In the spirit of giving...

I firmly believe that change is good. While I have already experienced quite a few changes in my life this year, I thought I needed at least one more. In this case, my change translates into a hefty donation to Locks of Love.

In case it's not obvious, I have a lot of hair, both in thickness and length, so this should go a long way toward making a complete wig for someone.

End result. (Sorry, for the blurry pic, but the one that is sharp was taken from the front and not only does posting that pic go against remaining anonymous, but it's also an ugly picture.)

Shouldn't this make me exempt from any further participation in the holiday season?

When pedestrians scare me

Recently, I encountered an individual who I thought seemed like your average everyday pedestrian, although dressed a little on the warm side. About 3o seconds later, I was worried I was going to end up a head line on the evening news: Mental health patient escapes from hospital, kills woman sitting at red light.

Here is how it went down:

I pulled up to a stoplight to make a right turn. While waiting for a break in the traffic, I notice a man standing on the corner (to the left) at the crosswalk. He is wearing jeans and a grey hoodie with the hood up. This strikes me as odd because it's still really warm here...way too warm for a sweat shirt. As he crosses the street and passes directly in front of my car, I notice his accessories: gardening gloves (that look fresh from the package) and shiny black dress shoes.

In addition to the unique ensemble, this guy is walking very slow, eyes looking straight ahead and his posture is very rigid. Just when I think things are getting kinda creepy, he kneels down, lowers his face to the ground and proceeds to lick the freaking sidewalk. At this point things are officially weird and gross. After he finishes, he calmly gets up, turns around and heads back across the street (to where he started). I assume he is going to repeat the process and I wonder how many times before he decides to pull out a gun and shoot everyone at the intersection (Yes, I watch a lot of bizarre TV). I am ready to get the hell out of there. Luckily, there was a break in traffic and I made my right hand turn.

I often wonder who that guy was, how he chose his outfit, where he was going and how long it took him to get there.

Before you go on vacation...

When my husband and I go on vacation, we can be sure that some kind of cat-driven hi jinks will happen in our absence. We can always count on the oldest cat greeting us with a very loud, hateful meow, followed by ignoring us for the next several days. Her style of ignoring includes sitting with her back toward us and sleeping by herself instead of next to my left shoulder. I guess this is just how she chooses to express her disdain for being left behind.

The ignoring I can handle. The random crazy shit caused by one of the other cats (I'm looking at you Kelso) is what I dread. For example, when we went to Mexico for four days last year, we came home to find Kelso locked in the spare bathroom. To accomplish this, he went into the bathroom, shut the bathroom door and then opened a drawer in front of the door. This open drawer prevented the door from opening more than an inch. When we finally managed to get the door open and free him, we found surprise #2; piles of shit. I should also mention that before he shut himself in the bathroom, he also shut himself in the spare bedroom (which you must travel through to get to the spare bathroom). So, the sequence of events went something like this: (1) go into spare bedroom, (2) shut the door from inside, (3) go into bathroom, (4) shut the door from inside, (5) open drawer, (6) take a shit and then (7), repeat step 6 as needed.

The Hawaii vacation would be no different, except the hi jinks occurred before the vacation. A few days before our departure from the mainland, my husband and I noticed the aroma of cat shit, but we could NOT figure out where it was coming from. The litter boxes were clean and empty and a thorough search of the house did not reveal a rogue pile of crap. We couldn't find the origin. As it turns out, we were too limiting in our search. This is what my husband found:

Don't see what I am talking about? Try this one:

Yes, that is the culprit sticking to the door. A smear of cat doo doo.

My husband and I spent about 5 minutes bent over laughing our asses off upon finding this gem. How the hell did one of our cats manage to wipe their ass on the door, in an upward motion starting two inches from the ground? Keep in mind that the cats ass is at least 6-10 inches from the ground, depending on the cat in question. WTF cats?

Germ tube in the sky

Tomorrow morning I am leaving for a well-deserved vacation to...wait for it...wait for it...Hawaii. Kauai to be exact. I am very excited, as this is my first time to visit this portion of the globe. I just hope that when I get there I'm contagion-free.

It's my understanding that, statistically speaking, you are no more likely to get sick on a plane than when you are in close contact with a large group of people in some other situation. I find this difficult to accept. My problem is that the air is recycled. I know this happens in building as well, but normally you don't sit around with 100 people in the same small space for eight hours. I'm sure they have some kick-ass HEPA-type filters, but I don't know if these yahoos are changing them on time or installing them properly. I do know that HEPA filters are damn expensive and I also know that airlines aren't exactly rolling in the dough.* I've never gotten sick after a long plane ride, but n=1 is not a reliable sample size and rules of logic dictate you should not assume your personal experience represents the norm.

Each time someone starts hacking up a lung, sneezing or making frequent trips to the bathroom, I am sure I'm getting inoculated with something viral or microbial. I feel the urge to bust out a mask and fly in SARS style. This is probably not a good idea though, since I'd probably scare the shit out of everyone else on the plane, and I'm already going to make people in my immediate vicinity uncomfortable enough when I bust out my breast pump.** At least the type of plane we are flying in allows me and my husband to occupy two seats together in a row consisting of only two seats. That means that I don't have to worry about sharing a row with some Ebola-riddled freak or get in that pesky fight over the arm rest.

I know I'm being a little ridiculous. It's not like I'm boarding a cruise ship, which actually does seem like a floating petri dish. And yeah, I do not have a burning desire to cruise on a ship anywhere. If pressed to go, a mask would definitely be the order of the day.

I'll write a full report and post some pics when I get back next week unless I download the iPhone blogger app, in which case I might post some pics throughout my vacay. :)

*I'm not making any claims about airline air filter upkeep and maintenance.

**So not looking forward to this.

Damn, I'm an idiot

I spent the better part of today and yesterday, both at work and at home, running around like a chicken with my head cut off in an effort to get ready to go on vacation. I had abstracts to get written and submitted, freezer stocks to make, and of course favors to ask so that I wouldn't be totally dead in the water when I returned. Not to mention, trying to squeeze in a few more experiments. Outside of work, I also had no shortage of errands. I had to pick up the bridesmaid dress from the tailors, pack seven days worth of clothes, buy a swim suit to accommodate my redonkulous new bust, get my parents over to the house so that they could learn the delicate balance of litter box maintenance and trash day that comes with four cats and get all mini-xx's stuff together. It's not like I was waiting until the last minute, it's just that yesterday and today was all the time I had for the above activities. There was other bullshit that consumed the weekend.

Anyway.

About 30 min. ago, while I was coordinating with my Mom about when to pick up mini-xx in the morning, I was interrupted. It went something like this:

Lancelot: "Uhhhh, we're leaving tomorrow?"

MXX: "Yeah, dude. We're leaving tomorrow."

Lancelot (looking panicked): "I thought we were leaving Thursday! Seriously? We're leaving tomorrow?"

MXX: "Seriously. Yes. It's in my calendar for tomorrow." We stair at each other for a few minutes. "Let's check the itinerary."

I pull out the itinerary from the travel agent and find that we are in fact leaving on THURSDAY which is NOT tomorrow!

Fucking fuck! I really need to get more sleep.

What the hell?!?

If I were going to smuggle a living creature through airport security and onto a plane, I would NOT consider inside the clothes I was wearing a viable option. Apparently, this guy thought it was an excellent place to hide 18, yes 18, Titi monkeys. The monkeys, which are quite small, were inside bags or socks. According to the story, the man was initially going to store them in his luggage, but he was worried that the x-ray machines would harm them.

First of all, I can't imagine that someone would believe that this was a good plan for smuggling endangered monkeys into another country. I would be worried that, among other things, they would make noise, go to the bathroom or get free during the flight. Two of them died during the trip, which makes me assume they were quite restricted. Of course, I don't know how the two monkeys met their end, so I suppose that I can't rule out natural causes.

I always wonder about people who participate in this kind of activity. Why would they assume they wouldn't get caught? Are they crazy? Insanely optimistic? Found success previously? Extremely passionate about ensuring that all citizens of the world get a chance to own a tiny endangered monkey?

The Funky Toe Strikes Back

When I was much younger, I got into a fight with another girl and I am still paying for it. This was no catfight, there were fists involved and for a while I had the upper hand. The person I was fighting with realized this too and decided that the time for weapons had arrived. She reached for the closest thing she could find, which as it turns out was a decent sized metal pale. Since I had no weapon, I decided to haul ass in the other direction. As the smaller participant, speed was on my side and I got away from her, but not before I rammed my pointer toe into the side of the side walk. Normally this part of the sidewalk is beneath grass and dirt, but at this particular spot, the rain had washed the grass and dirt away, leaving the concrete exposed.
Safe inside my house, I inspected the damage and it was bad. I was bleeding profusely and it hurt like a bitch. My Grandma was watching me and after scolding me for once again not wearing shoes, she made me wash it and then elevate it on a bunch of pillows. The pain did not let up the next day, so I ended up making a trip to the doctor’s office, where it was decided that my toenail needed to be removed. The nine-year old Microbiologist XX did not like this idea, especially since it required six shots in my toe. After it was all over I went home, sans toenail.
Eventually it grew back, but I was less than pleased with the new toenail since it looked like a claw. It didn’t lay flat against my toe and it seemed entirely composed of the quick. Now everything that touched that toenail elicited pain. Since the toenail, while strange and funky, wasn’t odd enough to allow me to be in a carnival sideshow, I did the only thing I could…accept it. I found that if I kept it painted, no one really noticed the difference until they got really close to it, and people don’t usually get that close to feet.
Unfortunately this toenail/claw hybrid was a magnet for disaster. While my nine other toenails enjoyed an uneventful life of growing and getting clipped, the funky toenail would get stepped on, snagged on socks, run over with bikes, etc until about five years ago when it fell off again. This time I slipped on some rocks while trying to get out of a canoe. As usual the funky toenail got the worst of it. While trying, ever so gently, to wipe away all the blood, I wiped away the toenail too. Once the pain subsided, I decided I was glad that stupid toenail was gone. I was optimistic that this time what grew back would resemble a human toenail and not some weird bird’s claw. At first, I thought everything was OK. The initial nail that grew back was thin for sure, but more importantly it was flat. However, as it got thicker, it started to take on the claw appearance until my funky toenail was back in full force.
This past weekend, after a lovely four days in Mexico (pictures to come), I was exiting the shuttle to get in the car when a piece of luggage, that was apparently full of cinderblocks, rolled right over my damn toe. It bled all the way home and the next day at work. I was kind of hoping it would fall off again, but the results from my inspection this morning indicate otherwise.
After a lifetime of my toe getting jacked up, I’ve decided that I just want the nail removed once and for all. What I mean is, I want it yanked out and I don’t want it to ever grow back. I don’t know if it is possible, but it is the first thing on my agenda when my new insurance kicks in. I just hope it is possible to kill a toenail.