Guest Blogger: Gizmo

On Friday, R and I took in a foster dog! His name is Gizmo and man is he cute. Cute as he may be, he definitely makes us appreciate Aries' calm, sedate, quiet nature. Gizmo is a bundle of energy and is always looking for mischief.

We are fostering through a dog rescue, so if anyone out there is in the Chicago area and is looking for a dog, Gizmo is currently up for adoption! If you are interested email me at allearsonme at gmail dot com. I would have just provided the information for the rescue we are fostering for, but I didn't want to tarnish their reputation by having my blog about bodily functions showing up in their google search. So, if you are truly interested and want to fill out an application to adopt him, I will give you all the info via email!

Anyway, I was telling Gizmo all about my blog and he made a request to be a guest blogger. How could I resist? Just look at that face! So without further ado I present to you Gizmo's Diary: Day 1.

Gizmos Diary: Day 1

Hey everyone!

Gizmo, here. Just wanted to update everyone on how things are going at my new foster home!

So, I got here yesterday morning to meet my new foster mom and my new foster brother (my foster papa was still at work, so I met him later).

My foster brother, Aries, is a really cool dog, but he is a lot older than I am so he doesn't like to play as much. We DO like to take naps together, though!

After introductions, mom set up my crate and bed and showed me the rest of the house! So many new things to explore! There's lots of new interesting things to sniff and chew on, but mom keeps saying this word I've never heard before: "no." It's okay though, when I'm chewing on "No" she usually takes it away and gives me one of my toys instead!

Aries, mom and me went out onto the deck for some fun in the sun! Aries and I got tired and fell asleep for a little while and then we came in to cool off. Whew it was hot out there!

Mom's friend N came over and she brought me a toy! A squeaky fish! Being the scientific fellow that I am, I needed to know what makes that fish squeak. So I dissected him! With my teeth! He exploded and his fluffy insides flew everywhere! It was AWESOME!!!

I saw someone named "Joey Gladstone" on the big box in the living room. I found his Mr. Woodchuck impersonation to be very offensive, so I barked at him! A lot! That got me a time out. I think mom must have a crush on this "Joey Gladstone." Why else would she defend him!?

Later, mom, Aries, N and I went for a walk! I sniffed a lot of things and peed on them! It was awesome. I found a piece of pizza on the sidewalk! I tried to eat it, but I was only able to snag a piece of pepperoni before mom lead me away...

Then, you'll never guess what happened!

Only the best thing ever! My foster papa came home and I got to meet him! I showed him how much I already love him by jumping up and down in the air and wagging my tail! Then we all went on a walk! AGAIN!

Man, this is totally the life! I get my very own bed in mom and papa's bedroom and a brand new best friend to play with. Sure, I had lot's of friends at the doggie day care, but I have people now and I get a lot more attention. Mom says she wants to teach me "manners," but I don't know what that means yet.

Anyway, more updates later! See ya!

- Gizmo

PS - Papa's toes and mama's kneecaps don't taste that great, so don't try licking them, I already tried.

Blogdentity Crisis.

I'm having a blogdentity crisis.

I've been writing this blog for about 6 months now and I need to be perfectly honest with you.

Despite the fact that I appear to know what the hell I'm talking about... I don't. I don't know what to do with my blog, in which direction to take it, or even what I ultimately want it to be. And right now it's a shapeless blob of blog-vomit all across the board.

Gross analogy, but you get it.

I guess I'm just asking you all to bear with me as I "find myself" and develop a clearer focus.

I feel like this is a completely self-serving post, so I'll throw some more random blog-vomit at you.

Sick. I have to stop using that analogy. Suggestions for a better analogy are welcome!

So, I'm watching a documentary about the human face and the role of facial expressions in modern society. They interview the family of a little girl with Moebius Syndrome. Too lazy to follow my link? Fine. Basically it's congenital paralysis of the muscles of facial expression. Without the ability to make facial expressions, how does one communicate effectively?

Later in the documentary, the family prepares for a surgery to give their little girl a smile before her first day at school. Through a facial surgery involving muscle transfers from the thigh to the corners of her mouth, she gets her smile a just a few days before school begins. It's pretty darn heartwarming.

In another segment, they discuss human lie detectors and how they use facial cues to determine if someone is lying. One such cue is the furrowing and raising of the eyebrows, a sign of "distress."

So... what if someone has Botox to their forehead? How will you ever be able to tell if they are lying? I mean, no one knows what Heidi Montag is thinking or feeling anymore after all the work she's had done. And I really could care less if Heidi Montag wants to tell a lie, but what if terrorists catch onto this and get massive Botox jobs done so that if they are captured they can lie to interrogators with greater efficacy?

I guess you'd just have to keep them prisoner, wait 3-4 months, then ask them again.

Furthermore, do you think this is why Abraham Lincoln could not tell a lie? Was his face just too wrinkly? I mean expressive? Poor Abey baby, I feel your pain. Like you, I cannot tell a lie.

I mean don't get me wrong. I can say the words. They are just not very convincing. My true feelings read like a book all over my face.

So,  go ahead and ask. Do those jeans make your ass look fat? Yes. Yes, they do.

My Life Without A Job: Day 1

Last night, after I published my last post I stayed up for about another hour or so for absolutely no reason. I finally made it to bed at about 3:30 after debating just staying on the couch out of sheer laziness.

I woke up today at the crack of noon. I then proceeded to stay in bed for the next hour and a half catching up on my blog reading via my RSS reader on my iPhone. The rest of my day went a little like this:

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Easily Distracted? This is not the place -- Ooo Something Shiny!

Three day weekends are not as exciting when you don't have a job to go to the next week.

Friday was my last day at my old job. Truthfully, I haven't quite had the chance to do a happy dance since we were frantically trying to get out of town to beat the Memorial Day weekend traffic.

The weekend was nice and low-key, saw the "in-laws," spent time at BBQs with some friends we haven't seen in a while, and we had a truly unique dining experience.

Sunday afternoon we had a few appearances to make at a different BBQ's, but I wanted to get something to eat first since I didn't anticipate finding too much vegan food at one of these cookouts in Madison, WI aka "America's Dairyland." I would have brought along my own veggie burgers or veggie dogs, but I didn't feel like buying an entire pack to eat just one and then abandon them at R's parents' house as we drive back to Chi town.

So, R took me to a place in town called Ella's Deli. I've passed by this place with R while cavorting about town over the past few years, but I've never been compelled to visit.

From the street, it looks like a big-top circus. Kind of creepy, if you ask me. Clowns are scary as shit. Don't believe me? Haven't you ever seen "IT?" "Killer Klowns from Outer Space?" There's a reason that clowns make good horror movie fodder: because like twins and octogenarians - they should seem completely innocuous, but they are actually terrifying. Because they will cut a bitch. Or turn into demon spawn and creepily appear in hotel hallways or bathtubs.

Yes, I'm aware that all my pre-conceived notions about horror movies come from The Shining, but damn if that isn't a scary book/movie.

What was I saying? Oh, right. Ella's Deli. Anyway, despite the fact that clowns creep me out, I was dying for a salad and they had 3 full pages of salads on their online menu. Awesome, where do I sign up?

We got to Ella's Deli, and what I found inside was not at all creepy. It was actually pretty damn cool, with all kinds of cool moving gizmos and gadgets a-plenty - all creating an environment entirely detrimental to someone like me with ADD, who incidentally forgot to take her medication that weekend. It happens. Especially when I'm away from home and off my normal routine...

I'm not too worried about being off the medication for a bit since I'm not working this week, but to give you a rough example of my level of distractibility: what I've written thus far in this post has taken me about 8 hours. It takes more than a few days off Adderall for my ADD to get pretty bad, but after about 2 days I have difficulty (well, more difficulty) focusing in a conversation. I make (considerably more) random noises, speak in accents, and add sound effects to most bodily actions. And I won't just do it once. I'll space out while doing it and get stuck in a loop like a broken record because I'm thinking about what the white stuff in the middle of York Peppermint Patty is made of and before I know it I've done the "wha-pshhh" whipping noise 5 times in a row to R's mom after I promised I'd keep him in line when we get home.

In fact, while you are talking I'm more likely to be thinking how cool the fraggles were than about the words coming out of your mouth. Which is why at times like these, I simply can't handle the numerous overstimulating obstacles presented by Ella's Deli.

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Happy Memorial Day!

Hola.

R and I are on our way to Madison, WI to visit his parents for
the long weekend. I'd really like to make a post while I am there, but R's parents still use dial-up(I know, right?!) so I can't guarantee it, but at the very least I'll be writing even if it's in a word document to copy and paste later.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Do You Like Falling Down? I do: The Helmet Chronicles Part II

In my efforts lately to exercise more and be more green, I've been using my bike for commuting and for errands whenever possible. My bike has been in storage for a few years, and truthfully the last time I used it was for the triathlon I did in 2004. I had used the bike as-is when I bought it, including the horrid cage pedals that the manufacturer put on it. Since I have been riding a lot more, I quickly got fed up with the cage pedals and opted to buy a set of clipless pedals and riding shoes. Today was the first day I got to try out the new pedals and man was I excited!

I woke up this morning raring to go. And the start of my day went a little like this:

Me: Oh my! I am excited to try my new clipless pedals! Life is grand!

Pedals: *evil laugh*

Me: *Oblivious* La, la la! Here I gooooo! *Promptly crashes into a building*

Building: Ouch.

Me: Whoops! Let me try that again! Wheeeee here I go again (on my own)!! *Forgets how to unclip, panics, tips over*

Concrete: Hello, helmet. Nice to meet you.

Helmet: Likewise. I have a feeling we'll be seeing each other again.

Pedals: *evil laugh*

End scene.

So yeah, the clipless pedals. They have won the battle, but I'll win the war. I've already gotten scores of advice from people I've told about this regarding keeping one foot unclipped until I get used to them. Well the sad part is, I only had one foot clipped in... my brain just forgot that I had another foot to use for stabilization and down I went. The other sad part is that the building I crashed into is our next door neighbor (roughly 3 feet from where I started) and the second place I crashed was on the corner (another 4 or 5 feet down).

But let it be known, that this is not the end. It is NOT. The. End.

In retrospect, I secretly hope I looked like this:



Because that would make me giggle. And Wayne's World is the best movie ever made.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

Oh, hey there pals!

Someone once wrote in their blog that they hate it when someone disappears from their blog for a while then apologizes for it... so I'm not gonna apologize.

I'm gonna disappear and you're gonna like it!

Or you'll just stop reading my blog.

Ok, you called my bluff. Please don't do that. You'll break my achy breaky heart.

So I've been absent a bit. Moving on to more important things - some random shit that I decided to blog-vomit into one post.

The past month has been a little nutso. In short, all of my available brain RAM has been taken up by the planning and co-hosting my BFF's bachelorette party and wedding shower as well as looking for a new job.

Remember back when I contemplated my next career move, whether to stay with my current job but at a different office or to seek out something completely new?

Well, after I wrote that post, I'd pretty much decided that I was going to stay at my current job in the new office and got comfortable with extending my contract (which ends tomorrow, btw) at the other office. I decided I was going to stay in my boring (but well paid) little rut and I got relaxed. A little too relaxed.

A few weeks later I spoke with the company that contracts my services and learned that slacker me waited too long to get on the ball and the position at the new office was no longer available.

DOH! *Face Palm*

They did, however offer me a position at their office in Rock Island, IL... on the Illinois-Iowa border. 200 miles from my home. In the middle of nowhere. Um... no, thank you for the offer, but I'm going to have to politely decline. The decision was pretty much made for me... I told them that I appreciated them providing me with contract work for the past 1.5 years, but right now I am not looking to relocate to the Iowa border.

So, about 3 weeks ago I embarked on the world's laziest job search. I say laziest because I have no desire to do any job searching myself, I just want someone else to do all the work for me. Which is why I've been consorting with a healthcare staffing agency. They pretty much just find me a job and bring it to me, like breakfast in bed - but for jobs. It's just a matter of finding the right assignment from the job menu.

I have no fear of becoming unemployed - the jobs are there. I'm being solicited like 1000000 times a day by healthcare agencies all over with basically the same job I'm doing now, but that's the thing - I want to do something different. I want to work with a different population. In theory I could take a position similar/identical to my current position if I got desperate enough, but right now I'm holding out for something I actually like.

So as of today, I have no job lined up for next week. It's actually strange how non-stressed I've been about this process considering the fact that when my life is at loose ends I usually turn into a giant spasmodic ball of stress. I'm actually more stressed out about the fact that I'm not stressed out. Is that weird?

I hope to start a new assignment the week after next, but while the search for jobs in my current field continues, I've also been considering what other awesome careers would suit me. Because I'm awesome and therefore deserve an awesome career.

Here are some of my ideas in no specific order:

1. Dog photographer - Well duh, I love dogs. I love photography. Put 'em together? Bam. Ultimate job.

2. Dog masseuse - I pet my dog all day long, now I can get paid for it! Yippee!

3. Rickshaw driver - Benefits include getting some really toned legs towing people around the city in a pedaled rickshaw.

4. Bike messenger - I dunno, these guys just seem to piss people off and that seems like fun.

5. Bartender - I tended bar in college. If anything I've become LESS mature since I've graduated, so why not?

6. Professional blogger - Think anyone wants to pay me to take a month long mental hiatus from blogging at random?

7. Snakes - Um. Not sure what. Just something with snakes.

8. Vegan baker - I baked my brother an awesome vegan cake with strawberry filling for his 32nd birthday last week, but when I bake I tend to make a big mess and swear a lot, so I might have to post one of those parental advisory stickers in my storefront window.

9. FBI agent - I've been watching a lot of X-files reruns, can you blame me for wanting to chase down UFOs on the government's dime?

10. Sharpie Artist - I can't guarantee my art will be any good. But at least I'll be high enough from the fumes that I won't be able to care.

So. Those are my shitty ideas. Suggestions welcome. In the mean time I'll continue seeking out a regular person full time job and I'll probably gripe about it the whole damn way, but not here. Like I've said, this is my happy place, so my rants will be kept to a minimum.

Finally, I will get back to gracing (read: forcing on) you with the musings of my rusty brain, which is still recovering from being my life's personal chew toy. What does that mean for you, reader? Just bear with me while I brush the dust off and oil the gears to get back into making semi-intelligent and/or witty posts. I anticipate some awkward/shitty writing at first, but with massive editing and some time I'll get back into the swing of things.

I also want to get back to the original purpose of my blog and resume the Dear Diary saga. If you are relatively new to reading my blog,  I originally started it because I found my old childhood diaries in my parents' basement and thought the musings of 9-14 year old T were hilarious and needed to be shared with the interwebs. If you want to read the past entries, you can locate them by using the "Dear Diary" search term in the search box on the right. One of these days I'll compile an archive, but for now? You do the work, I be lazy.