Why I have so many Mexican flags.

My friend Nick (not to be confused with My Nick) always has fascinating stories. Like the times he babysat the Olsen twins or when a drunken Lisa Loeb tried to stick her tongue down his throat. Stories you would totally doubt unless you knew him. Nick is the sort of person to whom things happen. Happen with a capital H.
And he's had some of the oddest odd jobs imaginable. Like chef, or bicycle thief.

For a while, he was temping for a company that outsourced trash pickup along freeways. He told me that the two most common things he'd find were Mexican flags, and bottle of pee.

Which made me nervous every time he'd tell me he had "found me a present."

Dirty, dirty laundry.

Sarah Smile - *lugs in a basket of wet laundry and throws it in the dryer* "So. That was weird."

My Nick - "The laundrymat?"

Sarah Smile - "It was pretty laundrymatish. I mean the people there."

My Nick - "No shit."

Sarah Smile - "Yeah, but not like that. It was all women there today, and they were so freakin' nice to me. Like, they didn't even acknowledge each other, but they fell all over themselves to talk to me. Show me the open washers, tell me to avoid the one with the wooky spin cycle, stuff like that. One woman, with a toddler on her hip, hefted up a giant basket of wet clothes up almost over her head to give me more room to pass by her, and I already had plenty of space. It was nice, and almost .......... ok, it was creepy."

My Nick - "It makes perfect sense. You're new. Therefore, you're the only woman that they could each know for sure hadn't slept with their husbands."

Here's a mental picture for you.

A hobo, complete with a bag tied to the end of his stick, wearing a smart blue and yellow argyle vest.

You really never know what she'll say next.

Colsy - "Hi!"

Sarah Smile - "Hi!"

Colsy - "I'm trying to find a good local supplier of emu eggs."

Sarah Smile - "I love you."

What's next? A moose? A polar bear?

Honestly, I would have been less surprised by a stampede of unicorns.

I can't help but suspect that My Nick is behind this somehow. I mean, he's a Whisker, and that's where these things are made, right? In Wisconsin?

This is califreakinfornia.

Ok, so yesterday I'm driving the, like, half, maybe a whole mile from my office to Nick's office. The quick little back way from one office park to another is through a back canyon, which has a driving range and a cemetary. And what do you think stumbles in front of my car?

An illegal immigrant returning to his camp in between gardening jobs?

A hippie liberal war protester with face paint and signs?

A six foot long rattlesnake?

No. All of those things I would have been prepared for. They've all jumped in front of my car before. (Except in the case of the rattlesnake, which didn't so much jump as just pick a really bad time and place to sun itself.)

A DEER.
I almost hit a DEER.

What the hell?
We don't have deer.
Well, ok, I've seen deer twice before in this state in my whole entire life. That includes my teenage years, riding my horse out on trails. So I suppose we technically have deer, but it's not like you SEE them. Certainly not while on paved roads.

At first, I thought it was a dog, and when I realized what had just narrowly missed my front bumper, I pulled over to take pictures, and also to chase it and hug it and squeeze it and beg it to come and live with me forever.

It (I think "it" was a "she" but I'm basing that only on the fact that it looked more like Bambi's mother than Bambi's father, because that's my only frame of reference when it comes to deer) stopped on the other side of the road, and calmly started grazing on the cemetary grass.

Since my camera batteries chose this moment to completely crap out on me, I shall have to recreate the surreal scene.

They're less suspicious when I buy nothing but a jumbo pack of toilet paper.

So then I said to the clerk, "I swear, there IS a reason I'm buying all these onions."

Yeah, my hands are shaking a little.

A crazy man called, demanding our janitor. He was yelling and rude. He identified himself only as Dave and that he was "from your electrical repair company" And when I couldn't get a hold of our janitor to put him on the line and offered to take a message, he got even louder.
I asked him to stop yelling.
He said "YOU'RE MAKING ME YELL!!!!!!!!
I WANNA STRANGLE YOU *muffled, either the word "THROUGH" or "WITH"* THE PHONE CORD!!!!!!!!!!!!!"


So yeah. My first official death threat.

The VP is trying to figure out who this guy is. I'm just nervous that he'd show up here, since he would know where we are if he really has subcontracted here. And while I don't want to be over dramatic, something in his voice makes me wanna take him seriously.

Anybody wanna sleep over at my place tonight?

Maybe I was hallucinating.

"Wait. Why do I have five corner pieces for this square puzzle?"

Lets just pay for our oil change and go.

It's a wee bit unnerving when a mechanic bursts in from the garage holding some random car part and says to the man behind the counter, "Is that Audi gone? I found this part from it."

So Then I Said ....

..... to an old friend, "So last night I had a dream that I was at some tiny little off Broadway play and you made a cameo as a funny little Englishman, wearing a vest and pocket watch. Then I woke up to banjo music, because I have a very old clock radio, and ever since the faceplate fell off, it has this quirk, that every time you turn it on, it changes stations at random and while this might technically be considered "broken" I think of it as a sort of musical adventure, and so Patsy the alarm clock and I get along just fine and it occurred to me that sometimes my real life is more surreal than my dreams, and then my puppy stuck his tongue in my ear and my nine pet birds chimed in with the banjo music, but enough about me. How are you? "