Ship's Blog: January, 2009

Note: if you ever wanted a breast reduction and have just been diagnosed with breast cancer, please do yourself a favor and read this piece in its entirety. I wrote this especially for you.

Ever since my teens, I have had big breasts. No, not "big breasts," but very big breasts. At age 17, my breasts were not even finished developing and I was a size 34DD. All grown-up and at my best weight and state of physical fitness, my cup-size was an FF... if I ordered from a certain company in England where their sizing ran larger. For at least ten years, I've hovered between a G-cup and an H-cup, all depending on the brand.

Some women might envy this, but please, don't. Having breasts this size has brought me no end of physical and emotional pain. My life has been affected by the size of my breasts in ways I can't count. I know plenty of uber-busty babes are reading this and nodding: you know it isn't fun.

In my case, I've dealt with chronic back, neck, and shoulder pain since I was 16 years old. By chronic I mean that I hurt every single day, and sometimes the pain makes me cry. I've tried to find ways to treat the symptoms, but chiropractic work, massage therapy, and Western medicine have never been able to reduce the pain. Weight lifting helps a little bit. Acupuncture helps a lot more. But nothing can "fix" the pain as long as my breasts work against me.  Read more »

Recently, I rewatched an episode of 30 Rock where Jenna, upset that Tracy Jordan was getting more attention than her, created her own entourage. Tracy already had his entourage -- Grizz and Dot Com, two really big guys who gossip well and know how to lose to Tracy when playing video games. Jenna's entourage was a bit different, appearing to consist mostly of young, gay men whom she hired to be bitchy to others while making her feel pretty. It just goes to show that everyone has different entouragorial (yeah, totally made that word up) needs.

It made me consider, what if I had my own entourage? What positions would I need filled that are specific to my personal needs? Because, you know, if I won Lotto and was living The Life, I'd have to have to staff up with specialists. None of those generic "personal assistants" for me.

Here's what I came up with as a start list of the people who could make my life easier:  Read more »

Yesterday, Kathy and I took her car into the shop because she'd been having trouble with the battery. When we got back home, I took a look under the hood of my own car, because I thought I had seen wisps of steam or smoke coming from under the hood.

We couldn't see a source of the problem, so while we were there, we added oil and water. I commented on how there was a lot of corrosion on the battery leads. Kathy said, "Well, we'll take your car in next." I agreed.

I went off to my figure drawing class and spent a miserable three hours drawing a skeleton while standing at an easel, because all of the chairs and stools were taken by an excess of people trying to add the class. Never mind that I was already registered. I discovered that the teacher was happy spending time talking to the pretty young girls but had nothing to say to the rest of us. By the time I got out of class, I was tired and cranky and limping due to low back pain. What a whiner.

Anyway, I got into my car, went and got gas, then stopped at the grocery store. I was anxious to get home. Feeling sorry for myself, I bought some ice cream and other frozen food. When I got back into the car, I turned the key and...nothing. No click. Dashboard lights but nothing started. Great, Kathy certainly couldn't come and help, because her car was in the shop! So, I called AAA and, after about an hour, they said they'd send someone over.  Read more »

As part of our attempt to increase our drawing proficiency, Kathy and I have been trying to sketch regularly. But we are not necessarily out and about in places where we'd want to sketch, so we had to find another way to do it.

I decided to institute the "Quick Draw" challenge (yeah, I've been watching way too much Top Chef) while watch TV. I pause our DVR on some scene, and then we sketch it.

This has, of course, lead to brilliant sketches such as:  Read more »

It's been a long time since I've done a review of the most notable searches that lead people to my website. I have so much data to sift through, it's crazy! (And sometimes scary!)

As I continue to sift, I've pieced together installment one for 2009. Remember, these are actual phrases that people typed into Google that somehow took them to this site. I do not edit them.

when you burn a jerusalem cricket - oh, I know where this is going. You want to know if burning a Jerusalem Cricket releases its soul into the ether. Well, the answer is a big flat NO, because they HAVE no souls in the first place. Niños de los Terros, my ass. Creepy outer space potato bugs are what they are! And everyone knows that only creatures of Planet Earth have souls...right?  Read more »

I have some very nice readers who send me kind messages from time to time-which I always appreciate, even if I am not able to reply-and for these readers, I thought I'd fill you in on What I Did On My Blog Vacation. Which wasn't really a vacation, of course, but I'm saving the word "hiatus" for future use. A vacation can be spontaneous, after all, and this one was certainly unplanned.

To recap: I gave a couple of hints about some of the stuff that was going on before I dropped out of view. I mentioned that I'd been struggling with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I had the regular stupid cancer follow-up which I unexpectedly spazzed out over. And last May, I told you that silly story about going to get an MRI on my shoulder (by that point, I was in severe pain from my imaginary shoulder injury).  Read more »

But I didn't mention the part where I went back to college and changed my career path and what actually happened with the stupid shoulder, as well as a few other things that I'll remember as I write, so let's see if I can flesh this out a bit.

I've decided to jump on the bandwagon and make a New Year's resolution this year, and gee, this one's a doozy. I mean, I dunno how I'm going to pull this one off, but hey, what good is a resolution if it doesn't stretch you a bit? You're going to say, hey, Alix, I totally couldn't tackle that resolution, what the heck are you thinking? But I'm going to try it. So here I go:

For 2009, I hereby, state that my intention is to do less.

My theme for this year will be how easy, how lazy, how painless can I make everything that I do? What corners can I cut? Who can I hire?

What standards can I lower?

Yeah, I know you're jealous. You're thinkin', how come she gets all the cool resolutions and I get stuck working out at the gym every other day? But hey, I'm not selfish. Not at all. I'm totally not going to call you a copy-cat if you decide to take on my resolution as your own - go right ahead. I'll be the jealous one, because you'll be making instant progress: you will have had someone else choose your resolution for you. That's like making a To Do list that includes things you already did, and right away you can check something off!

What could be easier? Well, in my life, everything.  Read more »