Barb’s Burblings

This is how I try and attract men:

(From Raising Hope)

Sexy, right?

I’m reading The Stranger Beside Me, a true crime book about Ted Bundy written by a woman who had worked with him at a crisis center. It’s a good book, but because it deals with a serial killer, there’s a lot of description of victims. And their last days. Which means that I wind up narrating my life that way:

Barb had gone to a movie with a friend the night before. That morning, she got up and posted on Twitter about snuggling with her cat and expressed her hopes for the Orioles’ future on Facebook. Her downstairs neighbor saw her leave the building at 11:30 in the morning. She was supposed to be ushering for Sunset Blvd at the Signature Theater. It was her first time ushering there, though, and so nobody was particularly concerned when she didn’t show up for the afternoon performance–just a new volunteer flaking out. It wasn’t until she didn’t arrive at the office on Monday that anyone noticed her disappearance.

Let me tell you–good times. Maybe I should re-read Bridget Jones’s Diary so I start narrating my life in that voice instead.

Snow was predicted for last Wednesday. I got home before it started, and when I pulled into the lot (shortly after leaving work; I left before it started snowing, so did not have an 8-hour commute, thankfully, unlike others in the region), I decided to park in the second spot from the end. My theory was that because the last spot was oddly shaped, nobody would park there. Then I’d only have to shovel out one side of my car, and the maintenance guys would dig out the end spot when they shovel the sidewalk and plow the lot.

Snow it did. At 7:30, the power went out. I did the dishes. And then I figured, what the heck, and went outside to dig out my car. The snow was quickly winding down by that point, and I didn’t have much else to do. So I cleaned off my car and shoveled out one side of it.

And then, 4 in the morning rolled around, and I heard the maintenance guys outside. Hours later, when I looked outside, I saw that my plan had worked. The one side of my car WAS dug out! Triumph! Of course, those guys are just too awesome, but actually, they had dug out everyone’s car. So my 20 minutes of digging was for nought. Well, exercise, I guess.

And then I didn’t get power back until 10:30 Friday night and had to throw out everything in my refrigerator and freezer. But that’s a boring, chilly story.

You know how when you’re first getting to know someone, you sort of throw out ideas and are all, “Yeah, we should totally do that!”? And how that doesn’t happen?

Except when it does.

One of the first times I hung out with my friend T, we talked about traveling. I mentioned my desire to go to Russia, and she said she wanted to go, too. Awesome! Traveling buddy! Except that, really, we didn’t know each other. But over the past couple of years, we continued hanging out. And the Russia trip kept coming up. We had hoped for 2010, but my family was going to the beach and that didn’t leave enough time to save money. “Russia 2011!” became the rallying cry.

And so it was that on Friday, we booked our trip to Russia. We’re taking a river cruise from St. Petersburg to Moscow. I absolutely cannot wait. I’ve wanted to go to Russia since taking a Russian history course senior year of college. Plus, I’ll be away from the office for over 2 weeks. Epic win!

So if anyone has suggestions for must-sees in Moscow or St. Petersburg, let me know!

My friend Steve tonight asked what his title was when we worked on our college newspaper. I couldn’t remember, but did remember that our school library has electronic copies of the paper, so I randomly chose an issue from January of 2000, my senior year. I flipped to the masthead and naturally my eye was drawn to the “Consider This,” which was our weekly editorial. That week there had been a snowstorm, to the point that classes were canceled. And this is what we wrote:

A helpful word of advice from the association of inebriated pedestrians: In hazardous conditions, the consumption of alcoholic beverages while walking anywhere on the College campus is not recommended. Out of the 500,000 snow shovels made by Wal-Mart annually, none of them, we repeat none of them, have ever made it to Gettysburg College. Also under that heading are snowblowers, icepicks, plows, and all other variations of snow removal equipment.

Drinking and debauchery aside, the cost of each class meeting for a Tuesday/Thursday session is approximately 95 dollars. The way that was, the staff, figure it, the College owes us a total of approximately 600 dollars. Checks can be made out to The Gettysburgian and mailed to campus box 434.

(The Gettysburgian, January 27, 2000, p. 9)

Dang, we swore! We were Hard Core. Also, completely insane by 2 a.m. And apparently desperate to pad the word count. But still, this, right here, is why I have such fond memories of the Burgian. It was awesome.

There was this Italian restaurant in Connecticut that we went to a LOT when I was growing up. In the back room, they had an arcade. In between ordering and the food arriving, I would scamper back and play Super Mario Bros. We didn’t have a Nintendo, so except for when I was visiting friends (”What do you want to do, Barb?” “Play Nintendo!” “But we did that last time.” “…Please?”), this was my chance to play.

I recently downloaded Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3 on my Wii. This is the Best. Thing. Ever. This illustrates why it was probably a good thing that we didn’t have a Nintendo. Because ALL I DO is play videogames when I’m home. If I’m not playing one of those (or Sonic), I’m playing Wobbly Bobbly on my computer. (I finally beat it! YEAH!) This is probably not the healthiest situation. Particularly since I’m all, “Ooh, I should compare it to Super Mario Bros. Wii” (which, good idea–it’s so impressive seeing how they updated it) (though I do get annoyed by the new one defaulting more to Mario shooting ice; I like the fireballs).

So obviously I have more pressing things to do than to update this blog.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment (and also a glutton for burritos), I went to the grand opening of the Chipotle by my apartment. It was a MADHOUSE. The cooks weren’t quite as efficient as the ones in Silver Spring, but the line moved fairly quickly. Still, I probably was in line for a good 15-20 minutes. (Why??? I had perfectly good Chinese leftovers at home.) Anyway, after a while, I realized that the people there fell into two basic groups: kids and their parents. Seriously, if they had kicked out everyone under 20, my wait would’ve been extremely short. (Assuming the parents left with their kids, which, judging from their faces, they probably would’ve.)

This got me to thinking. If I had had a kid shortly out of college, I could have a 9-year-old at this point. Plenty of people my age, though many have only had them in the past 2-3 years. And this seemed about right in Chipotle–I’d put the parents at mostly older than me by maybe 10 years. (On average.) (Not that I’m good at judging ages.) I don’t think there was another young, single person my age there. It jumped from 16 or so to late-30s. It was definitely an odd feeling. I felt more out of place than I have in a while.

And as I stood in line, the mother behind me ran into another mother she knew and they started chatting. (”It’s so crazy in here! And yet, with all these people, you’re the first person I know. Where did these people come from?” Me (internally): “I’m a hermit.”) And it was then that it hit that though I could be one of those mothers (their kids were maybe 8 or 9)…theirs was a life I remembered more than anything else. And a part of me still relates more to the kid than the mother.

On a positive note, though, I walked there, which obviously totally burned off the burrito. Yay!

Spam emails have new meaning for me. I was going through my work spam email when I noticed that a number offered Percocet for me without prescription. Ew, I thought. No way. Because now I have had firsthand experience with Percocet, thanks to my kidney stone.

Yes, I had a kidney stone. Yes, I am only 31 years old. My body has decided that I am, in effect, 50. (It actually decided that a while back, which led to me having a colonoscopy. Nothing like having one of those when you’re in your 20s!) Last Sunday night, I felt an odd pain in my lower left side. It went away after a while, and, being an optimist, I figured it would never come back. Yay!

Only that was not to be. About 45 minutes later, the pain came back. And it hurt worse. So I called the number on my insurance card and talked to a nurse, who told me to call my doctor, but since there weren’t any other symptoms, not to worry. Just take Advil. So I did. Which…didn’t help the pain so much. And then came the vomiting! When I called back with that update, I was told to head to the ER.

Now, I have to say, the time to hit the ER is apparently around midnight Sunday night of a holiday weekend. It was very quiet. I was seen immediately (making me two-for-two in ER visits this way; I only had to wait minimally the last time, when I had to get stitches on my thumb) and got to experience a CAT scan. Whee? Luckily, the pain had subsided again by that point, because that was slightly awkward. So I spent a fun 2.5 hours in the hospital, mostly reading (when I wasn’t curled into a little ball of pain). (Also, now I associate Roald Dahl with this, because I finished Going Solo and started The Irregulars, about his time in DC during World War II. So, that’s kind of weird.) The doctor was fab and everyone was lovely and I was home by 3 a.m.

And then I spent the next 3 days in a haze of pain, nausea, and sleep. A fab coworker came over and filled my prescriptions for me (and experienced the joy of me yarfing). Apparently, a side effect of Percocet is nausea. Now, I don’t know if it was the pain or the Percocet, but I could just not keep anything down there for a while. Which led to the incredibly TMI anti-nausea suppositories. I don’t want to think about it. But it’s at the point that I can only now start to think of juice without wanting to vomit.

But I slept a LOT and on Wednesday night passed the stone, which, according to my nurse coworkers I showed it to, is HUGE. The urologist I saw today was also somewhat impressed. (Want to see a blurry picture of it?) And now I have something like a 50% chance of getting another one. So, you know, something to look forward to.

Hopefully by that time, they’ll have something other than Percocet for the pain.

Around 1 on Wednesday afternoon, we got an email that there was a “disturbance” outside the building, and that we should stay inside. Naturally, I was intrigued, but it wasn’t until I heard coworkers talking about police cars swarming Georgia Avenue that I got up and headed to the windows on that side of the building.

So there, along with a bunch of coworkers, I watched as the police blocked off initially just the roads right around the Discovery Building…and then the next blocks. We watched as cops did the whole darting from place to place thing, guns held up. (I may have described this as “bad ass.” Because it totally was.) I took all this in and said that there must be someone in the Discovery Building with explosives, probably with hostages. (We were trying to figure out whether the building had been evacuated; we didn’t think so, but it turned out that they had evacuated to the other side of the building.)

And wow. I was right. It’s kind of hard t focus on work when you know that there could be an explosion across the street. But honestly, I never felt like I was in danger. Though it was a bit unnerving when I took the bridge from my building to the parking garage next door; despite the fact that the building I work in lay between us and the Discovery Building, the alley was blocked off, with cops and cop cars throughout. I paused to take this in (and maybe take a picture with my phone) when a voice came from below: “Ma’am! What are you doing? KEEP MOVING!” So I did.

Best part of the story? Because of the craziness, the parking garage wasn’t charging. Yay!

If you want to visit a site that you make you laugh until you cry, check out Hyperbole and a Half. Seriously, it brings me nothing but joy. And insight into my life. Seriously, this spiral (from “This Is Why I’ll Never Be an Adult“) happens to me on an all-too-regular basis at work:

The longer I procrastinate on returning phone calls and emails, the more guilty I feel about it. The guilt I feel causes me to avoid the issue further, which only leads to more guilt and more procrastination. It gets to the point where I don’t email someone for fear of reminding them that they emailed me and thus giving them a reason to be disappointed in me.

Then the guilt from my ignored responsibilities grows so large that merely carrying it around with me feels like a huge responsibility. It takes up a sizable portion of my capacity, leaving me almost completely useless for anything other than consuming nachos and surfing the internet like an attention-deficient squirrel on PCP.

Do yourself a favor and check out the archives. Made of awesome, and perfect for a Sunday night.