What the Duck?

Seen: The above animal on the evening of June 8, 2006. The creature was observed while driving by the docks of Put-In-Bay. In order to get a better look at this duck-like bird, Tim and I stopped the car and rolled down the window, upon which it decided to waddle towards the car. The animal seemed to be willing to accept food, however, we had no food on us save one lone midget pretzel in my back seat. We also wished to avoid having the animal launch itself through my driver's window, so the lack of food was probably a blessing. I have looked in at least 5 bird books as well as on the internet and I simply cannot find what the heck this bird is. In the meantime, I shall call him Turducken.

Snot Raisin

snot-raisin (n) - a booger that makes it feel like someone shoved a raisin up your nose.

In other news, my arms are dead after swimming 25 laps, there's a honkin' lot of water in my ear, and my armpit hair currently seems to be growing at an alarming rate.

Nobody's Business But the Turks

My sister is a fasion designer for Ruehl, a company that's an off-shoot of Abercrombie & Fitch. Occasionally they send her to various locations around the world for reasons I'm not completely sure of. All I know is that it produces good stories, and foreign hotel samples for me. Past locations have included Hong Kong, Paris, London and Lima. Back in May she went to Istanbul and sent me this email:

Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 17:10:05 -0400
Subject: things you hear on the street in istanbul

"You want to spend money? I can help you. Yes, please."

"Hello. Are you spice girl?"

"I think you dropped something. Your smile."

"You are laughing. What is funny? I want to laugh too."

"Hi. Are you ill?"

"You have the best style here today."

"Hello Lady. Do you need flying carpet?"

"Would you like to buy things you don't need?"

If those tidbits weren't good enough, she also included a picture of an actual storefront she saw:

The man in the picture is not posing, that's just how he naturally looks. Perhaps she should have brought him back with her and recruited him as an A&F model, no?

Never Mind HIPPA

Today was my first day volunteering in the ER, making follow-up phone calls to discharged patients. My job is to look at their charts, call them up and ask them how they're doing. I have to check each patient's chief complaint since there's certain follow-up phone calls I'm not allowed to make (ex: anything pertaining to suicide, social services, etc). Some complaints are fairly simple, such as "muscle spasms," others more descriptive, and some are just plain interesting. In compliance with HIPPA, I cannot divulge the patient's name (not that I even remember it myself), but I have officially declared him/her as my favorite chief complaint of the day: "Hamburger meat stuck in throat."

Go ahead and find this amusing, because he/she is "doing fine."