Category Archives: Birthdays

Well, yesterday was rather interesting. I overslept again and didn’t go to the gym like I had planned. But I did finally go get a blood test, which I’d been putting off. The nurse definitely had a procedure down for doing this kind of thing, with words and phrases to give instructions and little warnings (like, “This will be tight,” for the rubber band around my arm and, “Stick,” when she stuck the needle in). She obviously prioritized efficiency over personableness, though she wasn’t unfriendly. In a way I admired her method. It did get the job done, and I was happy to have done a blood test there the year before so I would know how to cooperate and make the whole operation go smoothly. The blood test took less time than I expected, so I was a little earlier to work than usual.

At two we had a birthday party for one of our coworkers, as we usually do, and the theme was chocolate, which is pretty much the theme every day in our office, but especially today. I decided I would gorge myself, so I had both a chocolate icing covered brownie and chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup. I could have done with just the brownie, which was extremely good, and I felt a bit overloaded and had to eat kind of slowly toward the end to avoid feeling sick. Unfortunately I had gotten myself a frosty from Wendy’s earlier and had just been drinking a root beer, so after the party I felt the need to drink lots of water to dilute all the sugar.

I didn’t feel much like working that day, probably because I’ve been getting too little sleep lately, and finally at around 3:30 I decided to take a nap in my car, which I’ve been doing more than I’m comfortable with this week, but it’s hard to work when you’re falling asleep at your desk. So I slept for a while and then just sat there for a few minutes, enjoying the warm but somewhat breezy day and the intense green of the grass and bushes in front of me.

After work I went to the bank and then to get a haircut, where I listened to the hair stylist tell another customer about being hit on on her way to work that day by a guy in his car. He said, “How are you?” while they were stopped at a traffic light and asked for her phone number. The light changed and she turned the corner, but he actually followed her and flashed her lights so she would pull over, which she did, cautiously, and he got out and asked for her number. She decided to give it to him, and when she got to work he had texted her. Her first question was, “Are you married?” because she had intuited that he was, and she was right. Well, that wouldn’t work for her because as she put it, she doesn’t share. She seemed to be very pragmatic about it. Her only objection to having an affair was apparently that she didn’t want to deal with a jealous wife. I hoped there was some moral commitment to the sanctity of marriage that she wasn’t stating for social reasons, but I can only guess. In any case, it was an interesting story and certainly not something that happened to her every day!

After my haircut my next goal was to buy some new dress shoes because my current ones are coming apart. I knew exactly which ones I was going to buy—Berry by Nunn Bush, the exact kind I have now—and exactly where I would buy them, Famous Footwear, because it’s the same store I bought them in last time, and I happened to know that they still carried them. Usually I have to find shoes that are almost like the shoes I have at the time because I buy cheap brands that I guess change models every year or maybe go out of business. But last time I was annoyed at having my shoes fall apart so quickly, so I bought something a little more permanent but still not expensive.

They had the shoe I wanted but not the size, so the girl at the register ordered it for me to be home delivered (well, work delivered in my case), with no shipping charge, which was nice. The card reader wouldn’t read my debit card, and she said that the reader had been having trouble ever since the earthquake last week. Mysteeerious. I like it when odd little things like that happen.

When I got home, I cooked some noodles, and while my water was heating up, I did some dishes. One of them was a large plate that had sat on the stove next to the pot of water for too long, and when I picked it up, I burned my right thumb and index finger pretty badly. They look fine, but for hours afterward, I had to keep them cool or they would start burning after less than a minute. At first I ran water over them or kept them in a glass of water, but then I froze a large bag of water and kept another bag in the freezer to switch them when the first bag melted. That worked out well. And when I woke up in the middle of the night, my fingers had recovered.

The last time I had to do that was when I was again cooking and had gotten some jalapeño juice on my thumb, and I suppose it crept into some cracks in my skin. It burned. I don’t recommend using jalapeño juice as, for instance, a hand lotion. Continue reading →