I know, how typical. A blog post complaining about the phone company. It’s probably near the top of the list of overused blog topics, right after “What I Had for Lunch Today” and “Hilarious Pictures of Mr. Shnookums Sleeping.”

But this one’s a doozy. Starting about three weeks ago, my phone started to get crackly. When I called John while walking my dog, sometimes the signal would break up so badly that he couldn’t understand me at all. If we hung up and tried again, sometimes it got better, sometimes not. Sometimes my phone wouldn’t ring at all—calls would go straight to voicemail—even though it was on and showed five bars.

At first I thought my phone was breaking down, especially since John was able to call other people with no problems. I called T-Mobile twice but couldn’t get them to take it in for repairs for various uninteresting reasons.

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The women’s bathroom nearest my study carrel at school, it smells. Not of human waste, but of various fragrances which might be pleasant if they weren’t so overpowering. It has one of those wall-mounted dispensers that releases a squirt of pungent oil into the air every few minutes. Judging by the strength of the scent, it seems the dispenser was designed for a much larger area.

I wonder who picks the scents. Is it someone at the university’s actual job to make that decision, or does the pungent oil warehouse just send out their leftovers? Last semester it was cupcakes. This semester we started out with generic disinfectant, then recently swapped to floral explosion. Keeps you guessing, that bathroom.

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Today has been absolutely stunning, weather-wise. The temperature’s creeping up into the low seventies, and the air is crisp and clear thanks to the three days of miserably cold rain we’ve just slogged through. Samson is greatly relieved that he can now do his business in relative comfort instead of being dragged out into the torturous drizzle.

The other morning, between rainstorms, I was out walking Sam when an older lady passed us on the sidewalk. I flashed the quick smile I usually exchange with people I pass on walks, but she was clearly up for some chit-chat. “What are you doing out in this weather, girl?!” she half-shrieked. I didn’t know what to say because, um, this guy at the end of the leash? He needs to poop. And he can’t be trusted to keep himself out of trouble on the way. So that’s what I’m doing. But maybe she was making conversation, so I laughed politely.

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Hey, why not make this a regular feature?

Some of these come from the same dream sequences, but describing the whole bizarre chain of events would be confusing and boring (as John has confirmed many times over). Just the highlights for you, internets.

1. I was eating at a restaurant in Austin with various members of my extended family, admiring the Matterhorn just outside the window. It was a brilliant purple, as mountains are.

2. I hopped on a chairlift only to find that instead of metal, the chair was made of a dozen geese tied together. I got nervous when one goose snapped in half, leaving the chair swinging wildly, and tried to call the chairlift operators on my cell phone, but the line was busy.

3. John, Samson, and I descended three stories into the basement of an old house in search of a public bathroom. I was worried we’d lose Sam because he didn’t have a leash and was the size of a mouse.

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1. I pulled a looooong strip of slimy black plastic out of John’s ear.

2. I saw a video of a transvestite eating plants off of a coral reef 20,000 feet below the ocean’s surface and sent it to everyone I knew. Then someone pointed out that the video must have been a joke because he/she wasn’t even wearing a scuba suit.

3. I had to drunkenly drive down a muddy mountain road in the middle of the night to catch a train to Belgium and save my dog. I took the corners off of a few houses in the process.

4. I stole a rental Lexus convertible that was clipped to the side of a bus and took it for a joy ride to find ice cream. I freaked out when a lady started shouting at me, but she only wanted to make sure my laptop had the most current updates.

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