Heather mentioned to me today that she was heading to the grocery store. I asked to go with her, as I needed to pick up items for Kris to make his world famous curry dinner (where world is defined in this case as the 6000 square foot lot known as Krikitt Downs, of course). That, and honey. Didn't have any honey for this morning's English muffins. Few things will make me grumpier than honeyless muffins.

Come to think of it, no toliet paper would make me grumpier. And we needed toliet paper.

After wandering back from the grocery store, Heather started putting the cold groceries into the refridgerator. After a few moments, she commented, "You have a lot of rotten fruit in your fridge."

Um, yeah.

She continued, "And what's this?"

I peered into the fridge to see the glop of something that had spilled on the second shelf maybe two, three years before. "Um... condensed milk? Maybe?"

A look of surprised horror came over her face as she looked back at me. She then lifted up the knife she had in her hand and started scraping it off. One! Two! Three jabs of the knife and the blob was gone. The nearly three year old, hardened white something that I had no idea what it was any longer was gone.

Heather wasn't done yet, oh, no. Pffft! Out came the shelf, lickety split cleaned. Zip! Out came the crisper drawer. Shwoosh! Clean.

1. The noise maker can be on by default at night, unless Kitt specifically requests it be off. Then it's off, and there are no arguments. (This one replaced the rule the first one in the bed decides, which resulted in one of us going to bed fully clothed, without any teeth brushing, on numerous occasions, just to be first in the bed.)

2. Dirty dishes go into the dishwasher, if they aren't hand-wash only dishes.

   An extension of this rule is, if the dishwasher is full, and you can't put your dirty dish into the dishwasher, unload the dishwasher and put all the dishes away.

3. No balancing more trash on the top of the trashcan. If the trash is full, take it out.

   An extension of this rule is, the trash isn't fully taken out until there's a new bag in the trashcan. Kris made me put that one in.

There are a few other house rules, like no farting around guests unless they fart first, or blame the dog when you do said fart, but they're usually unwritten and unspoken rules.

But now we have number four, to put leftovers on the top shelf, so that they'll be eaten.

When Heather was done with the bottom half of the fridge, she moved to the top. Out went the frozen tomatoes from the harvest three years ago. Out went the veggie dumplings that we bought by accident two years ago, along with the frozen creme brulee that had more freezer burn than brulee. We also pulled out steaks and, what do you know, frozen potatoes I had purchased a while ago. They'll make a tasty dinner tomorrow.

So, in the span of less than an hour, the fridge was cleaned out. Heather is the best roomie EVAR.

I recognize that things are going to change in life. The only constant in life is change blah blah blah. But that doesn't mean I don't find it annoying a lot.

And I mean, A LOT.

Today is Julia's birthday, and wanted to get her a nice bowl and fill it with chocolate covered peanuts. The peanuts were easy to get, so I dashed over to the local Pier One for a nifty bowl. I have several bowls that I like, a couple from there, so I figured it was an easy run.

The gaggle of teenaged girls going into the store at 8:50 at night should have clued me in that I should turn around and run. The "Everything 50% off!" should have screamed at me to freakin' run! There are few things I dislike more than the frenzy of cheap or free. People who would never buy some of the crap at the store, buy the crap. I don't get it. I don't like it. I can't stand it. Blech.

I didn't figure it out, though, and went into the store. Another "Blech."

Most of the shelves were bare. What remained was basically crap. No, no, real crap, not just the crap crap. Annoying.

It reminded me of the time Kris and I drove to San Jose to the Home Chef store for a rolling pin for Cal. We walked in, noticing the store had significantly more people in it than it normally did, only to realize most of the shelves were bare because they were closing the store down. That was the second Home Chef store closed (the other in downtown Palo Alto that burned down a few years back, to be rebuilt and reopen as the Apple store). The only reason I went to the San Jose store was because of the Palo Alto one burning down. But they're both closed now, and I'm left with the Williams-Sonoma or Draegers for my nifty kitchen gadgets and cookware (also known as expensive and even-more-expensive kitchen stores in my world).

I know that stores that don't have the clientele are going to close. But it's annoying that the stores I actually like and shop at are the ones doing the closing.

Entertainingly enough, I have come full circle.

Nearly two years ago, I came to this hospital for a group appointment to discuss options for laser hair removal. I really can't stand shaving, even though I've been doing it nearly every day for over last two decades, and wanted another option. I went to check out laser hair removal as it promised quick (sweet!) and painless (awesome!). The reality is far from the idealized version of such promises, but that's the subject of another post.

Today, I'm sitting here again. This time, as an after patient. I'm here with three old women with names like Gertrude, Arvilla and Palmina. Fifty years from now, will some punk kid look at me sitting across the room and think my name is odd?

The other people are here to listen to the presentation about the Mohs procedure: what it means, what to expect. I have never seen this video before. I'd like to see it, but I'll be heading into the back room while the rest of the crew watches the full video.

Once again, I feel like I'm in the wrong place. What am I doing here with these old people? I'm reminded of when Mom's second husband's mother told us about why she stopped going to her high school reunions: it was full of old people. She'd look at all these white haired people that she used to know and think, "Where did all these old people come from?" They reminded her of her own age, and who wants to be reminded of that?

Note to self: send an email to Scott. Before the email address I have doesn't work any more.

Holy crap.

A woman my age just walked in!

With her mother!

Okay, the older woman is her cousin. But her cousin looks old enough to be her mother. And she doesn't look old enough to have skin cancer.

Which may be the point.

It happens. It happens to a lot of people. Ask around. Just about everyone you know will know someone who has had some form of skin cancer or growth that needed to be removed. The only time it's a worry is when it's located close to something important (can you say, "eye?").

Time to get the stitches out

Gah! This thing itches like mad. I get the stitches out tomorrow, but have another 24 hours left before that happens. If I think about it, it drives me nuts. If I don't think about it, then, well, it's bearable. What is it about the healing process that makes it so annoyingly painful (itching being a low-grade, localized pain).

Several years ago, I bet Kris I could pee farther than he could. He told me he'd take that bet in a heartbeat. Tonight, once again, I bet him, given a full bladder and the right angle, I could pee farther than he could. To my surprise, I had intimidated him into saying, no, he wouldn't take that bet.

We were having dinner with Tyler and Heather at the newly opened, local Indian house (notes to self: veggie Korma delicious, chicken Korma sucky suck, garlic naan means no kisses, but is oh-so-very tasty!). I wish I could recall how the conversation went, but somehow we managed to arrive at the topic of peeing distances. Tyler expressed disbelief at my assertion.

I had once told Kris I could do 100 situps, no problem. He bet me $100 (our standard bet) I couldn't do 100 in an hour. I won, but only just barely. It's become our standard measure by which we gauge how likely some seemingly innocent statement is true ("Sure. And I can do 100 situps. In an hour.").

Update: Was talking to Roshan, and yes, we agreed that 100 situps in an hour is ridiculously easy. So, I'm clearly misremembering the incident. It must have been 100 situps in like 10 minutes, but Kris was gracious and gave me 15, or something like that.

So, sure, I can pee farther than you. And I can do 100 situps. In an hour. (Ignoring the fact that, yes, I really can do 100 situps in an hour, and in far, far less than than hour, but that's because I train.)

I had to describe to Tyler various requirements, then commented that my smaller bladder and higher pressure, compared to Kris's larger bladder and lower pressure, was guaranteed to win. He tried to counter with Kris' amazing stomach muscles being able to force the urine out more effectively, but was thwarted by my comment, "His abs are no match for my Kegel exercises. Which I'm doing. Right. Now."

I learned to pee standing up a long while ago, but the website I learned from has since been bought out and redirects to a sucky-suck site now. The best I could find was the recently discovered (for me) NSFW site, with her description of the process. It's as I recall, but without the pictures and helpful comments.

I'll need to wait until after Heather moves out before I practice in the shower hitting one wall with my back against the other wall.