Ravens of Doom

Maybe you've been wondering what's become of me. Or maybe not. Whichever, I don't care. As it happens, though, I have been working out of town. WAY out of town. And since I have been traveling I thought it would be a good idea to do some travel writing. What is that called? Travelogues? Something like that; watch out Rick Steves!  So, hmmmmm, where to start? A good beginning is so important when it comes to good travel writing. Otherwise it would be super boring: I got on an airplane and the seat was too small, then I went to this place, and saw some stuff and ate some food. Snoresville, am I right?  In fact I should probably just admit right here I have never read one single word of any travel writing, ever, because it is so deadly dull, and therefore have not even the slightest idea how to do it. Oh well, that never stopped me before! I'm just gonna jump right in, how bad can it be?

First of all, the stupid TSA confiscated my corkscrew. And they didn't just take it quickly so I could be on my way. No, it was a whole ordeal.  See, somehow,  I have NO clue how, it had found its way into the backpack I use to tote my computer back and forth from work.  The backpack had to go through the scanner TWICE, then they searched it by hand, STOLE my corkscrew, and then ran it through AGAIN.  In the meantime, I was forced to stand there with my collection of two computers, iPad, and multiple phone/devices. It was very depressing to confront the fact that I should have been able to launch an array of satellites or at least hack into the FoxNews website to endorse gay marriage across the land but instead my efforts will produce nothing but a prodigious stack of questionable paperwork.  And me without a corkscrew, sigh.

Finally, my spirit adequately squashed, I was allowed to continue on my journey. In an airplane seat that was too small. Now, the purpose of this particular journey was to assess some disaster damage in a bunch of freezing cold and remote places.  Places that you have to get to in teeny tiny airplanes that are wired together with walrus guts and polar bear spit. If you don't die in an icy fiery crash first, of course.  Because I am opposed to dying in such an undignified fashion, I put the kibosh on the wings of deadly carnage and instead we evaluated damages remotely.  From a toasty warm office that was apparently riddled with bacterial pneumonia spores. It was a really tough choice, deciding whether to plunge into the frozen tundra at high velocity or hack up blood. I went with door number two, which has worked out relatively well for me so far. I weaseled out of a boring meeting because germs! And one of my coworkers brought me salami and orange juice and kleenex because I can't leave my hotel room, because the blood will freeze in the air on the way down because it's like 12 below, and then I might slip on it and hurt myself. Also, every time I leave the room there are ravens following me. Ravens of doom. They are waiting for me to die so they can devour my bloody flesh and peck my eyes out.  Actually, they might not even wait. Especially the big shiny one. He talks to me. Caw! Caw! Caw!

I have to go home tomorrow, though. In an airplane seat that is too small. So I'm working on a strategy.  I'm going to save all the hacked-up blood and use it to fashion what appears to be a bloody corpse out of pillows. This room has at least eight giant ones, they won't miss a couple. Then, when I get outside, I'm going to throw them at the ravens and make a break for it. Wish me luck! I'm leaving my new corkscrew for the maid, along with all my dirty clothes and a few books. I can't have that stuff slowing me down. If you never hear from me again, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Tooth Fairy Better Not Screw Me Over

Do any of you guys remember two years ago, when my birthday lasted like six days and ended with boils? I didn't think it was possible but I think that one might be facing some stiff competition for the most ridiculous birthday ever.

I have been out of town all week busting my ass for the greater good, like usual, only extra hard. So hard, in fact, that I earned a sparkly tiara for my efforts, but that's a story for another day, except for the part where I put it on my head this morning so it wouldn't be crushed and then forgot about it and wore it to many usually tiara-free places. It DID seem like people were admiring me much more than usual, and some old geezer at the gas station told me I looked beautiful, so that worked out well. In fact, I think I might wear it all the time from now on.

I arrived home today with big plans to enjoy my birthday. A party, a Goodwill shopping spree: you know, all my favorite treats. The house was perfectly clean until I got there and lugged in about 8,000 pounds of work and 3,000 pounds of dirty laundry. Then, I took a nap and when I woke up all hell had broken loose. Shane was curled up on the bathroom floor, whimpering and surrounded by vomit. A trail of puke at least forty feet long and a disturbing red-orange color led from the kitchen, through the living room and down the hall. Meanwhile, Lloyd was yanking a loose tooth out of Weston's mouth with a pair of pliers. I guess he figured the whole carpet will have to be bleached anyway so a few more drops of blood won't make any difference.

It was all down hill from there, too. I cancelled my party in favor of popsicle shopping and the Magic School Bus. I'm still going to Goodwill, though. In my tiara. On deck tonight: 8,000 pounds of work, 9,000 pounds of yakked-on laundry, and a truly daunting volume of wine. I just hope that damn tooth fairy doesn't drink too much and fall asleep in her tiara again. I suppose she will be worthless when it comes to folding laundry, too. Happy Birthday to.... Oh, NEVER MIND!

Click or Climb 2012

Hey, guess what? It's time for the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society's Big Climb Seattle. This is their annual fundraiser where a bunch of crazy people climb the 69 flights of stairs of the Columbia Tower to benefit blood cancer research. I first wrote about it in 2009; you can read that here.

I have clicked instead of climbed every year since then, but I was actually considering doing the climb this year on my friend Brandy's team. Seriously, it's true! I have known Brandy since she was in middle school, which was at least ten years ago, and I swear she looks exactly the same now as she did then, probably because she does stuff like climb 69 flights of stairs on a regular basis. Unfortunately, though, I am going to be out of town, so once again the badgers can kiss my ass instead of chewing my thighs. This time. Next year, though, BRING IT ON, BADGERS!

As you probably know, my mother died of lymphoma. As a result, I appreciate Brandy's stair-climbing and fund raising efforts for blood cancer research even more than I would otherwise.

Please consider donating to Brandy's team by clicking here. Or, sign up here and climb yourself! Because if I NEVER hear of someone I know being diagnosed with lymphoma or leukemia again, it will be too soon.

And, oh yeah, on a non dead mother related note, if you missed yesterday's post called 'Questionable Content' about my brilliant plan for new vending machine selections at my office and want to see it, let me know and I will send it to you. I took it down because it was kind of, ummmmm, questionable.

On a Roll

Dang, people! I am on a roll: I have posted for three days in a row, so I'm going for four. It's like starting a diet as you come off a nasty stomach flu or a particularly bad couple of days after tripping over the fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning (paraphrasing here; thanks, Jimmy Buffet!) I was going to put a link in the text there, but let's face it: if you don't already know who Jimmy Buffett is you definitely should not be reading this blog.

So, what's new and exciting around here? Well, I have several things I would like to post pictures of, but Lloyd is fishing today with the camera. Wait, that didn't come out right. Lloyd is fishing, with a fishing pole, and he took the camera with him. To take pictures of the fish, after he catches them by using a fishing pole. THERE. I am quite looking forward to him getting home, so he can take pictures of the giant swollen bruise on the inside of my left wrist. And of the robots. Oh, and also because I like fish. My bruise is not related to either robots or fish, but rather skates. The kind you roll recklessly around on, not the kind that swim in the ocean and might be caught with a fishing pole.

I went inline skating today at lunch, for the first time in many months, and as you might guess, took a nice little spill, leaving me with a 6" by 2" linear, curved bruise from the base of my thumb, down my wrist and partway up my arm. It is currently an attractive shade of green with mottled purplish-red splotches. I have yet to check my butt, so I will spare you the description of that. I was quite shocked, as I am pretty cautious and rarely fall.

Afterward, I kept thinking of the worst skating accident I have ever had. I was working at an Air Force base, doing construction inspection. I liked to skate around the airfield at lunch, and one sunny day I was out in the back forty, where there was a small hilly section, about as far from where I started as I could possibly get. The sun was shining through some trees, making spots on the ground, so I missed seeing some leaves fallen on the path. I went down hard, right on the back of my upper leg. I had to skate all the way back, of course, and when I got to my office I found that I had a serious road rash, about the size of a dinner plate, from my underwear line about halfway down my hamstring. This wouldn't have been so much of a problem for someone a little more gracile; you probably would have just had a little saucer-sized wound, but I definitely had a large plate's, or maybe even a serving platter's worth. Then it started oozing blood and that yellowy sticky stuff, and I had to go to some meetings. My pants stuck to it and all the stinky old construction guys thought I was weird. And I am, but I just had a perfectly understandable sports injury! Geez! When I got home I had to take a bath with my clothes on to get it unstuck and it hurt for at least a week. Wow, that is a gross and unpleasant story! Aren't you glad I posted today?!?!?! Also, you should FOR SURE take up rollerblading right away.

I'm not sorry, though- it was an absolutely gorgeous day, and if Cliff Mass is to be believed, we will soon be suffering another brutal northwest winter, regretting every second we wasted with Facebook or Tom and Jerry whilst the sun shone. This would definitely be a good time to make sure you have an emergency kit in your house, and all your vehicles, too. Last year hundreds, if not thousands, of people were stranded on highways around here for 18 hours in a snowstorm. Just think about that, being trapped in your car on a frozen highway amongst your fellow starving commuters. What are you going to eat? Your seat covers? The skinny guy in the Lexus parked next to you? Oh, I know you could totally take him, but he's likely to be stringy. Would it kill you to have some granola bars, a blanket, a container to pee in, some cash to pay off the crazy-eyed woman in an Odyssey so she won't eat you? Just a little something for you to consider while you're shopping for your new skates. Ta-ta for now!

Bloody Hell

I don't even know how to start this story, so I'll just hop right in. I get myself in the worst fixes that way. If you ever hear me say, "There's only one way to find out!" or "How bad can it be?" just do yourself a favor and RUN. But I'm sure my story will come out fine, right?! Here goes:

I had a dentist appointment this morning, so I left work early. Luckily, my dentist is near a Goodwill, and it is also near a blood donation center. I have been wanting to give blood for a while. I used to do it, but it always made me queasy and lightheaded, and so I stopped. But blood donations kept my mother alive for a while, and I've been wanting to donate. Just a note for my Korea/Europe friends: living in Songtan will not disqualify you to donate blood products when you are back in the U.S., but some European locations may. I think it has something to do with those anemic Brits, but I don't know for sure. Also, there are some new creepy diseases to watch out for, like Chagras and Babesiosis (which I bet is not NEARLY as fun as it sounds).

After fortifying myself with a 7-11 Coke Slurpee and my beloved sea salt and pepper Kettle Chips (no FTC disclosure needed, this post is not sponsored by 7-11, Coke, or Kettle, though I would dearly love it to be!) I went into the blood center. I hadn't been for quite some time, so it took them a while to dig me up in the computer. When they found me, my birthday was off by a year, on the old side. This made the volunteer at the desk nervous that she had the wrong person, and while she was performing another records search, I recalled why the date was wrong.

See, I was a year younger than the rest of my high school class, and was thus not quite old enough to donate when the bloodmobile came around, so I just moved my birthday back one year. When I was regularly donating, I could remember that I had lied and so would just tell them the fake date that matched their data, so it wasn't an issue. I decided the time had come to 'fess up, so I told her the truth. Well, she thought that was so funny that she told the whole staff and they all thought it was so cute that I had wanted to donate so badly that I had lied about my birthday. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I did it for the extra credit, which I desperately needed. This will probably not shock you, but I was not the most industrious student in high school, though I was enormously talented at bootlegging animal beer. This post is also not sponsored by Schmidt, though I would dearly love it to be (CALL ME; I accept beer in lieu of cash!)

Then, they asked where I had gone to school, and when I admitted that I had gone to Auburn High, they told me that to this day, good old AHS has the best turnout for high school blood donors in the entire Puget Sound. I know they must think it's because Auburn's teenage citizens are the most civic-minded, generous, plump-veined kids in all of South King County. Sadly, though, unless things have changed significantly in the ever-so-brief period since I left, I'm pretty sure it's just because AHS is the home of the kids that need the most extra credit. And cheap beer.

I did get several compliments on my nice plump Auburn veins. I often do, they are quite appealing to a certain segment of the population. Funny, no one ever mentions my stunning looks, my brilliant conversation or my charming personality. Oh, well, I'll take what I can get, I guess. And guess what? The whole time they were sucking my blood, I felt perfectly fine.