Enter. Indent.

My friend has a condition that makes her, for all intents and purposes, highly lactose-intolerant.

She told me that for every cigarette I smoke from here on out, she’ll eat a bowl of ice cream.

So I’m stopping. For real. Today. Enough of the stupidity.

Triage

I’m sitting in an emergency room, watching the 2am bustle of the injured, ill, and diseased. Ridiculous as it may be, I often forget about how many people there are in the vicinity of my little world – and how close we all are on the equalizing planes of life and death. Yes, there’s fancy food and fast food, and yes, Los Robles hospital is quite a bit nicer with its bigger rooms than Alta Bates. But emergency rooms….

A few hours ago I let myself get caught up in dire abstractions of self and social pressures; seeking the bubble reputation in the mouth of a cannon I created (it was as ridiculous as that sentence sounds). Then my friend asked me to drive her to the emergency room. And I remembered that life goes on regardless, and… it’ll end regardless. #realitycheck -> what’s really important?

One of the nurses ran out to Jack-in-the-Box to grab food and asked the security guard at the counter if he wanted anything.Ron said he wanted a hamburger and large fries. It’s also his 60th birthday (and his anniversary!). I told him he should have asked for balloons too. He said it was okay and that his family was going to throw a huge fuss over him later. He also told me, after he’d listened to the loud, racist ranting of an 80 year-old alcoholic (who broke his thumb coming out of a bar) for some length of time, that the amount of good things that came – like hamburgers – far outweighed the things that could drag down a person. Ron crossed himself when he placed his hamburger order, and told me, “good things come from all angles.”

That’s important stuff.

There are better places to wake up, but Merry Christmas.

“We consider Christmas as the encounter, the great encounter, the historical encounter, the decisive encounter, between God and mankind. He who has faith knows this truly; let him rejoice.”

— Pope Paul VI

Just so darn clever

The Southwest crew on this particular flight read their traditional pre-flight security briefing to the passengers in the style of “T’was the night before Christmas.” It was long, but I’ll give them a healthy dose of credit for trying.

When the plane rolled down the Tarmac and approached the gate, a sing-song voice floated over with a “not yettt.” Then we stopped and the voice came on with, “okay. Now get out.”

Kudos, khaki-pantsed people.