various, with a mixture of sundry

1.) Since Mr Indemnity said this email I sent him cracked him up and was worthy of its own blog entry, here ya go:

I was so irritated with Verizon too, because changing over to FIOS meant I got a new voicemail access number which they *did not make clear to me*. I knew they said you'd have to re-record your greeting and set a new password, etc, but if they told me the new call-in # anywhere, you can't prove it by me, all my email from them, and the packet FIOS left behind. I had to call this morning to automated customer service, where it went like this:

robot voice: say 'next'

Andrea: next

robot voice: when you are ready, say 'next'

Andrea: NEXT NEXT NEXT NEXT motherfucking NEXT

2.) On the other hand, I loves me some online tracking. I had a package sent to me on October 28th, which as of yesterday, I had not yet received. That seemed excessive, so I went on DHL's site, put in the tracking number, and found that my package had been sitting in the DHL facility in Boston since 11/03. I emailed them, and this morning got back a very nice reply, apologizing for the delay which was due to their handling error, and promising delivery by the end of the day. It's just like that DHL commercial I enjoy so much with the guys in the golf cart.

3.) And in the "you really shouldn't fuck with Andrea's craziness" annals:

So, I've had this little patch of rash on my R abdomen since last Friday. I actually woke up with it Friday morning, scratching at it. I thought it was flea bites from goddamn Evil Kitty, because she was sleeping in bed with me that night, and in fact, under the covers. And I didn't think too much more about it. But by Wednesday, though it hadn't spread or gotten worse and was only very very mildly itcy and mildly irritated from having scratched at it and from my clothes rubbing on it, it hadn't gone away. In fact, it was looking pretty red. So the paranoid hypochondria starts sneaking in. I pull out my Pathology textbook from massage school and start looking at pictures of skin conditions. And of course, get psychogenically itchy all over my body.

So, it's definitely not ringworm. (Which, btw, is not a worm at all, but a fungal infection of the same class as athlete's foot and jock itch.) Could it be scabies? OMG, it looks something like scabies. Except scabies in the itchiest of all itches; people with scabies can't sleep at night for the incredible unrelenting itchiness. And you can only get it from prolonged skin-to-skin contact with someone who has it--which is why it's a concern for massage therapists and one of the reasons we're taught to be very suspicious of other people's rashes. But I've only been massaging close personal friends lately, all of whom would be sure to tell me if they had contracted any weird skin diseases. And since I don't have any little kids in daycare, either, who've come home itching, the chances of my having it were, basically, akin to my having testicular cancer.

So I come into work yesterday, and only one of my neurologists is here, because the others are all away at a conference. I show him my rash for reassurance, thinking he's gonna say, "oh, that's nothing." He looks at it and goes, instead, "Is that flea bites? Or scabies? Let's look up scabies on the internet." Um, thanks, dude, I can look at the scary pictures my own self.

So he gets all excited googling and he's like, "Oh, you should have your doctor look at it. I'm a neurologist, what do I know? But it kinda looks like scabies."

Yes, don't fuck with Andrea's craziness. Please. I'm like immediately panicking. Despite the fact I'm not horribly itchy and who the hell could I have contracted it from anyway? It doesn't cross species. Cat and dog scabies don't live on humans. "Can I go home now then?"

"No no no no. I need you to do this kid for me first."

Anyway, I eventually get to my doctor's office where the nurse practitioner basically breaks out laughing at the scabies theory. However, when she looks at my rash, its location and appearance, she gets all frowny and furrow-browed, and grabs a passing MD to come look too. They have me roll over so they can look at my back too. "You're sure it doesn't hurt, right?" To *them* it looks like shingles, though it hasn't spread around my side, and shingles hurts like a mofo.

The final conclusion is that I must have had either a bug bite or an allergic reaction that I then scratched at and infected with staph. So now I've got topical antibiotics to put on it. And much much reassurance from the NP that I'm not contagious. Really. So I'm feeling less crazy. Even though some people, who shall remain nameless, just said to me, "Are you sure that isn't the flesh-eating kind of staph?"

Do.Not.Fuck.With.My.Craziness. KThxBye.

xoxo