I am in a rut

All I have done for the last month, ALL I HAVE DONE! Is go to the doctor and phone Rogers.

So, I had to go to the doctor a few weeks ago for reasons that are personal and gross and which I will not share here. And then, remember when I rolled my ankle? I didn't go to the doctor then, because a rolled ankle isn't a big deal (even though it STILL HASN'T HEALED, FOUR WEEKS LATER!!!!!!), but then all of a sudden on Thursday the ball of my other foot is swollen, and then all of a sudden on Friday, the top of my foot directly above the ball is bruised, and that might be a big deal.

It isn't. But I had to go to the doctor to find that out.

Ok, and then also, this is the phone I've been using for the last five years.

It is compact and unbreakable and it wouldn't die. For five years, nothing I could do would make it die, and then it died, and besides, I really should start paying for my own phone. So waaaay back in September, Joel phoned Rogers and told them he wanted to cancel his plan, and then when they threw themselves prostate at his feet, he outlined all of the things that we would need in order to stay. Like new phones. For free.

A week later, this sweet baby came in the mail!

SO PINK!!! But Joel's didn't come, and my number had to be switched over besides, so we both phoned Rogers for our respective reasons, and then sat down to wait. Some days later, Joel's phone still hadn't come, and my number still hadn't been switched over, so we both phoned Rogers again. Joel's phone came, and my number switched, but hello! Our voicemails weren't working! So we both phoned Rogers again. The next day, my texting wasn't working, so I phoned Rogers again!!!

It's now been three whole days since I last phoned Rogers. I could sometimes kiss them for how helpful and eager and useful they are, but I hope to not phone them again for at least a month. Two would be nice. I went to the doctor today, and Joel is going later on this week (did I mention that all he has done for the last month is go to the doctor and phone Rogers? We live parallel, rutty lives), and then hopefully we will live lives of health for a good chunk of time.

I am internet-famous.

Yes, awesome. After years of being able to google my maiden name and find myself all over the place, I was pretty pissed to see how many Rachel Kruegers were out there. Finally, I show up on the first google page again.

Also, have I mentioned that I write the culture column here?

Things that make me feel old:

As I reach my twenty-six-and-a-halfth year, there are a handful of things around that are making me feel geriatric.

The cold. When did winters get to be so damned cold?

Teenagers. Especially ones in college. That were born in the nineties.

The fact that people who were born in the nineties are now in college.

My ankle. Remember how, when you were young, you'd hurt yourself and then a few days later, you'd be all, Oh! That scab has fallen off/bruise has gone away/bone has healed. Rad. So, last weekend (two full weeks after I rolled my ankle in the first place), I looked down and was all, Huh. Ankle is still fat. So I've been icing and elevating the hell out of it, and taking ibuprofen like candy (my stomach lining feels like crepe paper), and now you can sort of see the bump where my ankle-bone is. And I can almost sit cross-legged.

On the other hand, at least I'm younger than:

- Barbie,

- the Air Force,

- minute-rice,

- Pop-Tarts,

- Medicare,

- the CIA,

- the Pentagon,

- the Slinky,

- Sweet-n-Low,

- breast implants,

- the UN,

- Velcro,

- Alaska, and

- Spaghetti-O's.

And not everyone can say that.

When I have a midterm coming up and so everything everyone else does makes me crazy

Sometimes, the one side of people's phone conversations that I can hear makes me want to smack them.

Like the other day: 'Black....No, black....A black one....black....yes.....no, black....a black one...black.'

And then today: 'Where are you....in the SUB?.....Are you going to stay there?.....Are you....Are you going to stay there?....Are you going to stay there?.....Huh?'

Like, do you have the world's worst phone connection? Ever? Huh? What? Go outside and you can hear better.

I'm such a crank.

Eyeballs!

I have a HUGE midterm tomorrow and no time to study this evening, so I definitely shouldn't be doing this. But I'm kind of good at it (I KNOW!) and it's more fun than phonetic theory.

Some people....

I'm on the bus today going to the library (this always dilemmas me because I have to take 2 buses to get there, each one for maybe three minutes, and I always feel so dumb getting off RIGHT AFTER I've gotten on, but it would take over half an hour to walk there and it's all uphill. Such is life) and this woman who gets on at the same stop as me is all, Can you open a window? to me, and then to this other lady, You need to open a window. We need some air. And in my mind I'm thinking, Why don't you open your own damn window? The bus is totally un-full, and there are many windows you could open besides this one I'm sitting next to.

But it's one of the new buses and they have wacky windows and I don't know how to open it, and I'm only on the bus for a few minutes besides (see above), so eventually I'm all, Sorry, can't do it. And I sit down and wait the two seconds til we're at my stop and then I get off. This woman gets off at the same stop as me, which means that either the airless bus was killing her, or that she needed those windows open for all three minutes she was bussing.

H'ANYvays, so I'm trucking along and I hear, Excuse me! I turn, and it's this same lady. Where did you get your haircut! she says, but it's not like, Heyyyyyyyyyyyyy, nice hair! Where did you get it cut? It's more like, Where's the friggin cash register in this store! Like that. Also, I feel I need to add that I don't have a particularly great haircut right now. In fact, I have a fairly awful haircut that has grown out into a reasonable cut. Also, it was pulled back and therefore not visible.

In, uhhhhh, in Abbotsford, I say. So not here, she says. Uh....no. Abbotsford is neither here in Vancouver nor here on this street.

This appears to be all she wants from me, and she strides off, presumably in search of someone else with hair to ask where they got it cut. At least now she has fresh air.

It's that time again!! Where I remember to blog!

So, today in belly dancing (did I mention that I'm taking belly dancing? I am. It's hard) we practiced flexing first our top-ab muscles, and then our mid-ab muscles, and then our bottom-ab muscles. Some things in life are difficult.

Also, the ankle is healing nicely. It's only a little bit fat and a little bit green.

This weekend was mad busy. Boo and Darren joined me and Joel in attending Matt's concert, because he is a rock star. We are all glaringly old, and going out to a bar at 11:00 made us feel quite put-upon, but the band rocked hard and nobody fainted. Joel performed in an a capella choir for a memorial service the med students put on for the people who willingly sign their corpses over to be dismembered by over-achieving 22-year-olds. We went to a Stephen Pinker lecture which was hilarious and who, if you ever get a chance, I recommend you go see. I flexed all of my ab muscles separately (see above).

Also, I have had a raging head cold and my soft palate feels like sand. I eat nothing but grapefruits and soup all day long. We only have 5 mugs, and all I want to do all day is drink hot things, and the LAST thing I want to do is wash a mug, so I've designated them as tea-mug, straight-up-coffee-mug, sweet-powdered-coffee-mug, hot-water-by-itself-mug, and Neo-Citran-mug. Now I don't wash nothing.

Last night I had a Neo-Citran before bed and then a pile of bizarre dreams, most of which I can't remember. I do remember getting my new cell phone in the mail, and it being the size of a tv remote. If this happens, I will smash something. Also, I will start vending my prescient dreams.

I've got a bit of a cankle.

One of my feets needs to go on a diet.









So, I'm a crappy runner and need to stop sucking at things. Yesterday I'm running in the park, and I come around this corner at high speeds because it's my favorite part of the trail and it comes just after my least favorite part of the trail, and also because it means I'm halfway home. So I'm gunning it around this corner and I roll my ankle on a rock.



It hurts for a second and I say a few swears, but I'm really far from home and sweaty and it's cold out, and after I walk on it a few minutes, it seems fine and I'm able to run home on it. It's a little swollen by the time I get home, but I have things to do. I figure my boots will help support it for the day by, I don't know, crushing it from all sides, or something.



So I go and meet Joel at school and we have a study date with some of his med-buddies, and after a few hours I realize that no blood is getting to my one foot. So we're in there studying and I've got my one boot unzipped all the way down, looking like a tool.

Finally, I leave to go home, and as I come out of the building I see the bus. All this sitting and not moving has stiffened my ankle up so that I can hardly put weight on it, but the buses only run every half hour on Saturdays, and it's cold. So I gimp-run until I get close enough to see that it isn't my bus at all.

I go run some errands because we haven't got any food in the house, and by the time I get home I'm hobbling under the weight of my backpack, my laptop, my groceries, and my ridiculously oversized purse. I finally get around to stripping off my boots, and my ankle is swollen to thrice it's natural size.



The bruising is already halfway to awesome.

You HAVE to be nice to me today

I have a sticker that says so. And this isn't like the time I made them give me a 'Be nice to me - I gave blood today' sticker even though I fainted after the pricking so that I could stick it on my bio final and get an extra 2%. I actually GAVE BLOOD!

Ok, well, 2/3 of a bag. And then the blood stopped coming out and they readjusted the needle and I went a little grey and they cut me off.

But 2/3 of a bag! We're calling this a triumph. Not, like, a mighty triumph, but one that deserves cookies and juice.

Tis better to give, etc.

So, remember how blood does not seem like it's in me to give AT ALL? Because I faint? Before they start vampiring my arm?

So, Joel and I are going to go give blood tomorrow afternoon, and upon weighing the pros and cons of telling them that I'm a fainter (Pro: they will keep an eye on me. Con: to make sure I don't hook myself up to a bag, because there is no way they will let me donate) I have decided to just follow the advice of the last kind nurse to put cold cloths on my forehead and wrists.

So I'm eating big meals tonight and tomorrow lunch, drinking tons of water, and plan on shotgunning a juice right before I go in, and avoiding coffee. I'm also doing my usual iron-doping (red meat and spinach!! Also, but less interestingly, oatmeal). My mom can't give blood because of low iron levels. My sister likewise cannot give blood because she is, like me, a fainter (caveat: she managed to fill a bag before going under).

I'm confident that this time, THIS TIME, I will make it past the finger-pricking. Whether or not I make it to the arm-sticking is a different story. I'll let you know how things go.

I am TRYING to build up your self-esteem

Re: crossword puzzles


Joel:...I just wish I were better at them.

Me: You're quite good at them.

Joel: I'm awful at them.

Me: You're surprisingly good for a science major.

Joel:...That's like saying, For a guy in a wheelchair, you do a surprisingly good pole vault.

A day in which I get drunk on things that are not booze

Ok, it might be because I'm drunk on the whales we saw on the ferry (ok, not...the whales weren't on the ferry. We were on the ferry, and we looked off the ferry into the water, and there were whales), and it might be because I'm drunk on the sunshine, and it might be because I'm drunk on THE PLACE IN WHICH WE ARE GOING TO LIVE COME JANUARY WHICH HAS A DISHWASHER AND A PLUM TREE IN THE BACKYARD!!!!!, but Victoria is just about the prettiest little city I think I've ever seen. And I've been to Europe.

Ok, so Joel and I went to Vic today to check out a place for next semester, and we left the house at 8:15 and got to the place at 1:15, because that's what happens when you have no car. You take the bus, and then you take the other bus, and then you take the other bus and then the ferry. And then the bus, and then the bus, and then you walk a bit. And then later you do it all backwards to come home.

H'anyvays, the place is gorgeous and we have a BBQ on the deck (we have a deck!) and a washer and dryer and a dishwasher and a full-sized fridge with an actual, seperate freezer on the top of it (not a shoe-box inside the fridge which less freezes things and more just keeps them very cold, which, ps, is the suck) and TWO bedrooms (and one of those bedrooms has double doors which lead to our deck!!!!!!!eleventy-one!!) and a dining room that is not just the kitchen in disguise and a place to hang our coats when we come in the door and AND!!! After showing us around the place, our landlords tossed us in the car and drove us around Victoria (...the grocery store is here, we really like this deli, the UVic campus is here, this is a nice bit of beach that we've found, etc.) and then went and got a ladder and picked all the plums out of the tree that I couldn't reach with my short arms. I think I'm in love with them.

Also, we rode in a double-decker bus. Victoria is so quaint.

Also, it is the home of solar-panelled trash compactors I'm not even joking we saw this at a bus stop. Quaint.

The more you know.

So, I signed up for yoga this semester because I have tons of free time right now, and better to spend it stretching and breathing than enjoying our new-found tv channels.

So for lunch today, I'm all, I'll have some cottage cheese with cut-up fruit and some granola in it, because that seems suitably yoga-ish.

High-fiber, high-gassss-making lunches are not yoga-friendly.

Some fotoes to lighten up your Monday morning

In the absence of anything really interesting to say (classes are going well, we are unpacked, I made sourdough but didn't let it rise long enough or cook long enough, so it is both dense and raw-ish), I would like to share with you some pictures.

This is Estella, my lovely lady-skeleton. I bought her in Mexico and she survived the trip home. All of her fingers broke off, and I had to glue them back on one by one. She's missing a thumb in this picture because I didn't find it until an hour or so later. She is the very picture of elegance.

This is my greatest space-saving solution yet. It is a placemat. It is also where I hang my earrings. Martha Stewart is my bitch.My foot-thong tan makes it look like my feetses' underwears are showing.

The enormous landlord-cat only comes by when Joel's not home, so I have to take pictures to prove that the cat is (surprisingly often) in our suite. Please to compare cat-size to laptop-size. Cat is a great big one.

As an aside, I would like to thank frozen plums for not giving me raging diarrhea like fresh ones do. Why is that, do you think?

And then there were cats.

Ok, so there was this enormous cat in Mexico that Joel totally loved, so you can imagine how stoked he was when we got to our new place in Vancouver only to find that the cat had followed us there (this giant fatty is exactly what our landlords' cat looks like). He's left the cat-door between our two places unlocked since we moved in so that the cat could come in if it liked.

This afternoon, while Joel was gone, the cat stopped by for a little visit. Joel was crushed to have missed it.

Now, at the risk of becoming that lady who only talks about her cats, please go watch this video. I'm serious. If you do nothing else for me as long as you live, watch this, at least until about the 25-second mark. I promise, you will die.

Another in a long line of sum-ups

Whew, jeez. Long time to talk, and stuff. And there have been so many things this week that I've been all, I should blog that! But then I forget.

Like how the first week of med school is all scavenger hunts and group-charades and wine-and-cheese parties and then wham-o! On Friday you cut up bodies. Real ones. That used to be people.

Or how there are trails all through the UBC endowment lands that I've been jogging, and how there are also creeks all through said lands which means there are dozens of wooden bridges, and how someone needs to lay down some chicken wire on those bridges so they aren't quite so slick in the rain. I mean, I know, chicken wire is uggers, and when it's not raining the bridges are totally functional on their own, but as that French-Canadian fellow said to Robyn when she neglected to bring her rain gear to work based on the slim promise of a sunny morning, This is Vancouver.

And also how, often when I am jogging with my headphones in, and some song will start up that has talking at the beginning but I'll just hear voices in my ear and think someone is right behind me and scream! Except that two days ago I was jogging, and I heard a voice in my ear and thought it was just pre-song chatter but then something pulled up on my right and THERE IS A MAN ON A BIKE! And I screamed and he apologized, all, I've been trying to get your attention so I wouldn't scare you when I biked past you, and I'm all out of breath and adrenaline-sick because ack!

And how Joel and I watched the entire fourth season of 24 yesterday. We started at 5:00 am and went hard straight through and finished before 11:00 pm.

And how our tuition is due on Wednesday and our student loans should come through any second now...but maybe not before Wednesday, in which case...

That's all for now, kiddies. I'll try not to be so absent in the future.

Moving is deathness

Ok, so I'm unpacking today, and it's taking me ALL day because I have a severe case of the dawdle and also because Joel's in school so I'm the only one to make all the executive decisions (like where the hell do I put all this junk?). And I start to run out of steam at around 5:00, and alls that's left to do is find homes for all the miscellanea and stack all the boxes and vacuum up all the leaves that I tracked in earlier and I finally get it all done and everything put away and the house looks awesome and liveable and then hrack! There's a box under the tv. And not even, like, this is a box of dishes I must put away or this is a box of clothes I must hang up, but this is the last-ditch box that we flung everything into that wouldn't fit anywhere else, viz. this box is full of agony. I almost cried.



And now, apropos of nothing, I had no cat allergies in Mexico but had TERRIBLE cat allergies previous, so we're conducting an experiment wherein we unlock the little cat door that leads to our suite and let the comically-oversized grey cat (if he so chooses) to come into our home, and then we see if I am miserable. Maybe I am only allergic to Canadian cats.



H'adios, kids.

Reading is crazy!!

If I had the balls to wear a t-shirt with swears on it, and if I hadn't already worked through my lifetime quota of ill-fitting-but-hilarious shirts, I would rock this for sure.

Also, we have moved! Huzzah! Escuse while I unpack ALL DAY!!!

She sums up!!

Hello friends! I know, this is the least busy I will every be IN LIFE, and yet I refuse to blog. But this is me blogging.

Hrrrum....we've been staying at mine and Joel's parents' places alternately, and while I'm eternally grateful to them for housing us and feeding us and giving us somewhere to plunk our suitcases, I will be SO EXCITED to have my own space in which to make a mess and hang clothes up and rummage through the cupboards. You know how it is.

We've spent much of the past six days getting fatter, as both our sets of parents feed us very well and I have taken up excessive baking. Behold my strawberry tartlets!

Behold my black-and-blueberry pie!

Behold my sugar cookies!

Behold my bavarian cream eclairs!!!!!

Due to the fattening, we've also been going for jogs. The other day I stopped to pet this old eastern European lady's dog, and we chatted, and I mentioned how cute her dog was. 'He ees too feht!' she replied, and then thwacking him in the belly with one of her canes, 'Hey, fehtty? Ve'll shlim you down.' You and me both, puppy.

In our spare time, Joel's been playing Call of Duty and I've been plowing through my pile of books. Also, we bought this beautiful clay orb for my mother from Mexico, but when we got back, oh no! Orb is in pieces!!!

Joel likes puzzles, and I like fixing things, so we sat down with a tube of Krazy Glue and set to. I think I lasted half an hour. Joel, on the other hand, is a spatial genius.

Joel starts school on Monday, and I start school a week from. Oh yes, school! So, long story short my transcripts were delayed and didn't get to UBC in time and my application was cancelled, and I had to write a Letter of Appeal and wheeeeeeeee! They let me in! But by then all the awesome classes were taken, so I'm taking....history, or something. Who knows.

Dog days

Unlike in Thailand, where the streets are clogged with stray dogs, the streets of Mexico are clogged with owned dogs. Everyone has, like, six dogs, and they all run wild and mangy. But at least they are loved, so I guess it's a step up. Behold, my friends, the dogs of Mexico.

This is Babs, Greg and Alyson's dog. She is quite earnestly cute, if a bit snobby and cat-like in behavior. Also, she has epilepsy.

This is Chico. Chico is the most nervous dog I know, except maybe Dag (who has less cause, really), and also he hates me. This is maybe because I chomp him.

This is Banana. Banana is hilariously long in the body, and also exceptionally round. This is because she is terribly spoiled and will only eat wet cat food. She is my favorite dog.

These are tiny puppies from the pet store. I palmed their heads.

This is Dag, and these are his ribs.

Dag only comes by the house for a meal every few days, and he won't eat if you're watching him. He won't even come in the house unless you round up the cats and lock them in the bedroom.

This is Perro. He is a dog from one of the housebuilds, and is almost certainly diseased, but he is also desperately cute. I lasted three days before I petted him, and I didn't tell Joel. He has paint on his forehead, but it's not from me.

Also, we arrived home safe and sound.