Summer fun!! Weeeeeeee!!!!

Last night i started my first summer semester. 3 classes to go until graduation and i am NOT going to wait until next spring to finish up my stupid Associates degree. I don't want to draw this out until i feel i will never see the end, so i am taking 2 summer session classes and then one in the fall and then I'm DONE. Um, and then i start my Bachelors* in the spring.

I've never done the summer session thing and i feel like it might kill me before the end of July. I'll be in class every Monday thru Thursday night until the first week of August, from 6:00 - 8:00pm. For the first 5 weeks, i will be studying the fascinating intricacies of probability (example: What is the probability of pulling a 7 from a deck of cards?** Hello, 9th grade algebra...) and other such contemporary mathematical wonders.

I love the "survey" style math class. It's basically a math for non-majors or liberal arts majors, like myself (read also: "math idiots") and will be covering a range of subjects that are very much not calculus and also, not "hard". In the spirit of the survey class, we will not be going too in-depth into any of the subjects covered as that would be getting into the realm of "hard" and that's not what any of us are here for.

Give me my "A" dammit, so i can get on with my life.

And in getting on with my life, the next 5 weeks after math will be Intro to Communications, ie: Public Speaking. My goal here, was to save this class for the last moment at all possible, but it didn't work out quite that way, as i still had an elective left to schedule in for fall. I did however, purposely schedule this for summer under the illusion that there will be less people in the class. We'll see what happens, i guess.

Hooray for summer! and the beach! and barbecues! and parties! and swimming! and pina coladas! and ... and..... homework. Lots of homework.

Dammit.






*I know there is a more fancy (correct) way of spelling the name of this degree, but i am not smart enough to find it an use it. Everyone knows what this means, so i don't care.
**In case any of you are wondering, the answer here is 4/52. See? Does this bring up any Sequential I memories for any of you? It's like i'm 14 again...

Dirty smokers

Little Dog is upset that her sister is getting all the publicity. She wants her fair share of the spotlight and will dirty up my chair as much as possible if she doesn't get what she wants.

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Last week i went with The Boy to a doctor's appointment for some sundry things. Since his trips to the doctor are so infrequent (because he is a total child when it comes to doctors) he wanted to have a bunch of things done that hadn't been checked in a long while. You know, blood tests and such for cholesterol and whatnot.

However, he told the doctor that he was a smoker, and had been for a good amount of years. He knows its bad, knows its stupid, knows that whatever it has done to him, he knowingly did it to himself. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

So the doctor said, 'well, while you're here, why don't you go downstairs for a chest x-ray'. This was not a question or offer. Doctor's orders and The Boy couldn't get out of it. Woah. That's a nice way of bringing it home, isn't it. You know that what you've been doing to your body for the past bunch of years has been a bad idea and now you get to find out what kind of damage you may have already caused yourself. Hooray.

The Boy and I had the "We Should Really Quit" conversation about a week before this appointment, so it wasn't like it came out of left field. We're both dirty smokers. In fact, that was how we got to know each other when he worked at my company. We would both be outside on cigarette breaks together and got to talking. But we both know that its really about time to stop it and fix ourselves. I think i am more ready than he is, though.

I started smoking at the tender age of 15 and it was totally peer-pressure. My best friends were smokers (most of whom were a few years older than me) and i wanted to fit in with their group of friends, the cool kids. I won't deny how stupid that was, but that's how it happened. At first, i didn't get caught because my mother was still smoking. Then she quit when i was 16 and i got the close-up-in-your-face-like-only-a-mother-can-do-Sniff. "You've been smoking!" Oh, yeah. That was a fun time.

I had always told myself that i was going to quit after i finished with college. But then i screwed everything up, quit going full-time and got a job. I started going part-time at night and realized that finishing up just my bachelors was going to take me 8+ years. Quitting after graduation is not a feasible plan anymore. I've got to do something about it. I hate the way it makes me feel now, i hate the way it smells, i hate it that i'm dependent on something. I also hate the looks i get when i'm outside on break at work. It's just not as acceptable as it once was.

This is not my declaration to say "I'm quitting!!"(so please don't lecture me), i'm just talking myself through it. It's not going to be easy and i know that it will be much harder for The Boy than for me since he has been at it longer and smokes more than i do. But it will be much harder for us if we don't do it together since we smoke in the house. Which i HATE, by the way. Hate. It.
This is my commitment to say that i am going to start working at it. Ta-da.

In the end, Boy's chest x-ray came out clean. No spots, no scary stuff. I think it was enough to make him start thinking about it so it was a good idea to force him into it.

Mixed bag - photo spree

Remember how I keep mentioning that I'll post pictures? Well, I've finally gotten off my lazy ass and uploaded and e-mailed and stuff so that I can post pictures. About time, eh? Yeah, I thought so.



Remember how The Boy and I went to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens for the cherry blossom festival? Well, here's the proof, finally.

It was so beautiful there. It was like we were walking through a cave of flowers. Like the sky was made up of these beautiful pink blossoms. We actually had a really nice time outside in the outdoorsiness of it all; well at least as much as you can get in Brooklyn.
It was downright PACKED, though. Wherever you turned there were huge masses of people trying to enjoy the prettiness. Though if you wandered off away from where the huge tent was for the traditional Japanese dance (show? recital? exposition? no idea - couldn't really see it with all the people in the way) you could enjoy the lilac hills which were in full bloom and smelled AMAZING.
That deserved the all-caps it got, y'all. It was really something.

But here are the cherry blossoms...
So Pretty:
And here are some more as we walked along (please note that blogger is not letting me layout the photos as I would like and is giving be problems making this look nice. Obviously, I'm too dumb for photos):




Pretty bough









Pretty tree







Pretty sky






Pretty, pretty.



Also, we were at the Bayard-Cutting arboretum in April where we saw the daffodils blooming:
Lovely, eh?




And with permission from The Boy, here is just the greatest picture I've ever taken of him. :)




I love this.
There's one of me this close, too, but I'm not dumb enough to put it up.






That's about it.


Oh, and Big Dog says "hi". And also, "where's my treat?"

Random musings... and ARRRRRR!

I haven't a thing of interest to talk about, so I am making a list of some crap about myself that is not related to anything, nor is of any importance whatsoever.

*********

For some reason on my drive home for lunch, I started thinking of my first boyfriend, David. I was in the 9th grade and my then-best friend, Suzanne, wanted to fix me up with one of her friends. I don't know why. I never said that I had any interest in this guy, but he seemed nice enough so I went along with it. I had the joy of knowing that he, too, was not particularly interested. Suzanne excitedly told me that he said, "well, she's not a supermodel or anything, but sure". She probably wasn't supposed to tell me that, or at least I would hope that Dave wasn't so cruel as to tell her to tell me that, but so it goes.

Dave and I didn't make any sense whatsoever, though I'm not sure who would have to my 13 year old self. We were not interested in the same things. His most important goal was to become a firefighter when he turned 18, which I suppose was admirable in its way, but not really what I was into. There's a stigma about the Long Island volunteer fire people, as I'm sure there are just about anywhere, that they're all a bunch of cocky bastards. I was friends with a bunch of them for a little while and it wasn't easy to listen to them. Yes, they have a very important and dangerous jobs, but many (will not say ALL) think that they're some kind of gods. Drunken gods, actually. But I digress.

I never really connected with Dave on a personal level, nor was I particularly attracted to him. I kind of thought he looked like a cartoon character, as his features were sort of exaggerated. I would compare him to my friend, Melissa's boyfriend, who I distinctly remember describing as a "real person".

Things didn't work out in the end, as expected (sad, I know). Though I don't remember ever really breaking up with him. We just stopped calling each other, I think, by the time summer came around. Pretty sure that one lasted a solid 2 months.

**********

I am a closet Friends-watcher. No one knows this except the people I love and who I trust won't tell anyone. I love that stupid show. I can watch it 3 times a day, even if they're showing the same episode all three times. I don't know what it is, but whenever its on, I'll mindlessly watch it like its some kind of religion.
Truth be told, though, I'm much less fanatical about it now, than I used to be. I used to be drawn to it like a pirate to his booty, but now its more like comfort food.

***********

I dig pirates.

I am an avid supporter of International Talk Like a Pirate Day because it is ever so cool. And you get to go around saying "AARRRRR" and "Yarrr, yarrr" and telling people they're scallywags and such.

For christmas, I purchased this t-shirt for The Boy, from the Flying Spaghetti Monster store:




I think this is one of the greatest t-shirts ever.










Also, pirate jokes rock. Here are some from ratemypiratejoke.com for your entertainment. But mostly for mine:

What is a pirates favorite radio station?
NPyaRRRRRR

Did you see the last Pirate movie?
It was rated ARrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

What does a Dyslexic Pirate Say?
RRAAAAAAAAAAA !

Why do pirates read Playboy?
For the ARRRRticles!

Hooray!

Would just like to take a minute to say that The Boy has fixed the internets.

I am home and on the internet.


Yay!


Ahem. That is all.

Fun with the fambly.

First things first:
The Playstation is dead. That's right. No more.

There is apparently some kind of thingy where the disc spins that does something that makes the system read the disk that is not working. There are ways to take it apart and put it back together, but i'm not sure we are smart enough to do it.

All hopes of being a cartoon-carrot farmer have been dashed.*




*This is a reference to a post by Whinger from once upon a time. But for the life of me? I can't find the exact post. Hmm... sorry about that.


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In other news, today is pay day, which means that i can live again without being completely freaked that all of my "checks"* are bouncing or that i'm deducting imaginary money that will bite me in the ass later on. You just don't know. The Bank does crazy things with my money.



*See, i had to put "checks" in quotes because all of the banking is done online. Which i love. I just have to remember to look at it occasionally to make sure that things are being paid and transactions are going through. Not real checks, you see. Fake checks. Fake checks that need watching.


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Also, yesterday was Mother's Day, as we all know. So, Happy Mother's Day to all of you out there who have children.
I have no children (totally by choice thank you), but i would like to point out that the dogs gave me NOTHING. So disappointing. You try and try to raise good, respectful, little ones and they turn around and completely ignore you on your special day.
Well, thanks for nothing.


What we DID do yesterday was take out my mother and grandmother to lunch with The Boy's parents, his grandmother and his kids. Wow. This would be the second time both families got together, and i must say, they do get along rather well. I'm not sure what his parents think of my mother and grandmother, but my mom gets a huge kick out of The Boy's mother.

She is an interesting woman, Boy'sMom. She doesn't give a single, solitary SHIT about what you or anyone else thinks of her.

Boy'sMom was born and spent most of her childhood in Latvia/Russia/Poland (there was a bit of moving around for her then) and came to the states with her mother (a doctor - a Russian, Female doctor. In the 50's. Pretty impressive, i'd say.) and sister*. The three of them learned English, where in fact, Boy'sMom was a linguistics major in school and now teaches ESL (English as a Second Language) at the city college. At one point she worked for a government organization in Manhattan and entertained other job offers for another gov't agency. She decided that they were taking too long to present her with the right offer, so she told them she wasn't interested.
In the 70's she worked for Andy Warhol on Interview magazine, where the story goes, he signed a copy of his latest book for her and she handed it back to him and said,"why the hell would i want that?".
If she can tell Andy Warhol where to shove it, she can certainly tell the rest of us.

I am still intimidated by Boy'sMom. She is outspoken and intelligent, and will most certainly tell you to your face what she thinks of you. I really do like her a whole lot and love listening to her stories. The Boy, on the other hand, doesn't appreciate how she monopolizes conversations and insists on speaking loudly and telling embarrassing stories about herself or anyone else, for that matter.

She tends to be somewhat inappropriate. The Boy says she was born without a filter and just doesn't understand when she should keep her mouth shut. At her sister-in-law's funeral just a month ago, when the family was quietly shoveling dirt into the grave, Boy'sMom was telling a story to another family member about something the deceased had done that had particularly annoyed her. It was hard to tell if she was trying, even a little bit, to be inconspicious.
I find it wildly entertaining.







*No doubt there were more family members, but i can't remember exactly who. I think her grandmother came over with them... not sure.

Urban Exploring? I had no idea there was a name for this.

I would like to thank Surly Girl for putting up this post on Tuesday. And also posting this link with it. This link is hard to leave alone, it is hard to not look at EVERYTHING. I am losing productivity.

Her post awakened an old obsession of mine - kind of like when you accidentally scratch a mosquito bite that kind of went to sleep and now that you've scratched it is all angry and itchy again. I hate that.



A bunch of years ago, my brother and I found that the old, local Psych hospital grounds were open to the public. All of the buildings of Kings Park Psychiatric Center are closed, but two, and the state has sanctioned it as park lands in order to preserve and protect the property. My friends and I used to drive past and scare the crap out of each other (usually at night) just seeing the buildings in the distance (fun to be a teenager, eh?). Because um, this can be really f-ing scary:








Cha, yes it can. You don't know. This is just a picture. Try driving past this fucker in the middle of the night. Scary.*

My brother and I were curious and we began to investigate the grounds and around all of the buildings - there's a whole lot of them - and peeking in windows and such. Of course I was never alone* so it was ok. I brought my camera there a whole bunch of times (picture above is from site, Opacity, not me) and got some really interesting shots. I always thought that I was so interested in this place because i'm a sucker for architecture**, but I started to get really interested about the history of the hospital and did a lot of research to learn as much as I can. As well as visiting the grounds of the other two psych hospitals on Long Island, Pilgrim State and Central Islip and collecting information on them and taking more pictures.

But I never went inside. NEVER, EVER went inside. I just couldn't*. The thought of it gives me the willies and I just couldn't ever do it. It's not the fact that it could be dangerous due to decay and rotting floorboards or the fact that it's illegal and I would have to somehow break-in. I just couldn't ever bring myself to enter one of these places because it is just so damn creepy. Looking through windows at all the peely lead paint is one thing. That is "cool". Crawling through a broken window underneath a plywood board? That is "scary".

But this guy on the site, goes into the buildings. He goes into ALL of the abandoned buildings all over the place and takes pictures for the sake of art and preservation, I suppose. And he is what I like to call "brave". And also, "a good photographer". But mostly "brave". I couldn't imagine doing that.

My high school neighbored the town of Kings Park, so there were always fun rumors and stories about some of the escaped patients roaming through the woods around the hospital grounds or living in the abandoned buildings and underground tunnels. And it is true that the hospitals let patients go out into the world who were not ready to live on their own and were homeless.

I've never been interested in meeting the insane. I would not like to meet them in a decrepit building that is full of asbestos and lead paint chips. I would not like that.

I've really gotten sucked into this guy's website and its taking a lot of time away from these past two days. I really want to go back to KP (as its lovingly called) live and in person, but I am certainly not going alone. Not after looking at the pictures on his site because they have me thoroughly freaked out. And if you know me, you would know that I can't even watch scary movies because they live with me for weeks after I see them.

Um, because of*.




*Would like to point out that I am chicken-shit.
** Because I am a geek.

Bush Talk. But not what you think.

The Boy needs to have a talk with the Dogs.
I have a feeling they would listen to him.

On Sunday, in an attempt to curb Little Dog's suicidal tendencies, we planted some bushes along the fence-line to get in her way when she is running back and forth. The idea here is that the bushes will get in her way, perhaps stopping her from having a straight run and working herself into a full-out frenzy like the last time. You know, heat stroke. Because she's a little 'touched'. Ya'll know.

I was hoping to be able to buy a few BIG bushes to plant there to speed up the process of stopping her, but in case you didn't know, big bushes are really damn expensive. And we'll probably need about 6 of them and I really just don't have a 'bush budget' right now*. See the previous post about my bank account.

My father was nice enough to give me some pieces from his yard that he was going to weed out anyway. They're all the same type (though damned if I know what they are) and they grow very quickly and are actually quite nice looking. (Well in his yard, anyway.) The pieces that he gave me are very small and twiggy "so that the roots will 'take' without having to support the whole plant" he says. Apparently too many leaves and the thing won't be able to produce roots. Whatever. He tells me they grow quickly so I will believe him. And the roots are also kind of short and unhappy looking.

The ending result is that The Boy and I dug some holes, and stuck a bunch of green, leafy, sticks half-way in the dirt and watered them**.

Big Dog was very happy that we laid out this buffet for her.

Big Dog likes sticks. She likes it that we put these out just for her and made them so easy to grab. Even if she doesn't decide to pull them out and DRAG them across the yard, she can just as easily chew on them as they stick straight up. She has tried both ways and both are to her liking.

We are THE BEST. Like ever.




*This is going to direct a whole lot of people here that will be very disappointed.
**Pictures soon, I swear.

Sometimes maybe i'd like to just be a squirrel.

When i got into work this morning i signed on to my online bank account to check the fundage and see what my money was doing.

I love being able to do that. It makes me wonder what took them so long to come up with this idea. I mean, banking online? The greatest thing ever. I hate going and talking to people at the bank with the lines and the forms and all that crap. All you need here is a password and a mouse and your moving all of your money all over the place. Transfer? You bet. Throw it over there. I don't even have to write checks anymore - the bank does all of my bill-paying for me. Super.

Except this morning? I find that my "Running Balance" is much lower than i left it yesterday morning.

Why do i only have $1.00 in my checking account? Anyone? Where did all my money go...?

Why does this shit always happen to me?

(I mean, its not like i'm totally broke or anything. I do have a savings account and some cash hiding in a glass at home that has to be deposited. You know, whenever i remember to take it with me. And then go to the bank. Which i hate doing.)

And i know its because the mortgage payment cleared yesterday. But this is not the point.

I need money.

I think i should like to be a squirrel.

I'm envious of the little furry woodland creatures. They seem to have it so easy, you know? Collecting nuts and hiding them. Scampering around the yard. Cleaning their fluffy tails. And they're just so damn cute.

No mortgage payments, no full-time crap job, no rush-hour traffic, no twat of a boss. Just acorns and leaves and running from dogs.

Though i think it would get rather cold in the winter. I probably wouldn't like that.

Maybe if my grammar was better, i would sound more interesting

I actually did have a very nice weekend - there was in fact "fun" though i didn't see it coming. I was able to twist The Boy's arm into taking me to Brooklyn and i have lots of pretty pictures of all kinds of things - mostly cherry blossoms and crowds of festivaling people enjoying the beautiful day- but i can't post them here.
Um, see, cause i still don't have an internet connection on my home computer because The Boy hasn't fixed it yet. Though he intentionally disconnected it (he was "trying to do something"). I think its been about 2 months now but i'm Still Not Complaining. I swear!
Whatever, i'll post some pictures soon.

*******

It occurs to me on a regular basis that i have many things that i would like to blog about and how great it would be to post something funny and poignant on a daily basis. Then i realize that i'm NOT a writer and have NEVER wanted to be a writer and then i don't feel quite so disappointed with myself. In fact, i've always had a lot of trouble with my creative writing for school assignments and would always try to opt for some kind of non-fiction-type paper rather than "Write a story about alien rabbits trapped on our planet with the intention of taking over the universe" because i just can't do it.
I'm crap at being creative.

In fact, I had a 4.0 GPA (that's straight A's, folks) for 3 years until i took my Composition class. That 'B' fucked it all up. Though, there's the chance that it was because it was my first online course and i just wasn't prepared to actually have to DO anything since i would never have to meet the people in my class. Online classes? Not as great as one might think. Oh, and my grammar was also crap. Which was probably why i got the 'B'.

But that wasn't my original point.

Usually when i'm in the car, topics pop into my head about things i want to write about. I form the dialogue and everything and then when i get back to a computer, i totally forget about it and don't post anything at all. This is the case this morning as yesterday i had something i wanted to talk about and now its all gone. It looks like i'm going to have to come back later in order to properly entertain whoever out there actually reads this thing.

Also - i surprised myself recently and gave out my blog address to four people that i actually know in real life. I didn't think i would actually ever do that.

This WILL come back and bite me in the ass some day; i'm just sure of it.