"The Lazy Bloggers Post Generator"

Goodness Gracious I just had a cup of tea and realized I haven't updated this since Paris Hilton was in jail... You wouldn't believe that my hands were chopped off and I was waiting for bionic ones. I prostrate myself in sorrow and beg thy forgiveness..

I'm flat out with sleeping my way to the top, learning to speak Japanese, just generally being a terrible burden to my local police, my day starts with the dawn patrol from sun-up to dusk. I'm beyond drunk most of the time. I need some perspective.

I hope you're having a good life if one more person emails me to ask why I haven't posted today I'll start posting pictures of toe fungus, or fecal murals. You have my word! Unless of course the pool with the cocktail bar is heated!.

All right, hopefully the absurdity of that, combined with the atrocious grammar and rampant punctuation errors, as well as the flagrant use of contractions, made you realize that I did not actually write that. And...none of it is true, except for the "I just had a cup of tea" part. In fact, I also had two delicious chocolate-chocolate-chip cookies. The bit above was courtesy of The Lazy Bloggers Post Generator, which actually takes longer than some of my posts do to write. But it was amusing, and that is what is important to me. Take a look, be amused.

Working at the deli continues to be better than answering phones for Sprint. I hope that I can get out of there soon, though. I keep checking back at Barnes and Noble - they tell me they are going to have some openings soon. Working in a bookstore is pretty much my dream part-time-while-in-school job. In fact, I was thinking about this earlier, and I think that if I were not on a career path that I am very excited about and know I will love, I would not mind working in a bookstore long-term. I love bookstores. I love books. I love people who love books. So hopefully that will work out.

My parents are going over to Seattle this weekend, for my cousin's wedding on Saturday. It will be nice to have a good stretch of alone time. I was worried that my dad would decide to not go, but everything is moving forward as planned, and they are leaving at six or seven tomorrow morning. I am tired of living with my parents, but it really is the best option for me right now, financially. It is allowing me to save some money, and I hope that that will result in my being able to pay of my student loans more quickly after I am out of school. Of course, that all depends on my not going insane from living with them. My sanity is ever up in the air, so we shall see how that goes. Time alone will be very good.

There is more, but not for tonight.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

Wait, What?

Another sign I read everyday on my way to work is outside of a bar. It says,
THE M'S ARE HOT
THE BEER IS TOO

...what?

I do not know much about beer, but I am fairly certain it is not supposed to be hot.

Of course, "The M's" is talking about the Mariners, in Seattle. Since they are Washington's only major league baseball team, most people in Spokane futilely cheer for them as well. And if the beer is as hot as the Mariners are, then perhaps it would not be so awful.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

On My List of Things That frighten Me.

Yes, that is frighten with a little 'f.' The list is not of things that Frighten me, or of things which I Fear, in the style of A.A. Milne, where Important words are capitalized, especially Nouns. Perhaps the list is more Things that Make Me Nervous. Anyway. On this list is Chiropractors. I think I may have been raised to be Nervous about Chiropractors, or even to be frightened of them.

I like my job (this is not as horrid a non-sequitur as it may seem). It is not something that I want to be doing for the rest of my life, but it is steady and active and my shifts go by quickly. And, of course, it gives me money. However, the past two weeks were hellish. I flew back from LA on Monday, June twenty-ninth, and worked the next nine days without a break. And really, my visit to California was not much of a break, because I was seeing people and down late and up early and quite busy overall. So, I worked over the holiday weekend, and most of my shifts were nine or ten hours. My longest, most horrid day/shift was Thursday, July second - that one was twelve hours long; I was called in two hours early for my scheduled eight (and one-half, if you include my lunch break) hour shift, and did not finish closing until an hour and a half after my shift was supposed to end: ten-thirty to ten-thirty. Horrible.

So, sometime in there I strained something in my back. And then not having a break aggravated it. And it was hurting quite badly by the end of my shift on Wednesday, and on Thursday I could barely move at all. I had planned to get a lot done on my day off - mostly cleaning my room and doing laundry - but I ended up spending most of the day curled up in an armchair. In a moment of temporary insanity, perhaps, I called my best friend and asked for the name and number of her chiropractor. I did not know if he was covered in my insurance, but the one thing in the situation that I wanted less than to go to a chiropractor was to go to a chiropractor chosen indiscriminately off of a list from my insurance company's website. (As it turns out, he is a provider for my insurance, so that is going to work out nicely.)

So on Friday I faced my Nerves, and went to see the Chiropractor. The doctor, while working on adjusting me, informed me that he had never seen anyone my size (height, weight) so tight and tense. I am unsure as to whether or not I should be proud of this accomplishment. He was especially impressed/horrified by the knot in my left shoulder which I have had since I can remember - probably at least since junior high. Afterward, I was able to move and straighten up some, so that was a significant improvement, though I was still in pain. I went in again this morning, very, very, very sore from yesterday, for another adjustment, and this evening I am feeling well. That is, I am feeling no worse than I generally would at the end of a work-day. But the doctor says that we are going to get me Well, or All Better, which is fairly Exciting, although the whole thing still makes me fairly Nervous.

I do like having movement, though. And the cracking is simultaneously absolutely terrifying and extremely satisfying.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

Whatever happened to "Read a good book this summer!" or "Have fun and be safe!" on school reader-boards? For the month leading up to Independence Day, the reader-board on the middle school I drive by on my way to work read, "Fireworks are Illegal. $513 fine in Spokane." At first I laughed, but in retrospect, it makes me sort of sad. Yes, fireworks are illegal in Spokane County. Yes, we can get them very easily because we are about twenty minutes from Idaho. Yes, middle-schoolers probably should not play with fireworks even if they were not illegal. But is it the responsibility of the school to warn them against that? Is such a warning even effective? I feel like the kids who are likely to acquire and play with fireworks are the ones who are also likely, in general, to do whatever the school says not to do. Signs like this seem to me to, at worst, aggravate the problem, or, at best, have no effect whatsoever. I very much prefer those signs which encourage good behavior, not discourage negative. After all, while the message is essentially the same, "Read Read Read" or "Have fun in the Sun!" are much nicer than "Stop being a couch potato!" or "TV rots your brain!"

Blessings on your travels,
Emily