After a bit of a hiatus, Touch You Last has brought you the next installment of "Inside the Blogger's Studio," wherein TYLer Dave interviews the peeps on his blogroll. He kicked off the series with an interview of 'lil ole me and now his latest interview is with Jorge¹ from Barking Space. I provide you with this link because, well, because I think it's a funny interview. And because I'm insanely jealous that I didn't get to do an audio interview². I know I live on the other side of the country, but we could have done a double-ender³.

¹Pronounced like "George," not like "Hor-hey," just FYI.
²And from the sounds of it, only Jorge is going to get the audio treatment.
²For the record, a "double-ended" is *not* what you think it is. Get your mind out of the gutter!

Why Do I Find This Hard to Believe?

Just received this message in my Facebook inbox:

Attention all Facebook membeRs.

Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,There have been many
members complaining that Facebookis becoming very slow.Record shows that the
reason isthat there are too many non-active Facebook membersAnd on the other
side too many new Facebook members.We will be sending this messages around to
see if theMembers are active or not,If you're active please sendto other users
using Copy+Paste to show that you are activeThose who do not send this message
within 2 weeks,The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more
space,If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until
then send this message to all your friends and make sure you sendthis message to
show me that your active and not deleted.

Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg

• Call me crazy, but don't we all know that Facebook tracks everything you do and has a wealth of information on our every move? Why would they need me to send an email and then have to check every email to see if this specific one had been sent to see if my account is "active"? Don't they already know that I've posted on your wall, bit your zombie and Scrabbled your Scrabulous?
• And isn't Facebook keeping every piece of data ever entered for some nefarious, but as of yet unspecified, reason? Why would they make me sign over the rights to my every status update, book preference, top friend, picture and first born child only to then want to delete it?
• Isn't the whole point of Facebook to have as many people on it as possible? Why would they want to delete people? More people on Facebook = more ad revenue, no?
• Speaking of revenue, you really expect us to believe that Facebook wants donations?
• And what gives with the weird capitalizations and punctuation errors?

OK, clearly, I have way too much time on my hands today. It's not like I'm leaving on a jet plane tonight and haven't packed, wrapped my presents or planned the course I have to start teaching in January.<sup>1

1</sup>I had a nightmare on Sunday about this. I was in my classroom for my first lecture and I hadn't prepared and I had NO idea what I was supposed to be teaching. Perhaps I sign that I should learn the stuff I'm supposed to be teaching, eh?

Procrastination

Sure, I could be working on, say, planning the course that I'm teaching in January, about which I know very little thus far¹. Or, say, developing the activities for the class of grade 3-5 students that I'm working with in January. Or even, say, doing my Christmas shopping. Or hell, I could be getting ready to go out for my pre-12 Bars brunch, followed directly by the 12 Bars itself.

But no. I'm playing this. Repeatedly. If I could last for at least 5 seconds in this game, I think I'd be satisfied. But I have yet to last longer than 4.8 seconds. Bah!

Update: The problem was I was trying to use my touchpad mouse thingy on my laptop. This does not work. Playing with a real mouse: 16.3 seconds!

¹Yup, it's true. Your university instructors have to teach themselves the material before they teach it to you. Only I get paid to do it, and then you pay for the honour of learning from me that which I taught to myself. Seriously.

I don't care what you say, I like Quatchi

So, they unveiled the 2010 Olympic mascots yesterday and the general sentiment I've been hearing is one of three things:

• they have nothing to do with Canada - there's no maple leafs/beavers/loons/moose
• they have nothing to do with Canada - they're "too Asian"¹
• what Olympic mascots?

But I don't care what the naysayers are saying². I like Quatchi.

Quatchi is a young sasquatch who comes from the mysterious forests of Canada. Quatchi is shy, but loves to explore new places and meet new friends. Although Quatchi loves all winter sports, he’s especially fond of hockey. He dreams of becoming a world-famous goalie.

Dude, he plays hockey! And I think he's cute! And he's from the "mysterious forests of Canada." *I* live near a mysterious forest! Maybe he lives in my 'hood!



Although I do have to agree with Darren that if you go to the official site and hear the mascots say their name, which you do by mousing over the characters, it's a bit freaky. I like to run my mouse across all of them really fast so that they keep saying their names over and over in quick succession. It's kind of psychodelic.

Apparently, I need to get out more.

¹Seriously, I've heard that a lot - listening to open phones on the radio and reading comments sections on online new stories.
²Or naysaying, as the case may be.

NHL All-Star Voting

You know you want to go here to vote for all your favourite Canucks. And remember, it's not a beauty contest, so it's OK to vote for the Sedin twins.



And if you win the trip to the All-Star Game in Atlanta, you have to take me, k?

These Boots Were Made for Walking

Once upon a time¹ I bought a pair of boots. And so beloved were those boots that I wore them everywhere - to work, to clubs, to job interviews, to a blogging conference. They were an integral part of my last two Halloween costumes. Hell, I even wore them to my Ph.D. defence.

Of late, I have noticed that the beautiful pleather² that gives my boots their shiny goodness was starting to flake off. 'No matter,' I thought, 'It's just flaking a little bit and you have to look quite carefully at them to notice. They're still good, they're still good.'³ But that was before I fell down the stairs. Twice in as many days.

OK, "fell" is probably a little overly dramatic. More like "slid" or "slipped." The first time I was rushing down the stairs at Granville Station to catch a Skytrain⁴. I figured that the stairs were just slippery or something. But then the next day I slid down the stairs at my massage therapist's office, right after getting a nice hour-long massage - and pretty much undoing all the good that the massage had done. 'What the hell?' I thought, 'Why am I suddenly incapable of going down a flight of stairs??'

Then I got a brainstorm: 'Perhaps I should look at the sole of these boots!' Um, ya, so the heels of my boots are *completely* devoid of tread. Like, totally, completely 100% tread-less. So I had to admit to myself that it might, just might, be time to find a new pair of boots, as continuing to wear this pair appears to be hazardous to my health and well-being⁵. So this newfound concern for safety, combined with my jealousy of Stacia's beautiful new boots, led me on The Search for A New Pair of Boots.

Only one small problem. My boots are too cool. I can't find anything even remotely as cool. And I went to every shoe store in downtown Vancouver. I found a pair that, while not as perfect in style as my current boots, I could have been happy with in this shoe clearance place in the basement of where The Bay is downtown, but they only had them in size 8.5 or 10, whereas I wear a size 6 shoe⁶. I found another one in the Shoe Warehouse, but same deal - too big. There were a couple pairs that I tried on at Winners, but they didn't fit properly - either they'd be way too big for my calves, or they'd put your foot in a weird contorted angle that you know would be very, very uncomfortable after about 5 minutes of walking around. The thing with my current boots is that they are super stylish, but also really comfortable.

All in all, I think I only tried about 5 pairs of boots that looked acceptable but turned out to be too big/small/uncomfortable/weird, but this number was completely dwarfed by the number of boots I had trouble even being in the same room as, let alone be willing to try on or, god forbid, consider buying. Apparently the style this season is stiletto heels⁷ and ridiculous pointy toes. And I'm not talking just a little pointed. I'm talking the shoe is so exaggeratedly pointed that the toe of your shoe is in a different time zone than you are.

Heading home, dejected, from the boot store which appears also to stock only stupid pointy toed, stiletto boots this season, the answer to all my problems hit like a stroke of divine inspiration⁸. Where did Beth find her most perfect pair of footwear? eBay, of course! A quick search led me to this pair, the auction for which I just won this morning:

Anyone want to take bets on which will get here first: the eBay boots or the vegetarian marshmallows?

¹A.k.a. November 2005.
²Being a vegetarian, I don't wear leather. Pleather is also way cheaper that leather, but it doesn't last as long.
³I may have been in denial about the impeding demise of my boots.
⁴Which, of course, begs the question that Sarah & Dave asked me on one of their visits to Vancouver: "Why are we going DOWN stairs to get to the SKYtrain?"
⁵Not that I've actually stopped wearing them. I just try not to run down stairs in them.
⁶Which,I was doubly choked that they didn't fit because they were $100 boots that had been marked down to $25!
⁷Read: ridiculous uncomfortable. Who the hell thought that putting an entire person's weight on two millimeter wide sticks was a good idea?
⁸As previously mentioned, my deity⁹ may vary from yours.
⁹and Her sexy shoe obsession.

The Tale of the "Vegetarian" Marshmallow

Today I received a most exciting email:

Dear Beth,

We are pleased to report that a product in the VeganEssentials Online Store, about which you requested notification, is now in stock.

Product: Vanilla Vegan Marshmallows by Sweet & Sara

About two years ago I decided that I really needed to find me some vegetarian marshmallows¹. I've been a vegetarian for over a decade and while I'm perfectly happy not eating meat, I really do miss marshmallows³. I can have marshmallow creme, as that is usually vegetarian, but you can't toast a jar of marshmallow creme! At that time, I found a brand called "Vegan Supreme Marshmallows." They were stupid expensive - if memory serves me, they cost something like US$8, plus shipping, for a bag containing 18 marshmallows. But it was oh so worth it to toast marshmallows on my stove again!

I was so excited, in fact, about the discovery of this product that I emailed both Choices & Capers, two local fru-fru organic grocery stores and told them that if they carried these 'mallows, I knew many, many vegetarians who would be more than happy to buy them. Choices ignored me, but Capers actually started carrying them, which meant I could just pay $8 a bag, no shipping. At that point, my life was basically complete⁵. Until one day, when I went into Capers and lo and behold, no Vegan Supremes! I asked one of the staff what was up with that and he said that "one of their ingredient suppliers went out of business so they can't make their marshmallows anymore." I'm not sure why, but I assumed that it was the maker of their vegan sugar⁶. I was totally disappointed, but I figured that in the long run it might be a good thing for my chequebook and my waistline to not have such ready access to these tasty treats.

Skip forward a few months and, in a fit of procrastination no doubt, I decided to see if that company had ever found new suppliers. Googling "Vegan Supreme Marshmallows" yielded this: as it turns out, the company that he been supplying the vegetarian gelatin substitute to the company that made V.S.M. was just lying - they were just selling regular old animal bone & skin-derived gelatin! Which means that I had been eating gelatin! And, to add insult to injury, I was paying $8 a bag to do so! So gross!!!

Anyway, after a recent conversation I had about marshmallows in which I recounted this tale⁸, I got thinking about marshmallows again and Googled and found that Sweet & Sara was now making vegetarian marshmallows, but the dealer, the VeganEssentials Online Store, was out of stock! I was thinking that perhaps they had met a similar fate, but signed up for a notification in case they ever had them again... and apparently they do! And just now I found the following on YouTube which explains all:

Part 1 of the video:


Part 2 of the video:


So, mystery solved. Sweet & Sara marshmallows really are veggie and my life is, once again, complete. Or it will be in 6-9 days⁹.

¹Almost all marshmallows are made with gelatin², and thus not vegetarian.
²Gelatin is made from animal bones/skin/hooves. Yum!
³And Mini Wheats, which also contain gelatin. My kingdom for a gelatin free Mini Wheat!!
⁴And this was back when the US dollar was worth more than the Canadian dollar.
⁵I know I've said that about my Treo, my eBay shoes and various other purchases, but really, it was the vegetarian marshmallows that completed my life. No, really.
⁶Refined sugar is often processed through bone char^7
7Yup, "bone char" is exactly what it sounds like it is - charcoal made from bones.
⁸I really only have about 5 stories that I tell (e.g, the veggie marshmallow story, the story about how my sister screwed me out of tonnes of money when we delivered newspapers when we were little, this time I bought these shoes on eBay). After that, I'm pretty much out of material.
⁹Estimated shipping time to Canada.

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?

Palmasutra

Yes, it's what you think it is. And it makes a great conversation starter, like when you are out for dinner, out clubbing on Saturday night or around the water cooler at work: "Hey, what did you do this weekend?" "Well, let me show you!"

Exciting features include:

• full colour pictures of each position
• detailed description of how to do the position, in case you find the pictures confusing
  
• checkboxes to keep track of which positions you've tried
• note pages to record important information about each position (like, "tried this with so-and-so," "I <3 this position," and "causes serious injury; do not attempt"
• searchable by posture (including "standing," "sitting," "kneeling," "from behind," and "preliminaries")
  

The Palmasutra - d ownload it to your Palm Pilot today! http://www.palmasutra.org/

Sugar Daddies, Inc.

So I just saw an ad for this: http://www.seekingmillionaire.com/

From their site:

Seeking Millionaire is the premier Millionaire dating site.

The premier site for millionaire online dating. Not one of those cut rate ones.

You know, you'd think with all those millionaires paying to be on this site, they be able to afford and editor to tell them that the second "millionaire" in that sentence shouldn't be capitalized.

My friend James sent me a link to this over msn:



Do you think he's trying to tell me that I'm the prettiest girl in the whole wide room, or definitely in the top three good looking girls on the street, depending on the street?

Vote for Breakdown!

My friend Johnny's short film Breakdown has been nominated for 4 Canadian Comedy Awards, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to pimp his film to my legions¹ of blog fans.

To entice, I give you the blurb for the film:

In May 2006, filmmakers John Bolton and Errin Clutton were given eight days and eight hundred dollars to produce the disaster film BREAKDOWN for the Crazy8s short film event. Unfortunately, they spent the first seven days in casting. On the eighth day, they cut together “Breakdown” with the only footage they had - the video from the casting session. This is that film. Starring Christopher Shyer (WHISTLER), Amanda Tapping (STARGATE: SG-1), Carly McKillip (ALICE, I THINK), Sonya Salomaa (THE COLLECTOR) and Winston Rekert (NEON RIDER) as themselves. A Crazy8s Film Ltd. Production in association with JB Productions and Maple Syrup. Distributed by Ouat Media.

Intrigued? You can check out the film by going here and scrolling down to "Category - Film." Go watch it - watch it now! And then you can like vote for it and stuff. Go vote - vote now!

¹"legions" is a synonym for "dozens," right?

Underpromise, then it looks like you are overperforming

So I get a call today that a Telus dude thinks he can fix my internets without me even being home. You know, like gets my hopes up and whatnot. Then he calls back and says he could not, in fact, fix it from the outside, so I'll still have to wait 'til Saturday. And then I'm like all sad and stuff.

Later in the afternoon, I get a call from another Telus dude who says he can be at my place in half an hour and can I get there?¹ Fortunately, this was around 3:45pm² and what I was working on could be done at home, so I grabbed my work and booted it home, arriving just as the Telus dude arrived. So I let him in, profusely apologizing for the messiness of my apartment³, making a surreptitious check around my bedroom to make sure I haven't left anything too incriminating lying around, as my modem lives in my bedroom due to the fact that it's the only place in my apartment with a jack.

And then, miracle of miracles - he fixed it! Just like that! He clicked some stuff and did some other random fiddling with cords and suchlike and bingo bango bongo, I have internets again! I can even feel the warm glowing warming glow of the wireless internet-y goodness making their way from my wireless modem/router to my laptop. No really, I can.

I believe that the business lingo for this tell-them-you'll-be-there-on-Saturday-and-then-when-you-show-up-on-Thursday-they-will-be-all- happy-about-it is called "Underpromise, then overperform." I have no idea where I heard that, and I've probably completely messed it up. But the idea is that you promise something that is much less than what you can really do and then you will supposedly look good when you get it done faster. But I'm not falling for it. I still know that I was without internets for over 5 full days and I won't forget it Telus!

And now, a list of things that I missed doing and am ever so happy I can do again, now that I am jacked back into the Matrix in my own home:

• blog
• play Scrabulous
• upload my photos to Flickr
• watch Stephen Colbert in my bed
• watch various other videos that are NSFW⁴
  
• catch up on all of your blogs
• do my banking
• check the bus schedule before I leave the house
• talk to people who live outside of Vancouver⁵
• and so forth

¹for the record, although this sounds like the start of a porn or something, it totally wasn't like that.
²I was going to work 'til 5 pm.
³Which is a whole other story, but involves me having chucked a whole bunch of boxes that Dani had neatly stacked in the corner all over my room in an attempt to see if the modem was plugged into the jack in said corner and not putting them back since I figured that the Telus dude would need to access the jack, which he did; a half assembled Ikea bookshelf, which was abandoned only half assembled when I discovered that I'd put the sides on facing the wrong way and I didn't have a hammer to remove all the nails that needed to be removed to fix the wrong-way-facing side problem, the nails having been nailed in using the heel of one of my sturdier pairs of high heel shoes; my not having been home a single night this week to do things like tidy up my place; all combined with my general level of messiness.
⁴I'm going to leave it up to your imagination exactly what I'm talking about there ;-)
⁵I only call long distance on Skype. Seems silly to pay long distance charges on my cell when I can talk for free via the series of tubes that makes up the intarweb. And then when my intarweb is down, it turns out that I'm just too cheap to pay for long distance now.

The internets hate me

Since Telus isn't sending someone to fix my non-functioning connection to the internets until SATURDAY, I'm writing this posting up really quickly on my lunch at work. So y'all will have to wait for a proper recounting of my camping trip. Here are some pretty pics¹ to tide you over until then.²

And since I apparently work in 1997 and don't have Javability on my work computer, my apologies to all my Scrabulous opponents - I can only partake of our Scrabble games on occasions where I manage to either (a) insinuate myself into other people's homes to use their Java-capable computers with functioning internet connections or (b) trek with my laptop to a coffeeshop with wireless access. And did I mention that the only coffeeshop where I can access wireless that is within walking distance of me closes at 6 pm?

¹The pics aren't properly organized in my Flickr, as I uploaded them on shaky coffeshop wireless, which kept wigging out on me in the middle of my upload. So I think I have several photos uploaded more than once and other ones not uploaded at all. Stupid shaky coffeeshop wireless.

²Granted, I could write it up at home and then just bring it to work on my memory stick to post from here, but I've been much too busy to do that. Last night I had dinner and played with a Wii for the first time (clarification: first time playing with a Wii, not first time having dinner); tonight Alicia and I are going to pretend that we are training for our respective half marathons by going for an 8K run along the beach, then dinner; tomorrow I have coffee that somehow got upgraded to drinks (or maybe even dinner, I'm not exactly sure!)... and all that makes me tired just thinking about it!!!

Wikipedialicious

As we all know, Wikipedia is the definitive repository of all knowledge in the known universe. In fact, looking stuff up in Wikipedia is so commonplace, it's become a verb. It's been verbed, if you will. Don't know something? Wikipedia it.

I was at a workshop on social software the other day and the speaker showed us a graphic on what Wikipedia would look like if it were bound in a series of books, like old-timey encyclopedias. Keep in mind, this is just the English version (which contains nearly 2 million articles at present); just the current Wikipedia articles (not older edits); not the discussions; and it doesn't include tables or pictures, just text. This is how big a bound copy of Wikipedia would be, as of August 2007:

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Size_of_English_Wikipedia.svg

While checking out this graphic, I then noticed this one, which breaks down what Wikipedia actually contains:

Source : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Size_of_English_Wikipedia_broken_down.png

It's funny 'cuz it's true.

Addicted to Scrabble

My name is Beth and I'm addicted to playing Scrabble online. And the thing is, I'm terrible at it. I don't have the patience, the vocabulary or the inclination to do math that Scrabble requires. Jorge was giving me tips the other night, but I'm still no good. Yet.... I. can't. stop. playing. it. As I type, I have 8 games on the go.

Perhaps I keep playing because I do things that amuse me, like this:




Hee hee. I played sex for 10 points.

Also, amusing is:




Hee hee. My rack.

It helps that I have the sense of humour of a 12 year old boy.

I will say, however, that I'm improving. As evidenced by this screenshot:



That's right. I played sex for 30 points this time. I'm now officially 3 times better at playing sex. It must be true, because it's on the internets.

Cursed Trampoline

Just saw this ad in the "free" section of Craig's List:

Hey everybody,

I am the unlucky owner of a brand new red trampoline which I now believe to be cursed. Due to a recent injury concerning the trampoline I will be giving it away for no charge. Warning : the trampoline is cursed.

Please contact me as soon as possible,

If only I wasn't so superstitious, I would totally take that trampoline. But my experience with cursed chocolate bars taught me that you just don't mess with curses. Also, my apartment has very low ceilings.

The Wisdom Teeth Extraction Adventures of Beth

So, I'm feeling much better today - my jaw is only a wee bit achy so I'm off the T3s which were making me all loopy and unable to type properly all day yesterday.

My adventure at the oral surgeon's office started off with the unpleasant discovery that they lied to me about the cost. I was told that my insurance covered most of the cost, I just have to pay the specialist fees¹ - they had gotten a pre-approval for the cost of what an extraction would be if I went to a regular dentist and for the deep sedation. They told me that since the sedation is through my extended health benefits, rather than dental benefits, I had to pay the $190 for that upfront (despite the insurance company pre-approving this, they said they "didn't trust" that the insurance would actually pay for it), and then they would pay me it back once they got the money from my insurance company (as opposed to the rest of the cost, which is covered by the dental benefits and so they would just charge to my insurance directly, trusting insurance would cover it). But when I go to pay for my part of the fees, I notice on the receipt that they've charged me $375, not $190 as I'd been told. And when I asked them about it, they are like, "Oh no, the insurance covers all except $190, you have to pay that. But we charge you the full amount and then reimburse you the difference when we get it from them." And so I'm like, "That's not what I was told and, in fact, I have it written down on this piece of paper exactly what you guys told me and that was that sedation costs $190 and my insurance will cover it." So they begrudging apologized that I "was given the wrong information" and so I told them that I supposed that it's too late to do anything about it now, but they should make sure they aren't giving people incorrect information like that, because $200 is a lot of money to suddenly be out of pocket.

Then I went and sat in the waiting room and caught up with Rachel, who I hadn't seen in ages, and it was good that we had the chance to do that because I couldn't talk much after the surgery (although the poor other guy in the waiting room sure got an earful about all my drama and our ensuing analysis of said drama). They finally called me to go into the surgery room and then I got to act like a big baby about the fact that they were going to be stabbing me with a needle. And putting a blood pressure cuff on me. I hate those, they make me feel so confined! And why, when you tell a nurse "I'm afraid of needles" do they always say "it's not that bad. It's just like a little bee sting"? Is this really supposed to make me feel better? I mean, seriously, am I supposed to say, "Oh good! Bee stings tickle!" So I say, "Um, I'm terrified of bee stings too. But thanks." So she takes my blood pressure and that gets me all freaked out and then even putting the little heart rate monitor on my finger freaks me out, so they strap my arm with the blood pressure cuff on it to the arm of the chair "too keep the blood pressure cuff in place" (translation: "to keep you from flailing around, you big baby") and by the time the surgeon comes in and puts the tourniquet on and tells me to open and close my hand to pump up my vein², I'm literally curled up in a fetal-like position (except with one arm strapped to a chair and the other arm raised as I make feeble attempts to open and close my hand without totally passing out from the queasiness of it all and saying, "how long until I can be unconscious?" and "I promise I'll be more compliant once I'm asleep!"

The thing with me and needles is that I have to watch the needle go in. My imagination of how big the needle is, and my terror at not knowing the exact moment they are going to stab me, make me more of a basketcase than just watching it happen. So when I say, "I have to watch" and the surgeon literally turns my face away, saying "look at this lady over here," I wanted to scream "you paternalistic bastard, I know myself and I have to watch"... but I restrained myself and left out the part about him being a paternalistic bastard. So the needle goes in fine and doesn't hurt too bad and then he says, "This will feel like a cold drink being poured into your hand when I put the medicine in," and I say, "Yup, that feels cold", followed shortly by, "that feels really uncomfortable" and then the next thing I know is some vague feeling that something is going on in the bottom left side of my jaw and then they are telling me to wake up, it's all over, get the hell out. OK, maybe they didn't say "get the hell out." It was more like, "we are taking you to the recovery area, be careful, you'll be pretty wobbly." So I stumble to the "recovery area," which is literally a bench, and they bring Rachel in and she's like "I can see why they insist on an escort, they really rush you out of here. You were only in there for 20 minutes." And that had to include 10 minutes of blood pressure taking, needle stabbing and my being a big wussy baby. Then the nurse proceeds to explain a bunch of instructions to us and thank god Rachel was there for that because I was so doped up, I totally felt like I was extremely drunk and the only thing I remember was some vague comment about not having caffeine. Of course, even in a drug addled state, I pick up on the caffeine comment. At this point, I can't feel my face, because of the local, but I notice that my hand, where they IV had been, was killing me and, despite the Dora the Explorer band-aid, is covered in dried blood. So I put some pressure on it with my opposite hand to try to lessen the pain a bit and that takes about all the brain power I have at the time.

We get a cab to the Shopper's Drug Mart by my place so we can pick up my prescriptions and the pharmacist is like "There are several people ahead of you, it will be at least 15 minutes and Rachel is like, "She just had her wisdom teeth out, can't you possible let us jump the line" and the pharmacist is like, "No. Besides you have 3 prescriptions." And why the hell does it take so long to fill prescriptions? I mean, you have to count 8, 15 and 18 pills out big bottles and put them into little bottles. My 2 year old niece could do that! So anyway, Rachel decides to bring me home and she'll come back for the drugs, 'cuz it's just a few blocks. I decide to buy some juice in Shopper's 'cuz the nurse said to try to get some sugar in me as soon as possible, since I wasn't allowed to eat since midnight the night before. And as I take the change back from the cashier, I realize that my hand, with which I'd handed over my Shopper's card and my cash to the cashier is covered in dried blood, from having used it to put pressure on my IV wound. It takes a minute for this to register as my brain is still all messed up on the sedation and I feel really bad for the poor cashier, and a bit surprised she didn't say anything like, oh I don't know, "Um, you are covered in blood."

Anyway, Rachel gets me home and gets my drugs and I take my Tylenol 3, which was quite challenging because they said to take it when the local starts to wear off, which you will know is happening because your nose will feel tingly, but at this point your mouth and tongue are still frozen and I have trouble swallowing pills at the best of time. But, after several attempts, I manage to get the pill down somehow and spend the rest of the day in the following routine: take a T3, try to email or chat or read blogs but go all loopy, then get all drowsy and fall asleep on couch with laptop on lap, wake up when someone calls/texts/pings me on msn/google talk to see how I'm doing, feel better, watch something on the internets, notice my jaw is sore, realize that I was supposed to take another dose of T3 an hour ago, so then take another T3. And repeat. Always repeat. Oh yes, and rotating ice packs on my face - take one out of the freezer, strap it to my face, replace it with an alternate when it loses it's coldness. For the entire day. During one of my less loopy phases, where I could actually figure out how to send an email, I emailed Rachel to find out what exactly they had said about caffeine, and it turned out that they said to just not have caffeine in my first drink. Which is a relief, since I was afraid they were going to have said, "don't have caffeine for the next week". Or something equally insane.

I end up watching 2.5 movies and a bunch of clips of Stephen Colbert, catching up on most of my blogs and even watching an episode of good ole Young & the Restless. My friend Clayton brought me pudding in the evening, because I discovered that the pudding mix I bought to make for myself had gelatin³ in it and I'd somehow missed that when I read the ingredient list when I bought it and somehow noticed when I took it out of the cupboard to make it. I had taken a T3 just before Clayton got here and apparently I was in my loopy phase, but didn't know it. I totally thought I was acting normal until he said, "You are on T3, aren't you?" And I was like "Why? I am acting weird?" and he laughed "Yes." But I really, totally didn't think I was! The T3 seemed to make me act like I had ADHD or something - I'd be like "I really should write down that I just took that T3... hey, what is that shiny thing?" And I also didn't notice that there was blood on the hand towel in my bathroom, which may have been from my IV wound, or possibly from when blood was dripping out of my mouth, but most certainly was not appropriate to have hanging on my towel rack when someone was over!

I took my other meds with my dinner (mango pudding), which is what the nurse had said to do. My other meds are an antibiotic, which apparently "should only be used for serious infections because infrequently there are severe, rarely fatal, intestinal problems," (which seem like an odd choice for a prophylactic antibiotic) and a corticosteroid, which may decrease my immune response (which seems like an odd choice for someone who is trying not to get an infection) and may stunt my growth (which is an odd choice for someone who is clearly due for a growth spurt any day now). And I followed Ann-Oni Mouse's advice and sprayed my gauze with Chloraseptic, which seemed to work well for killing pain and I'm hoping will contribute to infection prevention.
I took my last dose of T3 just before I headed to bed with Stephen Colbert, at about 12:30 am, figuring I would wake up about 5 hours later in need of another dose, but I slept right straight through until 11:30 am. And my jaw only had a dull ache, which seems to be the most prominent in my lower left side of my jaw, which is appropriate because that's the only place I remember feeling anything happen during the surgery, so I'm guessing that was the most difficult one to get out. Anyway, since the pain is fairly minor, I haven't even taken a single T3 today. I figure I'll be careful about taking my other meds as scheduled (I set the alarm in my Palm Pilot to remind me when to take it and then record that I took it... I'm kind of like that guy in Memento), gently clean my teeth as my surgeon recommends and keep my fingers crossed that I don't get any infections. My mother thinks I have inherited my father's propensity to heal really fast. I think that time I accidentally stabbed myself with that needle contaminated with rat blood in the lab, I took on the rat's super immune system capabilities⁴. Because we all know that super powers are gained by science lab mishaps.

I spent most of today sitting in the sun, either goofing around on the internet or talking on the phone (and then having my landlord make fun of the amount of times I used the word "like" in my conversation with Sarah... "not that I was listening in on your conversation, " he says, "but I counted that you used the work "like" 75 times since you came outside on your phone. Stupid, really, that everyone uses the word "like" so much.") Went for Frappuccinos with Kalev, who came to hang out a bit after he finished work and before the movie he was going to.

And to top off my crappy week, I did some laundry, during which I pulled the genius move of putting my bluetooth headset through the wash. Like I said, genius. I'm going to give it a few days to completely dry out before I try turning it on again. Which I've heard works for when you dump an entire bottle of water into your purse and soak the hell out of your cell phone⁵. But August 2007 Crapweek started last Saturday, so I figure that it's scheduled to be over in 7 minutes⁶. And, so long as I still feel as good tomorrow as I do right now, I'm hitting the town with some friends tomorrow night. 'cuz I so need a night on the town right now!

OK, probably time for little Bethy to take her med (need to check my notes to remember which one!) and hit the hay. Beth sleepy. Beth has comfy bed with soft, freshly laundered sheets in which to sleep.

OK, I just went to take my night time meds and discovered that I took the wrong med earlier today. I'm supposed to take my antibiotic three times a day (like morning, midway through the day, and night), and my steriod twice day (morning and night). But, for some unknown reason, I took my steroid in the middle of the day instead of my antibiotic. I think I can kiss that growth spurt goodbye.

¹I figure if someone is going to be messing with my face, it's really worth the extra money to go to the best of the best.
²For the record, just typing that out made me queasy.
³Since I'm a vegetarian, I don't eat gelatin, which is made from horse hooves and cow bones. Ick.
⁴Lab rats seems to have ridiculous awesome immune systems.
⁵For the record, this was not me.
⁶It was 11:53 pm on Friday night when I typed that.

Stephen Colbert In My Bed

I'm sitting in my bed as I type this. I recently bought some new sheets and they are sooooo soft. Sooooo comfy.

And since I have my laptop with me, I can watch Stephen Colbert clips in my warm, soft, comfy bed.

And recently there have been two clips in which Colbert refers to Canada. And, as all Canadians know, while we pretty much define our national identity as "hey, we aren't Americans!", we somehow still love it when American pop culture acknowledges our existence. "Hey, that character in that movie said 'Montreal'!" "Hey, Wolverine is in Alberta!" So, as a good Canadian citizen, I now share with you two clips of Stephen Colbert talking about his northernly neighbour.

First up, "Smoking Pole: The Fight for Arctic Riches":



Secondly, we have "Nailed 'Em: Northern Border":



Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch some more of Stephen Colbert in my bed until the drowsy stage of my latest dose of Tylenol 3 kicks in. Oh ya, I suppose I should mentioned that I did, in fact, survive my surgery and I've now been freed of four teeth and a heck of a lot of blood. I'll tell ya all about it tomorrow - I kept meaning to blog about it earlier, but I'm all loopy on the meds and would forget that I meant to do it in the time it took me to open a new browser tab to open up Blogger. Or I'd fall asleep. Which I think I might do soon now, the drowsiness seems to be setting in.

A while back I posted some cool T-shirts that I wanted from the site T-Shirt Hell. Well, the other day I received their e-newsletter saying that some shirts were on sale, like a warehouse clearance thing, so I decided to take a gander and ended up finding one of the ones I liked (although not one of the one I'd posted in my previous posting). And so I bought it and, in the process, discovered that their checkout process, much like their products, their newsletter and their T-shirt Whore of the Month page, is quite amusing.

I first noticed something was odd on the page where I had to pick what payment type I wanted to make:


Then, on the confirmation page, there's a sweet little message from the site telling you how very much they enjoyed you purchasing their wares:


Now, of course, you are wondering what T-shirt I ordered, aren't you? 25 points to the first person who correctly guesses which one!