A Bug. In. My. EYE!

Ben and I were out walking Scruffy last night after we got home from work. I don't usually go on those excursions, but it had cooled down a bit after the rain we got, and it was a generally pleasant sort of evening. We walked side by side by side and everything was going fine.

Then I realized there were these nasty little gnats flying around everywhere. One even flew into my mouth. Gross, I know, but who hasn't had that happen? Just spit it out and keep your mouth shut.

And then it happened. One of the little buggers flew into my eye. My eye! Not just ow-that-bug-hit-my-eye but ew-ew-ew-that-bug-is-stuck-in-my-eye! I abandoned Ben and Scruffy and started running down the street towards my house, covering my one eye and squinting considerably with the other to prevent a second eye-invasion. Let's not even talk about how ridiculous I looked to any neighbor that might've been watching.

Tearing open the front door, I ran to the bathroom, pulled out my contact, and stuck my open eye under the running faucet. I figured the same rules for rinsing a household toxin from your eye might apply in this situation.

And here's just the thing... what else besides rinse it out and blink a lot can you DO when something gets in your eye? Not much! You can't exactly stick a q-tip in there and get it out... as far as I know you're not supposed to poke anything into your eye, or even rub on it for that matter (as Heather often scolds me). I was left perched on the bathroom counter with my face a few centimeters from the mirror holding my now burning from tap-water eye as open as I possibly could. And though I could not see it, I KNEW that bug was still in there, up on the top of my eye. Ben peered inside my upper eyelid with a flashlight (yeah, that was bright) and insisted that it was gone. FALSE. That bug was still in there! At this point my imagination went into overdrive. What if the bug was carrying a disease? Would I have to go to the ER if I couldn't get it out? OH MY GOD WHAT IF IT LAYS EGGS IN MY EYE.

The last thought was enough to send me over the edge, and I (predictably) started to cry. And as I looked into the mirror at my swollen and bloodshot eye, I watched as the evil demonic brutal invader of my eye, a tiny gnat bug, came tumbling out in one of my tears.

And that, my friends, is what happens to me when I go into the wilderness. And, this was just my neighborhood, which is quite civilized. Can you imagine the kind of stuff I might encounter and be forced to endure should I have to go into the REAL wilderness?!?! And it does, people, it does. I did, at one time, enjoy the outdoors, and in the right circumstances, I still do. I liked being outside in Colorado (except for one specific bug related incident - detailed here in my work blog). But good grief, if I can't even walk my dog down the street without a gnat invading my ocular space, there's no way I could be expected to survive the real outdoors without suffering serious insect-inflicted damage.

That's Hot

Okay, there is hot, and there is HOT. Today, my friends, was the latter. We are talking 103 degrees. Today was the kind of hot where even inside where your AC is blasting you can't get comfortable. Pretty much the only acceptable activity is laying on your floor watching TV in just a t-shirt and your underwear with nothing else touching you. Trust me, the floor is best. It is maybe 1 degree cooler down there than on the couch. Don't even think about going upstairs.

Other thing to do on such a hot day:
1. Nothing
2. Sip an ice cold drink
3. Eat a popsicle
4. Lay with a fan blowing directly in your face
5. Watch movies where it is snowing

Other things NOT to do on such a hot day:
1. Move
2. Wear more than two articles of clothing. You can pick which two are appropriate for wherever you are.
3. Go outside
4. Clean or any other indoor activity that would cause you to sweat, ie walking from room to room
5. Blow dry your hair

Wherever you are, I hope you are staying cool. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to move away from this computer which is emitting unnecessary heat in my general direction. Back to the floor!

Music in the Rockies

Hey all, just so you know while I am gone I am writing a blog about my time at Music in the Rockies for my work's MySpace page. Check it out here: www.myspace.com/gospelmusicassociation.

There are pics too!

Miss you all and see you when I return.

Amy J

Wii-tastic

Ben and I are the proud new owners of a Nintendo Wii. It came to us on Sunday, from (where else, but our favorite store) Target. It is a beautiful thing. If you have never played the Wii, please come over to our house immediately and try ours.

Here's what you need to know to understand how awesome it is. I have never in my life owned a video game system. As kids my sister and I were never allowed to have one, and we didn't particularly want one either. I remember one Christmas our neighbor got a new Nintendo 64, and so from time to time we would play with him, but it never tickled our fancy. Ben was also never a big gamer... B.W. (before Wii) all he owned was an original Playstation on which he played CoolBoarders 2.

Video games always seemed, to me, to be so solitary and exclusive. Going to someone's house who had a system usually meant I ended up sitting on the arm of the couch watching in boredom as a bunch of boys played Madden.

Then, one fateful day, I was at my friend Rachael's house and people were playing the Wii. It struck me as a very social game - people were taking turns playing one another in Bowling or Tennis, and others who weren't playing were enjoying just watching. Rather than taking away from the human interaction at the party, it was encouraging it! Not only that, but unlike other video games where for hours on end one sits slack-jawed staring at the TV moving only one's thumbs, the Wii had you on your feet, swinging your arms in tennis or baseball or, in what was seriously an aerobic workout, boxing! Plus, no previous skill required. Unlike even basic old games like Mario Brothers, in which I was seriously out-played by even young children, the Wii was highly non-threatening to a non-gamer like myself.

I knew instantly that the Wii could very well be the first video game system that I could see myself having. And thus began our hunt to find one - even though they came out before Christmas, they are still in hot demand. Ben got ours on Sunday at about noon - and it was the last one in a shipment of 12 that had come in that very morning!

We hooked it up and each created our Mii - the little person who represents you in all your games. And then we started playing. And it was as delightful as I had hoped. I sustained my first Wii-injury when, in a lunging backhand during Tennis, I stepped backward and banged my ankle into the couch. I discovered I am rather good at Bowling, and not so good at Baseball.

So the Wii is on at the James household, and you are all invited to come play with us! Wheeee! (Or should I say, "Wiiiiiii!")

A Sad Thing

I saw a very sad thing today and I just need to write it down.

I was driving to work and going behind a slow old man driver. I was getting annoyed and thinking of how I was already late for work. Then the car in front of me swerved into the other lane to avoid something in the road. All I could see was that it was some sort of roadkill. "Gross," I thought, and followed suit in driving around it.

As I passed it I saw what it was - a tiny baby deer, young enough to still be covered with white spots on its back. It had obviously suffered a very recent death, no doubt at the hands of someone like me driving 55 mph down the curvy back road.

It just made me think about how normally dead animals in the road are either so mangled that they are unrecognizable or are so common that the sight of it doesn't bother you anymore. A dead possum or dead squirrel won't ellicit much more than an "ew" from me. But for some reason to see the little baby deer's body in the road just made me sad enough to cry. Which I did. For about the next two miles. I cried for that baby deer even though I know there are thousands of deers and that what I saw is not that uncommon. I cried for that baby deer even though I know deer aren't exactly the brainiest of animals and that the baby's mom was probably over it already. I cried for that baby deer even though I know the real world isn't like Bambi.

And even though I know that animals don't "go to heaven" in the sense of humans I prayed that God had been there and comforted it upon its death. I prayed that as a part of creation which God made to glorify Himself, the baby deer and its life mattered to God and that perhaps that baby, and animals of all kinds, will be present in eternity. I don't know if that is true, but what I know of God's character makes me believe that it is.

This is the second entry in my series entitled "Driving: It's Just Not That Hard." Today I will be covering the very challenging topic of MERGING.

Merging generally refers to a situation in which one lane of the road is ending, forcing cars in that lane to get over into another lane which is still open:

As you can see in the above diagram, an accident will happen unless one of these vehicles moves. Every day on my way to work I watch as morons... er, I mean "driving-challenged" people float from the on-ramp into traffic with nary a glance as to the cars forced to jerk violently out of their way to avoid being sideswiped.

Please read this carefully: THE PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY OF MERGING SAFELY RESTS UPON THE MERGER, NOT THE OTHER CARS! It is your job to take the initiative to use your blinker, to slow down or speed up depending on the other vehicles around you, etc. It is NOT enough to doodle your way into traffic, expecting that other cars will part like the Red Sea in order to make room for you. It is also NOT acceptable to merely follow the right-hand white line as it guides you merrily into another lane.

Is it nice if other cars let you over? Yes. Should they make every effort to give merging traffic room to merge? Absolutely. Is it your God-given right to plow into their lane simply because you waited too long and ran out of room? HECK-to-the-NO.

All this talk brings me to another point involving merging, and pardon me if I seem fussy but this one is just completely dumb and dangerous to boot. When you are nearing a construction area and you see one of those ENORMOUS FLASHING SIGNS that says "RIGHT LANE ENDS 500 feet" here's an idea: get over NOW! Nothing makes me wish I was allowed to ram other cars off the road than when a blithering idiot comes barrelling down the ending lane attempting to swoop in and merge at the last possible second. I will never, ever, ever, ever, EVER let you over. If I see you coming in my rear-view mirror, I will in fact drift over to take up both lanes thus preventing you from going any further.

There is a verse in the Bible that says, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." This is a beautiful verse about God's creation is enough to make humans understand and see that God exists.

I feel similarly about merging. "For since the construction workers and road designers put up signs - bright yellow and orange and sometimes flashing - and these can be seen by your own eyes and comprehended by your brain to mean that you must take some kind of action about merging, you are without excuse in taking said action as quickly and safely as possible.

The only thing someone who is a bad driver could possibly say is that "they didn't see _____" or "they didn't notice ______." There is a fancy phrase for that called "not paying attention," and from what I understand it doesn't hold up so well under a court of law.

Who the heck is Lindsay Wagner?

So this summer, in the absence of our favorite tv series LOST, The Office, and others, Ben and I are enjoying delightful reruns. For me, X-Files. For him, Wonder Years. Our TiVo records both of these shows in the wee hours of the weekday mornings, and if you have ever watched something that is on at 2 am, you are familiar with the commericals for the Sleep Number Bed. And the spokesperson for this delightful product? It's "Actress Lindsay Wagner." And if you have seen this commercial, you probably asked yourself the same question we did, after the 15th time around... "Who the heck is Lindsay Wagner?"

Ben was content just to stop fast-forwarding through the commericals long enough to hear his favorite part, when Lindsay tells him how he can get "a more recooperative sleep." I finally broke down and came upstairs to my computer, where I looked up Lindsay in the Wikipedia of the entertainment world, good ole' IMDB.com.

I was pleased to find that not only was she a real actress, but an Emmy-winning one at that. She was famous in the 70s/80s for being on The Six Million Dollar Man, and then starring in her own spinoff, The Bionic Woman. Since then it has been pretty much downhill, but it seems like this Sleep Number thing is a sweet deal. I mean, sometimes it is the only commercial I see during an entire hour of X-Files. A little Mulder, a little Lindsay Wagner. A little Scully, a little more Lindsay. A little truth-chasing, a little chat with Linz. It's kind of comforting, in a way.

PS - In case you were wondering, her sleep number is 36. Like I said, I have seen this commercial a LOT.

You know what I love? When you go swimming, and you get water in your ears, and you can hear it in there for hours, making a sort of crunchy shifting sound, and then you come home and lay down and all the sudden the water frees itself from your eardrum and the little droplet that trickles out of your ear is all hot from being inside your head.* And you are like, "Ah, I can hear again!" There is something really satisfying about that warm little bit of water coming out of your ear, like when you pop your finger really loudly or successfully scratch an itchy spot on your back or lay down after a long day and feel your spine stretching and relaxing.

*Footnote: Today I went swimming at our office pool party and this happened and it was like every day of my childhood summers all over again.

DRIVING: IT'S JUST NOT THAT HARD

This will be the first in a series where I try to help people who seem to be bewildered and befuddled by the act of driving. Unfortunately, being a bad driver doesn't stop people from being ABLE to drive... sort of like being a bad parent.

If all this series of posts does is help me vent about the complete dolts whom I graciously share the road with each day, then that might be good enough.



Issue #1 - Turn Signals

With some skeptical exceptions, human beings are incapable of reading each other's minds. This can prove dangerous when operating a two-ton piece of machinery going 60 mph. You might be asking yourself, "How will someone know if I want to change lanes?" or "How will the person behind me know I'm not slowing down just to annoy them, but to turn?" Luckily, the makers of motor vehicles have, for the past several decades, installed in your car/truck/suv a special device designed to, in a way, convey your thoughts to other drivers. This magic tool is called the TURN SIGNAL.

The turn signal is a flashing yellow or red light that is located on both sides of your car's front and rear bumpers. By manipulating a lever near your steering wheel, you can illuminate either the right or left blinking lights. Inside your car you will hear a clicking sound to indicate that the lights are blinking appropriately. Once you have finished the act of turning or veering to the correct direction, flick the lever again and the blinking light will stop. This lets other drivers know you don't now intend to move in any other direction but forward.

Now I know you might be thinking to yourself right now, "But I KNOW where I am going... why do I need the turn signal again?" Please keep in mind, the turn signal is just that, a SIGNAL to other drivers. Short of rolling down your window and hollering about what your next move is, it is the best way to keep other drivers informed of your decision to fling your car into their lane.

So remember, I can't read your mind! If you use your signal, you are reducing your risk of me slamming on my brakes and screaming "What the ef are you doing you stupid moron" by at least 43%. And that is a good thing.

Thank you. The next entry in this series will cover MERGING, where I tell you how to increase your chances of me letting you over (hint: it involves your turn signal).

sweet

six fifteen and the beep-beep has commenced
i can poke the snooze button with my toe if I stretch
draw my foot back into the cocoon of covers
flip the pillow to find the coolest corner

and when I roll over there you are
little white shirt stretched across your skinny shoulders
and with the day creeping up on us
the sweetest thing is ten more minutes curled around your back