Letter Count (A-Z):

I love Saki one-liners. It's always things like, "I love it when Americans try to speak French; what a blessing it is they never attempt English."

And, "I wish you wouldn't agree with me; I have a wonderful temper but I can't stand being agreed with."

Besides, "You agree with me, then; I always say, beauty is only sin deep."

As well as, "To be clever in the afternoon would suggest one has no plans to dine in the evening."

Also, "He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death."

Not to mention, "It's no use growing older if you only learn new ways of misbehaving yourself."

These are not exact quotes, just lines as I remember them. I listen to the audiobook collection of Saki short stories, narrated by Rupert Degas. Let me tell you, Rupert is welcome to narrate everything as far as I'm concerned.

And yes, my hand is still healing. All the stitches came out though (suuuuper fun) and there's only a little bleeding, so, you know...


I love to write.

I'm at the point now where I can type a little, and so I now have. My hand is puffy and bandaged and a little scary to look at.

I'm dying or boredom.

I love that it's shaped like a leaf. How dare it be so magical?

No matter what, every single storm in BC knocks out the power in multiple locations. It's basically just a fact of life at this point.

I had three wisdom teeth extracted one day, a ganglion cyst on my hand removed the next day, and I'm still not allowed to do a damn thing. This is me breaking the rules.

You know you're an adult when you're looking forward to being able to brush your teeth and work again. Sigh.

I typed this. Whoops.

I'm getting three wisdom teeth removed today, and so I assume I will be considerably less wise tomorrow.

Eggnog shouldn't be seasonal; it should be eternal. But it should also have more spices, as a standard. Stores basically sell bullshit and call it a beverage.

Waiting to plug in a new fridge is a serious exercise in self-control. Yes, technically you could just plug it in, but the longer you wait, the better. Luckily, new fridges are a bit more merciful, and you only have to wait a few hours, but back in the day if you even moved a fridge you had to be extra careful about not wrecking it by plugging it back in too soon.

Now I feel old. But I do have a new fridge.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but prions scare the shit out of me. I learned about them maybe twenty years ago, watching a TV show (I don't remember which) and even before that I had learned in school about cannibalism and prions, but it never really sank in.

Prion disease is fatal. A prion is a misfolded protein, and it can happen on its own or due to exposure to prions. Prions cause cell death, and cell death causes, well, big death.

There is no stopping prions. BSE (mad cow disease) is a good example of one that's scared us before. There is concern about, say, deer with prions urinating on wheat crops and then those prions wind up in people.

Not fun. Prions are not fun. I am afraid of prions.

I'm just going to leave this here, for anyone who doesn't know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_demand_avoidance

There's every conceivable kind of Christmas lights now, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, lots of it is trash, but sometimes you find an awesome string of curtain lights with a remote and multiple settings.

The concept of night science is kind of interesting. Night science is the creative, zany side of exploring the world's facts; rather than approaching it methodically, go at it with pure intuition and come up with the solution in a dream. Be creative, not rule-abiding. Or practice day science, like a nerd (just kidding, I'm a nerd too).

There's something about having holiday treats around, and the simpler the better. Heating up pine branches and cinnamon sticks, eating sugar cookies, and having an excuse to use extra blankets and feel super tucked into bed is all I need to be happy, honestly.

Renting really sucks. I'm sure that having things go wrong when you own a house is lousy too, but let me just say that waiting almost two weeks for a fridge because a property manager doesn't have problem-solving skills, the interest in acquiring them, or the concept of tenants' rights, is frustrating. Having no fridge or freezer is thoroughly inconvenient: there's nowhere for leftovers, there's nowhere for store-bought eggs or cheese or milk; there's no cold food in the house at all, and everything we had is now thrown out.

I'm told the landlord won't be inclined to compensate us, which would mean if we want anything we would have to go the legal route, which will just upset the money-havers.

So again I say, renting sucks. The vast majority of the money that flows in every month flows out to a source that doesn't believe we deserve to live (this may sound dramatic, but these same people called us "difficult" for not wanting a running SUV in the garage that is below our bedroom in this tiny laneway house; the fumes were horrible, the car alarm kept going off, and the people trying to fix the car left the garage door wide open for several days in the middle of winter).

Purple Skittles were never meant to be grape flavoured, just like green ones were never meant to be green apple flavoured. They finally swapped the green ones back not too long ago, but if you want the proper purple Skittles, you have to buy the British ones. They're blackcurrant, and there is absolutely everything to prefer about that.

Our refrigerator is dead. As a result, we're keeping the butter in the coolest part of the house: the bedroom (we sleep freezing cold). Anyways, the butter sitting there for no apparent reason is disconcerting. Maybe I need to bring the toaster upstairs too; that might help.

Eartha Kitt challenged the White House during a speech they asked her to deliver on "street crime" (yes, they chose the topic, not her), and she then found herself considered a threat by the CIA and FBI, so much so that she relocated to Europe to keep her career going.

I mean, that's just insane. The display of insecurity from a government! Please. And you know they're still just as terrified of that kind of thing.

So yeah, it is said that power corrupts, and it certainly does, but maybe it also makes people absolute cowards.

Anyways, Eartha Kitt was amazing, and every time I encounter the word "hammer" I hear her voice going, "And then I'll smash it with a HAMMER!" and it brings me joy.

I am becoming very familiar with x-rays of my jaws. After years of neglect (I know, I know) in the form of not going to the dentist, I finally went to the dentist and was subsequently referred to an oral surgeon.

I don't like surgery, but I currently have three queued up: one to remove wisdom teeth, one to fix a thing in my hand, and one to fix my ankle, which is a disaster.

The weird things is, the majority of the surgeries I've ever had were eye surgeries, and it horrifies most people to hear about them. Needles in the eye, staying conscious while they shove things into my eyeball or peel layers off it...

So maybe this other stuff isn't so bad? It's what I usually tell myself, as someone who doesn't like needles or drills or stitches or sedation.

Wish me luck.

Have you ever noticed that there's a tragic, sort of defeated note that flutes often play in movies and TV shows when a character is struggling big time? That's failure flute.

This is a meaningless observation, and yet, at the same time, whenever I hear it...I think failure flute.

My first words were barks.

This does in fact say a lot about me.

I haven't lost a pet recently, but the pets I've lost still feel recent.

People have a way of choosing the terms of their death that can make it easier for other people around them. Pets, on the other hand, are entirely our responsibility and leave us feeling guilty as hell whenever they die. It's one of the hardest things to get over, when it comes to decisions made or not made.

On the plus side, pets have the supernaturally comforting faith that comes from being cared for personally by a deity who can bring light, food, water, and entertainment at any time.

Aberlour whisky is good. We get a bottle about once a year (okay, okay, maybe a couple bottles every year) and it really doesn't matter which bottle you get. Really. They all taste like caramel air made of fire and fields of gold.

Okay, I think we can afford to have either reality TV or modern day royalty. We can't have both, it's redundant and costing us dearly. We need to pick one and completely ditch the other; the remaining one will fill the gap. I vote we keep royalty; we already have the production going, just film the whole thing and there you have your reality TV. And I know, some of you are thinking we'll lose some great content, but listen: we can just as easily watch royal families be yelled at by personal trainers; it doesn't HAVE to be obese Americans every time. There are already idiots doing crazy stuff, just film them and save yourselves the trouble of renting out and designing a set location because you'll have all the magnificent backdrops you could possibly want, and all the catering of an entrenched tradition that makes no sense.

So maybe we try to pick one. It's totally fine if we choose to keep reality TV instead; in fact, it would be maybe even a little encouraging. I see very little difference between them.

Extinct national animals are way more mysterious to me than mythical ones, but both are a little...woebegone? Maybe picking something tangible would be just as sad and silly, I don't know, but I think national animals should all be weird, lesser-known creatures that confuse the hell out of people. Like nightjars and stick bugs and microscopic monsters.