Year: 2007

I’m sitting at my NEW DESK(!!) on my NEW CHAIR(!!) in front of my computer that is actually on and in the desk and working for the first time in two weeks. Heh heh heh.

It was bloggable.

P.S. – Oh holy crap it’s the end of October tomorrow and I have no new layout.

Because I suck.

The end.

I’m lazy. So here ya go! I’ve a recycled theme I coded in 2005. Look at all of it’s old skoolness. The really close together white font on a black background. Hostees!! (Which I totally don’t have anymore so don’t bother clicking). That silly little stat counter… I still remember sitting in our tiny apartment creating that image. Isn’t in so 2005?! I love it.

Anyway, since I know me and it will be at LEAST a week month before I get something completely coded I’m going to revive some old themes and throw them up for fun in the mean time. Enjoy!

Monday on the way into work what I can only assume was a drunk soccer mom swerved across two lanes and almost side swiped my car. Lucky my ninja like reflexes kicked in and I swerved all the way into another lane to avoid the dive bomb. My ninja like reflexes are strong. Like steal. Usually. Sometimes at 5:30 in the morning they are less like steal and more like tin foil.

At the same time I managed to avoid the 4000 pounds of metal, my LARGE McDonalds Iced Coffee flew into the air, did a complete flip, landed on my passenger seat and exploded into a coffee a-bomb. It filled up the cup holders, landed in my hair, left a film on the front window and pooled up on the floor under seat. It took me a full 45 minutes and an entire roll of paper towels to get it cleaned up enough that I didn’t STICK to the seat when I sat down. THANK GOD it was rainy and cold outside because I can only imagine what that would have smelled like after 8 hours of 100 degree heat in the full sun. *shudders*

So, the day can only get better after this, right??

WRONG!

SURPRISE! Major Medical University is REQUIRING all employees to get flu shots this year because JCAHO is an evil asshole. I can understand that the accreditation is important but I’ve never, in four years, EVER come into contact with a patient. I mean, we work a MILE off campus.

I wasn’t going to get one this year because even though the nurse SWEARS that you should not be sore afterwards, I always am. Last year my arm ached for THREE DAYS. This year when I went in I requested that they inject my left arm so that the arm I use to use the adding machine, answer my office phone and make sweet love to my iPhone would not be sore. I mean, I can go a few days without working or talking to people… but don’t get between me and my daily movie binge. Mother fucker.

Again this year the nurse SWORE to me that I’d not be sore since it’s my “off hand” that got injected. Yeah, she’s a lying ass bitch. My arm is sore from the injection spot all the way down to my hand, with the majority of the discomfort at the inside bend of my elbow. Why do they lie to you? Why not just say, “Yes, idiot, it’s going to hurt it’s a SHOT. Now roll up your sleeve and suck it up, pussy!” I’d honestly deal much better with that.

When I was in 2nd grade I broke my arm and it had to be reset. When I asked if it was going to hurt the doctor looked me straight in the face and said, “It’s going to hurt more than anything you’ve ever felt. But it will be fast and when I’m done it will stop hurting and it will heal the way it should.” And he wasn’t lying. When I look back now, it was second in pain level only to squeezing a human out of my vagina. But, at least he TOLD ME. I knew what to expect. In SECOND GRADE.

I’d say things can only get better at this point bit who am I kidding?!

Is it Friday yet?

Next time I mention in my blog that I’m taking Cassidy to Chuck E Cheese, I expect all of you to virtually back hand me. Repeatedly. With a hammer. I love my daughter, dearly. And that’s the only reason I can come up with for voluntarily putting up with 500 screaming, misbehaving, sugared up kids and cheese covered cardboard passed off as “pizza”.

Usually at some point I try and break away from hosting duty (because I paid $20 a kid for SOMEBODY ELSE TO DO THAT) and go throw some balls. Skeeball. Sometimes I think about throwing the balls at the kids but I’ve always managed to control myself. Mostly. When the two year old wearing nothing but a diaper started running across all the lanes, I came pretty close to throwing a ball directly at the parent’s head. Except there WERE NO PARENTS. WHERE WERE THE PARENTS?!

I just threw up my hands and headed back to the table to continue playing hostess since the 16 year old in charge of running the party only actually showed up about three times and one of them was to hand me the bill. I think the rest of the time she was hunched over the toilet puking up whatever it was that kept her out till 5AM and at work looking like DEATH.

The only redeeming value of the trip is that Cassidy and her schoolmates had a blast eating cardboard, drinking liquid uppers and using tickets to buy crappy toys that will get stuck in the vacuum in a week. An absolute blast.

Seriously, hammer to the head. It would be a welcome alternative. Repeatedly.

Sinus infection back.

Pain.

Blood when I blow my nose.

More pain.

Urgent Care.

Pharmacy full of MORONS.

Poop.

LOTS OF PAIN.

Vicodin.

Sleep.

Last Friday in a moment of complete madness and click happiness I okay’d an upgrade on the iPhone from firmware 1.0.2. to 1.1.1 and within 30 minutes wanted to throw myself from the Golden Gate to end it all. Ozzy and Sharon said this week that they made a pact that if either of them ever have an illness that effects their brain, they’d assist the other in not prolonging life any more. I thought that was kind of funny coming from a guy that bites off the heads of live bats and a woman that throws pot roasts over her fence at the neighbors… But I think Ben and I need to come up with something similar. If we’re ever forced into using a stupidly inferior firmware on our current obsession the other will find a way to quickly and quietly stop the other’s suffering at whatever cost.

The good news is that the directions offered up on hackin0sh to downgrade actually work. Although, it was much easier then they let on if you had never attempted to unlock your phone. After the restore and two runthroughs of the AppTapp.exe, I just let the phone “restore” via iTunes and BAM! Everything was back. MobileChat, Springboard and all the pretty themes, Customize, the NES emulator, iFlickr, all of my goodness was there.

If you have the phone, and you haven’t upgraded yet and you really depend on any of the awesome applications AppTapp provides, NO NOT UPGRADE. Not only did I lose all those apps, but my battery life was cut by about 25%. I’m not completely certain that was caused by 1.1.1 but today was the first day that I ran out of battery at work after 6 hours of video playback. Prior to this, I was easily making it the full 8 hours of video playback with battery life to spare.

I’m pretty dissappointed with how strict Apple is regarding 3rd party apps. They need to realize how upset people are. People were returning phones in the hopes of getting one that hadn’t been upgraded yet. It’s okay, Apple. We LOVE our iPhones. We’d DIE for our iPhones. We also love the ability to add pink icons to the desktop and to play Super Mario World on them. These apps are making an already awesome piece of equipment even better.

So here’s my suggestion to Apple: Buy AppTapp, open the source, allow geeks to make your product even more valuable to the end user, sell more phones, watch profit grow.

Oh yeah, if I suddenly disappear off the face of the earth one day, it COULD be because I didn’t read the little box that popped up and Ben’s kept up his end of the pact.

So I have put off writing about this for over two weeks because as soon as you mention the most trivial TMI/personal info situation on the internet not only do you get a bunch of fun hate mail, blog posts written about you and 5,978 new links to your site.. but who wants to read about poop? If you make it to the next paragraph, I’ll assume that YOU DO. So when you try to point that snarky finger at me, I’ll just remind you of that. You totally WANTED to read about poop.

I figure that 99.9% of my family members have made it to this paragraph because if there’s one thing us Reids are good at, it’s talking about poop. I don’t think I’ve ever attended a family function where the frequency, consistency or peculiar potent nature of another’s butt bombs have NOT come up. It took me almost four hours of the first 8 hour car drive to my dad’s house to somehow work it gracefully into conversation to warn Ben before we got there.

Ben: So then I said, “Sure, I’d love some more iced tea and…”
Me: My family talks about poop!
Ben: Uhhhhh…
Me: My family. Sometimes they DO THINGS. Like fart. At the dinner table. And then somebody brings it up. Poop.
Ben: At the dinner table?
Me: Just seriously, if my dad asks you to pull his finger, don’t. Okay?
Ben: I don’t see your dad doing that.
Me: Yeah… Just, I warned you.

It took two days. Almost. While making breakfast on the second day we were there, while Ben watched my dad make his spectacular rosemary potatoes he leaned over, looked at me very seriously and said it:

Dad: Pull my finger.
Me: NO!
Dad: Too late!
Me: *looks at Ben* I’m so sorry.

So whatever. Everybody Poops. I’ve had this sinus headache for a solid week now. It started last Monday. I’m four days into a 10 day cycle of Amoxacylin (which my mom freaked out about… “CIPRO! I told you to get CIPRO!”) and I still have this problem. Every time I have a solid bowel movement, I get this EXCRUCIATING pain in my sinus cavity. Like, drop me to the floor, tears in the eyes, moaning, almost throwing up kinda pain.

WebMD was really helpful and told me that I have brain tumors. YAY! I mean, it would explain a lot. Like my obsessive compulsion to have all the cans in the pantry rowed up and facing out and organized into food groups. And why I like the color pink so much. And why think the sunflower in the front yard is stalking me.

Seriously though, I’ve never had this problem before. But I’ve never had a sinus infection before either. Is this a normal occurrence for them? I’ve not been able to turn up much on google other than the fatalistic WebMD search. I’m hoping somebody out there says that, yes you fool, it’s normal and it will go away and you’ll look back on this in a week after having received the 17th hate mail letter telling you what whack jobs your family are and laugh about your poop issue.

If nothing else, at least I’ll have an interesting story to share at the next family gathering.

Last year aflux went pink for the month of October to help promote Breast Cancer Awareness Month and I will be doing it again this year. Today I cruised on over to Steen’s and saw that she’s going to participate this year also. And you should to! So get to it, you have 10 days to come up with a cute theme and the crew over at Pink For October even have a few premade for you if you want to use them.

Its a worthy cause for our most body part! 😉

I wanted to leave you tonight with some Haiku that Cassidy wrote tonight for her homework:

Dragonflies are best friends
Dragonflies drinking nectar
Playing a happy song

and

Best friends with people
Never running away when life gets bad
Don’t always close your mind

Yes, I realize they aren’t exaclty 5,7,5 but her teacher said they had to be 5 or more, 7 or more, 5 or more. *shurg* I don’t teach the class!

A horrible plague has attacked my house. In the last two weeks I’ve been to the doctor twice, Cassidy once, Ben’s not had a single day where he’s not coughed, even the kitchen sink has sprung a leak!

What started for me last week as a seemingly simple sore throat and runny nose transformed into a sinus infection. I’ve never actually had a sinus infection before but at least twice in the last few days I contemplated whether I actually needed the top if my head to survive. Drilling a hole into my forehead to drain the mucus seemed like a welcome alternative to the pain I was in. Luckily, somebody finally said “sinus infection” so yesterday I went to Urgent Care and got some antibiotics and slept till 2PM today. When I woke up I could feel the stuff up there crackling and having a little going away party in my head and I was able to sit up without wincing in pain for the first time in three days.

I am so ready to be over all this, so ready to get back into the swing of things. I feel like I spent the last two weeks walking around in this haze of Vicodin (for the back pain over the birthday weekend), Tylenol and Sudafed. And I admit for the first day or two, it’s a fun haze. But after that it becomes like a cage you can’t get away from. I haven’t taken a single picture in two weeks and I have that new flash. THAT’S how sick I’ve been.

Anyway, so much has been going on in my absence from reality!

Britney bombed on the VMA’s and the world seemed shocked for some reason. OJ went all vigilante on the guy that set up all his off shore bank accounts he’s using to keep money hidden from the Goldmans. Paris was spotted in a book store. Most shockingly, Debra Messing was spotted wearing a magnificent blue parachute. In public. In the daylight. Were people could see her.

It’s refreshing to know that the people in Hollywierd weren’t too upset by my absence and continued to carry on with life as normal.

Next year, try not to fuck up back on birthday weekend. Or the day before your birthday. OR EVER AGAIN.

I am this close *hold finges an inch apart* from dinging 40 and getting a mount in World of Warcraft but it hurts too bad to sit at the computer. I’m on the laptop on the couch sitting the only way it doesn’t hurt.

BUT GOOD NEWS! Soembody is coming to look at the Range Rover in a few minutes and afterwards I’ll be hobbling myself into the Apple Store with Ben to pick up my second birthday gift, and 8GB iPhone. Yesterday we went to the camera store after breakfast and I got to pick up a Canon 580EX II flash and a hood for my 17/85mm lens. I got three things that I REALLY wanted so I’m a very happy camper.

Once I’m able to move again I’m going to take some photos with and without flash to show a comparison. It absolutely rocks my socks and is going to completely change what I’m going to be able to do with inside shots. Expect a bazillion pictures of the Princess and The Felines.

I hope to be back to my regular posting schedule in the next week or so. And like every other time I’ve ever said that, that means that I’m completely lying to you and you can probably expect a post about once a week. Or less. Unless Ben does something funny that has to be made fun of mentioned. 😀