Quick - randomly say something random!

I am the 2%. What's the 2%, you ask? 2% represents the fraction of the general population that have unbelievable things happen to them, things that do not happen to the other 98%. Sounds okay, right? Riiiggghhht.

The 2% has two sides, two extremes. One extreme is: unbelievably awesome things happen to me! Things like winning the lottery or never having a sunburn. The other extreme is: I can't believe this happened... why me... wwhhhyyyy!?!

I have yet to win the lottery and I get a sunburn every summer. I'm the 2% that gets the shaft. Oh come on, I must be exaggerating... just being dramatic, right? Wrong.

One Sunday morning, I woke up on my friend's couch with a headache. We'd polished off more than our fair share of booze the night before so I wasn't so surprised that I was under the weather. What I did find odd was my hands. They felt.... weird.

Upon first inspection they appeared to be slightly red and felt almost numb. I was sure I slept funny and it would just take some time for the feeling to come back into my hands. I was right. But what I didn't anticipate was that the feeling that came back ended up making my hands feel worse. That and they were swollen. And I mean, sausage fingers kind of swollen. I convinced myself that it was normal and there was nothing to worry about. Denial can be a powerful force.

A little while later, I noticed my pants were chaffing me. They really seemed to be digging into my stomach and it hurt. A lot. And they had an elastic waistband. That's not quite right, so I inspected my stomach and it was also red. Nothing to worry about here. All is well.

A while later, after changing into some larger pants and they too became uncomfortable, I suspected something else might be happening. I, again, inspected my stomach.

Small raised bumps had appeared. The tell-tale signs of an eminent rash. I was convinced I was having an allergic reaction so I popped a couple anti-histamines and hoped for the best.

The following day I woke up, with swollen hands, a rashy belly and sore feet. But that's what Monday's feel like, so I went to work. After spending the day at work, I came to the conclusion that I might have more problems that I originally thought.

I still wasn't feeling well and I certainly wasn't hung over. I decided to go to the doctor.

I went to a walk in clinic, feeling a bit like a tool. I can't believe I'm here just because I have a rash and I can't make a fist because my fingers are so swollen and why do my feet hurt?... The doctor came in and asked why I was there. I think I'm having an allergic reaction. Why? Well, because I have this rash and look at my hands! He looked me over and asked some general questions: how are you feeling? have you been sick? how long ago did you have this cold? did you have a sore throat? how do your feet feel? They hurt, in fact.

He took some notes, my temperature and then looked at me and said: "I don't think you're having an allergic reaction. I think you have scarlet fever. Do you know what that is? I've heard of it... I think he realized that I had absolutely no idea what it meant because he explained it to me.

Scarlet fever is caused by the streptococcus bacteria (the one that causes strep throat). Now, certain strains of this bacteria secrete a certain toxin and certain people are sensitive to this toxin and it results in a full body rash. This occurs in roughly 2% of the population. Of people under the age of 12.

Seriously. I had a childhood disease at age 27. Fuck you, 2%.

He wrote me up a blood work order, took a swab of my throat and told me to come back in two days. Scarlet fever, left untreated, can cause kidney failure, so he was pretty concerned about it. He had also never seen anybody that picks out their own clothes get scarlet fever before. I went back in two days and he looked me over again and decided that he wanted to send me for more blood work. He wanted to test me for everything that could possibly cause a full body rash (sounds reasonable), illnesses such as mono (okay, that's not too bad) and syphilis (what!?!?).

Oh, don't worry, he said, I don't think you actually have syphilis, I just want to be sure. Okay... sure... no problem... I'm clean...

I went and had the blood work done and went back to the doctor in two days time to get the results. I had to go in the middle of the day, so I had to leave work and go back after my appointment. At first, I didn't really consider syphilis as an actual cause of my problems. But then the doctor walked out, went up to the receptionist and said "I need an infectious disease agent on the phone now." Infectious disease agent? Syphilis is probably an 'infectious disease'. Oh dear God, I have syphilis. How long have I had it? Can it be treated? Where did I get it from? Who gave it to me? Who have I given it to? Am I going to die?

By the time they called my name to see the doctor I was pretty much sweating bullets and had convinced myself that I was a dirty whore. I went into the examination room and waited. And waited. Oh no, he's probably waiting to talk to the agent before he comes in here. He finally came in and said: I got your test results. Uh-huh. And it came back negative for mono. Uh-huh... And negative for everything else, but we don't have the results for the strep tests yet. So, no syphilis? No, no syphilis, come back in three days for your strep results.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief. No syphilis, I'm not a dirty whore. No awkward telephone conversations for me - success! So I went back to work feeling pretty good about myself and I told the story to one of my work friends. I was kinda ashamed that I had to have the test done in the first place, so I was trying to keep it on the down-low. But when I got to the point where I said he tested me for syphilis, my not-so-subtle friend yelled out "YOU HAVE SYPHILLIS?!!?!?"

Everyone turned and looked. I was mortified. NO! NO SYPHILLIS!! It came back negative. But that doesn't make it any better, does it?

So I went back to the doctor and got my results. I never had strep throat - my throat culture came back negative. My blood work, however, was positive. The doctor was slightly baffled... how can you have it in your blood if you don't have it in your throat? Almost no one gets strep in their blood without strep throat.... Almost no one? Like 2% of the population? Sounds about right.

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing the illustrations and being so damn excited about drawing the pictures that I had to write the post.

Nuttin’ but mutton

I went onto my blog page today to "moderate a comment" (I have to approve nearly every comment that people put on my page, and because I love the four of you so much, I also use that time to respond to your comments). It's not exactly time-consuming, but it does need to be done.

So today I went to my page to moderate and respond and I saw this little thing that I'd never seen before...

SPAM! I got SPAM?! I was really curious and had to see what it was....

Tracfone?! What the hell is that? And who exactly is supposed to answer his question? It's not like this is a forum for cell phones... Although, he was responding to "I bet it's in the credits", so maybe he thought it was about airtime credits. Either he didn't read the post, or he's a spam-bot.

I almost approved this comment just to make it seem like I have five readers, but then I thought the four of you would probably realize I don't. So instead of approving it and attempting to fool you, I wrote a quick post about it, mocking my lack of readership and his attempt at finding Tracfone airtime. Better luck next time, Carl.

I bet it's in the credits

I am unfortunately several weeks behind in posting about my recent endeavors. My apologies. My reasons are two-fold: 1) I was on vacation (Read: I was busy. Reality: I was lazy) and 2) I've been struck down by a crippling back injury (wait, there's nothing funny about that... moving on...)

Since it's very un-like me to leave a story untold because it's "so last week", I'll tell you a tale about something that happened on my vacation. To clarify, my vacation wasn't a traditional vacation; I wasn't anywhere tropical, I simply wasn't at work.

I started my vacation on a Wednesday (how very ramdon of me). I was set to volunteer at my best friend's work picnic. And so I did. We were supposed to go camping right after that and stay there for four nights and five days. As per usual, circumstance reared it's ugly head and our camping expedition was cut short. I arrived home on a Saturday night, one night earlier than expected.

I spent the first while reveling in the luxuries of home: hot showers, cold drinking water and comfy chairs. Also, the internet. I was sitting at my computer minding my own business.

I live in a basement suite and the upstairs people are very loud, so I pretty much hear everything they do. This day was no exception. I heard someone go into the bathroom and draw a bath. Roughly 15 minutes later, I heard them let out the bath water and start draining it. But then I heard this noise that was really loud but I continued on my merry way.

But then I started hearing what sounded like water dripping and hitting some sort of surface. If the upstairs guy was a "shower after having a bath" kind of guy, I would know. He's not. Besides, it would take awhile for the bath water to drain in order for me to hear the water hitting the tub. And then I realized, this noise, it's really loud. What IS that?!

I got up from my chair and cautiously peaked around the corner and looked in my bathroom.

When I wasn't ambushed by the water monster, I ventured further in and found this:

My sink overflowing and no sign of the water coming out of the faucet. In fact, it appeared to be coming up and out of the drain. Up? Water doesn't flow up, what's going on? I freaked out.

I had a brief lapse from the panic and recalled a conversation I had with my landlord when I first moved in (four years ago!). He brought me into the storage room and showed me this switch and said "If anything ever goes wrong with the water, this valve shuts it off for the whole house" and then he showed me how to use it. I ran into the storage room, but by the time I got there, was in full-blown panic mode again and couldn't figure out how to operate the switch.

I decided as a compromise, I would turn off the water going to my sink. Not at all logical since I was already aware that it was not coming out of my faucet, but then again, panic often over-rides logic, doesn't it? I crawled under the sink and turned off the water. For some reason, the water was still freely flowing up and out of my sink.

GEORGE! He lives where my landlord used to live and is clearly the person equipped to help me. I dashed out of my suite and around to the front of the house. I knew before I even reached the door that George wasn't home, yet I rang the doorbell and proceeded to bounce around on the stoop like a kid waiting for the candy store to open. It didn't.

I ran back to my place to call my landlord, but I couldn't find my cell phone (and thus, his phone number) anywhere. Crap! I eventually found my phone and called him. Meanwhile, water is still pouring out of my sink. I tried to sound nonchalant, as if I always call my landlord on Saturday nights. He wasn't buying it. I explained my problem and he said he was on his way.

While I waited, I thought it would be a good idea to stem the flow of water and try to keep it contained to the bathroom. As I'm laying down towels I hear the upstairs shower turn on. I turned and watched the sink with horror written all over my face. Again, water started pouring out of my sink. Nnnnnnnooooooooo!!!!!!

I ran up to the front of the house and knocked on the upstairs people's door. "Can you turn the water off?!?!??! My place is flooding!!!!!". Although, I'm sure I was much less coherent than that. In the end, the shower got turned off and I ran back downstairs to continue monitoring the situation.

Upstairs guy came down into the storage room to see how bad it was. As we were talking I hear the water turn on. I cut him off mid-sentence with "OH NNOOOOO!!!!!!". I can only assume I had a look of terror on my face because he immediately looked concerned "What's wrong?!?!" "THE WATER!!!!!! NNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!!" I bolted out of the bathroom, grabbed a bowl, came back and started bailing water out of the sink (and secretly wished I'd thought of that tactic earlier). All the while, he's yelling upstairs:

Him: HONEY! Turn off the water!!

Her: What?

Him: Turn off the water!!!

Her: Okay.

(water still running)

Him: HONEY! Turn off the water!!

Her: Sorry!

(water still running)

Him: HONEY! Turn off the water!! We're flooding down here!!!

Her: Sorry!

(water still running)

Seriously. He ended up having to run upstairs to tell her to turn the water off. "Sorry - I forgot!" She's not exactly the most considerate person in the world. So, finally she stops using water, my landlord showed up with a wet-vac and started cleaning up the mess.

He knew what the problem was but couldn't fix it until the morning. In the meantime, do not use the water in the bathroom. I nodded in agreement, the upstairs people looked horrified.

Them: No showers!?!?!?

Landlord: No showers.

Them: But we have a big day tomorrow we need to shower.

Landlord: Well you both just bathed so shower when you get home.

They continued to make a big production about it. My landlord and I just rolled our eyes. Once they left, my landlord turns to me and says "You know when a grown fucking man will only have baths that there's some major fucking issues going on. I mean, what grown man only has baths?!?!!?" My response "I dunno... the same one who gets mad that he can't have a bath in 12 hours when he just finished having one?"

The next day he came over to snake my drain. When he'd been there a whopping 15 minutes, upstairs lady comes down to see how it's going (and to see if she can have a shower). Get over it! Once he actually got the drain snaked, he pulled out this giant mass of black hair. Upstairs lady came downstairs again to see how it was going. He took one look at her long flowing black hair and said "What the fuck are you doing up there? Giving yourself a fucking haircut?".

Needless to say he was quite annoyed at them and their shenanigans. But it does make me feel better that someone who doesn't even live here is more annoyed at them than me. That just might warrant it's own post.

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing the illustrations!

Quick poll, please

I think I've mentioned on here before how much I like polls. For those of you that don't know, I really like polls. So I'm asking that you take part in this super quick poll for me. All 5 of you.

The title of this poll is: Titles - The Poll.

The subject of this poll is: Titles.

As you may have noticed the titles of my posts are somewhat... obscure.

Do you think my titles should:

a) Continue to be ramdon

~OR~

b) Actually represent what the post is about

Your input would be greatly appreciated!

I'll know how to do it, once I figure it out

I recently went golfing for the second time. Pitch and putt, so not real golf, but a lot closer to real golf than the miniature version I normally play. I am happy to report I obtained my all-time-high(low?)-score of 88! Oh yeah.

I went golfing with my brother, "Dan". He actually plays golf; he has his own clubs and everything. I had to rent clubs and buy balls just to play. I had rookie written all over me.

We approached the tee but a group of three young guys got there first, so we had to wait our turn. Danny speculated that they must be pretty good because all three of them were using very expensive clubs; definitely not the rent-a-clubs the pro shop had to offer.

Unfortunately, my brother's speculations couldn't have been more wrong. The first guy took three swings just to get the ball in the general direction of the hole. The other two weren't that bad... but all-in-all, I think I was better. And that's saying a lot!

Always the gentleman, Danny offered to let me go first. Always the asshole, I accused him of offering to let me go first just so that he could laugh at me for doing such a poor job.

He went first to "show me how it's done". When it was my turn, he asked me "Do you even know how to hold a club?!". I demonstrated my grip and said "Yes??". I guess it was okay because he didn't give me a club holding lesson.

I teed off and actually did pretty good: I hit the ball and it went in the general direction of the hole. My miniature golfing skills came in handy once I managed to reach the green. I did the first hole in 4 strokes! We caught up to the next group in no time. The other group drove my brother crazy. Not only did they have $500 clubs they didn't know how to use, but also, they were idiots.

Every time they were on the green they would leave the flag in the hole, so that when they actually came close to getting the ball in, it would hit the peg and bounce out. Danny would constantly complain "Take the pin out! Yeesh!" Around hole 15, when Danny was putting (and I'd grown weary of him complaining), I yelled, pretty loud "Don't worry, I'll take the flag out of the hole when your ball gets close!!!". Sometimes, I lack subtlety. At hole 16, the other group started taking the flag out.

Now, I'm not saying I was super pro or anything. In fact, at hole 5, the pin was 85 yards straight ahead and I hit the ball 2 yards to the right. Right into some grass, beside a tree, a really bad shot. I was pretty upset.

Danny said "Go again." And I was like "REALLY!!?!?!!?!?" So I ran up to the ball, grabbed it and dashed back to the tee, super happy and excited and bouncing around like a rabbit on speed. The group behind us watched the entire charade. You're welcome. Then he tells me that he wasn't just being nice, it's called a "Mulligan" and you're allowed one per game. "A mulligan, eh?" I asked. "Yeah, it's Scottish... for 'nobody saw that, right?'". Good enough for me.

Danny was making par left, right and centre. I was getting 7's left, right and centre... but Danny said we max out at 6 strokes, so that's what we wrote down on the score sheet. My brother was really hoping for a birdie and he was getting pretty discouraged. But then he teed off, got the ball on the green and putted right into the hole. A hole in two - success!! He was pretty pleased; he did his happy dance.

I was a bit jealous. Every time I thought I was doing well, I'd get cocky and then I'd hit a 7. I just wanted to make par, just once. Danny had already done his happy dance twice and asked what mine would look like. I said "You won't see it until I make par. So, I guess, you won't see it." But then, at hole 16, I made par. I was really excited.

The group behind us really got a show (again) as I bounced around the green, swinging my club, yelling "I made par!!!!". Danny asked "Is that your happy dance?" I'm not sure if he was confused because my actions did not resemble any form of dance that he was familiar with, or if he was being sarcastic. I answered his question regardless: "Oh yeah it is!".

At the next hole, I did it again. I MADE PAR!!!

I was pretty freaking excited again. The group behind us thought we were ridiculous. But, it's better to have fun than take it too seriously, right? At the next hole, I earned the first go (whoever got the lowest score at the previous hole goes first. That's called earning it. There were a few times during the game that Danny let me go first, even though he earned the first go. That's called pity.) Regardless, I was feeling pretty confident. I got on the green within two strokes. I was sure I was going to get another par. And then I got cocky and hit a 7. Son of a bitch!

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing the illustrations.