A feather is attacking Munchkin's nose!

Awww...here is my Peanut aka Munchkin. He is busy trying to get a parakeet cheek feather off his nose. I can tell it's a cheek feather because if you look really close there is a little black dot on it. Those are only grown around a parakeet's mouth area or cheek. They are molting right now and it looks like my parakeets exploded because there are feathers everywhere especially Sumo-keet, she's a big bird. The feather is a little fuzzy because Munchy was trying to eat it off his nose. He eventually succeeded and celebrated by gazing up at the birds and falling asleep. I figured he was dreaming of pouncing on birds since the closest he has ever gotten to my birdy babies are when he munches on their feathers. 

I know this sounds funny but the word "moist" creeps me out!

I always believed that the word "moist" was a wierd word. It kind of sounds dirty when you say it and when does a person say it. I've heard it used in sentences like "This cake is very moist" and that's about it. I checked out the etymology of the word and it states that it derived from the Latin word muscidus meaning moldy or mucidus meaning slimy, musty, moldy and/or mucus meaning slime. There is some other Latin words that "moist" could have derived from but here is my question. Why would some say that a cake is moist when they could say that the cake is slimy, musty or moldy? I don't know but that sounds like a nasty cake. I think the next time I encounter a "moist" cake I'll say it's gooey and not very dry instead of calling it a slime cake.

My adventures with EBay contd.

I have to admit, I think I am getting the hang of this EBay, schtick. I finally got the balls to sell something on EBay and sold some of my textbooks. I usually get only 1/4 back of what I spent on the damn book selling it back to the bookstore, so this year I decided to sell it myself. I am not looking to make a huge profit and I put a 100+ dollar book on sale for the buy it now option of only 50 bucks. I only sold two books but people bought them immediately and they left great feedback. I figure students have enough worries with paying escalating tuition bills and overpriced textbooks and this is my good deed for the month. I hope someone pays it forward and resells it to another student for cheap, too. I keep all my textbooks to lend to a friend who is a fellow nursing student. I admire him, he works his butt off to pay the bills and he goes to school,also. I figure I'd help him out this semester and give him my books from last semester and save him 135 dollars. I got an A in the class and hopefully my good karma rubs off.

It kind of came out funny?!

Today was my first class of Intro to Speech. It is an accelerated class so I have a lot of really young students and older students who are trying their hand at something different. It is a good mix and I feel that I will have some fun with that class. My teacher broke the ice with embarrassing stories of herself. Her most embarrassing story was that she was mistaken as a transvestite in a gay bar even thought she was a female. This got me thinking...what is my most embarrassing story? Lord knows I have plenty of them. I have one about me grossing out a vegetarian and making sex talk to my sandwich.

Here is how it went down. My husband got this huge double meat sandwich and I was trying to take a bite off his gargantuan sandwich! I think I said something like..."My God, honey, there is just so much meat, I don't know if I can get my mouth around it." This, of course, sent our friends in to stitches and the vegetarian who was looking at us like we killed and ate baby Jesus, started to laugh, too.

Here is a little info and I am not mentioning any names here but Taco Cabana bean and cheese tacos use lard, yep, from a cow, that's an animal. A rule of thumb when it comes to Tex-Mex food, if it tastes good they used lard. I just thought I should mention that just in case anyone was vegan or an ovo-lactate vegetarian and believed bean and cheese tacos were animal product free, I don't think so. Unless you cooked it, I wouldn't eat it if I were vegan. Yum, tacos!

Irrational anxiety!

I have this irrational anxiety when it comes to grocery stores. I hate shopping for food. My plan is to make a list, go in the store and grab everything I can in 10 minutes or less. If I pass an aisle, forget it. I ain't going back for it. I could blame my mom for this fear because when she went shopping she was in the grocery store for two hours or more. I hate wasting my time looking at stuff. I usually buy or at least window shop on line so by the time I get to the store, I grab what I want and go. I can't do that in a grocery store. It's crowded, people block your aisle with their carts and kids and sometimes it's like Mad Max beyond Thunderdome in there. I tried to remedy this problem by shopping only late at night around 1 or 2 in the morning but I kind of sleep during that time and I just stopped shopping and started eating fast food. One of my New Year's resolutions is to face my fear and dislike of the grocery store and to save money by not eating out all the time. So, today, I went to the store. They say music can calm you down and those people who figured that out weren't lying. I slapped on my iPod and earbuds and tuned out while I sang and danced little jigs down the aisles. People were looking at me funny but, hey, I was in a happy place. I shopped for 30 minutes by myself...all alone. This is a record. I had to take my earphones off at the check out and I started to get anxious and the cashier noticed, said something about me being flustered. I don't care I feel like I have crossed a major hurdle in getting over my grocery shopping anxiety.

What's going on!

Well, life has been the usual around here. I am still on winter break from school and I am just counting the days till I go back. I have a lead with a possible job that fits my perfect school job description...flexible hours, easy and I can do it and get the hell out of there. I have enough stress with school and I don't want to worry about work. I've been there and done that.

I have rescued another cat. He has been hanging around our outdoor food bowl. He seemed friendly enough so I picked him and discovered that he had a hole in his chest from a ruptured abscess that was trying to heal. I brought him inside so I can monitor the healing process and to make sure I can give him his medications regularly. My sister is pet sitting so I set him up in her bathroom. He seems okay and after further examination of his wound it doesn't look like he will need surgery but just some antibiotics. Plus, I noticed that the area around it looks like it's been shaved indicating to me that he is someone's pet plus the huge belly this kitty has. In the meantime we have called him Mr. Darcy while he is convalescing in Amy's bathtub. He got so relaxed he confused the cat box and the tub, repeatedly, and I was the lucky soul to clean that up. Yeah...fun. Amy's pet sitting job is over Wednesday and that is just perfect since Mr. Darcy is scheduled to be released that day. I hope his owner isn't too worried and I should put up a flier but I have been freaking lazy lately, I'll do it tomorrow, promise.

My other plan for this week is to check out the nursing school at the University of Texas at San Antonio. I am going with my friend, Jerry, and it will be a fun road trip. He is working a little bit more during this break and it's a soul sucking job sometimes so I just want to tell him to hang in there and that it's all worth it in the end. He is planning to go to nursing school, too, but the reality of paying one's bill is a heavy burden to handle while trying to keep focused on the future.

Another news flash is that my sister's cat, Don Gato, is in love with my husband. Since Amy isn't here, Don Gato and my husband have been cozier to the concern of my husband's cat, Sunny Bunny Bear. Sounds like there could be a cat fight in the near future.

Other than that, I am just happy to be alive and kicking. Peace out!

GO LONGHORNS! UT won the National Championship!

I watched the Rose Bowl football game tonight with the Texas Longhorns against the USC Trojans. It was an awesome game and UT came in as the underdogs and guess what? UT WON! I was biting my nails during the fourth quarter but UT turned it around and we won, how awesome is that. UT has not won the National Championship since 1970 but the wait was well worth it. My apartment is near student housing and my yells and screams were echoed by my neighbors. My sister who was staying at a friends house in Plugerville said that she heard people yelling and screaming when UT won out in the boondocks of suburbia. Down near the UT campus it's crazy and the streets are filled with people celebrating my alma mater and it's great. This is not only a big win for UT but anyone who loves and supports the University and the great state of Texas!