You see a short article in the paper and then echoed online, a motorcycle fatality, an unnamed rider who made a split second error. You shrug it off, because you can't let those things stick in your head, lest it affect the way you ride.

You see threads in online forums where that accident is being discussed and dissected. People musing over what he did wrong. People blaming the driver of the car he hit, because surely it wasn't the rider's fault. People wondering if he had time to know what had happened, or did he die before his eyes could close.

You mostly forget about it, until someone on another forum mentions he was a member of that forum; while he didn't post often, he was still more than just a statistic that cracked up on the Interstate.

You then learn his name.

You then realize not only did you post to the same forum, but that you knew him. You remember him from your late teens, the kid who was a year older and into theater.

You were never a part of the same crowd and you probably only spoke to him a few times, just enough to be aware of his existence. You haven't even thought of him in over 25 years, his name not even a blip on your radar.

You feel it anyway. Just a little bit, you mourn. Because even though you haven't thought of him in over 2 dozen years, even though he made a critical and possibly stupid mistake, he deserves that. You don't have a particular reason, but you feel bad.

You just do.

Wow...there was no growling, no biting, and only a little bit of pooping involved. This was the least eventful vet visit in years, probably because they were fully prepared for His Majesty. Max remained in his spiffy giant blue bubble carrier while Buddah was examined and vaccinated (without complaint...good kitty), and instead of pulling Max out there in the exam room, the vet took him to the back room where she had help standing by.

Said help was surely armed with wet towels...which were needed because he cut loose as he was being pulled out of the carrier. Is it wrong that we were kind of proud of him for that? Or that we think it's funny his records state "Sedate Before Exam"?

He definitely has feline acne, and it's a fairly mild case, which means we only have to put a little bit of an ointment on him once a day for a week or so. He's also still quite overweight (though honestly, a chunk of that weight is no longer fat but muscle...Buddah keeps him active) so we're going to wean him onto a new food, but overall, this wasn't a bad visit. We had taken Max off his pulsing antibiotics a while back, and there was no push to start it back up since he's doing so well.

The $200+ check the Spouse Thingy had to write was probably the most painful part, but even that was a lot less than we expected.

Max is still has a little bit of a buzz from his Happy Pill; it almost makes me wish we could dope the kitties up every night... ;)

My next door neighbor is outside with the hood to her car up, and she's banging on something in the engine with a rather big-heeled shoe. She bangs for a few minutes, then tries to start it up. It's trying to turn over, so I can only surmise she's not trying to beat the battery to death, but it won't start.

Now, if I were a nicer person I'd go out and help, but being mechanically backwards, about the only thing I could do would be to offer her a hammer instead of her show. Then we could both stand there staring at the engine, mumbling about how "this was easier back when cars didn't have computers and all that fancy stuff."

One of us would scratch, and one of us would belch, and the car still wouldn't start.

I feel bad for not knowing jack about engines right now.

I could offer her a beer..

Well now, looking out again someone else is standing there with her. I think they're taking turns banging on the engine with the big-heeled shoe.

I'm curious. I think I'll go outside and scratch myself.

Max has had a series of what we hope is just zits near his lip on the right side of his face off an on for a couple of months. I don't know if it itches, or if said zits come to a head and then pop and bleed, but he'll have a scab for a few days, it falls off, then another zit forms. All in one area of skin less than the size of a pencil eraser.

Just in case, the Spouse Thingy called this morning and made an appointment for both kitties to get their shots, and for Max's face to be looked at.

I am dreading this appointment.

It's not so much that I'm worried Max has face cancer and we'll have to have half of it cut off, leaving him a drooling, ticked off mess of kitty; I'm pretty sure it's just feline acne of a persistent nature. No, I am dreading this because Max hates going anywhere, especially the vet, and Max can poop at will.

Copiously.

He will growl, and he will try to bite, and at some point there will be poop in vast quantities and of such a foul smell that people in the waiting room will begin to cover their noses and mouths, their eyes watering... and chances are at least half that poop will be on me.

And then, when we're on the way home, he will press his ass against the side of his blue plastic tomb, and pee inside the car.

Since Buddah will be along for this visit, he may learn things. He may copy things. We may find ourselves hip deep in angry kitty poo, bleeding from fangs and claws.

They go on Thursday. If no one hears from us by Friday, they probably got loose in the car and ate our faces off.

Very Very. Very. Very.

I have a spiffy pocket knife; it opens with the barest flick of a finger, and it's very very sharp. I have no real need for it, other than I like to carry it around in my pocket, because it's spiffy and very very sharp. I'm under no illusions about using it as protection; it opens fast and it's very very sharp, but the greater likelihood is that it would get taken from me and used to slice me into neat little ribbons of Thumper.

So I just carry around this totally rad, very very sharp knife for the hell of it.

But the other day I was in the bathroom. We have a free standing toilet paper holder, and for the seven months we've owned it there's been this tag hanging off of it. I don't know why it was left there, other than laziness. But I was sitting there and I spotted it and thought to myself, "I have a knife! I shall remove this hanging tag and it shall bother me no more!"

(Or "Why is that still there? Let's cut it off.")

So I whipped out my spiffy, very very sharp knife and flicked it open with one hand while I grabbed that dangling tag with the other, and sliced right through the plastic tie holding it in place like it was butter.

I probably should have stopped there.

And did I mention my spiffy knife is very, very sharp?

I cut that tag off like a champ, and in less time than it took to blink, sliced the blade right into my index finger. It surprised me, but didn't really hurt, so I thought I'd just taken a little off the top.

I closed the knife, put it back in my pocket...and then realized there was blood dripping from my finger. It welled up from a neat little slice near the joint, and dripped.

But it didn't hurt.

It just bled.

The Spouse Thingy is now threatening to take my spiffy knife away, but I really do love to carry it around and pretend I can use it to hunt large animals and gut wayward intruders, possibly at the same time. And who knows when I might happen upon a accident, where someone might need use of a very very shape knife to cut bedsheets into bandages or possibly run into someone who wants to slice an apple into tiny little rose blossoms?

It can be a very handy thing to carry around.

And I'm pretty sure the skin will grow back on my finger.

Spouse Thingy can't actually take it away, because really, who would take away a spiffy and very very sharp knife from a crazy lady who has no fear of flicking that sucker open and chopping parts of digits off?

I sure wouldn't.

Total bummer. One of my favorite authors, Arthur C. Clarke, died. I was never a huge sci-fi fan until I read Rendevous with Rama and Childhood's End. He and Robert Heinlein opened a whole new genre to me, planting some fairly wild literary seeds, allowing me to push past the formulaic fiction force fed in junior high and high school.

It sucks to think there will never be another novel by Clarke... Really sucks.

I have nothing green to wear today. Pinch me because of it, and I will break your fingers.

Well, ok, no I won't, but I will glare at you and say things like "Are you on crack?" and "What the hell?" and "Do you want to meet Jesus today?"

All right, I probably won't do that either, but if you pinch me and make me cry, I bet you'll feel bad.

Happy St. Patrick's Day...I'm off to the gym, where people pinch at their own risk...

• Don't laugh...but it's Buddah's 3rd birthday and we made him a present this year. Little pink catnip-filled socks. Yep, handmade. We sat in the garage (lest the kitties help) and filled socks with kitty crack and sewed them closed.


• The gym was so packed today--45 minute wait just to get onto the cardio equipment--that I blew it off. Instead I went to Borders, where I stared at my word processor, because nothing would get out of my brain and onto virtual paper. That sucked.


• Starting Monday the Spouse Thingy has 10 days off. I'm predicting many bike rides, a few movies, and lots of sleeping in.


• I got nutin'...

As I was bouncing from machine to machine today, there was something different about this gym that I couldn't quite out my finger on. It has almost everything any other gym does: resistance machines, free weights, stationary bikes and treadmills and ellipticals, music playing overhead.

And then I spotted some way-too-fit blonde in the corner benching more weight that I could have when I was 20 and fit, and it hit me.

There's no grunting.

There's lots of sweating and lifting going on, but it's a nice, quiet kind of sweating and lifting.

It's nice, not having to hear Waldo heave out his lungs as he throws around more weight that he should actually be using.

Even when I worked in a gym, I didn't understand why men felt the need to do that.

The downside to the quiet though...if someone farts, everyone is gonna know...

Ok, so you're supposed to work out to help you lose weight. So how do you manage that when working out makes you so freaking hungry?

I'm gonna like this gym, but man, today I could eat a horse. Or a horse like product. Someone give me a steak already...

Scatteredness...

• I joined a gym. A women's only gym. Monday I have an appointment with a trainer, and thusly will the torture begin.
  
• They don't have a pool. I'm kinda holding that against them.
  
• While I was at Border's today, I overheard a couple of kids at a nearby table discussing their homework. "It's really very basic," one said, and the other agreed, adding something about Avegadro and magnesium and inversions and Einstein and Enert gasses and x+ab-y/dx*yyy...
  
• My head exploded, right there by the bagel case.
  
• Yesterday the Boy wandered home after a couple days of being Who Knows Where, and he cooked dinner for us.
  
• Schnitzle.
  
• I am stull full.
  
• Spouse Thingy, however, will probably want dinner tonight, and the Boy just left for work. At some point I will be asked "Are there any plans for dinner?" and I will have to shrug.
  
• I need a dinner fairy. And a cleaning fairy.
  
• Fairies don't come cheap, do they?
  
• =sigh=
  
• Oooh, I have a new helmet. It's shiny and has a spiffy built in sun visor and air pumps in the cheeks for a custom fit. I'm not liking it much, though, and it's too late to take it back.
  
• That part sucks.
  

Um. Yeah. I should know better than to rub it in about really nice days, because it usually bites me in the a$$.

We capped off that awesome day Thursday by ordering pizza--including my favorite, a Pizza Hut Supreme, minus the mushrooms. Mushrooms are evil, and must not pass the Wabbit's lips, lest the Really Bad Things happen.

Apparently, there was a stealth mushroom somewhere on a slice that I ate. And the Really Bad Things began to happen at 4:44 Friday morning.

When you wake up because it feels like Boy scouts are using your stomach for knot-tying training, you tend to notice the time.

Pukefest 2008 began somewhere around 9 a.m., educating Buddah, who has never seen someone trying to hork themselves inside out before. The cats then took turns sleeping on top of me, because apparently someone who feels like crap needs to be pinned to the bed by 15 pounds of purring fur, forbidden to roll over in order to find a more comfortable position in which to enjoy their misery.

I am not complaining; I was a lot less sick than previous Mushroom Adventures have left me, so perhaps the kitty therapy worked. I was almost human on Saturday, exhausted on Sunday, but feel about 90% today. It must be obvious that I feel so much better, because I've been able to sit here by myself since I got up this morning, and actually have a cat-hair-free t-shirt on.

Hopefully when the next Perfectly Awesome Day rolls around I'll keep my mouth shut, because if I don't, someone out there with a Thumper VooDoo Doll will make sure I get it in the shorts.