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While driving home from work after picking up the dog, remember that you need to go to the store. It is almost 8, and the store closes at 9.

Pull into the parking lot and find a spot near the front so you can check on the dog every few minutes.

Before making it into the store, decide that there are just too many people around and you can't risk someone trying to steal the dog. Go back to the car and drive home.

Take the dog out to go to the bathroom, bring her in the house, give her a treat, and go back to the car.

Close the garage door and start the car.

Wonder if you left enough water for the dog and if all of the doors are locked.

Turn off the car. Go back into the house and check the door locks and the water bowl. Go back out to the car.

Close the garage door and start the car.

Drive back to the store and find a parking spot. Sit there for 5 minutes while you try to remember whether or not you closed the garage door.

After nearly convincing yourself that you closed neither the garage door or the door leading into the house, somehow, and the dog is now running around the neighborhood, drive back home.

The garage door is closed. Quietly fight yourself over whether to open the garage door to verify that the door into the house is actually closed.

Win with the argument that if you do, you're going to get to the store and be worried whether or not you closed the garage again, and the store closes at 9 so you had better just go.

Drive back to the store and find a parking spot.

Spend the entire time in the store wondering if you closed the door into the house and if the dog is loose in the garage.

Check out and drive home.

Get out of the car in the rain with treats, crouch down, and open garage door. Prepare to catch dog.

As soon as you can see that the door into the house is closed, sigh in relief and stand. Realize you've been holding your breath since before you hit the button.

Look inside and verify that dog did not somehow get out anyway.

Close door into house. Check it twice. Unload the car. Lock the car. Check it. Close the garage door. Disable the opener.

Bring bags inside house. Greet the dog. Check the door locks. Set the alarm.

Put away purchases. Wonder if you closed the garage door. Turn off the alarm. Check garage door. Turn the alarm back on. Check the door locks.

Realize you forgot to buy cheese.

Ingredients
14 tablespoons butter, softened
3/4  cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2  cup granulated sugar
2  eggs
1  teaspoon vanilla
1-1/2  cups all-purpose flour
1  teaspoon baking soda
1  teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2  teaspoon salt (optional)
3  cups oats (quick or old fashioned, uncooked)
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup dried currants
1 cup walnuts

Preparation
Heat
oven to 350°F. In large bowl, beat butter and sugars on medium speed of
electric mixer until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well. Add
combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; mix well. Add oats and
raisins; mix well.

Moosh dough onto bottom of ungreased 13 x 9-inch baking pan.

Bake
25 to 30 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool completely in pan on
wire rack. Cut into bars. Store tightly covered. Makes about 2 dozen
bars.

HIGH ALTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Increase flour to 1-3/4 cups and bake as directed.

Recipe taken with minor changes from Quaker Oats

Current Mood: hungry

When I was younger, I used to write a good bit of poetry (note: I didn't say it was good poetry)--well past the age where it was the angsty teen thing to do. But, I think it's been roughly six years since I wrote anything, based on the date of this post. Lately, though, I've been finding myself thinking about it almost obsessively--as in, I caught myself trying to work out a villanelle while stuck in traffic this morning.

I wonder how much of this is just my brain rebelling against the fact that a lot of what I've been doing at work is, while not unpleasant, fairly repetitive and not particularly creative.

Perhaps it is a good time for me to sit down and work my way through the forms again. I'm sure I'll just get distracted part of the way through and not finish it, though.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: United States, Georgia, Atlanta
Current Music: Guster - Satellite

I want nothing more in life right now than to sleep through the night without being woken up by my own body contorting in fits. I appreciate that my body is trying to keep whatever plague has infected my (previously) throat and (now) upper respiratory area from getting into my lungs. I really do. But I'm so very tired. And, I'm pretty sure if I take a much higher dose of Robotussin than I already am, I'm going to start hallucinating. :-p

Current Mood: crappy

Flight prices to DC jacked up a couple days early. So now, we might not be able to go.

/sadface

I'm pretty damned unhappy about this.

ETA: We've booked flights to BWI, which is an hour away by commuter train, but at least they were under $300.

I have an extra hotel reservation for Dragon*Con. When I made the reservation, I requested a King bed--don't know if you can change that later. It's @ the con rate of $175+tax/night for 9/2-9/5 (checkout on 9/6). If nobody needs it, I'll be cancelling the reservation soon..most likely on Monday.

ETA: Room has been claimed. Thanks!

While doing some Spring cleaning, I came across a bunch of old journal entries (like high school old) I thought I'd ripped out of the notebook and tossed out. As it turns out, I'd ripped them out of the notebook and stuffed them in a box.

Skimming over them, I can say three things:

1. Lol angst.
2. Jfc, but I was a self-loathing teenager.
3. I had a better command of the English language in high school than most of the my postsecondary peers had when we were in college or graduate school. Totally should have gone with my original plan of English teacher. :-p

[Error: unknown template qotd]
Oh my gosh.. so many things.

Leggings as pants. Repeat after me: "Leggings are not pants." Leggings as leggings are fine.
Skinny ties.
Pants with pleats (when were these ever really in style)
Gladiator shoes.
Super saggy pants. I personally think any sag looks silly, but w/e. But, if you have to walk around holding your pants balled up in your crotch or duckwalk to keep them from falling down, you look ridiculous.
Polo shirts worn over polo shirts and/or any kind of collar popping.
Jhodpurs
Clothes that require you to be just shy of dangerously underweight to hang properly, regardless of general style.

I'd like you to meet Emeline. She is a Great Pyrenees pup who is currently being fostered by a friend of the family who runs a Doggy Dude Ranch (read: Dog Daycare and Hotel) in TN. She came to Monica as one of two survivors from a litter of 13 pups--the other eleven pups froze to death because their former owner did not provide shelter for the mother dog and her pups or let them in the house when it was freezing cold (Grr!).

Monica has asked me to get the word out about Emeline for two reasons. One, she's competing in a cutest dog competition, and more moolah means more kibble for Emeline and other rescued pooches. And two, she's available for adoption if you have the yard and quiet neighborhood for a GP. They are wonderful (and huge) dogs and excellent with kids, but they do need a sturdy fence and do better in a house where there won't be cars going by every ten seconds.

Please vote for Emeline in this competition daily and encourage others you know to vote as well. It will go on for several weeks if she qualifies to continue each week, and if Monica and Emeline win anything, M can use the money to rescue more dogs like Emeline. There are seven weeks remaining (including this one), and she needs to get the most votes in one of those weeks to make it to the next round. If she wins for one of those weeks, Monica will get enough money from the contest to pay to treat two dogs for heartworm (it is pricey), or to buy a whole mess of kibble.

http://www.cutestdogcompetition.com/vote.cfm?h=57068312C1763A3AA00481ADDB334F74

Steps to vote:
**Setup**
1. Visit the link above.
2. Register to vote with an email address (spamcatcher yahoo accounts are just fine).
3. Validate said email address.
**Every day (please!)**
1. Visit the link above.
2. Click the button to vote below the photo.

Made this last night for Paul and I. It was pretty delicious. We both thought it could use a little more sauce, but given that the sauce is simmered down broth in the spices the meat was cooked in and w/e else is deglazed off the bottom of the pan, topping it with some yogurt is probably a good alternative. I misread the recipe and used 16oz of chicken instead of 26oz, so it was heavily seasoned, but we actually both really enjoyed it that way. We had ours with warm pita, but I bet warm naan or chapitis would be even better.

Serves 4

Ingredients
2 T ghee or oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 onion, finely chopped
2 T garam masala
1 t coriander seeds, ground
1/2 t dried mint
1 bay leaf
26 oz (1lb 10oz)skinless boneless chicken, diced
1 c chicken stock
1 T chopped cilantro
salt to taste

Instructions
1. Heat the ghee/oil in a karahi, wok, or a large, heavy-bottomed skillet. Add garlic and onion and stir-fry for 4 minutes or until the onion is golden.
2. Stir in the dry spices
3. Add the chicken and cook over high heat, stirring occasionally, for 5 min. Add the stock, reduce the heat, and simmer for 10 min or until the sauce has thickened and the chicken is cooked.
4. Stir in cilantro and salt to taste. Mix well and serve hot.

I've got about five minutes of battery time left, so I'll make it quick.

I realized today that I haven't made a real entry since the beginning of the school year.

I keep wanting to, and it just doesn't work out. Everything I write sounds so pathetic, and I just.. I don't know... lost focus/interest/motivation halfway though.

I don't really know what to say--but I'm not okay. I haven't been okay in a very long time, and I'm honestly beginning to wonder if I'm ever actually going to be okay again.

I would say that my world is falling apart, but to be honest, I feel like it did that a while ago. Any time I slow down long enough to think, I'm just so miserable and lonely and empty inside that I can't take it and I have to start moving again.

I don't even know why I'm writing this.

Squee!

We won! We actually won!

I am crying.. seriously crying.

In other news, where the hell was the John McCain of the concession speech over the last 6+ months of the campaign? If he'd been that classy the whole way through, the final tally may well have been a whole lot closer.

So, I watched the Obama special, and as I was coming back upstairs, Paul asks me, "How was it?"

Me: "Good. Really good, actually. I feel it was a worthwhile expenditure of my money."

*phone rings*

Me: "Hello?"

Jesse: "Dood! That was awesome! That was so much better than I was expecting. I totally think that's going to reach some people. It was so worth my money!"

Me: *laughs*

So, my students have been going to great lengths trying to get me to tell them who I voted for. As far as I can tell: My third period is pretty flatly convinced that I voted for McCain. Sixth period is absolutely sure that I voted for Obama. And I have a couple in first period who seem to think I voted for Barr.

Today, I finally told my sixth period class that if they wanted to know who I've voted for, they just needed to wait until November the 5th. They got all excited, because they thought that they'd convinced me to tell them, until I told them how they could figure it out...

If I came in all puffy eyed and looking like I hadn't gotten any sleep, then they would know I had voted for the other guy. If came in all hoarse and looking like I hadn't gotten any sleep, then they would know that I had voted for the guy who won.

I've never been an especially partisan voter. In fact, I can't think of a single election that I have voted in where every candidate has been from the same party, or even from the same side of the political spectrum, including this one.

But this election.. something is different.

Maybe it's that our economy is in the fucking toilet. Or I'm tired of the fearmongering and the idiocy that we've dealt with for the last eight years. Or any of a zillion other things, but.. well..

I honestly don't think I want to be friends with anyone who votes for McCain*Palin in this election. Other Republicans in other races? Sure. Ron Paul write-ins? But of course. But.. McCain*Palin, honestly.. I think not.

I'm not talking about some bullshit Internet drama.. I just mean that I don't want to associate with them anymore in, well... really any context. After all the shit that's gone on in this election so far, anyone that could be informed and still vote for them has values and priorities so radically different than mine that I really just don't want to associate with them. And, in this election cycle, with all the shit that is going on* , any uninformed voter that votes for their ticket.. that votes for the candidates most likely to get us into more wars** based on base party loyalty or some even more bullshit reason***, well.. see above.

It doesn't necessarily say anything about their value as human beings, I mean.. who the fuck am I anyway? Hardly the model for the perfect human. But, it is what it is.

I don't think my friendship is important enough to anyone that it would shift their vote for president, or I wouldn't feel comfortable saying this. And, really, I still don't feel comfortable saying this. And, I mean, I'd never ask actually anyone who they voted for. But, this is still how I feel. And, I'm really not sure how I feel about that.

* war, economy, social bullshit, soforth
** barring some "Lets go fuck shit up!" party that I missed somehow
*** "You know he's a Muslim, right? It's in his blood."

So, I went ahead and voted last night. I knew who I was going to vote for in all the races I actually gave a damn about and I didn't want to wait in line for eleventy-billion hours on election day (yes, I know that's technically impossible).

I've never seen anything like this for voting before.

( A couple phone pics )

I couldn't get a picture of the third part of the long ass line or the fourth part of the long ass line, because the latter was past the no-phone line and the former was while I was talking to this older gentleman about getting out the vote and the virtues of splitting your votes versus straight ticket voting in the balance v. getting shit done debate.

All in all, it only took about 30 minutes, despite the massive line. They had about 50 voting machines set up in the Dekalb office, so it scooted along nicely.

But oh.. Joe Biden.. I think I love you like a folksy, gruff, grandpa.

I thought you couldn't early vote until the week before the election.

In Georgia, you can vote *tomorrow.*

Take that, long ass early voting lines!

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...and I wasn't looking for heaven or hell..

...just someone to listen to stories I tell.

Recent Entries

Things You Do When You Have Anxiety...And Also A Dog

Cooking: Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

On writing..

Feels like I'm going to die.

/sigh

(no subject)

Oof.

Gonna be one of those days...

Writer's Block: Out of fashion

(no subject)

Karahi Chicken

Why am I even writing this?

One of those days.

Omg.. omFg!

Hahah..

More election wank..

...a secret. Well, it was anyway.

Holy crap voter participation!

...I'm not listening to Tony, b/c I'm watching the debates.

Dood!