Picture a jar full of milky liquid.

Now picture a glass of milk.

Except of a slight colour similarity, your milky liquid doesn't like a thing like milk, does it?

You know how you can't overfeed goldfish because they'll eat all available food and then explode and die? However do they survive in the wild?

Tales from the bathroom:

There are two stalls in our bathroom at worked: one standard and one handicapped. The toilet in the standard stall works normally. The toilet in the handicapped stall flushes funny. When you flush, the water rises perilously close to the brim before going down normally. Now I always use the standard stall unless it's occupied, both out of politeness and because the toilet flushes better. But it seems whenever I have to use the handicapped stall, the, um, errand for which I'm using the toilet ends up being messier and more unpleasant to look at. So when I flush and it starts rising perilously close to the top, the contents of this toilet are hardly ever clear water and a single piece of toilet paper, it's always a colourful, graphic and odourous assortment of various bodily by-products. So as the water level rises, I always have images of this mess spilling over onto the floor and I'm tempted to flee without washing my hand in order to preserve my shoes, if not my dignity. Of course it never overflows, but it's enough to make one panic slightly every time.

Tales from the subway:

When I'm sitting in a double or triple seat and someone comes along and sits in the seat next to me, I find I tend to shift my body so I'm more centred within my own personal space and impinging on the personal space of those around me as little as possible. However, I've noticed that even when I'm already optimally centred in my own seat, I still tend to lift myself slightly out of the seat and then settle back in my original position, so as to give the impression that I'm making sure I'm out of their way as much as possible. Anyone else do this?

I was a very good girl today. I did all the items on my neglected to-do list from yesterday, except buy drinking glasses because the dollar store had no normal (or oversized) wineglasses and no plain glass tumblers. Fairweather has no work-appropriate pants with pockets, but I did find a pair for $30 at another store. They gap a tiny bit in the back, but the gappy part leans towards my body instead of sticking out in the air, so they're better than the pants I'm wearing right now (that's what I get for shopping at the Gap!). I'm not saying where I got them because I might want a second pair if I decide I don't hate them too much and they don't have much in my size.

So I just realized why only Fran could answer my psych question (unless someone else has answered in the interim) and why I could hardly find anything on the internet: the disorder in question was from DSM-III, which they stopped using in 1994! But I found this very interesting website which describes DSM-IV in lay terms, with enough caveats to keep me from diagnosing myself with absolutely everything!

If I were a tragic hero, my fatal flaw would be that I hate taking out my recycling. I try to recycle like a good girl, but I have to take it downstairs and outside and throw it in these big dumpsters. And it's cold and windy and I'm just getting over strep and my winter coat is too nice to be wearing when hanging around dumpsters. So my recycle box (which is really the box my microwave came in) is full with a week's worth of newspapers piled over the top of the box. I'm probably going to end up throwing a week's worth of papers in the garbage just to get rid of them. If I had a fireplace I'd make a fire and be done with it. (Aside: in my dream home, there would be a fireplace in the bathroom. Of course, in my dream home, the fireplace would be gas or something so it would turn on with the push of a button, and I wouldn't be able to burn newspapers in it.)

I just looked out the window and it looks foggy. Can it get foggy in the winter? Maybe it's a fine light snow, but I can't see any flacons de neige even with my glasses on. Very odd.

So my to-do list today:

1. Take out recycling and vacuum.
2. Do laundry.
3. Mend 2 shirts.
4. Get started on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to conclude my straight-through read of all the Harry Potters that I began when I first came down with strep, so that when my library books come in I can read those.

Things that I put on today's to-do list yesterday, that I've since mentally crossed off because I'm simply not going to get there:

1. Go to the bank and cash my GST cheque.
2. Go to Fairweather's and try on every single pair of black pants with pockets in the store.
3. Go to the dollar store to replace the drinking glasses I keep breaking by piling too much stuff in my dish drainer.
4. Go groceries.

I'm going to try to push those things over to tomorrow, although since I'm still aiming for an 8 pm weekday bedtime for the next few days to make sure I don't relapse into sickness, I don't know how well that's going to work.

But really I don't want to do any of this stuff. I just want to sit here in my bathrobe playing computer games until it gets dark and then change back into my jammies.

Perhaps my fatal flaw should be sloth...

I ordered every book on Salon's Best Books of 2003 list from the library. Going to forceably force myself to diversify my reading. I'm far too comfy re-reading Harry Potter and other books that I know I like.

And because it's midnight and I promised myself I'd go to bed early this weekend, goodnight.

Ponderance of the moment: are there gay male gynaecologists?

As I went about tedious household chores today, I found myself wondering why the contestants in the Triwizard Tournament couldn't just Accio the golden egg.

Because someone reading this must have taken psych at some point:

Yesterday I stumbled upon something called "Imature Personalty Dis-order". After a bit of background reading from Google, I realized that it might apply to more people in my life than I care to admit. Then I found myself wondering: at what age, or at what stage in one's life, is one's personality supposed to become "mature"?

[this post has been edited to insert intentional misspellings]

It occurs to me that a great deal of social and public discourse in our society is based on the presupposition that sex is The Best Thing Ever. (and the corollary (sp?) that if sex isn't The Best Thing Ever there must be something wrong with your sexual methodology).

I wonder if this is a universal presupposition, or if other societies have different concepts of what constitutes The Best Thing Ever.

I had no voice today, so I could only talk in a whisper. And I noticed something strange. When I'd say, in a whisper, "I have no voice", other people would instinctively respond to me in a whisper.

I'd been wondering for a while why it takes so much training to be a pharmacist. All I ever see pharmacists do is dispense the number and type of pills written on the prescription. Why should that require so much study, beyond a 4 year degree and with such stringent entry requirements?

The other day I saw a pharmacist display actual knowledge for the first time. I said that I was allergic to erythromycin, and the medication history she gave me said that I'm allergic to macrolide antibiotics. So she must have known that erythromycin was a macrolide antibiotic (I didn't know this). First time I've ever seen a demonstration of medical knowledge on the part of a pharmacist.

I just woke up for some reason, and I wandered into the living room to find that my computer had frozen in the middle of rebooting. Problem: I don't remember rebooting my computer! GAH! Shit, I hope it isn't doing that sponteneous rebooting thing again! I'd better up my credit limit just in case, because it isn't under warranty, so if this one dies I have to get a new one.

I'm going to stay home sick again today. Badly need several more hours of bedrest, and I can't get that at work, now can I?

I'm sick, I Have a fever, and I'm craving nachos. I don't think I've ever craved nachos before in my life.

Someone keeps calling and hanging up without leaving a message. Whoever that is, STOP IT! YOu're jsut waking me up!!!

Ear infection. Blerg. I'm going to go get antibiotics as soon as my hair dries. It's such a childish malady, an ear infection.

The Star did a pair of articles on the generation gap between baby-boomer workers and my generation of workers. I don't have much to say on the content of the articles themselves, but they brought up a peeve that has been festering in the back of my mind.

In my family, none of the boomer generation were affected by the downsizing of the 90s. They're all well into their third decade of continuous secure employment, with respectable pay, benefits and pension, with retirement just around the corner. And yet these people are advocating left and right policies such as outsourcing and contract work, which will rob the next generation of workers of the opportunity to also enjoy secure employment. Mind, they all have at least one kid who will be entering the workforce within the next few years, and I'm sure they all had at least a passing glimmer of worry during the recession of the 90s, but for reasons I cannot fathom they are all vehemently opposed to any policy under which workers are paid a respectable salary with a modest raise every reasonable interval, with basic benefits, a pension, and some semblance of security. All I can say is WTF?

I feel like I'm coming down with something, but I still need to go grocery shopping. I have no food. And even if someone else could do groceries for me, I have no idea the name of the soup I want (I only know what the box looks like and that it's in the kosher section).

I sponteously spent $50 on Amazon the other day, and I don't even feel guilty about it. I bought the Princess Bride on DVD since I was having so much trouble finding it, and the Sims since my copy isn't entirely legal and kind of doesn't work any more. My copy wouldn't uninstall, so I had to clean it out of the registry by hand, which I don't really like doing but I managed to do successfully. Then when I finished I found out that there's a utility to do that (It's called something like SimEraser and it's on the Maxis website). But anyway, I got a DVD and a game which is technically 2 games for $50, so that's fair.

I just finished reading Ten Lost Years by Barry Broadfoot. For those who haven't read it, it's a collection of oral histories of people who lived through the Depression in the 1930s. It was very interesting, although sometimes I found myself wondering if the stories were a wee bit exaggerated, but the storytellers lost all credibility to me in the last chapter. In the last chapter, they were discussing the long-term effects the Depression had on them, and some of them were mentioning how shocked and appalled they were about how people "today" ("today" is 1973 when the book was written) were so casual about spending money. They cited a parent who buys her son something that costs $25 and doesn't consider it a big deal when that was a month's income in the Depression, or the fact that a lobster dinner costs $8 (1973!) which could feed a family for over a week during the Depression. But don't these people understand the concept of inflation? I presume that at the time of the storytelling they were still living as functional adults in everyday society, so wouldn't they be aware that the value of a dollar is different? The mother who spent $25 on her son wasn't spending a month's income on him, she was spending $25 on him. Don't the storytellers ever go shopping? Shouldn't they be aware of what stuff costs? This one little thing changed the storytellers in my eyes from people with interesting stories about a historical event to whiny bitchy old people who are all grumpy because things aren't exactly like they were when they were young.

FYI à tous: I will be screening my calls this weekend, so anyone who wants to call me should just leave a message and they'll be called back soon.

Just realized I have to go to work tomorrow. GAH!

I was doing laundry today, and when I stripped my bed Boomer accidently got caught in the sheets and ended up in my hamper. Luckily I found him before he ended up in the washer, but then I had to proceed from the laundry room back up to my apartment carrying a stuffed aminal. And, of course, the one time I'm walking around the building carrying a stuffed aminal, about 14 people pile out of the elevator as I'm waiting to get in.

I also met a small child whose favourite toy was doors. That was interesting.