The Almost Trip to England

This really happened to my friend JM. All of it.

David Cassidy and my daily life

My coworkers stayed an extra 30-60 minutes on Tuesday night just to decorate my office, hardhat, laptop and files with pictures of David Cassidy all because I requested very loudly in what might be considered an angry voice that they stop signing "I think I love you" for the fortieth time in two days.

david flowers- scientific name davidus cassidius

my hard hat

even my desk drawers..

My guinea pig bit my hair off

On Sunday, after running in the Komen Race for the Cure with my friend SM, I decided to shower and hang out with Manny. I recently changed shampoo and apparently it must smell like strawberries, Manny's favorite food.


Manny is sitting on my shoulder while my hair is down and chirping away when all of a sudden I see a chunk of hair fall onto my t-shirt. Turns out, Manny was chirping while nibbling through my hair.

(Me with my new "face framing layer")

Trippy

(these are not actually my knees but they look close.)

This past weekend I suffered several injuries. Anyone who has been around me for any length of time knows that graceful or agile is not exactly the words which quickly come tot he tongue when asked to describe me. Instead, in a National Championship game broadcast, I was once described as "rumbling, bumbling, stumbling". Nice.

So why I was suprised that I would suffer injury trying to be lithe and athletic on Sunday is a little beyond my own understanding of myself but the whole event was rather hilarious, so I thought it should be shared...

It all started Saturday when in a fit of fake rage, I threw a punch thru a doorway with my elbow. I honestly wasn't sure I didn't break it until Sunday morning. I failed to recognize my surroundings and was much closer to edge of the closet than I realizes. When I threw said punch, I slammed my elbow into the reinforced edge of the closet causing my elbow to give since the reinforcing wouldn't and I collapsed in pain that didn't relent until I fell asleep that night. When I woke up, I still couldn't use it too well in terms of putting pressure on that arm but I was obviously not broken.*

It was a sunny Sunday so we decided to go running seperately (see above for descriptive terms of my athleticism and you'll understand why I often run with myself). I was enjoying the sunshine, listening to Sookie, and running amongst the throngs of people in town for the regatta on Boathouse row, when I found myself suddenly airborne. With reaction time close to a blind deaf slug, it was helpless to try to react and instead I allowed myself to come to a heavy stop on my hands and knees. A man doing step-ups on a bench stopped and stared. No one managed to snicker until after I stood up, an event that made me look like a lop-sided tripod due to my elbow injury from the previous night not allowing me to put weight on that arm. When the man recognized that I was able to walk, he went back to his step-ups on the bench. I wanted to throw a rock at him, but the pain streaming thru my hands was stopping me from doing anything besides blinking back tears of embarassment. I quickly started to run, toughing it out when I realized the blood streaming down my knee was probably pretty disgusting.

(I should take this moment to comment on my running attire for the day. I choose to wear bright red shorts and an almost hot yellow t-shirt. So assuming your friend missed my theatrics, you could quite easily remember and point out the girl you just totally saw bite it in the biggest way.)

I managed to tough it out another half mile or so when I saw a bench and stopped to check out the damage. A man walked past my obvious attempt to stop the bleeding and then doubled back, asking if I was ok, if I needed a ride anywhere or if not, that he had a bandaid in the car. Feeling a bit like a five-year old at the playground being asked if I would like some candy, I released my yellow shirt now stained with blood and told him I was fine and continued on my run. I made it home and washed the rocks out my knee and spent the rest of the day trying to not run into things or fall anywhere else.

*(My elbow is currently the size of two elbows and rather blue in color, in case you were wondering).

Cops and Jury Duty

Question of the Day: "Would you be more likely to believe a police officer testimony because of their job?"

I recently (Tuesday) served my civic duty of jury duty for the City of Brotherly Love. Don't get me wrong here... I enjoyed having the valuable time of my day dedicated to reading magazines I was smart enough to bring while I was shuffled back and forth between uncomfortable wooden pews.

Following a friend's advice, I arrived approximately five minutes late. Apparently, my friend gave this advice to everyone on jury duty that day as there were a plethora of people who had chosen to not quite be on time. I passed thru security with little to no issues and entered Room 101. Finding myself with little understanding of just exactly what was going on here, I grabbed my mini-golf pencil and form 1 & 2 and hustled back to the theatre chairs all the way at the back that meant a little extra leg room. I filled in the information at the top of both sheets, listening for my name to be associated with a juror number (secretly wishing for juror #4)...

Peter Bartlett: I didn't bribe anyone.

Casey Novak: (sarcastically) Nooo... that fifty thousand dollar payment to juror number four was charity.

But alas, just as I began my filling in my answers to the questions on page #1 and #2, I was given the number 6. I had made it all the way to the question with which I started my blog and a flashback started to occur...

***Enter whispy dry ice fumes....

Monday, I am driving thru downtown Philadelphia and find myself at 16th and Chestnut at 1:38PM. I must go approximately 4 city blocks until I enter a covered garage and proceed upstairs to a meeting being held at 2PM. As I pass 16th, the two cars in front of me turn left leaving me the solo driver in my lane for the next block as several cars deep are waiting to turn right on 15th. As I approach the intersection of Chestnut and 15th, three youths streak across the intersection across traffic. Please note I had a green light.

Due to the actions of these fine young men, I now find myself slamming on the brakes. Since they clear the street before I even have the chance to hit them, I now clear the intersection as it turns yellow out of the corner of my eye. I am now stuck at the next light, as lights inevitably change in unison. When the cars behind me advance, I see a cop car pull up behind me and then flash its lights.

Now. The following things are true:

1. I drive a bright red passat.

2. My age is sometimes mistaken and I have been asked unreasonable questions about my age in multiple locations (example: at 22, I was asked if I would be driving soon. True story.)

3. I believe that I am a good driver.

So when I see the lights, I think, "They should have turned at 15th. There is a lot of traffic here and a bus on my right. How are they going to get past?" Naivety.

Folks, they stopped that cop car right there, got out and approached my vehicle. Having had my car broken into twice last year, I actually did not know where my registration and insurance was at first and the lady cop to my left was very curt when she informed me to stop freaking out because I hadn't gotten a ticket yet so my attitude could go a long way towards helping that. Also, I needed to "turn my radio down!" (Note to cops out there: Please do not speak to humans in a tone used for a naughty dog. It tends to bring out the b*tch in all of us). She asked me my age (check the license lady) and asked me if I knew why I was stopped (obviously not given my surprise at your tapping on my window as I sat in traffic) and then I then sat in the left lane blocking traffic until 2:02 when they brought my papers back and told me to have a safe day.

...smoky fog clears****

Do I have any bias towards the Philly Police department who has not shown up to my car break-in and then wasted twenty minutes of my day not writing me a ticket but warning me not to try to hit people who are jaywalking while I have a green light? I think I have done enough jury duty for this city for a while.

Aspiring to be a Proactiv Model

It appears that the tides may have turned. I promise as soon as most clusters disappear, I will stop posting daily photos of my disgusting face that will need to be burned upon my healing.

A tid bit nippley

Another good friend, JN aka B, shared this little gem yesterday about her recent email escapades:

"So I’ve been tanning for my friend’s wedding on Saturday. I went topless b/c I don’t want the lines. So I said to my friend that I didn’t want to burn my.... Nips... :) so she told me her fiancé said to put chapstick on them. Which to me- makes perfect sense. So I have been. Then last night, I forgot. OOPS! Well... They hurt a little. So I go to email my friend and her fiancé – who I’ve never emailed, but know he works for the state – as does she. So I take her email address: and put in his initials: .ONLY to get an email saying ‘Brian’s email is There are a lot of Bells that work for the State – you’ve now told some weirdo that you burnt your nips... B/c you forgot chapstick."

Your day could always start out like this, people...and bbell, if you are out there, we hope you at least got a smile at 7AM yesterday morning!

Un-glamour shots

Last night, my sister lovingly took photos which she emailed to me under the auspicious email title of "Glamour Shots". Glamorous they are not.



Please note that as itchy as they may look, they are actually worse.

Today, however, my forehead appears to have lost all redness and one whole half of my face no longer looks like I was held under duress on a red ant hill and bitten half to death.

Underwear

We have a friend, DB, who occassionally befalls bad luck. Only to us, instead of it being horrific and tragic, it always seems to lean towards the comedic.

On Monday, at work, DB visited the bathroom only to learn that her underwear had broke. That's right, folks. Broke.

The above represents the type of underwear I think she was wearing. Apparently, these being her favorite brand and style, she had worn them to the point of becoming brittle and when she pulled on them, the side piece tore.

Knowing she had little options, sitting there as she was, she proceeded to tie the broken pieces together. I think the resulting scenario would look something like this MS Paint sketch:

As you can see in the repaired sketch, it appears that approximately 1/2 of one buttcheek would be "free" for the rest of the day. Also, due to the quantity of material needed to "tie" them back together, the resultant panties were a little bit small. In fact, fearing she would never be able to get them back down or up, this trip was the last to the bathroom for the entire day until she returned home.

Obviously, feeling uncomfortable, sure that someone could tell and needing some resolve from outside herself, she emailed her sister to get some feedback. The response:

"Sometimes things happen. I just saw a cow mounting an alpaca and the alpaca looked very uncomfortable."

So ladies and gentleman, I guess that your mom was right. Always wear a good clean pair of underwear when you leave the house.