Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

I can’t wait to wake up in a dystopian young adult novel tomorrow. I BETTER get the aggressively perfect boyfriend that comes with it.

I feel the need to apologize to all my friends in other countries. If this election goes as it seems to be, I'm sorry for all the harm Trump's America is going to do.

What a day! Poisoned? Sea sick in the pool? And a visit from firemen!

When I got home from work today, it smelled like there was an electric fire in my apartment. I checked everywhere, felt walls, outlets, my computer, all my electronics, but nothing was hot. So I called the fire department. (Not 911, a non-emergency line.) Then I packed up my cat and went outside to wait.

In the minute or two before the truck arrived, the apartment handyman happened by. He was doing work in the apartment next to mine, so I asked if anything he had been doing could have caused a burning smell in mine. He said no.

When the firemen came (how is it that all firemen look hot?), he was still inside. Together they realized the smell was from work he did on pipes, he had to do something under my sink area (drilling up from below my apartment? His English wasn't good.). So the firemen left.

Thinking that was settled, I played around on the computer a few hours before it was time to go to my first water aerobics class. I really don't like my new bathing suit, but other than that the class started out great. Maybe 20 other women, all of them older than me, all of us heavy. One of the two teachers was a young skinny guy, which at first worried/annoyed me, but he turned out to be great.

About halfway through the class, I started felling nauseous. It got bad to the point of me sticking near the wall, so I could get out fast in case I had to throw up. As the class went on, I felt worse and worse. It didn't stop when I got out, or driving home.

Since it had been darned cold, first thing I did when I got home was take a hot shower. Then, even though it was 7:30, I went to bed. The smell (from under the sink) annoyed me, so I got back up and opened all the windows and turned on the overhead fan.

I slept for two hours, now I feel better. So the question is, did swimming make me nauseous? I had been in fresh air for an hour before it hit, so I suspect it wasn't a result of sitting around in the smell for a while. (I had the AC on in my apartment for a few hours, thinking that would be enough air circulation to get rid of the smell. Belatedly I wish I had opened the windows as soon as I smelled it.) I suspect it was swimming, since it felt like motion sickness. Even though I paid for three months of classes, if this continues, I won't be able to keep going. :(

Minor issue compared to those things: When it rains, it pours. I have five books from publishers waiting to be reviewed! They all look like books I'd like to read, so yay free books, but it's still daunting to have a list like that waiting.

I don't like leaving windows open when I sleep (my apartment is on the ground floor), but I think I'll leave the kitchen one open to help get rid of the smell. I wish I knew what the guy did -- I bet he used some kind of epoxy and that there's a warning on the container to use only in ventilated places or something.

Ellie New Cat has a dirty mouth. She has two different viruses in it, one of which has no cure. As a result of this, at the ripe old age of two, she's lost five teeth already.

One of the two viruses has a cure, and the vet says when you cure one the other sometimes gets better, so we're going to try that. Unfortunately the first med we tried made her very sick. (Not-so-funny story: Cat has diarrhea from meds, gets a big puddle of it on her foot by mistake, goes racing around the apartment from one hiding place to another, because suddenly human is being all scary and trying to grab her...)

So today I went to the vet to pick up a different medicine for her to try. This time it's in liquid form. On no. D: I could hide pills in Pill Pockets and she gobbled them down without a care in the world. But liquid? When she doesn't want to be caught and rarely even wants to be held? Let alone doesn't want my hands near her face...

More than the challenge of doing it, I'm worried about breaking her trust in me. :/ Poor little Ellie.

(Side note: I always want to write "virii", not "viruses", but merriam-webster.com lists only "viruses" as the plural, so I'm going to stick with that.)

And in other sick-thing news, I still am. We're going on two weeks here, lungs and chest and throat! Get better, I'm sick of coughing! Sleeping the night through would be a lovely change, too.

I'm sick, I had four hours of sleep last night, bedtime was an hour back, and I'm about a million years from sleeping.

Best. RP. Ever.

I mean like ever-ever. :D Ever been in a group scene where every single post is perfect? Everyone's posts every time? (Except mine because ARG why can't I pre-type in notepad so I can catch redundant words! And 'happy'? 'Happy'?! Is there a more bland, less descriptive word out there? And rough sentences, arg!)

For you MU* folks, recall how the best RP logs would be linked from the game's webpage, as an example of RP found on that game? This would be so totally linked from our page. :D

Ha ha, tomorrow morning I'll be all embarrassed that I posted this, because everyone involved can read it, but tonight? SO HAPPY. SO NOT SLEEPING.

Tired. Going to go try to sleep again. Unless I throw up first. WAY TO RUIN MY HAPPY RP FEELING, WHATEVER BUG GAVE THIS TO ME. Now I've been reduced to typing in all caps. I'm going to post this and go back to bed before I start talking in lolcat.

I was really, really sick during the night (stomach issues, blech), so I knew I wasn't going to be exercising this morning. Sorry, not going to do it when I got just a couple hours of broken sleep and still feeling sick. This made me a little excited as I could hop onto WoW and get my dailies and stuff done before work.

Sat down, tried to log on, failed. Peered at the authenticator, tilted it this way and that. (The housing is slightly off, it's hard to tell if the first number is a 9, 8, or 5.) I was sure I had the number right, and I haven't changed my password, so why wasn't it workin-- wait, what's that text on the side? Oh darned, it's Tuesday.

More than a year of playing, and Tuesday downtimes still take me by surprise!

In Pokemon news, Fire Red is MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH better! Oh my god, I have such a nice, sane team!

Charmeleon: My starter. I like Charizard, so I'll probably keep him for the long run. (Can you believe I have to google these names to make sure I'm spelling them right? Ha!)
Rattata: I usually keep one on my team the whole time, but he keeps falling behind in level, so I might replace him.
Spearow: Yay! Will become my pokemon to fly on.
Pikachu: Back in the old days, I never really liked pikachu much. Currently I'm overjoyed by him! I guess lack of exposure to cartoon Ash means I no longer associate pikachu with him.
Abra: WOO! Okay, I had to cheat a little to get him (with the emulator, you can save at any point, so I saved after encountering him and just kept chucking pokeballs and resetting when it failed), but I would have stuck around and kept trying over and over anyway, so mostly I just saved myself time and stress, so I'm okay with that. I got him on the third ball thrown too! Just a little depressing that he won't ever make the final evolution since I can't trade.

The last slot will be for Magikarp, and maybe I'll replace Rattata with a Gastly when I find one.

Really though, Red is SO MUCH FUN. Every time I encounter a pokemon I'm like "Hey! A paras! I remember you!" and "Ekans! Snake spelled backwards! How did I ever forget you!".

It's funny the memories these bring back, too. I saw a shellder and immediately thought of the McDonald's toy. I had so many of them! And I still owe them to hamburger. If I ever find the box of them, I'll play with them send them along.

This weekend's movie is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. If this movie did one thing, it demonstrated my lack of ability to turn my brain off. From the very first moments, it had me rolling my eyes. Five men shot, and not one drop of blood on their uniforms or the ground. Jones&company repeatedly shot at with machine guns and no one is ever hurt. Jones survives a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator which flies a far distance through the air and he walks out of just fine. All this, and I'm only halfway through the darned movie.

As annoying as the movie is, last night was even less fun. I spent from 11 PM to 4 AM in the bathroom. Three times I tried to leave, but I didn't get more than a couple steps before I had to go back in. In the past I had thought I had food poisoning, but I think maybe this time I really did. I got only a couple broken hours of sleep last night, I feel so horrible now. Blah.

I forgot to do Nano Haiku yesterday. Oh well! I think 12 days in was about as far as I got with the 'month of RP questions' thing, too.

Best laid plans of mice and men...

The 24 hour downtime on my WoW server wasn't going to be a bad thing. I had a crapton of things to do. Shop, clean, and when I needed a break, roll a DK on some up server so I could see the quests again.

Only kink in my plan is that I got sick. Really sick. So sick I don't want to move. I got a little shopping done, and I cleaned the patio, but that's as far as my RL plans got.

Stupid DK quests took 3.5 hours, which was WAY more time than I had wanted to spend on them.

I seem to have some inability to read quest text. I forced myself to read the first few (literally forced, made my eyes move along each line of text), but after the first few I just couldn't be bothered.

I did see enough to make me dislike the quests though, from a RP standpoint. They make you too special, too perfect, too twinky. Perfect =/= fun RP.

And now I shall go to bed. zzz Cold, exhausted.

I was finally able to get my H1N1 shot. Woo woo, no turning into a pig for me! Seems really late in the season to be finally able to get it, but hey. It came with a girly pin bandaid (which luckily is hidden by my shirt sleeve).

I suspect my computer might be fixing to catch fire and/or run out the door. Twice in 12 hours it did a really odd thing: Screen went black, whole machine seemed to lock up (the first time I was in a quiet area of WoW, but the second was in a battle so I could tell the noise did that 'window froze' thing). WoW friend thought my video card might be going, so I googled around a bit and decided it might be the temperature of the card. I downloaded a program that would monitor how hot various parts were working (and how fast the fans were turning). Wow! The video card was 100+ C (200+ F!). Hottest it got was 107/222. (My card is rated safe over 120C, but... sheesh!)

I leave my machine running overnight (with WoW loaded but window minimized) and it was about 70 C this morning. Logging on for a half-hour this morning sent me into the high 80s.

I opened up the housing and I need to get a little fan to direct inside (going to be a pain in the ass, since it'll hit my legs as well. I'm cold enough as it is!).

Last summer my machine was shutting itself down and I thought it might have been because it was too hot, so maybe it is. (This is the first time seeing the black screen behavior though.) Blah!

I love Google so much! For so many reasons! Today's is:

Current events in their logo! And it's eeee fossil/evolution news, too! If I had unlimited time and money, I'd go back to college and get all sorts of scientific degrees -- not for the degrees themselves, but so I could learn all sorts of interesting stuff. Evolution's spiffy!

...And that little burst of excitement burnt off my whole day's worth of energy. zzz *headdesk*

Can someone explain how I can not sleep and have nightmares, both in the same night? Even though yay RP started last night and I was willing to stay up late to play, I felt like crap and was exhausted, so I logged out. Went to bed, started (continued to!) cough. Coughed until about 4 AM when I finally fell asleep (and had nightmares!). Woke back up at 5, throat burning, still coughing. Was cold so stayed in bed another hour before getting up. Blah.

Stupid silly nightmares. Why do I keep having MMO nightmares? It doesn't even make sense! Last night it was me as my WoW hunter (with my RL cat as my pet... and a stuffed animal from childhood as my second pet...). I found a "NM" (FFXI term, and FFXI-style mob) and killed it -- it was a tiny little level 10 mob, I killed it with one punch. Unfortunately it was a spawn for a much larger mob (and since I was new to WoW I hadn't known it -- any experienced player would have known to leave the little one alone). So this big snail/scorpion thing spawned and I couldn't lose aggro. I ran all through my childhood house trying to lose it, but it could get through doors. WoW Hunter style I let my pet die ( D: D: D: My poor cat! ) so I could try to live, but even that didn't work. (And seriously, how sad is it that I couldn't outrun and lose aggro from a half-snail mob?)

The night before I had a nightmare that I was on a WoW quest. I had to throw a giant party for a relative (cousin?) of the Lich King. He really really hated my efforts. Hated the food I picked, the musicians I hired, the guests I invited. And then, hey, monsters attacked the party and he hated that, too! (Okay, maybe that part was reasonable...)

I need sleep, brain! Not nightmares! zzzz

PS: Lungs, please remain in my chest. The outside world isn't all that great. Stop trying to be coughed up.

It's very very hard to eat when you can't breathe through your nose. Tiny bite, hold breath as you chew-chew-chew, swallow, gasp for air. Blah.

This morning I thought I had a nosebleed. I sat up in bed and warm fluid ran down my face. I lunged for tissues because I didn't want to get blood all over the place (it was running off my chin at that point). It was just my nose running. c.c I've never had my nose run that much, that quickly before.

Stuff's been happening in WoW (and RP!), but I don't have the energy to type it all up tonight. One small amusing thing. I got a mail message with congratulations and a reward attached. The letter said:

"Wear this tabard with pride. That way your friends will know who to ask for directions when the time comes!"

...ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. If my friends came to me for directions, they wouldn't remain my friends for long. :P