Things that are faster than getting a damn (third) rheumatologist

I got a letter this afternoon from Yale Rheumatology with my appointment information. This should be a cause for celebration, but the date of the appointment? Is in April. April 18th, to be exact — nearly five months from now.

Fine. I didn’t want to drive all the way to New Haven, anyway. :roll:

Right before I called my insurance company to get a list of rheumatologists at Yale, my mom found another rheumatologist in my city. At the time, I was fed up with every doctor in this city, so I took the envelope she’d written the information on, thanked her, and put it aside where it sat… until now. I tried calling my doctor’s office to get a referral for this guy, but their line is busy. So, in the meantime, I thought I’d make a list of things that are faster than getting in to see a rheumatologist when you’re on the medical merry-go-round.

  • The Facebook help center (poor Jess!)
  • Pregnancy — elephant pregnancy
  • Zombies on meth
  • Breakthrough bleeding on Lo-Seasonique
  • Canadian customs (Blaine knows what I’m talkin’ about!)
  • Falling asleep the night before really awesome plans, like going to your favorite vacation place
  • Getting a screaming toddler to calm down

Can you think of other things that are faster?

Lesbians in zebrastripes

I decided that, for the next week, I’m going to title all of my posts using the letters in my nickname, L-I-Z, no S. I’m doing this because the spambots think I’m awesome, so if my human readers think it’s lame, at least I have the bots. Here’s what my newest fan, a bot named Luciano, had to say after reading my post on the super excited girl at the bar who decided to have a baby because of me:

Merely want to say your article is striking. The clearness in your post is simply spectacular and i can assume you are an expert on this subject. Well with your permission allow me to grab your rss feed to keep up to date with incoming post. Thanks a million and please keep up the effective work.

This is what spectacular looks like in the morning.

In short: my writing is striking, spectacular, and I am an effective expert. Thank you, spambot.

The problem with this title scheme, guys, is that there are only so many Z words. The only Z word I can think of is zebra. This is where you come in.

I need you to leave me comments with your favorite Z words. I’m especially counting on the spambots, since they are getting pretty damn smart. Not that you humans aren’t smart. I’m just saying that the spambots tend to spit stuff out depending on what they see. So if they see the letter Z, they are going to go crazy and leave all kinds of Z words.

In fact, I think that spambots are the next superior race on planet Earth.

What spambots will be saying about us in the future on their spambot oatmeal packets.

They will be so much more advanced than us, in ways that I — in all of my spambot-blessed expertise — cannot ever imagine. I mean, they’re already ahead of us. They are INVISIBLE, for crying out loud! If a spambot was here in my house right now, looking over my shoulder as I type this, I wouldn’t know it.

They also have a great sense of humor. The spambot in that post is funnier than Mepsipax, Avitable, and Allie combined. (Then again, Allie made a great documentary about the Battle of Twitterloo. If you don’t believe me, press play.)

So maybe Allie can one-up the spambots. I’m not sure. But I do know that they are going to be the next superior race, and before this happens I need to write as many L-I-Z acronym posts as possible. (My apologies to those of you who thought this one was gonna be about lesbians in sexy zebra stripe underwear.) So give me your best Z words, or the Fun-Size Kitty of DOOM will eat you!

The glowing eyes mean that she is charging up for ATTACK!

Donated Z Words:
Please note that Z words are rare and endangered. Donating a Z word to my blog will keep them safe from spambots and Fun-Size kitties.

Zebra
Zig (Mike)
Zag (Mike)
Zipper (Mike)
Zinger (Mike)
Zelda*
Zandra*

*Z names count. If you don’t believe me, prepare to answer to Fun-Size kitty.

Zit
Zombie (Me, Taliana83)

Zap (Allie)
Zaps (Allie)
Zapped (Allie)
Zapping (Allie)
Zoo (Allie, Taliana83)
Zenith (Allie)
Zany (Allie)
Zodiac (Allie)
Zephyr (Allie)
Zealot (Allie)
Zeal (Allie)
Zealous (Allie)
Zen (Allie, Taliana83)
Zero (Allie)
Zest (Allie)
Zesty (Allie)
Zestful (Allie)
Zimbabwe (sagasky)

And then @BookGeekGal kicked some major Z ass (01/10/2010, 12:49am):

Spambots, you are letting me down! Are you really going to let a bunch of humans out-Z you?

Update 01/10/2010, 12:56am: The spambots are fighting back, but instead of Z words, they’re insulting me!

This means war!!

Update 01/10/2010, 1:34am:

They're going to overtake us!!

Update 01/10/2010, 2:34am: It’s totally fucking weird that I’m updating EXACTLY AN HOUR LATER, but it’s even weirder that the spambots are now kicking our asses. They can speak an assload of Russian, so they win this battle 3-2. I am too lazy to take and post a screenshot, but believe me, they dumped a whole mess of Russian into my blog comments. (Thank goodness for Akismet, or they would have taken over my blog!)

Their hefty block of Cyrillic smack-talking translates to:

Listen up, puny Earthlings. We are INVISIBLE, have no need for Z words, and can DESTROY your bandwidth with just the power of our MINDS. Also, we speak Russian and 19 million other languages, including ones you have not discovered yet. Surrender now or prepare to fight! Meow, that’s right!†

We will get them next time…


†If you can tell me what this is from WITHOUT GOOGLING, because that would show weakness to the spambots, I’ll whore your blog/Twitter/website/pictures of your cat on my Twitter.

The name game

What is a name?

A name is what you go by. It’s a way for people to identify you, and for you to identify yourself. Names can have positive and negative connotations. The name Liza Minnelli reminds me of my 5th grade teacher, Miss Crane. She called me Liza Minnelli and encouraged me to keep writing. Sometimes she drove me crazy with her red penned edits on the stories and essays that I handed in to her, but I will always love her.

The last name Liuzzo fills me with fear and dread, and the last name Purcell fills me with a weird mix of sadness and disgust.

Somewhere between 6th and 7th grade, I got sick of there being at least three other girls who called themselves Liz. I wanted to separate myself from those Lizs, somehow. I decided it would be cool of me to change the spelling of my nickname from L-I-Z to L-I-S.

I know. I know. L-I-S does not spell Liz. It pretty much spells Liss, as if I were named Alyssa. It also spells LAME.

But in my twelve-year-old mind, it was cool as the other side of my pillow. Forcing an S to sound like a Z was so cool, in fact, that I decided to make everyone I knew spell my name that way, or else they received a lot of whining. (What I should have been working on instead was weaning everyone in my family completely off of calling me Beth. FUCK that nickname is stupid. I’d then managed to get mostly everyone to stop with the Beth, but even today there is one person who still stubbornly slips now and then. And I’ll tell you, if you are ever feeling like dying in a painful, “Let me get my head chopped off” kind of way, just call me Beth.)

Unfortunately, just like any nickname, the stupid S stuck. Liz because Lis, and people started to actually go with it. (Looking back, I should have spent my energy on convincing people to do something more beneficial for me, like buy me my own condo on the beach or something. My power of persuasion is apparently good, though it takes a lot of time.) Even now, a lot of people still spell Liz with an S when giving me gifts or writing me notes.

And suddenly, it just looked really fucking stupid to me.

“That says Liss, not Liz,” I said to myself one day. “Oh man, that’s dumb.”

But how can you kill your own Frankenstein? Especially when the Beth Frankenstein lumbers right next to it?

“Oh man,” I said. “I have way fucked up.”

To make matters worse, my little cousin Katarina took it upon herself to make Elizabeth — or ‘Lizabeth, as she sometimes calls me — sound like the coolest name in the world. It took a long time for my full name to grow on me, but Kat made me LOVE it.

“I can’t make people call me Elizabeth now. It’ll confuse the hell out of them, and they might even question my sanity. Like, really, who changes their mind about their name every five years?” I mulled this over day after day, until seeing L-I-S literally made me want to scream. (Though not nearly as loud as B-E-T-H makes me want to scream. And puke. And kill people.)

So one day, I said casually to the people next to me, “Spelling my name with an S is dumb.” And I stopped doing it. And I told them to stop doing it.

And people still do it anyway. I think they’re all so confused, they don’t know what the hell to call me anymore or how to spell it. I have, indeed, created a monster. The Lizlisbethenstein is coming to eat us all. Hopefully it eats Bethenstein first.

Very superstitious

I knew Mike was superstitious about Game Day, but I never knew just how bad it was! The following Facebook IM transcript depicts devout superstition. Reader beware, you’re in for a scare!

Elizabeth: can i wear a jersey? <3<3

Mike: um no

Elizabeth: WHAT

Mike: i only have that one manning jersey

Elizabeth: you always wear two you liar

Mike: no i wear the the shirt robbie gave to me and my long white sleeve and the manning

Elizabeth: you wear two jerseys
and that shirt

Mike: no i do not [know] what your talking about

Elizabeth: of course you don't - it's because you're LYING because you don't want me to wear it!

Mike: white long sleeve,grey soupcan shirt and the the manning

Elizabeth: plus the sanders or something
and i have a big blister on my heel ):

Mike: i cant wear the sanders cause he is out for season and if i wear it brings bad luck

Elizabeth: but you've BEEN wearing it!!

Mike: my unitas only gets worn when we play baltimore

Elizabeth: i make fun of you EVERY. TIME. because it's funny that you wear all of those clothes!

Mike: i havent wore my sanders since octobers injury
this is my routine and it works ok so back off

Elizabeth: (snort)
I'm making fun of you on Twitter*

Mike: your an asshole brat (snort) right back

Elizabeth: hahaha no, i’m awesome

Mike: what ever i am superstious with the colts i dont care what anyone says including you

Elizabeth: i so love you


*No actual harming of the Michael was done

How I inspire people to make babies

Karaoke night, from two weeks ago. Last night I went to the Berlin Station Cafe for karaoke again with Kate, and this time Mike came along. Poor Mike looked traumatized every time someone other than me, Kate, or a few other people sang, and he kept getting frustrated because they didn’t have any of the songs he wanted to do. (My love is quite picky when it comes to music. It’s a good thing I’m a decent singer, or else I’d be afraid of singing in front of him!)

I didn’t tweet at all this time because I was too busy singing song after song, getting mauled by strangers who wanted to adopt me, and laughing at Mike’s horrified facial expressions during songs where people who were just having fun did songs he really liked and ruined them. Ah, good times, good times.

I did the following songs:

  • “Head Over Feet” — Alanis Morissette
  • “Going Under” — Evanescence
  • “I Turn To You” — Christina Aguilera

I was going to do “Fallin’” by Alicia Keys, too, but we left a little early so that Kate could get up for work in the morning. I feel like I did another song, too, but I can’t think of what it was.

Kate did:

  • “Mercy” — Duffy
  • “Sweet Child o’ Mine” — Guns N Roses
  • “No More (Baby I’ma Do Right)” — 3LW

and I think she did another one, too, but again, brain isn’t awake enough right now to put it all together.

Mike just cheered us on, sipped my beer while I got drunk, and made this adorably traumatized face when some guy did Disturbed, some lady did Evanescence, and a couple of guys did Snoop Dogg. (Kate and I were amused; we take karaoke seriously enough to do songs in our range, but we both seem to thoroughly enjoy watching other people, whether they’re good or bad.)

As Mike drove us back home (Kate lives twenty minutes away from me), I sang “Fallin’” because in my drunken mind, I was gonna get that song out of my system, dammit. Then I sang “Delayed Devotion” by Duffy. I started to sing something else, and then got sidetracked because we started talking. Or, well, he started talking. Then I started talking with him because I’m ADHD like that.

Altogether it was a fun night. I really like the bar, and even though it’s quite a ride away from my house, I think it’s worth it. I like it so much, in fact, that it’s in my novel. (I mean, I’ve only been to like five bars in my life, so that qualifies me to decide on a bar now.) I really like the atmosphere, the people, and the all-you-can-drink for $10 special (you get any of the drafts and the first row of hard alcohol, which is mostly vodka, but whatever, I love vodka). It pays off once you’ve had a few beers, and now that I’ve been drinking a couple weekends in a row again, I can drink more than a couple beers before I’m sloshed. Heh.

Ahead of me this weekend now is more writing, some work on a client’s website, some research for another client’s social media marketing plan, my Colts game against the Ravens (should be good, too bad I have to miss most of it), and a baby shower for Mike’s brother (which is smack in the middle of my game). We got the baby some cute stuff though, and a few things that I think Robbie and Jaysa will really, really appreciate. I realized as Mike and I were shopping that I know entirely too much about raising a child for my age.

“It’s because you have so many friends with kids,” he said.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. It’s just weird, being surrounded by people with kids and still not being in The Mom Club. Believe me, I know my time will come, but in the meantime it’s a little awkward. Still, it’s nice to be able to enjoy other people’s kids without having to worry about the financial end of it or the other scary bits about parenting. Mike and I have long talked about someday having kids of our own; we both love kids and can’t wait to have our own. But we both know that we have a lot of work to do before then (so if any of my family is reading this, you guys can breathe now). Heh.

Anyway, I don’t know how I got from alcohol to babies, but this couple at the bar last night — they said they were thirty but looked a lot younger — just loved me. It was a drunken love, but it was love. They grabbed my wrist with the LOVE tattoo while I was getting a refill on my beer and both screamed at the same time. She kept telling me that she really, really wants that tattoo, except the O shaped as a heart. The next time I stood next to them waiting for a refill, they proclaimed that I am their daughter from the future, because I’m beautiful and bold enough to do karaoke. I was like, “uh, thanks,” and pretty much just squirmed while they sat there squeeing and telling me that they were gonna make a baby that night and that they hope their daughter is like me.

Hey, I guess it’s better than getting hit on by an old man at a hip hop bar.