Grumbling

Even though I'm not supposed to work on Fridays, I had to go to work today because the people who foolishly hired me to be an integral part of their research team are currently scrambling to get a grant proposal finished.

Then I came home and immediately had to go out and run 6 miles. I wisely chose to run a new route so that I wouldn't be bored by the tedium inherent in running the same old trail for an hour. I didn't really assess the route before I started it, but I guess you could say it was quite pleasant, as long as you don't count the part at the end of the route where it suddenly turned into TWO STRAIGHT MILES OF NONSTOP MISERY HILLS. In other words, I didn't break any records today. Unless there are records for "Most Sweat-Soaked Shirt" or "Slowest Limp Up a Mountain" or "Running Face That Looks Most Like a Stroke In Progress." Or how about "Most Labored Breathing While Walking"?

I could come up with these for days, people.

AND THEN I got home and the whole apartment smelled like the hot wet litter box of Satan's own cat-beast, who is probably named "Buttsplosion," after his digestive problems. The reason the apartment smelled like that because Charlie, who I've recently renamed "Feces Factory" because I want everyone to be put off their meals just as I am every day, actually does have a litter box that sits in our dining room, the smell of which somehow expands to fill every inch of space in our unfortunately quite open floor plan. Since something had to be done to make the smell stop I pulled out the litter box liner and its contents, but then somehow the smell impossibly got EVEN WORSE, for reasons that are too disgusting to explain. And then I valiantly struggled my way out the door and across the parking lot with the Bag of Olfactory Nightmares, because it was WAY too heavy because someone - who is not me - put too much litter in it when they cleaned the box last time. So I, breathing through my mouth the entire time (and still tired from running 6 miles up and down the hills of woe and sadness), had to take a few steps, set the bag down, take a few steps, and set the bag down, all the way to the dumpster which obviously already has it in for me. And then I had to heave the bag in through that terrible small shoulder-level hole and pray with all my heart that it would go IN and not somehow tumble OUT and on to me, forcing me to burn myself alive just to be free of the smell.

Which thankfully did not happen. But the threat was very real.

In conclusion, it's been an exhausting day, so I could not possibly write you a blog post. Please forgive me.

It's So Hard To Be Good

Lately I've been trying really hard not to waste food, not to eat so much junk food, and not to eat out so often. So far, I've been pretty pleased with myself. I've been going to the grocery store often enough that I don't have to subsist off crackers and cereal, and I've been saving money by not eating out as often and also by coming up with creative ways to make sure I use all of the groceries I buy.

For instance: Awhile back I had to buy eggs for something, and I ended up with 4 eggs just sitting in my refrigerator for weeks on end. Now that I'm trying to be more conscientious about food and groceries, I was determined to put them to good use before they went bad. I had already resigned myself to an unorthodox meal of scrambled eggs some disappointing Tuesday evening, so I felt like a genius when I came up with the idea of hard-boiling them and putting them on a salad instead.

So it was that today, I hard-boiled eggs for the first time. Since I don't work on Fridays this summer, the extent of my plans for the day were to sleep in, boil some eggs, and run 3 miles. I was a little apprehensive about the eggs because technically they're a week past their official expiration date, but I was emboldened by the results of a recent experiment with slightly expired yogurt. At any rate, I googled "how to boil eggs" and followed the instructions faithfully. While they cooked, I prepared the rest of my salad (which was sexy as hell, I wish I'd taken pictures), and then I very carefully selected a test egg to peel.

I have to pause here for a tangent. When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Charlotte's Web. There's a scene in Charlotte's Web where Templeton, the sketchy rat, takes one of the unhatched goose eggs down into his lair, because he's weird, and also possibly wanted to do sexual things with it. Anyway, all the farm animals forget about Templeton and the egg for a really long time until one day some kind of barnyard mayhem goes down and the egg - now WAY past its expiration date - gets broken and stinks up the place. As a child, I knew it must smell truly awful if even barnyard animals were offended by it, thus for as long as I can remember I've been extremely wary of potentially rotten eggs.

With all of this in mind, I delicately peeled and cut up my egg, fully prepared at any moment for it to explode like a foul grenade and totally ruin my day. Luckily it looked (and smelled) just like any other hard-boiled egg, so I went ahead and put it on my salad and ate it, and it was delicious, and all was right with the world.

A few hours later, it was time to head out and run. I was a little hungry, salad notwithstanding, but I decided to just wait until I got back to eat anything. After schlepping for 3 miles in the 80-degree weather, I came back and drank 8 gallons of water and had an apple to hold me over until I cooked dinner. As I sat on the couch cooling off, however, something not good started to happen. I had a confusing feeling that I might pass out or vomit or die, or all three at once. And then suddenly, with only just enough warning to get myself to the appropriate location, I violently ejected my salad (along with my carefully-prepared egg) back out the way it came.

I tell you all this not to disgust you (hope you weren't eating anything, by the way), but to ask you this question... Does this mean that I should throw out the rest of those eggs, just in case?

I've Been Watching A Lot Of Bones Reruns

This is Emily Deschanel:

This is her younger sister Zooey Deschanel:

I can't possibly be the only straight woman in the world who'd be willing to make out with both of them. Can I?

Happy 4th of July Weekend!

I Don't Even Know Why I Feel I Have to Share This

Speaking of things I do instead of working, I posted a comment on LiteralDan's blog today about how I have to use the bathroom about 90 times a day. But it just occurred to me that maybe part of the reason for that is the fact that I'm always in a hurry to get out of the bathroom. There are a wide variety of things I'd rather do than hanging out in the bathroom waiting for my bladder to empty, so I'm usually sitting there with the TP ready, mentally rushing it, "Come on, bladder! We don't have all day!"

So, you know, maybe I don't give my bladder enough time to do its thing, and that's why I always feel like I have to go to bathroom AGAIN after only about 10 minutes. On the other hand, maybe I have a UTI. Dammit, I'm not going to the doctor again for at least 6 months, so this will have to wait.

You may be thinking that devoting an entire blog post to the frequency of my trips to the bathroom was a poor choice. But I think that you should just be grateful that I didn't figure out some way to include pictures, like I did with my wrist cyst.