Random Ramblings of a Very Tired Beth

Typing this out on my Palm Pilot on the bus on the way to a free screening of Cloverfield. Won't have time to write blog posting when I get home as I have to finish my lecture for tomorrow. My wicked cool lecture about the BC Nutrition Survey, about measurement and about dietary assessment. But I'm so very, very tired...

So, some random thoughts. A recent study found that 75% of people in the study who called themselves vegetarians ate animal flesh sometimes. wtf? They put new floors in the hallway to the caf at my work. The new floors muffle the sound significantly compared to the old floors. I'm thinking they put the new flooring in because my new boots are like the loudest things ever when I walk down the hall in them. My ski buddy busted her knee & is out for the season; now looking for people with whom to ski. Is it wrong that I'm not done my lecture, but I decided what I'm going to wear to my class tomorrow 5 days ago?

My Apologies to Catrina

Last night, I got a phone message for someone named Catrina. As we know, my name is not, nor ever has been, Catrina. Clearly, this was from someone dialing a wrong number. Unfortunately for Catrina, I have a slightly odd message on my voicemail. My message goes something like this:

"Hi. You've reached the voicemail of Dr. Beth. The doctor can't come to the phone right now as she's doing something very, very important. Please leave a message and she'll get back to you."

The message I received last night went something like this:

"Um, hi Catrina. Uh, interesting message. This is Tom from [unintelligible mumble]. Call me right away. I hope I didn't interrupt surgery."

I'm guessing, based on Tom's tone of voice, that Catrina is not a doctor. But didn't it strike him as extra odd that she referred to herself as "Dr. Beth"?

And speaking of messages I didn't want to get, I recently was able to get my old UBC email address back, what with the teaching there and all. And I discovered that, in my absence, crap that I'd subscribed to at that email address was still being sent there (despite the account being non-functioning for a year). And today I got a reminder from BirthdayAlarm.com, a website that reminds you of people's birthdays and suchlike that I signed up for ages ago:

"Reminder: It is [my ex-husband's name]'s anniversary on Saturday, January 12th."

As in, what used to be our anniversary. Like when we are married. Which we are not. The extra annoying thing is, I hadn't even remembered it until I got that reminder. Which is an accomplishment, as Jan 12 happens to be the day after my very own birthday, so I thought it might be difficult to forget it. Which it wasn't. Until I got that email. Meh. Anyhoo, I went to BirthdayAlarm.com and deleted that - we have Facebook to do all our reminding for us now, right?

I hate numbers. I hate crunching numbers. I hate writing reports, with minuscule page limits for the actual report and multitudinous pages of appendices, to be submitted in triplicate.

I am SO glad that I have vacation days next week! You have NO IDEA how excited I am about that.

Also, I don't care what my waistline says, I need a mocha. NEED!

I forget

I have a terrible memory. I regularly lose my keys, my purse, I always accidentally leave things at people's places when I'm visiting them. I have been known to leave my oven on overnight because I forget to turn it off when I'm done cooking, or leave my hair straightener on all day because I forget to turn it off when I'm done straightening. My coffeemaker has an auto shut off feature so that when I accidentally leave it on, it goes off after two hours. My microwave beaps once every minute after its done until you take whatever you were nuking out of the oven¹.

My solution to my poor memory is to write myself notes, lots of notes. I have an intricate web of sticky notes on my wall a work to remind me of all the things I need to do ². All events in my Palm Pilot calendar have alarms set to remind me about them³. I'm kind of like that guy in Memento.

But this morning took the cake. I was knocking out a few quick emails before I left to go to a workshop on campus and was jotting down a list of things I didn't have the time to do before I left but needed to do as soon as I got back. "Post documents to course website." "Make November payment for hockey registration." Etc. And, as I typed out an email, I thought of something else I needed to do, but before I could write it down I forgot what it was! That's right, I couldn't remember it long enough to actually write it down on my reminder list!

I kind of thought it would come back to me. But it hasn't. So either (a) it wasn't actually that important, (b) I've remember and done whatever it was, but just didn't remember that it was the thing I was trying to remember or (c) I'm supposed to be in some really important meeting right now and I'm not.

¹Prior to this, I routinely found abandoned cups of tea in there, as I'd nuke my tea and then forget it was there until I went to nuke something else like the next day.

¹Mostly because my whiteboard is already full of an intricate web reminding my of how I'm trying to structure the course I'm developing.

²Except hockey games. I seem to be able to remember that I play hockey every Sunday.

Elizabeth

According to Wikipedia, there are 69 nicknames for Elizabeth:


They kind of cheat by counting "Lili," "Lillie" and "Lily", and "Liz," "Lizz", "Lizzie" and "Lizzy" all as different names, but even still, that's a lot of names. But then they don't have "Bethy" or "Bethie" (which a surprising number of people actually call me, given that I'm 30), but they do have "Bethey," a way I've never, ever seen it spelled. Ever.

And from now on, I think everyone should call me Tetsy. Seriously? Tetsy is a name?

Hallelujah, It's Raining (Garbage) Men (and Women)

In keeping with my recent, and what will hopefully be short-lived, trend of being the last to report on a long-broken piece of news, did you know that the Vancouver garbage strike ended this week, after almost 3 months? Which is unfortunate for my local Home Hardware, who had a sign proudly announcing:

Not unlike my reporting, it's just too little, too late!

Sadly, though, in order to catch up on the backlog of smelly garbage, the garbage collectors are not picking up recycling for two weeks. And since my landlord was getting rid of our garbage¹, we don't have a trash backlog at our house, but I am drowning in recycling. Unwilling to follow my mother's advice of "Just throw it all in the trash!", I had bags and bags of cans and bottles and plastics and paper fill my kitchen. I was seriously thinking I was going to have to move out soon, since there is almost no room left in my tiny suite!

Anyhoo, there's my much belated report on the end of the garbage strike².

¹I have no idea how. I put my garbage outside in the garbage bin and it disappeared. I decided to adopt a don't ask, don't tell philosophy.
²In reality, I just liked that title that I thought of like halfway through the strike, was waiting and waiting to use and then, once the strike was over, got too busy to write this post until now.

What's Pissing Me Off Today: Radio Commercials

I listen to the radio. A lot. As in while getting ready in the morning, all day at work, and often when I'm at home in the evenings and on weekends as well. And the radio station I usually listen to seems to like playing the same commercials over and over and over again. They seem not to realize that, even if it's a good commercial, hearing it ad nasueum will make me want to not buy their product. But when it's an annoying commercial, that's when I want to go postal.

Case in point - this one commercial which, although it mercifully appears to have been discontinued, was played so often, and was so friggin' annoying, that I think I'm permenantly scarred by the memory of it. It was part of a series of rather funny commercials for Haagen Daaz ice cream where "Haagen Daaz" was used as a sexual innuendo. Things like "My friends say they get Haagen Daaz everyday, but that can't be true, can it?" But this one commercial had a guy complaining that now that he was married, he didn't get "Haagen Daaz" as much as he used to. To paraphrase: "We are busy. Kids. A mortgage. Susan's career." But he says the words "Susan's career" with such contempt that I wanted to reach through the radio and throttle him. He's not complaining that his career takes up time. He's entitled to his career, but how dare Susan have a career. Gah!!

Also on my hit list: Carnation Breakfast. There are two commercials on the air right now - one featuring a man, one featuring a woman. In both of them, the voice of their "Busy Day" starts telling them about all the things they have to do that day and how Carnation Breakfast is sooo convenient to fit into said busy day. The man's day consists of getting to work, important meetings, getting promoted before lunch. And the woman's day? Getting the kids up, fed and ready for school. Now I have no doubt that in the majority of homes, women do more of the childrearing then men do. But it is by no means universal. And furthermore, it is not, in my humble opinion, a discrepancy that we should be supporting. News flash Carnation Breakfast - men can get their kids ready for school too!! Women have important meetings and get promotions too, you know!! Gah!!!

Ah well, at least I've gotten that off my chest. And, for the record, there is one radio commercial that I do like: the one for Mini Wheats. Everyone put your spoons together for new strawberry flavoured Mini Wheats. Sing it with me now: Mini Mini Mini Mini Wheats!

Hey! I just googled the song and found that, apparently, this commercial is also on that new fangled contraption, the television:

Smelling Like a Cupcake

Slowly, and without my really noticing, most of my scented products have become vanilla. Well, I suppose they haven't actually become vanilla, but rather I've started buying vanilla scented things that I used to buy as a different scent.

It started when I bought Victoria Secret vanilla scented body spray on my first trip to Seattle. I've since maintained that VS vanilla scented body spray is my secret weapon for attracting the boys. Something has to explain the flock of hot boys that is following me around wherever I go.
When I stayed at my sister's place in Toronto last summer, she commented on the body spray as follows: "You smell like a cupcake!"

Then one day I discovered vanilla mint toothpaste. The mint part of vanilla mint is quite subtle and I like that because I drink coffee on the way to work, right after brushing my teeth and I have to say that the usual super-minty flavour of toothpaste does not go with the taste of coffee. Vanilla is much better in this regard.

And now I have vanilla chai anti-perspirant. And I mean, really, who doesn't want to smell like vanilla chai all day?

Is it wrong that 5 days without internet access at home has had a far greater impact on my life that 50+ days of a garbage strike in my city?

Also, someone with a 403 area code called me around 2 pm today, but didn't leave a message. I hate when people don't leave messages when I don't recognize the number! I believe 403 is Alberta. I don't know anyone in Alberta! Perhaps they heard all the nasty things I said about Calgary and now they are coming after me. You know what they say: Don't mess with Alberta!

FRUSTRATION!!!!!

So I get home from a lovely camping trip and discover that my internet connection is out. I've been internet-less for over a day because Mother Nature apparently didn't pay her internet bill and there is no internet in the middle of the backcountry. I'm jonesing, jonesing to check my email. I can see that when my internet crapped out on me, I had 13 email messages, because I left my gmail logged in. I call Telus and they try to help over the phone. Some astute questions (i.e., is your modem cord plugged into the phone jack?) lead me to the discovery that the modem cord was knocked out of the wall when Dani was moving her boxes around (as she was here this weekend, picking up her stuff that she was storing here over the summer on her way to her internship). Unfortunately, re-plugging it in and turning the modem off and then on again does not fix the problem. How unplugging a modem can do this is beyond any reasonable comprehension. "We'll send a technician to check the line," says the man on the phone. "On September 15th." "What? The 15th? When is that?? What day is it today? That's like a whole week? I can't be without my internet for a week!" I cry. Having been stuck on the Sea to Sky¹ highway for an hour while traffic was stopped for an accident on our way home from our camping/hiking trip had already put me in a sour mood, so I just couldn't help myself from this outburst. Just the thought of not having the internet for a week makes my blood run cold! I think I feel a seizure coming on. Why don't you just release a gaggle of hissing wolf spiders and black widows into my place while you are at it??? So pissed off am I that I actually put a cotton swab right through my gums as I was trying to get a piece of cashew out of my lower left gum hole^2,3, causing profuse bleeding but, thank heavens, only minimal pain. And now I'm writing this blog posting in Notepad, with the idea that I will go to a free-wireless coffee shop tomorrow to post it. And, having gotten this off my chest, I can then write a proper posting about my first ever camping trip, which was AWESOME!!!

Written in Notepad at my internet-unabled home on Sat night while waiting for a cab to take me out for dinner. Posted from a coffeshop on Sunday afternoon. Flying Spaghetti Monster bless wireless internets.

¹Or "Sea to Die" highway, as it is also known.
²What do you call the spot where you used to have wisdom teeth, after the extraction?
³Is this too graphic?

On the bus on the way to work today, it occurred to me that I am wearing the same outfit that I wore out clubbing two Saturdays ago. Same tank top, same skirt. Same necklace even. The only difference is that I'm wearing sandals instead of my beloved boots. I'm not sure if this means that I dress too skanky for work, or not skanky enough when I go clubbing.

My radio feed over the internet has wigged out on me (I think I just need to re-boot my computer - that usually fixes things), but the silence has made me aware that there is a freaking weird noise coming out of the radiator in my office. I'm actually somewhat terrified that it may be one of those hissing wolf spiders I've heard about. Dear god, don't let it be a hissing wolf spider! I'm up on the 6th floor - there shouldn't be spiders this high up, should there?

And speaking of being on the 6th floor, by the time I leave today, I will have walked up 23 flights of stairs, and down 23 flights of stairs. So that should make up for my complete lack of half marathon training, right?

Hair Stylist

As you may recall, awhile back I got a new haircut. I went to a new salon where I'd never been before and I brought Danielle & Sarah as my consultants, resulting in me getting a great new 'do. Well, as it turns out, hair grows and when you have bangs, you can't really go for three months without at least getting a trim or you won't have bangs anymore. So, with my bangs down to my chin, I finally found the time to go and get my hair cut again. I went back to the same girl who cut my hair last time, because I really liked the job she did. And I was *shocked* at what a good memory she had! She remembered virtually everything about my one and only visit to her. The first words out of her mouth when she saw me was "You didn't bring a group of friends with you this time?" She asked how Sarah had liked her haircut and if she'd gone back to Ontario, she asked how my roommate was doing, she remembered that I'd been divorced and asked me how "the single life" was treating me. She remembered how long my hair was before my last cut and noticed the change in colour (which she didn't like... "too orange for your complexion," she said, "and not enough variety - you need highlights"¹). I made sure to give her a good tip, because she does a really good job cutting my hair and because I'm sure she'll remember me the next time I go back and I want her to remember me as a good tipper so she'll continue to give me good hair cuts!

On a related - and funny - note, the reason I had to find a new hair stylist to begin with is that my ex and I used to go to the same stylist. When we broke up, neither of us wanted to be the one to tell her - we were afraid that she'd be so upset that she'd screw up our haircuts (you just have to know this women... trust me, there's a high likelihood that that is what would have happened). So, for a while, I continued to go to her and she'd ask me how my ex was (thinking he was my non-ex) and I'd say "he's fine" and he continued going to her and she'd ask him "how is Beth doing?" and he'd say "she's fine." It wasn't that bad for me, as I only get my hair cut like twice a year anyway, but eventually (a) I just got tired of answering the "how's he doing?" question and (b) due to my extended period of funemployment, I could no longer afford a haircut that cost more than $8, so I eventually just stopped going to her. Well, not too long ago I was chatting with the ex and he informed me that the old stylist *still* doesn't know that we are broken up (even though it's been almost 2 years (!) now and he gets his haircut like every siz weeks or so) and still asks how I'm doing and, on his most recent visit, told him, "Oh, you two are going to have kids soon, aren't you? I can just tell!" It's like the stuff that bad sitcoms are made of.

¹Which I'm sure in no way reflected her bitterness that I'd had Dani dye my hair with stuff from a box that cost $11 instead of having the stylist do it for $100+.

Ponderings

Why is the plural of "practicum" not "practica"?

Why can you say that someone was "nonchalant", but you can't say that someone did something in a "chalant" manner?

Why, no matter how many times I look up the definitions, can I *never* remember what "hegemony" and "heuristic" mean?

How long can I continue to use the excuse that my place is so disorganized because "my roommate just moved out, and I haven't yet had any time to reorganize my stuff since she left"?

I Went to the Dentist and Found Out That I'm Hideously Deformed and Possibly Dying

First of all, I'd just like to say that I'm sitting out in the sun, literally dripping with sweat, feeding my internet addiction via wireless and drastically increasing my risk of skin cancer. I love having Fridays off!

And speaking of Fridays off... I tend to pack my Fridays full of errands and meetings and lunches with friends and suchlike. And since this job thing that I'm doing came with this sweet, sweet benefits package, I've been frequenting the offices of medical professionals of late. First I found a family doctor, then there was the optometrist and today, a dental appointment. I haven't been to a dentist in forever because (a) the dental plan I had at as a UBC student sucked and (b) the last dentist I saw was a total shyster, turning me off of the dental profession. But I decided to go to a new dentist since the aforementioned sweet, sweet benefits plan covers all the basic dental stuff and a hefty chunk of the extended dental stuff. Since I hadn't been to the dentist in so long, I ended up there for almost 2 hours! They took a full set of X-rays, since I noticed recently that my top wisdom teeth are starting to come in... yes, I'm 30 years old and I'm teething! Two observations about the X-rays - (1) whenever I've had x-rays (which is not that often), I always feel like I can *feel* the radiation changing my DNA and I'm somewhat surprised that I don't have superpowers at the end of it, and (2) is it weird that while having my X-rays taken I was thinking, "well, if I ever get murdered, they'll be able to identify by my dental records! How could I have gone this long without such a record??"? The upshot of this is that I need to go see an oral surgeon who will tell me that I need to get my wisdom teeth pulled and why-didn't-you-do-this-when-you-were-younger-because-old-people-like-you-don't-heal-so-well*!

Also, the dentist did two things to freak me out. First of all, she looked at my teeth and said, "Are you happy with that smile?" with the strangest combination of contempt and pity in her voice. Now, I'm already very self conscious of my teeth. When I was a kid, I smashed my front teeth running into a jungle gym**, resulting in my formerly straight teeth becoming quite crooked, 3 root canals needed and a brief contemplation on becoming an endodontist***. I avoid smiling with my mouth open in photos**** because my teeth are awful and I think I look like quite a gap-toothed hick in the photos where someone does catch me in a toothy smile. So the last thing I needed was to be told that I have a hideously deformed smile that requires thousands of dollars of treatment before anyone can even look at me without turning to stone. No wait, the last thing I needed was being told, "We should take a biopsy of this abnormal white patch on your soft palate. Don't worry, though, it's probably not oral cancer.****" So, the upshot of these two things is that if I don't have oral cancer and die, I should probably get either braces (which I'd need for 1.5 years + 1 year of a full-time retainer + a nighttime retainer forever more) or veneers, which would not only fill out my f'd up teeth so that they lined up more nicely, but would cover up the hideous discolouration of my root-canaled teeth. What's that, you didn't notice the hideous discolouration? Here, let me shine a very bright light in your mouth and give you this magnifying mirror to look at so you can see how hideous you truly are. My dental plan covers about the same amount for either braces or veneer, so if I decide to do anything to fix my hideousness, I could go either way as far as cost is concerned. I think I'm leaning towards veneer, but need to look into it some more.

OK, I need to go grab something to eat before my softball game. Apparently the Friday night games are the ones where we are really supposed to do some drinking. The drinking at Wednesday night games is minor, really, compared to Friday games, or so I'm told.

*the answer, of course, being that it wasn't covered and I lived below the poverty line, so how the hell could I have afford it??
*long story, but it really isn't as stupid as it sounds
**primarily because I saw that the assistant did most of the work and the endodontist had a really big diamond ring and an expensive sports car.
***Seriously, check out my Flickr photos - you'd be hard pressed to find one of me smiling anything but a closed mouth grin.

Things I Meant to Post Before, But Didn't

Sometimes I have stuff I want to post, I jot down the idea in a draft posting and then, for some reason or another, I don't get around to posting it. Sometimes it's just a quick snippet and I figure I'll have something to add to it at a later date. Sometimes it turns out to be an idea that just doesn't work, and it ends up deleted. The following two snippets were from conversations back in March when Sarah was visiting Vancouver that I guess I just got too busy having fun with Sarah to actually complete a post on. I came across them today as I was cleaning out my old, unposted draft items and they made me laugh, so I thought I'd share them:


Sarah: Do you know what the first state in the union was?
Me: Nope.
Sarah: It was Delaware. Do you know how I know that?*
Me: Because you know everything.

---

Etienne: But my English is terrible!
Everyone Else at Dinner: Are you kidding? Your English is great!!
Etienne: Sometimes I have thoughts in French and I just can't articulate them in English.
Me: That happens to me all the time. But I don't speak any other languages.


*I can't remember now what her reason why was she knew that. But anyone who knows Sarah will know that she really does know everything.

The healing powers of magic

My foot appears to have inexplicably healed itself. This morning on my walk from the bus stop to my office, it hurt as just bad as it has the past three days. Usually it is fine when I'm sitting (with it elevated) at my desk, but hurts as soon as I get up and take a few steps. But on my lunch break today, it occurred to me that it had stopped hurting. Completely.

Now, I'm not sure how exactly this happened, but I have three equally viable hypotheses:

1. Hockey tape. The lovely shiny black heels that I bought when I first got my job have not been fairing well. In fact, the little rubber thingys* on the bottom of the heels had completely worn away within about two weeks of me buying them. Like, worn away so completely that the metal post** inside the heel was poking out of the bottom. I'm too cheap to take them to a shoe repair place (they only cost $30, so I can't bring myself to spend any amount on fixing them) and I've been meaning to do a homemade repair job on them for ages. This morning, before work, I finally got the trusty old hockey tape out and put a few layers on the bottom of each heel to replace the aforementioned thingys. And now, after a few hours of wearing them***, my half-marathon foot injury has miraculously abated. Clearly, hockey tape has magical healing powers.

2. Alternatively, Shalu is magic. Shalu and I met up for lunch (as we work at the same site) and had gone outside in search of free veggie dogs, cake and chips.**** And it was while we were outside that it occurred to me that my foot wasn't hurting. Clearly, either hockey tape, or Shalu, is magic.

3. Or, there is a synergistic effect of hockey tape + Shalu that is magic.

Of course, given the fact that my coffee ground vomitus-inducing stomach troubles also mysteriously cleared up with no help whatsoever from the medical profession*****, there is the possibility that the lab accident with the nuclear radiation, the genetically-modified spider, the particle physics machine and that goo from outer space has rendered me an invincible superhero*****, but I think there's really just an outside chance of that being the case.

Update: I had written the above on my Palm Pilot, sitting in a coffee shop on Dunbar Street after work as it was far too sunny and nice to be at home. I thought it was a nice posting - brief, to the point, pithy. Yes, pithy, as in of, like, or abounding in pith. And accurate. And then life sent in a monkey wrench, as life is wont to do. In order to post this, I had to come home and sync it to my computer (as I don't have wirelessness on my Palm). Coming home involves walking down a stupid hill (and just ask Kelly abou that hill!). And now my foot hurts again. Not a lot, but a bit. Boo-urns.

*I have no idea what the correct name of those thingys are. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

**Did you know that there is a metal post inside of high heels? I had no idea. Hadn't really thought about what would be inside the heels, actually.

***Yes, I decided to wear my heels today, despite having an injured foot. Don't judge.

****There was a celebratory BBQ at our work site where free food was given out. Good times.

*****No caffeine! As if!

******or super villian.

A Beautiful Day

Just got home from a lovely Ladies Night dinner - the second one in as many weeks. Last week, we made sushi; today, it was chili. For next week - hot pot! My friends in the dietetics program have realized that with summer almost upon us (and most of them spending their summers somewhere other than Vancouver), we have to make the most of these last few weeks before their spring course ends. And to us, "making the most" = good food.

I ended up having to walk home, on my still hurting foot, as the bus I was hoping to take drove by just as I was approaching 16th Ave. I was too far away from the bus stop to run and catch it, even if I hadn't been nursing an injured foot. Knowing that the next bus wouldn't come for 30 minutes, and that I was less than a 30 minute walk from home, I decided to walk... well, limp really, home. It was a nice night - the sky was clear, the air was crisp but not too cold, there was a bit of a breeze, but not crazy windy like it had been earlier in the day. As I walked past a school, I noticed a white plastic bag being blown around in the wind. It was, I swear to you, *exactly* like the bag that's blowing around in the wind in American Beauty - the one that Ricky tapes and shows to Jane and tells her about how it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. I even stopped and watched it for a while and I tell you, it was beautiful. And then, I kid you not, the next song on my iPod was U2's "Beautiful Day". That song always makes me stop and take in the beauty around me (I'm like Pavlov's dog with that song, I swear!). The lights of the city twinkling in the distance, the fragrance of the flowers in bloom, my knee starting to kill as I limp along, trying to will my foot to stop hurting. OK, maybe that last one wasn't so great, but overall it was a nice walk home after a super delicious dinner with good friends. I'm a lucky girl!

(In completely unrelated news, if anyone wants to see extremely small photos of me and Kelly from the half marathon, you can go to http://www.marathonfoto.com/ - you need to know my last name (do you know my last name?) and that my bib number was 8405).

Tying Up Some Loose Ends

Remember how I once accused my apartment of eating things? I was completely sure that it had eaten my favourite sweater. As it turns out, however, my apartment did not, in fact, eat my sweater. Rather, it mailed my sweater to my sister's apartment in Toronto. Why my apartment would do such a thing, I have no idea. It's sneaky. But how else can you explain how my sweater ended up there? Surely I did not forget it there when I visited last June! At any rate, my sister has mailed it back to me and now I have a nice sweater to wear to work*.

Remember how I sprung on you out of nowhere that I'd been working on a systematic review for "ages," even though I'd never mentioned it here ever before? I just got word that it's accepted for publication.

Remember when I told you about all the airheaded things I do? Add "pokes self in eye with mascara wand. On a regular basis." I forgot to add that to the list when I wrote that posting.

Remember how the bank didn't want to let me consolidate my 14 individual student loans and was telling me that I would have to make fourteen individual payments each month? Well, they went and consolidated them anyway, but now there appears to be no way for me to pay them through my online banking. There used to be an option to pay them in my "pay bills" section of my online banking, but now that they've consolidated my loans, that option is gone. It's almost like they don't want me to pay these damn things back**.

Remember how I complained that holding my coffee on the bus was just too taxing? My mom sent me this cool travel bag that has a million and one pockets, including a water bottle holder pocket that works perfectly as a coffee cup holder. I'm pretty sure my life is complete now.

*After I washed it to get all the cat hair out, of course.

**Which would be fine by me!!

The Mysterious Sticky Note

When I got to my office today, I noticed that there was a sticky note on my desk that I didn't remember seeing there ever before. It seemed like it had fallen down from somewhere and landed on my desk, so I picked it up to see what it said.


And much to my surprise, it said this:


I recognize the handwriting as being that of my predecessor. But she hasn't been in my office for a month and I don't even remember seeing this sticky note ever before and I have no idea how it could have just shown up on my desk. Furthermore, I really can't imagine a situation where someone would write that on a sticky note.

Freakin' weird!

Today I Got Mistaken For Me

Today, I ran into a woman that I have known for over 6 years. I was walking down a hallway in a building on campus (I was there for a workshop) and noticed her in a room that I was passing by, so I smiled and said "hi." She smiled and said "hi", but then when she stepped out of the room, she said, "oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were someone that I know." Needless to say, I was confused, so I said, "You do know me" and she was like "Beth? Are you Beth?" And I was like "yup" and she was like "Oh, I thought it was you, but then when I got a better look, I thought it wasn't you. Didn't I just see you a few weeks ago??" I had, in fact, seen her just a few weeks ago. I said, "Oh, it's my new haircut" and she said, "Was your hair this long when I last saw you?" "Actually, it was several inches longer! But I didn't have the bangs."

It's very weird to be mistaken for yourself.