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What did you do this weekend? I had my appendix out. Funsies.

Monday, July 25th, 2011

Ah, I have a tale to tell. Spoiler alert: it ends with me having an tiny obsolete chunk of intestine chopped out of me and lots of bed rest.

Friday night I thought I had a gas bubble lodged in my bowel, so I took some Gas-X and went to bed. Later, I was woken up by a not-excruciating-but-damn-persistent pain in the same spot. Figuring it was still gas, I did some stretches and wiggles in the hopes to jar it loose. Four hours later, I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t lay down, I was pacing around because that was the only thing that helped. Being that it was 5:00 in the morning, the only place to go was the emergency room. I won’t lie: I was hoping it was something remotely serious, because nothing is lamer than going to the emergency room for gas cramps (“I have a boo-boo, meeeehhhhh!”). Since I was profoundly grumples about the pain (I may or may not have used uncouth language towards everybody), the nice lady put a needle port in my arm and gave me Dilaudid.

Ahhh, Dilaudid. Let’s talk about Dilaudid for a minute. It’s a derivative of morphine, and you know how people get addicted to opioids? Yeah, there’s a reason. The next time I watch “Intervention” and someone is addicted to Dilaudid, I’m gonna cut them a little slack, because, damn.*

Then I was wheeled to have an ultrasound, and as soon as the ultrasound lady pressed that thing down on my lower right side, I said through my gritted teeth, “PLEASE. PLEASE DON’T DO THAT.” She said, “Oh,” in a knowing way. And then jetsetter me was off to have a cat scan! Whee! Where they were clearly able to see my inflamed appendix and then I was scheduled for surgery. Did you know when you have surgery they strap you down with your arms out a la the death penalty? I did not.

Which, don’t get me wrong, is a good thing. Funny story about how my maternal grandparents met: my grandmother was assisting in a surgery on a young adult male getting his appendix out and, in the middle of surgery he sat up, completely drugged, insisted he needed to go now, and had to be wrassled back down. My grandma eventually married him. So I think strapping down members of my family during appendectomies is a good way to go. Apparently we get feisty and like to wander a bit.

After I ate lunch the next day and didn’t barf (I actually didn’t throw up at any point in this process, very strange) they tossed me out. Everyone at the hospital couldn’t be nicer; They offered me Percocet, which I politely declined in favor of Tylenol (don’t worry, you’re not going to see me selling my lady-wares or plasma on the streets for hard drugs any time soon, despite my newfound love for Dilaudid) and now I’m home feeling sorry for myself. And, since I know you’ve been on the edge of your seat, here’s the picture you’ve all been waiting for:

*Even though this is insanely vulgar, it gives you a vague idea of what it was like. Start from 6:48 so you get the plot, but the pertinent bit starts at 9:16: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp5TeDVf1_Y

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Dollah dollah bills, y’all.

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

I have happened across a myriad of music about money lately for no reason in particular, just coincidence. These are the ones that I like.

1. “I Need A Dollar”. This song was recently used in a commercial and I immediately loved it. It’s deflated spirit but danceable underbeat reminded me of “Sixteen Tons”, another beloved song of mine.

2. “Money” by Pink Floyd. I have only recently been introduced to The Floyd (I know, I know) because I had always heard about how drug-infused their concerts were and I figured you needed to take copious amounts of LSD and pot to appreciate their music, so why bother? I now realize I was wrong, because they are rad, even when you are straight-edge.

3. “For the Love of Money”. This track is FUNKY. I always feel guilty boogie-ing to it because it’s got quite the grim message. It’s like gettin’ down with your bad self to “Luka”. This song is not for dancing. That being said, try to find a video of the O’Jays performing the song live. They do some fine choreography.

4. “Price Tag”. While the entirety of this song is charming, my favorite bit is a small chunk of the chorus. From about 1:13 to 1:17. If I hear this in my car, I’m singing with it, I don’t care who sees me.

5. “She Works Hard for the Money.” I love Donna Summer. One of the few tapes I had as a kid was her greatest hits album. Nothing sexier than a kid singing along with this and “Bad Girls” (beep beep, toot toot). However, this song is forever changed in my mind to Hank Azaria’s version from The Bird Cage. Forever. There’s no going back.

And additional monetary songs that I like but have not heard recently: Kanye’s “Gold Digger”, Cyndi Lauper’s “Money Changes Everything”, P. Diddy’s “It’s All the Benjamins – Rock Remix” (we listened to this all the time in college), and, of course, “If I Had a Million Dollars” by Barenaked Ladies. So sad they broke up. Sigh.

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The internet is a gift for which I am forever grateful.

Thursday, July 14th, 2011

1. I describe this cartoon to people all the time, because it is so very true.

2. Recently, I discovered this website, and now I cannot get any work done a’tall.

3. The internet has also kept me up-to-date on all things cute which is incredibly important to me. There’s a website called Must Have Cute that helps fill the gaping, almost-insatiable “adorbs” void inside of me.

Mustachio’d Pistachio.

A calendar where you draw a new line betwixt the dots every day. At the end of the month, you have a nice drawing.

The phattest kiddie pool ever. I won’t lie – I want it. I might even go outside during the day if I had one.

Measuring cups that make a robot when they’re all together.

And a variety of precious foodstuffs that warm my cold dead heart.

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Scales and feathers and sparkles, oh my.

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

I don’t normally talk about fashion here because, frankly, I don’t normally care. I think 98% of fashion is boring. Oh, are dumb-looking scarves in this season? Great. That’s swell. I will continue to wear the same things I do every single day that I’ve worn for the last fifteen years (black stretchy pants, black t-shirt, black trouser socks, black shoes). But I happened to see an article on Emma Watson who is being featured in Vogue this month. I think she’s a classy broad so I clicked the link and lo and behold! Fashion awesomeness! Check it out.

In the first picture, she’s wearing pantyhose encrusted with rhinestones and other whatnot. While that would be unpleasant (I like to cross my legs and the rhinestones would be all kinds of digging into my leg meat) it looks fabu. And in the second picture – oh, I can’t even describe my glee. Plastic fish scales over a ombre-dyed base fabric, the scales being held in place with little rivet-things, and then a feathered collar to top it off? WANT. Which gets us to the point of why I wear the most mundane-looking clothing imaginable. In high school, I used to care a great deal about fashion. I pored over magazines trying to copy the looks I liked. Unfortunately for everyone around me, the looks I liked were never tasteful pantsuits or sweaters. They were always the plastic-fishscales-rhinestone-pantyhose variety of garb. So I would trundle off to high school wearing the most inane garments and wonder why people would make fun of me. At some point I realized two things: one, no one was ever going to take me seriously if I kept dressing in this way, and two: you have to be very thin and very tall to pull off a great many of the looks I was emulating, and I am neither. So I decided to simplify things I would just pare my clothing down to the easiest things I could think of and focus my attentions elsewhere. I won’t lie though: sometimes I miss dressing like an extra in Cirque du Soleil.

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Birds of Prey Day.

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

For weeks now I’ve been looking forward to going to Birds of Prey Day in Brewster, NY. It’s on a farm and the poster said there would be 100 birds of prey there! You know what that means: OWLS. I was so excited I didn’t know what to do with myself. Cricket and I drove up to Brewster (a 45-minute drive) and OMG I’M GONNA SEE A MILLION OWLS!!

Okay, so it was a bit of a letdown. There were indeed about 100 birds of prey, but they were mostly eagles and hawks and falcons. In fact, this was predominantly run by a falconer’s association, so people were walking around with scary killer birds on their arms like it was no big deal. There was this bird:

And this one:

And this and this and this and also this:

And this adorable baby goshawk who was soft and warm and precious:

And they’re beautiful, but I really dig owls. Owls are my bag, man. What I learned there is owls are not for having. If you’re a member of the falconer’s association (which I could never be because I live in an apartment and you need to have a falconer’s outdoor area which must be approved by the association) you can slowly (over seven years) work up the falconry ladder getting to bigger and more dangerous birds, but at no point can you have an owl. You cannot buy an owl. You cannot acquire an owl. There are no owls to be had. I was very forlorn. It seems my dream of owl ownership is slowly fading away.

But not all was lost! There was a wildlife rehabilitation group there and they had some owls! Granted, they didn’t have the ones I really wanted to see (Eastern Screech or Saw-Whet) but they had this lovely one that was trying to catch a bit of a snooze, I think it’s a Barred Owl:

And a grumpy-pants horned one who gave me some serious stink-eye.

I love how because their eyes work independently in a lot of ways (pupils dilate and contract, eyelids blink) it looks like there are two separate expressions on their faces.

The best owl experience of the day was a with a wee tiny fellow. He was a short-eared owl, and he was a seething tiny puffball of rage in a wooden holding thing. I asked the nice rehabilitator man if he could pull out the little guy for me so I could get a shot of him and he said, “No, and I’ll tell you why. That bird is new, he’s wild and he’s feisty. But I’ll take a picture of him if you’d like.” I handed him my camera, and the man walked up slowly to the box, snapped a photo as quickly as he could and pulled his hand out of there. I found it great that this large, six-foot-one man was wary of this itty-bitty tiny smootchie demon-beast. Here’s the photo.

Evil Death-Bird…of DEATH! And Cuteness! But mainly DEATH!

There was also a wolf at the Birds of Prey Day, and that was kind of exciting. The wolf handlers were really nervous about having the wolf be around so many kids, but I was psyched. “Wha…? There might be a mauling? I don’t want to miss that! Lemme get my funnel cake and I’ll be right there!” However, this was the most mellow wild animal I have ever seen in my life.

The wolf handler asked the audience if anyone had a really fragrant perfume or lotion and someone did, so she poured it on the ground, and the wolf rolled around in it. He does that to mask his scent from his prey. So now, before his prey is taken down, it will be wondering why the forest smells like Bath and Body Works.

Posted in Activitays, Nature, New York, Stuff | No Comments »

A bunch of stuff.

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

1. I’ve seen some neat things in my travels around the city recently. Bryant Park is getting its annual overhaul (plants go here, skate rink goes into storage, lawn gets rolled out, etc.) In the area where they keep the lawn mowers and rakes, I noticed that it is guarded by a similiar owl to the one that hangs out at the Herald Square park near my job. Here’s the owl guarding my park at work:

And here’s the owl guarding the fertilizer and lawn chairs.

He’s right at eye level. I have ignored the bible’s teachings and thought about stealing this guy many a time. However, I suspect that he is bronze and therefore very heavy, and also getting arrested and going to Riker’s Island for attempted owl theft, then getting shoved in a cell with someone who has a stellar collection of human heads in their fridge, that does not appeal to me. So Mr. Owl gets to stay there…for now.

2. There’s a store on my route to work called Zara and they have these rad chrome ants in their window display. They’re big and they’re shiny and they’re awesome.

3. There’s this ad on the Metro-North for The Weather Channel that is just awful. First of all, the wording is ridiculous.

Here are the words on the ad:

At the Weather Channel,
we’re delivering more than just the weather.
We’re connecting people with their passions.
The ultimate-lifestyle-media brand,
on tv, online and on mobile…
connect here.

Okay, first of all, no. You can try to get all deep and whatnot, but you’re just there to tell me if it rains. That’s it. Sometimes the people in advertising take themselves waaaaaay to seriously. Yes rain? No rain? That’s is all there is. Stop it.

Second, that lady’s face is TERRIFYING. If you look long enough, it looks like she has a deformed mouth with two rows of teeth, like a freakin’ shark. Also, could she open her mouth a little wider? What is she doing, trying out for The Mummy movie? Here, look for yourself:

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Jessica and the not-particularly-great 24 hours.

Friday, May 13th, 2011

I’m not having a stellar time over here in Jessicaville. One of the things that have gone wrong in the last 24 hours: My entrails and I are having differences of opinions. I would like them to work, they would like to take a hiatus from their appointed tasks and re-watch all of seasons of The West Wing. Hopefully we can come to a reconciliation at some point. Until then it means I have to eat things like gruel and porridge, basically things that look like clinical depression in a bowl. I grow weary of weak tea.

I had a very pleasant yesterday, when I gave my very first lecture to a group of librarians on simple design techniques. They were not mean to me and had good questions, it was all lovely. I got home where my computer was in sleep mode. I wiggled the mouse and tapped the spacebar and wiggled the mouse and tapped the spacebar and…nothing. So I shut it down, gave it ten seconds and turned it back on again, where it promptly went into sleep mode and could not be roused. I then looked around for seven dwarves because clearly I’m sharing my home with Sleeping Beauty (B’doom CHING! I’m funny!). I called Cricket and informed him of my woes, so after work he came over and took the side off my Tower of Power, tinkered around in there, and sadly informed my that my hard drive has Teh Computer Deaths. So until my new hard drive arrives in a week, I have a sculptural element in the corner of my bedroom. The screen, it taunts me with its blackness. “I could play music or surf the web, buuuuuuuuut I don’t think I will. Neener neener.”

Finally, I came back to work today to hear a tale that chills me to the very core. Here is the story as told to me. Upstairs, an employee came into their office to find a poopy smell and two hefty piles of crap on the floor. I was like, WTF?!?? I mean, I’ve seen the rats outside the building and they are big, but really? When the employee called office services, they found out that we have bedbug-sniffing dogs that come through here, and one of them must have just let it all out in the office. All my co-workers were like, Oh isn’t that just a hoot? NO. IT IS NOT A HOOT. I don’t want to have to deal with that kind of thing, EVER. If I wanted a job where large animals took dumps in my workplace, I would have become a park ranger. I am not a park ranger. I am a graphic designer. NO LARGE DOGS CRAPPING IN MY OFFICE.

Also, allergies.

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Pirate tugboat reborn – Part FINISHED!

Monday, April 25th, 2011

Okay, I finished the pirate tugboat part (aaaarrr) and I took a picture of it. And then I finished the sky and I forgot to take a picture of it. So you’ll have to take my word for it that the sky is very nice – pleasant horizontal lines representing pale clouds. In the meantime, tugboat!

Posted in My Art/Design/Business, Nature, Stuff | No Comments »

Macy’s Flower Show 2011.

Thursday, April 14th, 2011

Flower show, people! Very exciting! I don’t know if they had a cohesive theme this year like they have had in years past; it seemed a bit hodge-podge. But I’m not complaining. As always, all kinds of plants with bright colors and textures, oh, it makes me so happy.

The entrance was a bit eh in my opinion, all fake flowers slapped all over the walls. And in the window boxes were plants with cakes in the middle representing the different fairy tales.

I gravitated towards the succulent window as usual, and the wee succulents were delightful. If I lived in a desert climate, I would pour all my money into my garden for sure.

So, whoever was in charge this year was not afraid of the spookier plants, because as you came in and turned into the bag section – blammo! – you were confronted with giant freaky pitcher plants dangling in your face. They were so big and had so much presence when I almost bumped into them I said, “Excuse me,” to them.

Nearby these monster pitcher plants was the aye-aye of the plant world. The were a thick, fleshy, reddish, pointy plant covered with whitish fur. It looked like someone with white back hair got a bad sunburn.

That wasn’t the ickiest part though. It was the petals creeping out of the pods. All I could think about is every horror movie where they show a door, and sloooooowly dirty fingers with jacked-up nails come around the edge of the door, and you know OH DEAR GOD HORRIBLE DEMON A-COMIN’ and then you cover your eyes with your hand (if you’re me).

And then cactus cactus cactus.

All kinds of cactii. I love cactii and succulents so much because I think they look like totally alien creatures, very Dr. Seussian. And there’s such a variety of sizes and shapes! I never cease to be enthralled by them and their wackiness.

Also, orchids. Really stellar ones this year.

And, of course, no flower show would be complete without a picture of a papyrus plant with the little sign written in Papyrus font.

Additional flower show photos: woman exhausted and sleeping next to the jewelry section.

And the panderingest pandery thing ever: the jewelry case totally devoted to the look of former Princess Diana’s ring, now Kate’s ring. Here’s a pic of the ring.

And here’s the case.

Posted in Nature, New York, Random Art Bloggery, Stuff | 1 Comment »

Reasons my family left Russia.

Friday, April 8th, 2011

You might think it was the persecution or the lack of opportunity, but you’d be wrong. It would be the wacky animals that get waaaaay too close to the humans. I work in a highly urbanized area. I am accustomed to interacting with squirrels or little brown birds. In Russia, it is different. I would leave too.

Example 1: Cop stops guy at routine traffic stop, quickly leaps into vehicle due to a pack of wolves running by.