i’m going to go home and cuddle up with my phlegm

I think coming in to work today may have been an error, and I’m going to sneak out of here a little early, go home, and make myself a cup of milk tea.

Coming in wasn’t a total waste though; If I hadn’t, I likely never would have noticed this comment (Akismet marked it as spam) from “Mary” on the “High IQs and Douchebaggery” post from last week:

Because a non-member staff person made a typo in your name doesn’t seem like a reasonable reason to throw away the organization. You will never know what friendship and fun you are missing that way.

Wow, there’s nothing like a nagging, finger-wagging comment from someone who sounds like they’re as much fun as getting a pap smear to make one regret not joining their organization! (And one that harps on something that isn’t even the main point of my post–something I particularly love.) I’m totes kicking myself right now!

If you’re a prime example of the kind of “friendship and fun” to be encountered in Mensa, Mary, I’m more convinced than ever I made the right call. Thanks for stopping by!

bento #41 & egg salad

When I got my square Urara Lube Sheep box a couple weeks ago, I also got what I guess is supposed to be an onigiri box. But I usually don’t eat more than one with a bento (I like them as a side, but not as a main dish). It’s pretty high though, and I thought it would work for diagonally cut sandwiches. And it does! Although my sandwich looks a little mangled here… I should have used firmer bread, or toasted it. I think I’ll toast it for the rest of the week (I always eat the same bento for each week).

This week I have an egg salad with bacon sandwich. I really wanted watercress on this, but that’s hard to find, so I settled for butter lettuce. Essential to keep the egg salad from touching the bread, or it would be hopelessly soggy by lunchtime.

The bottom part conatins:

• Pickled cipollini onions
• Fresh rasberries
• A Babybel cheese
• Lemon tea cookies

Egg salad:

Finely chop half a dozen cooled-down hardboiled eggs, and mix with 1/4 cup mayo, 1 tsp. Dijon and 1/2 tsp. regular yellow mustards, and 1 tbsp lemon juice. Add a few chopped green onions and, if desired, a few crumbled bacon strips. I usually do desire, because bacon is awesome.

stitching, the flu, and another terrible movie

I didn’t get as much done this weekend, because I had either the flu or a really terrible cold, and for most of the weekend I wasn’t up to anything more strenuous than lying in bed and sipping Gatorade. I woke up with a sore throat on Friday, but thought it might just be a reaction to the incredibly poor air quality, from the wildfires. Plus, I didn’t know anyone who was sick; and I almost never get colds or flu in summer.

Well, Saturday put paid to that notion. When I woke up my throat felt like it had a flaming golf ball stuck in it, and after I’d been awake about an hour I started to feel lightheaded and achy all over. Hello, fever! The best part? I had no fluids in the house besides milk, and really nothing I could eat if I was sick, except for some crackers. There are times when being without a car really kind of sucks, and when you’re running a 101-degree fever and need some clear fluids is one of them.

So I got on my feet, and ever so slowly biked the mile or so down to the closest grocery store, loaded up on Gatorade, Coke, 7-Up, cough and Vitamin C drops (I know they don’t really make you any better, but it helps my throat to be sucking on anything, and it’s marginally more healthy than candy, even if it does have about the same amount of sugar) and chicken soup. Then I slooowly biked home, and collapsed into bed and barely moved for the next several hours; except to call the ‘rents and ask if Advil is a fever reducer (it is), because I don’t keep Tylenol in the house.

The fever broke Saturday evening, and now I’m just snotty and tired. It’s been 72 hours so I shouldn’t be contagious anymore, so I went ahead and came into work.

This weekend’s terrible movie was Strangeland on IFC, which was written by and starred Dee Snider. It’s about a killer stalking teens through the internet and is 10 years old, so of course it was totally hilarious. It’s filled with revelations, like did you know that people sometimes misrepresent themselves online?! And if you go into a chatroom, everyone in there will somehow be from your hometown. Also, Colorado suburbs are so blasé that a guy with multiple facial piercings and tattoos can just wander around unremarked.

Vote for McCain or I’ll kidnap you and give you a Prince Albert!

And that’s what the killer does to the teens: locks them in cages and gives them “body art”, in between torturing them with pseudo-philosophical blather like “We must all go through a rite of passage, and it must be physical, it must be painful, and it must leave a mark”. I’ll take the piercings, please. Also Dee, aren’t you like 50? Why are you ranting about “rites of passage”?? It’s like Dee Snider got pissed at Generation X for growing up and no longer being impressed with a fright wig and some badly applied make-up. These kids today, with their crazy pierced genitalia and tattoos! I’ll show them how dangerous it all is!! It makes sense once you realize that Dee Snider is a Republican (trufax, he campaigned for Schwarzenegger and performed at his inauguration).

I fell asleep about 2/3 of the way through, after Dee got lynched by some angry townfolk, so I don’t know how it ended. I can only assume he rose from the dead and extracted some bloody vengeance, before being dispatched by Lindsay Weir (Oh, Linda Cardellini, did you really need the money THAT badly?). Perhaps he continued stalking teens in their dreams, or maybe I just think that since Robert Englund, aka Freddy Kreuger in a zillion movies, was a member of the aforementioned mob.

ETA: How on earth did I become one of the top Google Image listings for “Dee Snider”?? This is disturbing.