About all the silence: We had no internet service there for a week or so. I was able to latch onto a wifi signal that first day to send that last post and then - NADA. Couldn't catch diddly-squat until the dumbass cable guy came to hook us up yesterday. More on that tomorrow. Someone please remind me. I'll forget to tell our lovely "How our packing/moving to Houston" story went. One word summation: shittyholyGODwtfdammitsomeonepleasekillmenowbeforeIkillsomeoneelse.

So good news, however... Found a new restaurant in our neighborhood that is REALLY GOOD. Heather thought it was alright - she had the grouper (the only fishy-type thing she'll eat) sauteed, but she said it wasn't as good as when she had eaten it in Mexico. Well, yeah. It's more of a Louisiana-inspired place. OMGcrawfish. I had the crawfish tail sautee with their homemade tartar sauce, which had some pepper and other Creole spices in it. Not your normal bland tartar sauce, but not so hot that I didn't want to eat it. I have a sensitive tongue, so I have to be wary of things labeled "Creole" or "Cajun," especially in Texas. But, the best thing?? The red beans and rice. Not spicy, but not bland. I swear to God, it was my mother's recipe. EXCELLENT. Our waitress looked a little scared of me. Heather told me to calm down because I was freaking people out. I was just damn happy to have fucking fresh seafood. In Austin, you don't get fresh seafood from the Gulf. The only fresh catfish in town is farm-raised crapfish. Unfortunately, I had just enough opportunities to visit Hammond/New Orleans to know what real seafood is, so living in frozen hell was horrid. Having fresh crawdads and red beans and rice that didn't taste like someone was trying to pass off their chili recipe was heavenly. I love being this close to Louisiana. I love being this close to the Gulf. I hate being away from my family, but having good food that reminds me of good things and Mom helps.

On the job front... the temp agency I signed up with is crap. Doing nothing for me. I have to call 10 different offices around the greater Houston area if I want all of them to look for jobs for me each week. How ridiculous is that? And the office where I went to do my "testing" (where they make sure I can type and use Word and Excel - 74wpm, 98% proficiency in Word, 86% in Excel) isn't helping me at all when I look on their site and find jobs that I want, call them, tell them that those are the ones I'd like to do... all they do is stonewall me saying that they've sent out my info and they haven't heard anything back from the "client." So, instead, there are about 6 or 7 jobs at Rice that are just right for my skills. And since Heather's already attending there... we figure it'd be easy for me to sign on there if I can, then commute to work together. She will have more than enough to do with research and stuff to take up the probably 8a-5p hours I'll be working. And that will allow us to both have benefits, earn money, and be near, but not super-near each other. Also? Save on gas. Though it is cheaper here, since we're in the petroleum refining capital of Texas. Smog City!

Good news: Kitties are getting along. Heather's cat, Kepler, who has been basically an only child since he was a kitten (he's 3) now has to share with my cat, Andrew (also 3), but Andy's lived with Shadow since he was 9 months old, and then since March he's lived with Mom and her 7 cats, so he's used to playing with others. Kep was pretty pissed at first at even having me around (I call him Kep, Keppy, and FuzzyButt - he's a Maine Coon, and very fuzzy), so when I brought Andrew up the next day, he was really unhappy. Andrew didn't care. They had met back in December when Heather brought Kepler from Arizona for the Christmas break. He stayed at my house with Andrew and didn't like that. Now, I think, Kep realizes that Andrew and I are here for good and is starting to warm up to both of us. He jumped up on the bed for the first time today, and licked/nipped Andrew on the neck. At least they're now able to share the same 5 feet of space. Yay.

Other good news: I am getting to cook again. I haven't cooked since I broke up with that jerk that I dated for oh-so-long way back in December of '05. It's just not really worth it to make a meal when it's just you. And I knew it'd be an excuse for me to overeat, so I just didn't. Now I get to cook and we get to share. And it's great, because Heather helps, so we share duties in the kitchen. And we seem to be sharing everything else about equally, too. Off to a good start. Let's hope it stays that way. The only thing we need to fix now is the fact that I'm on a nocturnal schedule still, and she needs to wake up at 8 in order to get up, out the door, and down to campus by 10. Yeah, we now have a commute that's longer than 15 minutes. Oh, well.

Also, most importantly: I FINALLY finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Only took me 2 weeks-ish. Sheesh. At least I don't have to avoid anything about it online or on tv anymore.

My list of things for tomorrow: Organize my desk, clean up my side of the room, clean up my side of the bathroom counter, finish organizing my books, find my box of important knick-knacks (including my statue of the Holy Mother, my meteorite fragments Heather gave me, and my snow globe collection) YIKES, check the mail, take pictures of the apartment and kitties, write about the TerribleHorribleNoGoodVeryBadMove.

Late last night, sometime around 1:30, something big went BOOM. Shook my apartment. I couldn't tell where it had come from because I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom, but it was loud enough for my heart to stop beating for several seconds. Scary. Scary shit. I thought a tire (or a car for that matter) had exploded out in the parking lot, so I looked out my bedroom window. Couldn't see anything, but then again, I don't have a great view out my window. After about 45 minutes of things seeming to calm down I walked to my kitchen in the back of my apartment, which faces the access drive to the back of the strip shopping and grocery store that sits in front of my complex. There was a fire truck and other vehicles which I couldn't see (probably cops, but there's a giant fence and tall bush blocking my view... another reason I like to be on the 2nd floor) behind the Cici's Pizza. I was talking to Mom since I had been scared out of my wits when this all went down and we finally realized when I saw the ladder truck that one of the gas tanks behind the pizza place must have caught fire and exploded. Which would explain the explosion I heard. And the apartment rattling. And why the cops and fire marshal were gathered behind the building this morning. And just now a "NuCO2" truck pulled up. Wow. I really hope that doesn't happen again. And I"m glad that it didn't go up in flames. Just make a very loud scary noise that set off every car alarm within three blocks. What I think is interesting is that it hasn't been covered by ANY of the local news channels. None. Highly annoying.

It seems that my stupid complex has decided that the absolute best time for landscaping (mowing, edging, and leaf-blowing - which I've never understood the point of anyway... you're just moving the leaves around, which seems rather pointless to me) is FRIDAY FUCKING MORNING AT 8:30AM. Oh. My. God.

I was awakened a little while ago by the mower making little tiny laps across the wide expanse of green behind my apartment building. Then he moved to the front and made little tiny laps with his big mower right in front of my window. Now the edging guy's standing right next to my window. He's causing a shadow to be cast into my room with what feeble light is coming in since it's goddamn early and raining. Oh, yeah. The rain.

I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End last night with Heather and a friend of hers. That's when the deluge started with the rain. Wow. It was POURING. We got absolutely soaked getting into the theater. At least there was about an hour to wait before the movie, and then almost three hours of movie to mostly dry out. The only thing that didn't dry out totally were the insoles of my shoes. They were still cold and squishy when I put my shoes back on at the end of the movie. My take on the movie itself? It was really good. I enjoyed it. I liked the ending, even though die-hard fans, like our friend, might be kind of uneasy about it. We did go to the 10:30pm showing (thank you, Disney, for thinking that maybe everyone doesn't want to attend a midnight showing with fourteen billion children like last year), but still didn't get home until sometime around 2ish. Didn't really get to sleep until about 4.

And now I'm up again and it's only 9. I just keep telling myself that this is just temporary. Just temporary. Only temporary, Em. It's okay. Whew. I almost freaked out again there. Have I mentioned my wireless service is absolute shit? Yes. It is. To the point where almost every single call I make, even the one to customer service, is dropped at least once. I'm in what they call a "hole". Where there's no technical obstruction according to the company, but the signal is crap for me because of these unexplained "obstructions." Made me so crazy yesterday that I was close to throwing my phone out the window. I need to talk to my psychiatrist about my meds again, I think.

Okay. So this is now what's coming at me to hopefully not rob me of too much more sleep for the rest of the morning:


I'm basically located where the "s" in Austin is. All of the yellow and orange in that whorl is sweeping in my direction. Yay. The one thing I can say for this apartment is that the windows don't leak. It's seemingly one good point at the moment. But it's something. Especially with a forecast where there's at least a 50% chance of rain for the next several days and then at least a 30% for the next several after that.

I'm in pain. I had an ovarian cyst rupture on me yesterday afternoon. Fun times. In a nutshell, a cyst forms when the normal sac that forms when you ovulate doesn't disappear after the egg is gone. This is not a good thing. Got it? Good.

I will save you from the full gamut of symptoms, but I will tell you this: It FUCKING hurts. It feels like you're cut open with a knife low across your belly. The first time this happened to me I actually checked to make sure that isn't what happened. And then it still feels that way for another 6+ hours, until the first burst of the pain goes away. You know the pain scale? 1 being minor; 10 being OH PLEASE GOD LET ME DIE RIGHT NOW. The pain starts suddenly at a 9, 9 1/2. After those initial 6ish hours, it goes down to a 7 or so, which relates to "tolerable, but only with really good pain meds and no movement." After about 24-48 it goes away entirely. After being curled up in a little ball of pain with usually one hand on your abdomen for those hours.

There was a big ordeal about this and getting meds, and if I needed to go to the hospital, and so forth yesterday, but it finally all worked out.

So, I'm drugged with lovely vicodin and sleeping late this morning when, over the sound of my TV, I am woken out of my super-drugged unconsciousness by the sound of yelling from outside my window. See, my new apartment is on the first floor, and is the dumbest design I have ever seen. The bedroom faces the parking lot, while the kitchen is in the back. It's incredibly noisy. And my neighbors, as I have said before, are mostly ghetto. And assholes. A man and woman are yelling about something or other right outside. And standing next to my car. And the man, to make his point, is beating on my trunk lid. So, I grabbed my keys and turned on the alarm. It's a puny one, I admit, but it did the trick. You can't have a fight by a honking blinking car. So they left. I may just have to keep my keys around me in my bedroom and when people are being loud at night I can move them with my car alarm. Hmm.

I've already complained to the apartment office about the fact that every time I go out to my car my driver's side mirror is knocked off. See, it had a run-in with a pole about 2 years ago now. I've kept it on with plastic glue and duct tape. It seems my neighbors are nowhere near as considerate as the ones from my old complex because it gets knocked off so often. I've had to repair it so much that I've run out of duct tape. I had to drive with the thing hanging by it's electrical cords the other day. Ugh.

Don't get me started on my cell service. I cannot wait until I move out of this place. At least there's only roughly 2 more months here.

To explain: the previous post was to be posted at 6:30 am, but there was no signal at the time. I sent as soon as I was with signal.

It's now 11:30am. The cleaning crew JUST got to my apartment maybe 15 minutes ago. Thank God it doesn't take long to drive to my new place. It took about 10 trips up and down two flights of stairs to get the remainder of stuff to our cars. Yuck. At least the rain cooled the air down.

I discovered a little fledgling mourning dove on the 2nd floor landing rail. I named him Fledgie. Mom, being the Southerner, named him Budgie.

He was so unafraid of us. He would just look us up and down as if appraising us for danger every time we walked up and down the stairs. We kept trying to get him to chirp so he'd be found by his momma. He was so funny. He'd open his beak, but wouldn't cheep. Finally, Mom made a move to poke him to maybe illicit a sound from him and he flew off into the tree you see in the background. Then he stayed where he landed in the tree. And didn't say anything. I said, "What if this is a mute bird? He really got screwed, Darwinianally speaking."

The rain, and there's a 70% chance of thunderstorms and major rain today, held off until Mom and I got the very last items into the back of my car just as the first drops started to fall. Then it stopped again just long enough for the cleaning people to get to my apartment. Now it's coming again, and gonna come HARD.

See all of that rain? See the little grey line that intersects with the black county line west of the interstate? That's generally where I am. All of that rain is headed STRAIGHT FOR ME. Woo! A true test to see if all of my windows leak or not. I know the last apartment was like a sieve.

Okay. Now I will eat and lie the hell down. Take a nap. Take my pills now that Mom found them (Thank you, St. Anthony). Later.

So: It turns out I have a very weak, but still very there, wireless signal at my new place. It isn't mine, of course, but I'm going to pretend. And you will pretend. And everything will work out just fine.

Most of my things were moved over today. I have a pile of stuff sitting in the middle of my living room floor at the old apartment waiting for Mom and me to transport it all to the new apartment tomorrow morning - just couldn't get it all packed before the movers came. Mainly stuff from my bathroom, linens, and clothes from the dryer.

Mom's being wonderful and springing for a cleaning service to come in tomorrow so we don't have to do anymore. I will probably spot clean the carpets, but they'll be doing all the vacuuming (which is HORRIBLY NEEDED since I haven't had a working vacuum since... um...), wash floors, toilet (ew), sinks (including throwing out all the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink - Heather's letting me use hers over the summer and we're getting a brand new set from a friend of hers when we move to Houston, so my pathetic, cracked, mismatched set is going bye bye), etc. Can't wait to hand the bitches at the front office the keys and say "hasta la vista, Bitches!!" Well, I probably won't say that since I don't want them to charge me an arm and a leg over the deposit, which they probably will anyway because they're nasty that way.

Anyways... I'm chillin' in my new apartment. And I'm bored. Bored bored bored. I have no cable hook-up at the moment and my TV's not picking up any of the actual tv channels around here (7, 24, 36, 42). It did, however, pick up 87 and 110. Which were showing some kind of stunt driving show and the original Star Trek. Which was great except it was black and white and I couldn't hear the dialogue over the fuzz. Bummer.

At least I feel a little less stressed now that the big part is over and done with. Last night I was FREAKING THE FUCK OUT. Tonight, I feel loads better. It was funny. I took a nap for a little while in my new apartment and then left to go pick up some essentials, like toilet paper and clothes, from the old place. Ever get that strange feeling of dislocation when you wake up at your new place for the first time? Maybe it's just me. I don't know. Anyway. It felt really weird having a different view out my door for the first time in over 3 years.

The old place? Gated. Nice cars like Porches and BMWs. Our own private lake (used to be a limestone quarry, but they hit an underground spring and it filled up). Two pools. Never a break-in. Red brick/white-black trim color scheme. New place? No gates. Beat up cars. No lake. One tiny pool. I don't want to know about the crime rate but just by observation the whole place is seriously ghetto. I've taken the faceplate off my stereo in my car, and parked it right in front of my bedroom window (which faces the parking lot) so that I'll hear if someone tries to break in to my vehicle. Orange paint. Yes. Orange. And not a nice, dark, longhorn burnt orange either. It's what you'd see if you ate too much pumpkin pie and then threw it up. It's that pumpkin plus nutmeg plus stomach acid color. I'll take a picture in the sunlight tomorrow and post it so you'll know what I'll get to look at for the next three months. At least it's easy to give directions. "You can't miss 'em. They're bright orange." My movers couldn't decide between mustard and baby poop.

By the way, anyone in Texas reading this... use Apple Moving. (applemoving.com) I have never had a problem with the guys from there. They charge really decent rates. The people are really friendly and easy to work with. Last time I was moving, I had to change dates last minute because my cousin was killed. They were incredibly understanding and worked me in on the next Saturday when it fit my schedule. This time I scheduled last minute. No problem. And the movers themselves are always very helpful and friendly. The two I had today were wonderful. They carried stuff down to my car that wasn't on their list, but they did it just as a favor. They even dropped a couple of things off at Mom's house as another favor because it was on their way back to their "home base" and I didn't have any more room for stuff. Just excellent. I really can't praise them highly enough. Seriously.

Okay. I'm going to try to do something else now. Really.

Just in case you were wondering where the hell I went over the past couple of weeks... I've been in a major depression (bipolar's a bitch I tell you), plus trying to pack my whole place to move to a new apartment. So haven't had time or the energy to put anything up here. I'm really really really fucking stressed out, and will continue to be so throughout the remainder of today and tomorrow until everything's done. Then I can relax. And then Heather will arrive and all will be good with the Universe again.

Also, there will be a black-out from this evening until the afternoon of the 3rd. Not because I'll be super busy again (thought for most of it I will be), but because I won't have the cable modem hooked up in my new place until then. I could try and steal a signal. We'll see if I can do that. Cross your fingers for lax control over someone else's wireless.

Then, on the 4th I'm traveling with Heather back to Tempe to go do stuff with her for her birthday and graduation from Arizona State!! YAY! I'll try to put up pictures of our adventures as I get them. But we all know how good I am about keeping promises about posting stuff.

Oh, speaking of promises to post stuff. It's way past the point now, but I had to break my no soda/fast-food rule for lent over spring break because I was driving back and forth to Houston. When you're a lone female in the middle of BFE, you really don't want to walk into a convenience store where all the trucks have gun racks and/or deer horns attached to their grills. So it was drive-through Starbucks and Schlotzsky's and Whataburger. I gave up the whole thing after that until Easter, and then, due to budgetary restrictions, I was forced to exclude soda again because it's cheaper to do other stuff. So that's the deal. It's only been in the past couple of days that I've enjoyed the zippy, wonderful taste that is Coke from a fountain. And, Damn it's good. I guess that sorta not really counts as keeping my Lenten promise. I went 2 1/2 weeks or so, took a break of about 3 weeks, and then did another 2 weeks. A record for me with the fast food AND soda. Damn near killed me, too. This was a really hard one, and one I'll repeat next year.

I am so tired. I'm packing up all of my shit and moving to a teeny tiny apartment (roughly 200sq ft smaller than this one) for about 3 months until I move to Houston with Heather. Yes. I'm moving to Houston. I can't wait. Woo! But this hurried packing thing is AWFUL. And, naturally, half of my crap is still in boxes from the last time I moved (3 years ago - what?), but the kitty used the corners of the boxes as her scratching posts, which is better than the door jam, but still made the boxes unusable. So half of my time is now being spent going threw mostly packed boxes with shredded corners seeing if there's anything I can throw away/donate to goodwill and packing the rest in shiny new boxes. Andy is living with Mom over the summer, so I don't have to worry about my new shiny boxes getting shredded at the new place. He will be coming with me to Houston, however. At least we know he'll get along with Heather's cat, Kepler, since they hung out together when she stayed with me over Christmas break. She swears that Andy taught Kep how to talk. And blames me for it. Like I really have anything to do with what cats say to one another. Telepathically. I mean, it's not like I whispered to Kepler while she was sleeping, "Hey, you know how to really annoy her once you get home? Meow your head off. All the time. Seriously. Do it. It'll drive her crazy." There was no conspiracy. I promise.

I learned a very important thing earlier. I have a HELL of a lot of yarn. Much more than I really thought I had. I'm one of those buy yarn for a knitting project, don't finish the project, go buy yarn for the next project people. So I just end up accumulating skeins and skeins worth. To give you an idea of how much I have, picture a large plastic storage bin, then picture it filled to the brim with yarn (and my snowglobe collection wrapped in paper is taking up half the bottom). That's a LOT of yarn.

I'm going to take a bath now and try to make sure I don't just completely knot up from all of this bending over and repetitive motion. I'm also going to take a bunch of benadryl/sudafed before bed to make sure I don't die from the dust. Which I just might.

I love when stuff shows up at my door.

First, my new luggage came. It's pretty. It's burnt orange. It's perfect.

Then, my new fridge came! Yay!! I can finally cool and freeze things again!! It's been a long time since I've been able to do this. See, it died probably 9 months ago or so. But I needed help cleaning it out and the apartment complex wouldn't clean it out themselves even though it was their fridge that died. So it took having Mom and Heather here over Christmas to get it done. And it still was nasty. But then I hurt my knee and stayed at Mom's for most of January. So I asked for a new one last weekend. It took until today to finally get one. What's fascinating is that this one is the first one I've ever had without an automatic ice maker. Which is actually okay, because I buy ice from the store anyway, so the extra room is good.. Jimmy, the head maintenance guy (or, as his Spanish-speaking only assistant calls him, "Yimmy"), is going to come back tomorrow to switch the doors around because at the moment they swing the wrong direction. Which is annoying. But I got food from a place here called Jason's Deli, and I could actually store my leftovers in the fridge!! It was so awesome.

After they left, the DHL guy came to pick up the faulty power cord for my laptop. I had to order one from Dell on Friday because there was a nasty short in it and it wouldn't work without about 15 minutes of tinkering and then NO MOVEMENT whatsoever. Now I have a new one that's actually longer and nicer. The only problem was I once again had to talk to someone in Sri Lanka. "Ernest." Poor guy. His actual name was something I can't begin to spell, but was nowhere near being like Ernest. Dell is SOOO no longer my favorite computer maker. And, it seems, many people feel the same way according to a letter from Michael Dell released to the local paper saying that he was going to decrease managerial staff and that their quarterly earnings were down. They have also slipped to the #2 position behind Hewlett-Packard again. Next laptop will probably be an HP/Compaq. Dell just pisses me off now. Too many Americans have lost their jobs. Because Michael wants to save some bucks. Grr. </rant>

Listening to Heather's talk for her technical review that she's doing tomorrow. It's kind of like a review of what she's done experimentally before she does her thesis defense later this semester. She has a very nice powerpoint and a nice lecture. I'm sure things will go very well.

I'm in pain. Stupid knees. The exercises that I'm doing for strengthening of my quads needs me to bend my knees. This creates arthritic swelling. I end up icing my knees down about 3 times a day. This sucks. At least I can use the reusable ice packs now instead of those instant ones. Those cost too much to do all the time. Must take vicodin and lie down.

Yahoo sucks. I had a Flickr account which decided to tie itself to my old yahoo ID (why, I'm not sure, and I'm really rather sure I didn't do it myself). I never use the thing. Ever. I have a different one that I use for a lot of my correspondence. So, the other day, Yahoo decided to deactivate the old one due to inactivity. That's fine. I never used it. Except to log into Flickr. Which is a BIG PROBLEM. You know why? Because now all of my pictures have BEEN DELETED. Yes, folks, that's right. If you use Yahoo to log into Flickr, make sure not to delete the account you are using, because all of the pictures tied to it will be DESTROYED.

So until I get my old computer, where all the pictures on this blog are from, up and running again you'll be seeing a lot of little red "X" boxes where my pictures should be. (Mom accidentally broke it again moving it while cleaning her apartment today - I gave it to her, now that I have the one Heather gave me. Aren't I nice? Now I just need to take it and get it fixed since the problem is a short between the motherboard and the hard drive that causes it to not be found. Fun, huh?) That teaches me to transfer everything while I have the chance.

In other news, I'm back in my apartment, finally. Andrew (kitty - he's the top one, Cole Porter is the one on the bottom next to the now-screwed computer... they became best friends because they were the only the black/white cats in the house) is back as well. He's settled in quite nicely, though I thought he'd have a little separation anxiety after living with Mom's eight cats for over a month. But he's right here, lounging on my bed with one arm hanging off like nothing's wrong. I personally think it's that he's happy to have a litter box to himself. I hate to break it to him that Heather's going to be coming in a few days and bringing her kitty, Kepler. But, at least I have a LitterMaid, so the box will stay clean even though there will be the two of them using it. (Andy's really picky about the box needing to be clean. Spoiled brat cat.) I take it back. He's glad he finally gets a whole lot of personal attention. Before he had to share me with the four other kitties that lived in the living room (the other three stay in Mom's bedroom). Now he gets me all to himself. He's a purring/rubbing/shedding maniac right now. Crazy.

Have. No. Energy. Must. Complete. Apartment. Cleaning.

The drama of the car mirror and resultant battle of MYTHIC PROPORTIONS with the evil stepmother of MYTHIC PROPORTIONS have drained me of all energies. How I'm going to get my apartment ready is in question.

Speaking of the car mirror... I did end up fixing the fucker... I bought a $5 bottle of epoxy from Walgreens, glued it, and re-taped it with more duct tape. It's holding thus far. Keep your fingers crossed. But, then again, that was the advice of the parts guy at the dealership, so I figure it's as good as any, and $5 is certainly better than $300 and allows me to somewhat stick my tongue out and go "THHHHHHTTTT" in my evil stepmother's face (in my imagination only, of course) for telling me to ride the bus until I could find a cheap part, since she wouldn't allow my father to pay for the actual part from the dealership.

For those who are not familiar with Austin, we have no real mass transit system. We have a bus network, yes, but it mainly transports those in the poorer neighborhoods in town and students who are going to and from campus. There is nothing else. Just the buses. And, in the summer, since a lot of these buses don't have A/C, it's like riding in an oven. So to tell me to take the bus wherever I needed to go is basically like telling me to go sweat to death. Certainly, I can't take the bus to a job interview... I'd be too sweaty and gross by the time I got close enough to the building and walked there in the 90-100 degree heat, plus whatever you need to factor in for humidity (which is the REAL killer). And to tell me to take the bus when I know they have the money to pay for the part is truly absurd. But, then again... dealing with sociopaths.

My laundry is clean.

Saw The Da Vinci Code this afternoon with Mom and Sis. I don't know what all the critics are bitching about (but they probably didn't read the book - stupid illiterate critics). It is one of the few movies I've seen recently that stuck faithfully to the book. Even borrowing dialogue. As much as I loved the book, actually seeing the places made it even better. The end scene with the two pyramids? (You who have read the book know what I'm talking about.) AMAZING.

While waiting for TDVC, we saw the trailer for World Trade Center. Oh. My. God. Beware, those who don't know. If you see a trailer start with Nick Cage and he has a mustache, that's the one. I knew what it was and by the end of the 3-4 mins I had to keep from sobbing. There were tears streaming from my eyes and my nose was running.
(It was kind of annoying, however, because afterward my contacts didn't sit right on my corneas again so everything bright had a little halo. At least the theater put the Cars trailer right after so there was some relief and "whew" time before the movie started.)

Went to Joe's Crab Shack with Mom. Stuffed ourselves with shrimps and crab. Yum.

I am noticing that with the new medication I do actually have more energy. Before? Cleaning the laundry area, plus my bathtub area (it was too dirty to get clean in, if you know what I mean), seeing a movie, and then dinner would just absolutely wipe me out. But I'm still awake and functioning, and I've been awake since 8 this morning. Whoa... So this is what it's like to have a functioning thyroid? Me likey.

P.S. Shadow + Tilex fumes = crazy. She crouches, ears back, on the floor like she's going to pounce on something and then rolls on her side using her feet to push herself across the floor in a squiggly fashion. This happens over and over again until the fumes disperse. Andrew just lazed on the edge of the bed with one arm hanging off, looking bored.

Now, I'm a weather geek. I wear the badge with pride. For god's sake, I begged the admissions dean at A&M to let me into their school (there was a stupid decision on A&M's part that caused me to not be admitted by them and accepted by UT even though I submitted the exact same applications to both - I was top 10th percentile) so I could become a meteorologist.

But I'm kinda getting tired of the storms now. I mean, it's almost three am, I had just fallen asleep, and BOOM!! Another line of storms is moving through, and it's a doozy. No radar pics; I'm just too damn tired. But it sucks. At least it's a line moving west to east and not training south to north so it'd take even longer.

Ooop. More hail. I can hear it on the fireplace cover. They don't sound like big hailstones, thank God. Not like the giant fuckers that hit earlier.

When my lease is up, I'm moving to an apartment that's more firmly constructed. The entire building shakes during even minor thunder. And forget a windy day - the apartment creaks and shakes and it's really rather ridiculous. Then again, my apartment is technically free-standing on three sides and only connected to the building by the back wall. So any wind that hits it from either side (one is an interior but open stairwell) would shake it since it's the top floor of three. Must find a 2nd of 2 again. That doesn't cost a bajillion dollars to live in. I want to kill whoever decided to make three-story apartment buildings. Because I love living on the second floor, but I want to have the top floor so no one lives above me. Bastard architects.

WE'RE GETTING AN IKEA. Yeah. I know. I'm so exited! Tom on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy would put together absolutely fabulous places for people using Ikea furniture. We don't really have anywhere except Target or frickin' Wal-Mart that has okay furniture for an okay price at the moment. It'll be nice to have another place to go.

Okay. I looked at the website. Big mistake. Now I can't wait the year for the damn thing to be built. Look at this chair. That's a TV watchin' chair if I ever saw one. And it rocks. Like, it's a rocking chair. So. Awesome. I have a feeling I'm going to refurnish my house in fairly short order after this store opens. Which will actually be a good thing, since the furniture I have is getting grungy from the cats doing things like surprising me by puking on the ottoman while I'm gone.

My apartment's a mess. Like a real mess. Like unhealthy, haven't cleaned it in six months because I hate cleaning and don't have a boyfriend who'll clean it for me and I've been depressed and don't clean when I'm depressed, dirty. It'd be okay if I just put the trash in bags and hauled them out. But I have this phobia about trash. I'm working out what that is about with Dr. M.

Anyway. I'm freaking out right now because there are inspectors coming TOMORROW MORNING to check the sprinkler heads for the fire system. Shit. I called when I got the notice in my door thirty minutes ago to check and see if it was one of those things where they were just going to be outside the apartment, or needed to come in. Of course they need to enter my apartment. And on the day I have my once-a-week appointment with Dr. M. The only time in a week that I'm definitely gone. This sucks. So I'm going to have to spend all fucking night putting trash in bags and trying to straighten up as best I can so it's not totally offensive and the guys can check the sprinkler heads in my living room, kitchen, and bedroom. Oh, crap. My kitchen. I forgot about the kitchen. I'm a slob. Someone kill me. Or send me a cleaning fairy between now and tomorrow morning?

ETA: Mom is coming over to help. She's so good to me. It's still a lot to get done before tomorrow frickin morning. Why, oh, why me??