While I appreciate people who wait to write their piercing experiences until they see how it’s turned out, I find that I have to write it quickly so I don’t forget what happened. To that end, here is my nipple piercing story.
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Well, it’s done. I’ve deleted the catch-all address I’ve used for years at my domain. I’m actually pretty scared of what’s going to happen…I don’t know if it’s an aversion to all change or if there’s legitimate reason to be scared of losing mail at this point. I visited 233 websites and changed my registered e-mail address. There are another 139 addresses that were either already established as legitimate, or for which I couldn’t change the registration information for whatever reason. The legitimate ones are being forwarded to my Gmail, and the ones I couldn’t change are being forwarded to a webmail account on my host that I can check periodically.

I’m pretty sure everything I would want to receive has been taken care of in one way or another, but it’s still nervewracking. Cutting down on the 1000+ spam e-mails I received daily (and all the bounces from falsified headers) will be nice, but I’m still nervous about possibilities. I’m not sure if I should bother enabling Dreamhost’s Junk Filter on my domain…if it doesn’t apply to forwarded addresses, then it’s only good for whatever is getting delivered to that spare account. I think for now I’m going to leave it turned off; if I continue to get lots of spam in either my Gmail or the spare account maybe I will use it.

If you need to reach me, the e-mail address you already use probably still works. Ask if you have questions about that.

I am depilated. It took an entire tube of Nair and some leftover Sally Hansen, but it’s done. I pretty much never get all the hair off my legs anymore, but I did it. It’s the societal pressure thing…if I’m going to be romping around in a bikini (which I am), I don’t want to have hairy legs. I used to get waxed sometimes, but that takes both time and money. So instead I spent a couple of hours doing it at home for $7.99. My legs may be covered with hives and still burning in places, but I still got it done!

I’m a bit ticked off, though, because that stuff eats your fingernails, too. I spent so much time with the cream on my hands and washing and so forth, that my nails are now paper-thin and won’t last. This pisses me off because I’ve been keeping them nice for a few months in expectation of getting a manicure with a fancy color of nail polish. A says I can just get tips put on and it’ll be fine, but I’m annoyed with the Nair anyway.

Given that every time somebody tags people on a meme, but not me, I think to myself “aw, nobody ever tags me,” I figure I better heed sewcute’s command to do this one!

The official meme: Once you have been tagged, you have to write a post with 8 facts/things/habits about yourself and say who tagged you. In the end, you will need to choose the 6 people you tag and list their names. No tag backs.

1. I love watching the soap wash off my body in the shower. I don’t know what it is about this literal cleansing - washing away - process appeals to me, but I like it.
2. I can’t imagine vacationing in a place more than once - there are so many places in the world I want to visit, that I don’t expect to ever have the money to return to them. That said, I have been to Montreal and Niagara Falls (Canadian side) twice, and I will be going to Alaska next year for the second time.
3. If I am not actively interpreting at work, I am sleepy. This means I am sleepy for most of the workday, often regardless of caffeine intake.
4. My favorite type of gum is Orbit Bubblemint. It lasts a long time, it blows pretty good bubbles, and the taste is unique - not quite like regular pink gum, but only slightly minty. Surprisingly, other Orbit flavors - Sweetmint, Cinnamint, etc. - do not blow such good bubbles. Isn’t it all bubble gum regardless of flavor?
5. Sometimes I think I am too nice online, and I should call out more people who deserve to be called out for whining, being bitchy and haughty, etc. But I am so afraid of people disliking me that I just keep my mouth shut. (Note: if you’re reading this, I’m almost definitely not talking about you.)
6. I am such a bad cook that I don’t even bother. Virtually everything I eat is pre-made, even my Diet to Go food, although that is at least fresh. I can make cookies, but that’s about it. I guess if I tried a little harder I might become a better cook, but it doesn’t interest me.
7. I used to do crochet and cross-stitch, but I haven’t picked either up in a very long time - probably at least a year.
8. My favorite candy bar is Reese’s Nutrageous, or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup if that counts. I also like that new “Take Five” candy bar, and the peanut butter Twix. Unfortunately these are all high in fat, so if I am being bad and getting candy at all I get Twizzlers or York patties, or if I’m being really bad I get Three Musketeers. I miss eating candy regularly - can I have my college metabolism again please?
9. Added - bonus #9: I really hate when I cannot remember stuff within minutes of thinking of it. Sometimes I forget what I was saying while I’m in the middle of saying it. I just completely lose it - and it hasn’t been replaced by anything else, I’ve just forgotten. I also meant to post something after I was done with this post, and I can’t remember what it was. Dammit!

And I am tagging the following people, who are under no obligation to actually answer this meme.

1. Halsted
2. eudyptes
3. curvedmetal
4. Nina
5. zaph
6. plantyhamchuk

A unique meme from Neil - I don’t do this kind of stuff much anymore, but this has unique questions. A bit long though!
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We waxed my leg last night. I say “we” because A was the one doing the actual yanking, and I say “leg” because we only managed to do my right leg and only below the knee. Now, I’ve been getting waxed for about six years. I detest shaving so much, and I’m so bad at it, that it’s been worth it for me to spend the money to have it done professionally in a way that will last longer. But for some reason I decided I wanted to try it at home, and A agreed to help me. It was much stickier than we realized; she had to wash her hands afterward with mineral oil. The wax was also purple, which was weird - in salons the wax is usually honey-colored, but theoretically this had lavender in it, so they made it purple. I also had to take it back down to the microwave twice during the process, so next time we’ll probably just do it in the kitchen and keep the wax on heat by putting it in a pan of hot water. It took about as long to do that one part of my leg as it would have for a professional to do all of both legs, but it didn’t hurt any worse than getting it done in a salon.

Anyway, I got my usual hive reaction when we were done, and it’s still there almost 24 hours later. For some reason I felt like taking pictures of it, so now you can all see too.

Well, this is interesting. I have a mild hearing loss at high frequencies, apparently. This was prompted by an NPR story about the “Mosquito” teen repeller, which plays a 17kHz tone to drive away unruly teens hanging around stores and other establishments. I had been able to hear the sample tone played on the radio, which was less than 17kHz, but we couldn’t hear it when I played the story on the computer. We figured it was just the computer having a hard time playing it, so we tried the Online Hearing Test at LloydHearingAid.com. I was the one clicking the buttons, so we were really only testing my hearing, and it came up with a mild hearing loss. It said my loss was greater at the lower frequencies (assuming I was interpreting the little chart right), but I figured that it only said it was a mild loss because they wanted to sell me hearing aids.

We still couldn’t figure out if my computer could play a 17kHz tone, though, so I searched around trying to find out how. I discovered that the Audacity software (which I downloaded to record Spoken Wikipedia articles) could generate its own tones, so we started playing with that. I was rather surprised to find that I couldn’t hear anything at 11kHz or above! A could hear up to about 15kHz. So now she knows why I sometimes don’t hear her when she’s calling for me from elsewhere in the house. I’m vaguely considering going for an actual audiologist test, even though I can hear human voices with no problem…just to find out what my actual loss might be, if any. I’m not actually worried…it was just a surprise to me to have A saying “yes, I hear that” for tones that I could swear weren’t even being played.

This is a tough post to write, but I’m up to the challenge. I thought about locking it, or filtering it, or something, but I’m not going to. I am, however, going to hide part of it, because not everybody wants to read about my sex life.
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I am profoundly tired. I am so tired it makes me want to cry. And I did cry last night, over some little thing, just because I was so exhausted I couldn’t handle it. I can no longer concentrate, and my thinking is affected. It’s not that I didn’t sleep last night, because I did, but I still haven’t caught up from the beginning of April. Ever since I pushed myself so hard at LLC, I have been tired, and I can’t keep up. I did it again last weekend and again this weekend, and I’m just tired. I want to take a day off, a day where I can sleep and not do anything and relax and maybe get a couple of chores done but mostly just do nothing. But I can’t, because A pointed out something last night - it’s not appropriate for me to be doing so much community service on the weekends that I have to take a day off from my paying job. So I will have to tough it out, even though I am so tired I genuinely, honestly, want to cry. This coming weekend is going to be more of the same, I’m afraid, because I will be working Friday night and Saturday, and there’s stuff going on Sunday so I might end up there again. I’m going to try not to, though, because I can’t take it anymore…I am so tired.

I asked to be interviewed by kgola and here are the results! My earlier offer to interview others still stands - just post a comment. These questions are partly about sex, so my parents should probably look the other way…
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