Death of a Subaru, Part 2

When we left off, my car, post $225 tow, was lurking in the depths of the Subaru dealership. I ventured forth the next day to discover that it would cost another $116 for the mechanic to even look at the car.

I didn't really have another option, so I paid the $116 and then went to my internship at the VA, anxiously awaiting a phone call. Unfortunately, in the middle of all of this car nonsense, my phone battery decided it was a great time to lose the ability to hold a charge for longer than two hours. I had to wait until 5:30 that evening to charge the phone and call the mechanic.

The verdict? Clutch was burned out and needed replacing. The cost? $1700.

I'm going to let that sink in for a minute before I continue.

$1700.


. . .




$1700.



$1700 to replace a clutch in a 14 year old car?!


I'm have a sneaking suspicion that this was an overestimation because I'm a fairly hapless 23 year old female. He also went on to describe what else was wrong with the car in as threatening a manner as possible - to imply that if I dared replace just the clutch the car was going to burst into a fiery deathtrap in a matter of hours.


Luckily, my preceptor had mentioned a very qualified mechanic who would be sure to give me a better deal. I called and was quoted the still outrageous but not quite as bad price of $1100. My father agreed to pay the cost. Otherwise, he was going to drive down to Reno towing a car for me to use and tow the broken one back to Idaho to fix himself.


(and people wonder why I'm so stubborn)


The issue was getting my car to this other mechanic. He did not have a tow truck, and I was not going to pay more money to haul my broken car around Reno. Enter my amazing roommate, Cassidy. She's had a plethora of towing experiences and was more than willing to help me out.


Two problems. One, she drives a Hyundai that weighs probably half as much as my Subaru. Two, said Subaru has two tow hooks instead of one. We threaded the rope through the hooks and wrapped it around itself before setting off.


We had each other on speakerphone during this less-than-well-thought-through adventure, and there was a great deal of needless yelling. Mostly from me. We took back roads as much as we could, but Reno is circled by one massively busy road you have to venture on to get anywhere. Oh, and it was 5:00 in the afternoon - the only time of day we could do it. And dark.


Once we figured out that I was going to have to be the main braking force, it was fairly smooth sailing. Until an idiot cut us off in an intersection. Cassidy screamed and hit the brakes, I screamed and pushed really hard on the brakes, and a giant BANG rang out. Cassidy's yelling turned into "Did you hit my car?! DID YOU HIT MY CAR?!"


I thought I had too, until I realized that I hadn't actually felt hitting anything. She, after a moment, realized that she hadn't moved forward at all. We assumed the sudden slack in the line caused the tow hook to slam into the ground and continued.


Halfway there, Cassidy brought up the very good point that we have numerous male classmates with better cars and probably more towing experience who we could have press ganged into helping us. We bemoaned our idiocy for the few miles remaining but made it to the mechanic without further incident. That giant bang we had heard? That was the tow rope untangling itself and becoming barely hooked to my car.


The mechanic came out of his office, saw the two of us and our awkward setup, and laughed until he cried. My father decided that since the car "only" has 215,000 miles, it would be worth paying $1900 to have every single possible thing replaced under the hood. And now Ingrid will get to drive it.



I feel it needs to be stated that my horrible luck has continued during this Christmas break. I took another old Subaru down to Pocatello. It started off fine, but when I got there I discovered that two of the tires were flat. Without me hitting anything.


I am clearly not meant to drive these cars.

Death of a Subaru, Part 1

Or, why I will love Buster Blue forever and ever.

My trials with cars have been fairly well documented. This was, however, by far the worst.

A few weeks ago, Buster Blue was playing in Crystal Bay (near Tahoe). I had spent the day working on rotation projects and preparing for a gigantic pharmacy convention and was huddled underneath my electric blanket when I realized that their show was that night. I debated for a good half hour as to whether or not I should attend (as my greatest weakness in winter is an electric blanket), but decided to venture forth and be social.

This proved to be a mistake.

The drive from Reno to Tahoe is along a small mountain highway that crawls through forests and up hills, that twists and turns and is generally inhospitable. It was a fairly pleasant journey, until I had left the last town before Crystal Bay long behind and was creeping my way up the last mountain. The car started to decelerate. I figured this was due to the grade of the hill, downshifted, and continued up the incline. The car continued to decelerate despite my desperate pleading and promises of sacrificing various creatures to the Subaru gods. Then it rolled to a stop. Though the engine would still roar, the car would not move anywhere.

I was alone. In the winter. In a car stuck on the side of a hill in the woods at 10:00 at night. The occasional vehicle would zoom past, not even slowing when they saw my blinking hazards. I sat there for a few minutes, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. The car had not seemed to be overheating, or acted like it was low on oil, but for lack of better things to do I stumbled around to the hood and checked. Coolant and oil were fine. The only thing left to do was call my father.

"Sooo the car is stopped on the side of the road and won't move."

A sigh. "Where are you?"

"On the way to Tahoe on the side of the road?"

"What the hell are you doing driving to Tahoe at 10:00 on a Saturday night?!"

It struck me that this was the electric blanket's revenge for my decision to leave its addictive embrace. 

The padre proceeded to call the insurance company and I stayed sitting at the side of the road, mutely watching cars pass me by. Then one pulled off in front of me - another Subaru, and a young man came hustling down the hill toward my car. He claimed he could not leave another Subaru driver in distress and offered to attempt to fix the car.

The car was unfixable (why is it always unfixable?), but he helped me maneuver my car about 200 yards down the mountain to the side of the road. He then offered me a ride to Crystal Bay - he was going to see the same show. I weighed my options. Five minute ride with a potential axe murderer to a nice warm casino v. hours sitting in an increasingly frigid car on the side of the road, easy prey for any axe murderers hoofing their way through the forest. I got in the car when he gave me the number to the highway patrol, figuring that if he was going to murder me in the short time it would take to get to the casino, at least highway patrol would know about it.

I stumbled into the casino, covered in mud and looking, I imagine, rather stressed. I walked around, waiting for the insurance to call and tell me what kind of towing I could expect. In my anxious meanderings I ran into Bryan (singer/guitar/banjo/saxophone).

"Dude, what the hell happened to you?" He was dressed for his show, lounging near one of the slot machines. I quickly explained, with more than a little flailing, and he leapt into helpful action - offered me one of their hotel rooms if I couldn't get back to Reno, the use of their AAA card if my insurance wouldn't do any towing, and best of all, a beer. He took me to a hotel room where I could dump my muddy belongings and sit in warmth for a few minutes.

There I met up with the other members of the band, all of whom could not be nicer, more helpful people. (This is where I order all of you to go buy their music, because it is amazing and they are amazing). I get the call from my insurance - they will cover a grand total of 13 miles of towing. THIRTEEN MILES. What are the chances that anyone, anywhere, breaks down bad enough to need towing withing THIRTEEN MILES of a shop? Because I had no options, I agreed to pay the whopping $225 for a tow to the Subaru dealer back in Reno. Unfortunately, the tow truck couldn't get to my car until 1:30 that morning.

Andy (singer/guitar/trombone/banjo/piano - seriously, these people are talented) offered me a ride to the car at the appropriate time, and then we went back to the main show room so they could perform. It was fantastic. 

After the show, Andy hopped into their tour van and drove me back to that lonely spot on the side of the road where my poor car was lurking. We ended up sitting there for an hour past the appointed time because my insurance had told the company I was in Truckee. Let me illustrate for you exactly how wrong that was:

As you can see, we have the location of my car, and Truckee. Which is not where my damn car was.

An hour and a half later, after a ride in the tow truck full of awkward silences, I was back in the confines of my electric blanket. Wondering why I had bothered leaving.

Stay tuned for Part 2 - in which the Subaru dealership tries to rip me off and my roommate and I are total badasses.

Now go and buy all of Buster Blue's music. It's on iTunes.

Crafty Update

This has been the summer of craftiness for me. I've had a lot of unaccustomed free time, and when I'm not reading outside I'm working on something indoors. The first thing I wanted to do was get something up on the bare, soulless white walls of our apartment.

Then I stumbled on this.

It seemed an easy enough project, so with judicious application of some birthday money, I obtained the supplies. On this expedition, I also found these. For only $1 each.


I may have felt like a horrible person when I ripped the first one apart. I've never destroyed a book before and it was a very traumatic experience for me. After I recovered from the shock of ruining literature, I followed the guide and came out with a fairly satisfactory product.

Yes, I shamelessly copied the design of the example. I have no art skills.

They're now hanging above the mantle. I'm planning on making another, across three canvases, with a giant octopus attacking a boat. I'm not sure how well this will turn out.

That was the most successful of my crafty endeavors.

Next we have the cross stitch from hell. Remember this? From a year ago? Yeaaah. Still not done. I've made progress though!


The doom sweater has been knitted and now needs to be put together. It's currently lurking in the depths of my knitting bag - I haven't had the courage to confront it.

And now we come to what is currently the bane of my existence. My mother gave me her old sewing machine last year, and after making an eight foot squid pillow and a disastrous attempt at a shirt, I put it away and refused to think about it.

Until now, when I have tons of free time and nothing to do with it.

I'm trying to make a dress. This dress. And, like the cursed shirt, the pattern claims to be easy. It's not. It's ridiculous. (Or, more likely, I haven't the faintest idea what I'm doing and am blundering along in the dark).

This is a week's worth of work.

I've become intimate friends with my seam ripper.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this is going to look awful when it's finished, but even if that's the case I am going to wear the hell out of this dress.

I'm not stumbling, lost in this dank forest of confusing instructions and mindless re-sewing for nothing.

Why do the people on Project Runway make this look so easy?

Invasion

After living in a basement apartment in SE Idaho for three years, I'm accustomed to the habits and evil of hobos (the spider, not the homeless person).

I've been attacked in the shower, whilst covered in soap and unable to defend myself. While lying in bed from a suicidal hobo on a mission. While in a seated, compromising position (it's hard to scrabble away screaming when your pants are around your ankles). They've come out of drawers, shampoo bottles, boxes of toiletries, and from underneath my sink. They're evil.

I thought I was safe by moving to Reno, out of hobo territory yet still far enough north to avoid the more terrifying desert bugs.

I was wrong.

Horribly, horribly wrong.


Two weeks ago, I walked into my room and saw a gigantic fuzzy blob lurking near the window. Radiating malevolence. I ran to get my glasses to see what the hell it was. It remained fuzzy. I should have known all that was about to befall at this point, but alas, I am only human. I called Dan into the room to get his opinion. He started shrieking. I started shrieking.

It was not my proudest moment.

You see, I am conditioned to fight eight legged things. I see a giant fuzzy blob, I see eight legs, I leap into action with the hobo killing book. I'm good at it. The hobos and I had an understanding. This had . . . rather more than eight legs. Plethora is a good word to describe the horror.

Dan ran for the first weapon he could find, which happened to be a hiking boot. This was a poor choice. You see, when you're confronted with the very face of Satan on Earth, you want a wide flat surface with plenty of crushing power. Not a surface layered with crevices that the vital portions of the centipede can hide in. Dan dealt the fiend a mighty blow that would have destroyed the most stalwart of hobos. I was yelling encouragement along the lines of "Oh, oh GOD, WHY IS THAT IN MY HOUSE."

The centipede got stuck in the crevice.

Then the hell monster was forced out of the crevice on the upswing. (damn you physics, you betray me yet again)

Enter five minutes of shrieking and running around until we spotted it on the windowsill. Dan slammed the window down, and we thought we were safe.

It took a stiff drink for me to have the courage to open the window and take this picture.

Until the centipede's family came back for revenge.

The kitchen, two nights later: Centipede runs from under the dishwasher, up Dan's leg, then back under the oven. Mocking our helplessness in the face of its unholy terror. The day after that: Dan is perched on the floor playing video games. He starts flailing and jumps up - to have a centipede fall from his shorts.


I am losing my mind. Two weeks of leaping up every time I feel the slightest brush on a leg or arm to do a full body patdown. Two weeks of poking potential hiding places with my sword before picking them up. Two weeks of giving every structure in a room the stare when I walk in. You know the one - left over from our days spent slightly lower on the food chain. The one where you seek out any possible threat while poised to run.

My plan of keeping all doors and windows closed seems to have been working. I haven't seen one for a few days now. But I know they're there.

Waiting.

Watching.

Plotting.

July Books

Or, what I read when I'm not forced to pour over guidelines and studies.

In an absolutely shameless theft of idea and execution from the lovely Sarah, I'm going to do a quick review of the books I read during July. The amount of free time I have right now is shocking, really.

Salt, by Maurice Gee. Dystopian YA. Hari's father is press-ganged into working in Deep Salt, a mine harvesting mysterious materials that no one returns from. He sets off to rescue him. The writing in this was . . . odd, but the world building was interesting. First in a trilogy.



A Murderous Procession, by Ariana Franklin. Historical Mystery. Adelia returns as the forensic specialist in Henry II's England, this time sent as a physician on a political mission back to her home country. I'm usually not a fan of mysteries, but this series is entertaining and the setting well chosen. There's a satisfying lack of anachronisms and while the attitudes of certain characters seem suspiciously progressive, overall it's believable.

Death and the Librarian and Other Stories, by Esther Friesner. Short Story Collection. I was not a fan of this one. 'A Birthday' and 'A Pig's Tale' were interesting, but did not make up for the rest of it. The writing was awkward and filled with characters with heavy accents. A frustrating read.

Uglies, by Scott Westerfield. Dystopian YA. Tally is waiting until the day she can have plastic surgery to become a Pretty, like everyone else in society, but ends up tangled with a group of people living outside the city and control of the government. This was an interesting premise, but the main character was frustrating. First in a trilogy.

Pretties, by Scott Westerfield. Dystopian YA. Having given herself over to the officials at the end of the first book, Tally is now a Pretty. She's forgotten most of the events of the first book and is content to live a life of endless entertainment - until she's reminded of the reason she returned. The slang in this book was *obnoxious*. The society continues to be an interesting idea, but the main character is not much more likeable here than in the first one. Second in a trilogy.

Wizards at War, by Diane Duane. Fantasy YA. Older wizards are losing their powers and memories, and it's up to the younger generation to find out why and confront the Lone Power yet again. This is 8th in a series, one I've liked for a long time. The magic is systematic and scientific, a refreshing change from most books dealing with the subject. The writing is engaging and the world building, as usual, is well done.


My brilliant plan is to emulate Sarah's fabulous blog and do one of these posts every month. A fabulous aunt of mine decided to start a book club on facebook, so hopefully I'll get some good reads from that.

Now I should probably go study. Bleh.

An Ill-Fated Accordion

This was going to be a video of me playing Spanish Ladies on my lovely accordion Benvolio. (Yes. It's Italian, he was Italian . . . close enough)

I've spent a few weeks practicing and figuring out good basal chords from the melody, and it was actually sounding decent. Until I tried recording the video.

You see, accordions work by forcing air over metal or wooden reeds when the bellows are moved. Pushing the buttons changes which reeds are open to create the chords. Loose reeds = open all of the time = horrible noises.

Benvolio has a loose reed. Benvolio chose to reveal this to me while I was recording.

This means that my accordion does not sound like this. (start at 0:50)

Not that I can play like this, but you get the idea

My accordion sounds like the noises you'd expect from an injured cat determined to kill as many as possible while raging against the dying of the light. That may be closer to my actual skill level than the lovely music above - but it makes for difficult practicing. At this point, the soonest I can get him fixed is mid-September. If I can get him on the plane back to Idaho.

Now I'll never get to be Lawrence Welk.

(In other news, I am destroying this infectious disease rotation and don't have to take the final. Muahahaha.)

I'm not sure if I'll ever eat again

I had my finger inside a patient's foot today.

Yes. INSIDE. In a gaping wound that was oozing pus. I stuck my finger inside a patient's foot AND HIT BONE. My preceptor kept telling me to stop being such a weenie and squeeze it harder. *hork*

I was going to come home and make some delicious food, like fresh rolls and egg salad for sammiches, or lime meltaway cookies. Problem is, every time I head for the kitchen, the only image that pops into my head is the oozing hole. This is not conducive to cooking. Or eating.

A few days ago, though, I made steamed pork dumplings. And had to face one of my weaknesses. If I were a cookery-themed super hero, this would be my greatest nemesis - secondary only to that bastard lemon.


Oh, don't laugh at me. You know those murderous tubes of dough strike fear into the hearts of the strongest men. Beowulf would hesitate before opening one of these monsters. I followed the instructions on the tube exactly - unpeel paper. Press on seam with spoon. Nothing happened.

AND THEN IT EXPLODED OFF THE COUNTER AT MY FACE.

Look. Look into the doughy face of EVIL.

If it had teeth, they would have latched into my jugular.




Anyway, I flattened out the individual rolls, filled them with a mixture of ground pork, water chestnuts, spring onions, and spices, then stuck them in a cobbled together steamer. I should probably invest in a real steamer, because while my tin foil on a pot worked, the dumplings ended up stuck together.

I can't eat the leftovers tonight, though. because my brain has been forever scarred by the fact that I had my FINGER IN A FOOT TODAY.

And here I went to pharmacy school because I didn't want to touch people.

June. And bread.

And here I thought I'd post more during rotations because I'd have more time.

While I didn't have much in the way of at-home work on that first rotation, the ten hour+ days were sort of killer. And then I got sick, which has carried through to now.

I finished my hospital rotation with massive increases in both knowledge and self-doubt. There's no way I know enough to be a pharmacist at this point. My God, I'm going to be in charge of sick people and making clinical decisions without anyone to point out when I've done something stupid. Luckily I have almost a year left to cram in as much information and experience as I can.

The hospital rotation ended up being fairly awesome - I got to see an open heart surgery, make new IVs, was allowed to evaluate patients and make decisions (thankfully nothing I proposed doing would have directly led to anyone dying!). I'm now a week into infectious disease, which is shaping up to be a lot more work. It's great, though. This is the kind of work I want to be doing as a pharmacist.

The preceptor has me going on rounds right now though, which is utterly terrifying and makes me feel completely stupid on a daily basis. I'm taking the stance that this is good for me. Because this is only the first week, I still don't really know what I'm doing. So when the ID specialist turns to me and asks a question, pretty much all I can do is make fish faces while my brain short circuits. I'm hoping this will improve.

Not much else has been happening. I go to the hospital, run around all day, come back, study whatever it is I'm doing the next day, and then pass out. This weekend is another glorious three dayer, thanks to the 4th. I had hoped to make it up to Tahoe, but the traffic was pretty crazy and I didn't have anyone to go with. No, parents, I'm not going hiking alone, so I won't be eaten by bears/mountain lions/crazy mountain men. I listen to you sometimes.

This weekend has been more eventful than most, though. I went on a library adventure and ended up with a slightly ridiculous amount of books. I also went to the most awkward baseball game ever last night. Details another day, I'm still recovering from the social doom.

I also made bread today. I love everything about making bread - the smell, the feel of the dough, punching the crap out of it after the first rise . . . The only problem is with the crust. For some reason, every time I make bread in this oven, the crust is incredibly hard. I have no idea how to fix this. All of my ideas for making it softer were shot down by Cody, the more experienced bread maker, because they apparently would only backfire in the worst way possible. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I know I've said this many, many times before, but I really am going to try harder to post more. And maybe there will be an accordion post soon, as my roommate is on her off rotation and thus not around to be driven to insanity by my playing.

Time

Or, what I do when I actually have some.

The last three years of my life have been spent either sitting in class, going to work, or studying. I have had precious little in the way of free time - or, rather, time not spent feeling guilty about not studying. Now that I'm working four ten-hour shifts, I get three day weekends. Glorious three day weekends. Three days of NOT HAVING TO STUDY ANYTHING.

This was going to be a long-overdue accordion post, but my roommate got home early and I didn't want to subject her to the horrors of accordion practice. We've only lived together for three weeks. I'd rather wait a bit longer before she loathes my very existence.

That said, I spent this weekend in a cooking fervor because it was snowing and I was too much of a wuss to go hike. Yes, snowing. I feel like I never left Idaho.



First, I made mushroom soup. I probably should have gotten more than one type of mushroom, but it was still pretty tasty. This recipe could use some tweaking though, so I'll be experimenting with this again. I might post the instructions once I'm satisfied.


Then I was hunting through my cookbooks and found a recipe for caramel pecan rolls. Note the total lack of pecans in the picture - this is because pecans are insanely expensive and I am poor. Someday, when I am a pharmacist and won't balk at paying $4 for a tiny bag of pecans, these rolls will be covered. Even without gold-encrusted nuts, these were pretty tasty.

-- slight interruption due to cooking disaster followed by airing out of the apartment --

I just attempted to make lemon chicken for a salad. I followed the recipe exactly but halfway through something went terribly, terribly wrong.

Our smoke detector is quite loud, in case you were wondering. And it seems that evil bastard citrus is still determined to be my cooking kryptonite. This is where I fall to my knees and scream "LEMOOOOON" at the sky a la William Shatner.

At least there wasn't any fire.

The Doom Sweater

This is the doom sweater.


It's also known as Darcy, designed by Kim Hargreaves, and out of the book Heartfelt: The Dark House Collection. While it looks lovely and stylish, and early inspection leads one to believe it will be a fairly quick project, I cannot emphasis enough how insane this sweater has been for me. It's done in moss stitch, otherwise known as knit one purl one. Which takes an eternity.


I started this sweater last summer. I'm now on the sleeves. I feel like Sisyphus, people. This sweater will never end. I'm going to be 95, blind, deaf, and I will still not have finished this sweater.


Today, while I was diligently knitting and purling, the doom sweater proved to be too much for my poor bamboo needle. It wasn't happy with my soul, sanity, or manual dexterity - the cursed thing had to take down my knitting needle, too. Luckily, I had some electrical tape handy so I could perform triage.

This sweater is actively trying to prevent itself from being finished.


This? This is a cedar chest full of yarn for projects that I will never get to work on. Because the rest of my life is going to spent on this sweater that doesn't even want to be finished.

One week down!

I am officially a week into my first rotation!

It got much more intense than that first day very quickly, and I discovered a) how to successfully forget every important thing we were taught in class and b) that 800 bed hospitals are very, very confusing to navigate. At this point I can fumble my way around the three towers to get back to the pharmacy, and maybe up to the cafeteria if I'm lucky.

On my first official day, I got to go on a STEMI code - a basic heart attack. I followed the pharmacist to the ER, and was allowed to help calculate doses for some of the medications. We then followed the patient to the cath lab (where they stick a wire through the femoral artery, snake it up to the heart, and inject flourescent dye to find the block). Here the pharmacist decided to quiz me on drugs that were given to the patient before we'd gotten there.

I froze. Something about aspirin? And morphine? Isn't there an acronym for this? I went into semi-panic mode - oh god, I don't know anything, I'm going to become one of those pharmacists known as Angels of Death, I'm never going to graduate or get a residency.

Luckily the pharmacist remembered being a student and, probably recognizing the look of horror on my face, laughed and supplied the acronym. I was able to fumble partially through at that point.

I can safely say I've never felt more stupid.

The rest of the week went much better, so I think the rest of the rotation will be fine. If occasionally terrifying. I had a great day in the IV hood, and another following the pediatric clinical pharmacist.

I'm also really grateful I'm not one of the students that had a much more clinical rotation as the first one. I can't imagine the anxiety I'd be having if that were the case.

Rotations

You're probably aware that I have moved to Reno for my last year of pharmacy school.

It's been a surreal experience thus far because I have never lived in a big city, nor have I had a roommate. Also, coming from the uber conservative land of Southeastern Idaho, it's a joy to see that stores are open past six. And I can apparently buy liquor in the grocery store.

Today was the first day of rotations. My first rotation is hospital - meaning I'll be spending the next six weeks learning how hospital pharmacies work. Turns out, though, that I technically wasn't supposed to start until tomorrow. I was given a tour with my fellow students, then told I was free to go.

Huh.

Months of vague apprehension, weeks of nervous panic, a morning in which I likely drove my roommate insane by pacing around staring at lab values (in case you were wondering, a normal potassium level is 3.5-5.5 mEq/L. You're welcome) and it culminated in two hours of hospital tour and a free afternoon.

My instinct was to return to the apartment and study. It's been my go-to move for three years. Problem is, I have no idea what to study. I have no hospital experience. Do I memorize various IV dosage forms? Do I fumble through two-year-old notes on fluids? Do I continue this morning's frantic reading of the pharmacokinetic textbook trying to re-learn equations for dosing antibiotics?

I settled on a continued review of lab values and working on the doom sweater.

Also baking french bread for tonight's spaghetti dinner.

I figured it's better to relax on this last possible day before going in at 7:30 tomorrow for the start of my rotations. And hope I'm more relaxed tomorrow morning than I was today.

Apparently I'm Stylish!

SquidinkSarah has nominated me for a stylish award! Hooray! Thanks, Sarah!



Her comment about me not updating enough is also completely apt. According to her blog, I now have to do some things.

(This is quite a nice distraction from the paper I'm supposed to be writing on Idaho's proposed medical marijuana bill.)

1. I am in love with science and chemistry, specifically organic mechanisms. To me, it's the ultimate form of truth. You can't get much more pure than the exact way everything works at the smallest level. I love that kind of certainty.

2. I have two kitties named Beaker and Threepwood. They're both a little insane.

3. I learned to knit because I found a stuffed penguin pattern and had to make it.

4. My first job was putting books away in a public library - because of this, I have a freaky knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System. Name a number and I can tell you the kind of book you'll find there.

5. The only dance I can do is polka. I only know how to do that because I went to Norwegian Camp.

6. I am unable to make lemon-y treats. Lemon meringue pie refuses to solidify. Lemon bars are lemon soup on top of shortbread. It's my kryptonite.

7. I am a certified video game nerd. I own every playstation console, a DS, and regularly play Xbox, 360, and Nintendo's various iterations.

As for the other requirements. . . I don't think I read enough blogs. I suppose I can't just re-nominate Sarah.

An aside: in an attempt to get myself to post more, I was kicking the idea of answering questions you people may have about drugs. If you have any. It obviously wouldn't constitute medical advice of any sort, but I take great joy in explaining things that fascinate me. Comment with a question!

Cars

I'm beginning to think that any dealings I have with cars are cursed.

Or maybe it's just this car.

I drive an ancient Subaru I inherited from my brother, who inherited it from our father. The car has . . . issues. It's the same car with the mysteriously stolen-and-replaced tire from last Easter. To set the stage: the front blinker is duct taped to the car after being hit in my apartment parking lot; the cover for the back light has fallen off; at some point keys were taken to the side; there's one off tire missing a hubcap. Oh, and the lock is busted so I have to crawl through the passenger side to open the driver side door. Makes me feel really safe when I'm entering the car in a dark parking lot.

Tell me the first thing that goes through your mind when you see this vehicle.

It's definitely "I'm going to break into this car because it clearly contains something valuable," right?

Right.

I entered the car, intending to drive to Idaho Falls. After fending off the automatic seatbelt - it occasionally snaps and tries to throttle me - I looked around. Something seemed off. Every compartment was open and the trash bag had been scattered. This certainly wasn't how I left it. It slowly dawned on me that the loose change had all been removed, as had my cassette tapes.

Who, in 2011, steals cassette tapes and leaves the USB charger?

I know my junior high self's taste in radio music and slight ineptitude at recording songs and not commercials is worth thousands, if not more. But seriously. They also stole my wickford express tape, which I'm significantly more upset about (who in Idaho apart from my father and myself even listens to sea chanteys?!).

At least they didn't take Edgar.