I came home to a non threatening yet bizarre (so bizarre it was bordering on threatening) doll with a note written in the first person: as you can see here:

Coming home to this after taking a test that may as well have been in Japanese was not what I wanted to deal with. We are in the midst of a noise feud with our neighbors. So when I read it I was like, “Exqueeeeeze me?” I had no clue how to process it. Do our neighbors think this is going to suddenly make us want to listen to their garage band at whatever hour they decide to practice? Do they think their new motorcycle waking us up at 5am every morning is suddenly going to be silent because of this note? I left it on our porch and went inside.

I called TBU and asked if he was on his way home because I needed his brain power to process it. He kept asking what it said and I was like, “I HONESTLY DON’T KNOW! It’s like child abuse and really fucked up, I guess?”

He got home, inspected it, took a picture for our landlord and threw it out. Over wine, we were laughing and trying to figure out just what the fuck. I mentioned that it was addressed to IRL TBU & Millz, which was weird because I can’t figure out how they know that. TBU looked at me, “Savage!”

So it wasn’t a cryptic note from our neighbor, it was from Savage. Turns out he was with Lou in our neighborhood. Much hanging out and having fun ensued. The night ended with us blaring 4 Non Blondes with the windows down and singing like our lives depended on it. Just what I needed to end a shitty week

The Millionizer says Hey!

Do you remember saying, “Up yours” a lot as a kid? I do. My friends and I would say it all the time at school. I knew it wasn’t to be said at home. I didn’t know what it meant and I never thought about it. But I knew it was never to be repeated in the presence of my mother. Until one night I got really angry.

I was doing my homework in the living room and my cat, Mr. Poopers,* was jumping on the screen door to be let in and fed. Mr. Poopers was NOT allowed to jump on the screen because then it would tear, and if it tore my mother would have to pay for it to be repaired and money doesn’t just grow on trees, Millionizer!

So Mr. Poopers is jumping and I’m ignoring him, knowing full well that each time he does, my mother’s anger multiplies exponentially. She asked me once to let him in. I said, “Ok,” and didn’t move. He jumped again, “Millionizer, let him in.” I looked at her and in a tone only little girls can muster said, “Why don’t YOU let him in?”

I swear to god I have never seen her face so red since, “I wasn’t the one who begged for a cat and promised me I’d take care of him, WAS I? No!” Then very, very calmly, “Let your cat in please.”

I hated that super calm voice because it meant she was anything but calm and was about to dole out some punishment. I don’t know why I said it, I don’t even know why I was so intent on pissing off my perfectly innocent mother, but I knew exactly what to say.

As I got up to let Mr. Poopers in I screamed, “UUUP YOOOUURS!” She was speechless for a second. Her face was blank but her eyes were slightly quizzical as if to ask, “What. The. Fuck?” I sauntered to the kitchen to feed Mr. Poopers as if I hadn’t just been incredibly ridiculous two seconds before.

The next thing she said is one of the most bizarre and hilarious things I’ve ever heard. “Do you how gay men get raped?”

WHAT?! I was EIGHT!! No I don’t frickin know how gay men get raped! I just stood there and gave her the same what the fuck face she had just given me. That was not the response I had expected. I thought there might be some yelling, a sleepover taken away or the threat of getting rid of Mr. Poopers. I did not expect to be asked about gay men and rape. Two things that had never before entered my mind.

Once she asked that I think she realized what a can of worms she just opened. Now she would have to explain what gay meant and what rape was, and the concept of sticking things in your butt, sexually. She dodged that awkward bullet by following up with another question, “What does ‘up yours’ mean?” Now all the awkwardness was on me. I raced through all the possibilities of what it could mean and assumed it HAD to be about sticking things in your butt. I was eight, everything revolved around pooping, peeing and farting at school. There was nothing else it could be.  I slowly and reluctantly replied, “Up your butt?”

“Yes, gay men get raped up their butt. Do you think that’s an appropriate thing to be saying?”

“No?”

“Good.”

And that was the end of that. It has never, ever been mentioned since. The only punishment I got was having to have that insane conversation with my mom. It was effective though, I don’t recall ever saying it again.

*Yes THAT Mr. Poopers. The one whose death inspired TheMillionizer.com

The Millionizer feels icky every time she thinks about this story

The Millionizer is terribly sorry if you got spammed!

I will now tell you my harrowing story. It’s not harrowing and I won’t fault you for not giving a shit, but for a solid 20 minutes I thought I was going to die and I was never going to see TBU, my mom, my cats or my mom’s dog ever again and for the briefest of moments I made peace with that fact and tried my best to remain calm. It should be remembered that throughout the tale that it is HOT, HOT, HOT. The past few days have been high 90′s low 100′s, dry and miserable. Being outside was suffocating, my skin felt like it was being lasered off every time sunlight even threatened to touch it.

At 3:35 I was driving to school with two friends, we were close to campus when the street lights just turned off. No blinking so people would know to stop and go in a semi orderly (but inevitably selfish) fashion, just off – blank. Simultaneously the radio turns to static. It’s the middle of the day early in the semester, everyone is there. At first it wasn’t bad. It took 20 minutes to make it through a mile of stop lights but traffic was moving. It was just weird.

I get out of the car and I’m already dripping sweat not even 30 seconds outside. Walking onto campus there are helicopters flying low and circling tightly, I think, “oooooook.” On campus lights are working but there’s no internet. That was strange but class starts like usual. Five minutes after 4pm my friend sitting next to me gets a text from her boyfriend, “Where are you?” then, “Tell me where to pick you up, it might be the apocalypse.” Those were the last texts she would send or receive for several hours. Hmmmm, we know he’s home and is most likely listening to a police scanner, cuz he’s just that guy. We look at each other, on edge. I try to text my mom, TBU, friends boyfriend, nothing. Nothing’s going out and nothing’s coming in, I have no cell service, she doesn’t have cell service. It just doesn’t feel right. Finally, one of my texts to TBU goes out. Several minutes later I get one from him, ” What’s going on? Major power outage I hear,” which tells me he’s safe and blissfully ignorant of much of anything, that’s good. It turns out that at this time only iPhones are working, sporadically, but more than anyone else’s. Even other phones on AT&T aren’t working. We’re in still in class with power but we can’t pay attention, for the last 10 minutes we’ve been trying and failing to communicate with the outside world.

Then the lecture hall goes pitch black, save for two green exit signs on opposite sides of the room. My next action will go on to be re-enacted all night because of it’s shear ridiculousness in hindsight. The lights go out, I instinctively shut my laptop, pick up my phone and in less than a second I am out of the room, having left all my belongings, including said laptop. Now I know shit is going down and I do not like it. I try more fervently to call my mom and TBU, at best I get voicemail but more frequently I get the AT&T operator telling me my call can’t be completed. I send the same text 11 times, it only goes through once but I have no way of knowing if the other person is receiving them, I get a feeling they aren’t. By now our class is cancelled and everyone is milling around confused, I’m reunited with my belongings. My friend gets a text from her mom in Northern California, “Massive power outage, all of Southern Ca, parts of TJ, Baja and Arizona. FIND YOUR SISTER.” That freaked us the fuck out, we have no way of knowing what’s actually going on and the only people communicating with us are making our imaginations go crazy. Her sister’s class is just ending and we are trying desperately to get a hold of her so she doesn’t start driving in what we can see has already become traffic-geddon. Right then disaster sirens start blaring, we are yelling right in front of each other and can’t be heard. At this point I’m nervous but I’m not panicking. I just want to know what’s going on, we’re relying on texts that aren’t reliable. Now cell service on the iPhones is going in and out. Nothing’s reliable. We are in a sea of 10,000 students and communication with the outside world is minimal.

We get to the other side of campus where my friend’s sister is walking out calmly like nothing’s happening. Because as far as she knows nothing’s happening, her class had power the whole time, they heard the sirens but her teacher just kept lecturing. What the fuck, shouldn’t faculty know the disaster procedure!? But we’re altogether. There are 5 of us, we’re all accounted for and so we calm down. We talk about how it’s a good thing we are where we are because, after all, SDSU was an evacuation center during the fires of aught seven. If serious shit went down we were already where we needed to be, or so we thought.

We go to a shady, grassy quad area. Still frantically trying to receive and send updated information on whereabouts and safety-ness. Cell service is almost non-existent. It’s hot, had I balls, they would be hanging as low as possible at this point in the story. The sounds of helicopters flying low and circling directly above us has only gotten louder as the number increases. We also start seeing airplanes, military airplanes in flight patterns they should not be in. They are circling above the helicopters. It makes no sense. A friend finally connects to her dad, who is trying to give her all the information he can from Northern California, she can barely hear him over the shitty connection and the aircraft. Then I hear the sound that forced me to immediately make peace with my death. It was the sound of an airplane, not a helicopter, flying low and hitting something. Everyone else in our group was on the phone or trying to be on the phone, but me and one other girl heard it, locked eyes and froze.

The fact that it was soon to be the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 flashed in my head. Then I panicked. Not 30 seconds later a sound that confirmed my need to make peace with my imminent death began. You know when bombs drop in movies? It sounded like this except louder, like right in my ears and without the explosion at the end. That’s also when everyone around us started to panic. No one really knew what was happening. People started running under awnings, bridges and anything that seemed safer than out in the open. The thought of protecting myself from shrapnel actually went through my mind. We didn’t know where the sound was coming from, it was completely different than the campus emergency siren we heard earlier. The sound continued for several minutes, just one bomb dropping after another without an explosion, then an announcement began. We couldn’t understand it at first or tell where it was coming from – the helicopters? the military airplanes? campus intercom system? It was just this big brother, Orwellian voice you could not escape. Then the bomb sounds started again and went on for several minutes. The voice came back, “This is an emergency, campus is now closed. Please immediately leave campus in an orderly fashion.” Where are we supposed to go?! We thought this was the safest place to be and now we have to leave, from what we could see the roads were mayhem. Being on the roads in  “Do the Right Thing” heat sounded like a recipe for disaster on top of whatever disaster we were in the middle of. Leaving was the last thing we wanted to do. I called my friends boyfriend whining, “Dude, what’s happening?!” He doesn’t know much just that the blackout is everywhere, nowhere has power only hospitals. Police and emergency stations are intermittently without power and only responding to injury calls. The airport is open to pilots that make the decision to take off without electricity until sunset but incoming traffic is being diverted as much as possible. He seems calm.

The bomb siren and the voice just repeated over and over. I left panicked, voice cracking voicemails for my mom, “Mom, please call me back or try to text me. Call TBU, leave a message with someone. I’m on campus I’m ok but we’re being evacuated.” I left increasingly distraught voicemails over the next few minutes while my friends and I tried to figure out what the hell we were going to do. We make it to the edge of campus near my car. My phone started to vibrate and I see my mom’s picture on my phone. The connection is terrible, we can barely hear each other, she is safe, she’s on the road home stuck in traffic. She’s otherwise totally calm.

I’m starting to realize that everywhere but where I am is calmly going about their day and simply adjusting to a massive blackout with grace. An hour after we’ve been instructed to leave campus, my friends and I decide to brave the traffic and make it to the closest house which just so happens to be disaster preparedness central, there are guns, motorcycles (if the need to flee in gridlock should arise), extra gas, stockpiled food and water, among other necessities. Luckily our route is West then North,  which just happens to be fairly traffic free. Before leaving, we took inventory in case we were stuck on the road: 2 full water bottles, a full tank of gas (I just filled up the day before luckily), several phones and laptops in various states of charged-ness, 3 whistles (at a fratty university these are as common as STDs) and a 6 day survival pack with all kinds of scary shit you would need if it came down to it that my father in law just so happened to give me a couple weeks ago and I hadn’t yet removed from my car (yay for procrastination!). We decide we are as ready as we are ever going to be and like a scene from a movie we start making our way to the car – game faces ON.

We get to her house, where her boyfriend is casually sipping a beer on the porch with a police scanner monotonically twittering in his lap. We walked in and he showed me where the guns and bullets are, he turns to me and says, “Millz you’re on the shotgun.” Sidenote: I kickass on the shotgun.

Then it was just a party in the dark. TBU met us there a couple hours later after partying at his bosses house where there were “grounds” to tour. He couldn’t get a hold of any of us to say he was on his way. Before we knew it was him coming up the stairs movement WAS made towards artillery – DO NOT test us! When his adorable face popped through the doorway I cheered. TBU and I went home and our neighborhood was in the middle of what I later named Blackout Blockparty 2011. It turned out to be quite fun.

In summary: SDSU has two separate disaster alarm sirens. One that is piercing and awful and unsettling and one that sounds like bombs are dropping. I would like to propose that instead they are standardized across all areas of campus and replace the sound of bombs dropping to get people to pay attention to announcements to something less…terrifying. Like maybe an un-ignorably audible but pleasant dooo dooo dooo. The next morning I got an email from campus police explaining the situation. Hey SDSU, how about sending that out immediately instead of what you did do, which was freak me out, force me to leave and tell me nothing. Also, we still can’t explain the weird airplane noise that was the start of my panic but others heard it and were equally terrified and that’s good enough for me.

In closing it wasn’t that bad after all, fun even. But fucking-a SDSU try not to create such a shit show. I’d also like to compliment the drivers of San Diego in general. I know Southern California drivers get a lot of shit from people who I suspect are just jealous of not living here, but during the blackout apocalypse, without traffic facilitators of any kind we did a pretty good job. People were patient, let others cut in, stopped at darkened intersections and followed the accepted protocol of being a good samaritan driver. I was pleasantly delighted, you guys. Nice job.

The Millionizer is ready for the next disaster

DRUNK POST! DRUNKPOST!!! DRUUUUNNNK POOOOSSST!!!

In reading my past posts (not recently, I don’t have time for that) I have looked most fondly upon those that were written whilst inebriated. It’s true, I’m that special breed of boring person that’s only interesting after a few drinks.

Have I sufficiently documented my love of Kanye West? Mayhaps not here, but it’s true. Not his music, but him, and his lyrics out of context. “I’ll call you bitch for short as a last resort and my first resort, you call me motherfucker for long,” I mean, if that can’t get me into hip hop there is no hope for me and songs you can dance to.

Fourth semester of nursing school starts on Tuesday. This time next year I’ll be getting paid (getting paid is part of the plan at least) to save lives. Right now I just do it because it’s fun.

Less than two weeks ago I finished a hellish summer semester in which I completed 19 units. I barely had time to perform my preferred hygiene routines, let alone talk about it on the internet. It should be noted (because I am a self centered asshole) that I got a 4.0 this semester, making my cumulative GPA 3.92 (fuck you Spring semester and your blasted A-!!). I have two semesters left and they are going to be the least intense. Alas, I hope to be back in a somewhat regular fashion for quite some time. We’ll see how I fair with the blogging slash schooling combination.

What else is of note? Assuming what I’ve already mention IS of note. I am in friend transition mode. I have amazing new friends and I’m also trying as best I can to retain my old friends (it’s like that girl scouts song “make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other’s gooooold.”

****

I found the above waiting in my unposted drafts, crying at the thought of never being unleashed on the internet. I don’t know exactly when it was written. I take it as proof that I need to give in to my blogging cravings because obviously I black out and choose to blog. Nerd? Yes, I think so.

In re-reading the above, I sadly have to acknowledge that I HAVE in fact mentioned my love oh Kan and should probably STFU about it already.

Instead of trying to make sense of it and finish it I’m just posting it. I have nothing, also coincidentally** I’m drunk right now.

**Not coincidental at all, I just have a problem.

The Millionizer kicks asses and writes down names

On one hand, I’m extremely grateful you said something to me. On the other, I dunno. Get over it?

Yes, he is attractive. But you know what? So is TBU. And so are you.

All I’ve got going for me is my personality. It’s a finely tuned tool and it has never* failed me. For the most part, people like me. And I like that they like me, so try not to make me feel bad about it. When people like each other, they sometimes interact. That’s the way it goes.

I’m clearly not trying to do anything. I mean fuck, I’ve gained 10 pounds since starting nursing school. I could try really, really hard and still look like I’m not trying. I’m happy TBU still wants to fuck me, I don’t have the energy to care if anyone else wants to fuck me. And if they do, it’s through no effort of my own. Even so, I’m sure that’s not what’s happening in this case.

Maybe you haven’t known me long enough to know that I would never do anything with anyone’s SO. Maybe you haven’t known TBU and I long enough to know that we would never do anything to jeopardize our relationship. Even in those moments I fantasize about hitting him in the balls, I love him dearly.

So, Friend, rest easy.

*OK, so it’s not perfect but it’s a fairly successful thing I’ve got going on in my head and outward expressions

The Millionizer will be at The Station tonight. You cannot miss her, she is LOUD.

PS she likes hugs

Fortunately, it’s nothing like that. We don’t even notice them unless we want to. Sporadically we sit outside and watch. “Oh there goes another Southwest, oh man those Alaskans are huuge!” We can gauge how touristy the season is by the frequency of the planes.

It’s even become a comforting sign for me. When driving home from the hospital or school I see the planes headed for descent and I know I just have to follow them. They’re like a giant flock of homing birds I just have to join to make it home.

Mid Saturday morning I was just waking up, lying peacefully in bed thinking about the day. The sound of a military plane was unmistakeable. I heard the high pitched whir as it came closer, closer until it was just over us. My heart pounded in my chest. There was no reason a military plane would need to fly over us, especially so low, unless shit was going down. The whir was so loud I couldn’t hear my own breathing. I probably wasn’t breathing, I was terrified, my heart was beating as hard as it ever has.

The whir was still deafening as the plane flew towards the bay, where the military battleships are stationed. I waited for the inevitable explosion. Out of bed now, I ran to the open front door, making wide eyed contact with TBU. I waited for the bombs thinking, “This is it! We should have never moved to a military city!” I waited for the worst to happen. Flashes of marshall law, no internet or cell service and panicked fits of trying to find my mother were in my head.

Then nothing.

TBU spoke first, “I’ve been on Twitter all day and haven’t heard anything.” That broke the ice and I bursted out laughing. WTF was I so afraid of? Well besides the aforementioned. We live in a military city, for better or for worse, there are training exercises all the time. I guess what scared me was the fact that training exercises never take place near the flight path of the civilian airport. TBU scoured Twitter and found the answer – naval aviation centennial. A fucking air show.

It goes to show how tuned in I am to the military goings on in this city. Not. At. All.

When TBU first came to visit me in San Diego we went to Silver Strand Beach in Coronado. Military planes fly low here, really low, for training I assume. I never thought anything of it, I’ve been going to that beach since since I was a tiny little thing. The whole beach rumbles when they fly over and if you don’t know the layout and military-ness of San Diego, the worst must come to mind. I remember TBU’s face as he saw it approach, fly so low he could see the rivets, and make a sharp turn back to base just past the breakers. I was confused at his terror. I smiled and said, “We’re right next to the base.” He was like whaaaaa? That was almost a decade ago.

Eight years of living in Santa Cruz, where anything in the sky was suspicious, has turned me into TBU at the Strand I guess.

I’m so proud of him, he works so hard and is so in love with what he does. He is going to make a fantastic leader, I’m positive he’s going to make great things with his team.

He starts on Thursday. We took great joy in cleaning out his office last night. I may or may not have taken a couple office supplies. That job seemed to take equal joy in dicking him around with everything. From month to month he would never know for sure how many hours he’d be working. Some months it would be 60% other months it was 85% or he would be told it was 100% then the day before it was supposed to start it would go back down to 80%. That made it hard to plan our finances. They fired his supervisor then made his annoying co-worker with no design, creative or managerial experience “team leader” whatever that means. We deduced that it meant he was doing two peoples jobs without an increase in pay. Which was fine because he just fucked it all up anyway, he didn’t deserve any more money.

When he told them he was leaving, team leader asked TWICE how they could keep him. TBU kinda guffawed and asked if they could provide parking, pay him double, respect his creative input or stop giving him shitty powerpoint presentations to make less shitty. They could provide none of it. I loooove it that he made it clear he took a large pay cut to work for them. They really had no idea what a fucking force they had in him. The supervisor that was fired knew what TBU was about, but when she left it was the blind leading the blind and refusing to listen to TBU when he told them maybe they shouldn’t cross the freeway.

It wasn’t all bad. This was the job that allowed us to move from Santa Cruz to San Diego. And it wasn’t bad until a few months ago. But when it got bad, it got stupidly bad. TBU was honestly too good for what the job turned into. A person with his experience and talent doesn’t need to be fixing powerpoint slides 40 hours a week and he doesn’t need you standing over his shoulder while he designs a flyer.

Anyway, he’s moving on and we’re all very excited for him. His new office is the top floor of a building that makes up the San Diego skyline. Maybe we’ll move. We are so cheap though, it’s crazy. We’ll probably stay put unless some serious shit hits a serious fan.

So Juan, the loud sex having raver who shares a bedroom wall and a floor with us. After the incident that occurred last week he has been gone an uncharacteristic amount for someone who works from home. He’s also been uncharacteristically quiet. Maybe I was right, maybe he does regret being an asshole. All I know is that it’s been a lot nicer around these parts.