free advice on how to take a sick day

1) Blowing your nose with paper towels leaves rug burn on your face. Yes Virginia, that is unfortunate.

2) It is preferable to clean up the 976 discarded tissues and paper towels off the coffee table before your roommate gets home. Especially clear the apartment of all evidence you ate the last of her good (slightly old) Halloween candy.

3) Remember you have to write a paper and it is due at 5 pm. Remember all day on a regular basis but don’t start it. It’s more important that you explore the depths of stumbleupon.com. Subsequently make banana bread from scratch (please take all proper precautions from the almost certain amalgamation of snot and batter).

4) Wonder how it’s possible you have generated so much mucous in such a short time and survived. No, really.

5) Talk to two friends via gmail chat and one via text message while making banana bread and keeping your hands clean.

6) Are you properly stressed over not writing your assignment? Good, because it’s almost 5pm.

7) Remember you stayed home today because you are sick, lick the batter bowl, and lay your aching feverish body back on the couch. Contemplate whose suave idea it was to make banana bread in the first place when you’re fairly sure eating is going to be futile.

8) Whine and moan for the benefit of the cats that might be questioning your permanent residence on the couch. Push them off if they try to join you. God, annoying. No one can pet two cats and fret over finding the end of the internet.

9) It’s 7 pm, have a cup of coffee while the morning’s dose of prednisone starts to really kick in, find the energy to get on your bike trainer for 45 minutes and completely overdo it.

10) Quit talking to your neighbor about nothing and *get in the shower*.

11) Somehow become so engrossed in lolling around that 10pm just blindsided you, your paper is five hours late. Commence paper writing.

12) Realize Nyquil makes writing in your native tongue virtually impossible.

13) Realize you have rugburn on your face. Let this provide fodder for imminent blog posting. No, it’s cool, paper is like – 2/3rds finished.

generalities need emphasis sometimes too

I wanted to put STUFF on my rear window, because it's really what I'm into these days - but now I'll just look like a copycat.

I should probably go excersize to burn off this negative energy (updated)

Dear Everyone,

Facebook is not going to make a dislike button. Please stop inundating my news feed with posts about how you want a dislike button, you joined a fan page supporting the creation of a dislike button, you find it ironic that you dislike the idea of a dislike button, you've invited me to like the dislike button option, you'd sell your soul or at least engage in highly immoral activities to pretty please install a dislike button. In my recent turn of events, that I may or may not digress at a later time point, my facebook activity is at an all time high and a little variety would take the most minor bit of edge off.

Five buttons I would support, and thusly take over your news feed in support of:

1) Shut the eff up
2) No one cares
3) I feel bad for your significant other
4) O_o
5) You have a cold, not the bubonic plague

Perusing my news feed this morning, eating wheat chex, watching Robin Meade, and pushing the cat off my shit, it dawned on me why my FB annoyance peaks on Mondays.

number six, which is really an elaboration of buttons one and two. In fact this button is too verbose and detailed to really be a button, but I feel like I would probably be at risk for carpal tunnel if it existed. Besides, there are no rules or limitations on hypothetical situations. That's the beauty of them being hypothetical. So there.

6) You are not kooky or original when you bitch about Monday. Stop it.

Yours Truly,

Lisa

Lisa McCoig likes this

there is nothing passive about my aggresion.

The last week of the month """last week of the month""" is usually kind of rough for me, probably rougher for Chad because he has to deal with essentially a mentally unstable female. This past 48 hours though have been ridiculous.

I will now elaborate.

I applied for North Carolina residency, this involves a long winded complicated form as to which they want to know some inane shit like, hey how many times have you been on vacation since you have lived in North Carolina? what did you do on vacation? why did you go on vacation? how much of your money is in what bank and for how long and why? What did you do the last Thursday of June in 1996 and was it in North Carolina? Were you thinking about North Carolina that day? Do you secretly wish you could shape your head into the state of North Carolina? Isn't North Carlina the COOLEST STATE YOU HAVE EVER EVEN HEARD OF!? Also, please submit your tax return. Hey its cool though because I was all frustrated as shit while I was in North Carolina. Also, while I was in North Carolina yesterday I received an e-mail from Julie who is reviewing my application. She informed me that I, *I*, I submitted someone else's tax return with my application, someone by the name of Pergolotti, and if I could please resubmit *my* tax form, thanks kindly. I had to walk away from my desk as to not return Julie's email with the bad news that I was going to inform her halfway home that she is using again. Hey Julie, I understand sometimes stapling documents together is complicated, but I'm kind of impressed with your gall to blame it on me.

So I went to resubmit my tax return, and the application is set up as such that you have to

fill
out
the
whole
thing
again

and now to trump assholitis story #1 we will proceed to assholitis story #2:

this morning on my bike ride I was hit by a car. no wait. one more time for emphasis. this morning on my bike ride I was hit by a car. That's right, a car slammed into my left arm so hard their passenger side mirror broke. The car thusly gunned it and sped off.

The car behind them pulled over to make sure I was okay, and I watched this nice lady's face turn from a look of concern and worry to a look of worry and horror as the most delightful combination of explicatives were stitched together in a way that would have made George Carlin blush. The lady slowly drove off after I assured her I was more pissed than hurt, but still in the midst of my detailed explanation as to what would happen after I hunted this man down, and did she get a make on the car?

More importantly, this confirms what I already know:

I have arms of steel.

Silvia.....Yes Mickey?...How do you call your loverboy?....Come 'ere loverboy!!....And if he doesnt answer?.....Ohh loverboy!...

...And if he STILL doesnt answer? I simply say Baby, Oohh baby...My sweet baby...You're the one!


So maybe, but maybe not - you are aware of my childhood Patrick Swazye/Dirty Dancing obsession. It's true, I watched this movie everyday, everyday, as a kid (and Poltergeist). At the age of 7 I mastered the heart stopping dance finale, inclusive of the lift - carried out on the end of my four-poster bed.

Swazye, DD and the DD soundtrack have echoed through the years with stronger nostalgic ties to my childhood than any other element that I have carried with me. Patrick Swayze's death feels akin to that horrid day in third grade when my best friend informed me Santa wasn't real. Or when Chad tried to inform me that the kooky relics at Cracker Barrel are all fake and the Cracker Barrel magic is just a farce. Or like the time I found out how hard it is to trudge through a phd when everyday is a failure. Okay, wait, no, back up, its really only like the huge disappointment of Santa being fake, but only just kind of. I spent my formative years sitting indian style on the floor, three feet from the television, eating pb&j, and watching, wishing, and idolizing every frame of Dirty Dancing - and Swayze was nothing short of my first love.

Another magical childhood hero laid to rest.

Rest in Peace Patrick Swayze

materialism is kind of fun

not to blow against the wind or whatever - but don't ever let anyone tell you money doesn't buy happiness. Because - I'm pretty sure the foosball table my friend and I just bought for $50, and my new rifle bb gun for $20 , and this pretty kick ass little yamaha I just got off craigslist - are kind of making me really supremely happy. I'd like to elaborate, but I'm off to go try out my new helmet that doesn't look too far from an optimus prime mask (read: awesome).

Happy one year chapel hill

Anniversaries rarely pass without some means of reflection - ironically, the more elusive and meaningless the event - the more prone I am to remembering it. Often these anniversaries are notched into my timeline via something appropriately inane - like, oh man, the day time awards are on tonight?? wow, this time last year I totally put a new crank arm on my bike - I can't believe its already been a year, jeez - totally still shifts like a dream - and every subsequent year I'll think about this crank arm when I hear about the daytime awards. The reflections become more intense in a directly proportional manner to time passed - several years and my crank arm will serve as a springboard for, woah I can totally ride X distance X amount faster - and all the other new equipment I have invested in, the jobs Ive been through and stressed over while riding, all the states I rode in, etc etc...

Besides real holidays and birthdays, its dawned on me that this weekend marked possibly my first worthwhile anniversary. The infamous, most fantastic of all music fests, Gathering of the Vibes - went down in Bridgeport, CT...(and I am very *very* sad to say I missed it).

Last year, The Vibes served as my last days as a New Englander, it subsequently served as the simultaneous best and worst days of my life. I distinctly remember delivering my last hug in a hotel parking lot, clinging, and crying way harder than anything a 13 year old girl could produce, and having no idea how I was going to get in my car, drive away, and permanently seal off this chapter of my life. The 14 hour drive south sucked. a lot. I cried. a lot. I couldn't began to fathom what in the hell was next, grad school remained a phantom intangible concept - I had yet to even meet my roommate, see my condo etc. Uprooting and starting from scratch, and having 14 hours in a stuffy car with a litter box in the backseat, to think of nothing else but this mystery future sitting in front of you, your best friends and familiar life behind you, with your drugged cat meowing like its dying beside you, is quite honestly - *unpleasant and unrecommended*

Since Vibes of '08, I learned the ropes of my first year, successfully made it through my classes, joined a lab, bought a scooter, selling the scooter, bought a motorcycle, lost two feet of small bowel, spent five months in the hospital, revisited Massachusetts, NY, Virginia, Bermuda and soon I'll be in Montana. Ive taken the hardest tests of my life, completed homework that would make grown men weep, and two months of intense labor produced a paper that nearly killed me. I gotta say, this was one of the more lively years of my life. And I hope next year, I'll be celebrating two years of grad school under my belt, back at the Vibes, with the friends from Massachusetts that I'm still torn up over having left.