8 days

That's how much time off I get per year. Not all at once, not even two days in a row. Nope. There are eight national holidays, that I get off. Let's see if I can come up with a complete list:
-New Year's day
-MLK day
-Washington's birthday
-Memorial day
-July 4th
-Labor Day
-Thanksgiving
-Christmas day

And in the lucky year 2009, July 4th is on a Saturday, so make that 7 days. Plus I didn't stay at home on Washington's birthday, which makes that 6 days. That's a whooping 25% vacation cut! (In 2010, July 4th will be on a Sunday, which means another 12.5% reduction in days off for the year 2010.)

Wait, I know what you're thinking: "Isn't everyone supposed to get, you know, a few days of vacation? Or maybe just a stay-cation in these rough economic times? Perhaps a long weekend? What about some family time around Christmas? Perhaps visiting some family over Thanksgiving (taking off Black Friday)?"

Excellent questions. I'm glad you brought those things up. After being told that any request for vacation would be met with the reminder that anyone can be "fired" (they don't call it that in grad school, they call it Master's degree), I got the following answers: No. No. No. No. and. No. Does that answer your questions?

I sure hope it does, because that's all the answer(s) I got. It's gonna be a loooong summer, I can tell already.

Combating negativity

Overly negative people who always only see the negative side of something really wear me out. They grate on my nerves and make me want to scream. Everything is glass half-empty and blah, blah, blah. How do people like that live anything close to a happy life? Can't they, for once, just see something GOOD or POSITIVE in something, anything?

I have a giant negative cloud hanging over me (impersonated by a person), and it is wearing me out more than anything else in my life. My mind is tired and my soul is writhing in pain. No kidding. It's that bad.

On the flip-side of life, I now have a gym-buddy and a gym-date; a fellow-student, and a girl on top of that (I work with all boys, there is way too much testosterone in my life). My locker at the not-so-great-but-essentially-free gym at school has probably rusted shut. I'm not sure I still know the combination to get into the locker! I also have no idea what may be inside the locker. All I know is that I pay $25 a semester to rent the thing. I guess Thursday will bring all kinds of surprises with it!

Here's to Thursday and to some soul and mind-purging exercising.

PS: I've been reading (OK, listening to books on tape) about mountaineering and Alpine-style mountain climbing lately and find it fascinating. Perhaps I will climb some high mountain some day. I also just finished listening to a book about yoga, and I think my life, body and mind could benefit from yoga (please leave a comment if you know of any good tapes or yoga books for beginners - I have a yoga mat).

Dentist Consumerism

I never had any big problems with my teeth. My siblings had braces (one had them more than once even), but the worst thing that's ever happened to me was chipping some teeth. Add some cavities and my dental history is complete. Every 18 - 24 months I work up the nerve to go to the dentist, and it usually coincides nicely with moving, so I hardly every see the same dentist twice.

Two weeks ago I had my first dentist appointment in almost two years, and I was mostly just a little mad at wasting two hours of my life on a dentist visit. A friend of mine had recommended this dentist to me, the office is within walking distance of school, and they take my insurance. So I went, with no negative or positive expectations and I was appalled.

The waiting room looked like a mall for teeth! Between your normal routine care poster reminders, there were advertisements for veneers, whitening procedures and other dental stuff I had never heard of. Every poster was sponsored by some sort of a dental accessories' manufacturer, and the receptionist asked me if I anticipated needing to set up a payment plan. I just shook my head, but not because I didn't think I would need one, but because I was shocked! I hadn't even seen the dentist, how was I supposed to know whether I could afford the bill.

Then I went in to see the dental hygienist, who treated me like a 3-year old. She politely informed me of THREE different products I could buy on my way out to help with the individual needs' of my teeth. No thank you. She then told me I would have to come back another time to see the dentist, since we had taken such a long time already. I said no, but no thanks. I didn't mind waiting for a while, but I was definitely NOT going to come back a second time (and pay another $20 co-pay!). If we were out of time, I would just leave without seeing the dentist, since I didn't have any dire dental emergencies anyways. I said this politely and non-threateningly, just matter-of-factly. All of a sudden a window of time opened up in the dentist's window. How convenient!

Almost 90 minutes after stepping foot into the front door I finally saw the dentist, who said that three of my teeth were in absolutely dire need of serious work. Really? None of them hurt... what's wrong? My two chipped front teeth apparently need to be redone as soon as humanly possible, and my chipped molar would need to be fixed even sooner than humanly possible to avert some kind of serious dental crisis.

I chipped my front teeth in 1993, and my molar in 1999. 16 and 10 years ago, respectively. I've seen at least three dentists with each of these teeth and they have all said the same thing: no need to do anything unless the teeth start giving me problems, or the look of my chipped teeth bothers me. No and No.

So after telling this newest dentist of mine that I had no interest in doing anything about my chipped teeth she looked at me as if I had told her I wasn't interested in fixing the life-threatening internal bleeding in my abdomen. But I said No. NO thank you.

She then pointed out four teeth that had cavities and said she would get a pre-certification from my insurance to see if they would pay anything to get those taken care of. Sure, go ahead. I'll let you fix my cavities, but I do think that it's a little strange that my insurance pays for four cavities per year and you found exactly four of them today...

I will be calling my dental insurer to inquire about costs/co-pay for fixing cavities and also to see if I can go to see a different dentist in my network without having to pay out of pocket. I walked out of that dentist's office utterly perplexed and appalled at how I had been bombarded with advertisements and tricked (unsuccessfully) into spending a pretty penny for something that is not as necessary as this lady told me it was. I can only liken this feeling of commercial onslaught to the horrors some people experience when they step foot onto a car sales lot.

Before I forget - the proverbial cherry on top of this dental visit was the TV blaring Dr. Phil in every room, an episode about children resulting from affairs and the corresponding child support. I asked the dental hygienist to turn it down and she turned it down about 0.001 notch and said something about how she enjoys Dr. Phil. *vomit*

Oh, Canada

Tomorrow I am doing something I have not done in a long time (8 years is my best guess).

I am going to go to a tourist-y place, stay at a very nice hotel, have a fabulous dinner at this hotel, and then breakfast before seeing the sights (read: ride that boat that goes to the falls). I am going to spend the day/night in Niagara Falls with my mom tomorrow. The hotel, dinner, breakfast and parking will probably amount to 1.5 weeks' pay, which doesn't say much, since I'm on a stipend, but I just don't do extravagant things like this.

When I go places, I try to find a free place to stay (a friend, a friend's friend), and I've even slept in my car to avoid shelling out money for a place to stay. Whenever possible I stay at hostels, but these are a little scarce across the US, unlike in Europe.

I spent 5 weeks in Spain last year and spent a total of $1500, including transportation (from another European country, so no cross-Atlantic flight), lodging, food, souvenirs, camera batteries, etc. That was probably the best trip I've ever taken. Where did I stay and what did I eat? That's another story for another day.

I don't do extravagant things but I will try my very hardest to enjoy a night in relative extravagance. It helps that my dad will be footing the bill, since the trip is mainly for my mom.

Little things

I hung up some curtains yesterday and from the moment they were up it bothered me that I had attached the brackets holding up the rod to the frame of the window instead of the wall next to the window frame. I had trouble falling asleep, because I just kept staring at the curtains, since they were in my bedroom. So today I took them back down and put them back up. An hour of work to fix the two hours I did yesterday.

Little things can bother me so much that nothing else matters. They get under my skin.

Scratchy

Having an itch is one of my least favorite sensations. It drives me crazy.

Today everything seems scratchy and itchy. The seams on my shirt are almost painful and my sweatshirt is not warm enough to keep me from being uncomfortably cold in this air-conditioned ice-box.

I can't wait to go home and put on soft, non-scratchy clothes.

Old man in the corner

I sat in this waiting room yesterday for about 10 minutes, and about an hour later for another 5 minutes. An old man was sitting in the corner, wearing non-descript, drab grey and brown clothes, head lowered and hands leaning on his cane. He didn't respond to my "hello-s", or my "goodbye-s". He never flinched or moved, and as far as I could tell he didn't move in that hour I was gone either.

When was the last time I sat someplace without speaking or moving for an entire hour?