yin and yang?

My weekend has been...interesting, to say the least. Saturday was miserable. Today was awesome.

Let's start at the beginning. I went to work Saturday morning. (Off to a bad start already, see?) About fifteen minutes after I got there, my left eye got really itchy. Like, the kind of itchy you want to scratch with a wire brush. Since I didn't have a wire brush in my pocket that day, I just rubbed it with my finger.

And that's where I went wrong. Shortly thereafter, my left eye was red, watery, and swollen almost shut.

That's when I remembered that I'd just fed and watered the guinea pigs just before rubbing the hell out of my eye. (Note: I'm massively allergic to guinea pigs.) I'm a genius.

So I called my dad and had him bring me the last of the Benedryl. In the hour that it took for the Benedryl to work, customers were looking at me like I was Frankenstein's disfigured assistant, small children were crying and clutching at their parents, and everyone I worked with said "Jesus Christ your eye looks terrible" at least half a dozen times each.

Then the Benedryl kicked in, the swelling went down, and I was fine, if incredibly groggy.

Then, around four o'clock (some five hours later), I started breaking out in hives for no reason whatsoever. Seriously. The only thing I'd been doing in the hour before the hives arrived was fixing the air flow in some of the fish tanks. I cannot possibly be allergic to fish water.

So I took another double dose of Benedryl.

The last hour of worked passed, and because I was so drugged up on anti-histamines, I just wanted to crawl in the corner and sleep when I got home. But I came home to a raging party. The house was full of people, the music was loud, and there was no way in hell I could've even thought about sleeping, let alone managed to pull it off.

I spent the next four hours driving aimlessly around town, just to get out of the house, then I went over Devin's and watched South Park for two hours. Fortunately, everyone was gone when I got home.

Today, on the other hand, was wonderful. Dad and Lisa had another party, but I didn't have to work, I spent the day drinking beer in the sun, and I even got to swim in the creek with Bailey.

Now I'm sunburned, but I don't even care because this is the first taste of sunshine I've gotten in three years.

Huzzah!

And, on top of that, I still managed to be productive today too! I wrote 1000 words on the novel I started last November, and I managed to copy edit five stories for Oddville. Yay me!

this could maybe possibly be something wonderful

Apparently, HBO is going to do a series based off George R. R. Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire.' Now I know what you're thinking, Martin's books are so full of sex and violence and political intrigue that there's no way a network could truly do them justice.

But this is HBO, people. The same network that did Sex and the City, back when it was taboo to have shows like that. If you look at things like The Wire, The Sopranos, and whatever the hell else HBO airs, you can clearly see that HBO really has no problem with...well, anything really. That said, unless the writers at HBO decide to do something retarded, they stand a very good chance of accurately following Martin's books.

Just think what would've happened if the Sci-Fi channel or Fox had gotten their hands on this. *shudder*

And for those of you reading thing going 'What the fuck is A Song of Ice and Fire?!', you need to check it out. Seriously. It might just be the best fantasy series of our generation. There characters are complex it's incredible, even the bad guys. You can't help but admire the fullness Martin's brought to them, and to the world he created.

I do have one question for those of you that know the series, the new book isn't out yet, is it? How the crap is HBO going to do this series if Martin keeps pushing back the release date?? And there's like one or two more to come after this one, right?

That's my biggest worry actually.

But anyways, this is big news. You can read more about it on Martin's 'Not a Blog'.

another issue of oddville

(Shameless plug to follow..)



It may be a bit late in coming, but at long last, Issue 3 of The Oddville Press is out and available for download -- free!

As has been our goal from day one, this issue of Oddville features some very well-crafted fiction, poetry, and artwork. And the best part, it all has a slightly odd twinge to it, which makes it all the more wonderful to us Oddvillians.

Download Issue 3 of The Oddville Press HERE!

escapee

Hey, this is my 500th post! How 'bout that?

Anyways, I decided I'd share the tarantula story first (since nothing of note has happened in the five days since my last post).

As mentioned, I work at a pet store. It's a small, locally owned little shop called Critter Corner. We don't sell dogs or cats, which doesn't stop at least half a dozen people from asking me that every day, but we do sell small animals like hamsters, rats, mice, guinea pigs, etc. And we sell reptiles and amphibians, and fish, birds, scorpions, and... you guessed it... tarantulas.

Have I mentioned that I hate spiders yet? Well, I do. There's just no reason for anything to have that many legs. Seriously.

Moving on, this story takes place about two months ago. We had three rosehair tarantulas for sale, each in their own little Critter Keeper thingamajig. Then one day, one of these tarantulas -- the biggest one, go figure -- turns up missing. And when I say it went missing, I don't mean that the lid fell off of its container and it escaped or it karate chopped its way out--no, it was just gone. The lid was secured; the container was still in one piece. The spider pulled a Casper and went through a solid wall.

So the six of us that work there spend the next three days scouring the store for this lost spider. Of course we don't find it. The store may be small, but it's got plenty of dark crevasses for creepy crawlers to hide.

On the third day of the missing spider, me and Dan were closing together. Everybody's gone, we're getting ready to leave. We put on our coats, I stick my hand into my pocket for my car keys, and my hand closes around something multi-legged and furry.

THE SPIDER WAS IN MY POCKET!!!

So I let out a blood-curdling scream, which Dan makes fun of me for to this day, and I throw my coat across the room. Well, Dan doesn't like spiders any more than I do, so we spend the next 15 minutes arguing over who was going to pick it up and put it back.

I lost.

*shudder*

the undead blog

So I'm thinking about resurrecting this lifeless corner of the web. The question is, is anyone still around to read it?

I'll bring you all up to speed in this little snippet though. Since my last post, I've gotten a job at a pet store, I've gone on a few interesting and not so interesting dates, and I've become very much addicted to Guitar Hero.

Oh, and I've acquired a very temperamental bunny and three acrobatic hermit crabs. There was a hamster in there somewhere too, but it's dead because it prolapsed and I put it out of its misery.

That's about it. Adieu!