Yes, just like on Seinfeld, part 2

Being a Standardized Patient (pretend patient, fake patient, etc) is actually not as interesting as Kramer made it look...but then again, what is?....nor is it as interesting as it sounds. I have this knack for finding employment which is far more intriguing to tell people about than it actually is to do.

For example: Fire Hydrant Painter. I spent 3 summers doing this during college. People who see it on my resume invariably ask about it (which is why it's still on there), because they've never heard of such a thing before. Most people really don't think about fire hydrants very often.

And there's no reason why they should. Spending 40 hours a week in the St. Louis sauna-season clad in long polyester pants, steel-toed workshoes, and a hard hat, with only hydrants for company does not foster the healthiest mental state.

I started composing songs about hydrants. They I started serenading them. Why? Because it was dull work, dull, dull, lonely and dull, that's why.

However disturbing my impromptu maintainence concerts were to the random passers-by, it was probably nothing to the day I spent a half hour writhing in pain on someone's lawn because I'd smashed my finger with a hydrant wrench.

You know those times when social interactions have gotten so painful and complicated you just want to assume the fetal position until it has all passed? Yeah, well, drinking doesn't make all that any smoother. Whoop.

So, what's on my mind today?

The fact that, as I type, my mums and sister are half the country's length away moving out of the house I grew up in. Said house will, within a month or so, be demolished for an airport expansion which has been in the works for, hmm, over 10 years now.

I'm feeling kind of bad about not being there to help. On the other hand, the distance is probably helping dampen the weirdness of the whole thing for me. Plus, the airport pays for packing and moving, so there's not like there would be anything for me to do.

Sigh. It was a nice little house, ranch and suburban cookie-cutter though it might have been.

(If I had the capabilities on my blog, I would post a picture of the house here. Instead, feel free to fill in with your imagination.)

No one must touch my blue bookcase

Interior decorators seem to think books are room accessories. This makes me laugh.

But then again, this is from someone who has over 700 books in 6 bookcases in their living room.

I wear my sunglasses, except when i don't

I wore my glasses to work this morning and changed into my contacts right before heading outside to lunch. What with being extremely sleepy this morning, running late, and generally experiencing dumbassedness, I left my sunglasses at home. This was a problem.

You see, I have quite light-coloured eyes, which means they are pretty sensitive to brightness. Having lenses suctioned to them only seems to make this worse, what with the focusing going on and all. Then, of course, there are other aggravating factors from time to time, like allergies...tiredness...it's being Thursday.

All factors conspired today to make reading scripts printed on ultra-white paper perhaps not the wisest thing. So I dosed and watched kiyakers instead.

Alsoooooo....besides the physical discomfort of my eyeballs hissing and cringing like vampires in the noonday sun, there's a certain psychological balance I get from wearing the sunglasses that I miss when I'm not wearing them. I think people can't see my eyes which, logically-and-of-course, also makes me feel that I'm invisible.

Naturally this is all delusion, but it's darn convincing. Leaves me feeling free to relax and observe and generally be a smartass. And isn't THAT a fun time for everyone. Yeah, suuuuuuuuure.

Right now, I find myself missing my tiny St. Louis apartment where I could work on my computer and watch The Dark Crystal at the same time.

When I say "work," please understand that I mean playing The Sims.

So, now I might wonder why I'm still awake. I might well wonder, because I'm operating on very little sleep right now. Usually, when there is this little sleeping, there is a tech week involved but, alas, nothing so interesting just now. Rather, weirdly, I'm finding it very hard to sleep. This is not at all a normal problem for me. One of the things I continually bless my college education for is the talent it helped me develop of being able to sleep anytime i needed to and for as long as I'd like. Sleeping, for me, often takes the place of leisure activities. It's the ultimate indulgence. But, these past 10 days or so, the sleeping has been ebing away. It seems to be stress related. Last night I lay awake in bed for over 2 hours, so tense you could've bounced quarters off of me. I also seem to have a writing bug, which also usually deprives me of sleep, luscious nectar of the gods, sleeeeeeeep, [insert bad luck scottish play quotation here if you dare, but i'm certainly not bloody going to]. Maybe if I just finish the play, the brain will let me sleep.

Current reason for listening to pop radio stations: Harder to Breathe by Maroon 5

This goes on in my head at night (warning: icky)

Had a dream where I was a cook. For an ogre. We were making a special Oscar Night dinner. Because Siskel and Ebert had been invited over.

For this special dinner we needed a freshly killed peasant. The ogre, being an ogre, undertook this chore himself, which is sort of nice of him if you are me in the dream and not the peasant. As the ogre kills the peasant, my viewing of the event takes on a Bruce-Campbell-movie sort of quality.

The ogre cuts off one of the peasant's arms. The peasant grabs an ax and leaps onto a table to defend himself which is plucky, though useless. The ogre takes out the guy's legs next and quickly reduces him to a head, which is still alive and apparently not in pain, because it is still making spirited remarks, until it spots its own destroyed body on the floor of the kitchen as the ogre carries it to the stew pot. Then the head starts to cry. The ogre says "I tol you not to look" (sounding oddly like Hagrid) and pops out the head's eyes before tucking it very gently into the pot.

Next thing I know I'm making peasant-liver pate and reflecting on what a waste it all is since Siskel and Ebert are invited every year and never show up.

The First Rule of Italian Driving

I really think I would be better off if I removed the rearview mirror from my car during rush hours. Ever since the incident with the truck and the other incident with the semi-truck, I'm much happier not knowing what's behind me...especially when what's behind me isn't showing any signs that it is slowing.

obsess, occupy, haunt, beset, besiege

Obsession: The action of any influence, notion, or fixed idea which persistently assails or
vexes, especially so as to discompose the mind.

I obsess. I have an obsessive personality. I obsess about things. Well, things, ideas, and people. Ok, mostly people.

I have no idea why i’m this way. It used to bother me. It still bothers me sometimes, when i forget that it’s not supposed to be bothering me anymore.

My current theory holds that obsession is my hobby. What would normally be my hobby I consider the main business of my life. The things i do to make money are not interesting enough to qualify as either hobby or career, but do take up a king’s portion of my time.

So, if i’m to have a hobby it has to be something i can do while i’m doing everything else that i’m doing, right? Right.

Obsession is portable, quiet, easy, desolves instantly in liquid and is one of the deadlier perfumes known to man.

Also, in a way, it’s kind of fun. I fear this is a perverse notion. It’s this enjoying the obsession thing that bothers me when it bothers me. I don’t think you, meaning me, are supposed to enjoy being obsessed.

Yes, just like on Seinfeld

I was very irresponsible this weekend, which was really quite nice, both in the ways in which I was irresponsible and in the fact that I had the irresponsible options that I had.

However, I've put brakes to the bandwagon for the evening and am doing laundry and dishes and learning my case for tomorrow.

As I repeat that last bit in my head (I'm not talking to myself outloud here, I promise) I think that it sounds all cool and lawyer-like. This makes me realize exactly how much of a nerd I still am, given that what I think is cool is really not very.

I'm actually learning a case for my job as a Standardized Patient, which involves pretending to be various different people with various ailments.

things on my mind
~ isn't reality tv impromptu drama as opposed to improv drama, and how can i explain what i mean by that?
~ what is a saturn return? apparently i'm in one. i hope it doesn't involve losing another car.
~ would going to med school be insane? why or why not?
~ does mamet _really_ write his plays, or does he just improv them blair witch style?
~ when is king arthur coming back, anyway?
~ who needs sleep?

Today's Topics

With Digital Cameras, We Can All Be George Hamilton
and
How My Temp Agencies Are Like A Bad Boyfriend

Because, basically, I'm still 12,
the Weird Al Yankovich parody of that freakin' annoying Avril L. song had me laughing my pants off. Really. I am now pantsless. Wait, check that, it was my shirt. Whatever. (heavy guitar riff)

Not only are Weird Al's lyrics far more interesting than Avril's, but his voice isn't nearly as whiny (though you can tell he's trying really hard). Textbook example of a win-win situation, methinks.

The Next President

If I get my way, that is: Dr. Howard Dean. Check out the blog his peops run, yo.

Cruel or Unusual?

Does rewriting the words to Tom Jones songs so that they have to do with my cat and then serenading him (the cat) with said songs fall in the unethical treatment of animals category? 'Cause if it does, I should probably stop. Or you should probably call Peta. Or both.

Dear Help Desk People,

First things first: yes, I have already turned my computer off and back on.

I am aware that much of your working day, and thus an unnatural chunk of your life, is filled with answering rude e-missives from people who have all of the technological understanding of a striped sweat sock.

And I feel for the time you must waste, paid time though it may be, directing and redirecting these people, who should not be allowed access to anything more electronically complex than a brick, to the instructions and FAQ pages which clearly and completely cover their concerns.

I can understand that you might be bitter.

However, I would like to drop you a hint that when you don't carefully read a carefully constructed questioning e-mail, you not only run the risk of answering and reanswering the wrong bloody question, you are making the same error as the technoneadrathals, thus sacrificing the High Ground of Self-Righteousness

And I don't think you really want to do that. The High Ground is so comfy.

Love,
Me

Ads As Windows into the Soulless

Dr. Scholl's foot supports are very comfy and, I doubt not, really good for your general ped-health, but there is no way, just really no way at all, to make them "cool." You also can not make them "hip," "bitchin'" or even "boss." Particularly not by calling wearing them, ahem, "gellin."

Who do we like least in this scenario: The boyfriend who goes to a club and flirts with 2 pretty girls while his girlfriend is off studying? The best friend who decides to take a picture of this activity and cell-phone it to the girlfriend? Or the girlfriend who decides an appropriate, not to mention mature, response is to get it on with a cute boy in the library? I'll D) all of the above for $200, Alex.

I'd also like to state for the record that if I had a girlfriend who used leaving me as a tactic to get attention and then immediately turned around and called a friend to brag about how it worked while still in my presence, I might just like my candy bar and television stories more than her too. Just sayin'.

Imaginary Victorian Poets Take Control

I've been re-reading Possession by A.S. Byant, which is a quite good book (way better than the over-Hollywoodized movie directed by Neil "I expected better from you" LaButte).

Besides being a highly intellectualized romance, it contains wrighting in several distinctly different voices of scholars and poets who did not, in fact, exist.

After 500-odd pages of it, though, the rhythms have kind of taken over my brain. As witnessed here.

I'm not sure this is a good thing. (Possessed by imaginary dead victorian pirates is good.)

Rachel and the busy week

The lack of blogging was probably a clue, but I've had a busy week. How busy was it? It was soooo busy, it was as busy as some other busy things which were busy.

I had to get up every morning BEFORE 7am. Really. And then get dressed, leave the house, and (get this) be coherent before 7:30. Weirdness. At least it was to go pretend illness for pre-doctors, which is fun, even in the morning before god gets up.

And then it was also tech week for a staged not-really-a-reading I was in. It was a pretty gentle tech week but, still, every session went overtime.

And there was some auditioning.

So, most of my home time revolved around sleep and food, or food and sleep, or seeping floods, or feeding sheep. But not blogging.

"You guys are dorks!" Kik cried delightedly

When she discovered we own Lord of The Rings Risk. (We also have Star Wars Epic Duels which I highly recommend for a fast-paced, multi-player, geeky good time.)

Jana is off getting her PhD hood this weekend. And what have I done? I've kicked Bob's elvin ass at LotR Risk, that's what.

I owed him that for Brainwashing my Alabaster Dragon when we played Magic this week.

Maybe we should get jobs soon.

Not a good sign

When you want to turn around during the final moments of the play and slap the director, 10 to 1 you've not enjoyed your theatrrrical experience.

It's very hard to go see a play you love and know better than the contents of your freezer. . .especially when you'd like to direct it someday. I know this, and should know better than to go see a production of it in a normal state of mind.

Sigh.

It's very hard to stand when your favourite playwright's, about whom there is what you hold to be a general misimpression abroad, best known work is being presented in a way that only serves to worsen the negative impression.

'Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel," one of my favourite quotes, clues me in that a playwright seen as "too" intellectual, is quite possibly writing comedies. I think at least the director should consider this idea. Just my opinion.

Oh, and bloody DO IT FASTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

an evening in the warm blue glow

~ Experienced my first and let's hope only ever 5 minutes of American Idol. I'd been under the mistaken impression that it was a contest. I hadn't realized it was a variety show.

~ West Wing was lovely. Despite the hype and lameness of pulling something that has only happened once ever in the whole history of the United States, it's still the most intelligent show on television. Also, one of the tech actors from SportsNight was in the press core. T'Hee.

~ Halfway through South Park, I was being bludgeoned with the premise club and enjoying it. That's just the kinda gal I am.

~ The news, guest starring John Malkotraz. The Magical Victory Tour is coming to take you away. Do you have your roadmap?

~ Had to fill a television gap here with an episode of SprtsNite. I conclude that I am glad not to be dating any of the female characters.

~ Not to be nitpicky, but I think the OffRoad Vehicle Golf episode of Junkyard Wars (Amer. version) is, um, stretching a bit. Sure, the vehicles were cool, but are they useful in any real-life situation? Well, besides when you run into a giant golf course in the middle of the desert. Or in the middle of dessert, but then you probably just need a spoon.