What the Hell Happened: Game Over, Man. Game Over

As you may know, today is Nick's Anniversary Spleen Day, so I guess now is as good a time as any to talk about what happened last year.

Michele and I realized that what we were paying in rent was the same as some people payed on their mortgage, if not more. That, combined with the eight thousand dollar tax credit for new home buyers, sent us looking at houses rather than another apartment. Getting laid off almost killed that little quest as soon as it started, but with Michele's salary and some government programs, we thought we'd at least be able to buy a small place.

We found one, on a busy street across from my eye doctor, that was in our price range. It only had one bathroom, and it was in the kitchen, yes, in the kitchen. And the upstairs was incredibly small, but the living and dining rooms were huge, with lots of built-in shelves, and there was a cool three-season room in the back that looked out on the huge back yard. If we could negotiate a lower price, we could use some of the loan to fix up the second floor and maybe put in another bathroom, or at least move the existing one. It needed a lot of work, but by God, it had potential.

We put in an offer, lower than the asking price, because of all the work that needed to be done. I was pretty excited, and on the way home I called Nick to tell him about it. He said something along the lines of "That's cool," then casually threw in "It looks like me and Heidi are no more."

What? WHAT?!!



He said she asked for a divorce. Just like that. And in an instant, all the excitement about the house was drowned out by shock and confusion. I was traumatized to the point that I couldn't even sleep that night.

How did this happen? I was at their house on Memorial Day. We threw marshmallows at each other and around midnight a lady from across the street came into the yard, and I thought she was going to ask us to keep it down, but apparently she was drunk and meandered over to ask why she never gets invited to these parties. And she wouldn't leave. It was a great night, and the last time I saw Nick or Heidi before he told me what happened. Neither of them could afford to keep the house, so they were going to both move out and sell it.

None of this made any sense to me. I wanted to go into Marty McFly mode and get them back together. I mean, they're not my parents and I wouldn't disappear if they broke up (um...except for online for several months), but I needed them. Nick and Heidi were my definition of what love is supposed to be since high school. They were Nick and Heidi, or as my dad inexplicably always said, "Heidi and them." You can't have one without the other. They were different people with vastly different personalities, but together they became this whole other thing, like Voltron. Or Captain Planet, I guess. With the rings.

Speaking of rings, as a best man, I've got a vested interest in that marriage. It's like I spent all those hours not writing a speech for nothing. I'm progressive in pretty much all other areas, but I just don't like divorce in general. When you get married, you take a vow before man and God that you will be together in sickness and health, through good and bad, till death. So when you get divorced, that means you were lying to God. And even if you're not religious, you're still lying to all your friends and family. I think we should all get handwritten letters of apology for wasting our day at a meaningless wedding.

Sorry I made you do the Macarena and buy me a punch bowl set that I'll never use.

And the thing is, I actually want to get married. It would be a lot less confusing if Michele, Brianna and I didn't all have different last names. But weddings are expensive, and to spend a bunch of money on a wedding and then just give it all up is like taking a big wad of cash and setting it on fire in front of a homeless person.

Jose and Christy came up in July, and we all went to see The Hurt Locker in Kendall Square. It was only a few weeks after Nick and Heidi split. She came, too. Nick was still living in the house, and she came over in her own car. Then we all piled into the van, and Heidi sat in the front next to Nick. She even sat next to him during the movie. If you didn't know, you'd think they were still together. I may have been watching a future Oscar-winning movie, but the real acting was happening right next to me.

If it seems like I'm placing too much blame on Heidi, good. Obviously Nick has all kinds of faults, and to be honest, if I was a girl I wouldn't even go out with Nick, much less marry him. But she did. And she stayed from high school and they lived in four different places together. Why now? If he hit her or something, at least it would make sense. Why is that when Nick told his friends, they were all shocked, but when she told hers, they all knew it was coming? It feels like a betrayal to not just Nick, but me and Jose and Wah-Kee and all of us who thought we were her friends. I actually de-friended her on Facebook because all of her status updates were like "Heidi is going skydiving" or "Heidi is riding in a go kart" or some fun thing that she's not supposed to be doing because she's too stricken with grief. I just got sick of looking at it.

Eventually, Heidi un-friended everyone she knew through Nick, Jose, my brothers, even Michele who was kinda hurt by that.

And I blame myself, too. For years I used to tag along with them to the movies, on road trips, or just hanging around the chicken shack sucking at Clue. It was always a weird feeling, because I was having fun, but at the same time I felt like I was missing out on what they had. Those were some of the most memorable years of my life, and I disparately wanted someone to share them with. And when I met Michele, I thought now we'd all be able to do these things together. It didn't quite work out that way, with Brianna being so young, and I went out with them less and less. status updates were like "is going skydiving" or "is riding in a go kart" or some fun thing that she's not supposed to be doing because she's too stricken with grief. I got sick of looking at it. I don't blame Brianna, I love that kid so much, it's just that I had different priorities now. Maybe I should have invited them over to my house more often, so we could hang out and take care of Brianna. As long as I can remember, we've always gone to Nick's house, regardless of where he was living. I felt awkward suggesting my place. Nick said Heidi told him that they never do anything together, and he didn't really have the motivation to do anything. Maybe if there was a certain fun couple to do things with, they wouldn't have fallen into that slump and would still be together. They had another party in June, I was supposed to go, but it was right after I lost my job and I wasn't really feeling it. I wish I'd gone now.

It's more than all that. The group dynamic is changed forever, if there's even still a group at all. Jose moved to South Carolina a couple of years ago. With Heidi gone, there's not a whole lot keeping Nick here. Him saying that he has to move back in with his step mother because "he failed as a husband" doesn't sound very promising. His birth mother lives in Virginia, and he had said that when he can afford it, he's going to move down there. Jose said I should move down there too. First of all, no. Secondly, even if I did, Nick will be in Virginia and he's in South Carolina, so even if I plop down somewhere in the middle they'll still be hundreds of miles away so what difference does it make?

The sad truth is I don't have any friends left. Sure, I have you fine internet people, but you guys are scattered all over the country, if not the world, so it's not like you can pop over here for five dollar movie night. And I hang out with a lot of people, but they're all Nick's friends. They're friends by proxy, and I never made the jump to change that. In fact I don't even know how. Are you supposed to do a certain number of things without the middle person before they are officially your friends? Does "Any friend of so-and-so's is a friend of mine" actually work in practice? I never had to worry about this stuff before. When Nick moves, what am I supposed to do? I've got to find him a local girl, fast. I haven't seen him in months, this probably isn't even a problem.

In the midst of all this, I got a text message from Jose on August 18 that said "Im gettin married." Then I got another one on September 4: "Im married. Yay!" That's how you do it. I hope they stay together, but at least if they don't, they didn't force anyone to go to some sham wedding.

Oh yeah, we didn't end up getting the house. But who even cares about that anymore. Instead, we're renting the house next to my parents' house, which happens to be where Nick and Heidi lived a couple of years ago. Weird.

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Obligatory Catch Up Post

I've been a little distracted lately. It's been known to happen. But I'm back now, and nothing is going to, holy crap, what's that little music icon? Is that a new Blogger feature? Oh. Nevermind, it's a Foxytunes feature. I can now insert current track as my signature. But I'm not currently listening to anything, And since you most likely can't see the icon I'm referring to, this entire paragraph probably hasn't made any sense to you. Suffice it to say, if you use Firefox and have Foxytunes, you'll see a little G-clef icon just below "Preview" when you're creating a post in Blogger.

I actually almost posted something over a month ago, because something happened that scared the crap out of me. Or, I thought something happened, but it turned out to be nothing. It's sort of embarrassing, actually. Maybe we should move on to something else.

A lot has happened in the past few months. Michele finally got the new job she's been trying to get for nearly two years. Some places have very strict rules about blogs; some say you aren't allowed to have one, even if only post during off hours; some are so strict that you can't even have one in your household. I don't want to get Michele in trouble at work, so I won't say where she is now. But it rhymes with Barvard Bedical Bool. There. Let's see them crack that code.

We're also without Brianna for the summer. She stays with her grandparents in South Carolina during summer vacation, but with Michele just starting her new job, we weren't able to go down there to drop her off. So her dad suggested we take a weekend trip and meet them halfway, in Maryland. We stayed in Hanover, which has this enormous mall with a Medieval dinner place and a 24-screen movie theater shaped like an Egyptian temple, with a giant Anubis statues and everything. We weren't there long enough to actually go to any of these places, but we'll be back Labor Day weekend, and we should have an extra day, so maybe we can go check them out.

One week after we got back from halfway-to-South-Carolina, Jose packed up and moved all-the-way-to-South-Carolina. Before he left, we got together one last time at my parents' house (my family went to Maine and we were watching the dog, the birds and Glenn's iguana). We didn't really do much, except talk and watch something about 80s songs on VH1, but that was enough. Even Hedie showed up, and explained a cryptic text message I'd received a few days earlier. (By the way, come down to Hajjars in Weymouth for wiked [sic] [expletive] awesome karaoke night) It was kind of sad, (Jose leaving, not Hedie's text message) especially since we could have at least gone with him half way if he had left a week earlier if if Michele's parents were able to take that weekend off from work, but he's happy and I'll probably still end up seeing him as much as I have been recently anyway. And I'm assuming we'll be doing Fantasy Football again this year, so I'll be beating his ass from eight states away. I think it's eight. Do you count the state your in? Well, anyway, I'll be beating him from as few as seven or as many as ten states away depending on your counting system. I think.

What else happened? Oh, over the past few weekends, Michele and I had some mini-vacations, just the two of us. It's been great. Weekends are that much more enjoyable when you actually go out and do something instead of sitting at home catching up on your DVR and recuperating from five days' worth of Joeisms. And we haven't had to spend too much because we saw The Dark Knight for free (two complementary tickets when you buy ten General Mills products, thank God we love cereal) and last week we went to the Harvard Natural History Museum, which was all free because Michele is an employee of um...Barvard. We walked around Harvard Square and took a nap under a tree in Harvard Yard. This weekend we're going on a sunset cruise on the Charles River.

Sunday was Michele's birthday. It was also annual Black and Orange Flying Bug Thing Orgy Day. There was a big group of them on the walkway leading to our house, all clustered together. At first I thought an ant was bringing in a big haul. You know how ants can lift many times more than they're own weight, and sometimes I've seen them carrying of much larger insects. But this group, they were all black and orange beetles. And a few inches away, there was another group of them. Still a bit further away, one black and orange beetle all by himself. That's rough. I got to the car, and two more orange and black flying bug things were on the front windshield, one on top of the other like on the Discovery Channel. Another exhibitionist couple was doing it on our back windshield. Michele doused the ones on the front with washer fluid and tried to flick them off with the wiper blades, but they were just out of reach and kept going at it like champs. Then it rained. A lot. And all the orange and black sex beetles most likely all died. I think that might have been Asop's lost fable.

Well that's it for today. Come back tomorrow to see if I can keep this going. I'm sure I have at least three more in me before I lapse again.

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His Hair Was Perfect

Welcome to this, the first full week of 2008! I think I've let enough time roll by to throw Kimmie off my scent. What, that was my plan all along. I can't have people ripping me off-- inserting their wenis wherever they see fit--and the best way to prevent that is to not write anything at all, right? Sounds like a perfectly reasonable excuse, err...explanation to me. How about you, LL?

Okay, so back to business. The Friday before New Years, we gathered at Nick's house to exchange Christmas presents. No, we don't do anything on time. Nick gave Jose that little robot guy from FOX NFL Sunday that jumps around and points at people. Well, the CGI one does, I don't think this one does anything expect look like the one on TV. Actually, did he get that from Nick? I thought Wah-Kee got Jose in the name-pool, because then Kee handed him a Carolina Panthers jacket to wear when he moves down to South Carolina later this year. Oh yeah, Jose's moving to South Carolina because he met some girl online. What is the world coming to? Anyway, someone got a FOX NFL robot and someone got Jose a Panthers jacket. I think either Nick or Jose got my gift. How am I supposed to remember, it was like three weeks ago. Whoever it came from, I ended up with a Best Buy gift certificate and Michele and I each got a tickets to a movie and a gift certificate to Smokey Bones. Other gifts exchanged hands, but all I really remember are the Mojitos. I don't think it's a gay drink. Mo-ji-to.

After the gifts, Heidi announced that she had a new game/social experiment gone awry for us to play. It was called The Werewolves of Millers Hollow, and it plays pretty much the same way as Mafia, if you've ever played that, which I haven't. The story for the game goes that there is a village that is being slowly picked off one-by-one each night by werewolves. So during the daylight hours, the villagers gather in town hall or wherever villagers gather (Village Hall?) and try to weed out the werewolves by way of democracy and lynchings, the chocolate and peanut butter of lycanthrope-plagued-townships. Whoever the majority of the village accuses as the murderous beast is strung up by their necks until they're dead. Only after their death is it revealed whether the village has finally destroyed the werewolf, or just offed another one of their own dwindling numbers. The battle of wits has begun. The game is over when either all the werewolves have been hung, or when the last villager is eaten.

For replay value, and to a lesser extent, legal and moral issues, no actual blood is shed during the game. Instead, a non-playing moderator holds out a deck of cards and a group of eight or more chose one card each. On the back of the card is either a werewolf, or a villager (or one of the various subsets of villagers with special abilities). When everyone has chosen their cards, the moderator informs everyone that it is night, and all players close their eyes. Then the moderator, in our case Heidi, says the werewolves wake up, recognize each other, and chose a victim. The werewolves merely point to the unsuspecting chump, and when Heidi says it's morning everyone opens their eyes, with one person discovering they've been killed. And how do you know when you've been killed? When you've got shiny purple beads tossed at your feet. Once everyone's eyes are open, then the accusing begins. And that's when it really comes in handy to have a poker face. A poker face not being one of the things Santa left in my stocking, I was in for a long night. My problem is, I always look guilty, even when I'm just a lowly villager, which was the case in the first round when they metaphorically strung me up just because I kept smiling. Well that's just great. I was actually the Fortune Teller, a villager who is allowed to look at one person's card during the "night" each turn to try and learn the identity of the werewolf or werewolves. But instead, I sat out the rest of the game. Lousy stupid villagers. The werewolves turned out to be Wah-Kee and his girlfriend, Des. Pssh! I could have told them that. They were both even worse at lying then me.

After that first game, I managed to not get myself killed through most of the others, except for the one time I actually WAS the werewolf. For that game I was also voted as the sheriff, which is a position that gives that person two votes. But no matter what kind of math you use, two votes are never going to beat six, I was voted out, and of course I was the only werewolf and at under two minutes it was the shortest game of the night.

Several games in, Heidi passed the moderator duties onto someone else so that she could play for a while. And I got her voted out in the first round. That was perfect. Michele wasn't immune, either. During one of my stints has a werewolf I gleefully pointed to her and danced in my seat. I can't really say why I did. Maybe I was afraid that if I didn't pick her, it'd look like I was playing favorites. I wanted to keep an even playing field. I suppose I could have done that without dancing, but why do anything if you can't do it while dancing?

On Nick's first go-round as the moderator, he left out the all-important "the werewolves go back to sleep" before saying "the fortune teller wakes up" so the werewolves, including me, had our eyes wide open when Des, the fortune teller, opened hers, so we had no choice but to kill her. Rookie mistake.

I don't know how many times we played, but it seemed like Wah-Kee and especially Des turned out to be werewolves an inordinate amount of times. We didn't keep a running score, so I don't know how many times the villagers won versus the werewolves, but considering the werewolves were usually outnumbered two to six, the village got wiped out a lot more often than I would have expected. I think that says something about people being more interested in "revenge killing" for previous games than trying to win.

The final game of the night answered a question that had come up a few times earlier in night; what happens when there are only two players left; a werewolf and a villager? If the two are remaining, during the "daylight" hours, the werewolf wins, because each one would obviously claim the other was the werewolf, resulting in a draw and no lynching, and the werewolf would claim it's final victim that night. That actually happened a couple of times. But, in the case of the last game, the final two were Josh (my understudy for when I'm not around to hang out with Nick and co.) and Michele. Each accused the other of being the werewolf, which would have been a draw, but...Josh was the sheriff, so his vote counted twice. So then we had two votes for hanging Michele and one for Josh. Josh wins, right? No! Michele had the hunter card. And the hunter, if voted out, is allowed to kill any other player with their dying breath. So Josh, the sheriff/werewolf hung Michele and Michele shot Josh. Nobody wins. It was awesome.

I don't know how to end this one. I guess I'll leave you with this advise for 2008: If you're constipated, DO NOT TAKE KAOPECTATE! That stuff is for diarrhea. Taking it for the other thing makes it much, much worse.

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Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto

Labor Day weekend may have been the greatest couple of days in my sad, sorry little life. Of course, then I got the hiccups for nearly five days, had to get a chest x-ray and a blood test, took prescription antacids and finally had the hiccups supplanted by constant, horrible coughing. And the pills made my crap turn black and spherical, like little bowling balls. Not to mention the constant job search, and getting turned down for a crap job AT THE MALL by people who are too stupid to use a PC. If Apple's share of the personal computer market is growing by leaps and bounds, then how come half the online applications for retail stores I tried to fill out wouldn't even let me finish because they weren't Mac-compatible? Congratulations on that five percent of the market, fellas. Keep reaching for the stars! But enough about all that. Back to Labor Day.

The awesomeness started when Brianna got back that Saturday. Oh yeah, I somehow forgot to mention that she's been in South Carolina since July 4th and the house has been heartbreakingly empty without her. Anyway, she'd been gone all summer and finally came back with Michele's sister that Saturday night. To celebrate, we went to Famous Dave's, Brianna's favorite restaurant. She got taller over the summer, and turned nine at the end of September. Man, that's depressing. It seems like just the other day she was wearing playing in my pajama pants. There's got to be a better way of saying that.



The other thing that would have been reported earlier were it not for my habit of long spells of infrequent updates is Nick and Heidi moved into the house next door to my parents. They moved in the weekend before Labor Day, and I asked my mom which day we were going to have a barbecue, because Nick might be having one, too. Somehow, this pure speculation on my part became fact, after Nick called me and said, "Did you tell your mom I was having a barbecue?" No, I said might. I saw a red grill when we were unloading the moving truck and, knowing that traditionally people have barbecues on Labor Day weekend for some reason, I thought there was a possibility that maybe they'd be doing something, and I just thought we'd coordinate. Well, whatever. My "idea" turned into a whole bunch of people coming over to Nick's place Monday, most of whom I'd never seen before or since. One of them was actually the mother of someone who was invited, but couldn't go so she sent her mom instead. Huh. I guess they're Hedie's friends. It's weird to think of her in her own world outside of our sheltered little group, I guess in the same way I can't really picture Lord Loser hanging out with his non-blog buddies, probably sitting around a campfire, eating cow placenta and talking about their beards.

Before the barbecue, I was out in the woods by the river behind my parent's house. Why? Well, you may remember a few years ago my brother found some rusty old gun barrels buried in the hill. We've also found some old bottles, most of which are worthless, but there's actually people out there that collect old bottles, and not just for the five cent deposit. One of the bottles I dug up a few years ago is an amber Warner's Safe Cure bottle which are apparently big collector's items. So I went out by the river to see if I could find any other cool stuff in the ground. Little did I know what I was about to unearth. Not anything I could sell, but something much, much better.

Long periods of no rain coupled with unseasonably warm weather left the already humble river withered down to a mere trickle. Behind my grandmother's house, sand patches that normally made up the riverbed now protruded into islands that baked in the noonday sun.





As I stood on the muddy riverbank, looking across at one such island, the clouds parted and a shimmering ray of sunlight shown down directly on possibly the greatest thing I'd ever seen. There, caked in mud and sitting atop a sand dune in the middle of the river, was what looked like...no, it can't be. Yes, it was! A Rock'em Sock'em Robot!



I knew right then that this was probably going to be the highlight of my life until I have kids. And even then it's a toss-up. I'd never owned a Rock'em Sock'em Robot set, or even had the desire to, but something about seeing that lone robot discarded in the river made my face light up. It was much bigger than I'd always pictured these things. Presumably years in the mud had stained it almost completely black, and at first I figured it was the blue one, but after cleaning it off a bit, faint traces of red were detected in the um, crotch area.



Not far from where I found the robot, I found a pretty cool squirt gun that, like the robot, had been transformed by years of gunk and filth from a goofy neon orange color to a realistic matte black. Subsequent trips further down the river revealed an ominous decapitated doll and a weathered and mangy Abu from Aladdin, both found in the woods on the other side of the river and creeped me out more than a little.







I also saw a snapping turtle chilling out in one of the few spots where the water was still deep enough to completely submerge itself. I saw him the next day sunbathing over by where the robot was. I asked it how to stop The Nothing, but it mostly just ignored me.





So anyway, finding that robot wrapped me in a swaddling cloth of confidence, as if it bestowed mystic Rock'em Sock'em powers unto me as thanks for releasing it from it's watery tomb. Everything from that point on seemed to be going my way. During the barbecue, I showed Nick and Hedie around their new home, since I practically grew up over there. My parents unlocked the upstairs apartment to show them around up there, and in one of the closets I found an abandoned Xbox game. I even uncharacteristically volunteered to go down the bulkhead into the creepy basement that seemed to be literally carved out rock and may have had some corpses down there. And later that night, we played a Madden 08 tournament and, despite a long and glorious history of losing in a spectacular fashion, I easily smoked everyone that stood in my path. It was the greatest weekend ever.

And then everything turned to crap. The robot giveth, the robot taketh away. Maybe I wasn't supposed to disturb him from his eternal slumber, and I've upset the delicate balance of something or other. Maybe it's like that cursed tiki idol from The Brady Bunch. But it's so cool. Maybe it's the ratty old Abu doll that's doing it. Yeah, that makes more sense. Evil monkey doll.

Anyway, everything's been going downhill ever since that weekend. So even the tiniest bit of good luck right now would be greatly appreciated.

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By Your Powers Combined...

Before I had a blog, I used to whittle away the hours on a message board, conversing with all manner of nerds, geeks and shut-ins interesting people from all walks of life. The interaction with all these characters is what made it fun and kept me coming back, but it's a little harder to reproduce that kind of dynamic on a blog unless there's an active comments section. As it is, some people don't even read the comments. It's true! Because of this, and because fermicat gave me the idea, I'm just going to copy and paste my last comment and count it as a new post, but make just enough subtle changes that you'll have to read it all over again.

Yes, I've been lagging lately. Ever since I moved at the end of last sumer, time hasn't been my friend. It's not that I haven't done or seen anything worth noting all this time, it's just I never seem to have enough time to put it into words, and now there's too much to write about and I don't know where to start back up again. Here's what's been accumulating in the queue...

• We moved into the town house. I had a little story about moving day. That was last August, I think. The last time I posted on a "regular" basis. After that I had little time because...
  
  
• Mr. Schprock's arch-nemesis, Ms. Smith made the last few months of the year, right up to the holidays, a living hell. She actually made me feel sorry for Joe. Don't worry, things are back to the way they should be and I want to throw rocks at him again. But for a while there, I was conflicted.
  
  
• In October, we hired a new full-time employee, Amy. And Joe's been making the workplace awkward and creepy ever since. She's read the Joe-kus, so she knew what to expect.
  
  
• Meanwhile, yet another employee has been perfecting his...talent.
  
  
• In March, Christy came back up to visit Jose, and we went to the Olive Garden, where we talked about a previous time at the Olive Garden where we heard a father make a very unusual offer to his son...
  
  
• I found some more information on the Cannibal King song, that I thought I'd share against your will.
  
  
• Over 20 years later, Large Marge still frightens children. I have a story of how I inadvertently gave Brianna Claymation nightmares.
  
  
• At the beginning of April, I spoke with Trina, who as most of you know, fell through a roof and ended up with Sloth face. This one was supposed to serve as an announcement as to what happened to her and why she hadn't been posting, but it turns out she actually managed to TYPE OUT A LONG-ASS POST USING ONE FINGER before I even put this one up. And I DID write a message on her blog, so more of her readers would see it than the few crossovers we've got between us. So it's a few weeks late now...but I'm sure there's still somebody who didn't know about it yet.
  
  
• Don't laugh, but I actually contemplated concluding my story about Nick and Hedie's wedding, which was supposed to be posted on 2nd Anniversary of the wedding (and the 11th anniversary of Spleen Day). But then the Trina thing happened and I wasn't sure which one to post that Monday, so I ended up doing neither. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
  
  
• Man, I sure procrastinate alot. That wasn't going to be a post. I'm just saying.
  
  
• I took last week off from work because Brianna had April Vacation. We watched a bunch of movies, made a fort out of cushions, and went to a carnival. It was the best week ever.
  
  
• Two squirrels were found (very) dead in my grandmother's pool. I imagined a little squirrel CSI team trying to solve the case. I was hoping to get some gruesome photos but...
  
  
• Holy crap! My grandmother's pool is gone! It's not there anymore, they took the deck and everything. I think Carmen San Diego did it. The worst part is, it contained evidence pertinent to the squirrel case! Also, my childhood memories are crumbling around me at an alarmingly rapid rate!
  
  

So that's how far behind I am. There are a few more, like the one I wrote when that comedian killed himself and the singer from Boston died (yes, he committed suicide too, but we didn't know that at the time). some of these things are time-sensitive, and if I don't publish them right away, they're sort of rendered irrelevant. I still have an account my my wrote of a dazed old woman wandering around my grandmother's driveway. That's at least two years old, before all the moving and sleeping on the floor craziness.

Anyway, do I just move on to something else, or try to catch up? While I'm writing these, what if something else happens that's too good not to share but I don't write about it because I'm still working on something from November and I fall behind even further. I need a designated "blogging time" I think.

Well, what should my next post be? It's up to you. The power is yours!

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The Secret of Bare Cove

Like the Hardy Boys before us, (the teen sleuths, not the wrestlers) my friends and I have discovered the secret of someplace. Yes, we have uncovered the grisly truth of behind the secret of Bare Cove. Or we would have, if we hadn't bolted like Kenyan marathon runners as soon as we heard someone coming.

Here's what went down: Last month we were sitting around Nick's house trying to decide how to spend our Sunday afternoon, when it was suggested that we buy some disposable cameras and go around taking pictures of random stuff. Maybe it was the ammonia emitting from the ferret cage, but we thought it was a good idea and we were soon on our way.

After taking a few pictures at Nantasket Beach, we drove to Bare Cove, the type of large wooded area where people go to walk their dogs or to write 10,000 page manuscripts on the evils of technology. It didn't take long for us to veer off the paved path to explore the woods. Eventually, we came to a suspicious pair of women's shoes.


Two red pumps. I think they were pumps. I don't really know what the hell a pump is, but it sounds good: two red pumps. Abandoned shoes in the middle of nowhere are a little disturbing. But not as much a hut made out of tree branches sitting on a hill that overlooks abandoned shoes in the middle of nowhere.





We went up to investigate the hut. It was small; made out of branches and twigs, and what looked like maybe a piece of broken old fence for a door. There was a jacket inside. Outside, there was a hacksaw with a bright orange handle sticking out under the dead leaves.



I'm sure there's many explanations for what we found. Maybe the hut was a Cub Scout project or some handy junkies home, and completely unrelated to the shoes scattered below. It's not like I saw any blood on the hacksaw, although I didn't exactly get close enough to investigate. We all ran away when we heard someone coming. Maybe it was just a jogger. Or a squirrel. But no one wanted to stick around to find out. I'm too young to be skinned alive and worn as a coat.

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Spleen Day

April 2.

This day may not hold much meaning to most people, but to my friends and me, it will forever be known as Spleen Day. Yes, on this day in 1996, Nick got smacked around like an angry rag doll and wound up in the hospital minus a superfluous organ.

We were juniors in high school. I was sitting in homeroom, probably doodling skulls and bunnies, when Jim burst into the room, laughing hysterically.

"Nick's nose exploded!"

"What?!"

"There's blood everywhere!"

Jim explained what had happened. Apparently, Nick had some words with someone outside the building. I think Nick made fun of his girlfriend or something. I don’t know. I was sitting at my desk, channeling my own teenage angst into demented little scribbles in the margins of my notebook. But the point is, things started to heat up, and Nick got punched in the face, spilling forth what I can only imagine was a crimson torrent from his nose. That probably would have been more than enough for someone to get their point across, but it didn't stop there. He was also kicked in the side, which ruptured his spleen and set up the subsequent hospital stay. All this before school even started. It was an interesting day.

Ironically, the school was having a blood drive that day. Really. The joke was that all the blood collected went to Nick, either that or all the blood he left on the dirt outside was mopped up and donated to the Red Cross.

Nick was laid out for a few weeks, while the other kid with the silly poodle haircut was suspended and told if he got into another fight within so many days he’d be expelled.

Nick has since proclaimed that April 2 be known as Spleen Day, and while the greeting card companies haven't jumped on it yet (Happy Spleen Day, Grandma!), it's significant enough to be the date of Nick and Hedie's wedding next year. Easier to remember the anniversary that way.

Who knows? Maybe it'll catch on. Or maybe not. But for a select few, it will always be remembered as the day Nick got the ever-loving crap kicked out of him by a drugged-out lunkhead.

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