Book Cart Drill Team Champ

Thank you All Things Considered, for giving me a really really good reason to be a librarian.

I can't decide if my favorite quote from the story is "Our carts at home don't do wheelies as well as the models we use here. These are full-competition models." or "There's a stereotype that librarians are boring. And I think they want to change that stereotype to 'librarians are crazy.' "

Dear my family,

I think we should all become librarians, because we would totally rock this competition. I know you agree. Thank you.

Love, Andrea

ANTM Dreaming

So I had this dream last night that I was on America's Next Top Model and they kept forgetting my wardrobe and makeup and stuff so everyone elses' pictures where all awesome and mine were just me standing there. But I somehow got to the top five anyway (and probably would've done even better if my alarm didn't go off during judging).

Anyway, I told a couple of my coworkers about it this morning and the response was "Do you watch that show 24/7 or what?" And then they related to me two other dreams I'd told them about ANTM in the last month. I had forgotten about both of them. Now I'm a little embarrassed.

Whatever, they won't be laughing when Tyra Banks crowns me America's Next Top Model.

Bureaucracy Sucks

For as long as I've known Trevor, he's been getting a monthly payment from the federal government, courtesy of the SSI program. This check has helped us out with rent and other expenses quite nicely and I've always been grateful for it.

I used to feel a little guilty about it because we weren't in Desperate Need, but I realized that I never felt wronged paying for the program with my taxes prior to meeting Trevor and we do have extra expenses due to his disability and there are jobs he could never get because of his disability, so...I suppose it's a fair program.

Anyway, the month of July rolls up and...no deposit. Figuring there was some sort of technical error, we call them up and "Yeah, you owe us $7000+." Apparently Trevor hasn't been qualified for SSI for nearly a year (makes too much money, I guess), but they didn't catch it until this month. It may somehow be our fault, but as far as I know, we've done everything we should have and filled out all the forms correctly and who keeps paying someone for so long for so much without just stopping the payment? And then stops it with no warning?

A couple days ago we got a letter in the mail that basically said "Send us a money order for $7000 and we'll call it even". Yeah, since we have that. Like we've ever had that much money at once. Not that we're going to go to jail or anything, they're fairly lenient about paying back, but most likely we won't be seeing a tax return for many years to come.

Anyway, this is just a frustrated rant. Good ol' government.

Note: I was *this* close to titling this post "And You Want These Guys To Run Our Health Care System?", but decided it wasn't entirely fair. I've heard plenty of horror stories of equal or greater value about private health insurance companies and/or private health care providers. The trouble with all of these systems is that they require humans to run things and humans don't do things 100% correct all of the time. Heck, even machines that run things don't do things 100% correct all of the time. Bureaucracy sucks.

Hair Help

I need to do something with my hair. It sits about 1-inch below my shoulders and is utterly shapeless. The goal is to go longer, so I don't want to take much length off, just shape it up into something that makes sense. I keep thinking layering things up will do the trick, but I have this dreadful fear that I'll end up with the Jennifer Aniston haircut we all sported during the 90s. I've also been thinking about some sort of loose perm for months now, so maybe this would be the time to go for that. Anyway, since hairstyle brainstorming is something that should be shared with friends, I'm enlisting your help. Any suggestions, helpful pictures, etc. are encouraged. Thank you.

Oh, and for the record, I have longish bangs these days, which are pretty flexible (the standard in-the-face bang, the piece-y in-the-face bang, the sideswept band, the slicked back and not really there bang, etc...I kind of do them all), so those will need to be taken into consideration.

Welcome Tiberius

Since the disappearance of Lyric, our family has been short a kitty and feeling it, so we decided it is time to get a new cat. After looking around a bit, we found the one for us, and he is, I am convinced, the cutest kitten of all time. He's sitting on my lap and playing with the tie to my pajama pants as I write this.

He's just two months old and cycles rather rapidly from super energetic/playful to super sleepy/cuddly. He's a longhair seal point of some sort with blue eyes and little lynx tufts at the tips of his ears. And he has the tiniest little meow and purr. He's adorable. I'll get some pictures of him up here sometime if I can ever figure out how to get pictures to the computer from my phone (my only camera) (I spent at least an hour trying to do that back on the post about Lyric missing, as I have some great pictures of Lyric there, but it ended with no fruit and a lot of tears).

We named our new kitty Tiberius after discussing a number of Roman names (to match our other cat, Julius). ("I like Tiberius." Tiberius was not a popular emporer. What a moody guy." "Well at least it's better than Caligula or something." "Whatever, Tiberius practically made Caligula into what he was, killing his whole family and introducing him to a world of decadence and vice at a very early age." "He wasn't all bad, though.") We liked the ring to it, and decided he's named after James Tiberius Kirk, rather than Tiberius the Roman emperor because Captain Kirk is a better man than Tiberius was. The deal was sealed by making his full name Tiberius Kirk Kelley. My brother-in-law Tylor lives with us, so they are Big Ty and Little Ty. Tiberius also answers to Tae Bo.

Julius has moved from hatred to annoyance to tolerance of Tiberius in the few days we've had him, so we hope that the chain will continue from tolerance to acceptance to friendship. He didn't get along with Lyric for the first week or so that we had him, but they soon after became good pals, so we expect that will be the same story here. When Tiberius first met Julius, he immediately ran up and nuzzled the heck out of Julius' legs (most likely Tiberius hasn't dealt with cats that aren't his littermates before, so he probably expected all cats to be nice) which was so cute except that Julius hissed and swatted at him in return. Tiberius now struggles with his desire for Julius' affection and his fear of him. He'll follow Julius all over the house, but will turn and run when Julius notices. Yesterday, though, there were a few very cute minutes when Tiberius decided that Julius' tail would be a fun thing to pounce on repeatedly and Julius just lay there contentedly taking it, so I expect things will be just fine in their relationship.

Speaking of those quick cycles, the kitty who was playing with my pants tie and who I couldn't keep off the keyboard when I started writing this is now sleeping in my lap. Man, he's so fluffy and tiny. I love him.