Swim practice

Every time after swim practice I notice a delicious aroma emanating from my body. First, I smell my hair to see if it's my shampoo or conditioner. Then I smell my skin to see if it's my lotion. Then I get it. My deodorant smells really good. I do this every time.

Ummm

Alla says that there are spiders that bite you and lay their eggs in you.

Update

The bump got as large as a football before I began taking antibiotics. I feel a whole lot better, but I still have a lump (but it is getting smaller). The antibiotics are really strong so I have to take them every six hours and have to take them an hour before I eat or two-three hours after I eat. This really messed up my eating schedule and makes me wake up at two in the morning to take them.
We won our swim meet on Saturday by a lot and came in third in relay carnival. This is fantastic since we usually come in fourth or fifth and we dqed in, I think, three relays. We would have come in second if we didn't dq in the boys 9-10 100 meter medley relay. Oh well, we are still taking like three or four relays to all-star relays.

Giant lumps

I hate a giant lump on my hip. It's an infection caused by a bug bite. It hurts. It's huge. Morgan says that it's gotten a heck of a lot bigger than yesterday. I have to take four antibiotics a day for ten days. I do not feel too well, but the swim team won today, so that's good.

Why I hate insects

I think I forgot to mention, but on Tuesday I was taking a nap in my room when I was viciously attacked by a spider. I woke up to go to swim lessons and my hand was covered with like twenty bites evenly spaced from each other from a spider of some sort. I tried to have a shoe-to-face conversation with the spider, but I was unable to locate the vermin. So, I thought I have had enough of obnoxious insects making a meal out of me, but, no. Today, when I was taking a shower at the pool, I noticed a weird red lump on my left hip. I took a look at it and felt it and it was big, red, and definitely more dense than normal skin. So, I showed some people and they were thoroughly grossed out. We guess it's a spider bite of some sort since I didn't feel it happen and it didn't itch, but I'm definitely having a nasty allergic reaction to it. It's still swollen and starting to hurt. It's about the size of an elliptical tennis ball, sticks out about the diameter of a dime, and is really red. It looks gross and it hurts.
On another note on things I hate: shopping. We went to get a USB floppy drive for the swim team laptop. They didn't have a good one at Office Depot, so I went to Circuit City. Then we (Karel, Morgan, and I) went to Target, KB Toys, and the party store in the shopping center off of Georgia to look for pirate things. We were very unsuccessful. Karel's brilliant plan was to go to a toy store because they should have like a pirate play set there, but, they didn't. They did have pirate stuff at the Aspen Hill party store, but Karel was no for that idea when we began shopping. Now I have an eyepatch, earring, pirate sword, and that's about it. I need to put together my pirate outfit.

Busy

Today was probably one of the most busiest days ever. First, I had to go to swim practice and deal with children all day (but on a very positive note, I help three girls work on their back stroke fears and one of them swam backstroke in the meet tonight). We did trivia day at practice and the kids weren't the smartest kids I've ever know. Of course, I did work with like Drew and a couple of twelve and thirteen year olds answering trivial pursuit questions. My 9-10 group was full of little geniuses. They were really knowledgeable. I guess the brains as well as the point scoring power resides in the younger portion of our team.
After swim practice I ended up writing all the B meet cards since Zach was at work, Karel was getting hickeys from her "friend" Jason (he's the one before Andrew that I had a picture of at school), and Matt looked absolutely exhausted. Originally we were just going to print labels and then affix the labels to cards, but it turns out that the swim team did not buy the option to print out labels when it purchased the software. I tried to get the new printer we bought to work with the laptop, only to find out that the laptop is not so much able to read disks from the cd-rom drive. Since I need a dial up connection to get the laptop on line to download the driver, I am currently without the new printer. I hate the damn laptop and the damn printer. This is just another strike against laptops and makes me never want to get one again. If it were a computer, it would be much easier to just install another network card and then install the driver, or even install a new cd rom drive. I do have a network card from my busted laptop...maybe it'll work. I might try this tomorrow, if I don't throw it down the stairs. Oh wait, unless the driver for the card is on a floppy, I'm in the same stupid situation. Damn this stupid printer situation! Damn this stupid laptop!
The B Meet went incredibly quickly today. Go Strathmore Bel Pre. It was funny because I think like a majority of my team has swam for Terry at some point in their lives. It's funny to see the kid's reaction to Karel, Zach, and myself when we tell them that we still swim with Terry. And our practice on Tuesday night kicked my butt. I haven't felt that dead in my entire life, but Terry said I was doing much better with the intervals that I have been. I felt like I had been doing worse, but whatever. I guess I just felt slower because I wasn't skipping hundreds...
Zach, Karel, Matt, and I just finished doing our lineups for this weekend. Saturday morning B meet at our pool and then Sunday morning is Relay carnival at our pool. It's going to be a long weekend and next weekend is going to suck. We should get creamed by the pool we're swimming next weekend and no one will be at home to do anything with. My parents are going to Cape Cod, my sister is going to RPI with Jason, and Ben's going to be at the beach. I'm going to be all alone and that really sucks. Speaking of things that suck, my sucker fish died. It was interesting because my mom and I just had a conversation the night before he died about how good he looked. The next afternoon when I came back from swim practice, he was floating belly-up at the back of the tank. Maybe I'm just not meant to have an algae free tank, although I did get a bonus snail when I bought my java fern. I noticed the snail the other day and was surprised by this unexpected inhabitant.
Also, I think I'm going to go to grad school starting next summer to become a librarian.

I hate mosquitoes, but I love swim team parents.

So, swim team parents, well, some of them, rock because Mrs. Rock bought the coaches subs today. Mmmm...Mozzarella and tomato. This makes me happy. My constantly itching legs do not make me happy. Neither do my really tight and sore hamstrings. I can't even like bend down to the ground without wincing.
Today I am going to make a major supply run: index cards, labels, paper, printer, etc. The swim team printer died this week and we need a new one, hardcore. Mrs. Jaffe said to just go pick one up, but I'm a little hesitant. I know the printer is broken, really broken, but I think someone who isn't a coach should have this responsibility. If I find one that is good, then I'll get it, if not, someone else can buy it. But I really want one for Wednesday night when the coaches do the A meet lineup and the relay carnival line up in one night after a super long b meet. It'll be fun.

Why I hate my family

Today we took down the shed in our backyard. It was a last minute decision that cost me my last day off until July 4th. This makes me angry. And my mom is giving away the hamster cage stuff and my barbies. The hamster cage stuff is not hers to give away; Karel and I bought most of it and it's like a couple hundred or so dollars worth of saved allowances and birthday money and she doesn't want to have to store a box out in the shed (which there is room for). So, she's just being a space bitch again. I can't decide whether to fight over the barbies or let her win, but I know I'll probably kick myself in the ass later when I have children (but will they really want to play with my old toys?) (and if anyone bitches about how I have too much stuff, I'll punch you, so you shut up already). Great, my parents have ruined my only day off where I had to opportunity to do what I wanted since Sunday, June 6th. This fucking sucks and I hate them.

Break things

I want to. The freaking swim team laptop is not working with the swim team printer or now, my home printer. People keep telling me that they aren't going to be at the meet like today, when I usually like to have my line up done by today. This sucks. I'm tired. I'm annoyed. I'm angry. Angry like oranges.
I'm letting the laptop sit now for a while and doing something completely different by I try to print the line up again. I'm going to Gaithersburg tomorrow to meet the other team's coach and exchange line ups.
My shoulders are sun burned and I put aloe on them after I took a shower. Then I took a nap and my shirt fused to my shoulders. I had to pick it off and it wasn't a comfortable sensation.
Let's hope it thunder storms today from 5:30 until 6:30 then I won't have practice (if the last lightening is around 6:30 then the pool will be closed until seven when practice is over). The good thing is that tomorrow is Friday and I don't have afternoon practice and all my work for the meet will be done before I go to bed tonight. I'm not going to try to score the meet and there is no team dinner this Friday (which seems weird, but oh well, more time for me to rest).
Stupid things not work.

Oh, on a happier note, I went to Olive Garden last night with Ben, Fuzzy, and Parker. It was good. I also called Fuzzy's younger brother, Jeremy, Andrew Ducore today at swim practice. It's a problem I have, confusing siblings (but at least I know whose siblings is whose).

Shrek 2

I went to go see Shrek 2 last night with Karel, Zach, Zach's adopted brother for the summer, Sean, Andy, and Matt last night in Snowden. Note to others: be careful when caravaning with Andy since his brake lights don't work and it would have been very easy to rear end him if Zach didn't hit the brakes a lot. Also, make sure someone knows where you're going because we got lost and had to like speed through parking lots. Also, I feel old because the androgynous cashier didn't give me the student discount while he automatically gave it to Matt and Karel. I really don't look that old, I promise.
The movie was okay. I'm glad I didn't like make a special event planned out of it, it was amusing, but not fantastic. The best part was Puss in Boots when he does his sad eyes. The next best part was when the people behind us said they crapped their pants and threw shoes. Wait, that wasn't part of the movie.
We eventually returned home safely after Karel and Zach almost stole another shopping cart and I felt like throwing up in the car. I was really sleepy this morning when I got up to go to work. It's okay though, since I took a two hour nap after swim practice was over. Practice went reasonably well. The best group was the 13-18's. I think we'll have to do something really fun with them tomorrow because they were so pleasant and worked so hard yesterday.
Tonight I have to go to the pool for lessons with the Parkers at 5:00, then practice from 5:30-7:00 and then afterward I'm going to Olive Garden with Ben, Fuzzy, Parker, and maybe other people. I don't know what's going on since I'm not planning this. I think I'll just give up on planning and make other people arrange things. Maybe that'll be less stressful for me.

Why my sister is dumb

This is Karel's away message: "nikki's finally back . . . let the summer of poor decisions commence (lets just hope i don't get caught this time)!"
Last year she was grounded for something she did with Nikki. Let's take bets on how long it'll be before she fucks up again. I'm going to give her a month.

Reading

So, I finished the fifth Harry Potter book for the second time on like Wednesday and have been in Harry Potter withdrawal for the past few days but haven't had the desire to go to my storage shed and get more of the Harry Potter books out of storage (why didn't I just bring them home?). I started reading The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, yesterday while driving home. It is addictive. I even put off starting my morning nap to finish more chapters. If you want a good, addictive, fantastic summer read, I highly suggest this book. It has fantastically short chapters (like three pages to seven pages) which make it excellent to read at the pool where there will likely be many distractions.

Pittsburgh

So, my quick trip to Pittsburgh was pretty dull and pointless. After time trials (which lasted like four or five hours because of super slow parents) I was rushed into getting ready to leave for Pittsburgh. Karel and I even had to eat lunch in the car. There was no time to even tell our parents how things went because we had to get out of here. Then we sat in the car for four+ hours. I tried to nap, but the guy who was lecturing on the difference between reform and orthodox Judaism in relation to some document or something kept yelling on the CD and waking me up. And then when my mom drove it was all bumpy and crazy and kept waking me up.
Then we checked into our hotel when we finally arrived and went to my Pap Pap's to pick him up to go to Chili's for dinner. I had the presidente margarita. It was damn tasty. Karel had a virgin strawberry daquiri. HAHAHA. The waitress laughed at her when she sad it in a sad and dejected voice. Then we went to Value City to purchase clothing. I got a couple of tank tops to wear to work so that I won't get as bad of a farmer's tan as usual. I am sunburned, by the way, from time trials and I totally put on sunscreen. I couldn't find a jean skirt, which I've been looking for for a while. I was sad because the shirt I wanted to wear today would look really cute with a jean skirt. But it's okay because it was too damn hot to wear it, anyway. I also got some shorts and some teaching clothes (a green washable suede skirt, a neat linen shirt, and a lacy blue flowery tank top to wear under a shirt or jacket). Karel and I watched Briget Jone's Diary and fell asleep pretty early.
I had a weird dream about waking up in the hotel room at like 11:00 am and missing breakfast. Then I decided that I was upset that I slept in that late and I magically turned the clock back two hours. Then I fake woke up and it was only 9:00 and I was happier. Then I for real woke up at 8:51 when my dad called to tell me to get up and go get breakfast. I always have weird dreams in hotel rooms. I think it's because I make them so deliciously cold that I sleep so well. Also, this place (the Marriott Springhill Suites) had the softest hotel sheets and blankets of any place I've ever stayed in.
I watched Biker Boyz this morning on HBO. It made me teary eyed; that's not really surprising to anyone who has ever watched movies with me. Then we went to the memorial park (ie cementary) to see my grandmother's grave. Then we went to my Pap Pap's (grandfather's) place and put more stuff from their place into our car to take home. My parent's then took Pap Pap to Walmart to get some stuff (flowers) and then went to the memorial park (to put the flowers on the grave). I think memorial park is just a crappy cementary with no head stones or crypts or monuments (so, nothing really interesting to look at). Then we took more old people (great aunts), Pap Pap, my aunt and uncle who live in Pittsburgh (the uncle who made rude comments to Kayla about her boobs and figure which, of course, my mom had to tell my aunt and uncle that I had been annoyed about that and they continues to say that if you have them out there then you deserve whatever comments you get which I don't agree with because none of my friends who are young made any sort of comments what so ever and since he's older he should have known better), and one of my mom's cousins and her husband to Eat'N Park. It was slow, but okay. Then we hurriedly left after dropping off one of my great aunts. Then once we got off the turnpike traffic was horrible getting onto 70, so we took a different and mountainous route home. It took a long time and we are finally home.

On another note

I have a bathing suit hickey on my neck and it hurts.

Mom news

So, now my mom says that she didn't have a heart attack and she never had one, when they (my mom and dad) told me on Wednesday when she came back that she had had a heart attack, but they didn't know when. So, I don't really know what the hell happened, but she's allowed to go back to all normal activity so I guess she's fine.
And I did get my anxiety disorder from her because she said she thinks she had a panic attack because of all the bull shit she goes through when she does the lost and found for Blake. Instead of just throwing everything away, she puts it out in the cafeteria during finals for people to come claim things, then she takes the good stuff, cleans it, and donates it to a children's clothes closet thing to give clothes, shoes, and backpacks to children who can't afford them. It's a really nice thing to do, but she always has all these major annoyances with it, like the PE department not letting her use the school's washing machines and dumping all of their gross and unwashed locker leftovers in with her relatively clean lost and found stuff. Wow, now I'm grumbling for her... weird.

Cleaning

I just want to say that I moved my bed, threw away all the trash under it, and vacuumed under it. I think this is a great accomplishment. I also vacuumed the rest of my room and picked up things for no particular reason. I think Kayla would be proud.

Updates

My mom came home from the hospital yesterday. She was back when I got back from swim practice. She had a stress test and her heart looks normal. But, it turns out that she did have a heart attack, but it wasn't a big one. So now she has to go back to the doctors on Monday. But, it's been a long couple of days.
Now I have to go to a stupid MCSL league meeting tonight. I want to go swimming, now I have to go to an uber boring and pointless meeting. POINTLESS! BORING! I've been before. I'm getting tired of doing things for swim team.
I think I'm just grumpy.
Ben was so cute yesterday because he remembered that it was my half birthday. He got me a birthday card and cut it in half. He's so sweet and cute. And it's funny cause I hadn't realized it was my half birthday. So, happy 21.5 birthday to me!

Sometimes you have to change your plans

So, I was totally going to have a relaxing and fun-filled day of Harry Potter reading and napping, but something happened that changed my plans. So, I had gotten up and was eating breakfast when the phone rang and it was my mom. She needed Karel and I to come pick her up from school and take her to Kaiser. She had chest pains earlier this morning and was going to have to go to Kaiser to get things looked at. So, I drove her to Kaiser and she was seen immediately. The plus side of the story is that I needed to go there eventually to pick up some prescriptions so it kinda worked out well. The doctor there had her for a while and did an EKG and then called me into the exam room where she proceeded to tell me that I was going to drive my mother to the hospital because I would be faster than an ambulance. Now, this was starting to freak me out. The doctor said my mom's EKG wasn't bad, but it wasn't perfect, either. So I drove my mom to Holy Cross hospital and we waited in triage. They are a little slow at Holy Cross, don't go there if you can avoid it. So, they did another EKG and blood work and after being there for about three or four hours we were finally seen by a doctor. The doctor said that she didn't have a heart attack, but something was off. So, now she's being admitted and held over night for observation and a stress test in the morning. So, I've had a long day. I left home at about ten thirty and got back around seven. I was at Holy Cross from one until about 6:30.
It's fun to be me.

Chipmunks mess up sleeping

So, I tried to go to sleep early last night because I was tired and not feeling too well after pretty much just standing in cold water for an hour yesterday. However, I couldn't sleep. I kept hearing things in my room and thinking that they were the chipmunk. And I kept positioning myself to like try and see him when he came out from where ever he is hiding. I know he's still alive because Karel's cat woke me up at 6:30 to chase him around the room. I didn't catch him. He's an amazingly wiley chipmunk. I think I just really need two people to catch him, but I don't know where Karel is and I don't think she'd wake up that early to help me.

Sunday

Sunday was another long day. I joined Ben, his brothers, and his father to Ben's cousin's high school graduation get together. Originally Ben wanted to go up on his own so he could make an appearance and then leave, but that plan was smashed when his dad mentioned that we should all go in Ben's new car. Now, the majority of all sedans are designed to seat five people, but not very comfortably. So, instead of taking their large eight passenger van or large tahoe, we took Ben's malibu. The only car that would make less sense to take five people anywhere is Ben's mom's beetle convertible which was thankfully with her at Ocean City. Now, if this had been like a short trip, the car wouldn't have been that bad, but it was an hour long trip to Frederick. It wasn't horribly uncomfortable, just uncomfortable enough to make you wonder why we didn't take one of the many larger vehicles sitting in the Custead driveway.
The party was pretty boring. One of the more boring graduation parties I've been to, but Ben was nice, so that was good. Then we came back and I was hungry. Ben was nice and sacrificed two hours of his time to go see the new Harry Potter movie with me. I can't decide whether I liked it or not. I think it might have been the atmosphere of a crappy theater and lots of antsy kids who kept talking and moving around. I did like the directing. It was very visibly appealing. I think they left out too much of the book to make it as emotionally impacting as the book. They should have made it longer. Makes me wonder what they're going to do with the fourth and fifth books that are way longer than the third. But, on the plus side, I didn't get as mad about them wearing normal clothes as I thought I would. But they totally left out a lot of the characters, like I don't think I saw any of the professors except the divination teacher, Lupin, a little bit of Snape, and Hagrid. It felt very rushed. Why can't movies be like six hours long? We could see them in segments.
Today I am reading the fifth book because I'm bad. I am also trying to catch the loose chipmunk in my room. Chipmunks smell bad when they start to decay, so I want to catch it before it dies. It looked pretty chipper this morning when I was chasing it around, so it should could out eventually. I also need to work on the swim team bulletin board. I think I'll start that after I take a shower.

Car shopping takes a long time.

Yesterday I spent the day with Ben. It was another exciting day in the pseudo-married life of Anna and Ben. First, we went to two different banks to deposit money into each of our bank accounts. Then, we went to his house to look up different used car prices on the computer and in the paper. Then we went to Carmax in Rockville to look for a car. We were there for four hours and looked at every car in his (well, really his dad's) price range. Of course we all really liked the car we later realized we could not buy because it had been transferred there for another person. Eventually he got a car. It's nice. I like it. You can read about it when he puts it in his blog, I don't want to spoil it for you.
Then we went to Fuddruckers. Then a bunch of clothing stores for me to find a jean skirt (which I didn't find one I liked for a price I was willing to pay). Then CompUSA where he looked for a laptop (which he didn't find) and where I asked how much it would cost to repair my broken laptop. Even if it is just as simple as I think it is, they have to hot metal glue the pin back into place, it's going to be a flat $140 charge for labor. No matter if they look at my computer for an hour, it's still $140. That's ricoculous. Then we went to Rockville Best Buy which one again proved that it the most superior Best Buy in terms of employee niceness. The Best Buy in DC sucks and we had a really rude guy not help us. But, needless to say that Ben hasn't gotten his laptop yet.
Um, yeah, and today I'm going with him to his cousin's graduation party. And that's about it.

Plans for the weekend

Yesterday I swam. I swam a lot. My workout was to swim for forty minutes. That's a lot of swimming. I only did 2000. That's not too bad for being my second swim practice since February and having a really stiff neck which made it quite difficult to breathe in freestyle. However, swimming seems to have made my neck feel better after I gave up trying to not hurt myself while I swam. After the forty minute swim, Zach, Karel, and I did a relay race against the clock and then did some cooperative swimming.
Today, I have to clean the porch because people are coming over for dinner and make some cookies for my swim team. Then I'm going to go to work. Then dinner. Then hang out with Ben because he's cute.
I have no plans for Saturday. But, on Sunday, I really want to go see Harry Potter. Me thinks I'll beg Ben to go with me. Maybe if I pay he won't mind so much.

Insaniquarium

So, I really like to play stupid games online, yet somehow I missed insaniquarium. I played rocket mania every day after student teaching, and yet, I never knew about insaniquarium. Now, I play it all the time. I play it so much that when I lie down to go to sleep I can see little fishes swimming around in my tank, pooping coins or diamonds. Ah, it's like The Sims, only was less complicated. Okay, it's nothing like the Sims, but it's really fun.
Popcap games

Judy Dench

Yeah, so Michael Hamilton thought it was amazing that Dame Judy Dench was at my graduation and received an honorary degree. I can't decide if that makes it more fantastic or just points out my uber nerdiness.

I think I missed something going to a women's college

I think I missed out on much male eye candy by going to Baldwin. I think I am unhappy/saddened by this fact the more I see more and more attractive men of college age. To think, I could have looked at them on a fairly regular basis if they had attended my school. Instead, I had whole bunches of lesbian drama, which is entertaining, but way less hot. Well, at least I didn't think it was as hot as staring at good looking men on a daily basis.

How do you know when it's PMS time?

When the idea of eating a whole large party sized bag on M&M's seems like a good solution to your dinner hunger. I really do love M&M's.
So, there are 140+ kids on the swim team. That's a lot of kids. Considering that the largest we had before this was 125 three years ago.
Swim team plan for tomorrow:
Old group
ask the older kids if they want to do a team builder and maybe do one with them
dryland for them (maybe around the gazebo fun?)
break into groups to train
Middle group
play trainwreck
dryland
swim some more
Young people
trainwreck
dryland
swim some

Some kids are really out of shape and some other kids are totally in shape. Yeah, swim team is fun! And someone stole the freaking wrench! Grr... Microwave, microphone, stereo: those seem like logical things to steal, but a wrench? I don't get it.

Ben

So, I would just like to point out how much I love Ben. He makes me laugh. He makes me happy and makes any situation tolerable. Wow, this is a less than stellar proclamation of my love for him, but I don't feel particularly poetic today. But, if any of you get married before we do, then I'll cut you. Hey, look, my rock-envy hasn't lessened since I've been at school.
On a side note, Ben's mom doesn't understand why it would be less than fabulous to live at home with your parents for an extended period of time. My goal is to get out by November -- even if I have to dip into savings and bonds. I think that November is a good goal. Let's say I don't get a job until like September (when the school year starts), then I'll have at least two months of payment to help make the security deposit and first month's rent.