View From the Bushes

Under ideal conditions, weekends are supposed to be enjoyable breaks from the normal routine of the week: full of exciting activities like skydiving, road trips, parties or at a minimum, fighting the line at the local cineplex to see the latest movie. My weekend was basically the opposite of all those things; rather my weekend was full of sickness, suffering, sleepless nights and saturn mutilation.

On Friday I was still reeling from the 2k gut punch of the transmission when my wife called to say that she was sick. I got home and found out that not only was my wife sick, but one of the children was sick as well. This was bad. My wife is the one who generally ministers to the sick, so I was thrust into the position of not only having to care for her (which mostly consisted of keeping the kids from climbing on top of her), but I had to spend Friday night with the sick child making sure that whatever came up went into an ice cream bucket rather than onto the bed, or worse still, on me. One of my kids had already demonstrated an ability to vomit with astonishing accuracy (I'll leave his target to your imagination, but just think of the worst possible place), a fate I wanted to avoid at all costs.

By Saturday, my wife was completely out of commission and it was just Ross vs. the Volcano. The rest of the day is something of a blur, but I somehow made it through to the evening and most of the illness had subsided to the point where there was no immediate danger of a "toxic spill." My wife was even feeling slightly better, enough so that I offered to go to the store to get her some pudding and swing by the local Blockbuster and get a couple of DVD's. That's when I made my fatal error.

When I turned right into the Blockbuster parking lot, I assumed I could immediately make another right and cut across the empty parking spaces. As it turns out, there was a two-foot wide spur which bordered the edge of the last parking spot, which was hidden by a small rise of grass next to the sidewalk, so that instead of flat asphalt I ran over two very steep curbs in a Saturn I had borrowed from a friend to use while the van was in the shop. This may be difficult to visualize so I've included a detailed sketch, which includes the gang members who were hanging out in front of Blockbuster laughing.

Everything seemed okay when I went into Blockbuster, but I wisely checked the tires when I re-emerged, and sure enough one of them was flat. I don't really mind changing a flat tire (though speed-wise I'm not setting any records) -- I just wish that it had come with a full-size spare. Because though there is some humiliation being out there changing a tire (which is tempered somewhat by the manliness of the act) there is extended humiliation involved in driving around with a little tiny spare on your car. Or am I the only one who feels this way?

In any event, it took me so long to get back with the DVD's that my wife had relapsed and was too sick to watch them. I spent the rest of the weekend tending to the sick and then got to cap the experience by spending another $250 on car repairs this morning at the Saturn dealership. Overall, it's been a rough couple of days. The only bright spot was in an area I don't often pay much attention to: Sports. On Saturday, Roberto Heras of the US Postal Team managed to sew up almost certain victory in the Tour of Spain in an 11 km uphill time trial (he did end up winning Sunday) . He had to take back nearly two minutes in those 11 km, going in I think most people would have at best given him a 5% chance of doing it. But that was not all my alma mater the University of Utah won a tough game against Colorado State and the Cubs made it to the playoffs (I've watched less than five minutes of baseball in the last 15 years, but the story of someone who hasn't won anything since 1908 is strangely compelling to me).

In any event this has gone on long enough (much longer than normal), so I'll end it here before I start talking about the Dyson Telescope game.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross