Why carry the milk
and then dump it on his face,
just to shoot his neck?
Monday, June 21, 2010
Socks and Laboratories
I have a very busy summer planned for the next nine weeks. I am taking the whole organic chemistry series, and am also working in a laboratory, where some very smart people are studying evolution. I get to work with photos of fish.
The lab I will be doing the laboratory portion of my organic chemistry class is, as I learned today, very, very cold. It was like walking into a walk in freezer. Not that it was actually below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, but it had that shock of cold across the face on a warm June day. I’d estimate that it was under 60 in there. I am wearing jeans and a short-sleeved sweatshirt over a tank-top, and I was wildly uncomfortable. Everyone in the lab was sniffling. With all of the talk of budget crises, I wonder why they are choosing to make it uncomfortably cold inside a building, when it would be so much cheaper and easier to just, y’know, not do that.
I have also wondered for a long time why the landscape people fight so hard to keep the students from wearing paths the grass; why don’t they just turn those ruts into real paths? People are going to keep wearing out the grass there anyway. I have been whining about this issue for years now, and during the spring quarter, a professor actually mentioned the same issue during class.
Yesterday was father’s day, and my mom (in a mild state of panic) sent me and my boyfriend to the sporting goods store to buy a couple of pairs of socks for my dad. Better than a tie? Oh, yes. These weren’t just any socks. These were Thorlo socks.
Now, like gravy, this may be one of those things which is unique to my family. There is, they feel, no better gift in the world than Thorlo socks. These are the socks that can solve all of your problems. They are the best socks in the world. These socks could cure cancer and then bake you a pie if they wanted to, but they don’t. They just want to cushion your feet from all the ills of the world and your Nike shoes. These socks are the Chuck Norris of hosiery. They’re the best.
Next door to the sporting goods place is an independent fish store (the kind which sells pets, not food) and since I like fish and we weren’t on a time constraint, we ducked in there after buying the life-changing socks for my dad. They have a large tank in the front of the store where they keep sharks and rays. Normally there’s one or two of the little guys swimming around, making me feel vaguely uncomfortable while I try to look at mollies and guppies and things, but yesterday, one of the sharks wasn’t happy.
He (or she, I suppose) had the most horrific injury I’ve ever seen on a living animal. His entire nose had been torn off, probably by another shark. There were little white strips of cartilage poking out of the bloodless pink meat, and the shark was breathing hard and fast, floating near the bottom of the tank, while his companions swam around like nothing was going on--like their sharky friend wasn’t missing most of his head.
Then we went out and shared a chicken bake and a soda, because I’m heartless and not easily put off my food.
The lab I will be doing the laboratory portion of my organic chemistry class is, as I learned today, very, very cold. It was like walking into a walk in freezer. Not that it was actually below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, but it had that shock of cold across the face on a warm June day. I’d estimate that it was under 60 in there. I am wearing jeans and a short-sleeved sweatshirt over a tank-top, and I was wildly uncomfortable. Everyone in the lab was sniffling. With all of the talk of budget crises, I wonder why they are choosing to make it uncomfortably cold inside a building, when it would be so much cheaper and easier to just, y’know, not do that.
I have also wondered for a long time why the landscape people fight so hard to keep the students from wearing paths the grass; why don’t they just turn those ruts into real paths? People are going to keep wearing out the grass there anyway. I have been whining about this issue for years now, and during the spring quarter, a professor actually mentioned the same issue during class.
Yesterday was father’s day, and my mom (in a mild state of panic) sent me and my boyfriend to the sporting goods store to buy a couple of pairs of socks for my dad. Better than a tie? Oh, yes. These weren’t just any socks. These were Thorlo socks.
Now, like gravy, this may be one of those things which is unique to my family. There is, they feel, no better gift in the world than Thorlo socks. These are the socks that can solve all of your problems. They are the best socks in the world. These socks could cure cancer and then bake you a pie if they wanted to, but they don’t. They just want to cushion your feet from all the ills of the world and your Nike shoes. These socks are the Chuck Norris of hosiery. They’re the best.
Next door to the sporting goods place is an independent fish store (the kind which sells pets, not food) and since I like fish and we weren’t on a time constraint, we ducked in there after buying the life-changing socks for my dad. They have a large tank in the front of the store where they keep sharks and rays. Normally there’s one or two of the little guys swimming around, making me feel vaguely uncomfortable while I try to look at mollies and guppies and things, but yesterday, one of the sharks wasn’t happy.
He (or she, I suppose) had the most horrific injury I’ve ever seen on a living animal. His entire nose had been torn off, probably by another shark. There were little white strips of cartilage poking out of the bloodless pink meat, and the shark was breathing hard and fast, floating near the bottom of the tank, while his companions swam around like nothing was going on--like their sharky friend wasn’t missing most of his head.
Then we went out and shared a chicken bake and a soda, because I’m heartless and not easily put off my food.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Hanging Backwards
Right now, I'm sitting on my bed, and am in the middle of putting some of my clean clothes on hangers before they go in the closet. The first thing I put on a hanger was a new blouse, which I like very much. I then laid it down next to me, with the loop of the hanger pointing to my right.
Since then I have placed five more items on hangers, and then tried to lay each and every one of them the opposite way on top of the first blouse.
I should have just put the shirt the other way in the first place.
I'll never get this right.
Since then I have placed five more items on hangers, and then tried to lay each and every one of them the opposite way on top of the first blouse.
I should have just put the shirt the other way in the first place.
I'll never get this right.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Cereal Thumb
A couple of weeks ago, my sister was in a play at her high school, and it was very funny. She was spectacular in it, as she always is. She has real stage presence, and she throws herself into her characters.
After the play, I rode in the car while my dad took my aunt home. Then, we came back to the school to pick up my sister, and one the way we ate single-serve cereal boxes, dry, which someone had thrown onto our driveway in some sort of marketing scheme. That isn’t shady at all. Anyway, since my aunt lives less than five minutes from the school, this took about ten minutes, so my sister was still puttering around and getting ready to go. That part doesn’t matter, though, because of what happened next.
I climbed out of the passenger’s seat, and shut the door casually behind myself with one hand, closing my thumb in the door as I did so.
I yelled non-words and dropped into a crouch, ready to fend off the lion or whatever, and began to spin around my thumb, as though it were glued to an immobile stake in the ground, hopping as I went.
I could hear my dad pause on his side of the car, and knew that he was waiting to see if this was a real injury or just one of those I-bumped-my-wrist-a-tiny-bit-too-hard things. As I began to rise in pitch as I yelled (mostly an assortment of nonsense with “Oooh no, ohh no,” thrown in) he came around the truck.
When he saw me spinning, he crouched down too, and did that I’m-not-touching-you thing people do over an injury with their hands (to fend off the carrion birds, I guess) and asked to see my thumb.
I opened my hand, which was clenched around the injury, and squealed, because it hurt, and there was blood. My dad hissed at me, and unlocked the car door to get some (clean?) napkins from the center consol thing. I wrapped them around my thumb, and managed to get up to follow him into the auditorium, in search of ice.
He strode up the aisle with purpose, and I followed behind him, hunched over my injury, making that high-pitched sound through the nose, like a dog, unaware that there were other people in the room. We made it to the lobby, where one of my sister’s friends was talking loudly on his cell-phone.
My dad had to ask him twice for ice, which is understandable, because that’s a weird request, but then he saw me, and scurried off to grab an adult (the drama director). She went behind a door and came back with a huge plastic shopping bag (the kind for like, microwaves or computer monitors) with about a cup of ice in it.
I wrapped this around my thumb and sat in a metal folding chair behind the card table where they sold concessions during the play, and made that sound. Another friend of my sister’s, who I assume saw me come in earlier, while I was in my pain haze, came up into the lobby and said,
“Apricot, are you oka-- you need to stop smiling like that. It’s creepy.” And then he shuttered. Of course, he didn’t call me Apricot, he used my name.
“I can’t,” I said, grinning. “It hurts too much.”
“Well it’s terrifying,” he told me, and went back into the theater.
My dad came over to the chair and said, “Let me see your thumb.”
I opened up the plastic and wet paper napkins to reveal a very ugly thumb, still making those irritating stuck-pig sounds.
“Whelp. You’re going to lose that nail,” my dad said.
And that’s when I burst into tears. My head fell back, and I started sobbing.
My dad sighed to himself, shook his head, and started down the aisle to get my sister.
Who thought I was carrying a dead bird in a bag, crying over the corpse.
It’s been a couple weeks since this happened, and the cuticle died completely, all the way down to the base of the nail. It does indeed look like I’ll be losing the nail, but it no longer looks quite as bad as it did, y’know, when it happened.
--
On an unrelated note, the boyfriend has started a new blog about his jewelry making, and I highly recommend it.
http://rolandgridley.wordpress.com/
After the play, I rode in the car while my dad took my aunt home. Then, we came back to the school to pick up my sister, and one the way we ate single-serve cereal boxes, dry, which someone had thrown onto our driveway in some sort of marketing scheme. That isn’t shady at all. Anyway, since my aunt lives less than five minutes from the school, this took about ten minutes, so my sister was still puttering around and getting ready to go. That part doesn’t matter, though, because of what happened next.
I climbed out of the passenger’s seat, and shut the door casually behind myself with one hand, closing my thumb in the door as I did so.
I yelled non-words and dropped into a crouch, ready to fend off the lion or whatever, and began to spin around my thumb, as though it were glued to an immobile stake in the ground, hopping as I went.
I could hear my dad pause on his side of the car, and knew that he was waiting to see if this was a real injury or just one of those I-bumped-my-wrist-a-tiny-bit-too-hard things. As I began to rise in pitch as I yelled (mostly an assortment of nonsense with “Oooh no, ohh no,” thrown in) he came around the truck.
When he saw me spinning, he crouched down too, and did that I’m-not-touching-you thing people do over an injury with their hands (to fend off the carrion birds, I guess) and asked to see my thumb.
I opened my hand, which was clenched around the injury, and squealed, because it hurt, and there was blood. My dad hissed at me, and unlocked the car door to get some (clean?) napkins from the center consol thing. I wrapped them around my thumb, and managed to get up to follow him into the auditorium, in search of ice.
He strode up the aisle with purpose, and I followed behind him, hunched over my injury, making that high-pitched sound through the nose, like a dog, unaware that there were other people in the room. We made it to the lobby, where one of my sister’s friends was talking loudly on his cell-phone.
My dad had to ask him twice for ice, which is understandable, because that’s a weird request, but then he saw me, and scurried off to grab an adult (the drama director). She went behind a door and came back with a huge plastic shopping bag (the kind for like, microwaves or computer monitors) with about a cup of ice in it.
I wrapped this around my thumb and sat in a metal folding chair behind the card table where they sold concessions during the play, and made that sound. Another friend of my sister’s, who I assume saw me come in earlier, while I was in my pain haze, came up into the lobby and said,
“Apricot, are you oka-- you need to stop smiling like that. It’s creepy.” And then he shuttered. Of course, he didn’t call me Apricot, he used my name.
“I can’t,” I said, grinning. “It hurts too much.”
“Well it’s terrifying,” he told me, and went back into the theater.
My dad came over to the chair and said, “Let me see your thumb.”
I opened up the plastic and wet paper napkins to reveal a very ugly thumb, still making those irritating stuck-pig sounds.
“Whelp. You’re going to lose that nail,” my dad said.
And that’s when I burst into tears. My head fell back, and I started sobbing.
My dad sighed to himself, shook his head, and started down the aisle to get my sister.
Who thought I was carrying a dead bird in a bag, crying over the corpse.
It’s been a couple weeks since this happened, and the cuticle died completely, all the way down to the base of the nail. It does indeed look like I’ll be losing the nail, but it no longer looks quite as bad as it did, y’know, when it happened.
--
On an unrelated note, the boyfriend has started a new blog about his jewelry making, and I highly recommend it.
http://rolandgridley.wordpress.com/
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Lizards and Logs
I worked the Forth of July this year. I was supposed to work a seven hour shift, but we ended up closing early. That was fine with me, because there was hardly anyone in the store all day long.
While I was sweeping the aisles, I saw a plastic lizard on the ground. I leaned down to grab it by the tail and move it to the toy aisle, where it belonged. When my fingers touched it, the lizard jumped straight up in the air and landed back down where it had been before, in the same position. I also jumped. ‘Hm,’ I thought to myself, ‘I must have bumped it.’ This time, when I went in to grab the lizard, I got it by the head, and it started to squirm.
The live, baby lizard, made it safely outside.
I put my log in my fish tank a few days ago, and the tannins from the log are leaking into the water, making it look like tea. This delights my fish, because he is from a part of the world where the waters are very murky. He didn’t like having the water be super clear; it made him feel vulnerable and weak. I am going to do some heavy water changes over the next few days, and then I’ll be ready to add new friends. I think I might go with these fat bodied, red-eyed little tetras instead of the glo-lights I was thinking about before.
I also want to buy a large snail.
While I was sweeping the aisles, I saw a plastic lizard on the ground. I leaned down to grab it by the tail and move it to the toy aisle, where it belonged. When my fingers touched it, the lizard jumped straight up in the air and landed back down where it had been before, in the same position. I also jumped. ‘Hm,’ I thought to myself, ‘I must have bumped it.’ This time, when I went in to grab the lizard, I got it by the head, and it started to squirm.
The live, baby lizard, made it safely outside.
I put my log in my fish tank a few days ago, and the tannins from the log are leaking into the water, making it look like tea. This delights my fish, because he is from a part of the world where the waters are very murky. He didn’t like having the water be super clear; it made him feel vulnerable and weak. I am going to do some heavy water changes over the next few days, and then I’ll be ready to add new friends. I think I might go with these fat bodied, red-eyed little tetras instead of the glo-lights I was thinking about before.
I also want to buy a large snail.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Logs and Buttons
In my bedroom, I have two fish tanks. One is a ten gallon, and currently houses a minnow, who has lived with two crawfish and three ghost shrimp. The other tank is a fifty-five gallon, which currently has one pearl gourami, who used to have two friends of similar persuasion. Over the long winter, while I was in school, I coasted with the tanks. I fed the fish and I cleaned the tanks (replaced water, kept up the basic maintenance on the filters, that sort of thing) but I didn’t do any heavy renovations. Now that summer break is here, though, I’ve started my spring cleaning. I’m most excited about the lager tank, which I am going to be adding at least ten fish to this summer, once I get The Log into the tank.
Last summer I went hiking with my friend, and we found this epic log of awesome, and brought it back to my house. I had every intention of getting it into my tank straight away, but that hasn’t happened. The log is no longer waterlogged, so I will have to weight it down. To that end, I bought a tube of aquarium safe silicone today, and will be buying some rocks on Friday. Then I will use my dad’s saw to cut the log down to a manageable size, and put it into the tank. I can’t wait. Then I’ll add some more plants, and be on my merry way to a beautiful, healthy home for the fishy friends I will buy shortly.
My parents repainted the den this summer, and then bought new carpet and a new sofa. They have completely redone the room. My mom is going to make curtains, and has fabric samples up in the room right now to make her choices. We have a leather love seat, and my parents moved it from one side of the room to the other. My sister’s cat decided this meant it was a gift to him, and he shredded part of the newly exposed back. My dad is furious. He has decreed that the cat is no longer allowed in the den, and he super-glued those soft-paw deals on the cat’s nails, so he can’t scratch anymore. The cat doesn’t understand why he isn’t allowed in the room, because he has of course forgotten his misdeed. I feel a little bad for him.
My favorite jeans popped the button. It wasn’t the kind that gets sewn on, so the peg thing made the hole in the jeans too big, so it wouldn’t stay in. Since that had the potential to be very embarrassing in public, I haven’t been wearing them. Today, though, I bought new buttons and sewed one on. It works perfectly, and it’s like getting a new pair of pants. I’m most pleased with the results. It is a dashing button, too, if I do say so myself.
Last summer I went hiking with my friend, and we found this epic log of awesome, and brought it back to my house. I had every intention of getting it into my tank straight away, but that hasn’t happened. The log is no longer waterlogged, so I will have to weight it down. To that end, I bought a tube of aquarium safe silicone today, and will be buying some rocks on Friday. Then I will use my dad’s saw to cut the log down to a manageable size, and put it into the tank. I can’t wait. Then I’ll add some more plants, and be on my merry way to a beautiful, healthy home for the fishy friends I will buy shortly.
My parents repainted the den this summer, and then bought new carpet and a new sofa. They have completely redone the room. My mom is going to make curtains, and has fabric samples up in the room right now to make her choices. We have a leather love seat, and my parents moved it from one side of the room to the other. My sister’s cat decided this meant it was a gift to him, and he shredded part of the newly exposed back. My dad is furious. He has decreed that the cat is no longer allowed in the den, and he super-glued those soft-paw deals on the cat’s nails, so he can’t scratch anymore. The cat doesn’t understand why he isn’t allowed in the room, because he has of course forgotten his misdeed. I feel a little bad for him.
My favorite jeans popped the button. It wasn’t the kind that gets sewn on, so the peg thing made the hole in the jeans too big, so it wouldn’t stay in. Since that had the potential to be very embarrassing in public, I haven’t been wearing them. Today, though, I bought new buttons and sewed one on. It works perfectly, and it’s like getting a new pair of pants. I’m most pleased with the results. It is a dashing button, too, if I do say so myself.
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