So busy

Just a quickie to drop by and say, I've been SO busy. I'd been chanting for massage to pick up, and lo and behold I have 12 massages this week. 15 hours is considered full-time. When you take into account approximately 1/2 of paperwork for each massage, the hours start to pile up. But yay, more money - eventually.

Doing a reading tonight at the Schmee (a local fringe theater). It was a last minute gig, and any chance to get seen is good. Plus I get to do the reading with Fuquad Rob, and The Beige is directing. By the way guys, I had a kick ass time last night. Beige, how exactly do you spell "fur net"? For those of you who don't know, it's a foreign liquer of some sort that has many opiate qualities. I haven't been drinking that much since my surgery, and last night, this was not the case. Stine got silly. And then I came home and got more silly.

There is some major financial shit going down with the hospital that all my doctors are at, and where I had my surgery. It's too long a story to go into right now, but suffice it to say Ly and I are writing editorials to all the papers, I'm trying to seek whatever legal advice I can, and it may turn into something much bigger - it may not. All I can say is I'm so sick and fucking tired of big multi-million dollar corporations going after, and harassing self-employed, lower middle class folks who are only trying to pay their bills, and keep their heads above water.

Ok, must go now. I hope to catch up with everyone's blogs soon.

Because I am completely and utterly

Avoiding work right now...

And no one fookin' tagged me, but I'm gonna tell you anyway, so sit down.

Four jobs I've had:
1. Janitor in a junior high school (1st job ever)
2. Massage Therapist
3. Key Maker and Engraver
4. Actress

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. The Incredibles
2. Truly, Madly, Deeply
3. Secretary
4. Murderball

Four places I've lived:
1. Ogden, UT
2. Chicago, IL
3. Dale, IN
4. Seattle, WA

Four TV shows I love:
1. 24
2. LOST
3. Amazing Race (when it's in season)
4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (since it doesn't say "current" TV shows...)

Four places I've vacationed (this category I'm gonna suck in):
1. New York, NY
2. Boise friggin, ID
3. Lake Powell, UT
4. Mystic, CT

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Lobster
2. Biscuits & Gravy
3. White Trash Taco Salad
4. Green Tea Ice Cream squooshed between Ginger Snaps

Four sites I visit daily:
1. Blogverse
2. Livejournal
3. Topica
4. Google News

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Getting a Massage
2. Talking to Mandy (she TOTALLY just called - weird)
3. Sleeping
4. Having Sex

Four bloggers I am tagging:
1.

My Bitch

2.

The Beige

3.

My Hound Dog

4. and YOU!

Happy "V" Day

Notice I didn't say Valentine's Day. I have now heretofore dubbed this Happy "Insert your own V Word" Day. So all of yous, feel free to add as many V words as you'd like (your favorite, your least favorite, the name of your old pet, the name of your current pet)...

Here is my list (No looking in the dictionary_:

vagina (Of course the most obvious, and Stine-ly choice)
verisimilitude
voice
vulture
vernacular
vegan
vegetable
Vic's Vapo Rub
varnish


K, more?

Picture this...

Last night, my friend S and I went to Banya A Russian Bath House near the massage school I used to work at.We enter the front door, and to the right is two feathery looking soft leather chairs - done in subtle earth tones to create a feeling of serenity and peace. To the right, a fridge full of yummy drinky healthy goodness such as, "Kombucha Joy", "Odwalla - Find Your Inner Yin", and my favorite, "Your Minty Muscles". Actually that last one was a goo, but I digress.

We walk up to the front desk, and a lovely delicate gay boy gives us paperwork to fill out. We sign our forms, yadda, yadda...go back up to the desk, get our locker keys, sandals, and robes. In the women's locker room there are stacks of neatly folded plush towels, fake pussy willows coming out of a vase sporting the aforementioned "soothing earth tones", bottles of womanly fresh goo, and a smattering of lockers. I must admit, it's smaller than I thought it would be. S and I lose our clothing, take the obligatory "clean your dirty selves before entering the oasis" shower, don our robes, and enter the main room.

The main room consists of a brilliantly blue-lit hot tub, a bathwater tepid pool, a steam room complete with fresh eucalyptus plants (yummy!), shit-ass hot sauna, and a cold plunge. S and I start out in the steam room...and from there do various combinations of the tepid pool, cold plunge and sauna. I wasn't a big fan of the sauna (which was at, I think, 220 degrees). It was too hot, I'm still fresh enough out of surgery that my body was just overwhelmed, plus the floor was scalding hot. S liked it though because she had to go into the sauna to get her body hot enough to do the cold plunge.

Pause for geeky massage moment: Revulsive hydrotherapy is the shit.

During the next hour, discussions of boys and the massage school take place, there is much giggling and laughing about the 50-something "ladies who lunch" sitting in the pool next to us, and many more water sports ensue.

We finally start to start to leave. We decide to do the cold plunge one more time. S has to go into the sauna to get hot enough to do it, and in her excitement to get there, notices a basin of "herb water" with a large frond of large leafy herbs bundled into a fan floating on the surface of the water. So S gets all excited, beckons me to bring the herb water dripping frond into the sauna. She then procedes to show me what is "suppose" to be done with frond. Apparently one is suppose to beat oneself about the body with the frond, thus baptizing oneself in the herby goodness. So as I prance wildly up and down due to the smoldering heat that has started to occur in my feet, S is giggling wildy and beating my naked body with this herb frond. She then jumps up and down like a little 12-year old about to have a tea party and with a big shit-eating grin on her face, hands me the frond and says, "Do me too please...". I beat her a few times, and then as I'm starting to smell smoke I say, "DOOD, burning!" and point to my feet. It would have made a really good comedy porn.

The cold plunge was a like a warm downy comforter compared to the hades I'd just come from. So then S gets hot enough, does the cold plunge, we take a shower, encounter a really obnoxious east-side "type" in the dressing room, pay our bill, and then leave.

We then went to have a drinky, some Thai food, and a really damn fine conversation for the rest of the evening.

I have welts this morning...

Just Kidding...

those were from Ly, not S.

It's gotten out of control

"Danish Cartoons cause Global Crisis"

This is just crazy. I mean if cartoons can cause a "global crisis", we really have hit an all time low in religious zealotry. Fundamentalist Christians/Radical Muslims = No difference.

Boo Ya!

I have no idea what that means.

Hello, hi, high, how are ya? Ok, feeling a little amped/wacked/energetic/silly today - just warning ya.

Man let's see, what do I want to talk about. Oh yeah, I'll start off with Sunday. Ly and I had a lovely day on Sunday. We got up at an much earlier hour than we normally do on Sunday (when Ly doesn't have to work), and went to KRG. It's Kosen Rufu Gongyo, a large monthly SGI/Buddhist gathering. It was held at the Culture Center in Tukwila. A really kick ass chick was getting her Gohonzon Sunday. A Go Ho What? We then helped her enshrine it in her apartment. It was a lovely sunny day, and the first one in a long while here in Seattle. We went to a little Greek place in Fremont for some lunch. We then jumped on a bus headed for the student clinic. We both had massages, which were lovely. Then it was on to downtown to pick up a script, and then home to finish watching the rest of the SuperBowl (yes folks, it DID happen, Ly and I watched sports, and drank beer). Bless our hearts, they did real gud, our boys. All I can say, it is very funny to watch and listen to two people watch football who normally, don't know shit about sports really. I tend to know more than the Hound does. Anyway, I got real pissed when the Steelers intercepted the ball and turned it around to shortly thereafter, make a touchdown. I assume these emotions I was feeling are normal, they are just new and frightening to me, if you know what I mean. After we watched the game, there was movie watching, barely able to catch your breath pre-Olympic sex, and some cards - not necessarily in that order. It was a good day.

In other news, I got a mesage from the director of the play I just auditioned for, and didn't get in. Turns out that the woman who she cast as the mother, got cast in another show at a larger theater here in town. Long story short, I'm playing the mother. Her name is Ruth. A synopsis can be read: Heyah... Funny that we've been watching Six Feet Under (thank you Netflix), and I've really been relating lately to Ruth, the mother character. Anyway, I'm excited about that. Hopefully the schedule won't be that hard to work out.

Oh yeah, I remember the football question I was going to ask the blogverse, so when it's 4 & 2, why do they always punt? I mean couldn't they feasibly get 2 yards easily in one down?

Referral vs. Diagnosis Codes (Two different things)

I am SO tired of people calling me asking for massage by way of their insurance, and giving me grief over telling them they need to get diagnosis codes from their doc or chiro. It doesn't help that there are a smattering of massage therapists in this city, who make up their own diagnosis codes and bill the insurance for them. It is NOT within the scope of our practice OR license to diagnose people. You can get SUED for fraud people. Not to mention the fact that if you tell a client they have some sort of "condition", they seek treatment for that condition, the treatment fucks them up - you are BOTH shit outta luck.

And insurance companies don't make it any easier. They tell the clients that they don't need referrals to see me, and this is true. However, a referral and a diagnosis code proving massage is medically necessary, are two completely different things. Do people honestly think that an insurance company is going to pay for any Tom, Dick or Harry to go get a massage a week, and NOT have it be medically necessary? They would go broke.

Ok, end rant. That said, I am VERY thankful for the lovely client who just called me to schedule. After much explanation, and clarification of the LAW, I will be massaging her tomorrow through her insurance.