Winter Updates

Still alive, just a tad overwhelmed by everything that's going on and will be going on in the year ahead. First comes senior thesis time, then comes graduation from Big State U, and then comes my entry into the working world, just to start with the personal transformations. I'm also attempting to lose a rather dramatic amount of weight, so we'll see how that goes.

The house is changing dramatically, as well. Thanks to foundation and sump work, it no longer leaks and leaves us standing in six inches of water after every good rainstorm or spring thaw. Next comes the gutters, and then my old bedroom gets a remake with new windows and possibly new walls as well as new paint. After that, the old attic windows will probably be replaced with new ones, as well as the old back door. I'm doing my part to help clean up the whole mess, but since I'm off at school it never feels like enough.

I finally got my first interview suit the other day. I apparently look very professional, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm really a kid playing dress-up rather than a real adult.

A: Hairsicles!

Q: What do you get when you walk back from a swimming session to your apartment in 27* F weather without bothering to dry your hair first?

Yep. My hair froze in its usual waves, and I didn't notice until I heard the wind jingle something against the back of my trench coat collar. It sounded cool, like I had wind chimes on my head, and my roommates were impressed when I walked in with a head full of rattling curls, but it didn't feel all that good once the chill approached my scalp. Brrr.

I'm almost done with most of my end-of-semester assignments (most of which are due the day of the final, hooray), so right now I'm concentrating on surviving without digging into my chocolate stash and studying to make sure I get the grades I want. While it's reassuring knowing that you literally cannot flunk a class due to the work you've done and the points you've accumulated (or several classes, as the case appears to be for me), there's no reason to decide that the job's done and drop everything on the spot.

Granted, I'm very tempted to do that, since I have several piles of yarn and four new pairs of knitting needles just begging to be used, but, as with all things, work comes before playtime. I have to study for my finals and take them before I can start hibernating with several pounds of acrylic, cotton, bamboo, wool, angora, and alpaca and a pair of pointy sticks.

I have no idea where Dr. Moreau is now. We've been incommunicado since the day before Thanksgiving. I hope he's well, and that he ends up just serving someone coffee for his entire deployment. The man's been acting too thoroughly convinced that someone's going to kill him over there.

Knitting has to be better therapy for this kind of separation than stuffing my face. At least I can wear the result fashionably, and I have a ready weapon for stabbing anyone who makes an off-color remark about my choice in boyfriends.

May they flunk and go home to their unloving mothers.

I have seriously had it with our downstairs neighbors.

Remember how I mentioned they puked in the stairwell earlier? And how the banister was ripped down after their Halloween parties? Did I mention the loud parties virtually every night of the week?

Apparently, the Sunday before Thanksgiving (long after I'd departed for break), they decided they took offense to our repeatedly calling the police on them. One of them wandered down in front of our apartment and pissed on the door. Fifteen minutes later, while one of the roommates who remained was calling the police, the alleged adult in question wandered back and did it again.

No response from the rental company on whether or not they can evict the residents of the apartment who went this far. No helpful action from the police. I'm fucking tired of this.

At least the roommates of mine who were here didn't call and tell me. I had enough to deal with. (Dr. Moreau was sent off for deployment after Thanksgiving with his family. I was fine up until it was time for him to go. Then I lost my shit and had to spend Thanksgiving in hiding lest I send some heads rolling at the dinner table with family members that manage to get under my skin without trying.)

I've got enough crap to deal with during this week and Finals week without their adding to it. May they soundly flunk and be abruptly introduced to a cold, harsh world that does not put up with these boy-child shenanigans.

And the world (nearly) turned upside down.

Remember, remember, the fifth of November
Of gunpowder, treason, and plot-
I know of no reason that the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, 'twas his intent
To blow up the King and Parliament
With thirty-six barrels of powder below
Poor old England he'd overthrow
But by Providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and a burning match!

Granted, the day also marks a personal family anniversary, but it's still fun to wonder what would have happened if the epic fail of getting caught "with a dark lantern and a burning match" had not happened and the Plot had gone off without a hitch. Apparently those barrels would have still exploded, degraded gunpowder or not, and then...hmmm.

Unfortunately, tonight is a night for me to work on homework before taking off for an archaeology conference in the next state over, so someone else will have to do the obligatory History Channel and "V for Vendetta" marathons for me, as well as the bare minimum of setting off way too many barely legal firecrackers.

Superpowered Drunk People.

Seriously, that's the only explanation I have for my neighbors not killing themselves by now through their own stupidity, or flunking out after their weekly celebrations from Thirsty Thursday to Tequila Tuesday.

I was out last night with some friends to hide from the aforementioned neighbors' party that started at two in the afternoon. We had fun and ate dinner while having an anime marathon (Witch Hunter Robin was the series of choice - hey, we're all female and drooled over Crispin Freeman's voice), and I had a few quiet hours away from these drunken idiots. I managed to get back by eleven without being hollered at by too many drunks, but the party was still going strong and getting worse.

I finally zonked out around midnight and somehow slept until seven this morning (flexible work hours are awesome, as is a boss who doesn't care what time of day you work as long as the job is done by such-and-such time.)

What do I see this morning as I head out the front door of the building?

A splintered banister. Brackets and all. Ripped out of the wall - keep in mind we're discussing a solid wooden pole as thick as my wrist - and smashed on the floor with no obvious blood. Damn, I was hoping one of the jerks impaled themselves on the thing.

A brief conference with my roommates brings out the fact that one of the night owls among us stayed up long enough to hear something that sounded like people smashing into the wall.

If the landlord makes us all pay for this rather than placing it squarely on the guys who did it, I'm ripping an equivalent chunk of meat out of the culprits' asses. What's the going sale rate for college guy meat if it's pre-marinated?

Never say "I'm bored" out loud. It tempts the gods.

1) One of the secretaries in the anthropology department at Big State U has come down with a case of swine flu - a woman who interacts with just about everyone who works in and around that office, I might add. There's the prerequisite panic over whether or not she was contagious and the fact that Big State U has been dragging its heels over getting the H1N1 vaccine (and there was a hell of a run on the normal flu vaccine this year too, I might add.)

2) Someone smashed a pumpkin outside of the smaller grocery store positioned between Big State U and State Christian U. No rhyme or reason, it was just there, right next to some broken bottles and what looked like someone's broken cell phone.

2a) It seems the radiator in my apartment is hot enough to dry pumpkin seeds thoroughly for storage before planting. Let's see if they actually grow next spring.

3) People need to have certain ideas hammered into their heads over and over before they get it, such as a mutual friend of my roommates' and mine thinking I'd automatically get the word about a birthday party via Facebook, or drop everything and come over when my roommate asked me whether I was coming to the party in question.

I've repeatedly told this mutual friend (Jake, just to give him a name) that I'm not on any social networking sites. (Shhh. This blog is meant to be anonymous. It's more fun that way - I can do the internet equivalent of standing on the roof screaming with nobody knowing who I am.) He knows that I refuse to join them for reasons he keeps trying to shoot down. He has my school email address, he knows which apartment I live in and where, and he knows who my roommates are. You'd think that would be enough.

4) I can't tell if my upstairs neighbors are installing a bowling alley or if they're taking turns dropping each other on their heads. Really. Every now and then I hear a very heavy, solid *THUD* that sounds like someone dropped a medicine ball or equally large weight. There are also occasional screams and loud trampling sounds, and then sudden silence. All I can hope is that they're going insane and will soon be forced to move out and finally let the rest of us have some quiet.

The Paper Metamorphoses

Considering how little effort I've really invested, I'm irrationally proud of myself at this moment.

Three weekends ago, I invested six dollars into buying two paper grocery sacks at my nearest public library, and then snatched up any book, CD, audiobook, and the like that looked even the slightest bit interesting or useful and packed it away into these sacks as neatly as possible. The various used book stores and pawn/secondhand media shops around here are so variable in what they want that this approach will usually yield more in returns.

This weekend, after sorting through all of the media I had sitting in the bags (and around - one bag ripped open and sent a pile of paperbacks sliding across the floor), I finally started feeding the books I was not 110% sure I wanted to keep or give as they were to family and friends into the different secondhand stores around the two cities Big State U occupies.

This is always an interesting time of year for me, and certainly the time when I get the most exercise hauling around several cubic feet of printed matter in grocery sacks as I attempt to spread out that volume of books, CDs, audio tapes, and the like to maximize the returns. I never know exactly what's going to come out of hauling around all of the printed material, although I'm pretty sure of these possibilities:

1) More books - fewer than I started with, but definitely of better quality, since they aren't just what initially looked good when I scooped them up during a bag sale.

1A) Store credit at the places I bring the books to - this is always a gamble, since the used book stores aren't always stocked with what you're looking for, but it usually pays off.

2) Money - never as much as I expect, but more than enough to recoup the initial investment. Hey, even if it's just some quarters, money is money.

2A) This was an unexpected side effect, since one of my roommates wanted several books of a particular type but couldn't go to the sale. She asked me to pick up one or two of the books and promised to reimburse me. I've had books turn into dollar bills after I feed them through this whole process, but I've never before had them turn into ears of corn to pay the remaining debt.

3) There are just some things that nobody will take, for whatever reason - it's too old, nobody wants it (often the case with video game cheat books), or it's just too commonly available or otherwise undesirable (which is why I avoid picking up romance novels during the initial scoop the way you'd avoid touching someone who had the plague). Those remainders usually get dumped at the nearest library with a donations box or a secondhand store (which means some of the books I've been sorting might have already been through the process two or three times).

Yeah, it takes some work. But I've already made about twice my initial investment in credit at just one store, and gotten back half the money I spent in both cash and food just from doing my roommate a favor. And I've gotten plenty of exercise walking or riding my bike with the first load of books to each of the local stores, which is a heck of a lot better than paying to go to a gym.

Who says you can't see this sort of transformation of books into food, money, a healthier body, or new books right before your eyes? Now, if I could just do the same with loud neighbors (but what would you sell them for? Alarm systems? Pest scaring devices?), I'd make a mint and get two more hours of sleep a night.

Don't trip now!

Eight more weeks to the end of this semester, then twenty-two weeks to the end of the next, and I'll officially have my degree in hand. This knowledge is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. I've made it to the end of the racetrack, but what's waiting for me after the finish line?

Please don't let it be more neighbors who think it's fine to party every night from Thirsty Thursday to Tequila Tuesday. Or the prospect of living with my parents if the internship places are swamped. I get along fine with them, but I'm not happy about the whole idea in general.

Up late (not of my own volition this time.)

Either my upstairs neighbors are putting in a bowling alley, or their latest game is "see who can jump off the furniture and land with the hardest stomp without putting holes in the floor."

If anyone has a truly disgusting soundtrack from any film, the kind that would make even farm animals wince in disgust, and a very loud DVD or tape player, I have a voice recorder with fresh batteries, infinite loop, and the ability to be hooked up to the speakers of choice. We can make this work.

It's a knack, I'm telling you.

I seem to have made a bet (in the form of an independent study course) about whether or not someone could have survived on the wild foods that were available 2000 years ago, or whether it was possible to survive on these when you were just one person or one family making the effort.

At least I didn't offer myself up as the guinea pig to actually survive on this diet for a semester, which saved my butt twice already this afternoon from one misadventure in experimenting with acorns. I didn't know two things a few hours ago:

1) If you're scooping up acorns for food, check the shells. If the acorn is cracked, has a neat little hole bored in the shell,or is soft enough to squish with your fingers, toss it. Why?

WORMS.

And I didn't find this out until I came back with my booty, left it there for an hour or two while I took off for my last class of the day, and then returned to discover that the bag I'd scooped up everything in had a few holes in it. Apparently the worms didn't like hanging out in a plastic bag with nine pounds of acorns all that much, and liked the carpet much better.

A sweep with a vacuum and a thorough inspection of all of the acorns outside took care of that problem, which reduced the nine pounds down to two that might have been trustworthy.

(Sigh. I can already tell this is definitely not a solo effort if you're trying to feed yourself...)

2) With the two remaining pounds of semi-trustworthy acorns, I flipped through a tree identification book to check what type I had (I hadn't thought to look straight up to see if I was picking up acorns from under a red or white oak at the time.) Turns out I had red oak acorns, from the oak trees with the sharp, pointy tips to their leaves. Fine. I dug through the wild foods cookbook I had...

...to discover that red oak acorns were considered too poisonous to prepare. The thing about acorns is that they're loaded with tannin, which is great if you're trying to process leather but absolutely rotten for a human to eat. Too much of it and your kidneys will crap out on you. You can dry and then repeatedly boil the acorn meat through several changes of water to leach out the tannin, but red oak acorns have too much in them to do this unless you have a week or two to spare.

Out goes the remaining two pounds.

If I'm ever so hard up that I'm considering eating red oak acorns, I should just let the squirrels eat the acorns, and then I'll eat the squirrels. And next time I'll make sure I target the white oaks and start harvesting the nuts as soon as the acorns start hitting the ground.

File this under "the inventor was on crack."

During my weekend wanderings, which included a detour through the Saturday farmer's market, I managed to stumble into another knitting shop completely by accident. I noticed a sign on the outside of the building it was located in, stepped inside, and was promptly lost in a maze of twisty little passages for ten minutes while I tried to locate the stairs and the doors. I managed to find my way up to the shop eventually, where while wandering around I tripped over a pair of size 50 needles.

Don't clean your screen or your glasses, you read that right. Size 50 knitting needles.

For the non-knitters, needles in the United States are sized a little oddly - instead of going by millimeters in diameter, they each have a numbered size. Size 8 is about average and can handle most sweaters, hats, mittens, and the like, and it's five millimeters in diameter. I had previously believed that the thickest needle was size nineteen, which is maybe as large as a human index finger.

Size 50, as it turns out, looks like a sharpened broomstick. And not a small broomstick, either. Maybe it should be called a sharpened shovel handle, or a short spear. An atlatl dart, maybe, or a long lawn dart. In any case, each needle was about three-quarters as thick as my wrist, and some maniac had actually started knitting with them. Granted, it was a rug and they were using roughly spun roving (roving is semi-raw wool - not exactly straight off the sheep, as it's been cleaned and generally combed into shape or wound into long strands, but it isn't spun into proper yarn yet), but still...

And naturally, guess who had to try knitting on these things.

I can be a moron in the pursuit of the satisfaction of my curiosity.

Twenty minutes to complete as many stitches later, I managed to complete the row and gave up on the idea of another. I'd had enough already. I just scooped up a helmet liner pattern and a ball of ordinary brown wool on my way out.

Later that evening, I got to find out firsthand just how emotionally draining it is to be in the audience for a performance of Equus, but that's another story altogether. I'm still trying to get my wrists to work properly again.

The Annoyance of Bobo

I'm not calling it the wrath of God, despite how it looks. For one, nobody's done anything big enough to piss off the Big Guy lately. For another, although it looks like one of the plagues of Egypt, it's not yet to the point of serious disruption of human activity. And I'm dead certain that the translation was "flies" and "locusts" when it came to the insect-based plagues, not "soybean aphids."

For the non-Midwestern readers, soybean aphids are insects about half the length of a human eyelash that live on the sap secreted from one of our main two crops. They're ordinarily kept well in check by the weather, the food supply, and the resident population of ladybugs. Around this time of year, you might see the occasional cloud of what looks like extraordinarily fast-flying dust motes in the late afternoon or evening, never more than three to five feet in diameter at its largest and generally with plenty of room between the individual "motes."

Ordinarily.

This year, it seems we had favorable conditions for a population boom. The aphids responded by multiplying exponentially. The thing about aphids is that they don't need to be inseminated to be able to reproduce. They can do it asexually. One aphid could produce three to five more in a day, and in favorable conditions the population only needs two or three days to double. And we didn't start with just one.

And did I mention that, when they run low on food supplies, these normally wingless insects sprout wings?

The result is everyone walking around campus waving their hands in front of their faces, covering their noses and mouths with whatever's handy, and brushing and shaking everything off once they get inside. The bathrooms overflow with people spitting, wiping out their eyes, cleaning their ears, and blowing their noses to clean out all of the bugs. (Aphids are apparently not born with any sense of self-preservation and gravitate to the human respiratory system's entrances.) Fifteen minutes after you step out of the mist of flying insects you can feel hitting your skin as you walk, aphids will still fly out of your clothes if you shake them.

A good hard frost will kill them or at least reduce the mist to those negligible clouds I mentioned earlier, but in the meantime the student body has been advised to not wear yellow, which apparently attracts the bugs. I'm personally keeping my window shut, covering my face with a finely woven scarf, and contemplating whether I should order some ladybug egg cases or just wait for the first frost.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. OVER?

I hate it when it turns out I didn't know someone as well as I thought I did. I'm ready to punch the next person who mentions anything to do with relationships in general.

A little background: I'm in a (currently long-distance) relationship with someone who overwhelmingly resembles Dr. Moreau of H.G. Wells' tale of the mad scientist - the sort of person whose science experiments turn out to be great and terrible (in the same way as "I am Oz, the great and terrible"), and who, when he was a bit younger, you never quite knew which dimension he was in at the moment. Somehow we managed to hit it off without leveling a city in the process, but that's another story. He's currently serving his country by jumping out of perfectly good airplanes and the like, but all too soon he's going to be in a place where people are going to be shooting at him on a regular basis. I have my fingers crossed that he'll return from the latest hellhole he's being dropped into with all of his appendages and psyche still intact.

Yeah. Being in love drives me nuts in all senses of the idiom, especially now that I know a few months from now I'll be freezing and then praying that a certain name doesn't pop up when there's an announcement about an attack on US troops. Be careful who you love, folks.

Which makes what happened the other day all the more upsetting.

I was out getting in trouble in the nearest fiber craft shop (I knit, crochet, spin wool, sew clothing so it'll actually fit me, and do other things with pointy sticks so I am not tempted to stab willful idiots with them) and had just selected a few orphan skeins to buy. While I was getting the yarn wound into useable blobs rather than the long, twisted hanks it's sold in, I got into a conversation with an older woman in the store I'm familiar with. She has plenty of advice, generally good for whatever situation I find myself in and always good for calming me down out of my initial panic when I think I'm in trouble. It was nothing serious this time, we were just shooting the shit about the semester starting and whether I think I'll do well in my classes.

So I was caught utterly flatfooted when this came out of the blue:

"Are there any cute boys in your classes?"

I know I've mentioned Moreau to her, but I thought she might have mixed me up with someone else.

"Hugh Jackman, Gerard Butler, and Michael Sheen don't attend Big State U, last I knew. And besides, I have one in uniform out East."

"But what about here? Having a boyfriend doesn't mean you have a ring on your finger, and there's-"

At this point my brain shut off the connection to my ears. Luckily, it also disconnected my mouth for about thirty seconds, or I would have been screaming obscenities to the tune of:

WHAT. DID. YOU. JUST. SAY?

I stammered something about being loyal that probably looked and sounded weak. I can never articulate clearly when I'm upset. It's hard to enunciate when your lips are pulled back so far you're showing off the scars where your wisdom teeth used to be, or when your teeth are chewing on nothing because they can't take a chunk out of what upset you.

Then I paid, grabbed the bag of yarn, and bolted before I could do something stupid. I was beyond upset. I wanted blood. I wanted to rip down the whole building with my bare hands.

More than anything, I wanted a sympathetic ear, but the one I knew was immediately at hand was no longer there.

Great. As if I didn't have to deal with "he's military, you know what they're like" and encouragements to break up so I can "graze in greener pastures," now I have someone who had a military husband from when she was my age giving me a wink-wink nudge-nudge encouragement to cheat on my boyfriend just because our connection isn't formal. This is upsetting on too many levels to articulate. I can't even swear properly. And I thought I knew this woman well enough to...oh, damn it.

Looks like I'm not setting foot in there for a while. Or sewing my mouth shut before I do. It's the only fiber shop in town, and I want to be able to go back more than I want to show her exactly what I meant when I said I used to be a little ball of rage.

Next time, just use a d*** flyswatter.

Ah, college. Where else can you be entertained by just looking out the window?

I was completely oblivious to this whole scene until I came out in time to watch the tow truck come and haul away the vehicle in question, but apparently my little chunk of the Midwest is good for something aside from universities, the occasional meth lab, and idiotic urban planning. It seems we're also growing a bumper crop of future Darwin Award winners, as demonstrated by the story that led to the tow truck hauling away a certain vehicle outside the apartment building and an upstairs neighbor getting the fear of God put into him.

Note: all names and some minor details have been changed to protect the gormless from embarrassment and my butt from being sued.

The neighbor (who will be known from here as N for obvious reasons) and a friend of his (F, for ****ing idiot) are returning home from a late-night errand when F notices that they have an extra passenger. Somehow, a trilobite-sized spider has climbed onto their car antenna and is clinging on for dear life. F is an arachnophobe, which I can sympathize with after a bad reaction to a bite in my past, but I have no earthly idea why F decided that what he did next was anything but a Bad Idea.

F has an airsoft gun in his car. He decides that the best way to get rid of Shelob is to shoot it off the antenna with this gun, which looks remarkably like a very real weapon. He pulls out this gun and shoots it, apparently dispatching Shelob after a few shots with attendant screams of terror.

Another person witnesses what looks like a deranged man shooting at cars and calls the cops, who understandably react badly to this piece of information.

N is the first to notice the first black-and-white following them with its lights flashing, but F tells N to ignore it. Then, about two blocks later (and right outside the building, as things turned out), seven cop cars swarm their car and bring it to a halt, both occupants are yanked out and thrown to the ground with the BFGs pointed straight at their heads, and the cops promptly tear through the car searching for the gun. All of this with everyone screaming at the top of their lungs, sirens going, and the safeties on some very serious weapons being removed.

And, yes, I was completely oblivious to all of this. Even though the apartment I live in was separated only by a front yard and a sidewalk from the action.

F spent the night in the pokey, the car was impounded, and N was sent on his way to change his underwear and stop shaking.

I wonder how F's going to explain that one to future employers.

*edit* Grr. Stupid spacing.

Proof that money does not equal class.

My living situation is such that I'm in one block of relatively cheap apartments, but live a parking garage and a dumpster away from the newer set of apartments that cost two to three times what I pay in monthly rent. The whole block is owned by the same realty, but the apartments across the way are generally the roomy ones that are ideal for parties.

On my way back from the library earlier tonight, I was about to cross the street when I saw two objects come flying off of one of the top balconies and hit the rock gardens underneath, both landing with weird splatting noises. After making sure no more of the mysterious objects were going to follow, I picked my way over to the garden to take a look...

...and found a flip-flop of the type favored by 85% of the students here and a slip-on shoe.

I don't care who you are - civilized (or at least sober) humans generally do not throw shoes off of balconies at odd hours of the night. Pity they didn't throw the mates, or I'd have some new shoes right now.

Crawling out of hibernation...

I'm still alive, just somewhat swamped by the world and in the race to finish my degree on time without letting the stress get to me. (A stock tip, for those still interested: invest in any pharmaceutical company that makes antacids. You'll make a mint in December and April.)

One hurdle to "official" adulthood I've cleared is moving into my own apartment, although I doubt learning how to deal with loud neighbors was on the "official" list. I have not attempted to take matters into my own hands after three in the morning by greeting them with sharp implements and an evil smile. I really must be mellowing with age. Five years ago, I'd have knocked down their collective doors (yes, my neighbors on all sides are the culprits) and done some very distressing things to the sound system, drinks, and the host in short order. Breaking crockery and blasting music at two in the morning does not make for a very happy neighbor, especially when you do it right outside that neighbor's window.

The beginning of the semester also brought back both of my jobs, although this year I got tossed to a new professor and a new class, along with another TA. (With about a hundred students in the class, most of whom regularly attend - there's a surprise for a Gen. Ed. class - we're kept quite busy, especially thanks to the agonizingly slow system known as Blackboard that the class also uses for the occasional online quiz and assignment submission.) The pickings at my primary job aren't quite as rich as they used to be, but I'm waiting for the "harvest" at the end of the semester and just before and after the big vacation times. There's still plenty, anyway - you just have to know where to look.

Oooops.

Things I did not know two hours ago:

1) Although they look and feel solid and outweigh their average user, most exercise machines are actually made of hollow bars and tubes of metal. They're pretty lightweight, and ordinarily that's a good thing. Ordinarily.

2) While aware that repeatedly stressing the same portion of anything will eventually deform or break it, I had no idea that the amount of force put out by the leg of an exercising human over a period of maybe a month was capable of creating sufficient stress.

3) Hollow metal hitting a concrete floor sounds like a gunshot when you're standing on top of the metal in question. It's also loud enough to be heard on every floor of a two-story building with a basement, although the basement's construction means it generally "eats" sound.

4) It cannot put a dent in cement - however, it also doesn't absorb the shock of more or less stomping full force on said cement. In other words, folks, it hurts when you land on it barefoot, and if you aren't hanging on you're going to fall over sideways.

I'm fine, aside from a really jumpy heart rhythm and a sore heel, but the machine's totaled. Good thing it was free. It's going out to the curb as soon as we figure out how to muscle it up the stairs.

And here I was, thinking the most exciting part of my day was locating some worthwhile stuff at a few garage sales.

Did I miss a bulletin?

Because lately it seems like more and more people are loudly and proudly proclaiming themselves to be willfully ignorant on several basic levels, and to be of the sort that would gladly meddle in my life when I couldn't care less about how they conduct theirs.

For instance, people who, when they hear about my choice of profession, ask whether or not I have to believe in evolution to be accepted. Aside from treating evolution as a belief, which is on a par with saying you believe in digestion, they act as though I'm going to glance side-to-side nervously, then lean over and whisper in their ear about instances of good True Believers being oppressed because they refused to believe in evolution.

I've discovered I have a hell of a talent for bullshitting when it comes to getting away from these folks as fast as possible without burning sneaker rubber or someone getting more than their pride hurt.

Then there are the folks I tried reasoning with about contraception at a pro-birth protest. Oy vey. I would have gotten further with the proverbial brick wall, and at one point I started looking around for a camera as a sign that this was actually going on a prank TV show or a sign reading "Every Sperm is Sacred." There's just no other explanation as to why someone would flat-out tell me to my face that the invention of the Pill "caused the idea of abortion."

(And I nearly broke a rib trying to not laugh when I explained that birth control and abortion had been around for as long as humans have been able to put two and two together. There are just some things you don't want to do, like douse yourself in steak sauce and then kick a Doberman in the nuts, or laugh at the kind of people who shoot OB/GYNs.)

Well, fine, let those ladies live with their delusions. Even my former Roomie, who, as darling as she was to me, insisted on being infuriatingly immune to logic, history, and any knowledge of what humans are like beyond the ideal that her religion promoted, and asked if I ever felt empty or incomplete due to my not giving a toss one way or another about religion.

The problem comes when they want to make sure I don't get to live my life the way I want to live it.

Grubbing in the dirt, Part #41792367

Contrary to popular belief, I wasn't one of those kids who walked home caked in enough dirt to add an inch of topsoil to the yard, so doing what I usually do around the house is sort of amazing considering how I hated getting dirty in elementary school.

Fast forward to undergraduate school at a university that's chock-full of...well, I'll save that for another time - and I'm the one willingly shoving my hands into trash cans full of everything except human body fluids and/or waste to fish out something that looks interesting. I apparently got a serious case of the "Oooh, Shiny" from a magpie, and finding everything from laundry money (seriously, how did several pennies, nickels, and dimes wind up in a trash can) to an extra load's worth of detergent in the bottle by just looking around does nothing to discourage it.

Over the summer, I've switched to occasionally looking in boxes dumped on the curb and mostly throwing around bags of dirt and sand while I look after the garden my family keeps trying to start in most of the yard. Potatoes are high-maintenance - you have to keep piling up dirt and sand or they won't actually produce anything - and really good for building upper body strength.

And now I just learned that I've been accepted into the community college's summer field school program. It won't even be a sleepaway field school, since it's so close to home. It'll be three hours each afternoon of shovel bumming at a chosen location, and cataloguing and otherwise learning how to properly handle artifacts in the morning.

I don't know if my rapidly darkening skin pigment comes more from being out in the sun so much or from the fact that I'm actually covered in dirt up to the knees and elbows until I take a power washer to myself.

Hey! You in the toga with the "Muse" tattoo!

Get back over here!

Or at least leave me some of those ideas you're scribbling on your notepad. I could use some right about now.

*insert sound of someone dropping a box of ten reams of paper into my lap*

Oh. Thanks.

I'll be back as soon as I sort through all of these things, folks, and get the growling about airline travel out of my system. I just got back from visiting Dr. Moreau and my brain's still settling itself.