ok.. so on Monday night, I tried my friend's suggestion - rubbing alcohol w/vinegar - Oh-Em-Gee!! it burned!! I was literally almost crying (I was saying "ow, ow, ow!".. but no tears).

imagine this - you have a cut.. you put lemon juice in it.. now keep pouring lemon juice on it.. what does it feel like now??

stop!! why would your torture yourself so!?

well, that was me, pouring rubbing alcohol and vinegar in my ear.. not just 1 drop, not 2, or 3, or 4.. but 5!!! and I had to let it sit there for 30 seconds!!! I couldn't take it anymore.

I tipped my head the other way and stuck the corner of a tissue in there, hoping to suck up this evil liquid.. pull out the tissue, little streaks of drops of blood - yes, this vile liquid was making my ear bleed!

so yesterday at work (yes, when I should have been working..) I researched more remedies.. copied several weblinks, and emailed 'em back to myself at home..

there were 3 I found intriguing (but would they work??):
1) tip my ear sideways over a humidifier
2) steam shower to loosen the 'gunk' in my ear
3) heat an onion in the microwave - let the onion steam loosen the 'gunk' in my ear (supposedly works with garlic too)

I came home and pulled out our ancient humidifier, filled the tank with water, and plugged it into the only available outlet in the entire house. sat there for what felt like 'forever' with my head tweaked sideways.. melted off most of my face, neck, and shoulder.. it finally got too hot so I had to stop (it's been relatively cool here lately.. but I'm still overheating on a "good" day)

didn't work - scratch that plan. I shuddered at the thought of enhaling onion steam.. so I skipped that 'remedy' but opted for the steam shower (I needed one of those anyway).

I started up the shower as hot as I could get it.. washed all of me faster than I ever have in 36+ years.. then stood with my ear catching all the steam it could find.. waited and waited and waited, until the water heater couldn't give anymore - then gave up.. again.

strike 2..

tonight I tried peroxide. 5 drops in my ear for 15 minutes - lots of crackles and pops, but unfortunately I still can't hear on my right side.. strike 3

fortunately life isn't a baseball game.. I'll just keep trying

we are being overwhelmed with baby spiders here.. he killed a black widow on our brick wall.. we had seen the white "stuff" not knowing at the time what it was.. but it was baby black widows... ronnie went out and killed 'em.. but there were a few he didn't kill that came in with him =(

so i've made it through one day with my ear blocked. it's got some pressure to it now.. not quite a headache yet.. think of altitude change, like with an airplane, how your ear gets pressure, and you just wait for it to pop.. yeah, that's what i'm feelin' - it just won't pop.. an old classmate gave me a suggestion of rubbing alcohol & vinegar (1:1 mixture) for 30 seconds.. I totally have to try that.. I can't see it being bad, as long as it's good.

oh.. and with my swimmer's ear, I got a sunburn for free..

last week (no wait, actually, the week before) a friend sent me an email about 2 kittens she has (+1 they are keeping). "litter box trained, eat food on their own, and very sweet and playful. Mom is an orange tabby and dad is a blonde tabby." how can anyone resist this adorable bundle of cuteness!?!?

then i had another friend at work that was interested. her son's cat disappeared almost a year ago, and they've been wanting to get him another for his birthday. so i asked for more pictures (per her request). she sent me a cute picture of 5 babies in a basket (all 5 are still up for adoption - the other people backed out on her) - 4 blond tabbies and 1 orange tabby.

so now my friend says - i can't see all their faces. I want to see all their faces. can you ask for more pictures - seriously!?! they all look very much alike. i can see the orange tabby in front left, and all others are blond tabby - what more is there to see? they are cute as all heck! I'D take one if i could (i'd take 'em ALL if i could). so now i gotta bug my friend again for more pictures..

today another friend at work, her friend rescued 2 puppies from the Devore Shelter - both girls, around 3 months old. possibly mastiff/lab or pit mixes.. also extremely adorable.

do these people know what they do to me?? if i had more room, i'd be taking every puppy and kitty that were ever emailed to me.

i've had the hardest time finding ANYONE to adopt anything.. my last foster baby was the luck of timing, they had just put their previous cat down 3 days before for old age. and with the recent foster, i bamboozled a friend. he came by, i shoved the kitty at him. that purring & snuggling bundle of fluff stuck in his mind, and he came back 20 minutes to bring him home (after just saying he couldn't take home another).
people always say babies are easier to find homes for - the cuteness factor wins 'em over every time. but my mother-in-law and sister have cats they are trying to find homes for. both around 4 years old - they are still adorable and (again) i'd take 'em if i could

i would love for my job to be puppies and kitties all day - but they do grow up into grumps and moody-monsters.. heck, my (2nd) job used to be puppies all day.. and they 'growed up' and became 70-lb puppies - that's a little bit harder to deal with.. but when you get 20 minutes of freedom, you tend to be crazy at it. i still love (and miss) every single one of them.

hmm.. yesterday - not much happened. we went to Hometown Buffet for breakfast.. a little garage-saling, then picked up Andy from his mom's. then I just stayed home and did some light housecleaning.

today, still not sleeping in =( but we went swimming! it was fun! I got sunburned! ..but it was fun! then about 1/2 hour later took a shower and my right ear completely clogged up - completely.. can't hear anything.. I'm stone-deaf on my right side now =( how will ever I get through the week??

we went grocery shopping.. that was fun.. got some essentials, got some "luxuries". now we are back home. Ronnie made the weekly salad - shrimp and crab meat with tomatoes (it has a name but I can't recall..) - yum yum! next is pasta for dinner..

he planned to ride his bike to liquor store for white wine.. goes to the bike rack and our bikes were covered in newly-hatched baby spiders, big momma right in the wheel well. he grabbed the bug spray out of the shed - it refused to work. he used ant/roach spray instead but that only killed the babies and made the momma mad. so he smashed her with an empty planter pot. she was a big 'ol creepy crawly black widow!!

he walked to Paul's liquor instead. got a nice white wine, pasta is cooking on the stove. Dougie and Michelle stopped by on their way home from the beach, so they went to the store to get a side dish to eat with our shrimp scampi =)

wow..

.. i haven't been on here since Feb 13?? so I completely missed Valentine's Day, my Birthday (woo! woo!), Easter (hiking), camping/fishing (awesome!!), Memorial Day, 4th of July (UFO sighting!!)

I am amazed by how much of a blogger I am not.. or maybe I haven't had the inspiration other people have had.. I have tried many times to blog.. I just never had enough to talk about.. even though my life isn't an empty shell. I wonder half the time if the stuff I could write about would interest anyone at all.

I live in a teeny tiny small guest-house (650 sq ft!), cool landlord but crazy neighbors.. we have an awesome garden, and would LOVE to have a farm with land (give me land! lotsa land! with the starry skies above! don't fence me in!) .. a 650-sq-ft house doesn't come with a whole lot of land, and most of it is un-useable for gardening. CA isn't the best place for farming land, not unless you are in an un-incorporated section.. and then we both have jobs (duh!), so "un-incorporated" wouldn't be very economical.

past blogging was always about the trials and troubles of past guys in my life.. liking this one who could care less about me, being liked by another who I had no interest at all in.. now that I have a happy relationship, how do I find it so hard to find things to talk about?? and then, I could write for the sheer satisfaction of venting and releasing frustration (I do have lots of that, despite my happy relationship) but then if someone I happen to know, comes across my blog - this could start wars!!!

so, here goes.. weapons - alert!!

the neighbors.. huh, that's a rough-n-tumble topic.. so the old neighbors.. mr kick-the-dog punch-the-wall couldn't work (disability) so his girlfriend had to support them, plus their baby.. but after a year, they moved to something more affordable.

they told us the power was getting shut off May 6th cuz that's when the last guy was moving out (oh yeah, his brother lived there too) so we'd have to change electric bill into our name.. when we paid our May 1st rent, the landlord said not to worry.. the electric is in his name - ERROR ERROR ERROR. May 6th - zero power!!! however we didn't find out about it until 4:30, at which point SCE was closing and couldn't send a tech out (believe me - we tried, the landlord tried). so we wanted until dark for the next neighbor to get home. landlord hooked up an extension cord from their pool-pump to our elec box.. then we had our fish tank connected to the refrigerator outlet - yay! food and light! it made for a very long weekend, I was never so happy to see Monday.

June 1st the landlord had a guy move in so the house wouldn't be vacant & exposed to "whoever". wow, and I thought mr kick-the-dog punch-the-wall was bad. he is there maybe 2 or 3 days a week.. there is no furniture in the house.. 2 weeks later, a girl shows up with a dog.. she comes through our gate, apologizes, then says "sorry I'm friends with Tom in the front". say wha?? the dog is still there.. I think he is the one that is house-sitting..

since then, another girl came into our gate a few weeks later.. she realized early enough that she was in the wrong place and left before causing a scene... BUT just this past week, a girl came into our gate (we were in the house) and asked if she could use the cell phone.. we said no, so she tried to come inside to apologize! you don't just walk into someone else's house! where do you think you are? WHO do you think you are?? oh -and the landlord said the guy's name is Steve. where was "Tom"??

we bought a lock for the gate, but the brilliant braniac landlord made this gate.. it isn't a standard size.. doesn't fit a standard deadbolt.. we're going to have to rethink this whole situation.

at work I started a new job.. it's still the same department but a whole new job entirely. I didn't really know about it. my boss just moved me there. I thought it was just temporary to help them out.. nope, permanent. I like it though. it's the next step after my old job.. so some of it is really making sense now. some of the 'lingo' is still confusing however.. that part I still have to learn.

oh, and we have a new 'baby'. march 11th - 2 fluffy kitties.. adorable!!!!! our friends Daniel and Lori took one (a boy) a week later and we still have the other one (a girl - who we thought was a boy). she is the cat I always wanted (although I'd prefer short-haired, and not black). loves attention & very playful (she's just barely 6 months old) with big golden eyes.

we also built a music studio in our house.. rearranged some furniture to fit it all in. once again, we have wall-to-wall furniture =P

this week was as normal as could be expected

how did I not post anything last weekend?? yes..the germy girl, and yes.. the projects at work.

Last Saturday, time definitely flew by. We did grocery shopping, and we went to Chinese buffet (Panda One).. there quite possibly could have been other things but they escape my mind. ocassional laundry, random garden-weeding. All led up to dinner out at Pho 999 for Jessie's sweet 16.

Sunday was SuperBowl. Daniel and Lori came by with puppy-patrol.. hot wings and burgers.. chips with salsa.

at work, I have had crazy problems of my computer just deciding not to work anymore.. It's totally random so I'm NEVER ever prepared..

I have 2 IBM screens, 5 internet screens, 4 or 5 Excels + 1 Word..

but before my day is half over my Adobe Acrobat stops working, and in the process takes 1 (or all) of my Internet Explorers. It used to last to almost 3.. then it was 2.. then it was 11:45 (just in time for lunch!) but now it's way way earlier.. =(

SO.. I get to deal with that this week.. and I will be training, so we'll see how well that goes.. =P

the cousin-in-law came over Friday night until this morning.. so no bike ride ever occured.. but we did have rabbit stew with dove. very tasty.. very very tasty.

in sadder news, Ronnie majorly hurt his ankle.. so that's pretty much all that occured this weekend.

just 4 more days of work.. and then I get a 4-day weekend =) ((yee-haw!!))

the world is a germy germy place.. and some people don't try to change that..

there is now a new girl at work.. she's a chatty girl (not part of our group) who seems to be in "training" - being that she prepares the training manuals.. either that, or she is perfecting the procedures and such already in place (?) her favorite word seems to be sporadically.. she uses it multiple times every day.

she lately has a cold as well, so coughs and sneezes multiple times every day - and never covering her germs.. Thursday nite/Friday morning, somebody put a box of tissues and hand sanitizer on her desk.. at first she sounded offended, but then played it off pretty well. that didn't stop her from still spreading her germs every where - she still doesn't cover when she coughs or sneezes..