Okay, so a co-worker used his phone to take a picture of my busted finger while it was being treated at the triage unit in the hospital. I now have this picture, so naturally it is going onto my website.

If you are at all bothered by blood or injuries, especially fingernail stuff, you shouldn’t look. Seriously, you probably shouldn’t look. Anyway, I gotta say, it doesn’t look so bad. Though maybe that is just because I saw the other side of that finger as well. Apart from the nail, the other side had the real damage. But the important thing is that the image is now on the Internet.

Anyway, I’ll give some updates about other aspects of my finger healing. One thing, yesterday it took me about ten minutes to open a bottle of juice. That was effing annoying. Here I am at about minute seven, just in disbelief:

But apart from that I seem to be doing alright with the limited use of my dominant hand. As I previously mentioned, I’m taking antibiotics four times a day and I have to take them with food. As a person who will usually only eat once a day, but can manage twice if necessary, four is an insane number of foods to eat. Here’s how I am remedying this:

A spoonful of sugar-covered nuts helps the medicine go down. I discovered these Sweet Vanilla Almond things a couple months ago and I love them. I’ve only found them at one store (a Circle K), in my immediate area (though this could be, in part, because I am bad at shopping) so I’ve not had them often (only twice, I think, until now). Yesterday I went to that Circle K and bought every bag on display. Now, for the two times a day I have to force myself to eat, I will use these as incentive!

It is entirely possible I will be sick of them well before I’m supposed to stop with the medicine, but I’ll row that boat when the water comes. For now: So good.

For more than a year now, I think, I’ve had something of a mission around my apartment, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here. I’ve been trying to get rid of as much of my accumulated stuff as I can. It was easy at first, I left about a third of my clothes in some of those donation boxes, and I just discarded my busted up dresser and this one chair I had. But as time goes on, it is getting harder to find things I can be so easily rid of.

Then I found a bag of disposable razors that I must have got somewhere. It had been quite a few years since I last bothered to go fully cleanshaven, I’ve instead been just using an electric trimmer at its lowest setting to give myself short stubble. But the possibility of using up the razors (and a can of shaving cream as well, for that matter) overcame my laziness and so I have been shaving this month for real.

Of course, I’m not all that good at it.

Not a great picture, but I’m confident that you can tell I’ve been butchering my face.

At any rate, it is getting to the point where my collections of comics, books, and DVDs are really showing how big they are. While I was able to rid myself of a handful of books, I really don’t want to part with most of these things. But there is also a not-insubstantial collection of VHS tapes I’ve collected. Years ago someone was leaving their collection in the laundry room of the building each with three movies taped from a movie network or something like that. I’m now working my way through these, getting rid of them as I go. Many of them are old movies I’ve either seen or never heard of and hopefully, as I get through them, I’ll work up the energy to offer my thoughts on the Internet, since that was my justification for taking the tapes in the first place.

Anyway, my ultimate goal is to have way less stuff. So far, it is going well.

Well, once again the apocalypse has let me down. Now I’m gonna have to pay rent and all that stuff again. Thanks for nothing, End of the World.

Haiku!

Unknowable frog.
You have confounded us all.
How you jump so high?

In other news, I just bought a box of Crayola crayons. Is it my imagination or do they not smell the same as they did when I was younger. I suppose the possibility exists that it has been so long since I’ve bothered to smell crayons that they have changed and I was left unaware. It is also possible that my own body reacts differently to smells than it used to. It is sad that I can’t tell if crayons have changed or if my memory is imperfect or what. Stupid reality being essentially unknowable.

I have noted in the past that my blood seemed to taste better than it does now. The smell of crayons and the taste of my own blood. Is nothing from my childhood sacred?

I find the month of June 2010 guilty of the following:

• One count of my partner who does all the work I don’t want to do being on vacation for a month, leaving me with twice the work to do and the only person at work I can have a real conversation with gone.
• One count of a staff member just not showing up any more leaving us shorthanded by one for the duration of the month.
• One count of a staff member injuring herself with a box cutter leaving us shorthanded by another one for the duration of the month.
• Two counts of staff members losing family members causing us to be further shorthanded, in one case for a week and in the other for the duration of the month.
• Four counts of machinery literally breaking.
• Three counts of my supposed second in command leaving early without letting me know and leaving me with extra work that I had to rush through so I could be done in time to catch my ride.
• Two counts of my supposed second in command calling in to say he won’t be coming to work for reasons deemed suspicious.
• One count of me not getting done in time to catch my ride.
• One count of the paper being delayed hours to wait for the results of a hockey game. (Fact: Anyone who cared about that game and for some reason hadn’t watched it on television or caught the results on the news or on the Internet or from friends should really just not bother)
• Untold counts of me spending hours trying to get to sleep but unable because of heat or noise from outside.
• Eight counts of me finally being asleep and then being awakened by some external stimuli (In one case it was a cannon salute for the Queen. Am I the only one who thinks maybe she’s been around the world enough that a cannon salute isn’t going to impress her much?)
• One count of being called into work when I had already been awake for twenty-one hours.
• Three counts of me crashing an sleeping for ten or more hours at a time, eating up an entire day of time spent not working.
• Two counts of having to postpone Father’s Day dinner because of work.
• Two counts of having to cancel blood donation appointments because of work.
• Three counts of having to turn down Hanging Out With Friends time because of work.
• One count of ruining a shirt on a jagged metal bit at work.
• Two counts of ruining pants beyond the point of wearability (and for me that point means they are quite damaged.
• One count of me injuring my finger in such a way that blood came out from under the fingernail.
• One count of a long scratch on the back of my neck from the corner of a machine I was reaching under.
• One count of not having access to the Internet on my only day off during one week.
• One count of the twenty-four hour gas station I used to stop for juice when I had to walk from work apparently not being open twenty-four hours any more.
• One count of locking myself out of my apartment.
• One count of the truck I was in nearly being hit by a drunk driver (or if not drunk, just a very bad driver).
• At least three counts of papercuts (those are just the ones that occurred after I decided to keep a list of annoyances).
• One count of being a month with so many annoyances I decided to keep a list.

Now, I fully admit that the vast majority of these are quite minor and several were obviously much worse for other people than me, but the fact it was all condensed into one four-week span really made June 2010 a month that I will not miss in the least. It joins the year 2006 in Times PDR Mostly Didn’t Enjoy. But hey, it is all over now.

Sure he gave back the site peacefully, but I have to set an example or I’ll have people taking over my site every time I take a shower and stuff, y’know…