Crying Fowl

This morning, at the end of this week's obligatory commute to the office, I turned in to the driveway and was accosted by the biggest honkin'* goose I've ever seen. He (or she) stood right in the middle of the lane, leaving me no room to squeeze by on either side. I inched forward, trying to intimidate him (or her) – “it”, for the sake of grammatical convenience – but like Inigo Montoya who came before, it would not be moved. It just stood there with its bill thrust defiantly across my hood, honking “None shall pass!”

I'd probably be stuck there still, but a vee of its buddies came flying over, and it lit off to join them.

* I could say “no pun intended”, but really… whom would I be kidding?

Baby Kitteh

For a couple years, Turtle has been lobbying to adopt another cat. It pains her to know that so many unwanted animals are euthanized at shelters every day and would gladly adopt them all – but she's willing to settle for one. The rationalizations justifications are numerous but include wanting to make sure Furry Dependant #2 has someone to play with when our 14-year-old Furry Dependant #2 is no longer with us.

Ever the wet blanket pragmatist, I countered with logical well-reasoned points supporting my belief that we should hold at two furry dependants. For example, I argued that there was a one-to-one ratio of cats to favorite people, and if we added another someone would always be left out. I referred to this as the "musical laps" argument, which gained exactly zero traction. I also expressed my concern that we'd start seeing all sorts of bad behavior and discord if the established cats decided they just didn't like the new one. Turtle countered with the succinct and undebatable “No. They won't.”

Eventually, one of the neighbors found a kitten stowed away on the engine block of his car and immediately thought of Turtle. A short time later, he arrived with his wife and daughter and a very tiny kitten in a crate. A very tiny, adorable, energetic kitten with a pink nose and needle sharp claws.

Baby Kitteh

Initially, the other two cats wouldn't have anything to do with her. They scuttled off to the nether regions of bed and sofa – those dark domains of refuge typically reserve for dust bunnies and storage boxes full of Christmas present wrapping supplies. It went on that way for about a week, which was mostly fine because Baby Kitteh (we didn't give her a name right away, because Turtle said we were only evaluating her for adoption) was constantly on the move and took up most of our attention.

By the second week, the baby was climbing everything. Turtle's legs looked like she had been dragged through a briar patch, and my leather recliner was scratched and snagged. Domestic tranquility was a distant memory, and the walls frequently rang with anguished shrieks as the baby leapt from floor to leg and scrambled up a back or chest to hang off shoulder or neck. Hydrogen peroxide and liquid bandage were the order of the day. I quickly discovered that the work of scooping the litter for three cats instead of two is somehow doubled, as opposed to the 33.3% increase that a logical person might expect.

Meanwhile, the two older cats had stopped ignoring the newcomer and, after considerable hissing and growling, a sort of equilibrium was reached. The middle child took to hiding in Turtle's closet, and the eldest wearily allowed the baby to trail around the house after him, biting his tail and trilling at him. Before long, he forgot that he was the cat equivalent of a 73-year-old and enthusiastically romped and wrestled with the baby. That's how he hurt his back, pinching a nerve and partially paralyzing one of his rear legs. So now, when he goes in the litter box, he always steps in his wet spot and then tracks muddy footprints from the utility room, across the kitchen, and beyond. The middle child has to nervously sneak into the litter box when she thinks the baby isn't around. This is because the baby likes to stand on top of the covered box and hang her head over the edge to peer inside like some voyeuristic gargoyle.

By the fourth week, we were calling the baby “Bailey”, and despite Turtle's several phone calls and emails suggesting to the neighbor that the trial period wasn't working out, it appeared she was staying. That's probably okay. She has to be locked up in her crate each night, or we'd never get any sleep; but she's a forgiving, affectionate little thing and only wants to rub, rub, rub when we let her out in the morning. The front claws are going to have to go when she's old enough, along with her girl parts, but if we can all survive that long, I think it's all going to work out.

But that's it. Three is the limit. Seriously.

Ghost of the Machine

When I started working primarily out of my home, last August, I faced a small dilemma: the ancient Dell desktop machine (1.9Ghz, single processor, 1G RAM, 75G hard drive) I'd been using as a testbed for web technologies couldn't come with me. This troubled me, not because it was a great machine or because officially retiring the hardware meant filling out paperwork, but because I had the development environment set up just so*. Also because I knew from painful past experience that the moment the old workhorse was out of my grasp, someone would send me an impassioned email, wanting me to do some of the C++ mainframe integration work or PHP scripting that it had been set up for.

So, before I turned in my paperwork and turned over my equipment to become part of a plastic-wrapped cube of dead electronics waiting on a pallet for transfer to some Chinese landfill**, I did some reading and figured out how to make a virtual copy of the machine's hard drive, which I could then use something like VirtualPC or VMWare to create a virtual machine, once I found a server on which to do so.

Which I never was able to do, because, apparently, a company the size of the one that employs me makes money by not giving anything away, not even to its own employees. It's never in the budget. So old FOORIDER-D4400 (not its real name any more than FooRider is mine) sat quietly on my external backup drive for the better part of a year, not compiling anything, nor accepting Windows updates, nor serving up documentation from its local IIS server.

That is, until earlier this week, when the dreaded words, "Say, we need you to do some mainframe COBOL work for us." For that, I would need my old terminal emulation software (the installation disks for which I'd pitched when I cleaned out my cubicle, last August, and so couldn't install on my current laptop), so out of storage came the image of FOORIDER-D4400. I had to spend a few minutes with VirtualBox (apparently, the major VM players can all read one another's virtual hard drive formats) to set up the machine, but then it came right up, like the hologram of Arnold Rimmer, minus the chrome "H" on his forehead.

Upon reflection, maybe I should have let old FOORIDER-D4400 rest in pieces.


* Translation: "everything was more or less working together in relative harmony" – a rarity, in my line of work.
** I have some lingering doubts about how the recycling of electronics is really conducted, you see.

Say what?

My wife and I are generally on the same page when it comes to matters of religion, money, and (not insignificantly) whether the free end of a toilet paper roll goes under or over. We do have some differences in the way we communicate, however.

When she casually mentions that she means to do a load of laundry today, my natural response is to acknowledge this intelligence with something along the lines of, "Okay." It's only after she repeats her laundry-doing intention that I may take an additional moment to consider the possibility of subtext in her announcement.

"Are you trying to tell me to take the hamper out to the laundry room?" I might ask.

"Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying," she'll say, hypothetically, and then heave a deep, exasperated sigh.

Then, if intent on pushing my luck, I might observe, possibly even observe aloud, "Wouldn't it be better to just say, 'Please take the hamper out to the laundry room'?"

Hypothetically.

Oh, the wondrous things we'll see, when we go to the grocery

It's still absurdly hot, here in the Lone Star State, so when Sweetie started muttering about her grocery list, this morning, I threw myself on the grenade and volunteered to go. No sense both of us getting all sweated up, and there wasn't a lot of produce on the list so how bad could it be?

So I hied myself over to yon neighborhood Kroger, parked way the hell out where only the wild shopping carts roam, and snagged a tame one from a corral, dodging minivans on my way to the front door. There, I applied all my ninja skills to fend off assaults from various child sports organizations, all trying to sell me the same “value card” that my wife had already purchased from some neighborhood kid the day before.

Inside, things went pretty smoothly. I ducked and weaved, tossing things from the list into my cart, per my wife's carefully-organized list. And then… the pasta aisle, where a tidy 40-ish mother smiled and chatted with four kids of varying ages spread out across the entire aisle. As I approached, hoping to squeeze past the pack to the spaghetti noodles, Mom tried to get all the kids moved to one side. I smiled at her and moved my cart to the other side – at which point the teenaged boy pushing the cart moved it to block my way. His (approximately) six-year-old brother with Down Syndrome put his hands on his hips and, with an exaggerated roll of his eyes, said, “Geez. The other side, dork.”

I just about lost it.

So I shifted back to the other side and slipped past. Mom said, nodding toward the teenager, “I don't know what his problem is. He has his driver's license.” I muttered something along the lines of, “Now that's scary.”

When I was ready to check out, I spotted a line where a very elderly lady was just wrapping it up. I unloaded my stuff and waited while the poor woman tried every way to swipe her credit card except the right one. Poor dear, all hunched over with osteoporosis. She finally got it sorted out and, as she shuffled away behind the bag boy pushing her carts, I thought, I should be so lucky as to be able to do my own shopping if I get to be her age.

I finished my own transaction and was pushing my cart across the parking lot when I spotted a shiny orange Corvette headed down the row toward me. As it passed, I noticed that the driver was the elderly woman from the checkout. She had her gangster lean on and one wrist draped across the top of the steering wheel!

I wonder… would a snazzy sports car help my back and neck problems? Maybe I can get my doctor to write me a prescription for Cooper Mini, or something.

Built to spill

Did I miss the memo about today being National Spillage Day?* It's not even 7am yet, on my patch of the earth, and already I've seen two mini-BP events!

The first came when I stopped at Kroger to fill Dorian's tank with gasoline. The woman on the other side of the pump must have negotiating world peace on her iPhone and was distracted, because she didn't bother to shut off the pump before pulling the nozzle out. After hosing down the side of her SUV and the surrounding area with about a pint of premium, she grabbed as many paper towels as she could get her hands on, wiped down the side of her vehicle, and sped off.

And I've been known to get a scolding from a green-minded Californian for topping off!

When I arrived at the office, I shambled to the break room in search of something caffeinated. There I found my buddy George holding a wad of paper towels the size of my head and darting back and forth in front of the counter like a hyperactive hummingbird. I immediately recognized the signs of a coffee pot overflow cleanup effort and grabbed my own wad of paper towels.

So think twice before setting that double mocha latté between your elbow and your keyboard as you begin your day, today. I'm just sayin'.


* I mean, why not? There seems to be National [foo] Day for everything else, right?

Unexpected jewels

Earlier this evening, Turtle did me a proper by scooping the cat box and leaving the contents in a plastic grocery bag by the kitchen door. A little later than that, I returned the favor by walking the bag out to the trash cart.

It was dark already, so I strapped an LED light to my forehead and made my way through the back yard and around the side of the house. As I walked, I noticed dozens of tiny emerald green lights sparkling in the grass. I stopped and squatted to take a closer look and was surprised to discover a spider! Then I stopped to look at a few more of the tiny green lights. Same thing.

I never would have guessed that spider eyes would reflect, just like those of dogs, cats, and other much larger creatures. How cool!

But I'm hardly the first to have discovered this phenomenon. When I googled spider eyes reflecting, I quickly discovered that this eye reflectivity is a common attribute of wolf spiders, as described in Wm. H. Amos' “Bright-Eyed Singers” and in the last couple paragraphs of “Recognizing Wolf Spiders” at accessexcellence.org.

Humble pie, no Reddi-wip

I recently learned via Turtle that our neighbor across the street is recovering from cancer surgery. Yesterday, when I got home from work, the neighbors were just going in their front door, and from out of the blue came the thought that I should give my neighbor my yellow LiveStrong band as a show of solidarity.

My neighbor and I are not close. He doesn't acknowledge my greetings when we're out in our yards, and his grown children and their families practically live at his house, their vehicles lining the street. But I've learned to go with it, when I get these “random notions”, so I cleaned up the band (which I've been wearing on bike rides for a number of years) and walked it across the street to present it. His wife answered the door and called to him to come downstairs. After a couple minutes he appeared, and I stammered something about the history of the band and how I had made a habit of presenting them to fellow cancer patients and survivors since my own cancer nine years ago. My first yellow band was given to me by a mountain biker who had survived bladder cancer, and I passed that one on to a friend several years ago when she was fighting breast cancer. But I replace them and pass on whatever one I've been wearing.

There's a lesson to be learned from this sort of gesture, though. God encourages us to reach out to others but, I think, He's not so keen on us feeling too proud of ourselves for making them. As reinforcement of this lesson, my neighbor's response to all this was something along the lines of, “Uh… thanks. What's your name again?”

Here's your humble pie, Foo.

Randomness

I can't explain it, but every time I'm mowing and come to the northeast corner of the fence line in the back yard, the word Germany inexplicably forms in my mind (and sometimes Bismarck). What's up with that?

No rest for the wicked

I've had to work some long hours this week, and last night I also dreamed that I had to work really late. In my dream, I was in a high-rise office building, which was mostly dark by the time I got ready to leave. As I stepped off the elevator in the lobby, the only person around was the guy at the security desk, and I could see that it was dark outside. I walked to the car in the pouring rain, turned on the ignition, and pointed Dorian toward the house.

That's when my alarm clock went off, letting me know that it was time to get up and go to work. I feel cheated, like I didn't get to rest at all.

20 Questions (less 17)

1. When a guy at work dresses down a subordinate for checking Facebook on company time and then spends the next forty-five minutes nattering on to his boss about his kid's sports activities, is that an example of irony? Or hypocrisy?
2. A guy comes into the men's washroom and stands at the urinal. He has earbuds in and his iPod turned up so loud that I can identify the tune even as he talks very loudly (presumedly to hear himself over his tunes) to the guy at the next urinal. Does he deserve a slap to the back of the head? Or a swift kick to the knees?
3. When I'm out riding my bike in the neighborhood, what scientific basis is there for the phenomenon that causes children to run into my path and fall, hurling their scooters, soccer balls, etc. under my wheel?

Five-second whipsaw

As I started setting up my cubicle for the morning, I noticed I was missing my cell phone. [crap]

Then, I realized it was probably not lost but still in my gym bag [yay!], back at the house. [crap]

But then I remembered that I had loaded my gym bag with clean workout clothes and placed it back in the trunk of my car [yay!]. All I had to do is go back out to the car and get it. [crap]

Of course, I have been eating too many robin's eggs, the the exercise won't hurt me a bit. [yay!]

Inking it old school

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with Dad on the phone. Our conversation wandered into genealogy territory (as our conversations often do), which led me to my sharing an anecdote about how Mom used to entertain me by making ink blots with a fountain pen she had when I was little.

“You know, you ought to start writing stuff like that down,” he said. He reminded me of a book he had put together a number of years ago, in which he recorded the sorts of family stories that tend to come up whenever family get together, and challenged me to do something similar.

My favorite fountain pen having a lie down on a bed of my everyday handwriting.

So I got to thinking about the smallish stack of blank books I've purchased over the years (but never used) and how I've been looking for excuses to practice my handwriting and exercise my fountain pens. I set one of the journals and a pen next to my chair in the living room, and when I happen to think of something that happened to me over the years, I jot it down in the journal. A description of the first house I remember, and the neighbors who lived near it. My first bicycles. The neighbor kids. My first job out of college. Life in a small town in Kentucky.

It's not always pretty, what with strike-throughs and handwriting mistakes, and it's generally not as well composed as what I might write and repeatedly edit on the computer. But it's kind of relaxing, and whether anyone will ever read any of it or not, there's now at least 37 pages of the stuff.

When self-service isn't

Once again, Valentine's Day lurks around the corner, snickering evilly, knowing that I have failed to come up with any grand romantic gesture to prove my love and pass The Test. Fortunately, My Lovely Bride grades on a curve (or claims to do); but I still like to do something, usually involving roses.

So it was that I ventured out this morning in the wind and freezing fog to Kroger. I was pleased with the timing of my trip, as the level of insanity in the aisles was relatively low. No screaming children. No elderly person ramming me with her Hoveround®. No thuggish individual throwing elbows next to the flower displays. One unsupervised sprog running in circles in the middle of the card section, but I was able to successfully reroute and reach my goal without mishap.

I found what I was after without much deliberation, and as I had only a few items I headed for one of the self-checkout stations. As I started to wave my bar coded flowers across the scanner, a diminutive but quite enthusiastic Indian gentleman appeared in a small puff of smoke and tugged the bethorned stems from my grasp.

"Hey…" I began.

Undeterred, he had my stuff scanned and bagged in the blink of an eye – and probably would have swiped my credit card for me, if I had let him. Next thing I knew, I was half way across the parking lot to my car. That's when I discovered that my genie hadn't put everything in the bag I was carrying.

I dashed back inside and was relieved to find the rest of my stuff still sitting at the check-out. No one tackled me as I picked it up the bag and headed for the door. Mission accomplished.

Next time, I think I'll just go through one of the full-service lanes, where the employees are less helpful.

The puck drops here

A couple years ago, we residents of Allen started hearing about the two big malls planned for construction just up the road from our house. With the malls would come a shiny new event center, and with the event center a Central Hockey League (CHL) hockey franchise of our very own. I was pretty sure I'd never heard of the CHL, but a friend pointed out that our as-yet-unnamed hockey team would be in the same league as the Texas Brahmas, with whom I was familiar. Better still, the Brahmas are based in Richland Hills, Texas (near Fort Worth), so we'd have an instant cross-town rivalry.

Over time, the malls and the event center came together. Earlier this year, stores began opening and we learned that our CHL team would be called the Allen Americans. Compared to animal avatars like the Mississippi River Kings' attitude-filled turtle, Odessa's Jackalopes, and the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs, "Americans" seemed a bit lacking in pizazz – and, while on the topic, I sort of wish the Americans' red uniforms didn't remind me so much of the hated Detroit Redwings – but we had a shiny new hockey team, and it was good. No, really. In their first season, which started in October, the Americans are currently only two points behind the Southern Conference leading Odessa Jackalopes.

All of that to say that Turtle, her parents, and I finally attended our first Allen Americans game last night, against the Texas Brahmas.

Allen Americans players swarm the Texas Brahmas' net

Initial impressions were generally positive. The event center, which is conveniently located about five minutes from our house, is very nice: brightly lit and very clean – as one would expect from a brand-new facility. It's not a huge venue, so even the nosebleed seats provide a reasonably close-up view of the action. The seats are all nicely padded and, for those with a lot more money than I'll ever have to throw around, skyboxes ring the arena. Jumbotron, check. Flashing, animated advertisements, check. Ice Angels (cheerleader/dancers) in white lycra pants so tight that a single splash of water in the wrong place would turn into an anatomy lesson… check!

More important, the level of play is surprisingly high. The players attack the puck and one another with the same amount of energy and relish as in any NHL game, and about the only real differences I could see were that the passing was not as crisp, nor the goaltending as impenetrable. These guys are a blast to watch, without having to take a second mortgage on your home to buy a ticket.

The only real down side is a significant one for Turtle and me – and a significant one that, if not addressed, will prevent us from supporting our team as we otherwise would have done. The Allen Event Center's ADA compliance feels like a nod and a wink. As far as the seating, at least. When I set about trying to acquire tickets for wheelchair accessible seating, it took me several phone calls and an unanswered voicemail message before I finally gave up on reaching anyone with a clue and went to the box office. There, after about 5 minutes of back and forth and “let me go ask,” I learned that the only accessible seating is on the glass. Not a bad thing in and of itself, as these are prime seats, near one or the other of the goals. The problem is that these are the most expensive seats, at $30 per ticket (as compared to the terrace seats, which cost less than half that). Then, when we showed up for the game, we were repeatedly (but politely) moved every time someone with season seats showed up and wanted our spots. I drew the line when it was suggested that Turtle should have to sit behind the 6'5" fat cat with season tickets.

After the dust settled, everyone was able to see and we had an awesome time, but the lack of accommodation for those who can't climb stairs left a bad taste in my mouth. In fairness, the event center has only been open for a month, and I'm sure the folks who run things are still trying to get their collective act together. I can only hope that the city of Allen, which owns the event center, will pay attention to the feedback it will certainly get from disabled citizens and get it together so we can all support the team.

All in all, we all had a great time at our first Americans game and hope to have the opportunity to cheer on our new team!

Ooo, ooo... that smell

The moment we walked in the door, Turtle gave me a strange look and I knew we were thinking the same thing: cat pee.

We checked the obvious things first. I scooped the litter box; Turtle tracked down each protesting cat and gave it a thorough sniffing. Finding that neither was the source of the problem, we spent the next half hour moving from room to room, scenting the air like lions on the trail of a pack of wildebeest (or wildebai, of you prefer). Nothing. Through the evening, we’d occasionally catch a whiff but never strongly enough to identify the source.

The next day, Turtle met me at the door when I came home from work.

“I smell it again,” she said. “I think it’s in my office.”

I dragged out the Floor Mate and gave the hardwood floor a thorough cleaning (for which it was overdue, in any case). That ought to do it, I thought, but as I made my way to the closet to put away the vacuum, I smelled it again: cat pee.

So off I went, on my hands and knees, with my nose in the carpet, trying to sniff out where one of the kids had dribbled or expressed his/her displeasure olfactorily. I sniffed my chair. I sniffed the fireplace facing. I sniffed the sofa, above and below, and the pillows. I sniffed the basket of cat toys. Nothing.

Finally, I found myself in the living room and noticed that I only seemed to catch a whiff of the offending odor when standing in the vicinity of the fireplace. My gaze passed over the Fall flower arrangement I’d gotten Turtle for her birthday a couple weeks ago, and I absently wondered how long it would take a pumpkin to go bad when filled with water and used as a vase.

The answer is “a couple weeks”, apparently.

Now you're cooking

This weekend, I've attempted to make a dent in my home maintenance to-do list, which means I had to make a run to the home improvement emporium. I needed weed and crabgrass killer for the nutgrass and other weeds I discovered while mowing yesterday, and some bags of pre-emergent for the next crop, which typically emerges in January. I needed fluorescent tubes to replace the long-dead ones in my clothes closet. And I needed a tube of Liquid Nails and some grout/adhesive for the soap dish that mysteriously fell off the wall of the guest bathroom a couple weeks ago. You know: the usual stuff.

So off I went to the store, where I wound my way up and down the aisles on my own personal scavenger hunt, checking items off my list as I went. My last stop was Lawn & Garden, where I dumped a few bags of pre-emergent in my cart, did not buy a garden gnome, and took my place in the check-out line. There, I waited while a guy in a bright yellow rain slicker scanned the items in the cart ahead of me. Then I waited while he proceeded to have a rather intense discussion with the customer. Something about grilling. I wasn't really paying attention.

When it was my turn to check out, Slicker Guy set about scanning my items – and then it happened.

“So. Do you have a grill?” he asked me.

“Um… yes?”

I detected a rather disturbing intensity in Slicker Guy's eyes, and I wondered whether 'yes' was the right answer, or the wrong one.

“Charcoal?”

I had my suspicions about where this line of questioning was headed and considered lying. But I'm a terrible liar, so I told the truth. “No, I have gas,” I said. Straight-faced. Somehow.

“Propane?”

I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition! I thought. I turned to the diminutive Asian woman behind me, who silently pleaded with her eyes for me to just leave her out of it.

“No. Natural gas,” I admitted. “We had a drop put in when we built the house.”

Slicker Guy's eyes sparkled with evangelical fervor, and I knew I should have lied.

“Oh, man. You just don't get much heat from natural gas. I've got…” And off he went on a five-minute screed BTUs, the benefits of charcoal, and how if I really wanted to learn to grill – and who wouldn't? – I had to get serious and start watching some guy on the Food Network who only uses a charcoal grill.

That's when I turned to the woman behind me and said, “Didn't you say you needed some information about charcoal grills?”

Yes, I'm probably going to hell for that, but I escaped and lived to burn chicken breasts to cinders another day.

Remembered, nevertheless

Most of you know, by now, that I've never reproduced. (Some – myself included – would say that this is a good thing, but that's a discussion for another day.) But don't let my lack of biological offspring deceive you into thinking that I spend Father's Day sitting alone and bitter, surrounded by power tools purchased to dull the pain. Oh no.

For instance, this year the cats gave me a humorous greeting card “signed” in their own precious pawwriting, and they talked Turtle into picking up a cold six pack of the Shiner 100-year Commemorative brew that I've been wanting to try.

But that's not all. I have two godchildren who also send me Father's Day cards and sign them in their own precious handwriting. They also call me on the phone, to wish me a good day. First up was 5-year-old Ignatz:*

Foo: Thank you for the nice card, Ignatz.
Iggy: You're welcome.
Foo: Did you know my cats gave me a card too?
Iggy: Uhh…
Foo: Well, they did. They signed it and everything, but they only made paw prints because they don't have opposable thumbs.
Iggy: [giggling] I have supposable thumbs!
Foo: Of course you do! And that's why your handwriting will always be better than my cats'.

From there, the phone moved on to my 8-year-old goddaughter, Schnickelfritz.* We didn't have the sort of philosophical discussion that I'd just shared with Iggy, but only because Schnicky was preoccupied with finishing up her bath. She did, however, take time out from her ablutions to challenge me to an armpit-fart-making contest. I conceded without a fight, knowing that I'm way out of practice.

I hope all you dads out there had as good a day as I did!


* Names have been changed to protect the innocents.

Out of the gate, slowly

[5:20am, scant seconds after silencing the clock radio with a slap across the top of its head]

Turtle: I'm sorry.
Foo: What?
Turtle: The cupcakes.

[dramatic pause. freshly-wakened neurons stretch, sputter half-heartedly, and ultimately shrug non-existent shoulders]

Foo: What the hell?
Turtle: 'Cause my leg kicked out.
Foo: Honey, what are you talking about?
Turtle: I don't know.

The gauntlet run

Most anyone who has read this blog for any period of time knows that I had a smallish run-in with thyroid cancer, back in 2001. Most cautiously agree that I'm cured – except the life insurance providers, of course – but ensuring that I stay that way demands a certain level of vigilance. What that means is that I must periodically submit myself to a week-long protocol of injections, followed by the ceremonial swallowing of a radioactive iodine capsule, culminating in an hour-long full-body scan.

It's all fairly routine by this point, but the week was not without its notable moments.

First off…

Since you've stayed with me this far, it's only fair to come right out with the good news (there is no bad news in this posting, so please… relax). After yesterday's scan, I received a phone call from the radiologist informing me that my scan was clear of any glowy bits. Glowy bits would have been bad, indicating thyroid cells that had absorbed the radioactive iodine. Since I no longer have a thyroid, thyroid cells could only mean cancer. So no glowy bits is a Good Thing™.

I thank God for granting me a continuation of my nearly eight years cancer free.

But there was a moment

The full body scan is actually done in stages, kind of like a series of x-rays. While the technician was repositioning equipment between scans, I happened to look over at the monitor where an image of the just-completed scan was displayed. It showed a bright blob of light (the aforementioned “glowy bit”), and I was filled with unease while lying there through the rest of the series.

As I gathered my things to leave, I commented on this to the technician.

“Oh, that's just a marker,” she said. “Remember when I was touching your neck? We place a radioactive marker on the [somethingorother] notch – where your collarbones meet – because it's right below where your thyroid used to be. It gives the doctor a reference point for that big dark area right above the notch.”

Big dark areas = Good Thing™, but I'd spooked myself. That's what I get for knowing just enough to be dangerous.

There Will Be Blood

After the scan in Dallas, I had to drive up to Baylor, in Plano, to have my blood drawn. I usually do this sort of thing at first light, at an hour that most people don't have the stomach for, but not this time. The waiting room at the lab was packed, and I carefully picked a chair that would observe the social nicety of preserving an empty chair between mine and that of any other occupied chair.

This honoring of personal space was especially important, because the occupant of one of those chairs was actually overflowing into the empty chair buffer zone. A short woman, her feet barely reaching the floor, she was very… colorful in her attire, hair color, and makeup selections. As I sat down, she lay slumped in her chair with the topmost of her three chins nestled in the others, snoring.

Her purse, which appeared to have been fashioned from the remainders of her dress, suddenly slid off her lap on to the floor. I spent a few moments in internal debate before deciding that, while the gentlemanly thing would be to pick it up and hand it back to her, it might be best to let sleeping potential litigants lie. Shortly, the question was made moot when one of the technicians came in to the waiting room, calling the name of someone who didn't answer. Several of us tentatively pointed to the sleeping woman.

Waking her was no simple matter, and getting her up and moving toward the lab was less so; but the technician managed, carefully leading her still-groggy, muttering patient by the elbow. As they left the waiting room, those of us who remained shot each other looks that said, Whoa, dude. That was, like, kinda weird.

I, of course, couldn't just return to examining the multimedia prints from Target that filled the empty space on the walls and leave well enough alone.

“I saw her purse fall and felt like I should pick it up,” I said, speaking more or less directly to a fellow patient who had smiled at me. “But then I sort of had this premonition of myself in handcuffs, trying to call my wife from a pay phone.”

For a moment, the waiting room was filled with tension-dispelling laughter before we all returned to the serious business of disacknowledging one another's existence.

Luck of the draw

After a while, I was called to have my blood drawn. My previous experience at this lab had been less than satisfactory, with the technician clumsily tapping two different veins before getting his sample. I drew a young woman, this time, and crossed my fingers as I sat down in the bloodletting chair.

“This is usually a good producer,” I said, indicating a favorite vein in my left arm. “But the last guy I had here didn't have much luck.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. You must have had Peter,” she said, glancing at the technician working at another station.

“Um… that's him. I'm sure he was just having an off day.”

“Oh no,” she said. “Peter sucks. He knows he sucks. Just this morning, one of the patients accused him of being the janitor, he made such a bloody mess of the guy's draw.”

Just an unfortunate choice of words, I hope.

For the record, my technician was so smooth, I barely felt the needle and today show only the very smallest of bruises.

Dawn's early light

Act I

[6:30am CST]

Co-worker: [from a cubicle in the next row] Who's that I hear rustling around? Who's crazy enough to be here at this time of the morning?
Foo: It's just me.
Co-worker: What are you doing here so early?
Foo: I've been here this early for about 14 years.
Co-worker: That's just crazy.
Foo: Think about that, the next time you consider dragging me into a meeting at 4:00. It could be just the thing to push me over the edge. You've seen CSI. You know how unstable we crazy people can be.

Act II

Co-worker (a different one): There's no toilet paper in the men's room! And the soap dispensers are all empty! What the hell?
Foo: Please stop touching my cubicle.