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I go to work everyday with a little bit of built up anxiety. If I hit ‘forward’ will I move? What happens when the juice no longer goes through and I’m stranded? I wouldn’t be. My co-workers are awesome and have pushed me those few times that I’ve stalled. I hate having to rely on them, but I just have to deal.

It’s the entire situation that has me frantic. When the scooter issues began, I suddenly had to rely on paratransit to get to work. I was just as abruptly reintroduced into the insanity of disAbled transportation. They never had my times, they ran close to an hour late, and the Star shuttle service that contracts with VIATrans never trains its drivers. Last week Star picked me up, loaded me into the back with a walker. The walker was precariously balanced on the side, jammed into the seat in front of. When the driver made a sharp turn, the walker fell on my legs. It was 40lbs of ow.

I especially love the way they attach the blue straps to my scooter. They’re never placed in the same spot twice, and I thank my lucky stars that the back of the van is small. I only have to worry about slamming into the back versus tipping over.

I have complained in the past. I’d get lovely form letters from VIA saying I expect too much. Well then, invite me to the next lawsuit. That would be fun.

In the meantime I have to hope that work won’t get mad at my tardiness, and that the scooter will behave until the new one arrives.

The liberal arts are disappearing from college campuses. Majors like philosophy are being deemed useless, while accounting appears to be on the rise. Or something.

I get that philosophy majors won’t get jobs. A future in academia, yes, but not a position at that banking firm (yet we wonder why many of them are crooks). It was the big joke on campus between those of use who chose our degrees in Humanities, Socrates or bust. Yet, we relished what we learned. Socrates taught us to question while Kant showed us another way of viewing the world. We came out thinkers and questioners, never accepting anything at face value.

Life is boring that way.

St. Mary’s President Thomas Mengler expects its business school to grow. And there’s a value in having such professional degrees in liberal arts schools, said Edward Speed, retired CEO of Texas Dow Employees Credit Union. He and his wife have given $287,500 to St. Mary’s, his alma mater, in the past three months, most to liberal arts programs.

Speed credits that type of education with propelling him to the CEO’s chair and said he could easily spot recruits with similar backgrounds.

Businesses are social organizations, he said, and employees “without that background in literature, the arts, language and politics — they’re mechanics.”

‘Nuff said.

I had saved up almost the entire Fringe season for this weekend. Since it was the finale I figured I’d enjoy it more by watching the last remaining episodes in a day, or two. The sucky part was running into accidental spoilers. I knew what happened to Etta, though the impact of her death wasn’t any less. Nina’s made me sadder, and I knew about that too. Yet knowing what I did didn’t prepare me for the last episode ever!

Fringe to me has always been a show about its characters. I adored these characters, and loved to see Walter evolve in all of his incarnations. He was a broken man who grew and managed to redeem himself through his love of Peter. A son who was never biologically his, yet he condemned worlds to save his son, ultimately sacrificing himself to save Peter’s future, his granddaughter’s life. I loved it.

Needless to say, I bawled through the last half of the show. I also cared about September, the observer we hardly knew, but damn if he wasn’t great. It was nice to see him become relevant, more than just a plot point.

Who will fill my sci-fi void now that Fringe is over?

On the other hand Once Upon a Time has finally irked me. The show is so riddled with plot holes that it can’t keep its storylines straight. Emma Snow was introduced as this bad ass chick in season 1. Her superpower – the ability to tell when someone lies. Yet on last night’s episode, and the one where Archie supposedly died, she conveniently couldn’t tell she was being lied too? What crappy writing! They give Hook great zingers, but I have a feeling I’m going to drop this show soon.

Dudash and I made plans to hang out yesterday. It was to be a dinner and movie night at his place, and I was really looking forward to it. Having a barely functioning scooter has left me feeling restricted. Unable to go out or make plans. I feel like spring fever has hit and I can’t do anything about it. So even if it meant a few yards to my neighbor’s home, I was relishing it. So was Dudash (aka Mika).

He started texting me early in the afternoon yesterday. Said he had a surprise, and did I know what it was. Honestly, no, but I figured that maybe Lee would be there. He was scheduled to work, but maybe his schedule had changed. Really, Lee is a sweety, and I’m looking forward to playing D&D with him. I was really expecting Lee.

But it wasn’t him, or anything else that I could reasonably fathom. No, it truely was a surprise.

I walked over to Dudash’s place and he asked me if I had guessed the surprise. I said no. Then he starts rattling off names that he had written on a legal pad. I recognized a few who were his friends and I had met at his parties. Some were neighbors, and the others were strangers to me. It was a ton of names. And as he’s reading them off I started getting this twisted feeling in my stomach. Dudash had acquired nearly $2000 in donations from his friends for me. $2000 to pay for a scooter!

I still can’t believe it. I can’t believe he did this for me. He knows that if I had known beforehand I would have forbidden it. So he did it behind my back. He blocked me on facebook, started an event, and everyone pitched in.

I stammered for the better half of an hour yesterday. Saying thank you. Feeling positively awkward. I grew up believing that you do things for yourself, and asking for help is absolutely cringe worthy for me. A part of me feels like I’ve failed myself somehow. I should have tried harder. I’m in a position not many people understand, and when help comes my way, I don’t know how to deal.

I just know that I’m incredibly blessed to have Dudash as my friend. I feel like I’ll spend the rest of my life making this up to him. And that’s ok. It’s perfectly ok.

My brother has demanded photos on this blog. Everyone else is doing it, so what’s wrong with me?

Well, my Bionic takes crappy pics. I’ve found myself wishing for an iphone just because they’re so crappy. On the other hand, Ravi’s adorableness makes up for the camera’s issues.

My loveable chihuahua is telling me he wants to go to sleep…. in my comforter. Seriously, by 9 pm he’s licking me and batting those bug eyes begging me to go to bed. And when we go to my room, he promptly ignores me and rushes over to the bed to cuddle beneath the blankets.

I stopped being mistress of this house a long time ago.

Ravi is ready for bed.

Anonymous attacks. Apparently dissatisfied with Pena Nieto’s new administration, the hacker group targeted the Mexican DoD.

"Our struggle is for life, and our bad government offers death as the future," the statement read, according to Spanish language tech news site Web Adictos. "Our struggle is for peace, and our evil government announces war and destruction."

The central complaint of "Anonymous Mexico" is the army’s mistreatment of indigenous and poor people living in the state of Chiapas. The group says it has aligned itself with the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which declared war on the Mexican government nearly 20 years ago.

Really? The Zapatistas? I guess it’s smarter to join with them than claim that the real reason for the attack was to protest the cartels.

I have a love-hate relationship with romance novels. Growing up I tended to devour all the horror novels I could lay my hands on while mocking my mother’s fascination for her Harlequins. My grandmother had her books too, but according to my mom, they weren’t exactly age appropriate. As if the heaving bosoms squeezed against Fabio on the covers weren’t much of a clue. The irony was that I was reading Anne Rice and Stephen King at 13.

In high school I cracked open one of those Harlequins and found it boring, yet I was actively worshipping Victoria Holt. That was until I realized all the storylines were the same. So I had to find my romance somewhere else. Unfortunately, my tastes in genres left little to affairs of the heart. Mostly, relationships ended tragically, yet the good guys still saved the day.

Now that I have a Kindle, I’ve been buying books left and right. I even bought a few romance novels, yet after reading them I’ve discovered that they’re still cliche and boring. Characters are poorly developed, sometimes under the pretense of supposed misunderstandings and a serious nature. Really? Girl meets boy. Girl hates herself thus she can’t get the boy. Boy enjoys girl’s insecurities and proceeds to lambast such traits. Sex, sex, sex. Bam! Boy gets girl.

It’s just not my cup of tea. So then why did I just buy another romance book? Maybe because it was advertized as a historical fantasy? Give me alternate histories any day. And it was only 99 cents!

Please don’t make me regret it.

PS and by the way. Was La Boheme excerpted in Phantom of the Opera? I’m listening to Puccini’s opera right now and I’m getting major flashbacks of Carlotta’s singing.

Whoosh!

This flurry of orangish-red smoke fluttered out of the controller for my scooter minutes after L had connected it for me. Story of my life!

My heart seemed to plunge into the recesses of my stomach as D raced my scooter out of the house, tendrils of smoke following after him. The door closed and they let it cool off. Meantime I’m lying on the couch freaking out. My pseudo legs died. They were burning out in the cold, and I’m wondering how I’m going to move. How am I getting to work! They just laid off two people. Would I be next?

Since December my scooter has been on the fritz. It would stall going forward, but reverse worked like a charm. I’ve become the queen of backwards, edging around corners and parallel parking like Evil Knieval. I’m that good!

I’ve replaced the cable, the wig wam, and moved on to the motherboard of scooters. Insurance doesn’t care that I need to work. They require three days to make a decision, and so far my request for a rental has been met with a denial. So, I’ve taken to fixing things myself. That was until yesterday and the adventure with the sparking controller.

Fortunately, the fire was internal. My old, spazzy controller is back where it belongs, but it’s begun to rattle in reverse. The replacement controller did that too. I’m probably sitting on a ticking time bomb. But I have to got to work.

I’m disabled and my artificial legs are dying, but I’ll still go to work because I refuse to live in absolute poverty due to government requirements. I’ll keep trucking along till that rental is approved and I get word that my new scooter is on the way. If medicaid approves it. If it’s not too expensive to cover the difference. Because, damn it, I need to work!

I will of course now stop messing with scooter repairs. The billowing smoke clouds that erupted from my baby will forever marr my memories. That and the smell.

Manti’s girlfriend was a hoax

What is this world coming too when even a linebacker from Notre Dame has to invent himself a girlfriend? Seriously, when I was there, the popular players never lacked an arm to hold on to or a date to the SYR (and even some of them were sweet).

It’s a shame if it’s true. I really liked Manti T’eo, and now my coworker is going to bug me to death over this little hiccup. Darn!