October…not such an active month for the old blog. Things have been a little busy since the last entry (those stitches are out now, btw). In a classic example of catastrophe clustering, I needed to have a wisdom tooth removed the week after the bike injury, so that put me out of commission for a few days. Then, of course, I had to come up with a Halloween costume (more on that soon…probably). And let’s not forget that I’m studying German this semester. Jawohl! I’m learning a foreign language so I can get the hell out of this country some day. Anyway, you can see how all this might be challenging for someone with my limited time-management skills. As they like to say at the consistently understaffed Walgreens pharmacy, “Thank you for your patience”.
ME: So I fell off my bike last week and totally sliced open my foot.
YOU: Ouch. That’s sucks.
ME: No kidding. I had to go to the ER to get stitches and everything.
YOU: Wow, all that just from falling off a bike? You must be really clumsy. How did you know you needed stitches?
ME: You can generally guess that stitches are required when the injury ceases to look like a “cut” and is more accurately described as a “gaping hole”. If you’ve cut through all the layers of skin you’ll be able to see the muscle and fat and such underneath. That’s when it’s time to visit the hospital.
YOU: Yuck!!! That is waaay more than I needed to know. Let’s drop this disgusting topic immediately.
ME: You think that’s gross? The doctor was telling me, as he was fixing the wound, that he’d cut off the edges of the skin before he sewing it back together, because it’s better to work with a clean cut than with the dirty, jagged edges of skin that are created by a typical laceration.
YOU: Oh, my, GOD! That is sick! Please stop telling me about this. I don’t, I repeat don’t, want to know anything else about this incident.
ME: Also, they numb the skin and surrounding tissue before putting in the stitches but apparently there was some bruising to the “deep tissue”, so I could feel this pressure-type pain beneath the completely numb surface the whole time the doctor was stitching up the ghastly gash. It felt like he was leaning on it with his elbow or something. Rather disconcerting.
YOU: Why are you like this? I asked you, begged you even, to shut up. And you just kept going. I need to lie down now. Please don’t post any photos.
ME: No problem.
Last weekend the over-priced 3-day music festival Austin City Limits made its annual appearance in our humble city. As with the previous year, I skipped the event itself (see whiny posts from September 2008 for details) but this time I did manage to hit a couple of the after shows. Friday night Broken Social Scene played a free-with-RSVP concert at an intriguing new location, the Seaholm Power Plant. Built in the 1950s, the plant’s not-so-lengthy career in power production came to an end in 1996. Now, over a decade later, the structure has re-invented itself as a music venue. It’s a rather savvy comeback concept since, in addition to bearing an Aladin Sane-esque lightning bolt on its front side, Seaholm is reachable by, you guessed it…Bowie Street! The actual concert took place outside, while the interior of the plant was gated off as a VIP lounge. Luckily, this being the venue’s inaugural event, there were still a few un-ironed wrinkles in the whole security system. Thus, common people like me are able to share cell phone snapshots of the inner sanctum with equally common people like you.
While they do have supermarkets in the south, you can also just eat stuff you find in the yard. Go ahead, it’s probably not poisonous.
