Vienna sausage, anyone?

No...that's not a canned meat treat, it's my left pinkie toe. Getting up off the couch yesterday, I smacked it on the ottoman as I was walking. Thinking I had just stubbed it, I walked it off. But then I looked at it, to check it for blood and noticed it was bent at a weird angle. After the waves of nausea passed, I called my doc to get it reduced. Went in 45 minutes later, but he didn't want to take a chance with it and referred me to my sports med guy. So I've been dealing with a bent, swollen toe for about 18 hours now, but an appointment in 6 hours to get it fixed.

Hopefully, I can get that 2 hour trainer ride in tonight.

It's the mini-marsmallows, honey, I swear

So last night, I'm on the Soul Bar message board looking for info about Sky City's pre-opening tonight. Amy comes over from where she's been watching What Not to Wear (which explains why I was on the internets--I'm not that gay...I don't care what anyone tells you).

"Whatcha lookin' at?", she asks.

"Soul Bar message board. Looks like they're open tomorrow," I cleverly retort.

"Cool." she says, walking into the kitchen.

I follow her in, always hungry at that time of night. I'm standing behind her as she reaches up into the cupboard...

...and pulls out coco(a).

Kind of a Freudian pick, I think.

Which is it?

So do I get four sticks with chicken on it? Or a stick with four chickens? Seriously, I'm imagining pulling up to the drive-thru window and them handing me a broom handle with four entire birds, and then gnawing on it two-handed while driving down Washington Rd. steering with my knees.

And, probably, with a window rolled down and a chicken-or-two sticking out. Getting cold fast.

Party's over before it began

This guy totally busted it riding the wrong way on W. Buena Vista in North Augusta, carrying two cases of Bud Light on his bicycle. If my phone shot video, you'd hear the decidedly family-unfriendly words coming out of his mouth as he gathered the runaway beers up. Oh...and did I mention this was just after 7 in the AM? Probably lots of lessons to be learned here, kids. Not the least of which is always wear a helmet when transporting 48 beers the wrong way in traffic.

F*cked up

So, browsing through my triathlon blog I found this jem. It's in there, if I remember, because it predates this one. Guess I'm gonna have to scour it for other gems.

From May 2006:

So Amy sent out an e-mail yesterday to a bunch of people asking how they relieve stress, for some story she's working on. She said be creative. I said does creative = truthful, and she said "of course not." So I started writing, only to later find out she wanted brevity. I'm not so much with the brevity so, long story short (ironically), she's not using it. Which means I can post it here.

(fictional work to follow)

Being a trauma surgeon can be very stressful. I'm presented with emergent cases and many, many times I am the only thing between those critically-injured peoples' lives and deaths. In any given night I may see gaping head injuries, gunshot victims with sucking chest wounds, little kids who've been mauled by pit bulls, impalements, amputations and everything else you can imagine. And some things you can't.

And the thing is, the patients aren't people to me. They are just injuries. I focus on their vital signs and what's bleeding, and that's about it. My only concern is to stabilize them and fix what's broken, torn or severed. It sounds harsh at best and inhuman at worst, but trust me--it's the only way to do my job. If I get caught up in them as people, then I'm distracted. And if I'm distracted, well, game over. So I never hear their stories. Oh sure, I sometimes hear about how they got to be in the condition in which they are presented: the drive-by shooting, the fall from a ladder or the car accident. But I don't hear about their families, their jobs or their problems. I don't get to hear those stories.

Nor do I want to. Those stories, the things that make them who they are simply don't factor into the equation I must solve in order to fix them. But I save their lives regardless. When I do, it's intensely rewarding. I'm the hero, almost Godlike, at least in their eyes.

Sometimes--too many times--however, they don't make it. Their injuries are just too severe, they'd lost too much blood before they got to my OR. For whatever reason, sometimes they just die. And when they die we have the unimaginable task of telling their families.

And that's when it becomes real. That's when, all of a sudden, their lives mean something to me. Gone is the surgical field, replaced by this group of people, pleading with their eyes and their words to give tehm any semblance of good news. BUt when ther eisn't any, there's this pat speech I use, along the lines of "Your son/daughter/wife/husband was critically injured. He was brought to the ER where we did everything we could to stabilize him/her. But his/her heart stopped and despite our best efforts, he/she died. I'm very sorry."

And I've delivered that speech to those shocked, disbelieving family members so many times it has become rote. Inside, I'm distant as I repeat it, dissasociated. I do it with apparent compassion, but in reality it's cold and unfeeling. Because, unlike other doctors, I have no relationship with these people, apart from their now-dead loved ones. I've never met them before this moment, yet I am required to deliver this horrific news. And it's hard. You have no idea how hard.

People in my profession deal with this stress in many different ways. A lot of us play golf, run, paint, play music. Usually to obsessive levels. Some of us find solace in religion. Some of us drink too much, or seek out the companionship of similarly nameless, faceless souls. Just to feel their warmth; to embrace something living.

But not me. I guess you could say I follow a different path. Not often, but once in a while, when all of that stress mounts to the breaking point, I relieve it by going downtown, late at night. And savagely murdering homeless people.

I think Amy sort of regrets sending me that e-mail.

Lost in translation (I hope)

So this morning on Stacy's blog, there's a comment from "bobo81" on one of her posts. Actually, it's sort of an uncomment, because this person said literally nothing. But, being the curious person I am, I click the link to his profile and discover (which you already know if you clicked the link associated with his blogger name) that he has more than a few blogs. Among them such fascinatingly disparate topics, like: "star war", "south beach diet", "cat t-short", "ornish diet", "Russian hi-tech shock" (wtf?), "Amazing free sex stories", and "fish catalogue."

Five bucks says you can't guess which one I clicked first. Ok, it was "Russian hi-tech shock" (apparently an homage to bobo81's computer mouse collection--I want to party with this guy), and after that "fish catalogue" (including a post titled "My cat eat golden fish!"--the post in it's entirety reading "My cat Putin eat my gold fish!." Damned good for nothing Putin.). But after that i was drawn like Porkchop to his food bowl to "Amazing sex stories." And I swear, finer erotica has never been written. Take this excerpt (warning...not for the feeble):

An apartment is one-room, but a room is very large, all of walls in shelvings, windows are curtained off. From furniture only the large polished dinner-table and bed, it is defiantly empty, in spite of the fact that can contain persons five. Suddenly from a bathroom a scream is heard. Max and Denis exchange glances. Taking initiative in the hands (only in an order to pass, rocking thighs), sent in a bathroom. I open a door. Our third friend is Dmitry, upright under a shower, voraciously sucks the papillae of young girl. It looks years seventeen.

I need to read further to see if Dmitry eats her golden fish.

Life lessons at the world's greatest mexican restaurant

So yesterday, after the ING marathon my aunt and uncle took Nola, Amy and I to this Mexican restaurant out somewhere west of Roswell (Georgia...not where the aliens crashed). A little blip in a tiny strip mall, smack between a dry cleaners and a Tae Kwon Do studio, Vallarta was totally unremarkable in appearance. I asked Uncle Joe how he found it, in such a random location a pretty good distance (even for Atlanta), from his house. He said it was his poker buddy Grover's favorite place. Joe said Grover could never play poker on Friday nights, because Friday was margarita night. Then, laughing, he said he always thought "margarita night" was a euphemism for Grover getting...and then he stumbled, realizing our 7 year old was along for the ride. I rescued him saying "yeah...we know what you thought Grover was getting."

Anyway, apparently Vallarta is the home of the bottomless margarita. They had like five different sizes on the menu, from small to "fishbowl," but apparently, if you're in the know you just order "margarita" and they bring you a glass. And as soon as you half-way empty it, up shows the waiter with a pitcher who refills it. And that repeats until you slur "no mas."

And even then, they give you more. Bueno.

Add to that a free bowl of chicken soup and free desert at the end with perfectly edible food in the middle and I can't believe these guys are still in business. But this wet dream of spice and liquor wasn't without its quirks--both nestled neatly in the menu. No...not the food. The food was pretty standard stuff. What was interesting was the lunch menu (and the lunch special on the board). Both notable for the fact that they are only open from 5pm during the week and 4pm on Saturdays. Maybe there's some secredt lunch cabal at Vallarta. Who knows. It's weird what you think about after your fifth glass of limey-tequilla-y goodness.

Then there were the instructions for eating Mexican food, at the bottom of the menu page describing what tacos, burritos and enchilladas are. I haven't seen that in years, and figured that by now, people just knew. I've also seen before, and also not in years, that sentence saying it's cool to pick a taco up with your hands. I mean, seriously, does anyone go all George Costanza-with-a-Snickers-bar and try to slice into a crunchy taco with a knife and fork? I've never seen it. I'd like to, but I haven't. But what was interesting about this disclaimer was what was apparently lost in translation:

"It is perfectly acceptable and expected to teach tacos with your hands."

Cause, ya know, spare the rod and spoil the meat in a tortilla and all.