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.