It's not a toomah!

I've been on and off crutches for a few weeks now. It was just over three weeks ago that I dislocated my kneecap and made my back to Los Angeles with a nifty cast. The recovery is going really well, but I do keep the crutches around to help my balance and just in case I get stuck in a chair that doesn't have arms.

Tonight, I was looking at my arm and was wondering what was wrong with it. My forearm had this really bizarre bump on it near my elbow. It didn't hurt or anything, it just seemed to pop up out of nowhere. Then I looked at my other arm and noticed the same thing. Hmm... that bump doesn't hurt either. Now that's just weird, right?

Then as I grabbed one of my crutches, I noticed that the little bump came up bigger. Yes, apparently I have so little upper-body strength that I didn't recognize a muscle when I developed one. Nice. At least it's not a toomah!

In which our heroine loves her glasses...

Another quick tale from the aforementioned grocery trip. Also, a little background:

I wear prescription sunglasses. I choose to wear glasses instead of contacts because I think I look better in glasses, and my prescription is primarily for astigmatism. I keep my sunglasses in the car, and sometimes I forget to switch from my sunglasses to my normal glasses. If you see someone walking around the store with their sunglasses on, chances are that it's me, and I'd look all squinty if I took them off.

However, I always feel a bit self-conscious when I wear my sunglasses indoors, so when the grocery trip turned from long to epic, I decided to take off my glasses and try to get used to looking around without them. My evil nephew, BP (Bottomless Pit), turns around and looks at me with surprise. He says, "Aunt Jakey! You have really dark circles under your eyes!"

Me: "That's because I have allergies kid. You have allergies too, right? You're looking at your future, buddy!"

BP: "Yeah, but they came up really suddenly!"

ME: ::puts back on her glasses:: "So, did they disappear?"

BP: "Ohhhhh!"

I guess it didn't help that I was up until 3:30am the night before, but I never miss an opportunity to make my nephew fear for the future. I figure I'll tell him about how guys have to trim their nose hairs the next time he's truly rotten.

In which our heroine sees the street signs

So, our local radio station has been doing an all 90s weekend. Considering I graduated high school in '94, of COURSE I thought that this was pretty fuckin' cool. So, I've been listening on and off all weekend. A few minutes ago, it hit me: When I was just out of high school, they used to do all 80s music weekends, and I TOTALLY dreaded them. I hated all the "old" music and thought that people who couldn't get on with their lives and start liking the new music were really pathetic.

City: Oldsville
Population: Me

In which our heroine views the world from a different angle

I've wanted prescription sunglasses ever since I switched to wearing glasses full time. My eyesight is good enough that I could definitely just wear regular sunglasses without a prescription, but because I have astigmatism (or maybe just because I'm a freak), it gives me a headache and makes me feel sick to my stomach to drive or bike without my glasses on.

I'm going to get my motorcycle license soon, and I really needed some sunglasses, so I went a one-hour glasses place. The lady was very nice and went through her whole spiel about how I needed polarized glasses and all that. I knew that I needed polycarbonate because I was going to be on a bike, so I let her quote it all out for me. I also had a AAA discount. She told me that the AAA discount was $80, and I was thinking, "DAMN that's a good discount." Then she told me that with the discount, it would be $200. Uh. Wha? $200? Okay then, no glasses for Jake.

On a whim, I went to my local club store and asked them to quote out a price for me. For frames that I liked better, polycarbonate polarized lenses, and scratch coating, it came out to a total of $80. Hot DAMN I'm all over that. They told me it would be a 7 to 10 working days, and I didn't care because I was getting sunglasses and they were perfect and CHEAP!

However, this is a Tale of Woe, so you have to know that it goes south somewhere, right? Tuesday was my first day of school as well as Space Kitty's birthday. It was the one day where I didn't have 2 minutes of free time to rub together... and of course, it was the day my glasses came back. Oh well. They're not going away or anything, but delayed gratification sucks sometimes.

Wednesday rolled around, and I went in to get them after work. I was SO excited. I got them, and they needed to be adjusted, so we did that. I walked out and put them on, and it was GREAT. The prescription was perfect, and everything seemed wonderfully clear. They really cut down on the glare a LOT.

I got into my car and closed the door... and noticed that that polarization on my glasses interacted with the tinting on the windows. Instead of the normal neutral tint on my windows, there's a very neat, but a bit distracting iridescent rainbow pattern when I look through my car windows. Now I view the world through rainbow colored glasses, I suppose. I also suppose that I'll get used to it, but until then, I'll have to be VERY careful while driving.

Not much of a Tale of Woe, I suppose, but it calls to mine one of those morality tales where you're granted a wish and it backfires on you.

In which our heroine goes back to school

So school started last night. I hiked up the long and steep hill to my sociology meeting to... wait, time out. I tried to take sociology in spring. I showed up for the meeting, got the add slip, and off I went. However, I forgot to actually add and pay for the class, so even though I had the book and was doing the work, I wasn't really registered and didn't get credit. At least I only wasted a couple of weeks on that. So, I figured I'd take it this semester with the same professor because the book I had bought was customized to him. So, I hiked up the long and steep hill to the meeting, and found that the professor was ill and in the hospital and would probably be replaced for the semester. Uh, d'oh? Hopefully they'll still use the same book, but if not, that's $60 down the drain, or I get to wait yet ANOTHER semester to take it. Just an inconvenience, but irritating. I mean, the poor man is in the hospital. I should try to find a little kindness in my blackened soul, you know?

I went to my next class, which... well, let's not mince words: I don't think I belong in it. At my JC, you have to take an essay test to be placed into english. They put me into the class BELOW freshman english. Nevermind that I've actually passed freshman english at another JC. For a variety of reasons, I don't want to transfer my transcripts over, so I'm stuck with where they placed me. So, I told myself that I needed to take the lower-level english class just to get it over with, or I needed to find out a way to get into the regular freshman english using my transcripts. I bit the bullet and registered for the lower-level english class. I decided that I could definitely use some polishing with my writing (and no, this isn't an example of my best writing. This is just a braindump), so I'm trying to keep a positive attitude about the whole thing. You can look up the required books before class even starts, so I ordered the books online to save some money. Turns out the listing wasn't quite thorough, and one of the books I ended up with isn't quite the right version, and another one of the books I got... well, I didn't need to spend 1/2 as much as I did on it. Damn college textbooks.

The kicker: One of the books is a vocabulary workbook. I'm flipped through the book, and was able to provide a clear and cogent definition for all except one of the words. Seriously. Oh well. At least I'll have it out of the way and will be able to take Astronomy next semester.

In which our heroine cuts herself with a plastic spoon

Yes, my friends, I cut myself with a plastic spoon yesterday. Not a spork, which one could possibly imagine one of the tines possibly being slightly sharper (possibly) than a pair of safety scissors, but a spoon.

We begin our tale after dinner. I had a pint of Ben and Jerry's Carmel Sutra ice cream waiting for me in the freezer. Asimovian was up and about, so I asked him to bring it when he came back to the couch. Little did I know that my laziness would be my undoing. He kindly brought me the ice cream and a plastic spoon.

Now, let me stop here to defend myself for a moment. Yes, I eat Ben and Jerry's straight from the canister. Yes, I like to use a spoon. Yes, I like using a plastic spoon from time to time because I hate doing dishes. My only defense is that Asi hates chocolate, and I never have to share, so I don't see the use in dirtying up a dish just to be civil. See... I'm saving the environment. Yeah, that's it.

Anyhow, the ice cream had been stashed in the freezer since the day before when the 12-year-old kid at the dairy had flirted with me shamelessly while bringing it to my car. The ice cream was hard as a rock. I set it aside so it would soften up a little bit.

But this is Caramel Sutra ice cream. It's dark fudge chocolate and caramel ice creams with a huge ribbon of caramel running down the middle. One does not just sit there and let the ice cream wait to be eaten. One dives in with reckless abandon and digs right in with the plastic spoon one's infinitely kind husband has provided. However, if one exerts too much force, one might break the spoon. And while the spoon isn't normally sharp, the edge of a broken spoon can be very sharp. In this case, it can, and will, slice open your finger pretty good.

What have we learned? Well, first off, metal spoons are much more suited to ice cream. Secondly, I might want to use a dish and scoop it out of the container in the future. But mostly I've learned that if I'm ever imprisoned, I know how to make a GREAT shiv.