Mark and I are in the middle of NE on our way to WY. While the weather is not as crappy as what's going on in OK, wow,still pretty crappy. I opened the car door at the gas station and couldn't close it due to the wind. Seriously, it took all my strength and three tries to close it. It was close to whiteout conditions earlier, but we're about through the worst of it. I drove all of it - I'm all proud of myself. Now Mark is driving so I can nap.

Tally ho!

Uh. Holy crap. We're driving to Wyoming in two days and I haven't done laundry, cleaned the house, paid bills, or ANYTHING.

Or taken a shower today, but that's going to happen in a minute.

This cold and the constant morning-to-early-afternoon cold hangovers and feelings of general unwellness can go suck it. If I'm going to feel hungover, I at least want to have a good time the night before.

My crazy dogwalker Melodee had clean hair that was braided and painted fingernails today. She looked put together enough (for Melodee). But she did spend half an hour in the sunroom mumbling to herself, so I suppose she's still crazy. At least she's in a good mood. We need to go to PetsMart tonight to get her dogs some dog food and treats. Christmas and all. She gets a week's pay as a bonus. Maybe I'll even put the check in a Christmas card. Good thinking.

NO, I will not take any more DayQuil or Afrin or sinus stuff. Dang it. Go away, cold!

Every few months I'll hit up the Vice Mag Dos and Don'ts page for lunchtime reading, rather than RSS feeds about programming/XML/DITA or the NY Times.



[caption] I would give anything to hear what this conversation between a womyn’s-literary-group president and Vicious D. Slim Rock is all about. How much they both love pussy?

Made my day, that did.

I feel like crap on a cracker. My entire head is visibly leaking fluid, it seems. Eyes, nose, even my ears feel all fluid-swollen. The only part that's dry is my mouth because I am a total mouth-breather today. I'm stupid like a mouth-breather too, because my brain isn't working.

The worst part is that I'm in the office too, so I can't even wear comfy flannel pajamas and sweat it out. This whole being freezing and then being way too hot is driving me bonkers.

Wah wah wah bitch moan cry whine. C'mon, body! I fill you full up with beets, squashes, red wine, dark chocolate, blueberries all the darn time. Go go antioxidants. Cripes.

It was the last meeting of the...meetings...yesterday early afternoon. I stood up to get my things, which thankfully were behind me and away from the person I was with. I bent forward a little and my nose literally dripped. Not mucus or anything (too) gross, but a drip. I was horrified. Was there a drop on my nose all this time I was talking? Was I getting sick? I didn't feel sick.

That will teach me to think I could skate away for years and years without catching a seasonal cold. I am one big ache and pain today, all sneezy and congested. I don't feel like I've been hit by a truck and I'm not coughing, so I doubt it's H1N1. It's a garden-variety cold.

The good part about it was I couldn't sleep because of the stuffiness and the not breathing part. Since I wasn't sleeping, I started work at 5:30 a.m. this morning. It's 3:17 p.m. now, so I think I'm done for the day. I'm off to doze away the sickness.

This email was sent to me earlier. It makes me smile, and a tiny part of me wishes I were in that technical writing niche:

I have a one year assignment in Huntsville AL with Sikorsky for a Flight Manual Writer. They want to see folks with rotary wing experience (preferably UH-60) but will consider folks with other helicopter experience.

Would you know of someone who may be interested who fits this bill?

Send resume to [email] for more info!

In an hour or so I'm going to take a lunch break and walk on over to the walk-in hair cut shop. It's not a salon, it's not a Super Cuts. Is 'hair cut shop' a good term? The nice thing about having super-long hair is that I don't need expert styling. A trim of the raggedy ends and I'm good to go. Because I don't brush my hair but once a week or so, even though it's been at least two years since my last cut, I don't have a single split end.

They also do threading, so I suppose I'll get my eyebrows shaped and get rid of my 'stache.

Then off to Walgreens for a box of hair dye and I'll be all purty, or at least more presentable than I am now.

Last night Mark and I had dinner with marys_second. Dude still tells a good story. It was a great time.

I am craving eggplant today, roasted eggplant in particular.

Yesterday I was a food-grazing fiend. It's always one day a month where I want to eat all the food in the entire world. By the end of the day I had consumed four cookies, one banana, one apple, a bowl of cheerios, some cheezeeeey rice casserole (a lot of it), green beans, a handful of shredded cheese, and...wait...half a quart jar of pickled brussel sprouts. Guess which food product is still with me today?

Helpful tip: half a jar of pickled brussel sprouts might be too many sprouts for a body to handle.

Winter's first snowfall here was nice and mild. Light,fluffy, easy to brush off the car. The salted roads were fine, no slipping and sliding.

I almost wish it had been more of a hellish-type snow, because Shiny Happy Snows lull us into thinking "this winter won't be so bad", and "why do people always worry so much about driving in snow? I can totally brake on a dime!". Stuff like that. Bad, dangerous, no good thoughts.

Another good thing about the mild weather combined with snow is that it's giving me some time to empty out my windshield washer reservoir from the blue stuff so I can refill it with the purple stuff. I was cleaning my windshield like a madwoman on the drive to work this morning. Bring on the purple stuff.

Here's a funny story that I'm sure joeyhemlock will appreciate me telling. Two years ago we took the S.S. MoneyPit to WY for Christmas. I forget why I didn't do it myself, but before we left, I asked Mark to please buy the purple stuff and put some in the reservoirs for the trip. He does remember me specifying the purple stuff.

Off we go, tra la la over the hills and through the woods. Through the very very cold woods flatland of South Dakota. My windshield was dirty, so I activated the windshield fluid-thingie. The fluid sprayed out and froze on contact on my windshield, effectively leaving me with a bunch of icy blind spots. I try to spray again (I'm not SMRT at times). Thankfully the windshield fluid nozzles had instantly frozen shut the first time. I turn into a growling irritable monster and snarl something like "did you NOT buy the purple stuff?"

That's when Mark admitted that no, he had not bought the purple stuff because he didn't think there was a difference. Thankfully, South Dakota is pretty darn flat with not much traffic, so it's not like I needed that much visibility. We get to a gas station and I buy the last bottle of purple stuff that they had. This doesn't solve the frozen nozzle issues though. I buy de-icer for that, which has huge warnings on it that it will peel paint off and blah de doo boop blah blah.

Note to all of you: Those de-icer warnings are a little exaggerated. De-icer totally unfreezes your fluid nozzles without peeling the paint around it. Heh. Fluid nozzles. I got your fluid nozzle right here. Sorry. We ended up getting much of the blue stuff out of the resevoir by spraying and de-icing the nozzles and then mixed enough of the purple stuff in with the remaining blue stuff that the fluid didn't freeze anymore.

Point of the story: If you're going to be driving across a barren frozen wasteland when it's -2°F out, get the damn purple stuff.

Hi Mark! Love you!

On Black Friday, I bought the cutest pair of shoes ever:



I even tried them on. They were on the clearance rack, so no box or anything. They fit well. I didn't walk around in them or anything, which lesson learned. Turns out I bought two right shoes and not a left and a right. Ha ha! I'm cracking up about this, even though it sucks because I wanted to wear them today. I guess I'll go to Macys tomorrow to see if they can exchange them, even though I've already thrown the receipt away.