you ever forget? it's happened to me...

so... last week, after michael visited, we were driving him home (or, rather, matt was driving home, and i was sitting in the front passenger seat). well... i start acting like a doof as usual... but the doofiness is usually reserved for when matt's the only other person in the car. you know, singing obnoxiously and dancing like an dumbass to be funny isn't always taken the right way. i could look like an idiot!

anyway, i'm dancing around like an idiot, and i see my brother out of the corner of my eye... and i stop. oops. i'd forgotten that he was in the car. hi, michael... at least i wasn't singing obnoxiously, right? i'm the biggest dork. my 12-year-old brother is cooler than i am.

***

went to winchester today. was going for the fair, but the animals were sold last night, so they weren't there to be seen. matt wanted funnel cake, but... after lunch, it just wasn't as appealing. we did see animals, though. we followed amy and chad to chad's parents' house. at the light on the way out of the parking lot, amy and chad were smooching in the car, and matt honked at them. amy jumped, and, as i later found out, she hit him. matt was an ass (to be funny, of course), and chad gets hit? matt got hit too, in case you were wondering...

amy got a new black moo-moo, and a little puppy. there was a little deer that had broken out... and it was cute. almost time to let it loose, apparently. the puppy punched me in the face. more than once. and then i let him eat deer poop =( i didn't mean to...

before we left, amy said something like... "took half an hour to get on her, and then he blew his load early... all over the ground." poor bull.

***

on the way home, i saw an audi. a black one. my first reaction was that it was an a3. no way, couldn't be. must be an a4 avant... coming up to it... it was an a3. and it was absolutely beautiful. you know that "new love" feeling? that happy feeling in your gut that makes you feel just the tiniest bit drunk? well, obviously, that's my guess at how that feels, since i can't get drunk, but you get the idea. yeah, that. i felt that. over a car. i thought i wanted a gli. looks like i might be spending slightly less on a considerably smaller car.

i'm too young to be driving a status symbol. does a hatchback count as a status symbol? i hope not...

***

my knee's been hurting like a bitch lately. at least there was an excuse friday--i had a skirt on, and i had my legs crossed the entire day. but other than that, it still hurts... wednesday, on the way home, my left side sucked. my ankle, knee, hip, and wrist just ached. i don't really want to say that it was because of the rain, but it was pouring at that time. ulyssees and stephen (panda) blamed me for the rain, 'cause it prevented them from balling. except they blamed me separately--ulyssees on the phone wednesday afternoon, when i told him that they called it off, and stephen the next morning, when i got to work. in fact, i'm still being blamed for it now. i think.

back to the original point. how can i be so messed up? i know my ankle came from me coming down on the hose coil wrong in high school (took months to heal), and my knee came from me falling on the ice while snowboarding (i think i broke my patella... my knee bruised in spots completely isolated from where it hit)... but what about my wrist and hip?

i wasn't a runner, nor any sort of athlete, for that matter... i stopped dancing way before i started hurting... i'm only 22. i'm not ready to be old. i can't be old. i'm 22.

they say romance is dead...

the problem with a love story... is that it makes real life seem less magical. situations so perfect will never present themselves in real life... for most people. and love stories create an unrealistic expectation that you'll be lucky enough to be one of the few that get to live a fairy tale. because you deserve it... right?

i type this as chi-chi sits on my lap (and there she goes). i've come to realize that she'll come to me (crawl into my arms from matt's arms), but not the other way around. even though i'm the one that reprimands her more often. she'll come sit on either lap, though.

it was cute. matt picked her up tonight, and when i wanted to get her, i opened myself up to her and let her come to me. so i said something about it to matt, and he tried the same thing... no success. she backed away from him. but he pulled her toward his chest, and pretended that it worked. i tried again, and she came to me again. matt tried it again... and she buried her face in my hand. guess whose baby she is =D

(and she just walked over the keyboard without typing in the blog!)

who knew i would love a rodent?

***

update: chi-chi was being bad. she wouldn't stop trying to pull the blanket out from under the couch (so she could get under it), so i had to pick her up from there (she was ignoring "no"). twice. second time, i try to give matt the opportunity to be her rescuer. she still wouldn't go to him. he took her. she still came back to me.

i'd hung her upside down by her tail (that's how you pick her up when she's not gonna let you pick her up... like when she's being bad) twice, and she still would rather be on me than him.

i hope we don't lose that bond when i'm gone...

while i was out...

my away message last night:

so... i'm coming home, and i find out... matt walked home from pretty much the beltway because the bus he was on... rear-ended a lady.
weird.

matt: "don't fuck with me, bitch"
<strikes pose>
<pants fall down>
<picks up pants and tries to pretend nothing happened>
HAHAHAHAHA!!! =D
(i should probably mention that these were the pants he pulled out of the dryer, not pants he was wearing)

my away message now:

i thought it was the man's job to erradicate the bugs (in this case, a wasp), and it was the girl's job to stand back and be scared.

we always knew we were different...

(remember: i'm the one that got 4-5 wasp stings--at one time--on the neck as a kid)

he's a happy drunk =]

and so this was my away message last night...

*SOMEBODY* showed up to dinner (metro, where i picked him up for dinner) drunk, crab flew across the table at dinner, and now he's activating credit cards drunk ("what was that question?" "i don't think so lady, i told you no...")

yeah, so yesterday was matt's birthday. yesterday was matt's company outing. hmm... good idea. he was funny =]

they went to a pool hall, got pissed off 'cause some guy (that worked there) was being an ass, and ended up at a plain bar. at dupot circle. aka "the fruit loop." hmm...

he told me that he'd call when he was headed for the metro, and that he'd probably be ready to be picked up (as in, at the vienna station) by 6... i got a phone call at 6:30. he was outside the bar (i didn't know he was at a bar at this point... last i'd heard, he was going to a pool hall). he was talking, uh... "happy."

he was funny in the car (even though i felt like crap, he was funny...), and then misstepped on the way into red lobster (his choice for his birthday dinner). he ordered a bunch of snowcrab legs... and then crab was flying. yes.

oh the way home, matt pretended he was chi-chi. i'll leave it at that.

just thought i'd explain it because the message made some people think i was mad...

***

so... we got four new cichlids. the fourth was supposed to be an albino zebra, but matt panicked and asked for another kenyi (fyi: our kenyi died when he moved the tank home). well... it's still a baby, so it's still a light purple-blue. if it's a male, it will slowly turn a pukish yellow, and perhaps a bright yellow if he's a happy male. we have a yellow lab (as in labidochromis, not labrador) and a yellow auratus. i want it to stay blue. i was talking to it. you know what i said? "i hope you stay a girl..."

perhaps it's also noteworthy that we also have two other blue fish in the tank... a cobalt blue zebra (the non-barred morph), and what appears to be a blue auratus... but only when it's stressed... otherwise, the most black strips disappear, leaving only those along the dorsal, pelvic, anal, and caudal fins. i think it's a socolofi... but the female kenyi coloration is prettier, in my opinion.

yeah, sometimes i have issues.

who needs fingertips anyway?

so... yesterday sucked. library server went funny again, and i just couldn't sit there and not do anything about it anymore... so i went to don, and the two of us were troubleshooting... and blech. i was one of those having problems, so i had to remote in (via a local account) to the server and do work remoted in. it was annoying.

stressed all day... keith wanted to see what i had done so far, and just had a part of my entire project that i could use while we waited... but it was ugly, so i made it a little more user-friendly before i sent it along. for some reason, this stressed me...

stuff and along, and i get home... still didn't feel so well (slept all weekend 'cause i just felt blech... and i ate about half of each meal =/ ) waited for forever to start dinner... was still cooking late, when matt came into the kitchen to tell me that chi-chi had chewed on his couch leg (it's wood), and i turned my head as i dropped a mushroom into hot oil... a little too high... and i covered two fingertips in hot oil.

i iced my fingers for the rest of the night. at one point, i couldn't tell if my fingers were killing me because they'd gotten burned or frozen (probably a little of both, seeing as i'd gotten a finger or two frozen to a fresh ice cube two or three times).

i took some painkillers, and then, right before bed, some antihistamine (which makes me go to sleep... i thought if the pain wanted to keep me up, then the antihistamine would counteract that)

fingers barely hurt this morning. it's more feeling funny than painful...

***

so... remember when i said that i iced my fingers for the rest of the night? (for some reason, i had "my life" typed there... yes... i iced my fingers for the rest of my life...) well... i managed to finish cooking dinner with my left hand, but i could not eat with my left hand... so matt had to feed me...

he took waaaaay too much joy in that. "here comes the choo-choo!"

... choo-choo this.

and all the roads we have to walk are winding...

yeah, i know... giant news. again.
and again, i'm leaving it alone 'cause i have nothing new to add.

moving on... my project. visual basic... i have to learn visual basic...

yeah, i know i can use a visual basic form to drive code in other languages... or even invoke another executable altogether, so i'm not really limited to one language for the project...

but i'm looking at the automation interface, and... not only is there *way* more documentation for it in vb... doing things in other languages are just ass-backwards. the automation was designed pretty much for vb. but i guess that's what i should expect--microsoft makes automation for a microsoft product to support development in a microsoft language. based on a microsoft... technology? they call ole a technology...

***

shortly after my last blog (the night of, i believe), matt was in atlanta, and i'd gone home to the apartment to let chi-chi out for a bit and to feed the fish and stuff...

pleco's back was rotting. there was fuzzy stuff from it all over the place... i really needed to vacuum the stuff out of the tank. so i did, figuring that i could keep chi-chi out of the bucket because she usually investigates things before she jumps on them. well, she came up to the bucket and sniffed the hose running out of it... and before i could say "no," she was already out of the bucket (yes, it happened that fast... it was the same movement that happened when she tried to jump on the trash can in the bathroom and didn't realize it was... well, hollow). she'd jumped out so quickly that only the bottom half of her got wet (out before the water sloshed back). i had to catch her and blow her fur dry... but i used the cold setting on the hair dryer (for fear that i'd overheat her).

friday night, i noticed that chi-chi had what looked like sand crusted onto her nose, except it wasn't changing color when we rubbed it with a wet towel. it looked like it might have been growing out her nose, so i didn't want to pull at it too hard... but i was thinking that she'd caught some bateria or fungus from the rotting-pleco water. she'd been scratching at her nose thursday night (we noticed it right after she sniffed matt's foot... we thought she thought it smelled funny), and she'd sneezed every once in a while (which i thought was from bath dust)... and she was sleepy. very sleepy. but friday... that was scary.

so saturday morning, matt woke up at 4:30 to make sure she was still alright (as alright as she was before we went to sleep), and then we both got up at 8:30 to go to the vet.

turns out that it was an upper respiratory infection (respiratory infections can kill chinchillas quickly--especially lower respiratory infections. but upper respiratory infections can cause huge problems alone, since chinchillas don't really breathe through their mouths), so she's on medication for a bit (which she hates us for), but she's *much* better now. if only i weren't an idiot.

she's still not pooping properly (which might be from the baytril putting her off her food, or an intestinal blockage... i'm worried about the latter), but i guess she's not eating very much to poop. i wonder how much weight she's lost...

***

went to see batman begins with ulyssees saturday, after we got chi-chi back from the vet (which is an entire story in itself... now that i think about it, i'll go into that later). joe was supposed to see it with us, but he ran late, so i told him that we'd meet him inside the theatre... he couldn't find us, so he called my phone and left a message that he didn't know where we were, so he was headed home. so much for taking joe to fudd's.

***

the vet visit...

chinchillas are half fur by volume. it was hot outside. heatstroke waiting to happen.

matt went outside to chill the car while i prepared a pee-dish, water, an ice pack, and put chi-chi in the carrier. matt and i had to wear jackets/sweatshirts in the car.

we had to go to eastern exotics off of 50 (stahl was booked until tuesday, and they suggested them), which is on legato rd. we turn onto legato rd, and it comes to a t intersection. with legato rd.

it was a good thing we could see the centre from the intersection... strangest intersection i've been to.