During my lunch break today, I braved the freezing cold weather to meander up to Seattle’s Best and get myself one of those Triple Peppermint Mochas (that Lyse says I’m not allowed to have anymore because I got altogether too excited about it). And a pumpkin cheesecake square (that I’m also not allowed to have).

There are about 9 or 10 concrete steps at the front of my building, because the sidewalk of street level is about half-a-floor lower than the lobby level of my building. As I was about to walk down these steps, my ankle buckled just as I set my foot on the first step from the top. In what witnesses called “a terrifying fall,” I went face-first down most of the rest of the steps. Luckily my face didn’t actually hit anything (I recall an instantaneous arching of my back in an effort to prevent the concrete steps from smashing my face in), but both my knees smacked down pretty hard, and my left hand got mashed.

Damage report –
Left knee: some small scrapes, perhaps minor bruising, no swelling.
Right knee: some small scrapes, definite bruising, lump the size of a shooter marble immediately below my kneecap at first, which has spread into a general swelling that is noticeable but not frightening.
Right hand: a little scuffed, not even bad enough to call “scraped.”
Left hand: a little scuffed, and as a special bonus, noticeable swelling and lots of blue brusing to the inside of my left ring finger. (I was briefly worried about having to have the ring cut off, but it stopped swelling short of cutting off my circulation.)
Back: hurts like hell, apparently pulled some muscles.
General: adrenaline overload which made me shaky for about half an hour.

Ow.

I’ve been blessed with creative, talented friends. Some of them make music videos! (I crochet scarves…we can’t all be artistic genuises.) So this week’s question, compliments of my Number One Internet Fanboy, is:

If you could make, or remake, a music video of any song, what song would it be and what would the video be like? Bonus points for casting roles and describing plot/theme/etc.

If I were feeling sentimental, I’d remake the video for Evanescence’s My Immortal…with scenes alternating between a ghostly man reaching out to a thirty-something woman at various moments in her daily life (grocery shopping, running for the bus in the rain, curling up with a good book in front of a fire, etc) and a much-younger version of that woman having various loving & laughing & sad moments with that man…and end the video at his gravesite, with her putting a memento on his headstone and then walking away resolutely as his ghost reaches out to her.

Today the Minivan From Hell died. (Damnit, and after I got all the bumperstickers I like on the damned thing!) The transmission started slipping just slightly in first gear on Sunday. By this morning, it was making ugly, loud grinding, crunching noises, and stopped going altogether.

The guy at the transmission shop – very nice people, Larry & Sons, I would recommend them – used what I’m sure is a technical term when he said “the transmission gear wheel exploded.”

It’s a spendy repair, at least $1200-$1400. Geoffrey & I decided that the Minivan From Hell has become a money pit, what with 3 major repairs totalling nearly $2,500 in the last 12 months or so. It’s just not worth it, when the blue book value is only $1300 if it’s in half-decent running order. Yeah.

So I am bussing it for the indefinite future. Which means that I have to be at the bus stop to catch the 6:14 bus…six-freaking-fourteen-ay-em! I will SO need a mocha.

In happier news, I’m deliriously elated to report that I have now been migraine-free for over 3 weeks, even though I just got my period today (yes, my car died and I got my period, the day after jury duty…do I need a de-cursing or what?!). Since I usually get slammed with at least 2 or 3 migraines within the week prior to my period, all I can say is that I love my anti-migraine drug. It’s the first one I’ve ever tried that actually works! Bonus points for having extremely minor side effects (slight case of dry mouth, which Altoids gum or mints gets rid of, and some grogginess in the morning if I don’t get around 7 hours of sleep). Mega-bonus for costing a whopping $7.50 a month! The pills are hot pink, which is vaguely annoying, but oh well. It works! I love it! I’m so happy about this, that not even owning a two-ton Plymouth paperweight bothers me!!!

The younger demonspawn is gearing up for her fourth Girl Scout cookie sale! The pre-sale is now through Jan. 17th. On Jan. 18th, I have to submit the official order (which is going to be whatever other people order during the pre-sale, and the cookies I want for my family, and a bit of hedging extra.)

Cookies will be delivered to purchasers between Feb. 12th & 18th! (Just in time for Valentine’s Day if you need a present for someone! And everyone likes Girl Scout cookies.)

So here are the choices:

Double Dutch – chocolate cookies w/chocolate chips
Lemon Coolers – reduced fat lemon cookies covered in powdered sugar
Trefoils – old-fashioned shortbread
All Abouts – shortbread with a chocolate fudge bottom
Do-Si-Dos – peanut butter creme sandwich cookies
Tagalongs – peanut butter & cookie covered in chocolate
Samoas – vanilla cookie, caramel, chocolate & coconut decadence
Thin Mints – like it needs an explanation

Also, the demonspawn’s troop is donating boxes of cookies to the Transitional School for homeless children, so any extra money you want to throw their way is greatly appreciated.

The only bad news? The price went up slightly this year, for the first time in over a decade. Cookies are now $3.50 a box (though they’re at $4.00 a box in most of the rest of the country).

So email, call, or whomp me over the head with an order!

Was browsing the oft-entertaining Terpsichoros when I clicked on this fascinating Xmas gift saga. I’m not much for Legos or Star Wars stuff, but wow. Though I was fascinated, in what I’m sure is a kinda-girly way, at the lengths some guys will go to in order to play with cool toys, gadgets, etc. Geoffrey was simply drooling.

And to think that, about 12 years ago, I thought putting together the Barbie Dream Townhouse (3 stories, 4.5 feet tall, with an elevator – a couple hundred pieces of nasty pink & white plastic) was irksome. Now that I think about it, my mother’s always gotten evil gifts for her granddaughters.

10> You haven’t gone to the bathroom for two days because you can’t roll enough initiative.

9> You like to sleep with your Balroggedy Ann doll.

8> The fame and fortune you’ve earned with your advanced gaming skills are attracting too many lust-crazed supermodels.

7> Your response to an Orc attack is the same as losing an important client: “Krogan mighty! Krogan smash puny foes!”

6> Your kitchen table collapses from the accumulated weight of the lead figurines comprising the Battle of Duggs Kich’ynn.

5> You can’t understand how the school bully beat you up right after you scored a direct hit with a lightning spell.

4> Your version of the events: “My famous wall-climbing ability was thwarted by the orc’s use of a powerful mage spell from Gandalf himself.”
The police version: “We plucked this weirdo, screaming like a little girl, off the top of a six-foot ladder!”

3> For the last time, your boss is not the “Dungeon Master” and you are not one of his “minions.”

2> Your conversation with the hottie at the bar ends when you start explaining how you killed all the other competitors with your impossible dungeon.

1> Two words: chainmail boxers.

They say two heads are better than one – well, sometimes two voices are better than one. So this week’s question is:

What’s your favorite unlikely duet?

Many thanks to my Number One Internet Fanboy for the question! (If anyone else were to suggest a question, that would be lovely. Just dash me off an email.)

I have bits of plastic in my eyes! Yay, I got contacts!

I also got a new pair of glasses, which are whisper-light thanks to a nifty kind of lens that weighs practically nothing. When I had them on earlier, I kept reaching up to touch them because they’re so much lighter than my old glasses, I forgot I was wearing any.

Of course the frames are purple. They’re metal, and dark purple, so in dim light they look almost black. But you can tell they’re purple in bright light!

Now I have to get used to contacts again, after many many years of not wearing them…they keep shifting and making things go blurry. But hooray for having peripheral vision!

Today I got pointy things stuck into me. (No, not that…you perv.) I went to an acupuncturist!

I got a referral from my doctor, since my migraines have been consistently resistant to medication (although the preventative I’m on now just might be working – too soon to tell, as yet). The acupuncturist was very warm, welcoming, a very nice person. He asked me all the usual questions you might expect a doctor to ask, then something kinda funny – he phrased it as “Now I’m going to ask you something kind of ‘woo-woo’ about your migraines.” It took me a second to get what “woo-woo” meant…but the question was, “If your migraines could tell you what they’re feeling, what would it be?”

I don’t think I’m good at “woo-woo” questions…all I could say was that I seem to get migraine attacks more often when I’m physically and/or mentally stressed – especially when both are happening. Didn’t exactly answer the question as asked, though.

Then he had me lie on a padded massage table, with a hole at the top to put my face in so I could lie face-down, and he stuck about 8 acupuncture needles in my upper back & the back of my neck. I got to lie there, relaxing & listening to the instrumental music (kind of New Agey, but vaguely Celtic-ish also). Then after a while, the needles were taken out and I got to roll over so he could stick about 10 or 12 needles in my hands, wrists, and feet.

They didn’t hurt. In fact, he probably did 2 or 3 before I realized he was doing anything at all, because I literally felt almost nothing. A few seconds after each needle got stuck in, I started to feel a very slight – almost imperceptible – localized pressure at each spot. The only needle that even felt like it was poking at all was one in the side of my toe, and that was more of a startling & uncomfortable poking feeling than anything actually painful.

I felt good afterward, not giddy or loopy, just good. It’s kind of odd that the sensations seem to linger for hours after the needles are removed, but maybe that’s part of the way it works. We’ll see how it goes; I have another appointment Wednesday.

Forty-some hours into the New Year, and I haven’t noticed that 2005 is really any different from 2004. Funny, that.

The good news today is that I found something for my cold that’s even better than the “nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, how’d-I-wind-up-on-my-kitchen-floor?” medicine. Not only that, but it’s not in either “green death” or “blow-chunks cherry” flavor. That’s right, Tylenol is marketing a cold & cough medicine that has the same ingredients as the “big N, little y, big fucking Q” medicine, but even higher doses of the cough supressant & antihistimine: Tylenol Cold & Flu Severe. It’s a mint flavor, which sounds gross but isn’t too nasty.

If I have to be sick & coughing, at least I found good OTC drugs.