grrgoyl

The Search for John Gissing: Arrived. It came via DHL which, you'll remember, isn't my first choice in a delivery agent but it wasn't up to me. After yesterday they're even less of a choice. I toodled on over to the tracking site to check its progress, and you can imagine my astonishment when I saw it was marked "Delivered" and "Signed for" already. WhatWhatWhat???!!?! I immediately headed to the mailbox only to discover it sitting on my doorstep. Which means someone climbed 3 flights of stairs and put it there (or tossed it over the railing from below) but couldn't be bothered to ring the doorbell and deliver it properly. What is wrong with them? This isn't brain surgery. "Abandoned" is not a synonym for "delivered." Thank god it wasn't something truly valuable like, say, a passport.

Passport: Arrived! Just when I was ready to lie and claim I was traveling sooner than I was. I can't help but think it's no coincidence that my earliest date of travel on the application was July 23, which if it were would be cutting it very close indeed. I had hoped its delivery would coincide serendipitously with a sudden drop in fares, but no dice. Amusingly, the passport was packaged with a pamphlet cheerfully proclaiming, "With a U.S. Passport, the world is yours!" because you're an AMERICAN and therefore foreigners must defer to YOU. Or so I preferred to interpret it in my current bitterly anti-American state of mind.

Creepy old neighbor Louis: Is still spending every day out on his balcony. Which I don't care about except every time I pass the window, he's looking straight up into our house. When it gets this hot, I don't much care to wear clothing, and I don't want to don a shirt just to walk around my living room. So he gets a little peepshow every now and then, which I guess is incentive enough to keep him staring hopefully. Ewww. But when it gets this hot, my comfort takes first priority, even if it's giving an old man his jollies.

Speaking of crazy neighbors, I got cornered into a conversation with The Alcoholic, who can't believe Tery and I don't use our air conditioning every single day (we don't break down until it tops 100 degrees). She uses hers at the first hint of mugginess, she told me proudly. A bigger sweatphobe I've never seen. I explained that we're New Englanders and used to 100 degrees plus 95% humidity, so it really doesn't bother us that much. I gave the excuse that we're nervous about running out of freon and needing it serviced. 5 minutes after we returned to our respective homes, she called me excitedly, telling me to check the user manual for our AC unit. Hers doesn't specifically mention freon servicing, so she reckons it doesn't use freon. Yes. She believes she has the world's first totally environmentally friendly air conditioner, that she bought 10 years ago. I didn't waste time trying to correct her, as it's not likely to change her usage anyway. But this didn't do much to raise her intelligence in my estimation.

Harry Potter: Finished "Half-Blood Prince" (again) and am more excited than ever for "Deathly Hallows." Meanwhile Tery is more stubbornly in denial than ever. We were talking about something and she made the comment, "Whatever, it's just Harry Potter." She HATES that Harry is so popular because she is, as my tag so aptly describes her, a joy-sucking robot. Which is perhaps for the best, so we aren't fighting over the book when it arrives. I'm holing up all day Sunday and Monday, NO INTERNET/NO SPOILERS whatsoever, then Monday night plan to see Order of the Phoenix in IMAX with my friend Rebecca. I also expect to gloat my face off to her silly sister-in-law, who refuses to believe that Snape is anything other than pure, unadulterated evil -- no complex motives, no hidden layers, just straight up exactly what Jo has made him seem to be. That will be fun.

Gideon: Has an adrenal tumor (common among ferrets). Unfortunately the gland in question is wrapped by the vena cava so it's a very complicated surgery. Tery brought him to the premier vet specialist in Colorado, Dr. Fitzgerald:

Some people might recognize him from an Animal Planet show called "Emergency Vets." He didn't want to do the operation at first, until he met Giddy and had to admit he was a great little guy and worth trying to save. He's still strong and healthy enough that he shouldn't have any complications. We'll see. Fortunately too Dr. Fitzgerald's hospital recently joined the VCA family so Tery can use her 70% employee discount.

That's all. Internet radio silence begins Friday evening just to make double sure to avoid spoilers. Will resume communication Tuesday morning. Over and out.

Current Mood: high
Current Music: I've lost a war, I've lost a fight, I've killed a man, wasted a life

This probably won't be my best work, but there are some things that need to be said and I'm getting a headache trying to coalesce them into anything coherent. As a consolation, I'm including photos which are always very popular.

First, our terribly gay ferret Xandir has been terribly sick for weeks now. Sick enough to stymie a ferret specialist in New York that Tery has been corresponding with. We believe he has some form of IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) that's giving him diarrhea and alarming weight loss. Tery is barely sustaining him on a repulsive diet of raw liver, raw egg and goat's milk mixed in a blender.

He went into the hospital yet again for another day of IV fluids, and Tery asked how I felt about her bringing the machine home to keep him hooked up overnight. The machine in question is a fluid pump, which is coincidentally also the bane of my existence working overnight as it is the machine that alarms constantly every time the animal moves and causes an occlusion in the line. So you can imagine how thrilled I was at the prospect of having one in the relative peace and quiet of our home.

But the other problem was devising an enclosure for Xandir. With a catheter stuck in his veins, we couldn't have him running about free-range as our ferrets do. We dashed to Target in search of some sort of baby playpen. We were almost big enough Polacks to shell out $40 for a crib-like thing, before Tery came to her senses and discovered the storage bin aisle, with a large $13 tub that would do just as nicely.

Fortunately Xandir wasn't moving much so we weren't subjected to the interminable beeping that I put up with at the hospital. He was miserable stuck in the tub, while all the other animals were doing their damndest to jump in and join him.

He's doing a little better now, but it is quite demoralizing.

~*~

My check has been cashed by the State Department, which means it's a fairly safe assumption that my passport application has been approved. In anticipation of my trip to England, I'm suddenly craving new T-shirts. I think I deserve them -- I wear boxers and wifebeaters the rest of the year and besides, nothing says American tourist like tacky novelty T-shirts. But I think these are actually pretty cool.

First, this Serenity shirt which I love the most:

Second, this awesome vintage Cure. I think

vagynafondue should buy one for herself and one for Chooch, who WILL grow up to be a Cure fan if he knows what's good for him:

Lastly, and sadly out of stock currently, Shaun of the Dead. Which, on a trip to England, might be a bit like wearing the band's shirt to the concert.

These shirts and many, many more can be found here.

~*~

I love eBay most of the time. What I don't love is when there's a million of something available, and some berk outbids you on your auction just because it's ending an hour sooner. I believe there are enough auctions of any given item that everyone can have one, but some people would much rather ruin a total stranger's day.

I mention this because our old Sharp Hi8 camcorder died out of the blue a few weeks ago, leaving us not only without access to scads of home videos on 8mm tapes, but with a tape trapped in the camera itself. Without knowing whether the problem was with the battery or the charger or the camera itself, I thought the safest bet was just to get a used, really cheap 8mm camcorder for the purpose of playing our tapes one last time so we could convert them to VHS.

Well. Camcorders, it turns out, have a very high resale value. There's a veritable feeding frenzy going on as we speak on camcorder auctions. There's even a power seller with a constant stream of camcorders up for auction, all beginning at 99 cents. The catch is the seller comes right out and admits that the cameras are "as is" and they don't even run a basic test on them before putting them up for sale. Almost every one of these auctions finishes between $80-$100! I've made some foolish purchases in my time, but if I ever pay $100 for a camcorder that might not even turn on, feel free to suspend my internet privileges.

The upside of this is I could probably get $30-$50 for our completely dead Sharp, unless we have to resort to forcible means to extract the tape.

After losing several auctions I thought no one else would possibly be interested in, in frustration I took the next Buy It Now offer I came across. I probably should have shopped around a little bit more, but I can only take so much failure before I just snap.

~*~

Finally, my new icon is from our latest rental, The God Who Wasn't There. This was a recommendation from my London friend Jeffy, who felt sure such a movie wouldn't even be available in ultra-conservative, radically religious America (I smugly informed him how wrong he was). This is a refreshing change from all the Evangelical Christian documentaries we've been renting. It's more or less scientific proof that Jesus never existed. It was a little too MTV style for Tery's tastes, with flashy graphics and music, but I enjoyed it. One of the most compelling arguments is the similarity "The Greatest Story Ever Told" bears to multiple pagan myths, like Osiris, Dionysus and Odin. "Ah, but OUR resurrection story actually happened, that's the difference," the Christians argue. O-kay.

Also the fact that Jesus fulfills 18 out of 24 of the mythic hero criteria. He's even kind of low on the list below Hercules, Oedipus and Theseus. Also there are a number of other deities who were thought to have been born on Dec 25. The list goes on and on.

Features the superintendent of a Christian school filling our children's heads with all sorts of garbage getting argued into a corner and fleeing the interview, as they always do when they run out of bullshit to spew.

It's only an hour, but some of the juiciest interviews are stuck in the bonus features for some reason, lasting longer than the movie itself. I think you'll agree from this icon that it's worth a looksee.

~*~

One last picture: Kitten Mitten suffering a bit of an identity crisis. Tery thought I shoved her in there for the purpose of this photo, as if I would ever traumatize my baby just for a picture for my blog.

This igloo is zoned for ferrets.

~*~

As an addendum but far from an afterthought, HAPPY BIRTHDAY

kavieshana!!!!!

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: And if he ever suffered it was me who did his crying

Thanks to all my friends who wished me a happy birthday : )

The day itself wasn't terribly special, particularly since it was one of my "fake days off" after working overnight where every minute is just a struggle to keep my eyes open. However Tery spent it striving to fulfill my one request, a pistachio cake like my mom used to make every year and I haven't had since I moved away from home. She had to recreate it based on the flimsiest of physical descriptions, and with the crushing pressure of not spoiling my happy childhood memory. She didn't do too badly:

The unnatural green color is one of my fondest memories

The punchline to this is that while Tery and I were talking to our respective mothers by phone and relating her success, her mother got misty-eyed at the thought of us preserving my family traditions, while my own mother had no memory at all of ever making me pistachio cake. I guess we now know where I get my pathetic memory from.

As for birthday swag, well, not much to list. Tery got me the new Muse (which rocks, btw. There are is a song near the end with a bombastic, Queen-esque, rock opera sound that bring tears to my eyes, some definite anti-Bush leanings, and Supermassive Black Hole and I are engaged to be married). I got South Park Season Nine which I had to buy for myself. Tery gives me shit because I shop for myself a week before my birthday. This is why: because I can't count on, or expect, anyone else but Tery to know what to get me. Then of course there's JeffyJeff's package, which won't arrive until mid September. That's just the way he rolls.

~*~

Another present I got for myself would be the last Harry Potter book. I decided to follow

ms_hecubus's lead and went to Borders hoping to score a free bumper sticker lying around unattended. Instead I almost immediately encountered an employee who asked if I needed help. Rather than wasting time, I asked about the promotion and he offered to reserve a copy for me on the spot. He was accommodating, enthusiastic, and perhaps more than a little gay. He seemed like he would be a really fun coworker and perhaps could have saved me from a life of working jobs requiring minimal human contact. I also know if everyone were half as stoked about customer service as he was, I'd be a damn sight happier as well. When he went to retrieve my sticker (hidden away behind the desk) he asked, "So, where do you stand on the issue?" Unhesitatingly I answered, "I trust Snape!" I heard him murmur approvingly, "I do too."

Once I was in my car it occurred to me that maybe he agreed with everyone regardless of what they said, but at the time I didn't question him because I simply can't imagine how anyone could NOT trust Snape.

~*~

I'm one step closer to my trip to England. I had also planned on my day off to get my passport renewed (having found it at the bottom of my closet with enormous relief. It had been missing since my car break-in, thus I couldn't be 100% certain that it was lost and not stolen (though obviously only an idiot keeps their passport in their glove compartment). Like I do with most seemingly insurmountable problems, I put it out of my head for a couple of months. Then of course I faced the possibility that it might have been stolen and now had to explain to Uncle Sam that I did nothing about it for a couple of months. That's right, fuck you, Homeland Security! Hence you can imagine my relief when I found it in my closet).

So I had the address of a passport agency that sounded perfect, one-stop shopping for a new photo and application. The problem was it was somewhere on Havana and Colfax, a frightening, busy intersection and, as I discovered, every single shop sign was in Spanish. Rather than try to travel to all four corners surrounded by angry traffic, I hightailed it south back home. However, I know myself very well and that once I got back inside my house I wouldn't want to leave again, and I wanted to get this taken care of. So I phoned Tery for another address (what did we do before cell phones??)

She directed me to a place in an office building very close to our house. I found it with no problem. On entering the office, I was intimidated to be greeted by three security guards as well as a metal detector. Sheesh, did the flight leave from here too? They told me I had to get a new photo, fill out a form and return with a travel itinerary. I said my plans weren't set in stone yet, but they seemed quite insistent that I had to have an itinerary to apply for the passport.

Well, now this is stupid. I'm not about to book a flight and risk not getting a passport in time, but I can't apply for a passport without booking a flight? Only in Bush's America. I decided to apply by mail so I didn't have to face down an unreasonable security guard about this detail.

Then I set out in search of a place to get a photo. The guard had mentioned Walgreen's and some other places that did them, but I heard only Walgreen's. No problem. I could picture a dozen Walgreens in the vicinity, I thought. There was definitely one I knew for certain but it seemed farther away than the ones I was picturing. It turned out none of the places I went where I could clearly picture one actually had one. And why does every single store have a red sign? Rather than just go to the farther one, I obstinately insisted on trying the locations I felt were closer, consequently driving for a half hour in search of a closer one. Pah.

So anyway, I got to one, got my picture taken, and have sent off my application for processing. Since I'm not flying until at least July, I think I have nothing to worry about. Then again, this IS my life we're talking about here. Stay tuned.

Current Mood: lazy
Current Music: How can we win if fools can be kings? Don't waste your time or time will waste you