Bone Spurs

Bones spurs have always been a weird phobia of mine. Don't judge me - some old lady at the church I grew up in got one when I was young, and it's been in the back of my mind ever since. My sister has a bunion phobia. We're normal, back off.

I always imagined something similar to a rooster's spur, this big gnarly growth coming out of your ankle:

Source

My heel has been hurting the past couple days. When I put weight down on my right foot it's sore. Kind of like a bruise. So of course I started thinking about bone spurs again. And, like any normal person, I looked it up on WebMD - the Internet's gift to hypochondriacs. Side note: I spelled "hypochondriacs" right on the first try. Go me!

Unfortunately, WebMD did nothing to alleviate my fears. Apparently bone spurs are not like rooster spurs - they're just a little bit of extra bone: A bone spur (osteophyte) is a bony growth formed on normal bone. Most people think of something sharp when they think of a "spur," but a bone spur is just extra bone. It’s usually smooth, but it can cause wear and tear or pain if it presses or rubs on other bones or soft tissues such as ligaments, tendons, or nerves in the body. Common places for bone spurs include the spine, shoulders, hands, hips, knees, and feet. [...] For example, the long ligament on the bottom of the foot (plantar fascia) can become stressed or tight and pull on the heel, causing the ligament to become inflamed (plantar fasciitis). As the bone tries to mend itself, a bone spur can form on the bottom of the heel (known as a "heel spur"). 

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Look at the "heel spur" link! *weeping* This is doing nothing for my paranoia! Thank you, WebMD. Thank you.

Please tell me you  have a ridiculous phobia, too. Please?

Weekend Tunes and Product Placement

It seems like these are all I have time for anymore... School is sucking the life out of me. Make it stop.




For my Tunes, I don't have a YouTube video. Shocking, I know. But in light of Halloween being in two hours and all....I'm gonna share Vitamin String Quartet's tribute to horror classics. So click right here and listen!

For Product Placement...let's see...I'm going to go with these strawberry candies. They are Mr. T's favorite candy and there are about 15 of them laying in front of me right now. They're delicious.

That is all. For now.

Dog Person All the Way

I've always thought of myself as a dog person, but now I am 100% sure. You want to know how I found out?

Source

Litter boxes. I hate, hate, HATE cleaning litter boxes. Especially now that we have two cats.You clean the thing out in the morning, and it will need it again by that night. And Chairman Meow loves a fresh litter box. As soon as I bag up the...debris...he hops right in to start a new cycle. Splinter? For all his other problems, I can at least turn him out in the yard for a few minutes and be done with the whole "bathroom" thing.

Tunes/Product Placement...What day is it??

Oh my goodness, I missed you my blog. My little snuffy-wuffy, bloggy-woggy...

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Anyway.

I missed...what...a week? I'm too tired right now to come up with anything clever to say, so I'll just do my missed Tunes and Product Placement from the past weekend.

Firstly, (not)Friday Tunes!!

These guys are playing Live on the Green in Nashville on Thursday (October 13). I actually played this video for my students this morning. Which may or may not get me fired... Hopefully it won't. I was just running behind and it's all I could think of. So...yeah. Woo!

And lastly, (not)Saturday Product Placement!!

At the risk of ridicule from my friends, I am going to product place Utz Cheese Balls. Mostly because it's all I could think of just now when I started typing. My friend MC bought these last Spring, and I wanted them, so I bought my own container. And for some reason, even though he bought them first, everyone started making fun of my cheese ball obsession. I actually finished the container, because I spilled about half one day on accident. Then...umm...Eel?... Sure, Eel. Eel bought me another container at the beginning of this semester. I brought it down to the lab a few times and between all my friends and myself we got it taken care of in about a month - before it had a chance to go stale. Here's to you, Utz, and your delicious, delicious cheese balls. 

mmmmmm....

SNAFU

If you look up the definition of "SNAFU" in the dictionary, there is a picture of my life and the words "Situation Normal: All F*cked Up" Yes, I know "my life" is a very abstract thing to have a picture of. Also, made you swear again! Such a naughty reader, with your potty brain. Hehe - that reminds me of the line from Get Him to the Greek where Sergio (P. Diddy) is talking to Aaron (Jonah Hill) about how he's mind f*cking him and Aaron says "I hope you're wearing a condom, because I have a dirty mind." omg, that movie makes me lulz...

I promise I'll stop complaining in a day or so. Probably when Fall Break gets here. I tend to feel better once I get it all out in writing or in words. That's probably why I've kept journals for so long. I wrote regularly from the time I was 13 up until the wedding. Things just got so crazy then I got out of the habit, and haven't been able to get back in the groove. It makes me sad, and is partly why I started this blog. I'm almost always in front of a computer, bathing in the soothing glow of electronic light.

Just so you know, I will never stop rambling and getting off topic. It's a chronic condition, I'm afraid.

Anyway, on to the complaining: I had two projects, a homework assignment, and an exam this week. Plus, I had to give a quiz and begin lecture on a new topic in the class I teach. And the student I assist with 2170 had a project he kept asking me for help with. And if you know me at all (or any college student, really), you'll know I'm quite good at procrastination.

So, project one was due Monday night. I finally got it working on Monday afternoon, then almost forgot to submit it. The way that professor grades is using demos. Thank goodness I married Mr. T and my last name is now Wilson - it used to start with a B and I would have been one of the first to demo! I won't go into details, but let's just say my program didn't output properly with the type of demo the professor wanted. My lovely friend...(I'm running out of good nicknames)...MC is as good as it's going to get. Anyway - my lovely friend MC, who has saved my butt about a million times over the course of my college career - let me use his test file which worked with my program when the standard test wasn't working. I still need to figure out why...

Tuesday I had to give a quiz. Then I spent the afternoon grading labs and the quiz. This was a golden day to get stuff done, and I squandered it. Oh, joy - I spelled "squandered" right the first time. Mood lifted slightly.

Wednesday was exam day. I woke up at 8:00 and started working on a study guide. Minus a few (incredibly stupid) mistakes, I'm really hoping that went well. Not too impressed with it. The professor was making it about 30 minutes before class. She had way too much on it - I wouldn't say it was too hard, but there was too much to get done in the allotted time. Only a couple people left before class was over, and I'm not convinced that they didn't just give up.

I had to finish project 2 last night as well. It was due at 12:00am, and I think I had it finished at 11:45pm. I hate that feeling. It was just stupid little mistakes that took too long to find. Again, I won't go into details. But Geddy (he really loves Rush, so I name him after the singer ;) ) and I got it done! The professor (same one from the above-mentioned exam) handed out the grading rubric before the exam (Yes, you heard correctly - the lab was due the day of the exam. It was actually due the day before the exam, but we asked for an extension. She gave us one day.). (Holy moly there are a lot of parentheses in this paragraph.) On the rubric, two of the requirements she had given us weren't even listed. So two features I implemented (because her project requirement sheet said I needed them) I won't even get credit over. The entire first half of the page was dedicated to all the comments we needed for our code. I hate undergrad classes.

Since I didn't get finished with the project until 12:00am, I didn't have a chance to prepare a lecture for my 8:00am class. So I gave everyone extra credit for showing up and encouraged them to work on the MS Office practice labs I've been pushing all semester. They were cleared out by 8:45am. Whatever. Punk students. I've been in my office all morning working on the lectures for next week, and now their exam is a take-home over fall break. You're welcome, punks.

I probably got close to 1,000 words today! Wonder how many tl;dr comments I'll get... Hey, if I get comments at all it's a win for me!

Choices, part three

Ha! You thought it was over, but it's not! I don't really have much to add, just a sad little story...

I got this really awesome job opportunity. My brother-in-law (we'll call him Lightning) sent me the information about a job opening in UT Extension. It was for an IT-type job, but would mainly focus on teaching the UT Extension software to employees. The hire is supposed to start mid-November, but I was hoping to be hired and start late November/early December (at the end of the semester), then spread out my last three classes over the course of next year. It would push my graduation date back to December, but I would have a real job! With benefits! And a real paycheck!

I knew it was really unlikely that I would get the job, and I thought I was keeping my hopes down low enough that it wouldn't matter so much when I didn't get it. But when I got the rejection letter (such an ugly word, "rejection") I was really, really sad. More upset than I thought I would be. Apparently they only consider applicants who are in their absolute very last semester. Sigh.

So here I am, with another semester and a half to get through, in a field I'm really not sure I like all that much. Hrm. Any suggestions? Other than to just get over it, that is. I'm working on that one.

Boo October

Don't get me wrong - October is great. You got Halloween, the start of Fall, the new Paranormal Activity will be coming out soon. Holy balls that looks scary. FYI - if you don't like the Paranormal Activity movies, stop reading my blog now. We are no longer friends. (Only kidding - I need the page hits. Just don't tell me they suck, or I'll cut you.)

I do love me some Halloween parties, too. We're invited to one where you have to dress up like a superhero/supervillain. But you have to make it up yourself. So no Batman or anything. We have a few ideas: Alcoholic Girl and her trusty sidekick Drunk Boy (This one mostly consists of us consuming large quantities of alcohol, which will probably happen anyway - I think it's a booze party, at least. If it isn't, our costumes will make no sense.); Tat and Too: Wonder Twins from the planet Ink (This one would involve me not wearing a lot of clothing, due to the location of most of my tattoos.); and The Steam Punks (This one would involve a lot of work in coming up with costumes). 

But no, I have a good reason for saying "Boo October" this month. Just over a month ago October seemed so far away. When Mr. T wanted to watch crappy B scary movies, I postponed it with "You can watch as many scary movies as you want come October." Last night he fell asleep to some weird movie set way in the past (think knights and such) that somehow involved witches and zombies. Tonight it's Bikini Girls on Ice. I know, right?! Contrary to my love of Paranormal Activity and Saw, I really dislike scary movies. Even bad ones.

Also, I have 2 homework assignments and a project due tomorrow (two of which are not finished), another project due Tuesday, and an exam on Wednesday. So, October blows. At least the first week. It should be awesome near the end. No verdict on the middle yet.

Side note - I think I'm going to dye my hair back to my natural color, but keep the sides short with a long streak down the middle. Like Anya, from Project Runway. I am curious about how popular this hairstyle is going to be now. I know as soon as I saw it I loved it. And even thought "If I do that...I'll just be a copycat. But it's so awesome!"

Saturday Tunes

Every Friday (this week I'm doing Saturday instead, for some reason) I'm going to post a music video. I have a few friends who choose to be rather ...  judgmental ... of my music. So I will warn you now that I will be choosing videos/songs that make me smile, or even laugh out loud. It may be ridiculous, over-the-top, offensive, or just plain bad ("Friday" anyone??) - but when I saw it the first (hundred) times, it brightened my day. I hope it does the same for you.

So I've mentioned before that I read dooce. Well, she's a recovering Mormon, and I have actually learned a lot about Mormonism from her. She posted this video...I have no idea when. I read her new posts, but I am also going through and reading all her archives (she started her blog in 2001, and I'm up to 2007). So I don't know if this was from a new entry or an old one...but it doesn't matter. I love Alex Winston's voice, and this is a bizarre song about sister wives. The video is super trippy. It makes me happy inside to just listen to it over and over...there is probably some subliminal message in there, because there isn't another song I've heard that I will do that with.