Recently, someone I know got caught up in some internal drama that revolved around me, except I wasn't even really a part of it. They had a number of assumptions built up about me and then somehow the assumptions changed and they reached some new, dramatic conclusion about me. I only know this because they gave me a sort of expose run-down after the fact. Feels strange, like I'm somehow a part of something I'm not a part of? Like I'm disconnected? Like they're disconnected. I don't know... so strange.

Sometimes I feel like I'm just a hamster in a wheel, running and running but I never actually get anywhere.

Twice now, I've struggled to find gifts for friends only for them to tell me later, "You should have checked Amazon!"

I'm a technically savvy person, right? Why don't I think of things like that? Amazon wishlists -- I have one. Ants and Val picked up Strictly Ballroom for me; a lovely movie, and I'm delighted to own it now. And I could have picked up something for them that would have delighted them as well -- they both have wishlists -- but I am too lame, oh so lame! And Alex, he has a wishlist too; heck, he worked at Amazon, but I never think to go there straight off. The lameness! For shame!

Holy shit -- the craziest car accident happened outside my apartment tonight. If I had a camera, I would have taken a picture to post.

So, I live on an intersection: Summit Ave and Olive Street. Summit has the right of way; there are yield signs marking both directions on Olive. My building faces Summit. The second level of the building is "street level" on that side of the building. There is a drop between the sidewalk and the first floor of the building, with a walkway coming up to the front door over the divide. If you can't picture that, think medieval times; there's an area between the building and the sidewalk which would make a great moat, only it's not filled with water and there are no sea monsters.

So anyhow, apparently this taxi cab comes careening down Olive and hits an Audi. The Audi goes flying through the railings which line the sidewalk side of the divide, and down into the divide. I'm not quite sure how it happened, because it barely fit. It was on its side, down in the hole, about as snug as a piece of bread in a toaster. It was such a mess that I didn't know how anyone could have come out okay, but noone was hurt. The guy in the Audi found himself hanging upside down in his car and pulled himself out. When I got home he was standing there taking pictures of the battered car and of an elaborate process for pulling the car out, involving many steel lines and many tow trucks.

I watched until they had pulled the car out and managed to tip it back right-side-up on the street, and now here I am. What a night.

SWEET! I want one!

On the bright side, I do other people's work well. I fixed everything for the other tester within an hour's time, and she would have struggled over it for days.

Thinking of buying a new house? Consider an Airplane Home!

Why do I always get stuck doing someone else's work?

First it was Mr_X0, always pushing stuff off onto me that he should be doing. Now it's Ms_Z0. She can't get anything set up and running, so she and Mr_X2 are begging me to go in and fix it all for her. Bugger it all.

One of my wisdom teeth is fractured. My dentist thinks it's best to just get them all out now, and I saw an oral surgeon yesterday who concurred.

Problem is, my current health insurance does not cover dental and does not cover oral surgery, so I'm paying entirely out of pocket. It's going to be expensive; I have resigned myself to that. But how expensive? Herein lies my dilemma:

• Base price for extraction of all four teeth, plus the office visit: $968.


• It will be $385 extra, on top of that, to be fully sedated so that I am sleepy.


• If I want to skip the sedation but have a bit of laughing gas on top of the local anesthetic, that's $89 extra.


• If I chose to go with just local anesthetic, I will pay nothing on top of the base price.

So how painful is it, really? The nitrous oxide and/or sedatives are meant to control anxiety, not pain; it's actually just the local anesthetic that controls the pain and that is always applied, with or without sedatives.

Am I anxious? I don't think I am. I've had teeth out before, and it's been no big deal. And it sounds like my wisdom teeth should be pretty easily extracted, since they are all mostly grown in and easily accessible.

But I don't know anyone who's ever had their wisdom teeth out and NOT been sedated.

Would I be stupid to choose not to be sedated myself?

Jaimes has introduced me to the joys of fresh produce. Today on the way to the bus stop, I had an organic navel orange. Yum! Last night, I made a cabbage and kale salad as part of dinner for Mary and I -- cabbage, kale, fresh roasted almonds, dried cranberries, fresh squeezed lemon juice, and a bit of olive oil. Also very, very nice.

Strangely enough, I seem to feel better, in general, when I am eating better. I've been eating quite well recently, and I feel fabulous. Go figure.

I did finally browse over to craigslist. Tres cool.

Hmm. I haven't been blogging so much lately; not sure what's up with that. I guess I just haven't had any blog worthy thoughts in the last several days? (And, although I am blogging this one, it probably isn't too blogworthy itself.)

Today, I was a super-dork.

I went to Target this afternoon -- shopped for general household supplies I've been needing to pick up for some time, and did a bit of Christmas shopping. Several hours passed before I was ready to go, and by then my legs were aching and I was encumbered by a shopping cart full of stuff that I needed to lug to my car. The bags weren't packed into the cart very well, and every once in a while something would fall out. I was getting all flustered trying to keep everything together. I finally got down to the level of the parking garage that I remembered having parked my car on -- and it wasn't there. My car was not there! I ran up a level to see if I had remembered wrong, but it wasn't there either. It also wasn't two levels up or one level down from where I remembered parking it. I was getting super stressed out, and there was this cart full of stuff that I had to leave behind every time I ran up or down a flight of stairs to search for my car.

I finally went into the Target customer service area to ask if I could leave the cart there while I figured things out. They said sure, and then they called their security, who in turn called parking security to come and help me.

I was really starting to freak out. Could my car have gotten towed somehow? What if it was stolen? Was there anything in it that I really cared about? My dance shoes and my little black notebook were both in there - crud. I sat stressing out for maybe 10 minutes, and still no sign of parking security. Then, on a whim, I ran to check TWO floors down from where I remembered having parked my car.

Golly gee, there it was.

I'm such a dumbass.

I went over to Jaimes and Rachel's place for a bit again tonight. We all hung out in their room - Jaimes showed Jeff and I some blues riffs and a scale on the guitars, and we had a jam of sorts. Jaimes came up with the great idea that we should switch off between people on the guitars and people giving/receiving "massagees".

Jeff and I played for a bit, and Jaimes gave Rachel a bit of a back massage. Then Jaimes played with Jeff and I continued Rachel's back massage. After a bit, I switched back to playing on guitar, and Rachel gave Jaimes a really nice back massage.

At some point, we all switched again and Rachel gave me an amazing back massage. Amazing! I don't think I've ever had a massage that was so nice. I felt bad because the one I had given her was so sub-par in comparison.

John got home a while later and he and Jaimes took over the guitars. Jeff sat down on an edge of the room just to listen -- Jaimes and John are pretty sweet to listen to when they get going, very inspiring -- and I gave Rachel a really thorough foot massage. It felt really good, really putting all of myself into the massage, almost better than it had felt receiving the one she had given me earlier. Strange how that works. Anyhow, between that and the music, I was in another world, so warm and bright and happy.

Then, all of a sudden, it was 3:00 am. Everyone crashed and I went home.

Mozilla is a piece of crap. It's always #@%# crashing, losing data all over the place. And the back button is broken, and so is "open in new window", so you can really only browse forward on a straight, linear path. It sucks.