I visited 13 wineries in Michigan this weekend. 13! That’s the most wine I have ever drank over a weekend.
Continue Reading »

I got my hair cut today.

Never trust a bald man to cut your hair.

These are the pictures I brought:

I said I liked the layers and how ithe cuts tapered at the bottom but I didn’t want it that short. My hair was a little longer than shoulder length. I could get it into a small ponytail.

So guy starts cutting and does an OK job at a layered cut. Then the he looked at my pictures again and said he could do the cut the blonde has. He seemed pretty confident that he could do this until he started. Creating this cut involves cutting at a 45 degree angle which isn’t so much cutting as it is grabbing a section of hair and dragging scissors down it over and over. It sounded like my hair was being torn out. Piles of my hair were on the floor and he hadn’t even moved to the front of my head. I noticed him lingering in the back too long and figured something was fucked up. Finally, the stylist next to me finished her client and took over. She had to fix the first guy’s mistakes so it ended up a lot shorter than it was supposed to be. TWO fucking hours later, I was done with a cut I really didn’t want and it does not look like the blonde’s. My hair still has too much weight to be like hers. At least they didn’t charge me.

So now my hair is kind of similar to a past cut I had, which I had named The Trendy Bitch and I’m pretty sure it can be fixed. If it can be fixed it will be the return of Sex Hair, where I crunch my hair into messy curls. But I was looking forward to growing it out and having long hair for the winter. Bitches!

According to my site’s stats, a lot of people come across my blog looking for LSW test info. So I figured I should post an update as to how I am planning to prepare. (I plan to plan!)
During my supervision group we reviewed test questions from one of the sites I planned on using for test prep. Group members that have taken the LSW exam and supervisor all said the questions were poorly worded and not a good example of what is on the test. One of the questions was on psychological testing. How many psych testing questions will there be on a social work exam?

The problem seems to be that none of the test prep sites are approved by the organization that creates the exam. Another problem seems to be that the ASWB and NASW do not offer enough test prep resources. But that is an entirely different issue.
So my new game plan is to wait until October to take the NASW review course. Then register for an exam date about a month in advance. Then I will take the ASWB online practice exam. If I suck at that, I will look into one of the non-approved practice courses since by that time they will be my only option.
I guess I feel comfortable waiting another month because I feel comfortable at my job. I have unexpectedly received some nice praise from 2 supervisors. My coworkers are nice and the job is tolerable.

I saw MC Chris at Abbey Pub this week. His show was awesome and even though my friend was late we still caught all of it. He hung around his merch booth during opening act, played requests for the last half of his show, talked about how he is from Chicagoland and signed stuff after the show. I noticed he blogs and checked out his old LiveJournal and his current MySpace profile. In both he writes about personal details of his mental status, health and girly interests. All of which are pretty typical for a MySpace/LiveJournal user. But given his public type of career it seems odd to know so much about him. The counselor in me asks where his boundaries are, the fangirl in me keeps reading about his depression and encounters with fans.

I guess I am not in a position to criticize what he shares since I have wrote about some personal things in blogs. But I’m not on stage. And he’s not my client.

I think of a million things to write about throughout the day, only some make it to the blog. Not necessarily the best, just what sticks it my head long enough for me to actually sit down and write.

I went to the bank today on lunch break. The bank is on the corner and outside the glass doors there is a guy fiddling with wires coming out of the wall of the bank. He is talking into a cell phone, wearing jeans and a t-shirt and has a small box at his feet. He doesn’t look at all official but no one blinks. In downtown Chicago, no one in our terrorist crazed society says a word. I go inside the bank and notice the security guard is sitting so the man outside is just out of his view. I’m fairly sure I can get in and out of the bank without dying and I am interested in this whole process so I say nothing. I get my check deposited and leave. The man is still there when I leave.

It kind of makes you wonder just how much you can get away with if you act like you are supposed to be there.

Girl next to me on the train, what is the point of having an Ipod that stores 498743983 gigs of music if you just listen to Sexy Back on repeat?

Is your sexy back now? What about now?

Now?

I was looking through more crafty, less slutty sites for Halloween costume ideas. One site had an awesome Pan costume. (Not Peter.) I saw that and thought, I can be Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That’s my favorite play and I knew most of Puck’s monologues when I was a theatre geek.

So I googled for Puck pictures because his costume varies so much in different stage versions I have seen. In my GIS, I found pictures of Neil from Dead Poet’s Society wearing his Puck wreath. Sniffle, now this is getting to be a weepy trip down angsty Su’s youth. I loved that movie and had to make myself stop watching it because it would make me cry everytime. Looking at the release date, I guess my angst started younger than I remember. I wasn’t even in high school yet! The picture I found was just a face shot so now I have to go to my parents and get this movie so I can watch (and sob) and see what his costume looked like since that’s the one I’d like to copy if possible.

Oh ya, I also liked She-Ra costumes but fuck her! Shakespeare!

Sometimes there are good things and I forgot to post about them!

My friend showed me a site for obsessive listmaker types like me. The site is called Backpackit and I have not started using it yet because the free version only comes with 5 lists and how can I limit myself like that? This should help me be efficiently neurotic.

I got a MySpace bulletin from a band saying “Hey tell people about us in non-spam type ways!” OK, I will.

The band is called Baby Calendar and I saw them with my friend’s band,The Buddy System sometime this summer. Baby Calendar is from Florida so I doubt they will be coming back to Illinois anytime soon so you will have to listen to them on MySpace and just believe me about their shows. Their live show is awesome. They have so much energy and they’re much more intense live. A lot more loud drums and wailing singing. Maybe singing louder because the drums are so loud? I don’t know. And the drummer likes to run around in his underwear and play tambourine. I’m OK with that. Maybe they will release some live recordings and then everyone would know what I am talking about. But their stuff on MySpace is good as well and I helped some guy in an animal costume surprise the band at their show. Well, I just held the video camera while he hugged band members, but they looked happy when he took off his costume head.

And my boy comes home soon and I will get some long overdue lovin. Yay!

So I have survived the first month of my new job. In return, they gave me a t-shirt! Woo!

And at some point in the near future they will insure me. Looking over my benefits makes me want to move to Canada. It would be useless for me to join the PPO because my “pre-existing condition” wouldn’t be insured for however long I didn’t have insurance. That would be about a year. So there are 2 HMO’s I can join. HMO1 is small and cheap and does not include the hospital that my doctors work out of. HMO2 (damn I can’t stop typing homo) is larger and includes the hospital and damn is it expensive for an HMO!

I don’t want to switch doctors because new doctors like repeating tests that have been done a million times and sometimes switching my meds, which makes robot angry. Even ghetto Cook County wanted to do tests. I told the nurse that the tests they wanted have always come back normal and weren’t necessary but she’s like “Noo! Follow my regime or no prescriptions for you!” Since my meds are about $300/month, I of course agree to the prodding.
Even though overpriced insurance is stupid and annoying, it will be nice to be able to go to the doctor and tell him/her to fix my knees because they hurt like an old lady’s. And if I wasn’t fucking terrified of it, I could get laser beam eye surgery pretty cheap. If they change the surgery so I can make laser beams come out of my eyes, then I will do it.

I managed to avoid the evacuation drill downtown today. Not that I would have minded the day off work but you better not fuck with my commute home!

The past few days I have seen my supervisor on the ride to and from work. She’s a good supervisor, nice, near my age but we don’t talk about much beyond work, weather and the CTA. So I’m wondering, do I have to sit next to her when I see her on the bus or train? Am I mean if I wave and keep walking? Most of the time it’s not an issue because the bus is crowded by the time I get on. I like to zone out on the way home and not talk to anyone. I’m also afraid I will see someone I know and they’ll greet me with “Hey, whore!” in front of my boss. Because that is the type of friends I have. This shows how corporate I am becoming, that I care about this stuff.

I’ve been sick for the last couple days. I’ve been popping supplements and vitamin pills like a dirty hippie and I’m starting to feel better. Vitamin C, echinacea, zinc, multi-vitamin, Tylenol and Chlortrimetron fix me up good! And tea, lots of tea.

The short client interactions that I have at work are beginning to take their toll. We are encouraged to explore and empathize but we don’t have time to do a lot of either. So I get the client to spill their guts and sometimes cry about what’s going on, then I say “there, there”, pat them on the head and send them away with a name of a nice counselor. So lots of problems, no resolutions. The rewarding part of counseling is seeing your client succeed in some way. I guess there are also rewards in the act of helping but I want closure! I want clients to call me back and say “What you said helped me with my crisis. The counselor helped too. I am slightly less crazy now.”

Some woman I was talking to yesterday got upset because I couldn’t find her in our system. She whined “I must have fallen through the cracks with you guys just like I fall through the cracks everywhere.” I was happy I was just on the phone with her so she couldn’t see me roll my eyes. Shut up and give me a minute to do my job. Oh what? You have a super complicated name that no one spells correctly? Hmm, maybe that’s why I’m having trouble finding you in the system.

Woo! Empathy!