Compassion gone awry

Bob* lives in an old apartment building. A couple months ago, Bob became aware that there were mice living in the walls of his apartment. Just recently the mice started to migrate out of the walls and take over Bob's living space. Bob didn't want to kill the mice, but Bob got fed up. Bob rigged some traps out of glass casserole dishes and wooden spoons.

When Bob caught the first mouse, he went to the park across the street to release it. Bob set the mouse down on the snow and started to walk away but then started to feel guilty. Rather than frolicking in the snow, the mouse started to shriek and run around in circles. The mouse found a footprint impacted in the snow and tried to curl up for warmth in the muddy imprint of the heel. Bob felt really sad seeing this and decided to re-capture the mouse and bring it back into his apartment.

Bob has since captured more of the mice that are infesting his apartment. For the time being, he is keeping them in a special mouse home he made and is feeding them dried peas. When the spring thaw arrives, Bob will take the mice and release them in the park.

Wow.

*chomp*

I’m not particularly squeamish. In fact, it’s pretty safe to say that it takes a lot to make me squirm. I’ve never been afraid of bugs, but based on the way that I react to insect bites I probably should be. I’m sitting here right now soaking my foot because my toe is twice its normal size. I think I was bitten by a spider at some point today. I haven’t seen a spider in months, but it’s all I can think of to explain why my toe is so swollen.

While I was living in the quaint, yet bustling metropolis of Aix-en-Provence, France I crashed at my friend’s house a number of times. She lived in Eguilles; out in the country where the creepy crawlies roamed. I was sleeping on her floor, once, and during the night I rolled over a scorpion. I woke up the next morning with a giant welt on my hip. As the day progressed, the welt grew until it reached a diameter of about 4 inches. The woman at the pharmacy gasped when I showed her my hip and scrambled to find a salve for the bite. I wish I had taken a picture of that welt…it was so nasty. Heh.

Funny to think about those invisible monsters you know are lurking about.

Internet!

I have a reliable internet connection again. Yay! Unfortunately, I don't really have anything worthwhile to post. Work has been pretty nuts lately and it culminated with a horribly shitty meeting with the president today. I don't want to spend all my energy griping about work because I love my job but I was really disheartened today. I met with the president of the company to present my budget for the year and to "problem solve" ways to turn the company's slump around in terms of my position and the department. Two hours into the meeting it sunk in that the president really doesn't care about my caseload and that this meeting was solely to make herself feel better for "making an effort". Sorry ma'am, don't expect me to kiss your ass when you pretend to care. It doesn't work that way.

Enough of that. I'm done complaining.

Since work has been on my mind so much, I thought I'd give you a glimpse of my job.



This is my office. When I started, my office was in our main building, but one of our contracts got so big we needed to lease out additional warehouse space. This was the result. My office was moved to a former carpet sample showroom with the additional warehouse space in the back. We still get "Drycleaning Quarterly" and other carpet-related trade magazines mailed to our address. They're fantastic. I've suggested that we bring in some extra money by subcontracting and renting out the crazy amounts of open space in the office by teaching square dancing lessons.



This is my desk. Notice how things tend to explode when it comes time to audit the files of your 40 clients.



These are my four dying plants. I originally only had one plant, but people kept giving me more when they didn't want to take care of their own plants any longer. I don't know why I keep accepting them because I have the tendency to kill plants and sure 'nuff these puppies are not in good health. Hrmm...



And this is Buddha Kitty, otherwise known as the Oracle of Meow. No desk is complete without a bronze-cast, slightly creepy cat sculpture.

Random ramblings

On Wednesday I decided to be an honest citizen and called Comcast to have my internet reinstated and transferred to my new apartment. While it's great that my karma is being restored and blah, blah, blah I still have to wait until March 5 before the next repair tech can come out. Fucking Comcast. Friday, my neighbor must have gotten fed up with me stealing their internet and put password protection on the network. So right now I'm sitting at Nina's Coffee Cafe catching up on email and whatnot.

I had an interesting opportunity present itself this past week. I was contacted by a woman who is creating a pilot program through the Hope Lodge in Minneapolis where I would be providing Reiki therapy to the residents undergoing cancer treatment. I think this is such a great opportunity for these people to receive a bit of nurturing and comfort in an otherwise sterile medical environment. Cancer treatments are so emotionally and physically draining that I can't imagine having to undergo the treatments away from home. So regardless of your thoughts and opinions on the efficacy of Reiki, everyone feels better after they get a hug or a massage, right? Same thing. She's still trying to figure out the schedule for the treatments so it might be a while before I start but I am really looking forward to working with them. I hope the program is successful.

That's pretty much it with me. Sorry I've been so boring lately. Hopefully I'll have some more wit to add soon.

2007 wrap up

This was one hell of a week. On Wednesday, I returned home from Christmas in Chicago to my cats wigging out from the smoke alarm beeping and shorting out in my bedroom. I opened the bedroom door to find brown water leaking from the ceiling. What I had originally believed to be a minor leak from the upstairs unit ended up being a nightmare of a roof malfunction. At this moment every single item from my bedroom has been crammed into my living room, the ceiling in my bedroom has been completely removed, and the carpet has been torn up and is being blown dry by two giant fans and a dehumidifier. I have plastic tubes running from my bedroom into my bathroom sink to provide an outlet for all of the water that gets sucked out by the dehumidifier. This is day 3 of my living room slumber party and I have been told it will continue like this until they figure out who is liable for the roof damage. That determines what repair crew they bring in to fix everything up. They anticipate it will get repaired in the next week. Cross your fingers. I feel horrible for the occupant of the unit above mine. The water damage to his unit was so extensive they had to tear down his entire ceiling and all of his walls. His king sized bed is destroyed. What's even worse is that he is still on vacation. I wonder if I'll be able to hear him scream when he gets back....

In other partially unrelated news, I'm moving to St. Paul! Originally, I was planning to move to a new place in April but having to deal with this shit sparked my curiosity and I poked around the listings on Craigslist. I ended up finding my newly renovated dream apartment for the exact same rent as what I'm paying now complete with brick walls, hardwood floors, french doors, beveled glass, a garden, and garage parking. Granted, it's located on top of an adult bookstore and it's smaller than the place I'm currently in but I'm totally excited. Never would I have expected that I would be moving to St. Paul but February first can't come soon enough.

Meanwhile, I'm going to get back to cleaning the dry wall dust from my belongings to the melodious droning of the giant fans in my bedroom.

Happy New Years, everyone!

'Tis the season

We all have that family member who is just a bit off and it always seems to be the most noticeable around the holidays.

I received a package today from my dad's sister Mick. Upon opening this Christmas/birthday gift (she did not include a card) I discovered that I was given a collection of objects from around her house. I curiously opened each newspaper-wrapped item and laid them all out on my table: a pink vinyl coin purse, a ball point pen, a calculator, and a sculpture made out of sea shells. I had a flashback to the scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where Aunt Bethany wraps up her cat and gives it away as a Christmas gift.


Given that I have yet to buy a single Christmas gift, I'm torn-- do I stoop so low as to regift or should I take the high road and wrap up one of my cats?

Anyone want a sea shell sculpture?

Haunted House 2007

Forest creatures

This picture was taken in the dark right after a group went through.

Getting in character can be so hard sometimes.

The haunted house this year was a success. Over the course of the three nights, we had about 1000 people go through. I continually forgot to wear my contacts so I never got to really take in the reactions of the people but the blobs were all screaming (with some tears!) when they went through our room. We all confessed at the end that we weren't looking forward to our theme this year, thinking that a haunted forest wouldn't be scary enough, but we upheld our title from each past season of being the room that's "freakin' nuts".

...And it was created by a bunch of chicks.