urbandruid

State of the virus: Sorted. Little fucker's gone, good riddance. Now I'm paranoid about other stuff getting in, but hey, whatever, you know? Gone! /State of the virus

The ants are trying to make a comeback, in totally weird places as usual. We found 'em in the kitchen, which, okay, I can understand, but the other place was Mom's closet. Not even the dirty clothes hamper or anything, just meandering around some random boxes.

Our ants are on crack. But that's okay, 'cause they're also toast. We're going another round with the outdoor bug spray this weekend, and any hills we find get a bottle of ammonia dumped on them. Ants, it turns out, do not like ammonia. It's kinda like salting the earth, too, because we've never had them come back in the same spots.

Note to self: Need to go to the 99 cent store and get some more bottles of ammonia. (We have a little left, but we also use it to clean up the indoor bug spray so Sam doesn't get into it. She seems to leave the ammonia alone, but we worry about the bug spray.)

I have- eek! -two weeks left of vacation, and I'm not ready to go back to school. I was, or close to it, but I feel sort of gypped on the last two or so weeks, courtesy of the virus. Far as I'm concerned, the only good thing about school starting is that maybe in another month, month and a half, it'll start cooling down a bit.

Right now it couldn't be winter soon enough. It's not as bad as it's been- but understand when I say that, I mean "it's not as bad as the week it was 109 to 112 all fucking week." So it's all relative.

Speaking of which, my grandparents have been out of town for the last week and a half or so. They're back on Monday. We're kind of not 100% looking forward to this. I mean, I love my relatives, but sometimes they can be a little... smothering. I'm thinking the next time we end up over there, I'll offer to go check out their internet security. I think they have broadband now, and that kinda scares me. An ounce of prevention might save me from having to play "search & destroy the virus."

Somewhat randomly, to all the cat people out there, I could use some advice. Sam hates having her claws cut, to the point where if I try to get more than one (sometimes even one, if she's in a bad enough mood) she'll swipe at me or try to bite. We're pretty sure that someone used to cut her claws way too short, and it kind of traumatized her- but I've got to cut the damn things. She likes to knead things- blankets, pillows, her humans- and those things are damn sharp.

Naturally her front claws are the ones I'd really like to get, but with them being, you know, by her head, I don't like to push it too far. I don't like getting bitten. Oh yeah, and the paw with the really sharp claws, she's hiding from us. She'll lay down and curl that paw up under her so that you can't even see it.

Clever little shit. I swear if she wasn't so cute, she'd be dead by now, but so what else is new?

I had some other stuff I was going to mention, but I can't think what it is right now. Too tired.

edited to add: I remembered one thing- I'm, um, pretty sure I passed a little kidney stone last week. Kidneys had been bugging me a bit, to the point where about midweek last week I said if I wasn't better by Monday (this past Monday, this would be) I'd have to call my doctor. I've got a pretty high pain tolerance, and was fairly miserable for other reasons that week anyway. And I kept getting really nauseated even though I was making sure to eat before I took any Advil or any of my other pills.

...Yeah. I kind of did a facepalm last weekend and went, "...Oh. Yeah."

In my defense I have to say that I was pretty distracted by the virus... but I still feel like an idiot. Definitely need to keep a better eye on my kidneys than that, especally with it still being summer in the city.

Too much about computers and their issues lately, not enough about me.

I'm pretty tired- school has been running me a little ragged lately, but doesnt it always? Im losing more keys, randomly now, seems like- the far end of the numbers, obviously the apostrophe is on the fritz again, and earlier today, the shift keys took a powder. Pretend the previous bit was in parentheses, those are screwed up too.

I have my first Abnormal Psych exam tomorrow, so I need to study a bit tonight. I'm not really too worried about it, though- I know this stuff. At least most of it. I think my first Geology exam may be next week. That one could be tricky- there's a hell of a lot of info in the first couple chapters.

Speaking of Geo, it amazes me how things can be so interesting in lecture- fascinating, actually... and then I go to do the reading. And I immediately feel like nodding off. Or like I'm about to nod off. For those insomniacs on my flist, I highly recommend this one: Earth, by Edward Tarbuck and Frederick Lutgens. No, I am not making up those names. I swear. This book is stupefyingly boring. I think when we get there, these two will have somehow managed to make even volcanoes boring. And I love volcanoes. In the sense of neat really destructive stuff I wouldnt really want to live near... Yeah. You know what I mean.

My book for Abnormal Psych is only a little bit less dull, but I expect it to get better with the next chapters; tomorrow's exam covers the boring chapter on the history of psychology, the chapter on the medical & psychodynamic models of psychology, and the one that's been putting me to sleep most recently- diagnostic tools & research methods. More specifically, the research crap. Maybe if they had examples of real studies that were a little less lame... Oh well.

Mentally, I'm hanging in there. Not doing too badly at all, actually. School is stressing me a bit, but I think its more in the range of normal stress than... well, than what happens when I'm not coping so well. The thing with Anna and her keyboard has really been throwing me lately, especally as it's so sporadic, and now the problem seems to be spreading. I can never count on everything working when I boot her up- I can't count on anything working. That's frustrating, and annoying, and on days when I'm coping less than brilliantly, it can be enough to have me bursting into tears. Stupid depression.

I'm not writing as much as I usually do, because of Anna's issues, and I think thats a big part of my stress and general feeling of crappiness. I do the bulk of my writing at the keyboard, for a number of reasons. One is convenience- most of it gets posted somewhere online, so already having it on the computer is a good idea.

Also, my handwriting is awful- no, I mean really really bad. It's a hand/eye coordination thing, and for some reason I'm not so fabulous at those. Every time I see the handwriting analysis guys on CSI, I chuckle, because I'm pretty sure they'd read mine wrong. I don't think it's changed much since, oh, junior high... Half the time I end up not capitalizing things, not because I'm going the e.e. cummings route, but because of the way I learned to write so that I could see it. Probably started in grade school, when they had us dropping the tails of letters down from the line... well, I wanted the space they were taking up for the next line. I drove my teachers crazy.

And this is my printing. My cursive- do they still even call it that? is atrociously bad. Like the printing, I can make it neater if I try, but that takes a lot of time, and mostly I don't bother. When I have to sign receipts and stuff, well... you can probably make out the C at the start. Other than that...

I guess the other thing is kind of related to the handwriting, which is that even when I'm not taking the time to make it really neat, it still takes me longer than most people to write stuff down. This is only mildly annoying for things like lecture notes- I usually just let those get really sloppy, and if need be will copy them out again later. But for stuff like writing, a keyboard has always been the only thing that could ever keep up with the speed of the thoughts in my head, exactly as I want to put them down. By the time I finish writing a sentance longhand, I'm five lines beyond it in my head, and struggling to catch up.

All of which makes writing a more frustrating experience than an- You know, its weird. It really isnt a leisure activity- I don't write like I read, or watch TV or movies- not just because I enjoy it. I write because I have to. Even if it's just a couple lines every day, maybe even every couple days if I'm really busy, even if it's just a couple lines scribbled in a notebook bitching about stupid crap like the vending machines at school- evil, money eating things that they are, and apparently some of their soda is really old and nasty, according to my honor society buddies.

Whatever, however little it is, I have to write stuff down. And lately the mediums for doing this have turned into a whole mess of frustration on their own. But I need to write. When I can't, when I haven't at all for ages, weeks, months, I can turn into a pretty horrid person. Not as bad as I am when Im in pain and without drugs, but just all tense and stressed and... I don't know. Its kind of hard to explain. Sometimes it'll feel like there are too many words stuck in my head, like I need to open a valve and let some of them out.

I suspect I'm going to end up using a lot more paper before the computer thing resolves. I'll just have to get used to going slower.

In other news, Sam is still being Sam, cute and occasionally very annoying. Last month she got into Moms closet- which, okay, no problem, though Mom would rather she didn't stay there forever. But we have one of those big plastic things you put rolls of wrapping paper in, right? And it has a lid, with a compartment where you can put your ribbons and your gift tags and whatnot. And Sam, clever little thing that she is, knocked over the container, and the ribbon thing must've fallen open, because the next time Mom went into her closet, she found... ribbon.

Ribbon everywhere, those spools of it that come like yarn, just wrapped around themselves. Well, they weren't wrapped around much except each other when we found them, and I discovered that however they put those together at the ribbon factory, it can't easily be duplicated by humans. I think the cat had a blast, though.

She's grown tons since the last pictures I posted of her. I have newer ones, and sometime (hahaha, right, in my *cough* spare time) I'll post them. She's gotten bigger, really just filling in. And that disgusting kitty-tuna canned food the vet suggested we put her on, has made her fur all sleek and shiny and OMGSoSoft!

She sheds like mad. White fur for all your dark clothing shedding needs, grey fur for all your light colors. :)

Our heat wave is finally starting to break, at least at night. It's still hot during the day, but at least after the sun goes down we can open up the house, and it's actually cool outside. It's been nice.

The heat during the day is still making me really tired and lazy, though. There's a ton of stuff I ought to be doing that I just... haven't exactly gotten around to yet. I owe people tags, should probably write some challenge responses at some point this week, and I need to start digging into my ficathon assignment.

I'm so lazy these days, it's pathetic.

Sam bit me yesterday. Actually it was more of a nip, more gums than teeth, and I'm pretty sure she thought we were playing, but she managed to get me right in the muscle of my forearm, and it hurts like I've pulled something there. And yet, I still love my kitty. I did bop her on the nose when she did it, though, because, y'know, ow? And I don't want her to think that this whole biting people thing is okay- though if she bit some of the jerks who set off illegal fireworks on the 4th on the next fucking street over, I'd be okay with that.

We had a good 4th, but I was worried about those idiots, with their pretty fireworks that shoot up in the sky, explode, and land who knows where, while they'll still all hot and flamey... and it was windy that night. I was going to go inside and call the fire department, but I saw the police helicopter circling the neighborhood, and I figured they knew about it already. I hope those jerks enjoyed their $1000 fine. I just bought this house, people, you're not setting it on fire! Idiots...

We, of course, were downwind from the rest of the neighborhood, so we got all their smoke on a big gust of wind. Lots of fun, that... We had some trouble getting our fireworks lit, and finally Mom ended up lighting them with her cigarette, which just cracked us up.

Some idiot in a pickup truck ran over our last groundbloom. Jerk. We'd thrown it a little farther out into the street than we'd meant to, but you know, they last about thirty seconds, he could've just stopped, instead of gunning it. I felt sort of bad about how far it was out into the road until he did that. After, well, I sort of hope he singed the underside of his shiny truck. Which isn't nice of me, but whatever.

We actually came in before we'd lit off everything we had. I was getting kind of tired of sparkers, and we had about 60 of them. Seriously. The booth we went to only sold them in boxes of thirty, and they were buy one, get one free. *headdesk* Like we needed 60 sparklers. I was going to give a bunch to the family down the street, but I think they hit the same booth we did, 'cause they weren't hurting for sparklers either.

This seemes silly to me,the 60 sparkelers thing. When I worked in a fireworks booth a couple summers ago to help out a friend of mine, we had the same deal on sparklers, but we sold the individual boxes that are in the big box- so you'd buy one box of, say, six sparklers, and we'd throw in another one for free. A dozen sparklers is a good ammount. Sixty is kind of like... Holy shit, what?

So next year we find out if fireworks keep for a year. They're in the closet in the office now, and I guess we'll see next summer.

Hell, we'll see if I can find them next summer. Stuff tends to get moved around that closet a lot- though I'm going to try to be nice to the explosives, obviously.

I'd forgotten how much fun the 4th of July could be. We hadn't lit off fireworks of our own at home since I was a kid, and all I got to do back then was hold the sparkers, of course. It's so much more fun to light the things and run like hell. :)

Sam wasn't too thrilled with the fireworks- she doesn't like loud noises at all- but she did better than I'd thought she would. I figured by the time we got back inside, she'd be hiding under one of our beds, and we'd be lucky to see her again all night. But she was parked in the living room in one of her usual spots on the carpet- a little touchy, but not too bad.

So, all in all, it was a pretty good holiday. Strange having it in the middle of the week, though...