Coffee, Cards, and a Goatee.

Life's been a lot more eventful the past few months. Normally I'd write a long winded, somewhat witty, and ultimatley unimportant post about it all (which I guess I'm doing anyway), but because I'm kind of tired and have been doing a lot of writing in the past few days, I'm going to break it down into bullets. These are by no means in any order -- I'm just writing them as they come to me. I will try to put downer things immediatley preceeding a happy, funny thing. This way, we all end up smiling. Aint that nice in a hippy sort of way?

Recent Events (and a sentence or two of thought on each)

• Started the Fall '06 semester. Classes include Cognitive Psych, American Fictions of Death, Clinical Psychology Seminar, Intro to Astronomy (snicker), and Lab In Learning. That last one has been a source of conflict -- while the others are all generally good, the lab requires me to work with a rat that Heather and I have affectionatley dubbed "Madison" (I'm really starting to love that lever-pressing rodent), and with another rat who takes the form of an overweight and excessivley hairy girl who wears nothing but belly shirts (or perhaps they were supposed to be mumu's that just got eaten by her dough-like gut) and likes to ask me ridiculously stupid questions. Questions such as, "Do you know what this Operant Conditioning thing is?" Non-psych majors may think that to be a legitimate question, but its akin to one carpenter asking another, "Hey, I've been at this for a few years now, but I'm not sure what these little pointy metal things do...nails, I think they're called?"
• Living In A New Place. I'm living in a two bedroom apartment in Johnson City with a Mr. Brian Juba. The location is thirty seconds from Wegman's and the Oakdale Mall, and it has central A/C. I'm loving it. Life in this apartment is understandably less exciting than it was last year...but at least I have an actual room now. In fact, the only bad thing about it is it's distance from the bars, but that doesn't matter because of the next point...
• Broke My Driver's License. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to write this in a public forum, but I am not of legal age to drink alcohol. I know, I know. I'm only a mere 20 years of age. So to aid in my quest for intoxication, I normally employed the use of a chalked ID. Now, I'm the first to admit the futility of the chalked ID. You might as well go up to the bouncer with a note that says "Please. I'm desperate." But it was the best I had. My usual artist is in med school now, so I thought it couldn't be too hard to do myself. Long story short, I tried so many times that I wore the surface so smooth, the pencil could no longer apply. In an attempt to re-rough it, I bore a hole straight through the ID. I know, I can't believe it either. But I did. I actually attempted to show a picture of this, but I dont have Photoshop and couldn't black out the personal info that I dont want some 45 year old using to come touch me tomorrow night.
• Grandmother. I'll keep this brief. I dont mean to bring everyone down, but this blog's about me, right? And well, this is something major going on in my life. So, my grandmother had this new operation that was supposed to fix all the problems she's been having (I can't remember if I've posted before about these issues, but if I haven't and you'd like me to, leave a comment about it and we can all cry together). The operation was a total hip replacement, but it was more complicated because of the removal of the old hardware that was already in there, etc. The incision ran from the top of her hip to the middle of her knee. Nasty stuff. But it was a great surgeon and it went fine. Things were finally looking up, until my grandmother hit a 1 in 8000 chance: she developed an arterial blod clot in the calf of the same leg. Quick bio lesson: Veins carry blood to the heart, arteries carry it away from the heart to the muscles. Therefore, no blood was getting to her foot, ankle, etc. No blood = no oxygen = necrosis (death o' cells). VERY long story short, her leg needed to be amputated. TWICE. First time, then to check and make sure they got all of the dead tissue off (any remaining would become severely infected and cause lots of problems), then a second time to cut a little more and close it up. So, after ALL OF THIS FUCKING 8 MONTHS OF BULLSHIT, the leg had to come off anyway. The worst part? Yesterday she told my mom she had to go to the bathroom, and when my mom went to call the nurse, my grandmother (who's been having some cognitive problems) said "Oh no, don't bother them, I'll just get up and walk there". Hear that? That's the sound of a heart breaking.
• The Goddamn Nav Bar Is Back. You may notice a strip of black across the top of the screen. That's the blogger nav bar. It used to not be there, because it's annoying and I found a little sneaky way of removing it. But guess what? Blogger released a new version of itself (Blogger Beta), and I stupidly complied in joining. "New Features!" they said. "More customizable!" they said. "Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!" they said. Wrong, wrong, and really wrong. It's the same its always been. But now, the nav bar is not removable. Goddamn you Blogger. I shall have my revenge. I will not rest til the streets run red with your....uh...machine code!!!
• Looked Into Post-Bac Programs. And then hid in the corner and cried.
• Might Be Volunteering At A Psychiatric Center. With my clinical psych professor, Dr. Krantweiss. Great teacher, maybe great opportunity. Chance to see schizophrenics in their natural environment, which I guess to them might be Narnia or something similar. More on this as it develops.
• BU Podcast? It seems the podcast idea has started its approach down the runway and will soon be taking off. Apparently a lot of paper work has to go into this first, but if it works out, you'll be the first to know. I'm getting tired of writing again, so I'm not going to go into the details of the project right now, but again, if you want me to write a summary of the idea, leave a comment. I loves me some comments.

Labels: apartment, blogger, fall, grandmother, ID, podcast, post-bac, psychology, school