I feel like I'm relatively out of touch with most popular bands these days. I barely even listen to my iPod on the subway anymore. I think I'm in some kind of music funk. Maybe it's because I'm tired of everything I already own. Even when I do find something I like, I listen to it non-stop until I'm practically sick of it. Anyway, not that they're that good or anything, but I am familiar with the band OK Go, and I knew they were having a video contest a while back to see who could imitate one of their dance videos the best. On one of my random internet searches, I found something that reminded me of this and decided to see who won. It's too annoying to watch all of them, but I thought this one was pretty funny. I hate when I get stuck on these internet tangents. I've wasted too many hours in front of this screen tonight! And I have a headache to boot. The whole dancing contest got me to thinking about a story Patrick told me. When he was either in 4th of 5th grade, he participated in his school talent show. His talent was to lip synch to Guns N' Roses' Welcome to the Jungle. I think the crowd really liked it, but unfortunately he was disqualified because during the part when Axl Rose sang "Feel my, my, my serpentine!" Patrick decided to grab his crotch. The image of 9 year-old Patrick grabbing his crotch in front of the whole school is so funny to me because I feel like he'd do the same thing now. I guess certain things about people never change. But in this respect, I find it endearing. 01*29*07 I called out of work sick today for the second Monday in a row. Well, actually I said I was coming in late so I could go to to doctor's first, but I ended up waiting to see her for three hours, so my supervisor said to take the rest of the day off. My cheek had swollen up over the weekend and it felt lumpy in spots, so I was a little freaked out. After waiting for three hours, my doctor said I should be ok, but to let her know if I had any other symptoms. What a waste of time. Although, when they weighed me I was very displeased with the number of pounds I've gained since the last time I weighed myself (whenever that was). But I just bought You On A Diet the other week so, if anything, this has lit a bit of a fire under my butt to get cracking on the reading. I had a good weekend. I saw Inland Empire with Brook Friday night. It was a painfully long movie, but it had its moments I guess. I liked Mulholland Drive better. Saturday afternoon Patrick came over and we walked around Park Slope, looked at some books on Ireland, bought some groceries and then made dinner together. We also rented Saw II and Saw III. I had only seen the first one, which I wasn't that nuts about, but Patrick liked the second one so I decided to give it a chance. It was ok. However, we both hated the third one. Sunday we grabbed breakfast in Park Slope, then headed to Williamsburg where we spent most of the day at his place. Patrick and I bought our plane tickets to Ireland a few weeks ago for the end of March, so I'm getting really excited about that. I also got an international driver's permit so we can drive around the country while we're there. We wanted to fit in a trip to London as well, but with all the places we want to visit in Ireland, I'm not sure if we'll have time. It'd be nice if we did though. Either way it should be fun times. 01*25*07 I feel really irritated. Anyone who knows me, though, knows that it doesn't take much to get me irritated. My therapist even pointed out in a recent session that a lot of things get me irritated. So I guess having just come from therapy, where I had talked about a slew of irritations, I was already a bit worked up. Then I got home to find that my Time Out NY is missing, which practically brought me to the verge of tears. I have had an ongoing battle with my post office about not receiving this magazine. In fact, out of the four issues I was supposed to receive this month, I've only gotten one. Not to mention however many others I didn't get last year. The manager of the post office left me a message last week promising the problem would be fixed (the one week I actually got my subscription), but apparently it hasn't. In and of itself, this is not a cry-worthy incident; but on top of what is turning out to be a pretty shitty week, I just want to cry. Maybe a cry will do me some good. It's nice that winter is finally turning into winter with normal freezing temperatures so I don't have global warming constantly on my mind, but on the other hand I friggen hate cold weather. I'm in such a fucking pissy mood. 01*22*07 I called out of work sick today and of course I was put on a guilt trip about it by my supervisor. It's never a good time to call out sick there. It's really fucking annoying. In my defense, I actually am sick. I had such a bad headache all weekend, then my throat started getting sore on Saturday. That somewhat felt better by Sunday, but the headache got worse and the ibuprofen I was taking didn't help. And I threw up. Granted I do feel much better today, but I don't fell 100% and would rather give myself an extra day to recuperate. I don't know why I'm defending my decision to call out sick here. Seems kind of pointless. Oh well. Aside from being sick, I helped Alex paint what will be her baby's nursery on Saturday. It went pretty quick, and then we relaxed and pigged out. She's 7 1/2 months pregnant and it only looks like she has a little bit of chub in her stomach rather than a baby. It's ridiculous. I was looking forward to being that obnoxious person who rubs her belly that she constantly tells me she can't stand, but there was barely anything there to rub! Nonetheless, I got a rub in and even sang to her stomach (after a glass of wine). Otherwise, my weekend was pretty low key. Friday night I conked out early after watching a bad movie, and Saturday night to Sunday night I stayed over Patrick's in a mostly debilitated state due to the headache. Good times. Pictures from my camera phone of 7 1/2 month pregnant Alex:
01*16*07 For the past few weeks, I've been trying to get the details worked out of the trip Patrick and I are planning to Ireland in early April. I'm not one of those people who can just book a flight somewhere and go where the wind takes them once they land. I need to find affordable accommodations, the cheapest rental car, and know where I definitely want to go in Ireland and any other countries before I get there. Not to say I can't go with the flow once I'm in a given location, but I need the major details worked out. But I think I'm kind of driving Patrick crazy in the process. Tomorrow night I'm having dinner with a girl I haven't talked to since I was 18. She contacted me on myspace and we figured since she lives in Manhattan that we should get together. I was trying to remember why we stopped talking, but I really have no idea. I guess it doesn't really matter. I'm also visiting an old friend in mid-February who has a house in Philadelphia. I've known her since the 4th grade, but unfortunately we drifted apart after high school. Anyway, I'm looking forward to spending some time with her. Nothing exciting to mention happened over the weekend. I did laundry and cleaned my place with my fabulous new vacuum. Hung out with Patrick Sunday night and Monday. I've been toying with the idea of going back to school to become a physician's assistant for a bit. Today I was looking into schools that offer the program and what courses I'd have to take. After looking into costs and the time it would take, I've decided I'm not going back to school for quite some time unless I'm absolutely positive I'm going for something I know I want to do. I like having a decent salary, not studying, and normal work hours way too much to go back to school otherwise. I guess ideally I'd like to go back to school if I could take night courses and only go part-time. There's still just that little matter of deciding what I want to do though. Ugh. Maybe I'll never know. But hopefully I figure it out sooner than later. 01*10*07 My company started a pretty aggressive eye donation campaign a few weeks ago (www.eyedonation.org). They've had ads on the radio, on the subway (since Monday) and on some NY TV stations. We've been getting a good number of calls because of it, but I also guess it got the attention of the press. The CW 11 News came to the eye bank yesterday to do a story on eye donation. I volunteered to go in front of the camera and examine a cornea with our slit lamp microscope. I didn't do anything but stare into the microscope, but they showed that footage pretty frequently during the short piece they aired last night. I'm famous! Now I'm just gonna sit back and let the movie offers role in. Speaking of eyes, Patrick had his cataract surgery today. I sat in the operating room while they did the procedure and made jokes with Patrick's anesthesiologist about how to make Patrick promise things while he was too groggy to remember. I also remarked how watching eye surgery done on someone who's alive was very different from what I was used to; they seemed to think that was funny. I watched the procedure up on a television screen in the room. It was pretty amazing. The doctor inserted a blue dye into his cornea, then vacuumed it back up a minute later. They told me that enabled them to see the top layer of the lens, which the doctor then scraped off and pulled out. Then he inserted the vacuum tube again and sucked out the rest the lens and whatever gel-like remnants it left behind. Finally the fake lens was inserted rolled up like a taco, and then flatted out with a spatula. The whole thing took about 5-10 minutes. We had to wait an hour after the surgery to have another doctor make sure Patrick's intraocular pressure was normal. However, it was too high when they finally checked, so they had to stick a needle in the side of his cornea to drain some fluid. Then we had to wait another hour to have them check the pressure again. Same thing happened; it was too high-they drained it again-we waited another hour. It was still a little too high when they checked the last time, but they gave him some special drops and said he should be ok. Good thing too, because if we had to wait another hour in that place, I think we were going to lose it. He didn't have much pain afterwards, and even though his left eye is sensitive to light right now and everything's a little blurry, he could already tell there was a big improvement. He remarked that he could finally see out of the periphery of his eye and he was pretty excited. I can't even imagine, but I was pretty excited too. 01*07*07 Ok, one more thing and I swear I'll stop writing about it...for now: You can click on your state on the map HERE and see what Green Power options are available to you. I just enrolled in Con Edison's GREEN Power which costs only an additional one cent per kilowatt-hour, and you receive a $25 rebate and elimination of New York State sales tax on your bill. Wish I had looked into it sooner. 01*07*07 So I guess Saturday was summer and today is autumn. Perhaps tomorrow will be winter? A meteorologist interviewed in the NY Times said this is not a result of global warming--it's a result of El Niño. I don't know if I buy that entirely. Perhaps it's partially true. After all, hurricanes are intensifying as a result of global warming. Sorry, I just watched An Inconvenient Truth and I'm on a bit of a kick here. I'm searching all over the internet for more ways I can do something, because after watching that movie I felt pretty useless. So, I guess I can do something by telling people who read this to go watch the movie, and to check out these links: Carbon Calculator, Global Warming Virtual March, Help Renewable Energy, More Links. I know I'm being cheesy here, but I also know I'm not the only one who was alarmed to have 70 degree weather in January. So there. My weekend started off pretty quiet with a TV-filled night at Patrick's (we didn't feel like dealing with the rain). Saturday was pretty lazy for me as well. Patrick and I had a fight over the phone Saturday night over some pretty trivial things, then I headed to Brook's and made her watch The Descent while we drank too much. I say I "made" her watch it because she kept asking me throughout the movie if we could shut it off because she was too scared, but I wouldn't hear of it. Much of today was spent with a vicious hangover and being lazy. I guess the main theme of this weekend was lazy. But on a more positive note, Patrick and I made up today and everything is as right as rain...what exactly does that expression mean anyway? What's so right about rain? Patrick gets cataract surgery on Wednesday morning and I get to watch. I'm very excited for him to possibly see clearly out of his left eye (Lopes). And I'm intrigued as to how they're going to do the procedure. Pretty neat stuff. Nothing else too exciting going on this week otherwise though. Hopefully that will change. 01*02*07 Happy New Year! I stayed home from work today. Great way to start the new year off, I know. But I actually did feel sick. I was almost all ready to go to work when I inexplicably became nauseous (no I'm not pregnant). Anyway, I figured what the hell, called out and went back to bed. By the time Patrick got up to leave for work a few hours later, I felt better. Nonetheless, I spent most of the day sleeping. So here are some goals I have this year: first I'll start with everyone's number one-go back to the gym steadily and lose some weight, go to Ireland with Patrick in April, go to the dentist, stop going to therapy around my one-year anniversary, start cooking more, have a party at my place, and maybe volunteer once in a while. For New Year's Eve I ended up going to a party at a friend of Brook's in Williamsburg. It's actually the same place where I met Patrick. We had a good time. I got pretty drunk and danced to James Brown after midnight. When the CD started skipping a lot and someone played it all over again, we decided to go home. I had a good time, but mostly because of the company I kept (i.e. Patrick). Before this weekend, I hadn't danced in almost 8 months. But I went out Friday night with Brook and her friend Sadie, and we started a dance party at the Beauty Bar. And of course I danced at the New Year's party. I missed dancing. So I also vow to dance more in 2007. New Year's pictures :
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