Super Club

I saw an ingenious anti theft device in a car earlier today, on my way to work.  At first I thought the driver must not know it was there, because surely she'd be embarrassed, but then it occurred to me that she may have put it there on purpose.  

As garlic is to vampires, this product is to men:

A giant box of maxi-pads were shoved into the rear window area.

Brilliant!

No guy is going within 10 feet of those things unless he absolutely has to and he sure as hell isn't stealing a car so he can drive around with them visible in the back.  

I'm going to tie some tampons to my steering wheel.  Think of them as The Club, just smaller and more absorbent. 

Things I Learned Today

Cabbage soup and gastroenteritis don't mix.

A tuna sandwich and chips and gastroenteritis REALLY don't mix.

When you have gastroenteritis and your trunk feels like a solid block of bloat and pain, carrying a 33-pound sack of dog food is not a good idea.

More cabbage soup on top of your gastroenteritis shit storm belly is an even worse idea.

Mon Petite Chou Chou

Girlfriend came back from Thanksgiving at her mother's with a recipe for cabbage soup.  She announced this afternoon that she'd be making it for dinner.  It gave me a little pause, but I thought maybe I could have the broth.  I hadn't had anything other than white rice, toast, or pretzels for the last two days.  Since I had gastroenteritis and all.

Yeah...

I've been home the last two days.  It hit me like a lightning bolt on Sunday afternoon.  I think I woke up Sunday night and blogged something about it.  

I'm feeling better for the most part, but there is still some sort of alternate world going on in my belly.  

Girlfriend came home and I watched her put some of the soup together.  I spotted onions and half a head of cabbage.  

Hoo boy.

Once she had everything in the pot, she called me over and gave me a hug and then half cried/half laughed something about not realizing until two minutes earlier that she was about to feed me cabbage soup on top of a stomach virus.  

She's distracted by her own TMJ pain, so I couldn't give her too much grief about it.  

I ate the soup.  My appetite was returning.  And I threw down some pieces of French bread for good measure.  

Pray for me.  

Or more importantly, pray for my coworkers.  I'm going back to work tomorrow.  

*Thanks to a little FB eavesdropping, I discovered an app today to practice my French.  My French I haven't practiced in 30 years.  A common nickname of affection in French?  "Mon petite chou chou," which translates to, "my little cabbage."  You're welcome.  :)

Pachinko

I'm not sure what they were thinking.  Friends of theirs had one and I used to play with it whenever we visited or when I was sent there for babysitting -- babysatting, since I was being sat and not sitting.

I remember it was $50 and that was a lot of money for my parents in the late 70s.  I'm not even sure how they tracked it down.  But one Christmas, I received a pachinko, a Japanese pinball machine.  

A very loud, clangy, bell-ringing, metal ball spewing pinball machine.  

Again, I'm not sure what they were thinking.  I can't imagine how annoying it was to hear me playing with that thing.

Here's a tame video of one.  The more the balls fall into the three large flowers near the bottom, the more balls one wins from the back top of the machine.  I can remember them just coming out as a constant loud stream.  And then once they were all out, they'd have to be added to the dispenser cup in the top back.  Again, a very noisy prospect.

Pachinko machine in action

Alas, the pachinko machine made it through a few moves, but when my mother sold our house, I didn't take it with me to Virginia.  I see one every so often -- there's one in a window display across the street from Stove in Portsmouth -- and just searched for mine online about two weeks ago.  I'm not sure I'd recognize my specific machine if I saw it.  Mom just sent me an email earlier today asking me if I knew there was a pachinko app.  I can't bring myself to spend the $0.99 to see if it still makes the same obnoxious noises.  Let's just assume it does.

The thought of it makes me smile, though.  It represents what my parents would do/put up with to make me happy.  And for that I'm quietly thankful.

Virus 1, Me 0

Who did it?  I hardly saw anyone this week and yet, someone sent a nasty little virus on its way to me.  I have a suspect in mind and she's done this to her family before, so there's past behavior to consider.  

I realize this is a fairly stupid post, but I decided I might try to keep the blog going for the 4 of you who read it.  Not sure if you noticed, but NaBloPoMo has come and gone.  Yay, me.  ;)

I hope you all had a lovely holiday weekend.  Back to the aches and pains and sweeping temperature changes for me.

Send Gatorade.