Man, is this week dragging, or what? I don’t think I’ve spent a minute less in front of my computer than I would have otherwise, and if I did, it was because I was either playing taiko or sleeping. I probably did pay a little more attention in class, though, so that’s a plus. Still, I’m ready to be done with this exercise.

Some unconnected bits:

Last night I dreamt that John was being chased by an angry kangaroo. He escaped by running to his dad’s house and tricking the kangaroo into jumping into a frozen lake. Then I stole an airplane and turned it into a robot. I tried to sign my brother up for a locker at his new law school, but the roller skating rink was on lockdown. I did find my own locker, though, and it was full of old swimsuits.

Samson is sleeping with his eyes half-open. All I can see are the whites, and every now and then they’ll roll around a little. It’s creepy as all get-out.

Three showers later, I’m still wearing the same eyeliner I put on for the Galveston show Saturday evening. I’ll probably have to take it off tomorrow because it’s finally starting to get patchy, but it’s had a good run.

Yesterday I was in a crummy situation that was all my own fault, and the idea popped into my head that it would be an ideal time to give blood, since I was already crying. The worst part of crying, after all, is trying not to cry. Once you start, all the tension releases, and there’s relief in knowing that however much your situation sucks, you no longer have to put on a brave face.

John and I haven’t gotten to see each other much lately, and it makes me sad. This weekend we’ll miss each other again because I’ll be in Hidalgo the whole time. Then three weekends later I’ll be in Nashville. I want to spend more time with him before he leaves the country for six weeks at the start of his new job in June, but spring taiko season has other ideas.

A little over halfway through, I’m feeling pretty blah about this exercise. It’s a success in the sense that I haven’t been on any of the sites I used to spend time on for the past four days, but I can’t say I’ve gotten much extra work done in the meantime. The main goal, though, is not to get more done during this week, but to strengthen my self-discipline in the future. A worthwhile goal, that, but hard to measure.

Quitting social media for a week has left me feeling disconnected and out of the loop. I’m completely cut off from my internet friends and people-I-follow, and I miss the casual chit-chat with my real-life friends, even the ones I see regularly in person.

Facebook and Twitter, for me at least, are all about being brief, witty, and shallow, and instead I find myself here on my blog, writing long, boring sentences analyzing the meaning of social media in my life. Gross.

If I do something like this again, I’m going to make it more like “only check Facebook once a day for a week.” It’s not actually interacting with people online that’s a waste of time, it’s keeping the site open and flipping over to check on it every time a new post appears.

Anyway, here are some of the things I considered posting to Facebook or Twitter today:

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Browsing the internet on my lunch break*, I noticed that I’ve been slacking on the blogging front lately. So here I am.

I took Sam to the vet this morning for a check-up and a squirt of something-something vaccine up the nose. I told the vet one of his eyes had been red off and on lately, but it hadn’t seemed to bother him too much. She took him into the back for a tear test and found out that my poor puppy is making almost no tears and has horribly dry eyes. And his cruel, cruel mother had let him suffer all this time. She didn’t say that second part out loud.

So now I have a tube of goop to squirt into his eyes once a day. I have to hold his eye open and squeeze a line of goo the consistency of Vaseline onto the surface of his eyeball. The vet techs managed to do it with two of them holding him still—I can’t wait to try it at home by myself. I can only hope he’ll understand how soothing the nice happy goop is and come running for it every morning. Hey, it could happen.

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Before I talk about work I’d like to share a quick story from today’s evening walk. The story is that a bird pooped on Sam’s head. Better him than me, I thought, since he didn’t notice and probably would have enjoyed it if he did. But then at home when I tried to wipe off the mess with a wet paper towel, he ducked and I got poop on my hand. So I didn’t escape unscathed after all. It figures.

Okay, work. I’m still thrilled to be there, even though I emptied my candy jar in the first two days. I’ve had to bring in and eat *fruit*, can you imagine? I finished my first practice assignment in cite analysis today and will probably get to start on a real assignment tomorrow, assuming I didn’t completely miss the boat on the practice one.

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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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I apologize in advance for the trite yearly-family-newsletter tone of this post. The videos are short, I promise.

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John, when he’s not grokking universe-defining equations, powering up a new radioactive cyclotron beam, or reminding young zoology majors of the difference between speed and velocity for the umpteenth time, has taken to brewing beer in his apartment.

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Today was a sleepy day. It’s 9:40, I’ve just woken up from an evening nap, and I’m about to go to bed. Sam had a poop emergency at 5:00 this morning; John was the first to wake up and was wonderful enough to take him out, but I think I still lost some deep sleep on that one.

This morning I had a conference with my Writing professor about my memo. I thought signing myself up for one of the earlier conferences would motivate me to have a draft done by now, but I’m still going through the research. I had plenty of questions, but I feel like I kind of wasted a good opportunity.

We had another taiko performance yesterday afternoon, this time at the new Discovery Green park downtown. Real quick, just twenty minutes . . . part of some arts showcase, I think.

Yup, that’s the news from today. I didn’t promise quality, remember.

Last week I noticed that Sam’s pee, instead of issuing forth in a glorious stream, dribbled slowly onto the ground, so that it took him two or three times as long as usual to do his business. He didn’t appear to be in pain and acted normally otherwise, but I took him to the vet anyway.

She took a urine sample and some x-rays and found a mild bladder infection and two bladder stones, one of which was lodged in his urethra. That one was so large that at first she thought it might not actually be a bladder stone, since he shouldn’t have been able to pee past it. But it was; Sam’s just a trooper. I really hope he hasn’t been in terrible pain for the last few days.

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Samson and I make a good roach patrol. He brings the keen ears and I bring the spray of painful death.

How long has it been since I last posted? A month? Everybody’s stopped reading, right? Awesome. Now I can talk about you behind your backs.

The thing is, I had finals, so I took a week or two off, and after that I’d get back to blogging, but then I graduated, which was a Big Life Change (in that my employability spiked dramatically), so naturally my next post HAD to be about graduation, but that would be a LONG post, and an IMPORTANT post, and really what’s the point of starting all that today when I can eat cake and take a nap instead. You see?

But no, that’s not how blogging works. Blogging (the hacky way I do it, at least) is about jotting things down as they happen, however dull and poorly-written the results might be. Planning, gathering resources, editing…those are for chumps. And professionals.

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