Snakes on a Floor!

Okay, so it doesn't have the same ring as snakes on a plane. At all.

I was walking by the bathroom last night, when I heard Rob Valentine exclaim, "What's THAT?"

I peek in the door, and I see something on the floor. It is long and paper thin, sort of brownish, greyish, yellowish, bluish, and blackish in color. It looks like it might be plant material - like maybe a plant leaf. I get closer to it, and I see that it looks scaly.

I say, "It's snake skin! A snake molted in our bathroom."

Rob protests because he says that a snake needs to rub up against something to do that, and it doesn't look all white and flakey like snake skin. He goes to pick it up using my straightening iron. I, of course, vehemently protest this plan. After briefly teasing me, he abandons the straightening iron for his leatherman.

He picks up the snake skin and holds it close to his face for evaluation. I say that it definitely looks like it has scales, and maybe it's a fish. Rob holds it even closer and seems to sniff it. Then he holds it out for me to have a sniff.

And I say, "Smoked salmon!!! Where did that come from?"

We puzzled over it for a bit, but as far as we knew no one else had even been home in the time that the skin appeared. Our best theory was that I left the hall closet door open and Miss America went to peruse its contents. As it is a bit of a hunting apparel closet, we were thinking that maybe she procured herself some old smoked salmon skin there, toted it to the bathroom across the hall, and then abandoned it.

Finger Baby

You may know that I have an awesome bump on my right ring finger. It is the product of an injury involving a fence around a tennis court in college. The injury was then misdiagnosed by a not-so-awesome nurse practitioner who decided to aggressively treat it at as a wart. The injury responded by growing huge amounts of scar tissue - quite similar to a keloid. Anyway, now it is a big ugly bump that has nearly completely destroyed my nail. I haven't found the solution yet. It has been removed with surgery, and I've even tried acupuncture. And there the finger bump stays.

So last night, I walked upstairs, and Smurfette Hermeson was on the living room floor. She was apparently involved in some sort of "fight" with Corky McAbelas. She was yelling something about "baby" and "no" and "get that away from me." She then instructed me to look at Corky's toe - "Look, he has a baby growing out of his toe!!" So I looked, and it did have a lovely bump growing out of it. Corky said that he thought it might be a wart.

So I showed the finger bump off to Smurfette. She gave a high shriek and ran from the room as fast as she could. I couldn't help but start to laugh as she stood down the hallway looking at me; it reminded me of that distasteful look that my old Moni the cat would give me after I had the audacity to brush her. A look of, "What is wrong with you? Why would you subject me to such horror?"

It seemed like a slight overreaction to me, but then again, I am forced to look at the finger bump every day. And, even I can't really say that I'm used to it. I'd very much like it to be gone. Corky attributed the growth "babies" to getting older, as Smurfette is the youngest one in the house, who possibly has not experienced the fun parts of aging. I'm not sure though; my finger baby has been going for a good 10 years now. Either way, the finger bump leads to my embarrassment once again.

Disappearing Act

One unfortunate Friday I lost my pen at work. Generally when I lose my pen, it turns up somewhere on my desk. This only happens after I have harbored very mean thoughts about someone who I am inevitably convinced stole my pen. This Friday though, I was certain that I must have done something with it. I looked all over my desk, under all my papers, under my keyboard, and I found nothing. I went back out to the copier and by the offices I had recently visited. I whined a little bit to my officemate over it. I suppose the loss of a pen at work doesn't sound like too big of a deal. And the thing is that it isn't. It's only that I bring my pens (Uniball Vision Elites!!) to work with me because I don't like the pens that are provided there. So I sort of wanted to find my pen.

By the end of the day, my pen still hadn't turned up. I cleaned off my desk for the evening, and it was still nowhere to be seen. I went home and forgot about it.

Later that evening, Rob Valentine and I decided to go to a movie. We were standing outside the theater, when we heard something hit the floor. I thought I dropped something - maybe my candy or a chapstick from my purse. I looked down...and there it was! The errant pen, right there on the floor in the movie theater. I can't figure out how it ended up there.

So you think maybe I placed the pen in my purse absent-mindedly while at work...nope. I wasn't even carrying the same purse at the movie theater that I had brought to work that day.

Your next theory? Maybe it was somehow on my clothes or in my pocket? Could be. The strange thing is that when I got home from work. I washed my car. So you would think if the pen were going to fall out of my pocket or come unclipped from wherever it was holding on, it would have done so while I was bending and reaching and standing and crawling around with my car washing. Or at least if it were in my pocket, I would have noticed. I mean, usually you can feel it if you crouch down with a chapstick in your pocket, and a pen is considerably longer.

So thank you pen people. Or whoever it was who returned my pen from the place that I somehow left it. I am quite pleased to have it back.

Fail

I was sort of going for blogging every day more or less. I actually got on late last night to make sure I got June 23rd. Well, as it turns out, my profile is set to another time zone. So I wrote my post and clicked "Publish Post." Then I went to view it, and what should I find, but that it posted at 12:22AM on June 24th!! And, it was actually 11:22PM on June 23rd my time. So I went through and tried to fix it. I deleted the post. I made sure that my blog profile was set to Anchorage. I changed my google profile to Alaska time. I re-posted. And it said 12:33PM on June 24th!! So, June 23rd gets skipped due to technical difficulties.

The Big Metal Box

When my friend and I came back from working out at lunch one day, we saw a big metal door sitting in the parking garage. It was near the door, black, fairly narrow, and quite tall. It seemed to have a lock on it too. There was a note taped to it.
"If you took the big metal box, this is the door."
Awesome.

108 Sun Salutations Later

I did it. I finished my 108 sun salutations. It went pretty well, I think. I'd say it took me less than an hour. I only did Surya Namaskar A, but I did mix it up between jumping and stepping back to plank. I also switched off between cobra and upward facing dog. And then I did have to drop my knees to do bow instead of a full chatturanga from time to time.

After 20 sun salutations...I was still feeling pretty good. Full chatturangas and jumps all the way. I was warm enough to lose my sweatshirt.

By 30 sun salutations...I was starting to feel like it wasn't going to be quite so easy to finish them all. I had to switch to stepping back to plank and forward to stand up again.

By 50 sun salutations...I was over the stepping. It seemed like I kept accidentally dragging one foot or the other along the mat. Annoying! I felt more energetic and went back to just jumping. It didn't seem like that was taking much more effort. I did however give up on doing full chatturangas. I did lots of bows with a few chatturangas mixed in.
I also did a lot more cobra than upward facing dog.

By 75 sun salutations...I started feeling pretty good again. It felt really smooth. Bow to cobra felt like exactly what I needed to do, like the most natural movement I could be doing right then.

And from 90 to 108...it just felt good. I was shakey. I was tired. But I was happy. I finished strong with full, fluid chatturangas to upward facing dogs. I could see the sun out the window; 108 sun salutations were the perfect way to greet the sun on the longest day of the year.

And today...I can sure feel it. My arms, my hamstrings...woohoo, they remember the solstice celebration!

Solstice!

Okay - so I've been on hiatus for quite awhile. Over six months actually. Things were a little rough there for awhile. But, I decided that the summer solstice was a great day to get back to some Carport Furby action. For today...108 Sun Salutations. AND - the sun is actually out if you can believe it! We've had quite a bit of cloudiness lately, so the sun's appearance is wonderful tonight. That's it for now, but I'll be back. Back with sore arms.