Thursday, December 13, 2007

Let the Record Show That I Was Innocent

I had a pretty good Sunday. I worked for a little bit, went to the English Tea with my mom, and went to the office Christmas Party. Then I came home and found that cardboard had already been put up in the place of the broken window, the blood had been cleaned up off the concrete, and Jenny and Debby were cleaning up the office.

Sensing that I had missed something important, I asked my roommates what was going on. The story, as best as I have been able to reconstruct it, is this:

Lynné and Andrea came to the apartment, and Lynné promptly locked her keys in the car. No problem, she's got an extra car key in the apartment, and the engine isn't running, she just needs to get inside. I'm at work, and forgot my cell phone, so she calls Jenny. Jenny was at her parent's putting up Christmas decorations, but she agrees to come down and let Lynné in from the cold.

While waiting for Jenny to arrive, Lynné decides that she would like to drink the soda that she has stashed in her purse. Being the graceful creature that she is, she managed to loose her balance while doing so, and put out a hand to steady herself. She was justifiably surprised when, instead of supporting her weight, her hand went straight through the window.

Now that we know she's going to be OK, we can laugh at the conversation Andrea had with the 911 operator while Lynné was busy applying pressure to her wrist. It went something like this:
"My friend just cut her wrist on a piece of glass."
*pause for operator's next question*
"Yes, it was an accident."

So, an ambulance arrives on the scene, and the paramedics put a super-heavy duty bandage on Lynné's arm. She declines to take the (expensive) ride to the hospital, and calls her parents, so they can take her to the ER instead. It is at this point, after the departure of the ambulance, when Andrea and Lynné are waiting for her parents in one of our downstairs neighbor's apartments, that Jenny and Patrick arrive.

They find a broken window, a pool of blood, and no Lynné. One quick phone call explains what's been going on, and that there is no need to call the police. So they came down to wait for the parents as well. Lynné parents came and took her to the hospital, where she got 8 stitches. While Jenny and Patrick set about cleaning up the mess.

So by the time I got home that evening, Lynné was back from the hospital, curled up on the sofa with many blankets, the glass was swept up, cardboard duct taped into the window frame, the blood cleaned up, and Jenny and Debby (at some point she was swapped for Patrick) were tidying up the office. I helped clean more, and we called it a night.

On Monday, I reported the broken window to the office (Lynné had strict orders not to do anything, and Jenny was at work) and they sent a man out to see about it. He did not have an extra window just sitting around in the back of his trunk, but he did put up some super-wide insulating tape to keep the air out. It still wasn't as good as a new window, but it made an appreciable difference in reducing the draft coming in around the edges of the cardboard. I asked if he could do anything about our heater (which wasn't working, just like our AC hadn't been working very well before that). He conceded that it wasn't working, and sent the guy who worked on heaters around about 15 minutes later. After about half an hour of mucking about with some sort of duct work that I refuse to learn anything about, he got the heater working, which made me very happy indeed.

We finally got the new window Wednesday morning, with very little fanfare.


Other than that, Jenny caught a cold which caused her to miss work for a couple of days, so that was bad as well. I assume that she's back to normal, because instead of sleeping on the couch all the time, she's back to never being here. I've been helping Lynné put hydrogen peroxide on her stitches every day when we change the band aide. It's not difficult, but she can't do it herself because she's only got one arm that works right. Also, it looks pretty gross, although it's better than it was Sunday night.

Classes are finally done (my last one was today), exams start on Saturday, which is the only night this week when I'm not closing.

I'm tired. It's been a long week, and it's still not quite done.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Le Sigh

We have reached that time of year when I start thinking "Why do I need this degree anyway? You can't do anything with a BA in German." That's followed by speculation about how far I could get if I filled up my car with gas and just started driving.

I'm ready for exams to by done. Does anyone have a time machine handy?

Sunday, December 02, 2007

A Word of Advice

If anyone every proposes building any kind of professional sports stadium within ten miles of your home, or if the only road to said stadium will pass within ten miles of your home, gather up everyone you know, get down to the polls, and vote that sucker down. Trust me on this. You will not regret it.

So, Thursday I was very nearly late to work because of the Cowboys game.* In order to more easily regulate the flow of traffic into the stadium, the Irving police department likes to do things like block off any road that does not lead to the stadium, such as all those by my apartment. Three hours before the game starts. During rush hour. While I'm trying to get to work.

Basically, once they've set up the traffic patterns for the game, the only highways I can get to from my apartment are west bound 183 and west bound 114. That is all well and good, except the highway that takes me to work is northeast of my apartment. There is a back way to work, which I had to take, which takes me ten miles out of my way down roads with a speed limit of 35 miles per hour.

My parents live just off the only road connecting their town to I-35W, where Texas Motor Speedway is. Anytime there's a race (a couple three times a year), we can't leave the house along that road. It's stop and go traffic all the way to the county line. Grr.

In conclusion, professional sporting arenas should be in the same place as federal prisons and hippy communes: not in my backyard.


-Yami



*First of all, what is an NFL game doing on a Thursday that's not Thanksgiving: does someone want to explain that to me?