worldmegan

This was too amusing to neglect posting. When you buy a helmet for any purpose… read the label.

• “The Helmet of Certain Death”

Yesterday we had family over for my birthday. My father and I lit off to the Austintown Dairy Queen to find ourselves a cake and some fixings. We picked up a box of cherry Starkiss treats and a quart of vanilla DQ. (We neglected to stop somewhere to get candles.) The cake, as you ought to be able to see here, had pretty, pretty clouds on it!

I was torn between the hearts and the clouds, but the clouds won. They were very, very pretty clouds. (I am apparently partial to pretty clouds. Have you noticed?)

As I mentioned, we neglected to get candles. We did not, in fact, realize that we were out of candles in the first place. My grandmother saved the day by bringing one candle with her. It was a yellow candle shaped like a one – you can see it just there. This candle has been around the family for as long as I can remember. And as far as I’m concerned, this January we celebrated my first birthday.

I suspect it is somewhat significant that when Marty and I split our Youngstown Crab Company dessert Friday, we stuck one lit match in the slice of cake, sang very-very-very quickly, and I blew it out. (I forgot to make a wish in both cases, but have been informed by a very authoritative source that it’s perfectly okay to make a wish afterwards.) There have only been two instances of candles, this birthday, and in both cases there was but one candle. So you see, significant, yes?

When I figure out why this is significant, I’ll be sure to let you know.

I got several wonderful things for my birthday, but this one brought the most immediate and effective joy—nay, perfect glee. Someday, Marty, you are going to drive Hallmark into the ground.

On that day, syndicated comics will weep, and Cthulhoids everywhere will rejoice. ;}

Bystander: “It’s him!! It’s Peter Griffin! The miracle healer of Quahog! Oh, heal me O Great One!”

Lois: “You see what your lies have gotten you? They – they think you’re some kind of healer!”

Peter: “I’ll handle it, Lois. I read a book about this sort of thing once.”

Brian: “Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn’t… nothing?”

Peter: “Oh… yeah.”

Projects like this just make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. People are always worthwhile projects.

• Simon Hoegsberg’s Thought Project

The gist: Complete strangers were stopped on the street and asked what they were thinking about at the time. It’s really worth reading – like a cross-section of humanity. Make sure you check it out.

(Gleaned from emdot, who is also really worth reading.)

Here we go – it’s time to get back into the swing of posting, after taking so long with my restructuring (which isn’t done quite yet, by the way). Time to get a few things down on paper. Er, in type.

I took off a large part of yesterday and today partly because of my birthday and partly because business has been conveniently slow this week. I had a great dinner with three friends last night and that seemed like a good way to kick off a good mood. And as I mentioned more than once, if I can’t have pasta on my birthday… then when?

Assuming nothing else comes up, I will most likely keep today slow. It’s a nice break and I really needed it! Then I’ll get back on the ball tomorrow morning. You know, two days relaxation just ain’t bad! (And when ‘relaxation’ means ‘hunched over the computer coding blog styles and forgetting to eat’, well…)

Blogging is pretty forced at the moment, because I haven’t had the outlet for awhile, but it’ll come back. For all three of you who read this. ;}

I woke up this morning… and I had turned into a giant bug.

Er. Wrong literary genius. Sorry. (Wince.)

I woke up this morning… and found myself in a strange, liquid environment.

Apparently my cool mist machine had gone wacko in the night, and my entire bedroom was a wonderland of condensation, a fresh-water ocean… complete with seafood.

I caught myself, biting back a note of horror, and replaced the thought of ‘seafood’... with… majestic… aquatic… life-forms.

As in, alive ones. There was an octopus in my room.

I lay very still for several minutes, too confused to think anything further than that. What does one do when one finds an octopus in one’s room? A small octopus, certainly, would warrant concern, examination, perhaps a shriek of revulsion and a dash from the room (if one felt particularly squeamy at the time). But this octopus was no small matter.

There were tentacles everywhere. I was quite lucky in that a small area around my bed was completely free of them, but both windows were dark with reclining limbs and one stray arm lay just between myself and the door. All this I saw with my superb peripheral vision, for I was still too confused and horrified to move.

Would it eat me? It was certainly bigger than me – but I was unsure how much larger a creature had to be before it could eat a smaller creature. Perhaps I might leap from the bed, flying over the splayed tentacle, and hurl myself through the door into the hallway. At least then it would be contained (maybe). And I would be elsewhere. And it was rather damp in my room – perhaps it wouldn’t even want to relocate. I couldn’t imagine an octopus seeking out less-moist surroundings.

And of course, that led me to think of other things. For instance, how had the octopus gotten into my room? The cool mist machine may have turned my part of the house into a cephalopod paradise, but the rest of the house was certainly not in any way similar, nor was the climate outside the house! It was 2 degrees, for Heaven’s sake!

How…. had an octopus…. gotten into my room?

This, I recognized finally, was hardly a constructive thought process, and so I began to plot my escape.

To be continued. (Ha ha ha! Gotcha!)

Discovered via Jameel and thought to be infinitely clever and quite institutable… this is, as you may have guessed, in honor of Lewis Carroll’s birthday.)

Happy birthday to me!