Well, eventful summer.  Actually that isn't exactly true; it was full of FRENCH, since I took another intensive course, and then it was full of Otakon, since I finished up my Sister of Battle costume in time.  But this post is to focus on the other great struggle of the summer: the case of the misbehaving cat.

Now it is natural for cats to misbehave.  All of my cats have behaved badly on purpose with malicious intent at some point in their furry little lives.  This cat, however, is the first cat that I've adopted off the street, and he still has a number of psychological issues, including a severe dislike of change, fear of abandonment, and, as we learned... a touchy bladder.



Yes, look how cute he is.  How innocent he looks playing with his toy.  Now look at my nice couch:



Look how nice and comfy that couch is!  Izzy agrees with you.  He also loves this couch.  In fact, he loves it so much that at the beginning of the summer he decided to start urinating right on the places where the seats join together.  This means pee ran down into the cracks and onto the carpet.  It made our whole living room smell most distinctively like, you know, cat urine.  Horrible. 

I was actually concerned for his health because his pee was looking a little off color, so I took him in to the vet on several occasions.  He was diagnosed with a "sensitive" bladder-- in other words, if he gets "stressed" he starts to have panicky urination and even gets blood in his pee, which initially made me think he was in serious danger.  Nope.  We put him on a bladder friendly (read: expensive) diet immediately and administered antibiotics.  His pee went back to a nice yellow color and a high volume.  I could tell because I had plastic sheeting down on the couch which conveniently collected it in puddles.  Problem NOT solved.

Keep in mind that I'm spending 11 hours a day at school during this entire time, coming home exhausted from French and then having to problem-solve with my frustrated husband to try to fix whatever was going wrong in Izzy's little kitty brain.  Eventually we made the decision that if we couldn't get the couch clean we would just have to get rid of it.  I called a couch cleaner (from French, during lunch) and after extensive phone-tag finally set up the appointment for the only day he had available... the day my French class "graduated."  Couch or "graduation?"  Sorry French class.

The cleaner guy did a bang up job, took care of the carpet underneath too, and we kept Izzy upstairs in the office for a couple of utterly miserable days in which he alternately sulked and made wild escape attempts.  His first instinct upon escaping?  RUN TO THE COUCH, ATTEMPT TO PEE.  

In utter frustration, I ordered a motion detector off of Amazon.  Here it is.  It is supposed to spray canned air and make an air-horn sound when the cat passes it.  Forty bucks, expensive, but I figured, what on earth else am I going to do?  If we get a new couch it's not going to be as nice, and what's to say he won't just relieve himself all over that one too?

So a few days later (of keeping the cat upstairs, in extreeeeeme frustration) we get the box.  I open it up and discover this:



This is two sprayer heads marked "defective," AND a letter from the previous customer stating how poorly he was treated when he tried to get a properly working product delivered.  Yes.  They actually had the balls to turn right around and ship the broken items back out to another customer!  Without even removing the previous guy's angry letter! !!!!! !!!!! !!!!  WAT.  In amazement and bewildered disgust I called the company.  Some sort of answering machine took my information, no call has been returned.

I next contacted Amazon and got a raised-eyebrow response from the rep, who commented that this was quite unusual and unacceptable.  Yes, indeed.  He shipped me out yet another one.  They can't refund my money because canned air is classified as "dangerous," so they don't take it as a return.  Hopefully this ends well.

As a positive codicil to this tale of woe, I fooled around with the sprayer head quite a bit yesterday and eventually got it to work, at least to some extent.  The results were extremely satisfying.  If the other one works dependably, I am going to be thrilled.  I have made a rage comic for your perusal concerning the upshot of this event, as follows.



Cheers from me and my cat, who is now "on tilt" and too nervous to even enter the living room.

Finds at Goodwill today:

• Perfectly fitting linen suit (very unusual)
• Cute woven leather flats - which I have been looking for for months!
• Nylon mesh turquoise shirt (another long-time list item)
• German-style embroidered cream skirt with pockets!
• Soft, wonderful plaid cowboy shirt with shiny snap buttons
• Wrap dress that makes my boobs look awesome <3

What an excellent pull!  Can't wait to add these to my wardrobe and enjoy them.

So, finished up the school year with a relatively successful run.  I taught my last TA class, which was greatly saddening to my heart.  My students this semester were, for the most part, extremely smart, great kids who really invested a lot in the class.  I was full of happiness when I read my evals and heard that they got so much out of my sections!

Immediately after school ended, we headed out to the Outer Banks for our vacation with the Internet.  We invited Kristina and Sean, who had visited us previously and whom we visited for New Years, along with some other wonderful folks who we had or hadn't yet met: Dan, Mary, and Sean (Skraleigh) had all been at the New Years party, but Brian, an old friend of Skraleigh's, was new to us as well as our friend Josh (Dwan) from Left 4 Dead 2.  He took a train all the way from Georgia and had never before seen the ocean!  

We had the house off-season for an entire week, very cheap.  The house was enormous, large enough to fit ten people easily, with a full kitchen, wet bar, hot tub, pool, and all the amenities.  The beach was lovely and the weather was wonderful-- it was even warm enough for us to go swimming!  We visited the pier, Tom and Kristina went kayaking, Josh and I shared some delicious home-made candy, Tom and I went parasailing along with two of the other couples, we visited the lighthouse, played miniature golf, and saw Bridesmaids, which was really a great movie. 

Here I am with a Lily Pulitzer themed horse:
  

Tom with some kayak oars:


The two of us returning from our parasail:


And the whole group, sporting our vacation's theme shirts.  Problem?


It was a great week.  We spent several nights happily intoxicated (except Dwan, whose underage and whom we were very responsible with!) and hung out in the pool and hotub and just enjoyed the heck out of the house and the beach and the weather.  I also found some awesome thrift store items, including a long, fur trimmed suede coat.  Yep.  It's a fucking PIMP COAT.  Serious.  It actually looks great!  

After the beach, we came back to two weddings in a row, all over Memorial Day weekend, and then I got to work on my costume-- but since the pictures from the weddings aren't processed yet (we had a huge backlog and Tom had done a noble job getting as many out as he has!) I will wait to post about the weddings until a later date.

Seeing as I'm completely useless today for reasons I'm about to explain, I think it's about time to post another update!

Our kitty has been good.  So good!  He's been walking on his harness and leash like a little pro.  I'm so proud of him and gosh darnit if he doesn't just look adorable.  Here is him on a walk:



So, walks have been fairly frequent and he has been very excited for them.  So, the other day I obliged him, took him for a nice stroll, and then picked him up to go back inside when Jack came up.  He went straight for us, and hissed at Izzy... Izzy just lost it.  He panicked and put his teeth right into my hand, almost skewering my thumb.  He also scratched my arm all up and bit my forefinger when I was pulling my hand away whilst throwing him inside through the door.  This is the porch after he bit me:



It looks like a crime scene!  Just gross.  There's more blood on the other side too, it didn't make it into the shot.  It seems that he actually punctured into the big blood vessel in my thumb, because the blood was just pumping the hell right out of there.  I stiff-upper-lipped it into the house and then broke down crying and washed what felt like half a cup of blood down the sink.  God, that hurt.  Izzy was immediately sorry and concerned about me, but I was just in too much pain to care.  Tom rushed me to Student Health and they saw me as soon as I got in (to their credit, I think) and were very concerned.  My thumb had already blown up to about twice normal size and the wounds were red and inflamed and really disgusting.  They gave me a tetanus shot cocktail and a can of gatorade, and prescribed me a HUGE antibiotic (seriously, it looks like a horse pill) and perkocet.  Then they gave me four ibuprofen and sent me home. 

Well, as fate would have it I had also scheduled Elizabeth Molacek's bachelorette party for Friday night, and there was no way I was going to cancel it.  So I put off perkocet and rolled out the sparkly pink and crude decorations and made some cupcakes, lemon bars and punch.  Everyone came over, and really the party went very well.  As it turns out, IMAgiNeiff makes a great bachelorette party game!  Afterwards I ate my nightly antibiotic and my perkocet and fell asleep exhausted.

So this morning, I took off all the little bandagey things and whatnot.  Here's the damage:




It's looking pretty good here, but you can see the trouble spots.  My thumb is swollen as hell and still hurts like crazy.  I'm still on the perkocets and when they wear off it's intensely painful.  The other problem area is the cut on my lower arm, near the wrist, which is puffy and red, and I think is also infected.  The thumb definitely is.  My index finger isn't too bad (I'm using it instead of my thumb to type) but the cat managed to get his tooth up under the cuticle into the nail bed, so that hurts.  The nurse who looked at my arm commented, "I'm pretty mad at your cat!"  I can't be mad at him, since he didn't mean to do it and it was just a panic.  And then, last night, Tom wasn't home because he was heading to Greg's bachelor party, and the kitty was very concerned-- so he came and snuggled me to sleep, and only woke me up once in the night for snuggles.  He's been really good today too.  He really does mean well.  But Jesus CHRIST this hurts!

So, amazingly enough, it's been three years since I got my Norplant removed and replaced with an Implanon.  I figured I'd give a rundown of the differences between the procedures.

I had an appointment for 3 PM with my regular gyno, a really nice, friendly and professional guy.  He's the same one who took care of the Norplant for me, so the procedures are pretty comparable.  

As before, after the official paperwork was over, he numbed the area with five or six small shots.  These hurt quite a lot, but worked quickly.  Then he covered the area with the surgical cloth with a hole in it over the upper arm and got to work.  He sliced a small incision on the end of the implant and then put pressure to pop the plastic tip up; however, this process was a little complicated, since it slipped out of his gripping tool repeatedly.  Every time it slipped, it made a little "pop" sound.  It also made a little sound when he cut into me, which is of course very unpleasant!  Sounds like cutting into steak!  After about 10 minutes or so of fishing and dropping it, he finally got a grasp on the implant and clipped down on it with the tool.  He tugged on it a bit but my body is apparently awesome at scar tissue, so he had to go in with the scalpel and take off some of the clinging tissue.  After that, it came right out, and he inserted the new one into the same place, pushing it to make sure that it sat in exactly the same place.  The pushing hit outside of the numbed area and hurt.  He only did it a couple of times, and then closed up the hole with suture tape, cleaned and wrapped the arm. 

The numbing shots wore off pretty quickly, within about two hours, leaving my arm sore but not excruciatingly so.  On the other hand, apparently my physiological reactions to being cut into are pretty strong regardless of how minor the procedure is; I had difficulty breathing during the surgery (due to inadvertently holding my breath and clenching my mouth shut).  I got lightheaded, nauseated and a bit dizzy, all symptoms that I've had previously to passing out in the past.  After the surgery was over, I felt completely drained.  I stayed awake long enough to get Tom, and fell asleep while he was making dinner. 

In terms of comparison, it was a breeze.  The Implanon removal was much faster than the Norplant by far!  And, it didn't require the extensive cutting and re-anesthetizing that the first procedure did.  It was interesting to me, though, that I had a lot of the same responses to the process given that it was far less invasive and painful.  Of course the first time I ended up crying with pain (after he cut into my un-numbed arm flesh), which absolutely did not happen this time.  But I'm still sore and exhausted.

Over all I would rate my Implanon 5 stars as compared to the 2 star Norplant.  Implanon has all the advantages-- several years of functionality, no need to remember to take birth control, virtually invisible and little interference with my sex drive and other normal habits-- without the huge drawbacks of the multiple capsules and the extreme difficulty of removal.  I'm very happy with this product and would certainly endorse it, now that I've experienced a full cycle of use.

By the way, here is a photo of the PREVIOUS time's wound:


The current one is much, much less disgusting.

I have finished grading exams, with great success.  I love it when my students make references to lectures!

I hacked together a beautiful dress.  For summer, so no pictures for a while.  But it's pretty amazing.  I made it from a crappy dress and a nice shirt.

The cat likes marshmallows.  Yesterday night he stuck his head in the bag of mini marshmallows, grabbed about 5, and ran away and ate them.  That's completely adorable.

First of all: 



We got ourselves a new kitty.  This is the story: About a week ago, one of our Left 4 Dead 2 friends and frequent team-mates posted on one of her friends' facebook walls, a post which made reference to a cat he had found, starving and stray, out in his area.  Our friend ("Fancy" in game, but actually Beth) lives quite far from us, so I just went to check out the pic of the cat based on the fact that I like cat pics in general.  Come to find out, Beth's friend lives very close to us!  So, via Facebook message, we set up a meeting, and Tom and I went over to his house, where I put my face on the cat and rubbed it around to determine whether I was allergic.  I was not; we picked the cat up at 8 and took it home.  It was, of course, terrified, and sat shaking in my lap while we drove down 64 to our house.  When we got home, he explored the house and then proceeded to follow us around and make the occasional loud miaow.  

This morning, I woke up and went looking for him-- he was under our bed, and seemed happy to see me... he jumped into bed with us and gave many cuddles!  All day he has been lap-sitting and rolling around and snoozing.  What an awesome kitty.  So lovey.  Tom and I have named him Isadore, or Izzy for short.  We have a little red shiny collar on him now and have an engraved heart with his name on it on order from this nice lady on Etsy.  Very reasonably priced, might I add!

Here is Izzy grabbing my head with love:


Happiness and snuggles.

In other developments, I've had a birthday.  We went to Roanoke for the weekend and had a splendid time, visited the little zoo up there and the Transportation Museum and it was fantastic.  We also went to a bunch of thrift stores, which was a great success.

Oh, we also went to eat at the Coach and Four.  The potato croquettes are fantastic, but skip the Delmonico steak-- I think they just threw it under the broiler for a bit too long, and didn't season it at all!  On the other hand, the cake we got for desert was terrific.  It was some kind of lemon layer cake with a creamy layer in there and raspberry sauce on top.  Just excellent.  We were pretty full from dinner and we still ate the whole piece.

In terms of school, I'm teaching Early Medieval this semester, which suits me just fine.  I had a couple of students take my section on purpose, because they knew I was teaching it!  Very gratifying.  

According to the internet, right around the post-Christmas season is when all the rich people donate their stuff to Goodwill.  This is a phenomenon of which Tom and I have been the lucky beneficiaries.  But I should start the story earlier.

About 8 months ago, give or take, Me, Tom, Kristina and Sean began to plan for a New Years get together.  They had visited us briefly in the spring (while I was still in super-panic mode about my thesis) and were up for another go-round, except this time it would be us visiting them in their rather more spacious accommodations, in that Sean has an extra room with an air mattress, a step up from sleeping on the living room floor as they had to when they visited us.  The idea for the party spread to Sean's roommate, Dan, a very nice fellow who looks like a pirate, and eventually ballooned to an enormous Facebook event with a soundtrack that initially included only bad but catchy songs and then turned into a free-for-all of tremendous size.  Additionally, Kristina's and Sean's friends Eric and (girl)Sean (otherwise known as "Skraleigh") were challenged by Tom and Kristina to a beer pong duel of EPIC PROPORTIONS.  Insults were readied, fighting words were bandied about.  So, when the day drew near, Tom and I rallied our forces (having just arrived back home from a very nice stay at the parents' house back in the Shire) and re-packed our car full of games and various things and attempted the 8 hour drive to the "Louisville Metro Area."

This drive, rather than being executed as a straight shot with lunch and dinner breaks, we treated as an opportunity to hit thrift stores across states we never visit.  From the morning to the evening we thrifted, with fantastic results, especially for Tom.  He found clothes from Banana Republic, Ashford, J Crew, Perry Ellis, Brooks Brothers, etc etc, all in like-new condition and fitting him very well.  One of the thrift stores we visited had very low prices, down to about $2 for everything, some things cheaper-- I got a brand new pair of suede heels for $2, and a silk scarf (also new) for $1.  I also found a couple of shirts while we were visiting from Karen Kane, which retail for about $60 a piece, for $2, among other things.

The "Metro" area is actually more like a small country town, with some various strip clubs, restaurants and shops, attached to a very large military base which Sean ("Carnes") showed us around.  He also told us some really interesting stories about participating in the maneuvers that they train their various soldiers with; apparently they re-create lifelike crowd situations and have the people figure out how to deal with tense situations.  Really cool stuff.  We went to some fun restaurants, visited Louisville, and even got to ride a carriage around with a lovely horse named Bill!  We also bought a huge amount of booze in preparation for the party.  Carnes also purchased lumber and put together a lovely standard size beer pong table, which we then decorated with sharpie art (illustrating the house rules we'd be using during the party).  In terms of liquor, we had rum and bourbon as well as silly stuff like a fancy vodka and amaretto and raspberry liqueur.  The amaretto was for me, I make a mean amaretto sour and not a half-bad whiskey sour either. 

The party went into effect exactly as planned, attendance was high but not retardedly high, no fist fights broke out and we all generally ended the night on good terms.  That being said, Tom and Kristina got TROUNCED at beer pong.  Utterly trounced.  Skraleigh and Eric wiped the floor with all challengers until they were severely inebriated and then came back for another go-round after having work some of the liquor out of their systems.  The advanced inebriation did allow the Envark/Bandit team a few wins but in my humble opinion the Skraleigh/Eric team was the true victor of the night.  While Skraleigh was taking a break from her victories, she also threw down with some sort of angry dude... a guy who talked shit to people all night, and kept trying to override her choices of music, insisting that his own were superior.  Skraleigh rightly took this to the beer pong table and humiliated him thoroughly; he sulked and left the party after only a few mild jabs.  Good riddance.  Lastly, unsurprisingly I was unable to stay awake after 3 AM, and went to lie down in the "sleeping" room.  Shortly thereafter I heard a great uproar in the common room and a girl was deposited on the couch who had apparently just puked all over the living room furniture.  She slept for a while, then when Tom came in to sleep she got up, went over to the TV stand, and climbed behind it.  I asked her what she was doing, and her reply was "I HAVE TO GET BACK HERE."  Then she tried to knock over the TV, and when that failed (due to me holding it up) she elbow-dropped Tom and fell back to sleep.  A little while later she got up and walked out; we locked the door and put a coffee table in front of it and slept peacefully (mostly) for the rest of the... early morning. 

The next day was a late awakening, followed by greasy delicious food from Steak n' Shake, and recuperation.  Carnes made about 4 different dinners, including pasta and hot dogs and hamburgers and we slummed around and played games.  I was exhausted (I hadn't been sleeping well at all, and was a little sick) and so I went to bed around 11:30, but after that Tom, Skraleigh, Eric, Carnes and Kristina played a huge game of Apples to Apples in which they went through the entire stack of green cards.  Kristina won because she is really awesome at picking out both funny matches and matches that are just crazy enough to work.  Pics of this game are forthcoming-- as are all the pictures, which are awaiting processing.

We went home as we came-- with many thrift stores.  It was actually a pretty relaxed trip, no ice on the roads or anything.  But by the time we got home we were pretty tapped out, and Tom had to get up and go to work the following day-- but by Thursday he was sick, as was I, and we've been home convalescing.  I'm not as sick as he is, so I've been running for groceries and various things, which brings me to the last subject of this post.

Today we intended to go to a flea market and then visit Elizabeth and Aaron (Molacek and Fond) but the illness prevents.  I was very disappointed.  Instead I made a quick run for sauce for dinner to World Market, and on a whim decided to stop by the consignment store near by.  I found some interesting things but nothing worth buying-- until I got to the shoe rack.  On top were the display pairs, usually the most beautiful and expensive shoes they have in stock.  So I look up there sort of wistfully and notice one pair, think to myself, "those are probably a size 8 and probably $100 (things aren't cheap there to start)."  On further inspection, they are actually... 9.5.  My size.  I was like, hell I'll just try those on.  Just for fun.  So I did.  Perfect fit.  I looked at the price tag: $60.  I looked at the sale marking: 75% off!  How did that happen?  They're the most gorgeous shoes I've ever seen-- and my size?  And $14 (including tax)?  What!  I bought them with my heart beating fast and ran to show them to Tom.  They don't seem to be selling on Ebay, so I've decided to keep them.  The leather is buttery soft, they are totally comfortable and the construction is absolutely excellent.  Here is the one and only picture for this post:



The bottoms and heels, which look brown here, are actually gold, so they flash a little when you walk.  The burgundy trim is suede and the laces lie beautifully when tied.  How awesome.

Tornado warnings tonight!  Our power went out for about 45 minutes or so already...

A student came up to me and said "Victoria!  You are awesome!"  I said (sort of embarrassed since I was with the other TAs and many people were around), "Thanks?!"  She said, "I didn't even like this class until today, but when I went to your section, suddenly everything made sense!"

*TEARS OF JOY*

I am so happy I am able to teach.  It brings me such satisfaction.  

Also, section went very well this morning.