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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It probably won’t surprise you that I, a reasonably regular blogger, keep up with a considerable number of other blogs. I collect and read RSS feeds with Bloglines, which greatly simplifies that up-with-keeping. If a blog doesn’t publish a feed, I tend to write it off as being not worth the effort; I can think of only three non-feeded blogs that I remember to read at least once a week.

I generally settle in to check on everybody once a day, maybe two or three times if I have lots of work to procrastinate on, and it usually takes me about an hour to get through a day’s posts. If there are enough intriguing links to other compelling sites with large archives, the process can last all day (see above re: procrastination).

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I went to see my doctor today about some persistent mild abdominal pain I’ve been having, and, after feeling me up, she prescribed me two antibiotics. I took the first one (metronidazole) a few minutes ago, and it was awful. The pill, medium-sized, wasn’t coated at all; when I failed to swallow it on the first try and it started dissolving in my mouth, I gagged and almost threw up.

I managed to get it down on the second gulp, but the horrible, bitter taste lingered, even after a whole glass of water. I thought some food might dull the taste, but I only ended up bitterizing the first half of my dinner. One down, twenty-seven to go. Blech.

Any suggestions out there for swallowing nasty, uncoated pills? I think I might try putting it in a spoonful of yogurt.

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Samson doesn’t have what you might call “road sense,” in that he doesn’t have sense enough not to leap into the road when traffic is barrelling towards him. Even in the parking lot he’s usually oblivious to an approaching car until it gets within one dog-length of him, when it startles him. Slower-moving dogs, on the other hand, he notices a block away. I guess terriers haven’t evolved their way into living with cars yet.

Usually when we go on walks I try to minimize the number of major streets we cross, which means the walks get a bit repetitive: every morning we walk around our block, and every afternoon we walk around the next block over. In the evenings we do a lap around the building for one last pee before bed.

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Some people living in my apartment complex, or maybe their friends, have a strange habit of leaving food and associated debris in the parking lot. I don’t mean empty wrappers or fast food bags that might have blown in from elsewhere; I’m talking about half-eaten dinners carefully placed between parking spaces, as if someone had eaten a meal in their parked car, decided they were finished, and set the remaining food on the ground before driving away.

It’s a chore to keep Sam away from the leftovers on our morning walks. None of it is probably inherently poisonous, but he’s probably better off not stuffing himself with people food, especially when the first half of that food was eaten by apparently-crazy people. Nine times out of ten*, when he darts off between two cars, he’s spotted half a hamburger or a milkshake or a box of mostly-eaten chinese food or a run-over dinner roll.

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The neater you keep your lawn, the easier it is for me to pick up the poop. I’m just sayin’.

There’s a dog in my apartment complex who looks a lot like Samson, but with shorter hair and a slimmer body. Her name is Phoenix.

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John got me flowers the other day, and at first I didn’t realize they were sunflowers because half of them were red with purple leaves. The dye in them turns the water purple, but since they’re in a green vase it just looks brown, which is a shame. They almost exactly match the flowers in the painting above my sofa.

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Ah, sweet humidity. You don’t know how much you miss it until it’s gone, gone, gone, leaving you with nosebleeds, chapped lips, flat hair, and painfully congested sinuses. The last four nights of the trip John and I slept in a room without a humidifier, and my congestion got worse and worse. The very last night I started a pot of water boiling and set it next to the bed, in the hopes that my stuffy head would clear up enough to let me get some sleep.

I saw many women in Colorado with normal-looking hair, and I wish I knew their secret. From the day we arrived, my hair stuck to my head in flat, limp sheets. I could’ve sworn half of it had plum fallen out, it was so thin. I washed it, I really did! But to no avail. The night we got home it plumped back up to its normal thin-side-of-average texture with no effort on my part. TV tries to tell me that humidity is hair’s archnemesis, but mine seems to thrive in it.

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Vacation’s been fun, but I’m ready to get back to warmer climes. As fun as it is to pile on four layers of clothes to get to the grocery store, it’ll be nice to prepare myself for the brutal mid-winter weather by maybe throwing on a light jacket.

We’re flying out tomorrow behind that giant storm that’s on its way from California, so I’m glad there’s lots of football* on tonight that I can watch to keep myself distracted. The biggest challenge will probably be getting from up in the mountains, where all the weather is, to Denver, where the daily high is usually above freezing.

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Sections today, because this is really several posts rolled into one.

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Let’s start with some spectacular news. My friend Sandra from all the way back in elementary/middle school, whom I haven’t talked to in years, found my blog a while back. She read my post about Sammy having to stay in a kennel over New Year’s and generously offered him a spot at her mom and brother’s house. Hooray! Y’all are awesome, seriously. Samson will be so much happier in a real, comfy house with people who care about him, and his mommy will sleep easier, too.

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