The Perils of Winter

I was thinking that I didn't have anything exciting going on to put on here. I haven't been to any concerts, no NBA games (where I saw the Elvis Impersonator picture), no midnight trains to Georgia... none of that spectacular wanderlust. I've just been doing my thing right.

Everyone should know by now that security of any kind is false, that junk of Murphey's Law, etc; you can never get too comfortable and bury your head in the sand is all I'm saying. Well, actually now it is obvious that I too have gotten into some kind of weird vortex where fate starts conspiring against whoever is in its grasp. So, let me share these conspiracies with my imaginary audience here now on this webpage! We'll do it chronologically:

1000 injuries I hath borne
(gotta give some ref to Poe since it was his birthday ayer)


1. I drop my phone on the floor of my apt. The case explodes (as usual). The faceplate disappears. I figure it has gone under the floor heaters that line the walls of me apt. The panels for the ones in this part of the place go all the way to the floor, so I'd never cleaned under it before of course. I find HUGE dust bunnies. But I find something even zanier: a large crab carcass (large may be exaggeration, but they certainly had lots of legs and were not the kind you'd eat- hearty looking brown ones). Ones? Yes, I then proceeded to explore under all the heaters and found a second crab carcass! EGADS! And this story is ever more comical if you know that recently I've had 2 really bad scares at night. One where I woke up thinking a lobster was next to my head on the curtain in my bedroom (this kept me out of there for 3 days til I was sure the lobster had moved on). The second was more recent, and I thought a giant spider-like-creature was next to my pillow.
   
   Were these merely nightmares? I leave it to the reader to fill in the blanks here!
   
   
2. It goes down to 4°F Tuesday night. My pipes freeze I guess; the toilet backs up. No fun! (especially if you loosely observe the rule of "if it's yellow it's mellow")…
   UPDATE: The waterlevel in the toilet started rising again just as the blizzard began Saturday afternoon. I even had shut off the water! It was time to contact the dude upstairs for help. Long story short, he flushed his "powder room toilet" upstairs, which hadn't been used for at least a week and a half. This magically broke the clog that was somewheres beneath our common channel. It was very strange because as we tried to plunge my toilet, water and detritus started backing up into 1) my sink 2) my bathtub! Nasty, eh!? So afterwards I covered the whole bathroom with bleach, and then this haze filled the apartment. I had to crack open the back door; no choice but to let the blizzard blow right into my kitchen!
   
   
3. This is the 3^rd calamity of the week, and possibly the most penetrating and despicable assault of late by that bitch-whore, Fortuna. This occurred first thing in the morning at work.
   
   • I am already angry from shoveling snow all morning and scraping ice from my car.
   • I am already angry that we have no new tea at work.
   All that is left is Cranberry Zinger (caffeine free), Taste of Lemon or something (no caffeine either), Mint Medley (yay decaf), and English Tea Time (tastes like burning). I go for the cranberry.
   
   For the first time in weeks I actually cleaned out my mug. Before, it had layers of gunk from the glory days of Earl Grey. Dagnabbit, after the cleaning it seemed some of this residue had tainted the cranberry; maybe I should have just left it alone. I was definitely thinking that there was an odd taint to it. When I reached near the end of the glass, I found a shocking surprise: a large fly. You know the kind: not quite a horsefly, but the big ones that actually are pretty easy to kill - not as fast and hard to track. I guess it was hiding on the backside of the tea bag when I dumped it. I really can't see how I could be so blind for so long, but there it is. It went in my mouth and then back out where I looked it, still unaware for a brief period of blissful ignorance, then calmly announced to my office neighbor, "there is a HUGE fly in my tea… and it went in my mouth."
   
   I could hear him wretching from down the hall where I was mechanically rewashing my mug. I'm now drinking black coffee all morning in hopes to strip from my taste buds and olfactory any remnant sensation of the cranberry fly encounter.
   

Perhaps this has been a bit of a rant. But maybe I'll clarify that misnomer here in the closing. I, of course, am laughing still. What is life but absurd? WTF!