Chicago, now with pictures
I'm safely back home, and have downloaded the pictures from our trip. We didn't take many, but here they are.
It was really damn cold. Bracingly cold. Bitterly cold. The kind of cold that makes you think your eyeballs could fall out. We were bundled, but it still didn't feel like enough, even standing in the CTA tunnels to catch the red line.
One of the best parts of the whacky jazz show at the Ice Factory? They have a cat named Ernest Borgnine, and he wears a bow tie.
Trent was totally horrified by the rack rates for our hotel room (it wasn't THAT nice).
I was just impressed with the view from the 46th floor.
Seattle's public library is cool, but Chicago's is by god imposing, with really cool statuary on the top (and check out that blue sky!).
The fiber report
I spent our travel time working on a sock from some lovely handpaint that my tea swap buddy, Tawana, sent me. It's from J. Knits and it's lurvely. I'm using 2 mm needles because it seems skinnier than most merino sock yarns.
Here's what I bought at Loopy Yarns. That's 3 skeins of Fleece Artist 2/6 merino sock yarn; in Blue Lagoon, Burgundy, and Rainforest; lounging against 8 oz of roving.
Meanwhile, my sweet Sweetie gave me an early birthday/anniversary/Christmas present, some roving from Spunky Eclectic. I dived right into the Tahiti-colored BFL. Mmmmm, tropical.
A tale of great clumsiness
Today I went to work wearing trousers that have fairly shallow pockets. I went to the restroom. My big wad of keys were in my pocket. In one of those totally automatic series of motions, I stood up from the toilet and flushed while silmultaneously pulling up my pants. My keys fell out of my pocket, straight into the flushing center of the toilet.
It turns out that the movies really have moments like this right. Time slows down, and your mouth forms a perfect O as you desperately grab at the thing you've dropped and shriek "Nooooooooooooooooo."
But yes! They flushed right on down. The nice folks at my workplace called plumbers, but it was to no avail. I learned that commercial pipes are 4" wide (with a 3" p-trap), so my keys are, presumably, now making their way through the sewer system. Like Clementine, they're lost and gone forever.
A kind coworker gave me a ride home, and another coworker will take me to work tomorrow so I can retrieve my car using Trent's keys. Unfortunately, my car has a microchipped ignition key, so I'm going to have to shell out some pretty substantial bucks to get another one from the manufacturer.
The best part of this tale of woe is people's reaction when I tell them I flushed my keys. They feel like they should be sympathetic, but usually the cackling hysteria wins.
Readers are encouraged to improve my day by leaving a comment about the dumbest or clumsiest thing they've ever done.
It was really damn cold. Bracingly cold. Bitterly cold. The kind of cold that makes you think your eyeballs could fall out. We were bundled, but it still didn't feel like enough, even standing in the CTA tunnels to catch the red line.
One of the best parts of the whacky jazz show at the Ice Factory? They have a cat named Ernest Borgnine, and he wears a bow tie.
Trent was totally horrified by the rack rates for our hotel room (it wasn't THAT nice).
I was just impressed with the view from the 46th floor.
Seattle's public library is cool, but Chicago's is by god imposing, with really cool statuary on the top (and check out that blue sky!).
The fiber report
I spent our travel time working on a sock from some lovely handpaint that my tea swap buddy, Tawana, sent me. It's from J. Knits and it's lurvely. I'm using 2 mm needles because it seems skinnier than most merino sock yarns.
Here's what I bought at Loopy Yarns. That's 3 skeins of Fleece Artist 2/6 merino sock yarn; in Blue Lagoon, Burgundy, and Rainforest; lounging against 8 oz of roving.
Meanwhile, my sweet Sweetie gave me an early birthday/anniversary/Christmas present, some roving from Spunky Eclectic. I dived right into the Tahiti-colored BFL. Mmmmm, tropical.
A tale of great clumsiness
Today I went to work wearing trousers that have fairly shallow pockets. I went to the restroom. My big wad of keys were in my pocket. In one of those totally automatic series of motions, I stood up from the toilet and flushed while silmultaneously pulling up my pants. My keys fell out of my pocket, straight into the flushing center of the toilet.
It turns out that the movies really have moments like this right. Time slows down, and your mouth forms a perfect O as you desperately grab at the thing you've dropped and shriek "Nooooooooooooooooo."
But yes! They flushed right on down. The nice folks at my workplace called plumbers, but it was to no avail. I learned that commercial pipes are 4" wide (with a 3" p-trap), so my keys are, presumably, now making their way through the sewer system. Like Clementine, they're lost and gone forever.
A kind coworker gave me a ride home, and another coworker will take me to work tomorrow so I can retrieve my car using Trent's keys. Unfortunately, my car has a microchipped ignition key, so I'm going to have to shell out some pretty substantial bucks to get another one from the manufacturer.
The best part of this tale of woe is people's reaction when I tell them I flushed my keys. They feel like they should be sympathetic, but usually the cackling hysteria wins.
Readers are encouraged to improve my day by leaving a comment about the dumbest or clumsiest thing they've ever done.
posted by Melinda at 9:48 PM
8 Comments:
OK your key story is so similar to when I flushed a watch down the toliet at WSU. I put my hand on the flushing lever and as I flushed away, my expensive, gift given watch from England threw itself off my wrist and into the depths of the Pullman sewer system. I'm still quite bitter about it.
I'm glad you had fun in C-town though! Did Callie wake you up to eat your hair this morning?
I work with someone who flushed their pager down the toilet. Not sure if it was actually an accident though!
Glad you had a good time in Chicago, Seattle must feel almost tropical.
I had the same thing happen with my wallet a few years ago. I bent over to flush and it slipped right out of my jacket pocket. I know what you mean about time standing still. Luckily, it was too big to go down the tube and I was able to grab it. But, needless to say, I went straight to a store and bought a new wallet! TMK
Henry Kissinger dropped his glasses in the toilet in an episode of the Simpsons. Homer was later found wearing them...
Well... crap!
(Sorry. It's the only appropriate response!)
Probably my stupidest thing was (about 20 years ago) getting my purse stolen out of my car two weekends in a row. After I figured out that leaving it in the car was a bad idea the first time, you'd think I'd not have done it again in the same location one week later. But nnooooooo...
I couldn't think of anything, so I was going to tell you about how my husband had snuck in an extra errand while out with the car, to shop for my christmas present. But after parking the car, he got involved in an NPR story on the radio. When it was over he got out of the car, locked and shut the door only to realise he had left the radio on, which meant that the keys were in the ignition and the car was running. We only had one car, so he had to call me to ask if I could call a friend to borrow a car so I could bring my keys to rescue him. But then I remembered one of my most humiliating moments.
Senior year of college, I lived in an apartment owned by the school. Complex was two stories, each apartment had a small balcony overlooking a common courtyard. One morning I was supposed to meet a friend to walk to class. In the courtyard instead of walking up the flight of stairs to her apartment, I picked up a pebble (tiny! I swear) and tossed it at the sliding glass door of the balcony (gently, I double swear!). As you can guess, the door shattered into a million little bits of tempered safety glass. Calling the dean to tell him what happened and paying for it (I don't think he charged me the whole cost) was not nearly as bad as my embarrassment standing in that courtyard with everyone looking out to see what happened.
I flushed a mouthpiece down a urinal at SMSU. Feel better?
I left my husband behind in a McDonalds in Tennessee and didn't know I had done it until a highway patrolman pulled me over in Kentucky, 90 miles later, to smirk and ask, "Missing anything?"
I swear I thought he was snoozing in that pile of sleeping bags in the back of the station wagon. Although I did wonder briefly why I wan't hearing him snore...
But we are still married 20+ years later :-)
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