Stranded!

Been in Dallas since Monday on business. Supposed to be in Monday morning, out Tuesday night, but last night's lurvely weather stranded us here. Booked to head out around noon. And so I sing...

Show me the way to go home
I'm tired and I want to go to bed
I had a little drink about an hour ago
And it went right to my head
Whereever I may roam
On land or sea or foam
You will always hear me singing this song
Show me the way to go home

Great Birthday / Not So Great Day After Birthday

I got a pair of Bill's Khakis for my birthday. I've always wanted a pair and now I have some. They're the most comfortable khakis ever. My wife is the greatest! I also got the complete Strangers With Candy series on DVD, which is about as twistely hilarious as you can get. It was a very nice birthday at home with the family.

We'd planned to go out to eat, but Maddie hadn't been feeling so hot so we ordered take-out Thai food from the place down the road for our birthday dinner. We've eaten there a few times and always liked it, and Wednesday night it tasted particularly good.

Apparently food poisoning tastes particularly good.

Everyone who ate the Thai -- my wife, both step-daughters and myself -- spent all day yesterday violently ill. I've never experienced anything like that in my life. Normally you'd think three bathrooms is enough for a family of five (one of which is an infant), but not yesterday. No, there were times when each bathroom would be occupied and someone else would be hurling in a pot next to the bed. The only one who was unaffected was little Sam. He just hung out in Mommy and Daddy's bed all day happy as can be.

I came into the office this morning but I still feel like crap, so I'm going home.

Blech.

READ HALOSCAN COMMENTS.

Oh how I love the airline industry.

I am so tired, I've got that needles-poking-in-my-eyeballs thing going. I'm a mountain time zone guy on the east cost, so that two-hour time difference means it's hard to fall asleep at night and harder to wake up in the morning. Plus, I'm an insomniac when I'm traveling.

I slept about five hours Tuesday night, so I thought I'd be able to sleep more last night. Nope. Couldn't fall asleep to save my life. To make matters worse, I had to get up at 5 a.m. (that's 3 a.m. to my body) to catch a 7:30 flight. So after two hours of sleep, I schlepped myself to the lobby, caught a cab, got to the airport, checked in and went through security.

Then I found out my flight had been cancelled.

Yep, cancelled. Next flight leaves at 10:30.

Could they call me before I left for the airport? No. Could they let me sleep another three hours? No. So here I am, at Logan Airport in Boston, looking like I belong in Night of the Living Dead.

I want my bed.

READ HALOSCAN COMMENTS.

Tears of a clown.

I seem to have developed horribly oppressive allergies in my mid-30s. They hit me with relentless fury last September while visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States of America. It was particularly dry there, which is to say it was as it always is there, and a certain type of weed had taken to flight. Every time I stepped outside my eyes teared up and my nose factory produced an endless supply of drip, which was particularly annoying while Julie and I walked up and down Canyon Road visiting the art galleries. Upon returning to Denver I visited an allergist who, after poking and prodding me with needles, told me I was, and I quote verbatim, "Horribly allergic." When I asked him to what, he said, "Everything." He prescribed Zyrtec D and shots twice a week. I got two shots and then stopped getting shots. Too expensive, too time consuming.

One year later I'm wishing I'd continued with the shots. I'm taking the Zyrtec twice a day, supplementing that with antihistimine eye drops and an antihistimine nose spray. I'm the Mel Gibson of histimine haters.

Yet I'm still miserable. I'm on the verge of sneezing every waking moment. I hold off sneezing as long as I can, however, because if I sneeze once, I will sneeze at least 20 times. Unlike much of what I write, that was not an exaggeration. It's kind of like when you're tying on a good one, drinking like a fish as you like to say, and you resist the urge to pee as long as you can because you know that once you open the spigot you will be opening it every four minutes. I have a 20+ sneeze attack at least twice a day.

My eyes look like they belong on a zombie in a George A. Romero flick. They are completely bloodshot and constantly weepy. And they itch. Oh, do they itch! Yet scratching them only makes them more bloodshot and does nothing to alleviate the itch.

The eye drops and nose spray help a tad, but they don't last very long. Can one overdose on anti-histimine? I may be close to knowing the answer.

It's been raining a bit lately, which helps. Helps me, at least; it doesn't help those of you allergic to mold in the least, but right now I can give fuckall about that. I'm just hoping, praying and wishing upon a star that the worst is behind me and I can stop looking like I have the bird flu.

READ HALOSCAN COMMENTS.

I get a kick out of you UPDATE

I had to get a tetanus shot yesterday because I gashed myself with a bit of hard metal, and now my arm hurts along with my ankle. That's just plain wrong.

I get a kick out of you.

Call me Hopalong. This past Sunday I was moving stuff around in my garage and accidentally kicked something hard and metallic. I'm not entirely sure what it was, but I know it was part of the bike lying on its side that I was trying to step over. Based on the amount of pain, the gash on the protruding bone on the inside of my ankle, and my subsequent inability to put much pressure on the foot, I believe it was either the sprocket or pedal. Whichever it was, it hurts like hell.

Of course, being the manly man that I am, I kept working in the garage. A wicked Colorado Storm* was a-brewing and I needed to get shit cleared so I could move the cars into the garage before the hail came a-calling. At one point I carried something inside and my family saw the blood running down my ankle and pooling inside my Keen. They freaked. "It's worse than it looks," I said. At the time, I really thought it was worse than it looked. I have a pretty high tolerance for pain, so I got the garage cleared and the cars under cover.

I finally cleaned the wound and saw it was deeper than I thought, but didn't think it needes stitches. I covered it with Neosporin® and a Band-Aid® and wrapped an ACE® bandage around it, expecting to feel good as new Monday morning.

Couldn't walk Monday morning. Ouch fucking ouch best describes how it felt when I put pressure on the foot. So I got X-Rays. Not broken, quit complaining you big pansy. You should have gotten stitches though, idiot.

Now I'm a hobbler. A cripple. My office is, of course, at the top of a flight of stairs. Shouldn't the ADA apply to me? I'm supposed to play hockey tonight, and if you saw my Thursday 13 last week you know how much I enjoy that shit. Can't walk, can't skate, can't play.

Ouch fucking ouch.

You may now post your sympathies in my comments.

*A Colorado Storm happens when the skies are blue and the weather is beautiful. You look away for a moment, then look back at the sky to discover it's turned completely black. The temperature drops 45 degrees and lawn chairs start blowing across the road. A bolt of lightning strikes the person standing next to you and locusts carry children away. Then bowling ball-sized hail plummets from the sky at the speed of sound, demolishing busses and government buildings. Four minutes later, the skies are blue and it's beautiful again.

READ HALOSCAN COMMENTS.