Being Amber Rhea

One day, I’ll get back to blogging on a more regular basis. In the meantime, check out the blogroll. I just can’t keep up with blogging, blog-reading, and all the rest of it lately, with everything that’s going on. (I’ve been Twittering because 140-character increments is about all I can handle right now.) But I’m sure I’ll be back in the swing of things come October.

As Jenny said the other day, “It seems like there’s been a lot of bullshit in your life recently.” And there has been. But it could definitely be worse. I’m not going to sit here and be one of those whiny woe-is-me people. Some things are annoying, but I’m keeping at the forefront of my mind the important stuff - I’ve got the GDBF, I’ve got my health (such as it is), we’re in a new/old apartment in Decatur, we have a plan for the coming year that involves getting out of debt and buying a house, we’re going on a road trip in a few weeks, and I have nothing but optimism for the coming year.

Still… I am annoyed about more than a few things…

Don’t make me use this.

Having a positive attitude does not mean tolerating bullshit. Quite the opposite, in fact.

This weekend, I’m going on a retreat with Georgians for Choice. We’ll be staying in somebody’s cabin near Ellijay, and there won’t be internet access or a cell phone signal. Am I allowed to use the phrase “off the grid” to describe what my weekend will look like? (Probably not, because there’s a landline and electricity at the cabin.) I’m not sure what we’re going to do at the retreat other than eat and sit around; but that’s okay, because eating and sitting around sounds like a damn fine weekend to me.

On one hand, I’m looking forward to the retreat, but on the other hand, I’ll be missing Rusty and looking forward to getting back to Atlanta (civilization) on Sunday afternoon.

Oh, for those of you who don’t pay attention to my Twitter updates, our AC is fixed now. Last night we slept at our apartment for the first time in 11 days. There are other updates regarding this situation, but I’ll post them later.

And now that we can actually stay at our apartment again, I will post about the pole saga soon, too. Executive summary: Platinum Stages is a shady company that has fucking awful customer service. Don’t buy anything from them.

Sad:

Sad:

Happy: (also my current desktop wallpaper at work)

We still don’t have AC. For those of you playing along at home, we’re going into day 6 of not being able to spend more than a few minutes inside our apartment.

I am now really worried because on top of everything else, the AC has been running this entire time in the hopes that it’ll actually get fixed and then cool down the place before we get home one afternoon. Who am I kidding? So today when we pop in to get clothes (including a laundry basket and detergent, because I must do some fucking laundry, I’m nearly out of everything) I’m going to turn off the AC, because I don’t know how stupidly high our electric bill is already going to be, but I’m not going to let it get even worse.

In addition to grabbing an overflowing laundry basket this afternoon, I’ll try to snag some other stuff like nail scissors… all the mail that’s piled up… a book or two… the cable that connects my iPod to my computer…

I hate money, I hate jackassess, and I hate this apartment at this point.

Oh, and on another note, here’s a preliminary list of stuff we’re going to sell soon. I would love to take photos and post them online, and write complete descriptions with the item in question actually in front of me, but again, that would require being able to spend more than a few minutes in the apartment. So anyway, we’ll be selling:

• A fancy dark wood dining room table. If you ever went to Rusty’s old apartment in Decatur, you saw it.
• A 27-inch TV. I bought it in 2003 when I moved to Dallas - almost exactly 4 years ago!
• A fairly low-end but perfectly functional DVD player. Mitsubishi I think.
• A blue denim love seat that folds out into a bed. I bought it at Pier 1 in 2004.
• Maybe the blue denim chair that matches the love seat. I haven’t decided about that yet, though.
• A coffee table and two end tables that kind of make a “set.”
• A Mac Mini and monitor.
• A garden-variety microwave.

Email if interested, but I don’t know prices or anything else yet.

And, preemptively: nobody post any comments about I should do this or did I try that or why don’t I do that other thing. No, no, no. We’re doing what we’re doing, and that’s what we’re doing. And that’s the end of it!

Thermostat

Originally uploaded by rustytanton

Sorry for the lack of blogging. At least my daily Twitter updates provide some semblance of a record of what’s going on. Anyway, the short version is, we’ve been staying in hotels and with friends since Sunday, because our AC is busted again and as you can see from the thermostat, it’s ridiculously hot in there. I took a photo of the thermostat yesterday afternoon when we were there to pick up a change of clothes, and it was even higher - closer to 100.

So, net access has been spotty, work’s been busy, and there’s other stuff happening that I don’t think I’ll blog about just yet. And in the midst of all this, I haven’t yet posted about the crappy situation with the stripper pole! Eventually I will… but, you know, I would like to post something positive, too!

There’s kind of a lot of kudzu behind our apartment building:

Ah, Georgia. Even in the middle of the city, the kudzu will not be thwarted.

The two major events of last night involved me scraping up my leg while pole dancing at a sex club, and the police coming out to our apartment building at 2:00 a.m. These two things are not related.

We decided to go to a sex club to (here comes the big surprise) watch people fuck. I didn’t exactly have high expectations, as I had been to a sex club about 6 years ago and was underwhelmed to say the least. But, I thought, that was one night at one place; why not give it another shot? It might be fun and hot; and if not, well, at least we went, and we could laugh about it.

I did get my hopes up a little after talking to a friend who had been to a club called Trapeze about 3 years ago, and reported that it didn’t suck. And, according to their 1999-esque web site, they had a pole. (Side note: I do not recall the name or location of the club I went to ~6 years ago. It was somewhere in/around Atlanta, but that’s all I remember. It might not even exist anymore.)

So we went out there, and plopped down the $115 to get in ($50 membership + $65 door fee - they don’t waive the door fee on the night you buy your membership). They had a full buffet, and I’d heard that the food was really good, so the first thing we did was go get some food. And indeed, the food was awesome. Honestly, it was the highlight of the night. (Close second was a furtive blowjob we witnessed near the dance floor, but really, the mashed potatoes and broccoli still win in my mind.)

We sat at a table near the dance floor. There was really bad porn on two TVs, but fortunately the sound was muted. After we finished eating, I sat there waiting for the DJ to play a song that didn’t suck, and for annoying people to get their asses away from the pole so I could go up there and show them what’s up. Finally, I just decided to go up anyway even though I didn’t really like the song and this one couple would not move. So we went up there, Rusty stood on the “sidelines” so to speak, and I wiped the pole down with a napkin. This obviously wasn’t good enough, but I thought it might be better than nothing. Well, I ended up not being able to do a whole hell of a lot, because the pole was really slippery and dangerous. I tried a few spins and such, but for the most part I couldn’t get enough grip to do anything 100%. When I tried the fireball spin (Darcey will know what I’m talking about) I damn near fell off. Discouraged, out of breath, and bruised, I sat back down. Rusty said I did a great job but he could tell the pole was holding me back. Later, I noticed that I’d not only bruised the crap out of my legs, but they’re peppered with scrapes and cuts, too.

After I caught my breath, we decided we might as well go to the back area and try to see if we could watch people fucking. So far the clientele hadn’t exactly blown our skirts up, but we thought we should at least see what’s up.

The club was pretty clearly segregated into a “naked” and “non-naked” area, which annoyed me. And to go back to the part with the beds and stuff, you had to get naked or mostly naked. They had lockers, but they didn’t actually lock. That annoyed me too. Look, I don’t have a problem getting naked, but I don’t know these people; I’m not going to trust a bunch of strangers just because we all happen to be naked. But, still, we put our clothes in a nasty little locker, in a cramped locker room with a leaky shower (and some woman spilled her drink all over the floor right next to us), and wrapped threadbare towels around our waists. I kept my purse with me.

We walked through the double doors to the designated fucking area to find… not much fucking. Really, not any fucking. We walked around the whole place, and there was no fucking to be seen. A few old people had gone into one of the semi-private rooms and were groping each other, but I didn’t want to watch them fuck anyway. Mostly, people were just sitting around naked. WTF. Why do you go all that way and pay all that money just to sit around naked? You can do that at home. (Yes, you can have orgies at home too, but that’s a digression for later.) And most of the people were significantly older than us. I have nothing against people having awesome sex at any age, and indeed I intend to be having awesome sex until I’m seriously geriatric; it’s just that at this point in my life, if I had my druthers, those aren’t the type of people I’d like to watch fuck.

So, we stood in the corner for a minute or two, nonplussed. Some older men leered creepily. Finally we decided to just leave. So we got our clothes back from the nasty little locker and left.

I guess I’m a little disappointed, but not exactly surprised. However, we’ve decided to do a little more “research” and do a podcast about it, hopefully within the next few weeks. Since we have the three-month Trapeze membership (we didn’t have a choice), we decided we’ll go back on a Saturday night, and see if it’s any different. For one thing, single men aren’t allowed on Saturday nights. That might help create a less lecherous dynamic.

We also want to check out Club Venus (why do these places always have web sites that look like a bad mid-90s Geocities home page?) and see what it’s like. That might be the club I went to before, but I can’t remember. I don’t know of any other clubs that are still open (Velvet Heaven and 2Risqué closed; shame about the latter, they had an under-40 rule) and aren’t BDSM-themed or something. If you know of any others, let us know; but our podcast research may remain fairly limited in scope anyway, ’cause this shit costs money.

Later I want to write about why the whole “swinger” concept annoys me; but I’ll do that in a separate post, because this is already really long, and I have to talk about the person on the roof.

So, after coming home, we were lying in bed at around 2:00 a.m. or so. The lamp on the bedside table was on. Naturally, we were lying there naked. I was lying on my side, facing Rusty… we were relaxing and talking, and then all of a sudden he says, “Holy shit, there’s a person outside the window.” (When he was at the “there’s a…” part, I thought he was going to say something like “a ginormous insect on the bed.”)

I dove under the covers; I didn’t even look up to see the person. Rusty yelled, “What the fuck??” and apparently the guy ran off. I was scared and stayed under the covers. Rusty got up and called 911. He told the operator that there had been someone on the roof peeking into the window, and it looked like the guy was fiddling with the window as if he was trying to get in. (He wouldn’t have gotten very far… it’s like a 20-foot drop inside those windows.) So about 10 minutes later, a cop came out, and looked around the building and the roof, but didn’t see anyone. So that was that. We didn’t file a police report or anything. Oh and apparently the cop said something to Rusty about, “Most people have drapes.” (This was over the phone.) Excuse me?? For the most part, I was happy Rusty was dealing with cop and such, but I wish I had been on the phone at that moment. I would have pointedly asked exactly how us having drapes on those 20-foot high windows would have made it okay for someone to be creeping around on the roof at 2:00 a.m. A million other questions about this stupid non-sequitur spring to mind as well. I mean, also, I shouldn’t have been wearing that short skirt. And what was I thinking, walking through that part of town alone?

So anyway. That was our night. My leg is still sore from the shitty pole dancing. I’m pretty much over the “dude on the roof” incident now, and am just pissed more than anything. (Yes, we told our landlord; but you know how things have generally been with her. Strained, to say the least.) We’re thinking it would be nice to have drapes up on those windows, but we’ll definitely have to hire a professional to install them, because there’s no way in hell either of us is getting up there.

Stay tuned for, eventually, a podcast about our experiences with Atlanta sex clubs. And I’ll also write a post about the whole “swinger” thing, and the concept of sex clubs in general.

Rusty and I have discussed the possibility of hiring someone to professionally clean our apartment once every two weeks or so. Given our busy schedules, it makes practical sense. And I’ve had the contact information of a cleaner for about two weeks now, on recommendation of a friend - but so far I haven’t actually contacted her.

I feel weird about this. I guess the word to describe what I feel is guilt - but I’m not sure that’s the whole picture.

For one thing, at a very deep level I just balk at the thought of me hiring a cleaner. It seems absurd. That’s something rich people do.

Also, I don’t want to be contributing to, well, exploitation. It goes without saying that I would be respectful toward any cleaner we might hire, and tip well. And yet, again on a very deep level, I feel bad about it, kind of like, how dare I pay someone to do this?

But when I think about it, that second reaction isn’t exactly fair, is it? It’s along the same lines as the reaction many people have to sex workers, for example. Obviously they must be downtrodden hard-luck types who would rather be in a different line of work, but as it is they’re poor exploited victims with no choice, and no voice. And we all know how I feel about generalizations like that.

And it’s really arbitrary, when I think about it even further, because I don’t have a similar reaction to, say, yard workers. Maybe that’s because when I was growing up we hired people to do yard work sometimes? (Even though, for the most part, they were my parents’ friends.)

So, upon (over-)analysis, it seems like the first part of my guilt-like reaction is coming from a place of being low(er) class myself, and the second part might be coming from a place of relative privilege. Maybe. Does that make sense?

Thoughts, anyone?

It’s another smoky morning in Atlanta. I can’t believe those wildfires in south Georgia re still going on - and that the smoke makes it all the way up here, ~250 miles away.

This morning our apartment smelled like smoke, because of the window that doesn’t close all the way. And yeah, about that… I emailed the maintenance office about it Saturday, and yesterday the landlord wrote back and said (and I quote), there’s nothing they can do and it’s just “part of the historic value of the building.” :P

Great. Except, our living room area was already coated in dust from a crew working on the outside of the building (landlord says “the recent tumult of the dust intrusion is a rare occurrence”), and I worry about industrious mosquitoes finding their way in during summer, and cold air during winter.

I don’t like to be a chronic complainer, I really don’t. And I understand that with an old, industrial building, it’s pretty hard to find satisfactory solutions when problems like this arise. But it’s frustrating. However, it’s obviously time to take matters into our own hands; tonight, I’ll be breaking out the duct tape! (And the mop, to clean up the layer of dust on the floor.) The apartment should be somewhat clean in time for this weekend’s podcast party.

You’ll get something like this again tonight at 11:59 thanks to my daily Twitter updates, but just wanted to put up a post letting everyone know the surgery is over and done with, and my “strapping young lad” (heh, thanks Veronica) did great. He’s sleeping on the couch now. I’m glad he managed to get to sleep, because he was in pain (which is to be expected). Debating over whether to wake him at 3:00 for another Percocet.

Everyone at Crawford Long was very nice and helpful (except for one nurse who acted like she wanted to get us out of there as soon as possible) and the doctor said he should be fine. So that’s the update!

While waiting at the hospital, I managed to finish reading Full Frontal Feminism. Review coming sometime this weekend, whenever I’m not compulsively cleaning. One of our windows won’t close all the way - converted industrial buildings have “charm” and “character,” you see - and a bunch of dust-like crap got inside on the furniture from where a crew was pressure-washing or something on the outside of the building, and it’s making me sneeze and generally pissing me off.

Off to tend to the patient now! :)

It’s shaping up!

More here.

Soon we’ll have curtains… and there will be more photos.

The good thing about automatic del.icio.us and Twitter posting is that it makes it look like I update my blog every day. (Reminder: if you find those things annoying, you can always subscribe to the “actual posts only” feed.)

It’s been a good, calm weekend. Yesterday morning, my Online International Podcasting Expo session went well. Then last night we had dinner with some friends at the Vortex in Little Five Points - which was a lot of fun, but goddamn are some of the people at the Vortex annoying. (I would attribute that attitude to me getting old, but I felt the same way about such people when I was 21.) Today we did our requisite weekly brunch at Radial, I had my requisite afternoon nap and my requisite persistent headache; then we went to the Container Store and spent about $1,000 on elfa equipment so that we can build a closet in our lofted bedroom.

Once our place all set up, it’s going to be awesome. The upstairs in particular is going to be cozy and kick-ass (yes, it can be both). Also, it’s going to be our personal Porno Central.

Downstairs, the furniture arranging and box unpacking is coming along. We have so much space that we basically have two living rooms (or living-room-like areas, since there are no walls) - one with a TV and one without. The kitchen is another matter, however… I need to get on top of that soon, because eating out all the damn time has gotten really old.

I can’t believe it’s already 9:00 p.m. This weekend has flown by. I still might edit a podcast tonight… we’ll see.

I’ll be back to writing posts about feminism and shit next week, I imagine. For now, this is what you get. -Oh! I would like to say publicly, CONGRATS to Jenny on landing an awesome new job in Washington D.C.!! It’ll be great to have you on the east coast. :)

We now have wifi in the new apartment. Rusty and are sitting here on the couch (which is missing its feet) amidst boxes, haphazardly positioned furniture, and general disarray, typing away on our laptops. Priorities - we’ve got ‘em.

Now if only I could find the USB cable for my camera, I could upload my first 365 Days self-portrait (I started a day late).

I was going to edit the Frolicon podcast tonight but now I think I’d rather just get in bed. (The bed is still only a mattress on the floor, but again I say: priorities.)

Blogging will still be light throughout this week, I imagine. There’s a lot to do before we leave for New York on Thursday.

Well, it’s official - Rusty and I are completely moved into our new apartment! The place is currently a disaster area, but hey, at least we have just one address now. We’re currently sitting at Doc Green’s eating dinner (because we’re getting a new fridge tomorrow) and using the free wifi (because the internet at our apartment isn’t working yet). I’ve felt sick for most of the afternoon - headache, stomach ache, sniffles, general ickiness. Sometimes I get really irritated with the way my body likes to pretend I’m 70 years old. (I’m pretty sure the frequent headaches I get are transformed migraines, but I’m not willing to endure the withdrawal symptoms of going off Excedrin cold turkey.)

So anyway! That’s the status. Blogging might continue to be light for a while. And, on Thursday, we’re heading up to New York to visit Dacia, go to PodCamp NYC, and nap whenever possible.

Well, we’re going to head home (our home!) soon and continue doing a ton of laundry. And I might edit a podcast… a week or so ago I interviewed one of the organizers of Frolicon, and I need to get the podcast up soon.

More new-apartment-related (and other) updates coming eventually!

Via QD/BL…

What is it with corporate America? I’ve realized that it’s no wonder a lot of people think I’m a freak. Most people spend their lives in a corporate America where it’s de riguer to act as if humans don’t actually have sex or know what it is. Which is a laff a minute given what drives corporate America otherwise: sex. Selling sex, sex, and more sex. I mean christ, among other things, we’re selling cars, boats, yachts, aircraft and lord knows what else. All of those things are sold, each and everyday, on the basis of advertisements and a cultural tapestry of various symbolism which associate cars, boats, yachts, and aircraft with sex, sex, sex.

And yet, the guiding principle at this place seems to be to pretend we don’t actually have sex. I’m sure corporate life is a lot more varied than what I’m experiencing. You can certainly tell from reading blogs, Fucked Company, and other means of getting to the underbelly of other workplaces. But this one: man o man, am I a fish out of water who has to keep my bawdy sense of humor in check at all times.

Heh. I can relate. (Read the full post.) And that’s part of why my previous two jobs started to drive me fucking crazy and I had to come back to this job! Here, people don’t pretend like sex doesn’t exist. And, they can accomplish this without everyone being a walking HR incident. Thank god.

What else is going on? Well, we’re still moving. After this weekend, I don’t know what kind of internet access I’ll have, because I don’t know when it’ll be turned on at the new place.

Moving kind of makes me feel like a jerk because I was so physically exhausted last night that I had to lie down instead of finishing packing. Oh and I also didn’t edit the podcast I was supposed to edit. But I suppose that’s lower priority.

I just want to get moved in and start cleaning and decorating and shit. And we already christened the vault last week, so now we just need to christen the rest of the place.

Note to self: Don’t forget to pay full rent Monday.

This has been your disjointed blog post of the day.

Rusty and I now have the keys to our new apartment (!!!), so we stopped by on the way to work this morning to drop off a few boxes. Rusty snapped some photos with his cell phone camera:



Check out the full Flickr set.

In other news, I’ve been toying with the idea of moving my blog to WordPress. But I doubt I’ll actually do it anytime soon, because honestly, the thought of it makes me feel dirty.

PodCamp Atlanta big wrap-up post coming soon, I promise. Still recovering!

At the end of March, Rusty and I will be moving here:

Photo from Easements Atlanta

It’s going to be awesome. We’re going to have a podcast studio and a pole. More details to follow.

Well, let me back up. I might have killed my internets. I don’t yet have conclusive proof.

So last night I’m chilling in my apartment, sitting in bed with my iBook. I spent about an hour or so watching episodes of a video podcast (a.k.a. “vidcast;” or, for the even hipper, “v-cast”) of teh pr0n, which I cannot link to now because I’m at work - but you should check out Comstock Films. At around midnight, the GDBF finishes his fervent and awesome editing of episode 1 of the North Fulton Drama Club podcast and makes his way down the hall to my place. He climbs into bed with me and the iBook, and I’m all, “Let me show you this cool shit I’ve been watching” - and as we’re getting situated so that we can both see the screen, there’s a quick flash and a loud pop, and the lamp on the bedside table goes out. We’re both stunned for a second, and then we’re like, “WTF was that?”

My first (rather alarming, but also rather stupid) thought was that the water heater had exploded or something, because it sounded like it had come from the utility closet. Rusty thought it might’ve been a power surge, but none of the other lights were out. So I thought the lightbulb had just burned out and had made a big production of it. (Going out with a bang, as they say.) While I went to get a new lightbulb, Rusty realized we were no longer connected to the internet. Now things were getting seriously worrisome.

My wireless network wasn’t appearing at all in the list of Airport networks. I investigated and saw that all my electronic doodads - cable modem, wireless router, Tivo - were, in fact, off. (No glowing green LEDs!) I flipped the circuit breaker and everything came back on.

Still no internets though. So I went through all the standard troubleshooting BS… reboot the computer; unplug the modem and router and plug them back in; turn off Airport and turn it back on; et cetera. All to no avail. By this point it was very late and we were tired, so we decided to just go to bed, even though I was stressing about my potential lack of connectivity. I guess I’ll know for sure when I go home tonight. Any of you network admin fools know anything else I should try? It would suck if I fried something.

Oh, I guess that means I should tell you what caused the flash and the pop. We finally figured it out; get a load of this shit. Since I live in a converted ice and coal factory, the whole place has that ultra-hip neo-industrial feel - e.g., the electrical outlets stick out from the cinderblock walls. Turns out my metal bedframe was making contact with an empty socket. Uh, oops. Guess I need to get one of those plastic thingies that prevent babies from sticking their fingers in sockets. (”Socket” is a funny word.)

And only I could ramble on for several paragraphs about the spark that jumped from my electrical outlet to my bed frame.

• Things with my dad have gone from bad to worse. I’ll be leaving for Augusta tomorrow morning and will be there until Saturday. In all honesty, I am not looking forward to going; but I need (and want) to help my mom as much as I possibly can.
• I’ve moved to the new apartment but I’m nowhere near unpacked. I can’t find any-damn-thing. Fortunately Rusty lives down the hall, so I can camp out with him. But finding clothes to wear is a challenge, even in the face of the looming laundry pile that’s eating his couch.
• I’m pretty much broke. Apparently my rotors were fucked, in addition to my brake pads, so that didn’t help matters. I want to give my parents as much money as possible, but I’m afraid my contribution might be a paltry sum compared to the generous donations of readers and friends. This kind of makes me feel like a loser. How does anybody get by these days, much less save money? (Do not answer that question; it’s rhetorical.) The term “nest egg” kind of makes me want to punch anyone who says it.
• There’s other stuff I can’t write about because I don’t want to get dooced.

I’m not looking for anyone’s sympathy, or phishing for compliments or praise. I’m just stating the facts, and telling y’all why I don’t care all that much about ideological arguments lately.

Thank goodness I have Rusty to help me keep a modicum of sanity; otherwise I don’t know what I’d do. Oh, and I miss Jenny and Niki big time.

…is not a good thing.

- Espcially when one has been sleep-deprived all week while one scrambles around trying to move to a new apartment at all hours of the night/morning.

-Especially when one has been way too busy (typo: busty) at work while one’s boss is out of town.

-Especially when one is constantly worrying about the situation with one’s dad, and, perhaps even moreso, one’s mom.

Especially when one is talking of oneself by constantly using “one.” ‘Cause that’s not annoying or anything. Oh, and is too lazy to make an unordered list.

Must shower and then go clean old apartment. Oh and pack up the shit that’s still there. Ugh.

I know, that was way too obvious a title. But really, how could I not use it?

Tomorrow morning I’ll pick up the key to my new apartment in the Ice House Lofts, and then I’ll have until Friday to move all my crap over, and get the old place spic ‘n’ span, so I can get my deposit back. I’m taking the day off work Friday, and will be spending 3 hours of that day waiting for Comcast to come over, even though I really don’t need their help setting up my cable modem.

Moving is always hectic and a pain in my ass, and I’m looking forward to getting it over with and settling into my new apartment. And even though I’m really excited to live in Decatur, down the hall from the GDBF, there’s always something bittersweet about moving; the whole “one chapter of your life closes, another one opens” schtick. There are lots of ways to delineate chapters of your life, and where you live is as good a way as any other. My apartment in midtown (which already feels like someone else’s apartment that I’ve just been visiting over the past few days) was the first place I lived in Atlanta; I could wax nostalgic and talk about how different things were when I moved there 2 years ago… but I’ll spare you. For now.

This is to say, if blogging is sparse over the next few days, you know why.

I have four travel mug tops but only one travel mug. (Although, I distinctly remember having a WebMD travel mug; but that still leaves two tops unaccounted for.)

WTF.