All I have to show for risking lung damage is this hacking cough.

Wow, did today suck. Today sucked harder than a herd of vampires in a coma unit. I rarely have a really good day or a really bad day, as my goods and bads are pretty evenly dispersed over time. But all the good of Tuesday let in lots of room for the bad bad suckage of Thursday. And it's too bad, because I'm generally fond of Thursdays.

And wow, my browser did crash and Firefox managed to bring my post back. Firefox, I love you. But I'm still missing The Office right now. MERDE.

telephone bills up my sleeves

I am going around singing "I quit my job/and I took another job/Oh my God oh my God." And that is a pretty straightforward summary of my day and how I feel about it.

Aieeeeeeee.

in for a penny, in for a stint at Gitmo

"Hey," I said to the cat, "you've got to stop killing birds and leaving them outside our front door."

"Meow," said the cat.

"I know," I said.

"Meow," said the cat.

"I know," I said.

silence is a survival strategy

You know how in movies and things people are told to picture themselves in their Happy Place? And they always pick a beach? I tend to shy away from things involving the exposure of skin or copious amounts of sunlight, plus I do not understand the appeal of sand, so the beach is not really my thing.

I've been happy in plenty of places, of course -- buildings, soccer fields, in vehicles, closets, houses. I've been comfortable, contented, relaxed. But there's never been anywhere that I pictured myself being in order to relax. After being in Belize last year, where it was Just. So. Hot, I was prepared for Costa Rica to be about the same, although I looked forward to seeing the higher-elevation Cloud Forest (bosque nuboso!). I was told I might even need a sweater there, which made me ridiculously happy.

And dudes - I love the Cloud Forest. I love Monteverde. I love the little town about 20 bumpy minutes down the mountain, Santa Elena. I love the little coffee shop above the little bookstore in the little town. Love.

We go to study environments, ecosystems, flora & fauna, Issues. But I found myself listening to the way people spoke - in Spanish, in Spanish-accented English, in English-accented Spanish. For the first time ever, I spoke in Spanish to people who needed me to. I spoke things I had to rehearse, and instead of saying "de nada," I said, "con mucho gusto," because that's what the native speakers say. My first-ever, real Spanish sentence was expressing the idea that I do not need a bag for that, thank you, which you would think is my favorite sentence in English.

I learned I'm bad with numbers and thus money in foreign languages as well.

I understood the slow and careful Spanish of one of our guides as he spoke for the translators - I understood most of the Spanish between an American practicing on one of our patient leaders. I could get the gist of what the Costa Ricans said to each other. A couple of times, when I said something, I was so flustered and surprised that they understood me that I forgot to listen to what they were responding, and got completely lost.

I want to go back there someday.

Ah, I see The Sociopath's Handbook's back on the Bestseller chart.

Hello, paperless billing. Hello, green energy. Today I am doing things that I should have done a long time ago, but that it is not too late to start doing.

I am doing a lot of things this week that I should have done a long time ago.

way to go, sub-prime lenders!

Now, I don't mean to imply that my Mom is happy that I'm ashamed, or that that was her ultimate goal in the War of the Room. I'm sure it wasn't. I don't mean to imply anything like that at all.

And another brief addendum: this problem, of the clutter, is compounded exponentially by the very large group of people who continuously print my name on things and USPS them to my house. (Those people? I hate each and every single one of them.)

The room pulled together okay. The wireless high-speed internet, not so much. I called India and after much repeating of C-as-in-Charles, T-as-in-Thomas it was determined that this particular wireless thingamajig is past its warranty. No help for me. (In fairness, it's really that help would have cost me $30.) This setup worked once before, but is not working now, not at all, and it cost several dollars and four hours to figure this out. At least we got Other's working again. It was working when the cable guy left, and at some point in the long, arduous, painful journey it became clear (ha, like any of this is clear) that Other's router is probably the missing link here. I'll try to avoid getting sucked into the vortex of this long, convoluded, possibly wrong explanation, but the following three statements seem to be true:

1) To get my adapter to work, we must run the router set-up on Other's computer.
2) Set-up requires both that the router be unplugged and that the cable connection to the internet be live.
3) The connection to the cable internet only works if it's run through the router.

Therefore, it's dialup for me.

To top it off, the unplanned indulgence of a pineapple pizza turned out to be a waste of twelve dollars because the pineapple was pepperoni.

Anyway, today Dave Eggers inspired me to get rid of most of the clothes that are currently piled in the closet.

I don't think he meant to, though.

split the night

When I was probably about 10 or 12, my mom gave up. She decided that if we were to remain people who could be in the same family, living in the same house, she was not going to succeed in making me clean up my room. She insisted that a) I have a clear path from the door to the bed, dresser, and window, and b) my friends not be allowed in the room in such a state. So I got pretty used to not having friends in my room (which wasn't really a huge desire of mine anyway).

This unfortunate habit of living constantly in complete disarray has continued well into "adulthood," as they say. And at heart, I'm totally fine with it. I would rather spend time making stuff than moving junk around.

But tomorrow, a nice computer guy is coming to install our cable internet -- after several years of going without, we've fallen off the dialup wagon again. (Or gotten back on? I don't know. Either way: fast internet.) He's going to need to look at my computer, and thus my room, to get everything set up.

And even though she lost just about every battle we ever had over my room, she won the war: I am completely ashamed of this room. I really don't want strangers to see it. Or friends. Or Other. And it's not just because I fear ending up on some reality show about intervening in hoarders' lives - I'm just embarrassed.

A huge part of this problem is the fact that I'm acutely conscious that everything I "throw away" will actually go somewhere. It will sit, among everything else that is "thrown away" and rot. Possibly for thousands of years. That's a lot to have on one's head. I recycle like an insane person, ripping the sticky part of the envelope off and recycling the rest, recyclng tags, junk mail, office paper, receipts printed on paper, any kind of paper packaging. Paperboard. Cardboard. Printer cartridges. Plastic, glass, and aluminum, of course.

Then there's just the issue of all this crap that is not technically trash, like the pipe cleaners, cellphone charger (wall & car) that doesn't fit anything, picture frame I don't want, cd-rom I don't want, acrylic yarn I bought when I was first learning to knit, etc. etc. etc. What do you do with this stuff?

Mine sits in my room. Not ideal, but better than chucking it. Maybe by tomorrow afternoon it will have been jammed into a closet.

i killed my dinner/with karate

98 is the number of degrees it is. 104 is the number of degrees it is on the heat index, which on the one hand I think is kind of a bullhockey thing to make us all feel better, like yes, dears, it's really very hot. And on the other hand, wow! 104! 98 actually does feel different than 91, which I wouldn't have believed when it was 40 out. But now, yes. And the humidity is something to behold.

98 is still not too hot for Lou, who will charge into the yard, walk as far away from me as the extend-a-leash will go (16 feet), sit on his tail, put his ears back, take a big breath in through his mouth, close his mouth and exhale loudly through his nose as his pupils become the size of pinpricks, then stare up at the sun. The hotter it gets, the harder it is to get him back inside.

Make a new plan, Stan

After months of careful research, scientific observation, and calculation, I have reverse-engineered the grocery store's criteria for determining whether an item gets its own plastic bag.

An item needs its own bag if any of the following criteria are met:
1) The item is fragile (eggs, fruit, glass containers)
2) The item has a "gross factor," like association with such things as salmonella (raw chicken) or being rather slimy (fried chicken)
3) The item is heavy (a 1-gallon container of orange juice with its own handle)
4) The item is big (cereal)
5) The item is round (canned food)
6) The item has corners of any kind (boxes of granola bars)
7) The item exhibits any of the physical properties of matter, including but not limited to: having mass, taking up space, or reflecting light.

That's how you know KRove's in the HOUSE

Living, as I do, far from the be-exclamation-point-ed and be-multiple-ticker-taped world of cable news, when I encounter it I am immediately tricked into thinking that Something Big Has Happened when in fact regular old news has happened. Either cable news or I (it's hard to tell) has/have lost all sense of the proportionality of things. I agree that the World Bank is important and often newsworthy, but unless the World Bank done blowed up, it's not worthy of a blinking 72-pt font headline.

Our local news goes the entire broadcast these days with the words "BREAKING NEWS" at the bottom of the screen, next to the network logo and ticker tape reporting on a car accident, scene at the courthouse/7-11/Key Bank, and that guy who fell in the river last week. Yes, I suppose that the apartment fire that the windswept reporter is standing in front of is technically breaking news, but as you are a news show, which implies that the things you are standing in front of, interviewing neighbors about, and collecting information on will be generally news-related, this seems a bit redundant.

I can't pinpoint exactly when the world of news went all crazy, but it seems like fifteen years ago, breaking news was news that warranted interrupting Our Regularly Scheduled Programs, and even then I was relatively certain that whatever had happened could've waited until Brenda & Kelly had finished scratching each others' eyes out.