Joyous Cow Cheese, or, Another Thing Not to do When Short of Food

The first thing that greeted me this morning was the immediate realization that I had a fever.  The  next few things to greet me included some mucus-coated pieces of my lungs and the very real possibility that I had a cold.  A few days have gone by that I have been feeling a bit under the weather, and working in the pouring rain in low 60 degree (F) weather has not been helping.  I decided to continue my morning rituals in order to better assess my condition before calling off work.  I hate to call off work, but I also know when it is best that I rest that I might miss less work than had I pushed myself too far.  This was one of those days.

I am also taking care of a house-ful of dachshunds (6 wieners!) this week, so I had to drive in this condition a few miles down the way to let them out of their crates and administer their various medications.  The few that stay out over night decided that the doggie door is the forbidden zone when it has been raining and had left me a few presents to attend to.  Wonderful.

I gathered my own dogs and returned home, called in ill, and went back to sleep.  I awoke around 2 pm ravenous.  Ravenous and lazy.  Instead of taking the logical route and making something I had the proper ingredients for (see previous post on the pie-that-shall-not-be-named) I decided that I must have a grilled cheese sandwich and soup.  The soup I had, the bread I had, but the cheese I did not.  Digging into the ominous depths of my refrigerator, I scrounged up some of that Joyous Cow Cheese (or whatever it is called) that comes in little wedges, and 3 lonely bits of mozzarella.  It was sandwich time.

As it turns out, you should use a cheese that is a bit less liquid to hold together two pieces of bread.  Also, you should check the expiration date on your cheese.  I now have a cold and food poisoning.  Delirious and achy, I return to the confines of my bed.

A pet-owner’s guide to insanity, and other tales

Owning a pet can be the most rewarding thing in the world.  If you aren’t the one who takes care of it.

The past few nights, I found myself repeatedly waking up to the delightful sound of a howling cat.  And by delightful, I mean more irritating than Sarah Palin’s hockey mom  jokes.

I finally took Kipper (the cat in question) to the vet yesterday, and it turns out he has quite a significant fever.  I sort of feel bad for threatening to make him into mittens if he wouldn’t shut up and let me sleep.

First, I was a walk-in, which means you don’t get a vet but a vet-tech.  Second, vet-techs have no souls.

She looked him over and deemed him perfectly healthy except for being 14 lbs of pure retarded cat and feverish.  She actually got offended when I suggested that he was mentally sub-normal, but she doesn’t have to remind him to look INSIDE the food bowl each time he is hungry so that he is aware that that is where food is kept.

She gave him a shot of anti-biotics and told me that she was going to give me some to take home and administer orally twice daily.  There is nothing more fun than getting a feverish aching cat to hold still while you pour bitter fluid down it’s throat.

Next, she informed me that they don’t give this to people allergic to penicillin and I stared at her in a hopefully meaningful manner.  I gaped in her direction with a look of incredulous irritation.

It then dawned on her to ask if I was allergic to penicillin, turns out I am.  Remember, vet-tech = no soul.

She gave me some gloves and sent me on my way, telling me to not let Kipper lick my face at all the next week.  I told her that I’m not really into that kind of thing and she just looked at me like I had a dead fish nailed to my forehead… no soul = no sense of humor.

After I got home and settled, we all (me + the dog + the cat) all piled into my bed for a good night’s sleep.  A rather smelly and furry nights sleep, but for the most part okay.

About 10:00 am this morning I felt overly warm.  Air conditioning broken?

About 10:00:05 am I felt uncomfortably hot.  Hair dryer came to life and is attacking?

About 10:00:10 I realized I was covered in dog piss.  I thought she had jumped up on the bed to snuggle, but her rapid departure WAS a little suspicious.

Turns out I have an incredibly smart dog, I taught her not to pee or poo on the floor, and she didn’t.  I could hardly be mad while I marveled at her ability to find loopholes, she could be a politician.

I cleaned up the mess and set forth into the middle part of my day, which was relatively uneventful, but I should have known that every hurricane has an eye during which the hellish storm lightens significantly.  Suspense!

Remember the bank incident?  If you have been reading my adventures with rapt attention as you should then you do.

My bank just so happens to be inside another store, and I had just purchased a stepping stool for a certain four-foot friend of mine who will be coming over this week for a visit.  I was feeling all warm and fuzzy and helpful at the time.

The teller that I had embarrassed was standing outside of the bank offering checking accounts to passers-by.  They must have kicked him off of teller duty after the shameful incident of a few weeks prior.

First, he turns around in mock anger, and then we had a good laugh over my inability to handle social situations.  Who doesn’t laugh at me for this?

He notices the stool in my cart, and asks if I’m getting it because I’m so short.  I’m 5′3″, thank you very much!

I explain the situation to him, and he says he understands, it’s for her to be able to reach the milk and stuff.  I agreed, and glowed in the glory of being a good friend, making a remark about that in hopes of gaining some respect back from him.

He went on, saying, “You know what else you could do, since you’re so good at it?  You could write demeaning remarks on things, like on the milk write, ‘You must be >5′ tall to drink this milk,’ and such”  Well I probably deserved that.

I once again profusely apologized and then we laughed and I left, shameful and hunched.  The End.

So if you happen to ask me how my weekend went within the next few days, I will probably just laugh and then slowly start to walk away.  Or I may just squeal like a sea-urchin and pass out.

There is always tomorrow, but pagans don’t usually have much fun on Sundays in the Bible Belt. It’s a law that if you don’t go to church like the good baptist that you should be that you must stay indoors all day and hide from the light of day like the fiendish nightwalking sacrilegious demon-being that you are.

Of all the people to accuse of animal cruelty…

The past two days have brought me to a state of sanity known as “the edge.”  I have actually built a bridge over the edge out of popsicles but it doesn’t look like they are going to hold for much longer.

Today, I was in one of my favorite stores of all time, the World Market.  Elbowing my way through hippies to stock my cupboards with some new glasses and coasters.

I had my dog with me, and as usual if I have to leave her in the car I try to park in the shade and leave the windows open and a cup of fresh cold water in the cup holder.  No big deal, she was snug as a bug in a luxury suite.

I was in the store for about 10 minutes when an employee cautiously approached me and asked if it was my maroon car parked in the front of the store.  I knew she wasn’t about to compliment me on it so I got a little scared.

She proceeded to inform me that several customers had been complaining about my dog.  Mira has quite the sailor’s vocabulary so I prepared to apologize to some scandalized hippies.

Apparently they deemed me a bad parent to my dog for leaving her in the car and found it to be their duty as animal rights activists and dirty pretentious hippies to complain to the management about me.  Dirty hippies.

Instead of thinking for like, 30 seconds about the situation or even looking at her conditions and seeing that she was not panting, had water, and was in fact completely fine, they got me kicked out of the store.  Peacefully protested right outta that place!

The clerk actually just “suggested” it would be best if I payed for my items and left right then, but knowing my tolerance for people who can’t mind their own business I figured putting up a fight would be a poor decision.  It’s all peace, love, and pancakes until they find something to complain about, which is everything.

I have determined that the hippie handbook must read on page one, “Live and let live*.  *For a full list of exceptions see Appendix A” Appendix A is a 257,845 page document that must be printed double-sided on paper made from recycled fecal matter and inked with the blood of anyone who uses logic and reason for the basis of thought as opposed to magic and sunshine dust.

The ultimate irony here is that I parked the car right in front of the building so that she could sit in the shade with the downside being that she might yip at people going by.  I am an enormous advocate of animal rights and do not eat meat unless I have verified that it was raised in an ethical manner.  I am also now an advocate of the “Have you punched a hippie today?” campaign.

I will never date again if I carry on in this manner.

Today was a frustrating day. What day isn’t?

After work, I had to finally transfer my license plates to the correct state as both the state I now reside in and the state I escaped from are getting a bit snippy with me over having only half of my things transferred.  What’s wrong with living in Pennessee?

After forgetting every form I needed and the money to do the transfer, I made the necessary stops and re-entered the office, finally obtaining that tin rectangle that everybody wanted me to get.  I also could have gotten my nails done and ate a soft pretzel on the way out, but I opted for getting the hell out of there.  The County Clerk’s office was in a mall, go figure.

My next stop was the bank.  It seemed like an innocent sort of errand, the thing that normal humans do when dealing with money.  Or so I thought.

My teller was a younger sort of guy who was joking around with me from the start.  People tell me this is known as “flirting” but I’m pretty socially awkward and am bad at identifying such behavior.

There was a bit of down time while we waited for something in the computer to go through, so we were just talking about something and it came up that we both like video games.  Video games are the devil, it turns out.

The older woman working the next station over looks at me and says, “Are you single?” and I took this as making fun of me for liking video games and being single.  A fairly valid reason to tease someone.

She then says that they are trying to hook up the teller I was talking to with a girl and I turned white and had a blank moment before practically bellowing, “Oh God, no!”  Not the best way to impress a cute guy.

He was a pretty good sport about it but everyone in that bank was busting up with laughter.  Except the guy, he went into the back room and shut the door.

Luckily, he was just joking and I hurriedly tried to explain that it wasn’t him it was that the situation was just awkward and I didn’t know how to respond.  Loaded question sort of deal, say yes you’re interested it could be a joke, say no everyone laughs at the poor guy.

I often wonder why I don’t get asked out, aside from being sort of plain and not that pretty…  it is apparently more about my inability to handle social situations with any sort of normal human response.  Maybe I should move on to another species, work my way up, I hear nematodes are a good starting point.

Mortified and exhausted from my frustrating and embarrassing day, I now sit, vodka in hand, to try and relax before I go to bed.  And the nightmares begin.

Comic!

So today I’m cleaning my apartment.  aka I’m playing on the Internet.

I came across this funny picture, and of course when you come across a humorous animal picture there is no option save for making a lolcatz comic from it.  If you ignore it for too long it will explode.

Here it is!:

The Little Table that Could (make my day miserable)

There’s something about that first paycheck you get from your first real job that you don’t have to give entirely away to pay for your housing and/or utilities that finally allows you to get those large unnecessary items that everyone seems to have in their houses.  Like dining room tables. Apparently responsibility =dying a slow painful death due to the lack of  Halo 3.  Who knew?

Today I set out in search of the elusive table, but I don’t want to seem lame and old fashioned, so I went with the hip and stylish pub-style bar table and stools. I was obviously unaware that for each extra inch of wood you add to the bottom a piece of furniture, you double the weight.

I picked out the set I wanted, a seemingly harmless table and two stools sort of deal, from a local shop. It seemed like such a good and responsible decision, as opposed to the HD home theater projector I wanted.

My first clue that this day would not end well should have been that the box would not fit in my car.  Solution?  Take it out of the box!

After removing the cardboard sheath and pushing all of the seats in my car as far forward as they could go, we managed to get the table inside. Great fuel economy = horrible for everything else.

Driving down the highway, I realised that I could not turn to check my blind spot, as there was a foam veiled obstruction sitting in my backseat. No, not Aphrodite.

Luckily, I knew my way home very well, and managed to arrange it so that I wouldn’t have to merge right. Ever.  Believe me when I say that is hard when the roads you are taking are mostly 4 and 5 lane highways.

Finally, I arrived home, safe and with no tickets for driving violations, though I’m certain I committed a few, and  gazed joyfully at my 3rd floor apartment.  And then it hit me.  I live on the third floor!?  Where was this information when I was buying the table??!

First, I grabbed the box with the two stools inside and started to sort of roll it, progressing it by flipping it over and over longways until I made it to the stairs.  And I thought the fun could never end!

I tried sliding up the stairs, but in the end settled for doing it the same way I did from the parking lot. Only this was funnier to watch, I’m told.

As I prepared to take the final flight, my neighbor appeared behind me and offered to help.  Where was she 20 minutes ago!

With that done, I returned to my car for the table, which was out of the box and thus scattered in pieces.  Foam-wrapped, evil pieces.

I carried the table and remaining bits up the stairs, no problems.  Table leg, 2 lbs.  2 barstools, 2,000 lbs.  No lie.

This was  about 4 hours ago, and still they sit on my dining room floor while I recover over a stiff drink and some light music.  Milk and System of a Down.

It looked so innocent and cheery in the store...

Something smells odd around here…

So today I was on a glorious and holy mission that at one point brought me to an unfamiliar parking lot.  Ha! I bet you actually believed I was on a holy mission for just a second there.

I parked my car relatively close to the building in which my destiny lay, and got out.  Which turned out to be a big mistake.

As I rounded the front end of my car, my fellow car-mate let out a gasp, quickly followed by a gag. Feel that suspense rise, bathe in it.

I take a look at the asphalt in front of my car, and let me be struck down by lightning if it wasn’t the decapitated head of a skunk  staring up at my car.  At no point did we ever find the body.

I took this to be a bad omen, and should have heeded the Mephitidae’s warning, because beyond the doors of the building we were about to enter was roughly 2.5 hours of frustration.  Of the paperwork variety.

I can’t continue this story, if I told you where we were and what we were doing, I would have to kill you.  For making me relive this awful day.  That’s all.  Nothing secret or cool, unfortunately, I just really wanted to show people pictures of the skunk head.

iwwwwwwww

Nothing says, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter” quite like a decapitated skunk.  Just the head.

When is a pie not a pie? When it is a horrific monstrosity that should never have been born.

So tonight I decided to make pie.  Here are the ingredients:

1 frozen pie crust

2 shots vodka, administered orally

1 cup Stonyfield plain yogurt

1 Tbsp hot fudge ice cream topping

1 Tbsp caramel ice cream topping

some random amount of flour, baking soda, and salt

1/7 bottle Coca-cola

I really wanted pie, so I thought, I know enough about baking to make something edible and tasty out of such things.  By ‘I thought’ I mean ‘The vodka told me’

After mixing the above ingredients in a manner that the FDA would arrest me for, I baked it for a good hour and a half, and upon the realization that it would probably never have an even consistency; I decided to try a slice.  Food poisoning goes away, right?

What came out of my oven should be burned, staked in the heart, and thrown in a river at midnight during a New Moon.  Ironically, my last name means ‘a wooden stake’

No amount of toothpaste will ever rinse this horrid taste from my mouth.  And now my gums are bleeding

I’m still a little too toasted to make any more sense than this… but I’ll keep you all updated on my gastro-intestinal status as more updates come in! Or rather out…

No comic, but new shenanigans!

Moving blows.  I just had to get that out of the way early on.

Correction: Moving out of state REALLY blows.  Paperwork nightmares and evil government employees await all ye who dare to make the perilous voyage across the boundaries of US states and sanity.

So aside from all of that frustration, I discovered some fun things about living on my own.

1. I don’t have to wear pants. in my apartment, that is…

2. I can listen to heavy metal (at reasonable levels) all day and no one is going to tell me to, “turn off that god-forsaken racket!” nice!  devin townsend, warm up that guitar, it’s 3 am and I want some METAL!

3. Weekends are my kingdom, my almighty domain, my sanctuary.  Instead of being harassed by the parental units to clean their house, I have my own apartment to clean.  Surely the excitement will wear off soon… but I can mop my own kitchen of my own free will with my own mop and no one is going to try and give me pointers on how to best disinfect.  jubilation!

4.  I need to invest in some pepper spray. okay so this one isn’t a fun thing but is a very entertaining story intro…

Story time!

So I have a dog, and the other morning I was out walking her around 6 am before work.  I like to walk her near my apartment complex’s dumpster complex so that I don’t have to carry dog shit very far This particular morning I noticed a scraggly old man escorting some empty beer containers to the dumpsters, so I held back a bit.  Mind you, this was no mean feat, as my dog was barking her bloody head off.  I have never witnessed such ferocious barking from her, she is ordinarily very people friendly.  This, naturally, should have been a clue that I should walk very quickly in the other direction, but at that point the man looks warily at my dog and says drunkenly, “Will she bite me?”  I replied, “Yes, she is very protective of her owner.”  This, naturally, was a lie.  I have no idea if she would bite someone, but it is always best to err on the side of protection.  He then slurred in my general (but by no means accurate) direction, “She probably smells that I have a hard on,” as he clutched his meat and two veg with a gnarled old man hand, “I’ve been jerking it all night…”  he continued some incoherent drunken mumbling as I began to walk in the other direction very quickly.  He began to shout after me and the dog was still pulling towards him, freaking out in a way that left no doubt in my mind that she would have torn him up if she could have reached him.  I hid behind a building so he wouldn’t see where I was going back to, and waited until he had returned to his apartment to return to mine.

In conclusion, females living alone should always have some form of protection! The pepper spray arrived in the mail two days ago, and I feel much better walking alone with that little can of hell in my hand.

Well that’s about all I’ve got for you today.  Since I have recently made the move from a Yankee to a Confederate state, I am sure many tales laced with hilarity and hush-puppies are bound to come a flyin’ yer way!

Time for more words of wisdom from Divination Master Kipper:

Divination Master Kipper says, “Where am I?  That is to say, can anyone truly define the location of their being?  I’ve looked everywhere and all that I see are two paws and some stray whiskers and occasionally my ass, but to define where I am is a mystery…

Speaking of mysteries, has anybody seen that tuna sandwich I had a few weeks ago… I thought I put it in my mouth for safekeeping but I cannot find it anywhere   “

Excuses excuses…

So, you are either wondering why I haven’t posted in like a billion or so years or you really don’t care, but here are my excuses.  Aside from graduating recently with a double undergraduate degree, both degrees containing the word “Physics”, I also obtained employment and have been preparing my 700 mile relocation.  Who knew what a pain moving to a different state is?  Why didn’t you tell me?  Tch… jerk.  Aside from transferring addresses and car registrations and drivers licenses and earthly possessions, I then have to start work.  Granted, I got a better job than most 22 year olds straight out of an undergrad degree could ever hope for… but man it’s like I was floating in college happy land and suddenly the “real world” hits me in my already oversized nose, breaking it and instead of blood pouring out, here comes a load of unexpected complications and frustrations….  Oh look, my left nostril just produced some new insurance policy paperwork… hmm…

So chaos has been my medium of existence of late, so I apologize: no new comic.  Not that I even have that many readers… I think I’m up to a whopping one or something…  Maybe my rantings are entertaining enough to qualify as a substitute.. I’ll have to check the legislation on that… I’ve got it somewhere under this massive pile of paperwork…

And now my slow-in-the-head cat just jumped onto my lap, completely ignoring the fact that it was already occupied by my laptop…  his name is Kipper, and he is the slowest moving cat you will ever encounter.  It is impossible to startle him, he just sort of slowly turns at loud noises, and he is about as intelligent as a box of unprepared jello.  But he has words of wisdom for you today (do you smell a new tradition?  because I do… and it smells like cat litter and cobwebs)

Divination Master Kipper says, “Forfeit your tuna sandwich… it will cause you nothing but strife.  I will gladly take it off of your hands and perform the proper burial rituals to expel from it the negative energies.”

Okay Kipper… maybe I smell the end of  a tradition.

Well that’s all for today, chums.  So long, and thanks for all the fish!