I Won a Blog Award?

Annika awarded me the One Lovely Blog Award after she had won it for her blog. I was shocked, but grateful. My blog is pretty small, with only a handful of followers, so it means a lot to me. As part of winning the award I am supposed to write 15 things about me. That's going to be hard. But I'll give it my best shot. And then I'm going to forward the award to other blogs.

Fifteen Things About Me

- because I'm so special -

1. Blood tests reveal my blood thyroid peroxidase antibodies score to be greater than 1000. My doctor insists this doesn't mean anything, but the internet says it means I'm going to die of Hashimoto's disease. Or not die, necessarily, but it is still bad and might reveal the source of most of my health problems of the past several years. A nurse I talked to disagreed with him, too. So I need to go back to my doctor and argue about why this is not "nothing" and needs to be looked at further. Obamacare isn't helping at all here, as doctors are now spending 90 percent of their time filling out Obama-required electronic paperwork and only 10 percent actually thinking about our cases or talking directly to us. Thanks Dr Obama, for making medicine worse with all your deep medical knowledge and experience which enabled you and your party, so overflowing with medical professionals as it is, to legislate everything all better.

2. My allergies are beating the ever loving crap out of me as I write this. My nose is running like an Icelandic waterfall in Springtime. Aughlek!

My allergies

3. My best friend growing up was half Swedish, half Choctaw Indian and he almost never talked. I mean, he'll talk if I can stumble across a topic that interests him, but otherwise he is mostly just silent. And if I ever ask a personal question like "are you dating anyone" or "who do you like for the presidential election" this is an offense tantamount to insulting his mother or the Chicago Cubs. Unless he happens to feel like talking about one or both of those subjects at that exact moment. So mostly I end up doing all the talking and he will either just listen to me ramble on or else he will ignore me and watch TV. But he never says "I wish you'd go home and leave me alone because I don't feel like seeing you today." And he never calls me up and says "hey, do you want to do something?" or email out of the blue to ask "what's up?" He is Swedish to the bone. And his sisters are beautiful.

4. When I was younger I didn't care if the gym was totally empty as long as I had the equipment I needed to do my workout and maybe a good workout partner. As I've gotten older and lost all my old workout partners and most of my drive I find myself caring more about who else is around, even if we never speak to each other. I guess being alone changes things. And also getting no results from my workouts. That's a real demotivator, too, so I guess I lack the focus I used to have. See #1 for a possible cause of the stubborn lack of results. All of this is ironic because I tend to try to ignore the other people in the gym and just do my thing. Or maybe I am an idiot and don't realize that sometimes I notice the other people and sometimes I totally don't? Maybe my allergies have my brain more muddled than I realize? Where am I and what was I talking about?

5. My new car costs too much. I don't just mean the car itself, but everything associated with it. The insurance is high. The tires cost a freakin' fortune to replace. It didn't come with a spare and I'm not driving around with no spare, so I went out on Ebay and bought a wheel that fits it. Next I'll have to throw a tire on the new wheel and that's going to cost a pretty penny. And then I'll have to throw that into my trunk along with a jack and wrench I stole from another car I used to have. This sort of defeats the purpose of choosing the car with the larger trunk since its going to be full of 20" spare tire now. Blah! But otherwise it is a lot of fun, especially when I step on the gas pedal.

FA$T Car!

6. Lately it seems like everyone I know is either A) in a band, B) promoting a book they wrote, or C) getting married. I had at one point deluded myself into thinking my irregular bouts of guitar practice would lead to my joining one of my friends bands, but no, I suck too badly to ever make it into anyone's band. With multiple friends writing books I'm doing a lot of reading lately. I feel like I should be able to say "hey, that was a great book! I just read it and it was awesome." One problem is that I don't own a Kindle or a Nook or whatever and more and more I find my friends self-publishing their books electronically only, or else they'll come out in print for all of a week and then go strictly electronic. So that gives me a week to buy the book or else I can't get it. Looks like I'm going to have to buy a Kindle whether I like it or not, I guess. I don't really know what to say about the people getting married. Congrats, I guess. But be aware, you are probably having more and better sex while engaged than you will after you get married. Just sayin'

7. I instantly dislike people when I see them in traffic driving slowly in the passing lane, only to speed up as soon as anyone threatens to get around them, and then slow back down again when the threat has been successfully blocked. Or go slowly in the passing lane until one of the other drivers does manage to escape their passive/aggressive blockade and get past, and then they speed up and chase that other person for miles and miles in a quest to force their victim back behind them again, at which point they'll slow down once more. I had a guy chase me for 10 miles this morning because I escaped him and it made him mad. People like that don't deserve to have a license. What they deserve is a punch in the face.

Get out of the passing lane, you doucheturtle!

8. Farting makes me laugh. In college I knew a girl who was seemingly normal in every way except that farts didn't make her laugh. She said she had never, ever laughed at a fart or a burp, not even as a little kid. She had never found them the least bit funny. It was then that I noticed that she didn't laugh much, even though she had a nice smile. And she was dating a guy who didn't seem terribly funny or prone to laughing either. I think there is something odd about a person who can't ever find a fart funny.

9. When I'm really mad I cuss worse than any sailor I have ever met. The only person I know who cusses worse than me was a tow truck driver who had to give me a tow after a car accident back in college. And he seemed to take pride in his exceptionally creative cursing. He shouted things at other drivers that were brand new to me. I had never heard things like that before in my life and I've never heard anything like them since, although to be fair I can't remember what he said anymore. I just remember that it was exceptional. After I told my father about it, he said that some people take pride in their ability to creatively curse other people out. I guess he was right. This guy was a cursing genius. He was the Hemingway of "F You."

Ernest F-ing Hemingway

10. If you decide to take your blog private, and I have you in my blogroll, and you don't invite me to view your private blog, I will drop you from my blogroll. I think that's fair. Why would I or anyone keep a blog in my blogroll that I can't even view? And how do I know its still active even? Clearly it must be dropped.

11. I used to be very athletic. Since having 2 knee surgeries and a sinus surgery a few years ago, something changed inside of me and screwed up my whole body. No one seems able to, or interested in, figuring out what the problem is. That's why #1 is up there. It is apparently entirely up to me to find out what is broken and how to fix it. I still compete in races and things, but now its more like I'm just there for the hell of it, but not at all competitive, because my athletic body transformed into a potato. And my health, meanwhile, just continues to slowly slide downward.

12. At this writing, as far as my family and I know from what heritage we can find, I am Cherokee, Irish, Scottish  English, Welsh and Snarkish. We haven't found any Italian, Germanic/Scandanavian, Asian, black, Jewish, Spanish, Mestizo or Puerto Rican in our family tree as yet. Anyone know the official PC definition of 'diversity?' I'd like to know if I qualify or not.

13. For whatever reason, and this too may relate to #1 from what I've read about it, but I seem unable to read one book at a time. I have a stack of them beside my bed and I am perpetually reading a few at a time. Right now I'm reading "Overlay" by Marlayna Glynn Brown and "Dracula" by Bram Stoker at the same time. It's quite a contrast since the two stories have absolutely nothing in common.

I want to suck your ... oh look, boobies!

14. I have 2 cats and yet I am a dog person. I don't have any dogs at all. How the F did this happen?

15. I have a brother that I have not seen in years. Even before that, I almost never see or hear from him. The only way I know to get in touch with him is to go to his house and knock on the door. I don't even have a phone number.

And now its my turn to award this to the following blogs:

Ute
Padded Cell Princess
AlleyCat
Julie Maloney
About Last Weekend
Blue Grumpster
Our Not So Fairy Tale Life

No pressure. You don't have to do anything if you don't want to. But if you do decide to post something about the award and do the 15 things, let me know so I can come by and read them.

Irony - just as I was receiving this blog award someone dropped me from their blogroll.

Friday the 13th - Bleargh!

Sick

I've been sick. Something has been going around. I managed to resist it for a long time, but it finally got me. Oddly, the combination of being sick and the medicine I have to take makes it hard to sleep. I mean, I sleep, but I don't sleep well. And then the next morning when I have to get up at oh-my-God-its-early I feel like death frozen and placed in the spare freezer down in the basement. So anyway, that means no gym time this week.

So what else is new? Hmmm

Sexual assault and torture versus peeing on dead soldiers

Some US soldiers were videoed peeing on the dead bodies of enemy Taliban soldiers. For some reason we are expected to get upset about this. I saw this video right after I saw the video of Keshana Wilson, a 14-year-old-girl, being shot in the vagina and electrocuted by a police officer with a Taser after he had slammed her against a car and then she raised her hands indicating that she surrendered to her assailant. The officer admits he aimed at her groin intentionally, as Taser recommends. Personally, I find the video of the Tasering and subsequent sexual torture of the unarmed teenaged girl far more offensive and alarming than the video of soldiers peeing on dead enemy soldiers, but maybe that's just me? I tend to think that a society where police officers are more abusive and prone to sexual assault and genital torture of unarmed citizens while soldiers in combat are held to an oddly tame standard is a society with a serious moral schizophrenia crisis. But again, that's probably just me who thinks this way.

The man who would be king

President Obama seems to be doing a bunch of stuff that the President lacks the legal authority to do, and then he dares anyone to do anything about it. Congress could impeach him, but if history is any guide, they don't have the guts. The problem with this is that even after Obama leaves office, if nothing was done to uphold the laws then the next presidents who come after can do the same thing and point to Obama's actions as legal precedent granting them the power to do likewise. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago talking about this. The author clearly likes Obama, but he pointed out the dangers of the "good prince" crisis where people allow some leader whom they think is moral and righteous and good to violate the law and get away with it. It inevitably leads to more of the same with the "princes" who come after, and then everyone is upset and wonders how things got out of control. Well, its because you let them.

Hospital

Heather Locklear is in the hospital. She just had a broken engagement and next we hear she's being rushed from her home to the hospital, but they won't say what happened. Who knew you could be so good-looking and yet have such a disastrous personal life? I mean, besides everyone in Los Angeles, that is.

Casey Anythony

Casey Anthony, the 20-something girl who murdered her own daughter, has said that she was molested by her father when she was younger and that she became pregnant with Caylee after being drunk at a party and passing out. She remembers nothing about the party and believes she may have been raped. I find this interesting because it wasn't mentioned in her trial and only came out after. Had she been lying about this, like Lorena Bobbitt or Mary Winkler, it would have been her entire defense - "I'm the real victim" - and would have won her some sympathy. She still would have been hated by the women of the jury, but it would have gained her sympathy otherwise and made things go easier for her. For it to come out afterwards, though, makes me wonder if it is actually true.

I just farted and it was really potent.

Bad idea for a tattoo

A very foolish man in Iran had a popular saying tattooed on his penis. It was done using a hand-held needle, no electricity involved at all. And apparently the tattoo artist, not being acustomed to doing work on penises, pushed the need in too far. The result is that the Iranian man now has a permanent erection and doctors are unable to make it go back down again. In addition to the popular saying, "good luck with your journeys," he also had his girlfriend's initials tattooed on it. If they ever break up he's going to have a tough time dealing with that one.

Holiday

Monday is a holiday for me. I just found this out. Today is Friday the 13th, the roads are frozen, the doors of my car were frozen shut, I am sick and under the influence of medications, and I have a long, cold, 3 1/2 hour drive ahead of me immediately following work on dark, frozen streets, and I am not looking forward to that. I hope I make it home alive tonight.