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November 06 Warranty Service RepairWhile sorting thru a box of memorobilia in the basement, I came across this mock letter that I wrote back in 1999 to the doctor that delivered my children. I wrote it just trying to be funny and never intended it to actually make it into the hands of the doctor. However, a friend of my wife's decided it was too funny for the doctor to miss out on so she gave him a copy. He thought it was great.
TO: Dr. Meek (OBGYN)
FROM: Lord Snarffingham
RE: Warranty Service Repair
UNITS: 4515752 / 4515583
Dear Dr. Meek,
I am writing to you in regards to the Alex and Enya units that you delivered to me on June 19, 1993 and November 4th, 1996 respectively. The units in question have been malfunctioning in multiple areas of operation and I would like to schedule a time that I may return them to you for warranty service repair.
I will enumerate the malfunctions below:
- The mute feature appears to be damaged or missing. In fact, the audio output volume control has been stuck on high ever since the unit's speech synthesizers started operating. This is especially apparent late at night when the units' suspend feature malfunctions (I will go into greater detail later).
- The voice command recognition module does not operate as anticipated. Upon giving commands or instructions, the audio output module returns a response of "No" during roughly %85 of these interactions. Increasing the volume of my voice commands is ineffective.
- Hardware compatibility is often a problem as the units will not interact with various items of hardware that I already own. The Enya unit will not interface with the 'toilet' module as described in the brochure. Thus I am required to continue using the 'diaper' hardware patch which is expensive, time consuming, and generally unpleasant not to mention that lately the unit seems to have an aversion to having the patch applied. Additionally, the Alex unit will not interface with the 'dinner' updates but instead opts for the poorly coded 'cereal' or 'popsicle' options.
- The expensive hardware options that we purchased at Christmas to interface with our units have been completely destroyed by the units. They have requested more of these expensive hardware options.
- The suspend and recharge feature is twitchy at best and I would like to be able to set the units to automatically switch to suspend mode at 8:00PM. Instead, the units will suspend and recharge at random, often in the early evening leaving them charged and active late into the night.
- When interacting with other units not owned by me, my units tend to download undesirable behavioral programming which also affects their voice command recognition and audio output levels. Occasionally, one of my units will try to engage in an input/output interface with the 'teeth' upgrades that they received earlier on. This leads to unpleasant high decibel alarms from the receiving unit who did not want to the interface in the first place.
- The affection and loyalty features appear to be working properly and have been about the only thing that has kept me from throwing them in the trash or returning them for a full refund.
Please contact me at your earliest convenience so that I may have the units repaired. Only now do I understand my parent's words, "I hope you have a unit that malfunctions exactly like you do."
Lord Snarffingham
Parent October 31 A House Is A Peculiar ThingWhile a house is physically nothing more than a conglomerate of materials thrown together in such a fashion as to keep the rain from falling on our heads, there is no other object in this life that we so cling to and apply such emotional value on. And why not? From the day it is built a house begins to evolve and develop personality. Its occupants determine the environment in which it dwells forever directing and shaping its personality - effectively making it a home to some, merely a house to others.
The definition of a home changes from person to person; some place significance on a house if they were born there while others harbor fear and dread of a house in which someone has died. Should the events surrounding the death be violent in nature, the fear increases exponentially to the point where a house loses value and may be difficult to sell to a new owner. For this cause, if such an occurrence has happened in a house, attempts are made to keep the information from potential buyers. There are no laws regarding the mandatory disclosure of such information, which is strange considering that 4 out of 5 people would likely reconsider a home purchase if they had this information. Perhaps because a cracked foundation or leaky roof can be repaired, but how do you calm a disturbed house? How do you repair that which cannot even be explained?
I am the 5th person. I have never been one to give in to superstition or believe in visitations from the dead, so it never concerned me to know the history of a house and it’s occupants before purchasing it. If it is structurally sound, what is there to worry about?
I bought a house in the quaint town of Kaysville in 2004. I jumped at the opportunity because the area was perfect and the price was wonderful. The house was built in 1974, has 3300 square feet, on the side of a wooded hill, and has 6 outside doors. I began to notice immediately a natural tendency of my children and others to run out one door, around the deck and into another door, upstairs and down, screaming and laughing as they went. While I am not opposed to kids having fun – in their hurry the doors would often be left ajar leaving me to follow around behind them and close the doors. Often times the kids would get lectures about leaving the doors open and a plea to make sure the doors were shut tight after they went thru them. Over time, many of these lectures followed. I was always closing the doors and the kids began to deny having left them open which only caused me to scold them more harshly.
I frequently have trouble sleeping though I wouldn’t say I’m an insomniac. So it is not uncommon for me to be awake late at night and out of bed again first thing in the morning. One night, I was up late watching TV around 1am and the dog started to bug me to let him out. I followed him thru the kitchen and to the door but suddenly he stopped short, his ears perked up, his panting stopped, he stared at the door for a moment, then he turned around and hurriedly left the room. I called after him, “I thought you wanted to go out.”, then I turned and saw that the door was open a few inches. I mumbled some curses under my breath about those darn kids, closed the door and locked it. I went to find my dog had bravely jumped on the bed and snuggled up to the wife to protect her – and he even more bravely didn’t want to get off of the bed so I could go to sleep. The next morning I woke up around 6am to get ready for work, I went into the kitchen and immediately noticed that the door was again standing open a few inches. I stood; petrified for a moment while I contemplated how this could have happened. The entire family was still asleep. I nervously approached the door, closed it, locked it again, and pulled hard on the handle to make sure it was latching correctly. Ultimately, I dismissed it with the thought that someone had let the dog out during the night – something I would later find out didn’t happen.
I refused to let the thought enter my head that there were some unworldly powers at work in my house. I even went so far as to think that maybe a previous owner had a key and was breaking into my house only to find that I had nothing of value to steal. I wasn’t sleeping well, my dreams were repeatedly filled with dark images of the house standing alone precariously atop a cliff in a with a raging river down below. While searching around, I would find secret passages filled with decaying body parts hidden in side chambers and alcoves; but the layout of the house in my nightmares and the actual house were dissimilar so it was physically impossible for these passages to exist. During this time, the dog would spend his nights curled up very close to the bed and occasionally stare out the window overlooking the deck and growl. I was at home alone one day and walking thru the front room when the front door started to swing open. Slowly, almost pedantically, and creaking as it went. I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at it for what must have been a full minute with my jaw hanging open. With as much strength as I could muster I said, “H… heellooo?”, but there was no reply. I went down the stairs and peered into the front yard, there was no wind and nobody nearby. I dismissed it again with the thought that perhaps the door was not latched properly and a gust of wind had simply blown it open. Very slow wind.
Finally, I was up late one night again walking thru the house. It was completely dark except for the dim, green glow of the nightlight we keep in the hallway for the kids. As I passed thru the front room, I got chills and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. This struck me as strange because it was summer and the house was actually uncomfortably warm. I saw something, some kind of movement out of the corner of my eye. I dared not turn to look – was it a figment of my imagination or something else? I tried to collect myself and convinced myself that I was neither dreaming nor insane. I saw a shadow – at least that’s the best I can describe it. A shadow that was darker than the darkness, standing on the deck just outside of the large living room window. Finally, I turned to see if I could get a better view, and it vanished. I began to hear footfalls on the deck as if a child was running around to a different door. I took several astonished steps back, my hands reaching out into the darkness trying to find something to hold onto and almost fell down the stairs. Having backed myself into a corner I suddenly realized that I was gasping for breath and my heart was beating with a force that seemed to indicate that it wanted to escape my chest. Gathering all the courage I could muster, I want into the kitchen and turned on every light I could find. I startled myself when I switched on the garbage disposal. I looked over at the door – it was open a few inches.
I was never very serious about it when people would ask me how the new house was and I would chuckle and say, “Heh – Haunted.” Then I would regale them with these experiences and watch their eyes almost pop out of their heads. I told my grandmother the same thing when she asked me about my new house. She always found my stories to be amusing. She died that December and the occurrences stopped. I can only imagine she had a chat with the lingering spirit that was still occupying my house and convinced them to leave me alone. The best I can figure, the alleged ghost in question is a child because of the tendency to run around the deck and open doors. I may muster the courage someday to ask the neighbors about the history of the house and its occupants. Hopefully I don’t find a shallow grave somewhere under the house as I complete my renovations. June 09 I Was An Illegal Alien In Mexico For A DayThere comes a time in every man’s existence where he either has to find the ability to sit back and laugh at the absurdity of life, or lose his mind completely and start running naked up and down the hallways of his employer spilling gasoline and whistling show tunes. The latter has crossed my mind on several occasions during my professional career, but I could never think of just the right show tune for the situation. Not to mention the psychological damage that I would inflict on others by simply running around naked. Having said that; I think it appropriate to start another tale of misery and woe which proves only one thing; that God is out to get me. I recently had the occasion to take a short business trip to Juarez, Mexico. I’ve been there a few times before because I have somehow wedged myself into the unfortunate role of ‘Juarez Expert’ at my place of business. Some are born with greatness; others are tied down with duct tape and had greatness force-fed to them. My boss was with me on this particular trip and as it was his first visit to Juarez, I was showing him the ropes; how and where to get a work visa, how to get Mexico insurance on the rental car, where the various buildings were, etc. We went to the building where you apply for your work visa and I handed my passport to the immigration officer at the desk. He looked at it, paused, looked at it again, flipped thru the pages, and suddenly my passport was being passed around the facility like a dirty picture in a high school locker room. Eventually, it made it back to the officer at the desk who looked at me with great concern and said, “You’ll need to talk to my supervisor.” The supervisor comes out, flips thru my passport and says, “Where is your paperwork from the last time you were here?” I was dumbfounded; my reply was hesitant, “Well, I uhh… I most likely threw it away.” A big smile spread across his face, “Bad for you. Come back to my office.” I’m a pretty collected, patient, and level-headed person for the most part. Even when I am screaming in panic on the inside, I might exhibit only the slightest glisten of brow sweat on the outside. At this point in the situation, my heart had dropped into my left foot and I was having trouble breathing. A cursory ‘get me out of here’ glance at my boss was met with a ‘wow – sucks to be you’ glance in return. Later, he told me that he was thinking, “Oh great, Matt is going to get thrown into a Mexican prison – and worse yet he has the car keys.” I followed him back into the immigration office, past several officers whose stares of accusation were burning into my very core. I felt as if they were tearing away little pieces of my soul in a vampire-esque attempt to feed off of what life I had before I was condemned to spend the rest of my days rotting in a cell… or maybe I was just really thirsty. He took me into his office, closed the door, and told me to take a seat while he circled the desk with my passport still in his hands. Finally, he sat down and pulled a bunch of papers out of his desk and proceeded to show me on the back of the work visa document where, in print so fine you would need an electron microscope just to realize it was there, was written that you were required to return your work visa to the immigration office before leaving the country so you could get an ‘exit’ stamp in your passport. Why does nobody tell me these things? If I were to read every legal document that I was exposed to in life, assuming I lived to be 80 I would still be reading several decades after my death. If ignorance of the law is no defense, I maintain that there are too many laws considering the average citizen would require an advanced law degree to know and understand even half the laws out there. However, that argument will have to wait for another day. He then proceeded to show me the fine associated with allowing a work visa to expire - $47.50 pesos per day (Approx $4.50 per day in dollars). I did some quick math in my head: “Let’s see considering it has been expired for eight months at $4.50 per day… Does that include weekends? 30 days in a month… 240 days… carry the remainder… All at once I realized a dollar amount and I wanted to jump up, flee the room, throw the car keys to the boss, and make a run for the US border. I had wild fantasies romping thru my brain of myself making a desperate dash for the border shouting, “I’m an American citizen!” while being pursued by several Mexican police with machine guns. All during my fevered fantasies the immigration office supervisor was fiddling with his calculator trying to determine the amount of my fine. My restraint was nothing short of heroic if I do say so myself. After what seemed like 30 minutes, he turned the calculator to me and the number on the screen was $10,000 pesos in change. “Wow, this is really bad for you – but good for me… er, I mean for my country.” He then punched in the current exchange rate and it came out to be more than $1000 dollars. I checked my left ankle to see if my heart was still beating. It was… like a jackhammer. I sat and stared at him for a while and finally managed to get a comment out as sheepishly as possible, “I didn’t know. What are my options here?” He responded to my comment by pulling out the paperwork again and showed me where it said I was supposed to return my visa before I left the country. He put a dash next to the requirement and even went so far as to get out a highlighter and mark it in bright yellow ink. At this point, I wanted to make some indignant comments but decided that I didn’t know enough about how much trouble I was in to start making people mad so I told him, “Okay, you got me – I never read a single word on the back of that document. Now tell me what you want from me.” It has been my sad experience to note that some people with authority will do anything to inflate their artificial sense of power and control over people’s lives. They exercise devious mind games in an attempt to intimidate their prey and exert their ‘influence’ over other human beings. My natural defense mechanism to intimidation has always been known to annoy this type of person to their very core. I don’t allow myself to become riled up or react in an emotional manner, the intimidator is unable to feel a sense of power by inspiring fear in the heart of his prey. They become frustrated, agitated, and even more aggressive in their attempts to bully. This never ceases to amuse me. I'm not against authority by any means so long as it is used responsibly. But when you give authority to a power-hungry moron, you may as well be handing a loaded 9mm revolver to a 4 year old and ask them to clean up the streets. Case in point: The immigration officer knew he had me over a barrel and decided to introduce me to his schizophrenic version of ‘good cop / bad cop’. BAD COP: He thought for a moment, picked up my passport, slowly thumbed thru it again, grinned in evil fashion and said, “What happened to your hair?” Was that a bald joke? Did this guy just make a potentially insulting comment about my lack of hair? You have got to be freakin' kidding me! Again, not knowing how desperate the situation is, I bit my tongue, gritted my teeth and said, “God thought I was too good looking so he took it away from me.” He chuckled and ran his hand thru his thick crop of dark Mexican hair for effect. “Well, you will have to pay your fine before you can get another work visa.” He made a vain attempt to look thoughtful rather than conniving. “Also…” He fumbled around in his desk and brought out more forms. “You will need to go to the police department and fill out these forms stating that you lost your work visa from previous visits. They will likely have a fine for you to pay as well.” Yeah – right. I’m going to go to a Mexican police station and tell them that I owe them a lot of money. "Your cell is ready Mr. Snarffingham." I began to realize that the worst that could happen is that I wouldn’t be allowed to work in Juarez so I would just have to go back to the hotel, pack my bags, and go home. “Okay, well it’s starting to sound like I need to just go back to the US and go home. I can’t afford to pay that fine and I don’t see the point in filling out all of this paperwork. My company has a department that resolves issues like this – I’ll just refer it to them.” GOOD COP: He realized that he was losing me thus any possibility of a bribe, so his disposition suddenly changed to Mister Friendly Diplomat Man as he put the documents down on his desk, let out a little sigh and said… “I don’t want you to worry about these. I think I can take care of these for you. But this fine… we need to figure out what to do about this fine.” He took out a pencil and started writing figures on a post-it note in the manner I would normally expect from a used car salesman. He passed the note across the desk to me and started speaking in hushed tones, “Well, I think we can work something out so you only have to pay… $300 US dollars.” My brain did a flip-flop double-take as I realized this guy was asking for a bribe. I had heard that this was the norm in Mexico but never witnessed it with my own eyes. “Obviously, I don’t have that much cash with me. I would have to go back to the hotel in El Paso and get a cash advance on my credit card.” “Oh, we have an ATM in the lobby there.” “I can’t use my corporate card in an ATM.” “It takes Visa, MasterCard, Discover…” “I can’t use my corporate card in an ATM.” I was beginning to wonder if I would need sock puppets to explain this concept. “Okay, okay… wait a minute.” He took back the post-it note and said, “I can take this down to $200." He scribbled the figure on the paper and handed it back to me. I glared at him across the table for what seemed like 5 minutes. Again, he took the post-it note back “Well, I suppose that I could take it as low as $180. But that's as low as I could take it without getting into trouble.” As if I has the slightest bit of concern about him getting into trouble. He crossed out the $200 on the post-it note and wrote down $180. “Look, I have twenty bucks in my pocket for my work visa. I’ll have to come back later with money for the fine.” Finally, he resigned to the fact that I was too cheap to give a bribe of any significance so he begrudgingly printed out the paperwork that I would need to pay my fine at the bank. He proceeded to shoo me out of his office and I said, “I’ll be needing my passport back, please.” “Oh, didn’t I give that to you?” “No, it’s sitting there on your desk.” He picked up my passport and one of his business cards. He tucked the card into my passport and handed it back to me. I still have his card and it has his e-mail address on it – do you want it? So, I finally get back out into the lobby of the immigration office feeling somewhat relieved and just trying to figure out where I’m going to come up with $180. There was my boss sitting in a chair looking half asleep. “Wha? Did you get it all taken care of?” “No, let’s get the hell out of here.” Despite the fact that I was ready to just go back to the US, kiss the ground and never leave again – we decided to spend the rest of the day in Juarez. I was an illegal alien in Mexico, but it’s not like I was mooching off the welfare system, asking for free healthcare, or expecting them to have all their government documents in Spanish AND English – they are, but I didn’t ask for it or expect it. I DID finally get all my fines, fees, and penalties paid and got a nice legal work visa. You can be sure I turned it in before I left the country. You will note that my wife, whom I love and include in most of my blogs, is missing from this tale. Fact of the matter is, this whole ordeal happened on her birthday if you can believe it. I'm SO glad I didn't have to call and say, "Happy birthday honey. Could you contact the state department and see if they can extradite me from Mexico?" November 13 Goodbye, dear friend.Dedicated to Cisco
August 1993 - November 2005
All the things that I wanted to tell you, but you couldn't have understood.
I have known for some time now that your health has been bad.
It has torn me apart inside to watch you suffer, to be frustrated that you were so often sick.
The hardest thing I have ever had to do, I did to you today.
I had to decide to take your life away.
While your pain is now gone - mine has just begun.
So many have told me that this was the right thing to do. If only you could have told me what you wanted.
During our final walk this morning I was filled with regret;
Regret that I haven't taken you to the lake as often as you probably would have liked.
maybe I haven't taken you for walks as often as you wanted to go.
and perhaps I haven't thrown the ball enough for you to go fetch.
I don't think I should regret too much, however.
You would have done those things until you dropped dead from exhaustion.
Much more than the regrets are the fond memories I will carry with me always.
You always seemed to know when I was sick, or depressed, or frustrated with life.
I could see it in your eyes.
You never left my side. The worse I felt, the closer you would snuggle up next to me.
That's why I stayed by your side and tried to comfort you until you drew your last breath.
I walked into the front door at home afterwards and you weren't there to greet me.
The very thought caused me to break down and weep for you.
You were a blessing in my home.
You were a member of my family.
You were a beloved companion and friend.
You will be sorely missed by all of us.
Now there is an empty space in my room where you slept.
There is an empty food dish in the kitchen that will remain empty.
There is a dirty, yellow ball on the front room floor that won't be played with.
There is an empty collar on my nightstand that won't jingle around the house.
And there is a broken heart inside of me that will take a considerable time to mend.
I don't know when I will be able to sleep again without you there. It certainly won't be tonight.
May you rest peacefully. You certainly deserve a break after putting up with me all this time.
Thank you for being a part of my life. I will always remember you.
Good boy. May 16 Squirrel ConspiracyI recently bought a house, which essentially is on the side of a cliff. Whoever put 'gradual slope' on the real-estate listing needs to go back to school. Anyways, that's not important. The yard is pretty much paradise on earth, full of trees, and has a little creek running down at the bottom of the hill. I wouldn’t trade it for all the walnuts in… some place where there are a lot of walnuts. As you can imagine, this yard requires a lot of maintenance. I was out working around in the yard recently trying to remove a section of fence so I could pour a concrete pad. In one of the trees above me, a squirrel was happily munching on a walnut and watching me work. There was a single post directly in my way so I concluded that it had to be removed. I brought back a shovel intending to dig the footings up and pull the post out. I paused only for a moment to stare at the walnut eating squirrel who was staring right back at me as if he was anticipating something. So I went over to the post and noted that it wasn't very securely anchored to the ground. The footings had broken apart and the post was loose enough to wiggle quite a bit. I started pushing and pulling the post in various directions in order to free it from the broken footing. I would periodically give the post an upward tug to see if I was able to pull it up. After several minutes of this, I grew weary of the tedium and started to get more aggressive with this stupid fence post. I was practically down on my knees pulling this post towards me with all my might and the accursed thing BROKE. It did not even give me any forewarning by crackling or anything. There was just a loud POP. Well, the post had clocked me square in the forehead and hit with such force that my teeth hurt and I could swear I was seeing little squirrels with walnuts running in circles around my head. I'm fairly certain I shouted some obscenities at this point which may or may not have caught the attention of every neighbor in a 3 block radius. Immediately, I slapped my filthy, mud-covered hand onto my forehead, which was very wet. "Oh, I hope that's sweat." I thought to myself. I pulled my blood soaked hand away and suddenly slapped it back as blood started to trickle down my face. "Nope, not sweat." Wild fantasies immediately filled my head of grabbing a shotgun and firing randomly into the trees shouting, “Stupid squirrel! This is all your fault! You knew all along! DIE! DIE! DIE!” - But instead of doing that I went into the house. It is common knowledge that head wounds bleed considerably and therefore seem worse than they really are. This knowledge is usually picked up in grade school and carried with you thru life, not to mention the fact that I have had my fair share of head wounds. This fact notwithstanding, without fail every person I have told this story to has said something to the effect of, "Oh yeah - head wounds bleed an awful lot.” Now, I want everyone reading this to pay close attention to my words... I know. As is normally the case, I went in search of my loving spouse to imprint yet another traumatic image into her memory. Having found her with my face covered in blood and my filthy hand firmly planted against my forehead I stated, "Heh - Head wound." She just gave me this look of, "Oh why did I ever say 'I Do' to this bozo." She is getting better though - she calmly asked, "Do you need stitches?". This took me by surprise as I had not really considered the idea that I might actually need stitches - and that squirrel sitting on her shoulder eating a walnut and laughing at me was distracting me. Therefore, I wound up with stitches in my forehead. I could not talk the wife into letting me just super-glue the skin back in place. I have what I call a 'Pay for Stupidity' accident policy thru Aflac. I just got it at the beginning of this year and I have paid $40 into it and received $305 our of it. I am pretty sure my agent and I will be on a first name basis before too long. Now every time I see a squirrel, I twitch in fear. It's their fault, you know. The 'suirreluminati' control the world. May 12 Killer Soda MachineSo anyways, several years back I was filling my soda machine (Yes, I own a soda machine) with the nectar of life... Mountain Dew - When a can slipped out of the serpentine rails and started to drop. (Insert slow-motion imagery here) Not wanting to spill precious Dew, I thrust my hand forward in a vain attempt to catch it. I caught something... it wasn't Dew. I slammed my right hand full speed into a piece of sheet metal jotting out of the door. In the amount of time it took me to retract my hand and clamp my fingers together with my other hand, I was standing in a pool of my own blood. I know, most of you are thinking... "Does this guy REALLY bleed this much?" Ask my wife... she had to clean the blood off the ceiling (Yes, the ceiling), floor, and curtains from this one. I'm just a bleeder - that's why Red Cross Blood Services likes me so much. (I have A- blood type in case you wanted to know.) Somehow I convinced myself that it was probably superficial and scurried to the sink to wash it off and get the super glue. Starting to wash it I noticed that not only had I sliced my hand almost to the knuckle between my middle and ring fingers, but that I was bleeding... lots. I popped around the corner to find my wife on the telephone with her sister. "Hospital" I whispered. I'll never forget her reaction. I happened to be wearing a white T-shirt that was covered in blood and I was clasping my hand which was also covered in blood. Her eyes just about fell out of her head when she saw me. She blurted, "I GOTTA GO!" and literally threw the cordless telephone across the room, grabbed one kid under each arm, tossed me a shirt to wrap my hand in, and started a mad dash to the car. I love this woman.  Well, we should probably be better prepared for these sorts of things but at this moment we weren't and didn't know which hospital accepted our insurance. So we stopped at the closest place first. McKay Dee Hospital or as it has been nicknamed, "McKill Ye". (Pause for groans from locals) So, I'm in the ER of this place and they have ONE nurse checking people in and I'm roughly 7th or 8th in line. Another fellow with a bleeding hand came in, looked me up and down and said, "Dryer?" I shook my head and said, "Soda Machine" to which he chuckled, "It's attack of the major appliances night." That was funny - why didn't I think of it? We sat there for about 20 minutes as the one nurse fumbled with her computer trying to check in an old man for halitosis or something stupid and decided to try to make it to Ogden Regional before I bled to death. I feel sorry for the orderly that had to clean up the mess I left behind. Well, they got me all checked in and had a couple of nurses and a doctor taking turns at peeking at my injury. I think they found it amusing that blood would squirt out like a little fountain when they separated my fingers. Eventually, they called in a specialist to do surgery on my hand. I swear this guy looked just like Alec Baldwin. It was uncanny - or maybe I was just lacking blood. Anyways, he was a plastic surgeon who was probably more accustomed to doing boob jobs than fixing tiny arteries in people's hands. So he gets out his very expensive looking micro-goggles so he can see what he's doing and prys my fingers apart to take a look. "No, no... don" was all I could mutter before he got them far enough apart that BAM! He, and his expensive goggles got squirted. "OH F#@*!" he shouted as he recoiled and yanked off his glasses. I was actually kinda surprised that a well educated man such as a doctor would be so vulgar. More to the point, I was concerned that maybe this was his assessment of my condition. "I'm a gonner." I thought. Well, I won't go into a lot of detail - it gets pretty boring after this. Except that they didn't really have time to wait for the local anesthetic to kick in before they started working. I think that having several layers of stitches done between my knuckles without numbing was aobut the most painful experience of my life. Now I have a really cool scar. Want to see it? Does everyone have days like this?From a different Blog of mine dated 3/18/2004: I have been having a rough couple of days. Bear with me for a minute while I explain... So, anyways - yesterday I got home from work and approached the front door only to hear an electrical buzzing noise coming from somewhere nearby. After some investigation I came to realize that it was a sprinkler valve in the box next to the door. "No problem." I thought, "I can fix it later." I promptly stood up and caught my right shoulder on the corner of the house which was apparently sharp enough to tear my shirt and put a good sized gash above my shoulder blade. Not an uncommon occurance. Normally I get the wife to kiss better and slap on some bandages (crazy glue if it's really deep)and baby talk to me for a while. - BUT - The next day I'm at work doing a little ethernet wiring close to the floor. I finish, promptly stand up, and catch my forehead on the sharp metal corner of a whiteboard. "Ow" I yelped only to have a few people turn and see me with my hand frimly pressed against my forehead with blood running down my face. I sought a band-aid while controling the bleeding with a napkin from Blimpe. Need stitches? Naw... I just want to make sure this doesn't leave too much of a scar on my shiny, bald head so I throw some antibiotic ointment and a band-aid on it. Well, after all this I decide to surf some of the communities on Orkut. "Hmmm..." I thought, "My computer is making a rattling noise." So I pop off the cover to find out what is going on. I SWEAR THAT I DON'T NORMALLY DO THIS. I started poking around with my finger and decided - for some reason - to check and see if the CPU cooling fan is running.... with my finger. Long story short - the fan was running. (It's one of those high-end wind tunnel fans so it's pretty powerful.) I must have hit an artery or something because that sucker nipped the tip of my finger almost OFF and sprayed blood all over the inside of my case. "SON OF A B!+(#!" I yelled as I lurched and fell over backward in my chair - fortunately not hitting any other sharp objects on the way to the floor. Apparently I didn't yell loudly enough to wake the wife & kids, or they just don't care because the dog was the only one to come downstairs and see if I was okay. So, now I'm 30% covered in band-aids. I have them on my back, my forehead, and I'm struggling to keep this one on my finger tip while I type. Home row is covered with blood... yurgh... and I have more than one blood stain on my clothes. Hopefully, I can make it to bed before something else happens. I'll let you know tomorrow if it does. Note to self: Do not need to give blood this month. |
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