Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Feed a cold.

Colds suck. Mine started yesterday morning with a burning in the back of my throat, slightly similar to the feeling you get after burping too hard and puking a little. Now my sinuses are clogged, my eyes are all puffy, and all I want to do is go to bed and die.

In an effort to stave off the infection, in the past 30 hours or so, I’ve ingested the following:

4 Airborne tablets
3 cups of hot tea
8 Halls cough drops
72 ounces of water
1 Jamba Juice Coldbuster Smoothie
1 bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos
2 bowls of super hot chili (Why I have it in my head that spicy things fight off colds, I have no idea.)

Unfortunately, none have had any lasting effect. Except for the chili. But it wasn’t exactly the effect I was going for.

Apologies to anyone within a 5 foot radius of me. 

Monday, October 20, 2008

Twist on the fly.

Diana: tell me a story
Me: does it need to have a twist ending?
Me: or a punchline or something?
Diana: no
Diana: i want heartbreak
Diana: in the story, not IRL
Me: oh, so you want a made up story
Me: not a real-life one?
Diana: yes

I was sure she’d heard Romeo and Juliet before, so I decided to make up something on the spot. I thought for a minute and began typing.

Me: there once was a boy name alex
Me: who loved a girl named alex
Me: they worked at the same grocery store
Me: unfortunately, he could never get up the nerve to talk to her
Me: so one day, he thought he would write her a love note
Me: “dear alex, i love you. i dream about you constantly. i can’t live without you. love, alex”
Me: and so forth
Me: he’d sneak up and leave the notes in her purse when she wasn’t looking
Me: but each day, he’d never get a response
Me: so he began to think she wasn’t getting them
Me: so he’d start leaving them in her jacket pocket, on her car windshield, anywhere he thought she’d find them
Me: but she’d never say a word to him
Me: one day, she didn’t come in to work
Me: he asked around to see if anyone knew what happened to her
Me: and he found out that she had killed herself
Diana: whoa, that’s a bummer
Me: it turned out, she was a schizophrenic
Me: and since the notes were from “alex”, she thought she was writing the notes to herself
Me: no matter how much medication she took, she’d keep finding more notes
Me: she couldn’t stand it anymore
Me: and she took her own life
Diana: ha!
Diana: you tell good stories
Me: yeah, i’m pretty impressed with myself too

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Another reason to get a new car: the new-car smell.

It was small and black. That’s all I could really make out of it. I didn’t really get a good look because it was night. And I was driving down the highway at 65mph.  And I only had a split-second glimpse of it before it went under my tire.

“Cat” was my first thought. But I figured something like that would make a bigger clunk as I drove over it, if not an ear-piercing “meow!” So I convinced myself it was an old tire tread from someone’s blowout and continued on my way.

A minute later and I had already forgotten about it. I drove on and started to smell something faint. I couldn’t make it out at first. Like a mixture of Thai food, old shoes and stomach acid. It gradually got stronger and I could finally identify it.

Skunk.

“Damn, someone hit a skunk,” I thought to myself.

I thought harder.

“Damn, I hit a skunk.”

I was miles down the road already, and yet it still reeked. I thought the funk would have stayed with the skunk. So I figured that either the thing had wedged itself between my muffler and bumper, or it had sprayed my entire undercarriage before departing to the hereafter. I was almost at the grocery store, so I thought I’d have a look below my van before going inside for some food goods.

I parked the car, closed the door, and peeked underneath. Nothing. No blood. No fur. No corpse clutching to the transmission. And oddly, no smell. “Weird,” I thought as I headed inside the store.

A half hour later, I walked back with my usual bags full of beef jerky and fake crab meat. I tossed my groceries in the passenger seat and started up the car. I took a breath.

It still smelled like skunk. And I swear it smelled even stronger.

You know how the old legends say that if a person dies violently, their spirit can remain in the place of their death in a state of torment? Could the same go for animals? Has this skunk’s soul returned from the dead to linger in my car forever to make me suffer for running it over? Is my van haunted by the smelliest ghost ever?

I guess I’ll see in the morning. If the smell is gone, then no worries. If it’s still there, I need to start looking into finding me an animal exorcist.

Or at least invest in some Glade.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Less smiling at work.

Today, my supervisor at work had one of her teeth fall out for no reason. My first reaction when I heard was to ask her, “Was it a real one?”

“I dont’ wear dentures!” she yelled back.

I sure know how to rake in those pay raises.