Namaste, Bitches

Just had a nice long chat w/the Hula Rat on IM. It was a wonderful surprise.

And... in amidst my classwork, I took my goofily-named Blood Elf Paladin, Evilwyn, from scratch to lvl 40 in about 6 days of play-time. Got her warhorse this morning and since she gained the riding skill I went ahead & blew the 9 gold on a bird mount. I got the black one - I think I might have to blow another 9g & get the purple one instead. The black one doesn't look very flashy. Evilwyn's got black hair & is sporting the Chief Brigadier's set which is black & red, so I thought the black bird would look stunning, but it just looks, well, meh. I gave Kitsune, my lvl 40 'lock, a red undead horse along w/her felsteed because it looks absolutely gross - a skeletal horse with flayed, raw flesh in patches. Kitsune's got the worst-looking robe on right now - it looks like a burlap sack mated with a straight jacket. So I have an escaped undead mental patient on a raw skeletal horse. Now I have one lvl 61 and three, count 'em, three, toons at 40. I'm really good at bringing my guys up to 40, but after that they end up stuck in Booty Bay for eternity. They're all craft-mules anyway. I took Zane's skinning away from him & gave him herbalism because Rob really wants an herbalist to pal around w/Death out in the Outlands. Zane, my bad ass lvl 61 Tauren hunter (with an elite wolf mount, no less) is now wandering Eversong Woods like a freakin' hippy, picking flowers. I may as well take away his axe & give him the wildflower bouquet or something. At least, he's out there when he's not running Death around Stranglethorn killing lvl 35 trolls. "Kill all trolls, all trolls in STV must be killed. If you see a troll, kill it & loot it. We want their mojo, their wildvine, their tusks, their necklaces, and some vials of troll ball-sweat while you're at it". Or lvl 40 pirates... "Some pirate stole my eye & I want it back. Hell, kill all the pirates while you're out there & take their tobacky, too. And if they're hanging out with trolls, kill them & get some snot in a bottle for me".

Could be worse - I could be running back & forth between two guys who are about three feet apart. Gnome: "We're not talking right now. You go tell that goblin to my left that I have his widget for him"...
Goblin: "Tell that gnome his widget is missing some pieces."
Gnome: "That goblin wouldn't know a decent widget if it was lodged in his eyesocket. Go get him some more widgets from those trolls you already killed three times on separate quests for their lungs, toenails and loincloths."

We also watched Night at the Museum last night. I freakin' loved it, even if most of the good stuff was all shown in the commercials. Ben Stiller was quite real & Owen Wilson was actually acting & not just being Owen Wilson. The tyrannosaurus skeleton stole the show & the mummy's bodyguards were perfect. Rob bought Full Metal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa because it was on sale at Wal-Mart (why he was at Wal-Mart betraying his Union wife I have no idea... especially why he was in there alone... he couldn't even wait til I can walk again, geez) but we haven't watched it yet. Maybe tonight. I'm up way past my bedtime, considering Rob's got a 1:30 dr appt & I've got physical torture at 3:30. I don't want to go, honestly. I'm tired of those people poking me.

Yesterday, the Hula Rat e-mailed me - her dad fell off a ladder & ended up having a concussion-induced stroke. They had to do some trepanning to relieve the pressure & they put him into a drug-induced coma so his brain could heal... Ann's started to get to know her other family - her dad's new wife has a lot of people, & they all love him. His name's Leo - he makes a mean barbecue. I'm just glad to know that Ann's got people around her while she's going through this - she sits by her dad's bed & reads to him, they all try to talk to him & keep him stimulated. When the neurosurgeon feels he's had adequate recovery time, they'll bring Leo out of the coma & start doing therapy - see if he's had any permanent brain damage & which centers are still working vs. which ones aren't. At least I kind of know where that wave of the blues came from - picked it up on my antennae from Ann. I was just sad yesterday, pretty much all day, but this morning I feel a little more stable. I still want to cry, & after Rob goes off to his own bed, I probably will. Tears are good.

Woohoo! My amazingly talented soul-sister in San Francisco has finally graduated w/an MFA, majoring in English. Gone is her student-as-career days, now she must get something published & make lots of royalties so she can pay off those student loans. I got a copy of her Master's Thesis in Creative Writing, some of it old, some of it new, all in a 'Blue Spiral Notebook'. And, the choicest bit in the humongous package that arrived UPS yesterday, an actual letter!!! I just wish I couldv'e been there to see ye olde & terribly sexy Hula Rat in her cap n' gown.

They've finally given us a new schedule - I got the Hallowe'en-friendly Sun/Mon/Tues off. Next major challenge: Selecting & training a relief auditor so I can go on vacation before the BodyWorlds exhibit in L.A. closes.

I've got the house to myself for a few moments - the car again. We really need a different old car - the one we've got is becoming unreliable, noisy & is overheating again. Lurvly. Just lurvly.

Wellll, my bestest friend Ann sent me a DVD from rotten.com - an autopsy video, featuring Ken Noguchi from the LA County Coroner's Office. I watched it this morning. It was interesting, but in a way sort of anticlimatic.
The video was very subdued, almost as tho it wasn't made for others to view it at all, sort of like it was a video record of the autopsy. I expected splashy informational clips to be inserted here & there, like a Discovery Special or something. Maybe an interview w/Dr. Noguchi, or one of his assistants (aka dieners). I got the impression from how he was talking that one of the assistants actually worked in a forensics lab, because he'd ask "So, do you do this procedure for forensic analysis?" & the assistant would yea or nay it.
The good doctor was not gentle or elegant with how he cut into the woman's body (which had little blurs over her face, nipples & pubes) - he tugged & pulled at her w/the scalpels & knives. There were ripping sounds as he yanked the viscera away from the organs. I expected something a little more... uh, I don't know how to explain it. Elegant, maybe? I guess because they were performing an autopsy, it seemed as tho the quickness & efficiency was out of place, as though they weren't being careful enough or observational enough. The lighting in the room was bad, kind of dim & off-color. Like they were in a basement boiler room.
So he took each major organ out, trying to determine cause of death. She was an older, overweight woman but I was surprised at how little actual fatty tissue she had throughout her midsection. Doctors lead you to believe that if you're overweight your heart & liver are coated in a cocoon of choking fatty deposits. Her heart was very clean. Her lungs looked like velvet when cut open, smooth, pink & slightly mottled on the outside. Her right lung had evidence of pneumonia, which Dr. Noguchi determined as the cause of death.
Her liver... well, when they pulled her liver out, which actually looked better than any liver I've seen, including calves' livers in the grocery store. And my stomach took notice & rolled over w/a loud growl. My mouth started watering. I've got a whopper of a craving for liver & onions. I was kind of shocked at my stomach, asking it "What the hell is wrong with you, anyway!"
They left her stomach & intestines completely alone, didn't cut any samples off, nothing, just pulled them out & away from the inside of her body cavity so they could take out her spine & spinal cord. They cut her brain all to pieces, which for someone who's used to seeing whole or nearly whole brains in jars of fixative was strange. Because of the length of time since she'd been dead, her brain had already gotten very soft & once they started dissecting it, it sort of fell apart into a nearly-unrecognizable mass. A very sad thing to happen to a brain. I felt bad for the brain.
Another odd thing - there were no hanging scales. Dr. Noguchi would hold an organ in his hand, like her heart & say, "I'd say about 350 grams. A little enlarged." He passed her heart to one of the dieners & the diener hefted it & agreed. This method of measurement was used on the brain, the lungs, the liver - just the doctor estimating weight by the feel. I'd have liked to see them weigh the organs afterward to show how on the doctor was w/his guesses. It seemed cavalier & innacurate as all fuck-all. But, I remember watching the Cajun Cook, Sherriff Wilson, do the same thing w/salt - he'd poor salt in his hand, say "about 1/2 tsp." & then pour it into a measuring spoon & it would be almost exactly what he measured out.
And then it was pretty much all over - the body was sewed up, washed & put back into the body bag. The only thing that really got to me was seeing the featureless underside of her scalp folded over her face so they could access her skull & the brain cradled inside.

Well, the inevitable has arrived... all those lovely mercury amalgam fillings I have are deteriorating at a rapid rate. I s'pose that's what I get for being an acidic-food-&-drink lover (pepperoncini, anyone? how about some lemon to go w/that Coke?) So now I have a really interesting choice to make - root canal vs. extraction. It's a visible side tooth, so all the people in the dentist office are going, "Oh, honey, you'll want the root canal w/a crown. People will see that when you smile." When do I really show all my teeth when I smile? All I can see are little $$$ in their eyes. I'm going to get the thing pulled & maybe later go in for some bridgework, but more than likely I will walk around missing a toof. Right now I look like a lopsided hamster - one cheek all puffy & red, squinty-eyed. What's funny is the nerve pressure & swelling are making the other eyelid jitter up & down. It's an upper tooth, so of course my tonsils swelled up and my lower jaw hurts just for the hell of it.
My girl, the newly acclaimed Hula Rat, sent me the niftiest button. It reads: "I like poetry, long walks on the beach, and poking dead things with a stick." She knows me so well!
Finished reading another crime profile book, "The Cases That Haunt Us." Talked about all these unsolved cases - Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, the Boston Strangler, Jon Benet Ramsey... and the Zodiac Killer. I never knew that they never caught Zodiac. For some reason, this really bothers me. So much of my life has been spent hearing about killers... Zodiac, Son of Sam, the Green River Killer(s), Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy... being born at the beginning of the 70's meant that you grew up in the end of an era when people could leave their doors unlocked, when you could pick up a stranded motorist or hitch-hiker & feel relatively secure that the person wasn't a maniac... women could stay home alone & not be nervous... my mom was death on "not talking to strangers." I think it's partly because of the excellent survival training I received as a child that I now have a near-pathological hatred for anyone who stops me in the casino to ask where the nearest bathrooms are. Considering the day that we live in, and the atmosphere that has surrounded us, people continue to leave unattended children around the front desk while they gamble. 4am & there's someone's toddler napping by the bar. Ya know, even though we're quick to call security when someone leaves their kid to sleep on one of the benches by the front desk, when we see an adult come up the steps by the bar & gather a sleeping child into their arms & leave, we never ask them to wait for a security guard to properly ID them as the child's parent.