Beyond My Control

Geek Out!

I think I’m part geek. Not full geek, only part.

For example, I do have a blog (or three), I know my way around a computer – Mac and PC, I was a Buffy fan and haven’t turned down the opportunity to watch the new version of Battlestar Galactica when the DVDs have been pressed upon me.

On the other hand, my knowledge of and desire to play computer games begins and ends with Sim City and Tetris, I don’t own a PDA, or a games console, and I don’t know how to use at least ¾ of the software on my computer and nor do I care to find out.

However, I also spent the weekend doing the following things:

- buying and setting up the wireless router and then being stupidly pleased with being able to connect to the internet from bed

- buying and setting up a multi-function printer/scanner machine thing and scanning random pieces of paper just because I could

- sorting out stacks upon stacks of video tapes in order to cull the tapes that have now been replaced by DVDs, throwing out dead tapes and re-labelling others to be taped over and in doing so concluding that if I just happened to buy the complete collections of Buffy and Angel then I’d have a lot more space and many, many free tapes

- fixing some problem with Dad’s computer. Again

- showing my brother tricks with page formatting in Word

- cleaning up my home computer by burning a whole lot of stuff to disc so as to create more space on the hard drive

- making mixed tape-style playlists in iTunes

- talking myself out of buying a new iMac that I don’t need and can’t afford, but which is so attractive, especially now as I’m wireless etc

In my defence, I think I totally geeked myself out, and won’t need to revisit any of my geeky tendencies for at least a month or three. And I did achieve much time spent outside in the beautiful Spring weather that we had on Saturday – buying all of those geeky items does require one to go outside and walk around a lot.

However, next weekend it will be all sophisticated cocktail drinking and wearing of fancy clothes, or at least reading books, with nary a computer or TV show in sight.

Sure it will.

A story of successful stupidity, with (unsatisfactory) diagrams!

On Christmas Eve my life briefly turned into a Mentos ad.

I can’t remember if it was the Mentos ad in which they carried the car to get it out of the wedged in parking space, or the Foo Fighters clip ripping off Mentos ads. Both? For these purposes, however, I’m going to settle on the former. I didn’t see Dave Grohl around anywhere and, believe me, I would have noticed that. And this would be an entirely different entry.

Some things to note first. The car park at my apartment building is totally crap. It’s very oddly sized. Each space is the appropriate size for a compact car only. There should in fact be two spots for every three spots they’ve squeezed in. All the spaces are then wedged in chunks around the building, none with any kind of decent turning circle, especially not when other cars are parked.

My allocated spot isn’t the worst of them all – it doesn’t have water pipes sticking out into the space that’s not big enough in the first place, for example – but it’s still pretty crumby. It requires a diagram, I think. A not even remotely to scale drawing.

See how my space is wedged right in the corner there? Between a wooden fence and another narrow space. And see how narrow the driveway is coming into our section?

On a day to day basis this isn’t a big deal because I don’t have a car. So my two neighbours, with their tiny compact hatch-backs, spread out over the three spaces and all is happy – though it still takes them quite a bit of effort to back out in the mornings. In the past I have parked several different types of cars in my space, when I was moving in and such, and have concluded that the tiny baby hatch-back is the only type of car to park there if you want to be able to get out again.

Which brings me to Christmas Eve. Big family lunch at my place. Invited Betty, whose family is all in other parts of the country/world. She decided she would drive her little baby hatch-back over, park it in my space, then public transport home so she could imbibe. I would then drop her car off the next day on my way to Christmas lunch. Cool. And I didn’t even hesitate about her parking in my space, because her car has been in and out of there many times before.

However, she decided to be friendly and polite. And that was really, really stupid.

She decided that as both my neighbours were away at the time she arrived, and therefore she had more turning room, she would back the car into the space so that in the morning I could drive straight out.

So, with Boofhead and I standing and watching, waiting to unload all the booze she’d bought to contribute to the lunch, she started backing in. Fine. Fine. Just adjust a little. Fine. You’re almost around the wall. Good.

Shit.

How the hell did that happen?

In the space of one move, and about five seconds, the car was wedged against the corner of the building. Half in the driveway, half in the car park section, the driver’s side door firmly against the bricks. Go forward and rip off half the side panelling, go backwards rip off the other half of the panelling and the mirror. Could not even open the drivers door to get out.

None of us had any idea how it got there.

So Betty climbs across the front seat and out the passenger side and the three of us stand there looking at it. I wished that I had a camera in my phone, or film in my camera.

We didn’t ponder for long. There was really only one choice.

We had to pick up the car and drag it away from the wall.

Never mind that Boofhead’s shoulder is so wrecked and in need of reconstruction that it has been known, more than once, to dislocate when he rolls over in bed. Never mind that my back is basically stuffed and had already been playing up thanks to stupid things like having to move furniture around and actually vacuum the flat properly in order to prepare it for an influx of relatives.

We positioned ourselves along the back bumper, found something solid (and rather sharp, as it turned out) to hold on to, lifted, and dragged. Really we dragged, the tires never actually left the concrete. But the car moved. Away from the wall, into a good position, from where Betty then backed it straight into the space. And out of which I drove it easily the next morning.

Of course, it was only once it was parked that any of us thought that perhaps taking the tubs full of ice and cartons of beer and wine out of the back seat before we lifted the car may have made our job a little easier. But we were the three semi-injured morons who got the car into that position, and elected to lift it out in the first place, and forgot to take photos, so what can you really expect?

That all done, we unloaded the car – because lifting more things was just what the shoulder/back ordered – and then sat down to await the relatives. It was 11.45 in the morning. Nevertheless, we felt we’d earned a drink, and justified that the sun was over the yardarm somewhere in the world at that time, if not in our specific location. In true Christmas spirit, by the time the rest of the gang arrived over an hour later we were happily tipsy and feeling no car related pain.

Of course, by the time Boxing Day rolled around, I couldn’t roll around, or otherwise move, because my back was so seized up. But that’s what we have to go through in order to have car lifting stories to tell.

I just ask that next time, Dave Grohl is around. That’s not too much to ask, right?

Important Life Lesson Number 387

When lying flat on one’s back on the living room floor in order to relieve the discomfort from a flare up in one’s stuffed back (stupid back!), resulting in being unable to move because once one lies down one cannot get up again without substantial effort, one should not, under any circumstances, try to drink from one’s water bottle even when said water bottle has a non-spill sports lid.

Because when one takes the bottle away from the lips, the stream of water will, inevitably, be directed straight down one’s nostril. Which requires one to sit up really, really quickly in order to avoid (a) drowning; or (b) snorting water all over oneself, which is either (a) painful; or (b) impossible, depending on how quickly the medication is working.

Also, I must remember to tell the story of how lifting a car really doesn’t help a stuffed back get any better. It may, possibly, even have made it worse. (Ya think?)

Defying Death, and the Emergency Room

Remarkably enough, the first time I was ever admitted to hospital was when I was 29½ years old.

I managed to survive my entire childhood – not to mention my oft-drunken twenties – without breaking any bones, or requiring my appendix out, or even needing stitches other than when they pulled a couple of teeth when I was about seven.* That I managed to avoid this, and that I’m not currently sporting any metal pins or malicious scarring, is stunning given some of the stupid things I did as a kid.

So here I present the first in a sporadic series of stories of my death defying childhood stunts – planned and unplanned – so that you can marvel at (a) the stupidity of children; and (b) the fact that I managed to stay out of the emergency room.

One evening, on a weekend when I was – hmmm, can’t remember, older than 5 because we didn’t live in that house until I was 5, and probably younger than 10 – let’s say 9, I was fighting with Boofhead. This was far from unusual.

What we were fighting about, I have no idea. All I know was that we were in his bedroom (which was odd because for all our disputes as siblings we generally stayed out of each other’s space), and we were wrestling and likely punching each other. On his bed. Which was next to the full length window. The closed full length window.

You can see where this is going, right?

One minute, fighting with little brother on bed. Next minute, sitting on the grass outside the bedroom wondering what the hell just happened.

Fell off the bed, bounced on to the floor for a split second, and then through the bottom pane of glass in the window and landed, on my bum, in the garden. It should also be noted that the distance between the bottom of the window and the grass was greater than the distance between the top of the bed and the floor, i.e. there was a reasonable drop.

Despite taking a two tiered tumble, and breaking a window AS I FELL THROUGH IT, the grand total damage to me was: nothing. NOT A SCRATCH. Not a cut or even a little nick of the kind you inevitably get when you pick up a broken glass in the kitchen. Not a bruise. Nothing at all. The stunned expression on my face as I sat on the grass surrounded by glass was about as severe as it got.

Okay, the stunned expressions on the faces of Boofhead and my parents were as severe as it got.

All I really needed to do was a somersault as I passed through the window and diving career would have been in my future. Preferably not window diving.

Though, come to think of it, the window diving might explain why Boofhead and I generally stayed away from each other’s rooms and kept all our fighting to the billiard room in later years (there was virtually no fighting in the living room – it had tiles on the floor – we were crazy enough to keep wrestling and punching each other for years after we should have grown out of it, but we were smart enough to do it on carpet.)

Next up: how Uli tried to chop off her toe with a slippery slide.

* My exact opposite was my friend Bobby, who, when we were 13, broke his leg badly enough that he was in plaster from toe to groin. Then, while he was in said plaster, he got the chicken pox. While he was recovering from the chicken pox, but still in the plaster, his appendix had to be removed. That wasn’t such a good year for him.

Further proof that holiday can't come too soon

This evening, during a break in a seminar, I walked into the bathroom, turned the corner, almost bumped into someone, apologised for almost bumping into them, and only then did I discover that I had almost walked into a mirror and the person I was apologising to was myself.

And, of course, behind me, there were other seminar attendees sniggering appropriately.

Crap, it is me!

Last night I was attending an annual end of financial year function – aka mass free piss-up – and when it came to the speeches I consciously reached to turn off my mobile phone but then thought the following four things:

1. the speeches won’t be very long so by the time I turn it off I’ll basically have to turn it back on again;

2. it’s very crowded and kind of loud in here, so even if it did ring it wouldn’t be very intrusive;

3. my phone never rings; and

4. therefore there's no point in turning it off so I won't.

Ha! Two minutes into the first speech it bloody well rang, didn’t it.

Thankfully point 2 held true, and the phone was inside my bag, so it was muffled, and I could grab it quickly and viciously hang up on “private number calling” while looking appropriately chastened to those people around me who could hear the damn thing.

Mind you, at least I had sufficient phone etiquette to both be embarrassed and not actually answer the call. And not to have one of those annoying, loud and stupid ring tones (frog thing, I’m looking at you). Unlike the person whose phone rang during the second speech. It rang on the other side of the room and we could all hear it, and the guy answering it.

So I don’t think my standing in the fit-for-polite-company stakes has dropped too far. Just a couple of places. And I’ve definitely learned my lesson.

A Sad and Messy Tale

Ah, the day after St Patrick’s Day. A day that for me always means vomit.

But not in the way you might think.

No, this isn’t another drunken rambling, or a story about drunken rambling, but rather a sad tale of illness and despair.

Flashback to 17 March 1999. I had been working in our new company for two and a half weeks (although I had been working for the Boss for two years prior to that in the old company). The Boss was leaving in the middle of the afternoon to go overseas to a family event. This meant, in order of priority at the time, that (a) I could leave early to go to the pub for green beer; (b) the morning and early afternoon was crazy with trying to get things done in order to get him out the door and to the airport; and (c) as of the next day I would be in charge of the office. All of these things are relevant, as you will come to see.

So we ran around like the proverbial chickens with their heads cut off until the early afternoon. We didn’t get a chance to pause to get lunch until at least 2.30. Which was a problem, because around the city getting lunch after 2pm is virtually impossible unless you want to go to McDonalds. Which I didn’t. Because that’s a slippery slope. Mainly due to grease. So I wound up shovelling down a sausage roll that I thought at the time wasn’t quite warm enough and which had likely been sitting in the pie warmer since 9am.

But all was fine. The Boss got on his plane, I relaxed, and left the office at 4.30 to meet Nathan at the Irish pub that was, at that time, our regular watering hole. A few green beers and some Guinness was drunk from plastic cups standing around in the carpark next to said Irish pub, which they take over as an extended drinking hall each St Paddy’s Day in order to cater to the crowds. Needless to say, that gets old pretty fast, so not too long into the evening Nathan and I headed back to their place to meet Smurfette, drink non-green beer, and order that traditional Irish meal of pizza.

I got drunk, but not outrageously drunk. After all, it was the middle of the week and I had to be the boss the next day. I left at around 11, swaying but fine. On the way home in the back of the taxi I started to feel a little unwell, but, again, all was fine. I staggered into bed and was about to start snoring (figuratively, of course, I don’t actually snore) when suddenly I had to run for the bathroom and was violently ill. Vomitous. Awful.

By the time I staggered into bed a second time, it was the 18th of March, and hell day had begun.

I was throwing up, and having issues at the other end as well, for the whole night. I couldn’t hold even a sip of water down. Each time I’d climb shivering and sweaty back into bed and start to drift off to exhausted sleep, I would have to get up again and head to the bathroom. At a couple of points I was fairly sure that Betty – who I was sharing the house with at the time – would discover me passed out on the floor some time in the morning. Or maybe just dead.

All this time I’m thinking two things. One, why, why was I so stupid to drink so much? Followed by, but I didn’t drink that much! Two, I need to get up in an every decreasing number of hours and go be the boss.

By the time my alarm went off, and I was still unable to keep anything down, I knew that there was almost no way. I had to get to the doctor. Which I did, in track pants, a giant cardigan and sneakers, and with only having to get off the tram once to throw up on my way there. And with possibly the messiest hair and worst breath ever.

And of course it’s the day after St Patrick’s Day, so I was unlikely to be the only vomiting patient my doctor saw. But he was sympathetic based solely on the look of me as I slunk back into the Waiting Room after another detour into the bathroom. I described my night and confessed to green beer and pizza. To my instant relief his response was, “I don’t think it’s the beer, you have food poisoning. Bad food poisoning. And it’s not the pizza, they kill all the germs in the hot oven and you wouldn’t have been sick so soon. Did you eat anything about 9 hours before you got sick?”

Well, now that he mentioned it, there was that dodgy sausage roll. Bingo. That evil, evil, sitting around for hours, not nearly hot enough, breeding ground for germs, sausage roll.

An anti-vomit shot in the arse, a prescription for follow-up anti-nausea tablets, a medical certificate demanding I take the rest of the week off, and instructions to take a taxi home to bed later, I was out on the street. Feeling emotionally if not physically better. And knowing that I had to go to the office.

Needless to say Kimberlance took one look at me and tried to call a cab. And while I’m often an office martyr when I’m sick, I wasn’t capable of doing anything other than making a couple of phone calls and allowing her to call me the cab.

You’d think it might end there, with me in a happy drugged sleep. But no. While I had had a couple of mild cases of food poisoning necessitating shots in the arse before, I had never had to take the follow-up tablets because the shot had always done it. Not this time. After about six hours of the pleasant exhausted sleep I had to run for the bathroom again. The shot was wearing off. Thankfully I could keep the anti-nausea tablets down though, because I had to keep taking them well into the 19th of March, when I went back to work and became the boss, in true office martyr fashion.

Which is why the day after St Patrick’s Day will forever mean vomit. And why I haven’t eaten anything that came out of a pie warmer in 6 years. And why I always try to get lunch by 12.30. And why I never have more than two beers on St Patrick’s Day, because I have no desire to tempt fate.

Let's not go there

Situations I don’t ever need to be a part of again, number 523:

Visiting Mary, my step-mother, in the hospital after back surgery and the two of us going through the “What You Can and Can’t Do After Back Surgery” pamphlet, laughing at all the housework she’s banned from doing, being appalled at how long it will be before she can sit for any length of time, and then getting to the “Sex After Back Surgery” section of pamphlet. Both pausing for just a moment to take in the implications of this part of material, and then panicking and moving on quickly to the exercises section with a quick “they do cover everything, don’t they” and a mutual relief that we were looking at the pamphlet and not each other during this exchange.