a cautionary tale pt. II

I'm warning you right now - several times in this post resides a place where you'll find yourself thinking, too much information.

If you are a teenaged girl, then perhaps you'll find yourself thinking, TMI

With that cautionary caveat, I'm proceeding with the second movement of my bike accident drama.

The open wounds were easily the most visible ailment - but the real kick in the pants was the stiff neck. Man, you don't realize how much you need your neck until you are in bed, moving like you've got metal screws fastening your neck to your shoulders. I was very stiff.

One thing that has been kind of a pain in the butt is that my wounds aren't in good places, to heal. My elbow constantly bumps into things, and when it does it stings like the DICKENS!

My shoulder healing has been stifled by the conventional more of wearing clothes. I can only imagine if I were a nudist, or at least permitted to walk around shirtless I'd be on healed-wound easy street. Be that as it may, my shoulder wound gets agitated by clothing, and thus sticks to, and is otherwise irritated by my shirts. Many of my undershirts have blood stains on them. Its gross.

Weak stomach, should I keep going? Ok... brace yourself...

This has also posed problems for the white sheets on our bed. A week of sleeping on our sheets with my wound made it look like Ashley butchered her husband in bed. Ok, it's not that bad, but still, it's unpleasant.

As a result - because Ashley being a very thoughtful wife - she went out of her way to buy me all sorts of adhesive bandages in hopes that it could spare our sheets some staining, as well as expedite my healing process. She bought two boxes, sheer, and antibiotic!

Ashely is a big fan of neosporin and other anti-infection cremes, tonics, elixirs, and salves... so it was no surprise that she picked up the antibiotic bandages. I opted for those. I put one on my shoulder that night. Hooray... our sheets would be spared!

Everything went well that night, and the next morning I proceeded with my daily activities. Woke up, biked to school. Worked out at the Wooden Center, went to class, and then to work.

This is where the story takes another inevitable turn for the unsavory.

So I'm sitting in my History of The Built Environment class when I notice a smell. An unpleasant smell. I look over my right shoulder and notice a prospective culprit. A guy wearing birkenstocks. I let my nose linger in that direction for a moment, but dismiss the source. I look in front of me, perhaps it's the architecture student - you can't trust those guys right!?!

Nope, not him either. I look down at my beloved R.E. Load messenger bag. I sweat a lot on that thing. I smell it once... then twice... in the middle of class. Nope, clean as a whistle.

That smell, what on earth is that smell?!? It's a combination of B.O, stinky feet, and... rotting food. Really gross. I'm sure it's someone's stinky feet but I can't identify the culprit. Inevitably, my 15 minute scent-witch hunt ends and I find myself drifting back to paying attention in class.

Class ends... and I take the bus to work. I get to work... and I smell the smell again!?! I look over my left shoulder (the shoulder of my wound), and take a determined whiff...

Pee-yew!

I excuse myself to the bathroom where I can partially disrobe and assess the damage. I take off the band aid to give it one last olfactory assessment. BINGO! Really.. really gross. I didn't even have it on a full day, let a lone the "week" it says you can use it for. Disgusting. I can't even imagine the results of a week with that parasite on my shoulder. It'd probably eat my whole arm.

Seriously, It digested my wound. I guess you could say its better now, but it kind of looks raw now, and it is pretty stingy. What the heck band-aid? What kind of double cross is that? People come to you in their moment of suffering and you give them some man-eating foot-stink factory!

Lessons learned. If I could walk around all day like a shirtless Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall, I'm sure my wound would've healed in roughly the same amount of time and I wouldn't have had the traumatic experience of being eaten alive by a band-aid.

I think our first method was better. Tissue folded, and secured on my shoulder with masking tape. The poor man's bandage. (we didn't have the band aids yet)

Kleenex + masking tape is the Poor Man's Band-Aid

Let this be a lesson to any of you who might be in the band-aid market sometime soon.

a cautionary tale...

A great way to start the day is by lisetening to NPR. Morning edition with Rene Montagne and Steve Inskeep, it's like music to my ears.

Last Tuesday I happened to pay attention to a special tribute to April 15th - Tax day to you Yankees.

Other notable things that happened on Tax Day:
The Titanic sank
President Lincoln died
Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball
and...

David falls victim to the dreadful right hook

Yes - a right of passage for all bicycle commuters. I was hit by a man who was taking his child to school. It happened very fast - so fast there was no way I could react.

The man was apologetic, but didn't speak english very well. I think it may have been slightly more satisfying if he had been more indignant - so I could've been justified in yelling at him. Conditions as they were, I only managed to talk to him very condescendingly while looking at him like he was walking around in a prom dress or something.

He eventually left - and because I had only minor abrasions and my bike was fine, I pedaled my way to school. Right back on the horse!

The rest of the way to school I was a nuclear bomb with a minuscule fuse. I was just waiting for someone to look at me the wrong way and I would've unleashed the fury of a thousand... shrieking eels.

More carnage photos below [don't worry, they were taken with my cell phone and aren't that scary]

This image brought to you by the folks at Samsung, and Hanes.

Stinger - it's a jungle out there

All in all - it was a good learning experience. It's given me some nice memories. One last thing to mention - apparently, my ipod has an amazing sense of irony. The song it was playing on random shuffle mode when I got hit - Under Control by the Strokes.


post script:
I was wearing a helmet. Really glad I did. I think I may have hit my head, not sure. My helmet cracked a little bit on the side, and I'm not sure if that happened from the aforementioned incident, or when I slammed it in disgust after being hit.

post, post script:
Oh yeah - if you guys are drivers. Be freaking careful. Us bicyclists are happy folk with people who love us. Give us some space and be cautious, would ya?

a quick fix

Somewhere along the lines this term was commandeered by junkies in search of an expedited high. I do not advocate quick fixes in that sense.

I do, like fast, practical solutions to everyday problems. One everyday problem I deal with is an over-sized ear canal. Well, I don't know if it's exactly over-sized, I just know that my ipod earbuds do not fit in my left ear. Laugh all you want, it's my cross to carry ok?

What did I do? Well, after several frustrating attempts of jamming the earbud into my ear and it popping out, I put a little rubberband (I kept because of my prophetic hoarding tendencies) around the bud and now it's as snug as a bug in an rug/ear.

If you share the same genetic burden as I do, give this little wonder a try. You might not have the same cool rubber band, but i'm sure a thinner one wrapped several times would work just as well.

Ashley is particularly fond of the can-of-diet-coke for a quick fix.

Do you guys have any ingenious quick fixes you'd like to share with us?

ashley + david review swan lake

A week and a half ago we saw the classic ballet, Swan Lake at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles.

It should go without saying - Ashley was really excited and David was very nervous about the night that lay ahead. Ashley braved the nightmarish traffic heading east on the 10 - fortunately she got there in plenty of time for us to take a few snap shots.

The first item of business was to make sure that we were dressed for the part. Like our night out for Wicked, we decided to err on the side of formal, as opposed to too casual. It was a good decision. David was pleased he was in a suit when he saw some joker trying to impress a girl in jeans and a stretched out polo shirt.

The ballet can be an intimidating event for many men - but David devised several coping techniques that allowed him to safely pas de bourree through the event. Here are his tips:

1. Bring Candy. When your mind starts to wander, nothing brings it back home like some peanut m&m's or snickers. Cram a few in your mouth and you are good to go.

2. If you really want to get a grasp on what's going on - read the plot synopsis in the program. It really helps you understand why a guy spends 30 minutes dancing around the room, when really all he wants to do is go hunting with his new crossbow.

3. Find one character who's part you could play, that night, with no practice. It might be hard at first, but there's one in every cast. Some of the guys hung out on the sides for most of the performance, but inevitably they'd run out and do some crazy jigs that I could never do. However, there was this one guy who just walked around introducing people all night long. I could've easily done his job. Ashley said I couldn't have done it as gracefully because he was walking in four-inch squire platforms. Regardless, his job was easy and if I had to, I'd steal the show in that part.

4. It's ok to be impressed with the grace and beauty of the female dancers. They are tremendously talented. If you find yourself feeling the same thing about the male dancers - there's no hope for you... you might as well buy season tickets.

We were pretty lucky to see the performance. It was star-studded. The dude from Center Stage played the prince.

I wasn't struggling to get through the final act like David was. It ballet was more beautiful than I expected and I was so happy we went. One step closer to my big plans of seeing a Tchikovsky ballet at the Bolshoi one day.

Sometimes David likes to make fun of things I really enjoy. Anyone have any tips on how to get through the Messiah? Sometimes on Sunday mornings I try and sneak in a few pieces from the Messiah and it always ends in David doing an over exaggeratged vibrato.

David practices looking tough before entering the ballet.

We were all smiles after the ballet... for different reasons.

All joking aside, it was a really fun night out and I look forward to my turn to picking our next extravagant night out.