Do You Think They Have Indoor Plumbing?

I’m leaving again. This time I will be jetting to lovely Cherry Log, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. I’ve never been, so I am assuming it is lovely because that’s what the Cherry Log Chamber of Commerce tells me.

I’ll be at a two-day seminar. Five of us will spend time with the top person in our field. He may be the top person in the last 100 years. Or ever. In other words, he’s good. The other four people are some of my closest colleagues, and we always have fun together.

There may be wine. Maybe even beer. Possibly, if we’re lucky, basketball. I’ll tell you all the great stories when I get back.

On the home front, things have been very stressful at the Lefty home. That’s mainly because I am the only one there who is perfect in every way. I’ll share about some of that when I return, too.

In other news, the Cubs take their ringless streak to 100 years. And the West proves best in the National League.

College football is generally annoying the hell out of me.

See y’all when I get back.

It's a Dry Heat

Each June, my employer sends all of its employees to one of the hottest locations within driving distance for a week-long series of meetings. (By “hottest” I do not mean “coolest and hippest,” but “just this side of Hell”.) In any given year there are 800 to 1,000 of us gathered for the most pointless, long-winded sessions imaginable. But it’s not all bad. The meetings are held on a university campus, so we get to stay in old, smelly dorms with no air conditioning.

I get to see cherished colleagues there every year, and that almost makes the rest of the nonsense worth enduring. Of course, I always hunt down my best friends in the group to find the coldest beer in town.

My oldest friend there is a guy I first met in college. We played on the same intramural softball team and had lots of other common interests before we became colleagues. He was kind enough to rub in my face the fact that he plays on an adult baseball team once or twice a week. Bastard.

The good news is that I haven’t yet been purged from the company, and I still have a job. The bad news is that I’ll have to go to these meetings again next year.

What Goes Down Must Come Up

A few nights before my business trip, I was restless and uncomfortable. I couldn’t sleep. I chalked it up to the five cups of coffee I had that evening. About 1:00am, I got up to watch television.

During a DVRed episode of The Daily Show, I started to feel nausea. Before I knew it, the nausea was at full tilt. I’ll spare you the specific details, but for the next three and a half hours, in 45 minute cycles, I was running between the bathroom and the couch. I had never before been this violently ill, and there seemed to be no end in sight.

I asked my wife to take me to the emergency room.

The only times I have been to the emergency room previously were to have the doctors sew up various open wounds on my body, mostly on my face. I’ve had more thread in my body than a Central American sweatshop.

This time, though, I was sick. I was extremely grateful for the anti-nausea meds, which allowed me to sleep. Mrs. Lefty sat in the corner of the room, patiently reading a book. As I was starting to fade out, I thought about wonderful tricks I could play on the ER staff.

I could pretend to be delusional, asking my nurse why there were hundreds of spiders crawling out of the cupboards, or who was that man in the orange jumpsuit and carrying a roadside flare who kept coming in and messing with my IV? Or, maybe I could feign a sharp pain in my abdomen that kept moving around each time the doctor thought he had located it.

But no, I behaved. I didn’t want to be responsible for the death of some car accident victim just because I was playing a prank on the doctor.

Maybe, though, I’ll try it out on my family doctor after I have to sit two hours in the waiting room.

As for the illness, the doctor speculated it was only a severe flu and not food poisoning. It took me a few days to get back to normal, but fortunately I was well enough to drink myself silly on my business trip.

The Gray Days of May

The saga of my hair continues. After my last haircut disaster, I chose a different barber. He was a chatty, conventional fellow, so I figured it would be a good match.

We discussed my particular haircut needs, and when the question of length came up, I tried to describe what I wanted. He was a little unsure of what I meant, so he said, “I’ll cut it to a medium length, and if you want more, I can cut more.” Apparently, what he meant by “medium length” was “so short everybody can see the lice crawling around on your scalp.”

Mrs. Lefty, who always thinks my hair gets cut too short anyway, was furious. “You’re never going to him again,” she said.

Then, as we were riding in the car this week, my wife snorted at me with glee, “You’ve got gray!” Ack! It is true. I have never before noticed gray on my head, but there they were, accentuated by my new haircut, two wiry, gray hairs.

I guess this is it. My life is rapidly coming to an end. You can all begin to prepare your remarks for my memorial service. I’m sure your tributes would bring tears to my eyes if I were still alive.

Also, coming up this week...

• The long awaited paperclip-buttonless pants diagram.
• My trip to the emergency room just before I went out of town on business.

Still Away...

I'm still traveling, but am done for the day. Time to go to the bar, have a beer and watch some basketball.

It's a rough life, I know.

I'll Be Back

I am traveling to a series of business meetings this week (yes, in a sunny clime!), and so I probably won’t update this most important blog for a while. Instead, see one of my friends at the blogroll to the right, and I’ll be back before you know it.

You won’t even miss me.

(Hey, you’re supposed to argue with me. I say, “You won’t even miss me,” and you say, “Sure we will,” not “Good point.” Sheesh.)