I Heart Lists

Because I just can't go into how infuriating my OB's office is (current threat level: firebombing = proportional response), I present you with a List of The New Classics as seen on books i done read.  I've probably done this before, but I heart lists.

If there's any that I haven't read that you recommend, let me know!

THE NEW CLASSICS

1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy

2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer
12. Blindness, José Saramago
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
21. On Writing, Stephen King
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt
28. Naked, David Sedaris
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
49. Clockers, Richard Price
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe
58. Drop City, TC Boyle
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich
61. Money, Martin Amis
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
84. Holes, Louis Sachar
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show

Shitteth Fanneth Meeth

Note Bene: everything is fine with the baby, and will be fine with me once I knock some heads.

I have tons and tons to post, but, as I think the title subtly hints, things are a bit crazed 'round these parts, specifically in the job sphere.  It involves the always pleasant People Who Hate Me and their sidekicks, People Who Are Freakin' Stupid and Need to Learn to Do Their Jobs.  See, if you don't tell me about something really important that needs to go in a document, I won't know it needs to go in said document and won't include it.  So, when you start yelling at me about the missing clauses, I can reference my 10 EMAILS TO YOU REQUESTING RELEVANT INFO.  Bums.

Thanks A**hats for Proving My Point

Way to go fat-hating anonymous commenters!  Many thanks for proving my point on my last post.

I welcome all constructive comments, from those that point out that my health might be improved by weight loss to those that disagree with my political stances.  When it comes to needlessly mean and unconstructive comments, however, I draw the line.  At the very least, if you're going to insult me, have the stugatz (i.e., the balls) enough to sign your name.  Don't just hide your m.u.d. (made-up drama) behind an "anonymous" shield.

From now on, this blog will not allow anonymous comments.  Want to comment?  Sign in with any account that Blogger allows (e.g., Blogger, Google ID, Open ID, Wordpress, etc.).

People Who Hate Me: The Fat Haters

Welcome back to another edition of People Who Hate Me, now with more hate.  Who's hating me this week?  The incompetent sonographer (we'll call her "Dum Dum") and her azhat supervisory doc at the testing site for my week 20 scan.  Why?  Because I'm fat, have bones and require the Zofran pump for my hyperemesis.

As you know, I'm receiving Zofran through a subcutaneous pump.  Here's how it works (in non-technical language):

1) Infusion site: This is a plastic disc about the size of a quarter that sticks to my belly.  The disc has a spiked, fixed tube on it that goes into my skin (hence: subcutaneous).

2) Tube: The disc is connected to a thin, 2 ft. long tube that attaches to a syringe of meds on the pump.

3) Pump: The pump is about the size of a remote control and you wear it in a purse-like bag with an arm strap.  You put a syringe of meds in the top of the pump and the pump's computer pushes on the syringe plunger, thus pushing the meds through the tube and into me, stopping me from doing my never-ending Exorcist imitation.

So, I can't stop the meds and remove the site for you, Dum Dum.  You are not worth continuous vomit.  You'll have to work around it.  This totally threw her.

Also throwing her was that I was fat.  Now, I am aware that extra padding does make it a little more difficult to do a sonogram; it does not, however, make a scan impossible.  In addition, I don't think it was my fat, I think it was Dum Dum's lack of knowledge of anatomy.  See, no matter how much you shove on my hip bone with the transducer, the bone will not move out of the way.  It's bone, that's how that works.

After Dum Dum finished the scan, we were sent back to speak with her azhat supervisory doctor.  He told us, "Your baby is really big.  It's something we're worried about and you should be too.  You're going to have to have a c-section because you're so big and because the baby is so big.  In fact, we've included a note on our report that the scan was technically difficult due to your fatness."

Fine, asshole, but is the baby okay?  Are all the parts in the right place?  Are all the parts there that are supposed to be there?  Oh, yes.  The baby is perfectly healthy.  F-ck you, you prick.

Thank goodness I was seeing my doctor that afternoon anyways.  She's awesome and was like, "don't listen to that asshole, he doesn't know what he's talking about.  You're measuring a few days ahead, the baby is a little larger than average (baby is 14 oz.) and you're not automatically going to do anything.  You're only at week 20.  The baby is fine.  Your weight looks great and your blood pressure is fine.  We can all calm down."  I love my doctor.

PWHM - edition 4

Welcome to another edition of People Who Hate Me.  Today, it's really more of a thing or maybe I can go with the people behind the thing?  Do you think that's allowed?  Are the rules of PWHM that strict?  Anyways, the people who hate me today are the creators of Blogger's commenting system.

For several months, I've had trouble leaving comments at blogs hosted by Blogger.  I type my comment, press enter and then Blogger tells me that it can't publish my comment.  Then, I press enter again and a word verification comes up.  Then, I enter that and finally, FINALLY, the comment gets published.

This is utter BS and I call SHENANIGANS on the people of Blogger.  Does anybody else have this problem?  Is it just me?

Happy Delurking Week!  If Blogger ain't fouling you up with the whole comment-leaving thing, take a sec to say hi!

Giant289Pig

Please forgive me for interrupting the current programming with a surprise part 3 of our four hundred thousand, seven hundred and ninety two part series...

People Who Hate Me

So, I had to reset a password. The site sent me a temporary password to log in with. Yeah. The title above is my temporary password. They don't even know me and they're calling me a giant pig. Effers.
_________________

In other news, I commented at:

The Pitter-Patter (on her BFN)
The Baby Chase (on her pregnancy after IF)
On (In)fertile Ground (on being lapped)
Local Nourishment (on an awesome reusable grocery bag)
Into the Light Again (asking a question about knitting)

I returned a comment to:
Grace by Inches (aka Girl, Esq. who I know IRL!!) (on making good choices for herself)

PWHM - Part 2

Thank you for all of your good wishes for John Dear and myself. We really appreciate all your good thoughts. :)

It's time for part 2 in our four hundred fifty seven thousand part series...

People Who Hate Me

The people hating me today are the makers of Pr.om.etri.um. I just started it this morning and am already feeling incredibly dizzy and nauseated.* Blech. My mind keeps going to the group vomit scene in The Office. I could've totally nailed that scene. Heh.

In other news, we saw our RE today who told me that a) we do have a plan in case this cycle is negative (4 more OPK-predicted dIUIs) and b) I can get a flu shot. So, I'll be doing that on Wednesday and hopefully not puking.

I woke up at 6 AM so that I could get my walking in before work. It was freezing. I did not know this before going out, so wasn't wearing a jacket. It became fall in like a day and a half here. I am an iceberg; I am awesome.

*Just for my own notes: I had regular nausea early this morning upon waking. Heartburn around 10 AM. Major nausea throughout lunchtime. Dizziness starting after lunch and continuing this afternoon.

PWHM Series: Part 1

Welcome to the introduction of a new series, dear Readers, the first edition of our special report:

People Who Hate Me

Part 1: My Accountant
I'm pretty sure that my accountant hates me because I am sending her the docs to do my 2008 tax return today. Yep, that's right. She's getting 1 week to do my return.*

I'm not even certain if I have all the necessary docs in the package that I'm sending to her. I'm feeling pretty guilty about it, but I figure 1) better some info than none, and 2) better late than never.

There are some things that I am really on the ball about and some things where I utterly am not. When it comes to taxes, the ball is on another continent. I am not on it, under it, over it or in it.

I have good intentions for our 2009 taxes though. I got a green box at the Container Store to store all my financials papers in so they'll all be in one place. My goal is to get all the information (except for the company docs) into the accountant by April, 2010.


*Due to the way that finances are calculated in the company for which I work, I am not able to file my tax returns till October 15th, even though most returns in the US are due April 15th.