Emerging From a Week Full of Suckage
I’m going to do something with my blog I haven’t done yet — I’m just going to blow off steam.
The week of Feb. 25 will forever be known to me as the Week Full of Suckage. I started Feb. 25 tired and unfocused, and didn’t get cracking on those Things That Needed to be Done until early afternoon. I didn’t start my errands until mid-afternoon, and didn’t get home until about 4:30 p.m. That meant I had to scramble to get the groceries put away in time to do some cleaning before Jeannie got home from work, at which time I was going to make her dinner.
(In case y’all are wondering, Jeannie is working full-time, going to graduate school, and doing a “field placement” for her Master’s Degree in social work. It’s like working three jobs. So I’m bearing the brunt of most of the housework, something she did when I was working two jobs and she only one.)
Anyway, I do a lot of my grocery shopping at BJ’s Wholesale Club, where they don’t give you bags and pass the savings onto… well, hopefully to the customer, but one never knows. Instead, they offer you ***FREE*** cardboard boxes instead. Well, when I got home and got the groceries stowed away, I put those cardboard boxes against a wall in the dining area of our townhouse, just a few feet away from the dining room table.
Then I forgot that they were there.
And I tripped on them.
And fell. And knocked over two DVD towers behind the entertainment center. And scraped the hell out of my right forearm. And smashed the viewscreen of my expensive cell phone, which was in a holster on my right hip.
I don’t have a land line so my cell phone is vital. At the time my girlfriend and I purchased them they were $50 apiece because we were eligible for an upgrade from Cingular. But the phones weren’t eligible for insurance. And replacing the phone would cost me $299 plus tax. So I spent a lot of last week examining my options rather than doing things I’d rather be doing like working on my comic-book.
After some research I decided not to go the E-Bay route and instead bought a brand new phone with an insurance policy should this ever happen again (this model is now eligible for insurance — why it wasn’t before is a mystery to me). I stuck with the same brand and model because I like it so much.
So last week I fell and it cost me $330. That came out of my tax refund, which I was hoping to put towards something better like, y’know, debt reduction.
Today I have a new phone in good working order, an insurance plan to cover breakage, and my arm is healing. But the prior seven days were indeed a week full of suck. So if my next few entries have a bit more of an edge to them than usual, you’ll know why.
March 4th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
My condolences. That is indeed major suckage.
Are you absolutely certain the Cat was nowhere around you when you fell? They do things like that, you know.
March 5th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
The tax time curse strikes another poor soul down in his prime.
I swear, there’s just something about tax rebates that cause your luck to decrease to just about the financial equivalent needed to neutralize the benefits of them. The IRS did a deal with the unholy powers of the underworld to strike back at any who dare to reclaim even a few small crumbs of what they remove from us during the year.
The cat MAY have been involved? Who cares if you can prove weather or not the cat was there? Blame the cat anyhow. Cats are evil.
March 5th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
The IRS and Cats are all in line with my ex-girlfr–ooh, sorry, Satan. Any of the DVDs get scratched? Talk about adding insult to injury. IT’S A CONSPIRACY!
I feel your pain, Bill. I had a camera tower door fall on my head yesterday. While 60 feet in the air. Why, oh Universe, is it that whenever I’m hit, it’s in the freakin’ HEAD?
March 5th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Bill Mulligan: “Are you absolutely certain the Cat was nowhere around you when you fell? They do things like that, you know.”
“The Cat,” Bill? I have THREE. Of course I can’t be certain they weren’t involved. They’re like little ninjas!
Jerry Chandler: “The tax time curse strikes another poor soul down in his prime.”
Yeah, usually it’s my car that does it to me. This is a new wrinkle on the curse.
Sean Scullion: “Why, oh Universe, is it that whenever I’m hit, it’s in the freakin’ HEAD?”
Oooohhh, you shouldn’t give a guy like me set-up lines like that, Sean…
Seriously, glad to hear you’re all right. Having an object hit you in the head after falling 60 feet can be, like, fatal. Please be careful!
Odd, you’d think Jerry Chandler would be the one with work-related injuries to report being the Token Cop of this group.
March 6th, 2007 at 10:07 am
The Token Cop? Like, he arrests tokens? You gonna stand for that, Jerry?
Just in case anybody’s interested, I threw up the trailer for my movie on Ziddio. It’s the Shadow War under the Horror/Sci Fi tag. Of course, me being me, I put the ALMOST-final one up there, so yeah, I know that A) The title’s kinda lame, and B) The first chromakey bit doesn’t line up right. I gotta start remembering to DELETE the rough cuts.
And I’ll set ANYBODY up like that when they’re having a week as bad as you, Bill. Yeah, it was intentional. Really. It was. FINE. Don’t believe me.
Like I care.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Heh, heh, heh, bring two intruders into my home, eh? Reeeeeoooooowwwwww!!!!!
March 7th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
“Odd, you’d think Jerry Chandler would be the one with work-related injuries to report being the Token Cop of this group.”
You don’t get much in the way of injury stories from me because:
A) I work out and stretch regularly. Even as bad as I’ve been slacking the past year, I’m fairly above average in basic physical conditioning. You have no idea how much just basic stretching keeps you from getting the “normal” injuries that come with jobs like mine. Plus, I switched to working out on a Bowflex a few years ago. They’re not as all-that-and-more as they try to get you to believe, but the nature of the resistance, the range of motion it allows and the absence of the herky-jerky motion and momentum that comes with free weight seems to, on me at least, allow more regular and harder workouts without stressing joints and muscles to the point that they’re more susceptible to injury.
B) I can project so dark natured a presence when I want/need to that even some of the weirder 10-96’s back off from getting stupid with me. Between that, my horror movie addiction, my dislike of days, my favorite hours to work (4 to mids) and fairly extensive knowledge of the darker myths, legends and tales in history, even my fellow officers refer to me as “the Vampire” more often then they use my name. This kinda thing tends to keep down the other type of injuries you find in lines of work like mine.
C) I tend to not post too much about the constant snaps, whaps, splats, dings, dents, cracks and crashes that I inflict on myself weekly/biweekly cutting down the dead trees in my yard, working on home improvements, playing with my swords or just trying to walk around the house with two psychotic cats and two neurotic dogs underfoot all the time. Why tell everybody what a total klutz I can be doing the simple things in life when I can hold in reserve the ability to play off the bad injuries of stupidity as cool, work related injuries of machoness.
“The Token Cop? Like, he arrests tokens? You gonna stand for that, Jerry?”
Hey, don’t knock it. He doesn’t look like much on South Park, but that’s one tough little S.O.B. when he gets drunk or out of control. Somebody has to be there to take care of it when he gets out of hand.
March 8th, 2007 at 9:22 am
THERE’s the image I need for my script. Dark Jerry. Aye yi yi.