The Desert Mermaid

OKAY, I think we got LJ all working nicely again. What’d we all miss?

Me, I had quite a week. Rich and full experiences, that’s my life: futzed around in the garden, got bossed around by my micromanager, lost another coworker to the deep discontent around the library and the lure of Living Free And Easy, lost a favorite patron to That End Which Awaits Us All, finished a necklace and made an earring, gave up on the X-Files, started Fringe, and wrote a bunch of OGYAFE stuff.

Oh, and also there’s the whole, y’know, SURGERY business. That’s going on.

Seems that while I was away I picked up some kind of gallbladder inflammation. It announced its presence in the middle of a cart of books I was shelving on Saturday. It felt like this:


An apt metaphor for so many of life’s little golden moments, this.

So I mentioned this to my supervisor, who ordered me to get rid of the stupid thing. Sounded like sage advice, but I figured I’d get a second opinion from someone who was not a librarian. So after a few days spent curled in a fetal position cursing the cold unfeeling universe, I went to see Dr. Hyper, a woman I’ve always liked but whose actual name I could never spell.

DR. HYPER: So it hurts more whenever you eat anything?

ME: I’m down to dry Cheerios. Nothing makes you feel more like a three-year-old.

DR. HYPER: That is the right thing to do. Now let’s see if we can get this solved.

ME: Good, because I’m really hungry.


Then she poked at my abdomen.


ME: *squeak!*

DR. HYPER: I haven’t even poked you yet. My hand is still a foot away.

ME: I can’t help it. It was a dark day when my friends found out that even poking in my general direction makes me the Pillsbury Doughboy.

DR. HYPER: Okay, now I’m going to poke your back.

ME: But the pain isn’t in my baaAAAAAAaack—well, what do you know.

DR. HYPER: The pain does refer sometimes.


After that I went to get an ultrasound, which didn’t show anything,* and so I got to have another test: the Making You Lie Perfectly Still In A Tube For Two Goddamn Hours While They Blast Radioactive Dye Into Your Veins Test. Your job is to lie down and try not to think about just how much your nose itches. It itches a lot.


RADIOLOGIST: Okay, you’re all done! How are you feeling?

ME: … I just got out of the TUBE, man!

RADIOLOGIST: You’ll get the report from your doctor in a bit.

ME: Just as long as it’s not a queen.


And yes, I did get the report, just a few minutes ago, and after analyzing it carefully to see the cause of my distress, Dr. Hyper concluded—let me tell you, modern medicine is great—“Fuck if I know.”

So my gallbladder looks fine, but let me tell you internet, it does not feel fine. Doctor Hyper’s got some other options, such as Taking An Antacid For A Couple Weeks or, if that doesn’t work, Carving Out The Damn Thing Anyway, Because Often That Does Seem To Fix Things Even If Nothing Else Shows Up On The Test. So depending on how things go in the next couple of weeks, I either get better, or I get surgery. Either way, I plan to whine about it quite a bit.

Aren’t you glad LJ’s back?


*But it was more pleasant than the last ultrasound I got checking for ovarian cysts, since this time I didn’t have to drink a quart of water half an hour before the scan just to make my bladder visible. Especially obnoxious when you’re in eighth grade and “half an hour before the scan” is “math class.” I damn near exploded before I even got all gelled up.

Against all the principles of anatomy, my shoulder is kicking my ass.

It’s a true Injury Of Tomorrow, too: the whole arm is inflamed as a direct result of trying to save my hard drive.

The Teeny Tiny TARDIS, to put it simply, done broke. I suspect it is an actual physical problem: the cord does not stay connected, so while all the information is there, I would have to jimmy the adapter until it hit the right spot and then hold it there in a death grip to view files. This cannot be good for the drive, either, because after a night of this it gave out completely and refused to even acknowledge that anything was going on. I am sure all my files in there are intact, but at the moment I can’t actually connect to them. They are locked in the circuitry, and the thing does not connect outside of itself.

So yeah, my hard drive seems to have come down with autism.

Fortunately I back up my important writing files, because I have learned from previous experience, so the Africa photos and the writings are safe. But I don’t really want to lose half my bootleg MST3ks,* so I’m gonna have to take the poor Teeny Tiny TARDIS in to a computer repair guy.**

Oh, and I’m going to go take some Advil, too.

Modern convenience is annoying sometimes, isn’t it?


*At least not until they actually become commercially available.

**Who will creep around my files and probably be disappointed to find a complete lack of porn.

Have transposed quite a few songs and am working on learning Midna's Theme. It goes the full range my ocarina can give, which means trying to figure out how to play the high notes without it going all thin. It's making me miss my music critic of a budgie, though. Piners was not a fan of music practice. The shrieks she'd emit when my sister practiced were clearly conveying the timeless critical remark, "Your music's bad and you should feel bad!"

Also, I'm trying to work out arhod mathematical notation and terminology, because I am a god damn nerd. I do like that they refer to an ellipse as a bwarn bweltapte, though--because marhematics aside, they really are "squashed circles," y'know. I am really loving that I can put Office files on the Nook, too--makes it easier to lug my conlang dictionary and grammar overviews around. Damn, I love the future.

(I am also posting from my Nook right now. BECAUSE I CAN,DAMMIT.)

Look, y’all! Look what I got for Christmas!

( Or not. But aren’t you curious? )



But what is this? A fancy book? No! It’s ( Awesome Christmas Thing #1! )



And the gift I bought for myself! I know it’s bad form, but dammit this thing was just too awesome. But what is it?

( Awesome Christmas Thing #2 )

Anyway, that’s all for this year! Now tell me: what did you get?

While you’re thinking, enjoy some Christmas dinner. I dislike cranberry sauce, but I will chug cranberry juice all the livelong day, so it is indeed complete! Aye, it was a merry Xmas indeed!

There is a particular DVD on the kids’ shelf at work that never fails to baffle me:

Baby Einstein’s Baby Neptune: Discovering Water.

I don’t know about you, but I am pretty sure that as a baby and then a small child, I did not discover much about water from a TV screen. Here are just a few of the things I used to discover water:

-the sink
-the bathtub, where you quickly discovered that moving back and forth created El Niño and then your mom would yell at you for making a mess
-the hose*
-sprinklers, which as we all know are where rainbows live
-front yard wading pools
-duck ponds
-puddles
-swimming pools
-creeks and criks
-mountain lakes
-rainstorms
-snowstorms
-icicles

I’m not sure why this DVD, specifically, mystifies me so much. I suppose it would be useful to explain to me, the mountain kid, about oceans, but I have the feeling that if I’d never seen a duck pond on the outside of my TV set I wouldn’t really believe the DVD anyway.

Maybe it’s just my lack of trust in the claims of this DVD. If baby hasn’t been actively discovering water BEFORE this, then I really think there’s no hope for her.


*HOLY SHIT the hose! HOURS of entertainment. You could stick your thumb on it and watch it spray out rainbows, or see what happened if you held it straight up, or put that squirt gun attachment on it and blast your brother, or play London Bridge, or attach it to your slip’n’slide, or drink from it, or use it to fill your sandbox,** or help Mom water the garden …

**Which, given that our backyard is several narrow tiers on the side of a mountain, tended to mean that after a while the sandbox had migrated down a tier and become the sandpile.

So I was wanting to post about the nifty stuff I got from the Gem Faire fairies,* my miniature victory garden, and of course the traditional What I Learned yesterday, but instead I spent half the day shelving books OH GOD WHY DID I TAKE THESE EXTRA SHIFTS and the entire day wondering why I was feeling like grilled shit. Itchy, skin-crawly grilled shit.

Then last night I reached for my pillbox and found that instead of putting in a Fukitol, a Zyrtec, and a The Pill, I had put in two Fukitols and no Zyrtecs for every day this week. Yes, that would pretty much cover the feelings of lousy.

At least I caught the medswitch after the first day. All should be better at this point, except that I still have to go do four more hours of shelving in a little while. With luck I’ll get a What I Learned or some sort of post up soon.

Meanwhile, enjoy this conversation Mom and I had at Office today:

AMELIA: *shouting into the phone* MR GROMPUS, YOUR WIFE’S APPOINTMENT IS AT ELEVEN TOMORROW. ELEVEN. YOUR WIFE. YES, THAT WOULD BE MRS GROMPUS. NO, NOT TODAY. TOMORROW. YES. AN APPOINTMENT. GOOD-BYE. *hangs up* Dammit, if you’re hard of hearing perhaps the telephone is not your best option.

MOM: *cackling* That’ll all be your generation** in a few years … shouting into the phone, yelling “WHAT!” after every sentence …

AMELIA: You wish! We’ll just text.

MOM: …

AMELIA: That’s right, my dear Golden-Era-Rock Deaf-Going Analog-Age Baby Boomer! This generation planned ahead!

MOM: I’ll get you next time, you smug bastard.


*Not to mention the aggressive friending I was subjected to at the Faire. It was awesome.

**Us kids with our iPods and our loud musics and our Twitters are going to go deaf prematurely, according to Mom.

Hey, who knew? According to this children’s book from the 70’s, “In the year 2010 everyone wears a jumpsuit and shoes.” I'm gonna have to hit the stores, although frankly I may be more inclined to get me some sporty neon rings.

Me, I like the reference to the kitchen control panel looking like a typewriter, myself. It’s like when Mom refers to the tiny keyboard on her phone as the “typewriter.”* It’s interesting to see some of the things that are actually strangely spot-on, even though he definitely doesn’t have a good fluent language for it yet.

Either way, it’s still mind-blowing to realize just how much things have changed in just 40 years, innit?


*She also uses homerow when typing on it. Transcription training does not go lightly.

ETA: Forgot to say, thanks, archmage!

Good god, I love it when my face hurts from laughing. Rifftrax with a whole crowd of other nerds is a great way to do it, although I do sort of miss the silhouettes in the corner of the screen.

I also missed Heather and my sister, who were unable to use the tickets I got them—so toast_zombie and her friend did. Probably it’s just as well that Heather didn’t, because the other dude who came with us was in drag. He had a great frilly shirt, though.

And yes, it’s just another way of seeing them on TV, but it’s like those Sporting Events that folks seem to become enthusiastic about—when it’s live you feel like you’re more a part of it.* So it was still cool to sing along with Jonathan Coulton and to hear hundreds of others who came just to crack up at a really, really bad movie.

And Plan 9 was really, really bad. I can’t begin to describe how satisfactorily awful that was.

By god, my esoteric tastes have been sated. I am so happy.


*For example, one can note that, at this immediate moment, Mike Nelson’s face appears to be getting bigger. Soon it will blot out the sun.

Plastic-eating microbes discovered by teenager.

My only reservation would be that, now that plastic is breachable, civilization as we know it will collapse.

Other than that, nice work solving the garbage problem!

This is totally awesome:



Technology is so damn cool.