Today is such a perfectly lovely rainy day! I love it. There’s even thunder. Greg and I took a walk earlier, so… GAGG: 57.85 miles

Still catching up on pre-Christmas posts and stuff. Here’s a very, very long overdue picture of the chocolate sauerkraut cake I made for Greg’s birthday:

I had lots of fun at Dara & Tiffianna’s Christmas Candy Land Tea, and made a gingerbread house. It was pretty awesome, until it collapsed. I think, actually, my problem was I used too much icing. I thought extra icing would be more sturdy – but I think it actually took longer to dry, and didn’t dry, in fact, all the way through, so it collapsed. Oh well. Here’s my gingerbread house, after it collapsed and I started eating it. (I mean, it was collapsed, so why not eat it?) And I made Greg some naughty gingerbread people – here they are, too.

I also finally finished up the pointy kitty I was making for Dara. I swear this thing has been like a year in the making. And I’m never using brocade again, it’s such a pain. But the kitty turned out cute, so it was worth it. (I think anything larger would have done me in, though.)

And kitties. Chalupa likes to sit near the vents when it’s cold.

And I’ve probably posted pictures of this before, but I think it is almost unbearably cute when Skeeter covers his face like this, so I’m posting more.

I’m way behind in posting stuff I’ve been meaning to post. I have a ridiculous amount of photos backed up, waiting to be put up. Anyway, I’m starting with stuff I gave to Christmas in the City:

I called Duke today, to see what the deal was with the letter from the collection agency. Turns out, it was Duke’s fuck-up after all. Apparently there was one last charge from my gall bladder surgery, and insurance didn’t pay their part of it until this past April. (Which seems a little ridiculous to me, but whatever, I think they do have like up to a year after the service is rendered to pay up.) So then Duke’s computer system thought it was mailing statements out to me in May, June, and July, when they really hadn’t. Luckily, there’s a way to check and see if the statements really weren’t mailed out when the system thinks they were – which is what happened. (Also? It kind of sounded like this happens not too infrequently, and that’s a fucking problem, Duke. Y’all need to fix that shit.) Anyway, so they’re yanking the account back from the collection agency, and are going to actually send me a statement in the mail so I can pay them. I’ll admit I’d be a mite happier if it turned out I didn’t owe them any more money, but it’s not an unmanageable amount, and this should be better for my credit report, right?
More to come, but not right now. I’ve been working on a slipcover for one of our couches all day, and I’m a little wiped. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

I’m mad as shit.

I’ve had a wonderful day, and was totally going to put up a proper post when I got home from running some errands, and then start making a slipcover for one of our couches. Except when I got home I had a letter from some goddamn collection agency talking about money I owe Duke Hospital for my gall bladder surgery, which was back in August of 2006.

I took a loan out from the Credit Union in October of 2006, and paid Duke off, and haven’t heard from them at all since then. And now this. I’m fucking livid. I can’t stand it. Of course I don’t have any receipt from them for paying them off, but I did at least save the checkbook – thank god I’ve been using doubles for years, so I know exactly what check number it was, for how much, and when it was written, as well as other checks to Duke around the same couple of months.

I’m so fucking mad that I went to so much trouble to verify that I was paying them off *everything* I owed them (like made sure I was covering all the separate accounts that couldn’t be consolidated for whatever reason), and took out the loan and paid them off, and then after no letters of any sort for a year and some change, I get a letter from a fucking collection agency?

Fuck. You. Duke.

GAGG: 56.85 miles

First day of vacation, and I actually manage to get on the Gazelle. Go me.

I have things to post – especially pictures – but I need to tell you what happened to me last night: Skeeter stepped on my OPEN eyeball!

It was pretty awful, and it was entirely my own fault. Right before we went to bed last night, I was lying on the couch with my glasses off, and Skeeter had been lying on a pillow near my head. Well, he got up and started walking past me, but he was slow and I wanted his fur out of my face, so I picked him up to hurry him along, and put him off-balance, and when he tried to put his back left foot down to balance himself, it landed on my eyeball. So grody! So painful. Ugh. It hurt quite a bit last night, and it doesn’t hurt today, but I think he might have scratched my cornea, because it feels like there’s something in my eye but there isn’t, and it’s irritating the shit out of me, and every so often I have to go on a blinking jag. And I think Skeeter more or less knew what had happened, or that something unfortunate *had* happened, because he was a little sheepish around me the rest of the night. Poor guy. Pobre mio.

It’s official: I fucking hate brocade.

But I’m done with what I was working on, and I’m never using it again. And now I can go get ready for a Dara and Tiffianna’s awesome Christmas Candy Land Tea that I’ve been looking forward to.

Happy birthday to me! And many happy returns of the day to you!

Today was awesome, and this whole week has been pretty good, too (so far)! Yay! Greg bought me a rather early birthday present of 5 puttonyo tokaji – higher quality than I usually get for myself (I usually get 3 or 4 puttonyo – it’s one or the other, I can’t remember). Anyway, it’s fucking delicious, as evidenced by how little there is left of it:

On Saturday, we went to Staples to get some supplies for Greg’s upcoming show (which is this coming Saturday, at Hell, if you’re in town and want to see some kickass metal polka), and I found a set of French curves, which Greg also picked up for me. This is especially great because 1-now I can finish redrafting that shirt pattern, and 2-I wore one of my favorite dresses today, and it was windier than I was expecting, and at one point the dress blew up high enough to show off my undies. Not cool. But now that I have a set of curves, I can make myself some bloomers! Yay! The gorgeous ginkgo necklace from Susan and Shane also showed up on Saturday.

Sunday night I finished up the stuff I’d been knitting for Christmas in the City (that Pam’s organizing), and I mailed it off on Monday. I also had a bunch of stuff that I knit up a while ago, meaning to give to charity but never got around to donating. (I guess through that student organization I was the staff chair for, but that only lasted one semester and then fell by the wayside since the grrl who started it graduated and no one else took over.) So I got to send those, too, which is brilliant because now they’ll actually be put to use, rather than sit around in my house. I’ll post pictures of those later. Monday, I also sent Sarah a package I’d been promising her for a while, and came across a thread on Craftster where crafters were discussing the possibility of a steampunk swap!!! I think it’s going to officially start in January, so everyone has a chance to chill out after the holidays and NaNoWriMo and stuff, but I am so excited about it and I’ve already started brainstorming projects. I’m definitely going to try electrolytic etching, and I am fucking PSYCHED about that. (Cross your fingers that I don’t inadvertently poison or electrocute myself, or burn down the house. I’m only half joking.)

Yesterday and today, Greg had to open at work, so we got to go in early and leave early – out by two! I came across these shoes on a steampunk livejournal community, and the poster noted that they were at her local Ross for $15. So yesterday afternoon on the way home, we stopped by Ross to see if *my* local Ross had them. (Because those boots are fucking fantastic, totally Victorian Lady Adventurer, and I need them. But only if I can get them for $15. I don’t need them enough to shill out $95ish.) Anyway, the Ross we went to didn’t have them, even in sizes other than my own, but I did find a fantastic pair of boots that I loved, so I took them up to the register – only to have Greg push me out of the way and pay for them. That was awful sweet! And these boots are the hotness. The stitching on the foot seems a little steampunk/neo-Victorian to me, and I fucking love them!

Oh! And I was trying to decide whether I’d rather go to Sitar or IP3 for my birthday meal, but then yesterday Sitar was in the dining hall on campus, and we happened to go there for lunch (we’d left too early to pack lunch), so I got yummy yummy Indian food for lunch! And then for dinner we ended up going to IP3 with Kate, for some delicious, cheesy, greasy pizza. So I was very, very happy. And today I’ve gotten several well-wishes, and had a fantastic day. I got to come home in the afternoon and take a nap, which I always like. (Napping in the middle of the afternoon just feels so luxurious for some reason.) I ordered some tshirts from the Sharing Machine, a couple for holiday gifts and then one for myself I’ve been wanting for ages – that showed up in the mail today! Greg made me some utterly delicious General Tso’s Chicken Beast, and when we went to the grocery store to get some ingredients, I’m 95% certain our cashier was a drag king, and that was awesome. (I know there’s got to be more queer people in Durham than I see, since I’m a bit of a homebody introvert and keep a smallish circle of friends, but it’s nice to be reminded that there’s more variety in Durham than I sometimes remember, and that for every close-minded, prejudiced asshole I read about or hear of or deal with personally, there’s a drag king cashier doing his own thing at my local grocery store.)

And now we’re watching Dexter, which I’m enjoying very much, and I think it’s about time for some iced oatmeal cookies. Danny, Michel, Brian, and Carol called and wished me a happy day and sang to me tonight, too. I have been very nicely spoiled on my birthweek.

Happy early birthday to me!

Trust Susan to find awesome local artists wherever she is! This is from a Bloomington artist, who used a real ginkgo leaf to make the pendant. I don’t know if she knew I have a special fondness for ginkgo leaves when she picked this out, but I do! (There’s a male tree and a female tree on campus, although too far apart to do any good, and I love finding leaves on the ground under them.) I love this necklace!

(An update on the illness front: I finally fell asleep on the couch around 2am Thursday night, only to wake up around 3am and admit that it was pretty uncomfortable, and that I’d rather sleep in our bed. So I did. Friday I felt like ass, and came right up to the threshold of puking, and even had some gnarly vurps, but somehow avoided it – mainly by staying horizontal, because every time I sat up even slightly I got nauseous and dizzy. I had to diss on some plans I’d been looking forward to all week, but I slept and took it easy, and didn’t puke, and that’s the important thing. I’m feeling better – not completely back up to snuff yet, but much, much better than I was on Friday, so I’m hoping that was the worst of it.)

So, for the past couple of weeks, some weird cold or virus or flu or some shit has been hounding me, making me feel generally ill – a couple days it’s been so bad that I had to stay home, because I was all stuffed up and had no energy and was miserable. Yesterday was one of those days. I stayed home, slept, drank water, took Dayquil. Today I feel 100% better, back up to my normal snuff.

So of course, today Greg has to go home sick, and not just sick, but REALLY, REALLY sick. Greg doesn’t usually get sick – his immune system is insane, and mine is nonexistent in comparison. He’s also usually the carrier – he’ll bring something home, not get any symptoms himself (or really weak ones), and then my ass will be laid out for a couple days to a week, being miserably sick with the full-blown version of whatever maybe just gave him a slightly sore throat, or a tickle in his lungs, or whatever. But no, today he felt bad enough to not only go home early, but ask me to drive him home because he could not drive himself. I don’t mind this at all – I’m just telling you so that you understand how fucking sick Greg is, because he’s normally stoic to the point of craziness. So if he’s asking for a ride, it’s really bad. Anyway, Greg ended up needing to go home while I was in a meeting, so his boss was incredibly, incredibly awesome and gave him a ride home. And then before he made it inside, he puked in the bushes.

And I don’t care that he puked in the bushes – fuck some bushes, truth be told. What I care about is that he puked. I was really, really, really hoping that we wouldn’t get whatever’s been going around lately that, in addition to other symptoms, makes people puke. I hate vomiting. I despise vomiting. I LOATHE vomiting. There are not strong enough words to describe to you how utterly, utterly miserable vomiting makes me, and how much I hate it, and how neurotic I am about it. Or maybe this’ll give you an accurate idea: After I found out Greg had thrown up this afternoon, I honestly spent about an hour freaking out and working myself up to the brink of a panic attack because OH JESUS I’M GOING TO GET IT AND I’M GOING TO THROW UP. I’ve managed to calm down somewhat, and by “calm down” I really mean I’m just in denial. On the one hand, I know I’m going to get it, I *always* get it, even when Greg doesn’t. And when Greg does? Oh, then I’m 100% getting it. On the other hand, if I let myself think about it, I’ll freak the fuck out, so I’m denying that I’m totally going to get this shit and be miserable and puking, probably sometime this weekend.

On my lunch break today (which was around dinner time, but when it’s the second meal of the day because my day started so late, I call it “lunch”), I ran by the store to get some more Pepto for Greg and run it home. I also got him some bland, stomach-settling food (ginger ale, veggie broth, saltines), and got myself some generic Airborne, a new toothbrush and toothpaste (which are currently “hiding” in my makeup drawer in the bathroom, since apparently sharing the same thing of toothpaste can spread germs), and a huge ass tub of Lysol disinfecting wipes. When I dropped this stuff off at home, I also dug out my bottle of Vira-Gard hand antiseptic that I got when my mom had her hernia operation – Moses Cone had some nasty ass epidemic of a stomach bug that made you puke constantly for days on end, and I really didn’t want it, and I didn’t get it. (I used that Vira-Gard shit like crazy, and I also took my own bottled water and granola bars into the hospital, and didn’t eat anything else, and didn’t touch anything in the hospital, and, yeah.) So, basically, thanks to the looming threat of vomiting, I’m going apeshit OCD anti-germ until Greg gets better. I’m even “quarantining” him to the bedroom, and I’ll be sleeping on the couch. Hopefully it’ll do the trick. Me and those Lysol wipes are going to be like this:

Crazy.

Normally I don’t really care about germs. I figure, the more germs I’m exposed to, the more immunities I can build up. (Although now that I think about it, since I’m such a puny weakling and constantly sickly, that seems to be some seriously flawed logic right there.) But I desperately do not want to throw up. Um, like ever again in my entire lifetime. That’s reasonable, right? (Sarcasm.) Ugh.

Poor Greg.

(I thought it’d be funny to pose with the wipes and hand sanitizer like I was posing with friends, and doing that obnoxious cutesy-wutesy peace sign thing, only I realized I couldn’t ask Greg to take the picture because I’d have to wipe down my camera afterwards. So this is the best I could do. These are my new best buds for the next couple days.)

Follow-up: YAY! I told Susan what I’d *planned* on getting her, and she told me which shirts they’d like that *are* in stock in their sizes. Oh goody! (Those damn shirts better stay in stock til Friday. [shakes fist at other would-be buyers])