A noble cause

My sister is in law school and is currently interning (or is it externing?  I always get that confused) with the legal department at a hospital and she sometimes talks to me about this over messenger.  Apparently one of her duties to to review complaints and determine whether or not the hospital is probably going to get sued.  On the one she was working today, she consulted dozens of cases and statutes as well as her text book before finally coming to a conclusion. So I asked if they were going to get sued.

Sis: hahaha I think we're good [proceeds to lay out 3 paragraphs on why she feels that way] This is what I'm choosing to do with my life, by the way...

Me: LOL, have fun with that.  I'm choosing to spend my life trying to talk people out of using animated kitten gifs and Comic Sans font.

Sis: I think that's actually a far more noble cause. Until comic sans is just banned across the board--that's where I come in!

Me: I WILL SUE ALL THE COMIC SANS! You better watch your back, Papyrus - you're next!

Sis: Here's my co-counsel: Charles Carreon

And this is why my sister is going to be the best lawyer ever.

Where have you been and why are you carrying a jug of pee??

It's been while!  But then, I haven't exactly been myself lately.  In addition to balancing a full-time job, I've also been working on getting back into school (one that will actually return my emails and update their website in a timely manner, unlike my recent experiences), learning to cook, volunteering for test-knitting (more on that later), and dealing with fatigue, muscle weakness, lack of sleep, and mood swings.

That last bit is what's been eating most of my time.  Since March, I've been in and out of the endocrinologist's office for various tests to rule out hypothyroidism, diabetes, and a myriad of other conditions that all share the same vague symptoms.  I've had what feels like gallons of blood drawn, I've chewed on nasty-tasting pieces of cotton, but this last test takes the cake.

Most of these tests were because my cortisol was too high and they wanted to either rule out or confirm Cushing's.  After my chew-on-cotton-to-collect-spit test (ew), I got a call saying that my spit came back normal, but since my blood test had slightly elevated cortisol, they wanted to do a urine test.   A 24-hour urine test, to be exact.  I was told to come pick up the kit.  I assumed it was going to be a whole bunch of pee cups or something like that.  Apparently, I was wrong.

I had The Bastard drive me over there, since we had errands to run anyway, and he waited in the car while I went up to get the kit.  After a few minutes of waiting in the waiting room, a nurse waved me back.  Then handed me a giant, bright orange jug.

THIS giant orange jug, specifically!  Seriously, it's almost as big as a milk jug.

She said, "Ok, what you need to do is start in the morning.  Don't collect your first urination of the morning, but every one after that needs to go in this jug.  Then collect the first one of the next morning and you're done.  Oh, and it also needs to be refrigerated."

Aaaand that's where I almost lost it.  I'd been trying so hard not to laugh, and I'm pretty sure what came out would be classified as a "guffaw".  Not only was I going to have to collect my pee, but I had to refrigerate it?? I think the nurse was having trouble containing the giggles as well by this point.

In any case, I took my giant orange pee jug and walked back to the parking lot with as much dignity as one can have while carrying a giant orange pee jug.  I got in the truck and the following conversation happened:

Dan: What the hell is that?

Me (grinning): Oh you're going to love this.

Dan: Do I even want to know?

Me: Well, you kind of have to know.  See, I'm going to have to collect all my pee over a 24-hour period in this jug -

Dan: And why do I need to know this?

Me: Well... because it needs to go in the refrigerator.

Dan: ...no.  You are not putting your pee next to the food.

Me: I know that!  That's why I'm going to use the beer fridge.

Dan: WHAT? You're not putting your pee in my beer fridge!

Me: OUR beer fridge, and we're not using it right now, anyway.  It's not even plugged in.

Dan: That's not the point!  It's the fact that I'll know that your pee has been in there whenever I do put beer in it!

Me: You do know I'm not peeing directly into the fridge, right?

Dan: Beside the point.  It's the principle.

In the end, I won after I remembered that we'd originally received the beer fridge (a 2-foot-tall mini-fridge) from his mom after her office had decided to discard it.  This fridge used to hold blood samples.  Obviously, they were packaged in a secure and sanitary manner, and we thoroughly disinfected it just to be safe, but seriously, if that didn't bother him, then my pee should be just fine!

So I went through all that to get to this: I don't have Cushing's.  But I do have PCOS, which is why my hormones are all out of whack.  Now that I'm being medicated for that, I should be getting back to normal and should actually update this thing once in awhile.

Happy belated new year and Aldi trampolines

Happy New Year, everyone!  Even though I'm almost a month late, but that's beside the point.  With finals, Christmas, family stuff, and moving, I haven't really had the energy to put anything up here.  However, after discussing with one of my friends some of the weird shit that we've seen sold at my favorite grocery store, Aldi, I decided to make this quick post.  I present to you, the top two weirdest things from my most recent grocery run.

Resistance-band style weight bench

Mini trampoline (!!!!!!)

You're welcome.

My kingdom for a macro!

Disclaimer: This is a semi-rant concerning Rift, an MMORPG, so if you've never played one before, you probably won't know what the hell I'm talking about. It's also fueled by slight insomnia, so making sense is optional anyway.

I made a new character on Rift today and somehow ended up spending about 5 hours on her without even realizing it. I have a level 50 rogue that I usually play but wanted to try something different. So I went mage. I was actually kinda having fun with it, too. Then I got The Bastard involved.

All I wanted to know was how to make the best macros, since I had gotten her leveled to a point where they might be useful. That is when I was informed that mages are the hardest to level and their spells can't really accommodate macros. If I was actually able to play on a daily basis, this wouldn't be such a big deal. However, I don't have the time to really get a feel for this type of levelling, so I basically just wasted 5 hours.

I see only 3 options: stick with this mage out of pride and be annoyed; suck it up and go make a cleric; or say fuck it and buy Skyrim for my Xbox.

A rose by any other name... is still a deadly plant of horrors

On Monday, we went over to the in-laws' house.  They've moved to the other side of the country (thanks, economy!) but have kept their house here.  They'll be home for Christmas so we're trying to spruce up the place a bit.  In the course of decorating the front of the house, The Bastard came upon that annual obstacle.

The rose bushes.

First off, I'm not a big fan of roses anyway.  They're expensive.  They're cliche.  They're the type of flower that my grandmother, who likes both expensive and cliche, tried to talk me into having at my wedding (we went with star-gazer lilies).  The worst part?  With the exception of the pretty little flowers, they look like something out of Wes Craven's House of Flower Arrangements.

I wanted to set it on fire.  The Bastard pointed out that his parents' HOA might get mad.

Why why WHY does anyone plant these death plants??  The only reason my in-laws have them is because the neighborhood put it there and won't let them rip the damn things out.  We saw where Nurse Mommy cut them back last year.  They grew back with even MORE thorns.  It's like they increase their defenses every time they're cut, but the only thing we can do to combat them is to keep cutting them.

We move into this house next month and I'm a little concerned that these plants might try to grow under the house, into the bedroom, and try to kill us in our sleep.  Anyone know where I can get a good flamethrower?

Indecisive Bastard is indecisive

With school and work and holidays and blah blah blah, I haven't had much time for blogging.  However, I had to pop in to share this conversation.  Background info: My husband tries his damnedest to never decide anything.  Ever.  Also?  Never consult me for snappy comebacks.  This is a one-time deal here.

Me: What do you want for dinner?

Dan: I dunno.

Me: Well, we have ground beef thawed.  I also bought taco seasoning and spaghetti sauce.  Which would you rather have?

Dan: Meh.  Whatever.

Me: Alrighty.  I'll be in the living room whenever you make a decision.

Dan (as I'm walking out of the room): Whatever!

Me (walking back in the room): You never make a decision.  Do you even know how decision-making works??

Dan (grinning): No, not really! Why don't you explain it to me in 3 words or less.

Me (pondering for a few seconds): ...Choose... an... option.

Dan (boggling): Oh my god.  You actually did it.

Me: That's right!  I win!

Dan: What the fuck?!  GTFO!!

Me (walking out of the room): I WIN, BITCHES!!!

That's right.  I'm a winner!

I haven't occupied anything recently, but I may have accidentally crushed a bank employee's spirit

So we closed our accounts with Mid-Size Bank (not the actual name... duh) since we decided to transfer over to the company where we have all our insurance policies because hey!  Multi-account discounts!  We've just been lazy about it, but when our old bank sent a letter saying that they were increasing rates and charging to use our check cards, we had all the incentive we needed.

The banker that we spoke to was very nice and very enthusiastic to keep our business.  I felt kinda bad for him because I figured that there had been a lot of customers leaving for other banks and credit unions with the fee hike, so I tried to sympathize with him.  That didn't really go so well...