Random thoughts.

It smells like an auto repair shop in my office. This is extremely distracting, because I keep looking around and wondering where all the hot mechanics might be.

Ooh, my brain just put Jensen Ackles in a mechanic's jumpsuit . . . upper half unbuttoned and slung off his shoulders, down around his waist, smears of black grease on his pretty face and his white wifebeater tank -- yum. *shivers*

Something about all that clean-cut, chiseled prettiness just makes me want to get him dirty, you know? Which is funny, because that's not a usual kink for me, but age is all about expanding one's horizons, isn't it?

Like hot men handling guns, for instance. Never in a million years would I have thought that such a thing would merit more than a passing glance, but now? In the last couple of years, it's been almost a surefire turn-on.

The scene that started it all: from NCIS, Season 2, Episode 5, The Boneyard. Mark Harmon's character has one man in a chokehold up against a car, and with his right hand he draws a bead on someone approaching from his right. His aim is perfect, level and steady, even while he's staring down the guy he's strangling. *quivers*

Yeah, that was fucking hot.

Granted, I am aware that it's not realistic in the slightest. Still, hot.

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On Sunday, I was at Home Depot, buying screws to complete one of those closet-organizer-things that was missing all but one screw for the little handles for the doors. I was really annoyed, because I'd almost finished the assembly. How does something that needs *eight* screws of a certain size end up arriving with only *one* in the package?

Home Depot on a weekend is always amusing. The nails-and-screws aisle was filled with women wandering aimlessly, their eyes darting about in panic as they searched for the right fastener . . . or, failing that, a live person in a tacky orange apron. I snorted my disdain and began my search.

Wood screws . . . number eight . . . seven-eighths of an inch . . . package of 10. That'll do.

Then, because I felt kind of crazy, I yelled, "I won! I found my screws -- in under sixty seconds and without benefit of a y-chromosome!" and did a little dance in the aisle.

Some women laughed, a few edged away, and most just blinked at me like sheep and stampeded past me to the poor Home Depot guy who had the misfortune to enter the aisle at just that moment.

My smug glow of self-righteousness lasted until I got home, where I discovered the orginal, correct screws ( that came with the organizer kit ) lying there, right next to the doors and the handles, waiting for assembly.

I maintain that the gremlins took them.

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Last night I took the dog to the new vet I selected since moving. Yueng slipped on some ice during the last big storm and did a full-on Bambi -- legs splayed, full three-sixty spin, the whole nine yards -- and has been favoring one leg ever since. The vet said that she strained a tendon in her right rear knee, and gave me the canine equivalent of Motrin for her.

Then we got into the good stuff. Given some symptoms that she's been experiencing in the roughly year-and-a-half that I've had her, the vet recommended a heartworm test and a Lyme test. Both of those came back negative, so she said it was time for the big guns. Let's do a thyroid test. Ulp!

On the plus side, if it *is* a low-functioning thyroid, it's a very easy fix with some medications, just like for people.

But, OMG, the COST!!!

My bill was $471!!!!

And LOL, emrinalexander, considering I was just chastising you for MacGyver, how funny is it that I'm bitching about the vet bill now? I was actually standing in the vet's office, thinking to myself that rent is due this weekend, but that I just do NOT have the moral high ground here. Hee.

I do wish that I had thought to ask how much the thyroid test was going to cost *before* they performed it; I would have put that off just until after the next paycheck. It just never occurred to me that it would cost so much!

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Why would anyone design a building that looks like a dildo?

Case in point: the Chicago Spire.

Now honestly . . . can anybody look at that and NOT think of a sex toy?

Obviously the architect is either getting too much nooky or not enough.

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I've been getting back into my family geneaology and having a nifty time of it. So far, I've been able to trace back four generations consistently and five generations in two cases. It doesn't sound like much, but it's pretty nifty to me.

The first time I developed any sort of interest in family trees was when I was eleven. My great-grandmother stayed with us that summer, and I wish that I had taken the time to listen to her stories and learn from her. But my overwhelming memory is of a weird old woman who made the bathroom smell funny every morning, and when she went out to dinner with us, she always took the salt and pepper shakers and silverware and stowed them in her purse to, as she always said, "sell on the black market".

My brother and I thought she was very strange, even after Dad explained about senility ( it wasn't called Alzheimer's back then ) and how Gran thought she was back in Hungary before the first World War. Yet I remember her coming out to the garden and picking peas with us, and having Mom stop at a roadside produce stand on our way back from blueberry-picking to buy some kind of round, white squash. She grated it and added it to a kind of pancake batter, and I remember the scent of cooking oil and the taste of the sour cream we ate with them.

Gran was still with us, late enough into the summer, that Mom brought her along when it was time to go shopping for new school clothes. We got more than usual, because Gran insisted on paying for them. She had one of those little bra-strap pouches that seems typical of older women, and I remember how she reached casually into her cleavage in the dressing room and pulled it out, handing me more money than I'd ever seen in my life and telling me to give it to my mother.

I think my curiosity about our family roots stemmed from trying, in a roundabout way, to honor her memory.

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The night before last, I rode the train home ALL! TWO! HOURS! with a man sitting next to me who positively *reeked* of nicotine. Not cigarette smoke, but rather, actual nicotine. His fingers and teeth were stained yellow from the stuff, and it oozed from his pores in big beads of sweat rolling down his face. Usually I'm okay with cigarette smoke, unless my allergies are really acting up, but for some reason, this odor was making my stomach turn.

I was preparing myself to give up the prime real estate of the window seat when finally, all my distracting wriggling and fidgeting and shifting succeeded in annoying him into a hasty relocation at the earliest possible opportunity. I had the seat to myself for the rest of the ride and was most pleased. Since there really were plenty of seats, for once, I didn't even have to feel guilty.

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And hey! Look at that! I finally ran out of stuff to ramble on about!

See you all on Monday!