I keep forgetting this every year. Fortunately, my team doesn't.

Shirley had the best pirate talk:

Arr, methinks what that scurvy Smith meant t'say is how has none of ye
worthless bilge rats said nothin about this yet? Avast me hearties! Tis
International Talk Like A Pirate day!

On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Kyle Smith wrote:

> How has nobody said anything about this yet? Come on people. It's
> International Talk Like A Pirate Day.
>
> http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html

Kris didn't need to go to work today, as his company (place of employment, not HIS company) was moving from one side of the freeway to the other side of the freeway, taking the day to do it. Since he's planning on working from home (read that either as as "working" from home or "WarHammering from home", your choice), he didn't want to drive ALL THE WAY to San Carlos for a Velocity workout, only to drive ALL THE WAY back home for "work."

What? Kris? Lazy? Now that's like calling me lazy or something.

Oh.

Wait.

So, I drove the truck up to Redwood City to meet up with Doyle at his house. We were planning on using my truck to cart the 60+ 2.5 gallon jugs of water for this weekend's Sectionals tournament. I offered my truck since it's bigger than Doyle's, and, well, in theory, able to hold more of that water weight ("Does this water make me look fat?").

I exited the freeway and was driving down Woodside when I was stopped at a light. I know, I know, HOW could I POSSIBLY be surprised that I was stopped at a light? I have only the WORST red light karma of anyone in the state, just drive with me to see.

So, I'm sitting there at the red light, watching the homeless person standing on the side of the road. I've taken to staring at these people in a valient attempt to make them feel uncomfortable, kinda the same way they make me feel uncomfortable with their staring at me as they sit there. Sorta like a staring content of some sort, first one who blinks loses. Sorta. Maybe. No, not really.

As I was watching, the guy turned, and I could read his sign.

It read something like "Homeless. I need. Profit! World! Your soul. It is worth. Nonbelievers are materialistic! Not spiritual!"

Initially, I was annoyed at the guy and his sign. I immediately launched into the defensive mode, thinking gah, this guy is like, or at least wants to be like, every person of power in an organized religion: he has the ear of God, and only he does, so listen to him if you want to know what God is saying. I fail to believe, or rather, I fail to suspend disbelief, that any person has a better ear on the voice of God thing, than anyone else does.

Kris says I don't do well with people telling me what to do, so this probably doesn't surprise him.

After thinking about the sign, however, I had to laugh at his statement, even as I was annoyed by it. I was annoyed by it because, well, I immediately fell into the cultural and societal belief that materialism is bad, and spiritualism is good. If materialism is so bad, why not just forsake all materialism? You don't really need that roof over your head. Those clothes? Yeah, those are material, too. That food? Hey, what do you know, it's made of some material, too! WOW! Go ahead, and leave those, too.

I gave up after that, deciding that the whole homeless guy's cardboard sign really wasn't worth it.

When I was 14 or so and living at my dad's place, I somehow managed to grow a wart on the side of my index finger. Now, this wasn't just any wart, mind you. This was a GIANT wart (well, it seemed so at the time), close to 4mm across. Located on the side of my finger, on the side of the lower knuckle, it was annoying.

Given its location, even if it hadn't started out being annoying, just being where it was (easy access!) meant I was guaranteed to pick at it. Which, of course, I did. Which, of course, made the thing grow bigger and bigger and bigger. So, the tiny bump ballooned to a giant wart.

Did I mention annoying? How about the picking?

Yeah.

Turns out, warts are fairly discrete packages. They're considered a tiny tumor, typically caused by a viral infection. They have a core that will grow and grow and grow if you pick at them. Having a core, however, means that, hey, maybe that core will detach.

Which is what happened with the one I had on my finger. I was so annoyed by it that I picked at it enough to discover the separation layer between the core and the rest of my finger. Once I found this out, I took an x-actor knife and a bottle of alcohol into the bathroom, closed the door, and proceeded to excise the lump from my finger. I'm not sure my dad ever noticed. Either I cleaned up well, or he decided not to ask, as there was a lot of blood on that first attempt.

That first attempt not being so great. The lump grew back, causing me to try again. The second time, I cut much deeper, following the core down to where it tapered to a tip, and was rewarded with a deep hole in the side of my finger. It healed after a while, with no infection, and I have a small scar at the location, barely noticable in its spot.

Some time a few years later, I managed a half dozne more spots that looked very similar to the wart on my hand, this time on the bottom of my feet. I tried the various self-administrated wart removal techniques of the time, finally succeeding only with a 12 hour soak in the Salt River on a day of hookie with Jenn Chase and her boyfriend. I was able to scrape off (read: gouge out) all of the warts on the bottom of my feet but one that day.

That spot has stayed on my feet over the subsequent years, never growing big, always slightly annoying smack dab in the middle of my foot. It would grow so that it stuck up a little bit on my foot, so I'd take a nail clipper and trim it down, keeping it flush with my foot and mostly in check.

Until tonight. Gah.

Without thinking about it, I scratched the bottom of my foot when it itched today. I don't know if it was the combination of increased wart size or longer finger nails or what, but on a scratch, I felt a sharp pain and looked down.

To discover the wart had separated from my foot.

The thing is about 3mm across and, apparently, about 4mm deep.

Yeah, it's been twenty years, but I didn't think anything about pulling out the alcohol swabs and x-acto knife to get this one out, too. I wasn't as lucky this time, though. I caused a lot of blood (which, apparently, is pretty bad in preventing the spread of future warts), but managed only to find the edge of the core near the surface, but not the full depth of it.

Update: Well, crap. I think I've done more harm that good. I mean, aside from the unfinished open wound on the bottom of my foot, I now have a fever and sore throat. I can't help but wonder the timing of this illness.

I can't help but think, "I'm dumb."

I don't know that today could have been any worse. I mean, aside from falling asleep as my eyes were giving out on me last night, and waking I don't know how many times to get up and take more Tylenol or Excedrin or, hell, I don't know, maybe even some Vicodin in there somewhere, who can tell what the white pills that all look the same except for an E or a Watson on them are these days. I mean, really?

And aside from, of course, realizing that, hey look, there's a bright and shiny light RIGHT. IN. THE. MIDDLE. OF. MY. VISION. just as I finished my to-do list for the day, and cleaned off the table in preparation for attacking the list, and stuffed all the clothes into the washing machine, and realized I had done all of the unfun tasks for the day and was ready to start the fun ones, but couldn't, because HEY, I CAN'T SEE.

No, that didn't make this day awful, oh, no. It wasn't the stabbing pains in the left side of my head, the first time that I noticed the spears being lopsided. It wasn't the near vampiric need to escape the bright, bright, oh, too bright sun as it tried to beat its way through the windows. Or the thunderous racket that is known as Bella's Snore, reverberating through the house. Or the snick, snick, snick, incessant and fucking never ending licking of that other DOG, who I swear watches me as she licks her crotch, just to make sure she can see just how disgusted I am an her slurping.

No, that wasn't the worst of the day. It wasn't even realizing that I had just asked Kris to drive four miles for gourmet ice cream that I was craving, that HE DIDN'T WANT. That he drove all the way over here because he wanted me to be happy, and here I was, eating the perfect ice cream, and BAWLING my eyes out at my answer to his innocent question of, "So, what do you think of the economy?" The question that I spent 10 minutes crying while taking exactly three breathes between which I railed on just how bad the economy was, and how I didn't know where we were going to come up with $20k to pay the tax bills we just received, the ones that I had budgeted $10k for because THAT'S WHAT THEY WERE LAST YEAR and if the economy is so great and we're doing so well, why is my tax bill twice as high as it was last year when I'M EARNING THE SAME AMOUNT?

And did my client pay up? I DON'T KNOW. I couldn't get to the post office to find out because I couldn't drive today, lest I, oh, SUDDENLY BECAME BLIND or something.

No.

No, despite all of that, the crowning moment of this crappy day was the Tivo remote crashing to the floor and shattering into twenty three pieces.

Now that, THAT, was the highlight of the day. I didn't want to vegge out and watch television or anything. Nope, not at all.

It's not like I can just go to bed to sleep it off or anything.

There was a bright shining beacon of (true) joy (and not this sarcastic kind) when Megan came for lunch, picked me up and drove me to the bookstore so that I could find a book on how to write custom components in ActionScript so that I can finish this location based statistics recorder for ultimate that I've been talking about for YEARS and finally decided, well, if I can't play, at least I can do something useful on the sidelines.

I recall watching some video, maybe I Bleed Black, I'm not sure, where an older guy was interviewed on the sidelines, helping the younger kids out, taping their ankles, getting them food and drinks, cheering them on. I recall thinking at the time, what a loser, just get out there and play already, find another team and move on.

Doesn't work that way. Doesn't every work the way your retarded, stunted little mind thinks it does when you haven't grown enough to know what it's like to be in that position.

Of course, the guy just might have been a loser, can can't tell. I do know that I can comment, even if I can't condemn.

So, I give up. I was trying to back post all of the entries since mid-August, but most of the entries were incomplete at best. At some point, you just have to say, "Hey, this is what it is" and move on. I might fill in the gaps, but really, I just wanted to post about my romantic dinner with Mirabelle from last week, and all the rest of it was just holding it up.

Well, that and a chat with James (of blog naming fame) last night. He commented that even though he knows about all the various details about things I've done over the last few years since working with him, he doesn't feel like he is really connected to me any more. Which is true, since I see him far too rarely than my like of him would suggest I'd see him.

Body language, too, is important in communication, he further commented. Sure, you can read what someone writes on a website, but without the intonations and inflections in the voice, and the facial expressions and body language that accommpany the words, you don't receive the full story. He needs that to be really communicating with someone.

I suspect that goes especially when talking to people who do full-body talking, as Paul has on more than one occasion accused me of doing. Like it's a bad thing that my stories require the use of arms and legs to fully tell, or something (it isn't, and you just missed my rolling my eyes when I said it, and the smirk on my face. Or maybe I did one of my "Vicki" faces, as Kris calls them. I am a woman of many communication styles).

Paul has agreed to work through the Yale Death class I've been a little slow to start, but haven't given up on completely, with me. I was hoping to find someone near by to "take" the class with me, but really, I don't have anyone whom I can do the all night b.s. philosophy sessions with the way that Paul and I used to in the wisdom of our high school years. The folly of youth, mixed with hormones? Yes, THOSE people know what philosophy can be. So much more than we adults pretend to know.

I'm oddly enthusiastic about the class. I wonder if I could get some local friends in on it, too. If I could, I'd be able to convince Paul to come up here for our talk sessions (bribing Gena, of course, with free babysitting and some sort of spa visit).

Of course, my friends might be mad at me for bringing in someone who can philosophize all of the rest of us into corners.