm laying in bed with the lights off. The strange twin girls with their synchronized walking and the slow-motion tidal wave of blood in The Shining, for example. The woman cooking in the kitchen and the poisoned little girl in The Sixth Sense had me up for the night. While I thought the movie itself was a huge waste of time and money, the mass suicides of The Happening were freaky to me.

In Paranormal Activity, you know when something is going to happen. It's the fact that you don't know what's happening that messes with your head. Plus, like Cloverfield, you don't actually see anything happen, so your mind fills in the blanks. The little bits of actual action that you do see are so brief and subtle that you wonder if you saw them at all.

Right before Eddie turned off the bedroom light, he rolled over, kissed me, and told me "Now don't get all freaked out about the movie and stay up all night." Until that point I hadn't thought of the movie since Eddie turned it off after watching the alternate (and freakier, he tells me) ending. Naturally, I was up for another hour replaying scenes in my head - the bumps, the flickering lights, the shadows and footfalls in an empty hallway, the standard fodder for horror movies for a century that were suddenly exponentially creepier in the bedroom than they had been a couple of hours earlier.

And I'll probably watch it again at some point just to get creeped out again.

Hello, 2010! I've got big plans for you!

I don't do resolutions. I never stick to them, mainly because I set unrealistic goals and then I feel like I'm forcing myself to do something that I don't need to do. Do I need to make a blog post every single day? No. My 6 loyal readers won't like me any less if I keep doing my 1-2 posts every week instead of flooding their feeds with a post every day. So here, in no particular order, are the goals I've set for myself, all realistic and doable.

1. Keep on running for enjoyment -- I started almost a year ago, and I've stuck with it much longer than anyone thought that I would. At first I kept it up because no one believed in me, so this year my goal is to stick to it because I believe in myself, and shun the nonbelievers. Shuuuuunnnnnnnn-nuh.


2. Lose more weight -- Since February 2009 I've lost 45lbs, checking in this morning at 184lbs. I have no set goal weight in mind. I just want to get to a weight where I can be both happy and healthy.


3. Save more money -- I have no idea where our money goes, and that sucks. I believe that if we actually take a look at what we're spending money on, the money will sort itself out. The goals here are a trip in December and laptops for the two of us.


4. Run in the Rock & Roll Half-Marathon in Las Vegas, December 5th 2010 -- This is going to require me to actually do a shitload of running between now and December because, hello, it's a freakin' half-mary (ZOMG, lookit me, using runner lingo). That's 13.1 miles. For comparison, my longest run, to date, has been 3.6 and took me around an hour to complete. Additionally, I need to be able to finish the race within 4 hours. Oh yeah, and we need to actually save enough money for me to register, fly out, and stay in Vegas for a few days. As a grand prize to myself, if we do make it out there, Eddie and I will be renewing our vows with Elvis. Apparently that's what you do in Vegas.

so, what are you doing this year?

Everyone else is doing it, so I'm going to be a frigging sheep and do it myself. Here's a damned recap of the last year, and maybe tomorrow I'll post about what I plan on doing this year.

Winter: I spent most of January sick and sleeping on the couch. This is my typical winter behavior because I think I have small, mucus-secreting aliens that live in my chest during the winter (eventually they leave and spend their summers in the Hamptons). I also went outside my comfort zone and met up with Robin and some other lovelies for a movie, some coffee, and the best damned carrot cake ever.

I decided in February that I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life as a fat cow. I found the C25K program online and decided that come spring I was going to give it a shot. Then Mom got an elliptical machine, which I used several times and referred to only as "the machine of death" until she traded it for a treadmill. I started the program on the treadmill, bought some new sneakers, and OMG, I'M A RUNNER.

Spring: March, I spent sick, but I still ran. We also discovered the sheer awesomeness of Doctor Who on BBC America, and watched the last season almost in its entirety before we realized we were watching it in reverse order. Whoops.

In April we had a serious family crisis when Eddie stepped on Pickle. After an overnight stay that cost roughly a week's stay in a Vegas hotel, we brought her home and she was stuck in a cage for 3 weeks. Later in the month we headed up to Robin and Eric's house for some adventure.

I started running outside in May. I hated it at first because I sucked at it, but I love it now. I also managed to do my longest run ever, a 20 minute run that I thought I'd never-ever-ever be able to do. My cousin got married, and much fun was had at the wedding. I think I took about 2000 pictures there.

Summer: At some point in the beginning of summer I decided that I really, really liked running, so much so that I would go out in the rain to do it. Around the same time I also decided that I was going to stop playing WoW. And the best part of all was discovered that I'd managed to get myself under 200lbs for the first time in forever. Eddie and I also did another road trip into Massachusetts, this time to meet Avitable when he was visiting.

I changed my domain name, and finished the C25K, and I chopped my hair off.

Fall: I ran my first 5k in September, the CVS Downtown 5k, and had a fucking blast. My pace was so awful that I may as well have been walking, but I finished. I also decided to sign up for the Flames of Hope 5k in October to raise money for the Gloria Gemma Breast Cancer Resource Foundation, and Eddie joined in, and then Mom and Aunt Jane joined in. We ended up raising a shitload of money, and Mom got to carry a torch in the closing ceremony. The vet diagnosed Pickle with adrenal disease after she lost all of her hair, but some sort of miracle happened and she's an entirely new ferret.

... And that pretty much brings my year up to date, since the last two months have been nothing but more running, getting the kitten, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

Oh the joys of Christmas mornings... the wrapping paper tossed on the floor and at the pets, the excitement when you get something that you really wanted, the joy in a family member's face when they get something they didn't expect but really love. That's what Christmas is like in our house.

This year, my mother and Brian got us a Wii and the Wii Fit to go along with it. We hooked it up and plugged in all the cords, set about making our little Miis, then put the Fit cd in the machine. Whereupon it decided to ruin Christmas.

Let me just say that I really, really dislike the little voice of the Wii board. I plug in all my pertinent information, my height, my birthday, step on the board to the go through all the tests, only to have this obnoxiously cheerful machine tell me "That's obese!" And then it makes my Mii explode, popping out her little CGI tummy with one of those sound effects that you would expect from a movie about a blob - a "BLOOP!" sort of sound - and she looks around, stunned, as though she's getting ready to scream "WHERE THE FUCK DID MY FEET GO!?"

I did have some fun with the yoga options on the board. Most of them involve standing on the board and holding a pose for 30 seconds or so, trying to keep your center of balance in a specific spot. I made it through a few positions without any problems whatsoever; none of them are incredibly torturous, and the virtual trainer is thorough to the point of annoyance in explaining how to do something. Then I did one pose, and instead of the typical "You did great!" it said, "You seem very unstable." Five minutes later it told me, "You seem very unbalanced."

Oh, CGI-trainer, you have no idea.

I hate being sick. It sucks balls - I can't run like I want to (although I'm going to try tomorrow morning). :sickly:

The snow is finally starting to melt away. It was raining and warm yesterday and that got rid of most of it, and there was more rain today, so really the only thing left is a lot of big piles of it from plowing. Once the bike path clears off, I can run out there in the mornings. I just can't wait for it to get darker later in the day so that I can do more late runs.

Work was pretty hellish today. It's never a good day when you combine Monday with a 3-day holiday weekend. Not to mention the fact that no one seems to be able to take responsibility for their own bullshit; it's only a matter of time before these people decide they want us to call and tell them to take their pills and to come over several times daily to wipe their asses for them. It's only going to get worse next week when half the people change their Medicare plans and wonder why they should need to give us their new insurance cards, because all these damned elderly seem to believe that all pharmacies are staffed with at least one psychic person who has already updated their information in the system. :argh:

Some day, I'm going to be old, and I'm going to be ten times more independent than most of the people who walk through my store. I'm going to read the paperwork that insurance companies give me, not just expect everything to just work out through the benevolent interventions of pharmacy pixies. I'll know that the pharmacies don't have some sort of magical phone number to the doctor's office that will allow us to speak to someone when they only seem to get a busy signal or a recorded message that the office is closed. And most of all, I'll know that the recorded menu for the store IS NOT A REAL WOMAN, and that she's not capable of listening to me when I yell at it and does not need to be fired.

I'm thinking of taking a week off next month. I've got a week of vacation time that needs to get used up and I haven't used any since last spring. I'll spend the week running around Coventry, playing Mario Kart, and sleeping late.

It's been a good weekend so far.

On Thursday, Mom had set a few presents out under the tree and told us, "That's it. That's all the presents for everyone. I knew what I wanted to get you guys and I got it, but that's all the presents." We didn't care that there were only two or three packages under the tree for us; we'd only gotten a single gift for each of them. We made a shit-ton of cookies on Thursday night, and filled our entire fridge with them to chill over night.

Yesterday was filled with lots of food and lots of family. Eddie and I opened our presents to each other downstairs. He did a fantastic job picking things out for me this year, getting me some fun gifts (a Zhu Zhu hamster and a Doctor Who cell phone charm) and some practical gifts, like my RoadID and some water bottles and the orange coat from the antique store. Only one of his presents didn't fit, and that's his own damned fault, but it can be returned at some point and exchanged for something else in Hot Topic. He loved the messages I'd programmed into his super-nerdy scrolling belt buckle, even though I did make one that said "TEAM EDWARD".

Mom and Brian got us a Wii and a Wii Fit Plus set, which we've played with all morning today. I also got a Sea Monkey tank and a light up moon that displays the current lunar phase, and some flannel pajama pants from my sister. Speaking of Danielle, she damned near had a heart attack when she opened the box with the Coach bag Mom and Brian gave her. In fact, she took the little cloth bag that the purse came in, put it over her head, and shrieked. It was hysterical. Right before we left to go to my father's house, we could hear her on the phone with my step-mother saying "MOM GOT ME A COACH BAG AND IT'S A REAL ONE!"

As though my mother would get her a fake one.

We had a huge dinner of crown roast and stuffing and all the trimmings, and topped it off with a HUGE assortment of cookies, a sweet potato pie, a pecan pie, ice cream and a pumpkin chocolate chip cake. We all got fat and happy. We also forgot to do the Christmas crackers this year, so there's no family picture of everyone wearing tissue paper crowns.

Today we hit the Wal-Mart Super Center and got another Wiimote and Super Mario Kart. The Wii Fit girl is brutal and called me a fatty, but I was happy to find out that my weight is actually about 7lbs less than what I was thinking that it was. We also weighed the cats, just because we could. We're having a blast with the bowling and the tennis games, Eddie enjoys sitting on the couch and watching me do the hula-hoop game, and the boxing one kicked our collected asses.

The best part of the weekend so far? The knowledge that neither of us needs to go out tomorrow.

No, it's not another list of what I want. That would be selfish of me to expect gifts from y'all. This is a list of things that I'm too lazy to put into their own posts. Maybe later though.

• We have about 2' of snow outside. Thankfully it hit over the weekend so the only casualty of the storm was the inability to leave the house on Sunday.


• All of the presents that were ordered online have made it safely to our house; the last one showed up last night, finally.


• I got a gift certificate to get myself a manicure. SWEET.


• Mal has finally decided that the Christmas tree isn't worth trying to get into if he's only going to get one of us to get up and yell "HEY CRACKHEAD, GET OUT OF THE DAMNED TREE!" Because that's what we do.


• I have to make another batch of cookies. Eddie ate a bunch of the ones that I made, so we need more. That will probably be a project for Thursday night.


• I spent about 5 minutes at work chatting with one of our regulars about his stretched lobes. He told me mine seem to be doing just fine, but not to go up any higher without using the "tape method" to stretch, otherwise I risk a blow-out and making my lobe look like a cat's asshole.


• Tonight I think that I'll start wrapping.


• I'm sick. I hate being sick, especially when it's a head cold like I've got. I'm going to call my doctor tomorrow morning and hope she's actually in there and can see me. I know from previous experience that if I don't nip this shit in the bud right away, my little sinus infection will just blossom into a beautiful case of bronchitis. No one in the house wants me to have bronchitis.


• Being sick means no running, because I can't breathe. I was hoping to hit 200 miles for the year, but no such luck.

Last year, this side of the family exchanged Christmas ornaments. Some of us made them, some of us bought them, but they're all hanging on the trees this year and we're all happy, even if the angel my mother made us has only one eye.

This year, we're doing a cookie exchange. The deal is, we can buy them or we can bake them. Mom, having bought a giant tub of cookie dough, set about to make a metric shit-ton of white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. Earlier this week she asked what I was baking, and then scoffed because my choice doesn't involve any baking.

The week before Christmas always seems to go by so much slower than any other week. On the flip side, if you're like me when it comes to shopping, there's not enough time to finish what needs to be done, even though the week seems to go by slower than most glaciers.

Last weekend Mom, Eddie, and I did some shopping. We hit downtown Providence to check out Craftland, which we weren't very impressed with; I prefer OOP! any day. We went to another couple of stores on the way down Westminster, and I got a present for Deb. From Providence we went to Pawtucket, where we grabbed lunch and went to the Foundry Art Show. We went there last year and it was fantastic, so we went again this year. I ended up getting gifts for the girls at work, as did Mom. After wandering around there for an hour or so we headed back out to the Rhode Island Antiques Mall.

The place is huge, filled with everything imaginable, and I'd like to move in. There were display cases filled with odd and ends and jewelry of every price range, small "rooms" decorated in various styles, like 1970's modern to odd little corners with 1950's furniture. There was a room that was dominated by a huge dining table and chairs, complete with china place settings for everyone; the type of place settings with 3 forks and everyone gets their own butter dish and cloth napkins. One wall of the room was filled with pictures of peacocks, another was taken up by a massive cabinet, and yet another had a beautiful cream-colored chaise against it. And there, leaning against one of the other walls, was a giant picture of a half-naked woman that looked like it could have been sold behind the counter at a gas station.

Downstairs they had even more stuff. I found a coat that I fell in love with, a vintage 70's eyesore made from orange suede with giant trim made from fake sheepskin. I walked around with it for about 45 minutes before I decided that I couldn't buy myself anything because it was too close to Christmas and I'd yet to buy anything for anyone else. After Christmas, once everything settles down a bit, I might go back and get it.

Work has been... work. One of the pharmacists is on vacation, which means we've had a floater all week on the days she would have been in. He's a good guy who, unlike most of our floaters, actually works. We didn't have any complete freaks come in, with the exception of the guy who argued with us for 10 minutes about how the prescription he was picking up said he had no refills left, and he wanted us to give him a vial that said he had refills. And the old man who yelled at me because we filled his prescriptions.

But for now, I'm going to clean the cat box, make myself some hot chocolate, be thankful that it's the weekend, and debate the insanity of going for a morning run tomorrow before the snow hits us.

I decided that if I'm going to run in Las Vegas next year, I need to run more and for longer distances. I mean, I can't very well run 3.5 miles every other day or so for the next year and expect to show up in Vegas in December and be able to run 13.1 miles in under 4 hours.

At least, not without a serious amount of whining to be had along the course, most likely culminating in me huddling in the fetal position in front of Mandalay Bay and crying for my mother.

Running on the treadmill is boring. Doing it for 30 minutes is not too bad, but anything more than 45 makes me feel like I'd have more fun trying to pluck my ovaries out with chop sticks. Because of the treadmill-induced boredom I'm going to be doing more outdoor runs, longer outdoor runs, which means that I'll be off the bike path. The path, as it turns out, turns to dirt about a half a mile past where I usually turn around.

So how does my husband show his love for me this Christmas? With a swanky new RoadID, so that if I'm ever in an accident, they'll easily identify my parts.

And you know what? Morbid or not, it's a kickass gift.

Seriously. I will never, ever whine that I can't go out because it's raining. Or too hot. Or snowing. I might be able to get away with using "upcoming apocalypse" as an excuse, but even that might be a stretch.

December in Rhode Island has been weird this year. Last weekend we had beautiful weather, and even hit the 70's or so one day. This last Wednesday we got 3" of snow with a day's worth of freezing rain on top of it. On my way into work, I occasionally see this woman who looks to be in her 60's or 70's (maybe younger, maybe older, I can't really tell at 35mph) running along our main road through town. She's stick thin and looks like a stiff breeze could take off with her, but she's out there jogging and I'm willing to bet she's covering more distance than I do on my runs.

She's also a shitload more dedicated than I am, since on Wednesday morning she was out there running in the freezing rain with little more than a windbreaker, some tights, and one of those bright-as-hell orange knit hats that my father wore hunting. Plus, it's not as though she was even running on the road. This woman was running on the uncleared sidewalk, in a few inches of slush and snow, dealing with not only the sleet coming down from above, but also the freezing water that the traffic was kicking up at her.

And I will never complain about the weather again.

However, I'll probably stick to my treadmill when the sleet starts again.