Has anything of interest happened to you recently?

You named an arm Isaac?

I know a man with one arm called Isaac.

One of my colleagues just won the world championship in Judo last week. I also found out that he had a grand total of 27 swedish gold championship medals in Judo and BJJ. When the management congratulated him, upon his return from Miami, I manage to quell my futile impulse to upstage him, which probably was for the best.

New phones help you make new friends.

My girlfriend periodically gets texts from some idiot teenaged girl who, despite being told, refuses to accept that she is not in fact texting her equally dumb teenaged friend Christie.

I tried to get my girlfriend to let me reply, or better yet give her my number, but she is too nice by half.

I got calls for an Arnold for three years straight.

I am not Arnold.

None of his creditors understood why they were calling a female college student, but they kept at it.

That I can actually understand, as it's a pretty standard ploy to just hand the phone to a friend of the opposite gender to pretend it's not the right number.

Wanna know the really strange bit?

One of those signature pads at the grocery store once misinterpreted my scribbled name as Arnold Calma. (My first name does start with an A, but that's where the similarities end.)

For at least a year afterward, I got receipts printed with that name on the bottom. AND the phone calls.

Heh, my wife's grocery card still has her maiden name on it, and so whenever we go shopping, the clerks attempt to use her last name for me. My wife's Asian, and has a very Asian last name, so the clerks always stumble over it, and look confused.

The best part is when I get texts for "Brad" from someone who I believe is a current or former girlfriend. The "I love you baby" text was awfully disconcerting.

For a while there I was getting misdirected texts from some high school gangsta thug who told me, seemingly very earnestly, that he and some buddies were going to pop a cap in someone at school Monday. I got concerned enough to call the cops that work that school and send them the texts. Dunno if anything happened, but I stopped getting the texts.

Some of my best friends had a baby three months ago. There were issues from the start--his breathing just kept stopping and they couldn't figure it out. After spending his first month in the hospital they took him home and despite one night when he stopped breathing for upwards of thirty seconds (setting off his monitor alarms) he's been fine and growing. They've been running tons of tests since then to try to figure it out and linked it to some seizure activity they saw during an MRI, but they had no idea what was causing it.

Well. Prelim results are back. They think he has a rare genetic disorder that...has a really terrible prognosis. If it is what they're saying now, he won't reach his first birthday. They're lucky he's hit three months. They're going to do further genetic/DNA testing to confirm that it's what they think but...christ. It's fucking horrible. I can't even imagine going through what they're going through. The not knowing then wishing you don't know. It's just awful.

Kabul is still good, and I try and make sure I go there whenever I'm in the bay for work. There and also Zeni Ethiopian Restaurant, which rules.

Aieeeee. I have no idea how anyone can deal with that.

If you'll excuse me, I need to go wake my kids up and hug them for the next several hours at least.

That's terrible. Here's hoping they are wrong.

staying awake for a radio contest
i haven't done this since third grade

if only they weren't playing nothing but christmas music........

Oh, God. That's horrible. I really can't imagine going through that. To think that the child you've wanted and finaly had won't even make it to his first year...that's just horrible. I remember my friend's uncle lost his teenaged son not long after I met him, and that was just devastating for the family---but to not even be able to get to know your child before he's taken from you... I wish them the best and really, really hope the results are wrong.

It's pretty much the time when they have to depend frantically on each other to try and keep themselves afloat....while also trying to tend to themselves, and that is obscenely difficult to do.

My best wishes to them and their baby.

Even though I'm not typically the praying sort, I'll pray for them. My aunt adopted a baby a few years ago and he's had chronic health problems that send them to the hospital frequently, so I know even that much is rough. I can't imagine what they must be going through. I hope he ends up being healthy.

So, this happened to me Friday night



Wife and Kid were in the car, but everyone is okay (just bumps and bruises). That was a 03 Jetta at one point.

I guess those crumple zones did their job.

I'm glad you and family are ok.

Holy crap, G, glad to see you're Ok and taking pictures.

Well, if you're going to total a car and walk away unscathed, wreck the hell out of it. Well done!

Glad to hear everyone's OK man. Ever since a buddy of mine died in a car accident a few weeks ago I can't get in the car without wondering if that sort of random tragedy could strike me at anytime.

That shit will fuck with you if you let it. :/

Did the scene have any similarities to this?



Do your wife and kid have uncanny abilities to mimic voices?

If the answer is "No", have they been previously eerily resistant to injury and have you seen this man?

Damn. Very glad you and the family are okay.

Hey Thanks all. It actually looks way worse than it was since the '91 Ford F-150 that hit us just ran right over the top of the bumper and peeled the trunk off the car.

And sorry to hear that Ryan. I'm having similar thoughts when I get behind the wheel of my rental car :(

Hope everything went well. It's a little worrisome that this was your last post in over two months.

When we moved house a few years ago we were able to hang on to the one we were moving out of and we've been renting it out. For the most part I just give the tenants a poke every now and then to make sure they're alright and the most I've had to deal with is finding new ones when the incumbents inevitably get bored and move on.

Last Friday I get an email to say that the utility room and downstairs bathroom are a half-inch deep in water and there's some coming up through the floorboards on the other side of the house. I went up and discovered that there was a burst pipe coming from a radiator so I closed the valve that lets water into the C/H system and called a plumber. The plumber discovered the culprit - someone had driven a nail through a qualpex pipe when they were hanging a skirting board and over the course of nine years the nail had rusted to the point where it was no longer plugging the hole.

Yippee. So now I've got wooden floors that are starting to warp. The floors are a little weird to walk on and one or two of the doors are hard to close, but the tenants are pretty reasonable and accepting of the fact that it could take a while to sort out the insurance claim and so on. Plus, they're Spanish, so I'm thinking we'll have an opportunity to complete the work with a minimum of interruption when they head back to Madrid to see family or whatever. So it's a big nuisance but hey, not the end of the world.

Until tonight, when I get a call from the guy who lives next door: some of the water had seeped into his house and done some damage to his walls and flooring. Fucking great.

Sympathy like for damn-that-sucks. :(

Cheers. No one was killed (or narrowly dodged a bullet Guido Jones style) and it's nowhere near the same level of godawfulness that @Quacker 's friends are facing. But, I haven't told my wife about it (she was stressed enough when it was just our house that was affected, I think she'd have a breakdown if I told her a third-party was now involved), so I needed the catharsis of telling someone!

Ingmar has spent the bulk of the morning throwing up. We do not know why, although we suspect food poisoning. If he throws up ONE MORE TIME I am taking him to urgent care whether he likes it or not, because I am pretty sure if you can't even keep water down, that is bad. It's been like ... two and a half hours since he last puked, though, which is longer than any of the other non-puking interludes, so I have Hope that the worst has passed.

You're probably better safe than sorry, but I have had bouts of what I assume was food poisoning, where I was unable to hold water down.

Yeah, I just mostly worry he's dehydrating himself, which also makes you pukey, so vicious circle ahoy!

Oh man, that's awful.
If vomiting continues for a long period of time, it's better to just go to the doctor anyway. Just to be sure it's not something really bad. HE IS IN MY THOUGHTS BE SAFE INGMAAAAAAAAR

It's probably just morning sickness.