Hear my tale of woe, and laugh. There are many plants climbing my house...one of which, my dad identified as poison ivy. Thusly marked for death, it was sprayed with the the special death sauce. It croaked, but Dad cautioned me that it still had the nasty oil on it, so removal presented some problems. I mentioned this to some friends. Three friends. Rod. Mark. Andy. Their response was: "I'm immune to poison ivy. I've tromped through jungles of it, and never felt a thing, while my fellow trompers all died of The Big Itch. I'm AMAZING. I GLOW WITH POWER." Cheered by their heroic powers of immunity, and implied willingness to dispose of my itchy devil weed, I said "great, when can you yank that thing?"...which got me..."Uhhh...cripe, man...I could get poison ivy." Arr. Posers.

I make things go away. Specifically, Eric's things. Two items of evidence: (1) At Eric's house, he handed me a sheet of paper with a list of phone numbers on it. I set it down. Poof, gone. We searched the only room I'd been in, top to bottom. Totally gone. (2) After dribbling some "Stress Liquid" on the seat of Eric's car, we stopped at Rod's house to clean it up. Eric handed me his keys/wallet combo. I set it down. Time for Eric to drive back to his house. No keys. Lots of searching. More searching. Gnashing of teeth. Frantic searching. Nothing. Three days later, they showed up a few blocks away at the city pool, with teeth marks on the wallet. After these two experiences, Eric dared to tempt fate at DisneyWorld, when he asked me to hold his camera while made a pit-stop. Luckily for him, I kept the power in check.

Bored? Tape a person coming out of anesthesia after getting their wisdom teeth out. Mark told me I was very wacky when I was coming out of it, so when Andy had to have his done, I volunteered to drive him...and record his nutty drugged-up shenanigans. So I run into the recovery room after the tooth-yanking, and start filming. Andy's really woozy...and funny. He paws clumsily at his tongue, impersonates Elvis, tries to flirt with a passing nurse...all laugh-til-you-hurt stuff. I get home, watch it, laugh, hurt. Tell friends about it. Invite friends over. Start tape. Static. All static. I erased it. Oh, the horror. I looked into recovery services...apparently, this technology is top-secret government stuff. Arg. Darn government. The MAN'S KEEPIN' ME DOWN!

One night, at 3am, I was taking Rod home. I was driving my rockin' Renault...which suddenly decided to not rock so hard, and began shuddering. It was a small shudder at first, and we tried to ignore it, but it got progressively worse. I pulled over, jumped out, and looked at my back left tire, which was at about a 15 degree angle. Very much bad. I saw that there was one nut holding it on...the rest were gone, along with the bolts they were on. Very much badder. We tried to change the tire, but the last nut wouldn't come off (a real trooper, that nut). It was about 3:30am now. Four miles from my house. And cold (it was fall). So we decided to walk back. So we're walking...after a while, we heard wild dogs (or coyotes, not sure which), which made us rather nervous. Right at the height of our nervousness - WHAM! This huge beast charges toward us, shaking the ground as it came. I squawked in terror, and dropped to my knees. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Rod was amused because it was a llama.

I was at Sarah's parents' house, hungering. She, me, and her parents were in the kitchen. They gave me a raw hamburger to prepare. Being a fan of spiceage, I went for the spice collection. Her dad jokingly told me not to produce any toxic fumes. Well...I chose the tobasco sauce. Everything was fine until I flipped the burger, so the tobasco side was sizzling on the pan...in a few minutes, we were choking in a cloud of what some would consider "pepper spray". It was not my most impressive cooking moment. No casualties, but faith in my cooking skill has dropped a few points.

During a weekend, Mark had shown off his new SoundBlaster Live, with which he could perform amazing filtering effects. Plug in a mic, turn on the male2female filter, and you sound like a feminina...just one of many effects. So anyway, A couple of days later, I had to call him for something. Mark had recently moved, and had emailed his new number, so I whacked the number in and waited. A strange voice answered...I was immediately suspicious. We had discussed how funny it would be to prank people with those filters, and I wasn't about to fall for it, by cracky. The guy on the other end acted like he didn't know a "Mark". I asked him, in a hesitant tone, "This isn't Mark using voice-filtering software, is it?" The conversation went downhill after that. I emailed Mark. He died laughing. He typed the number wrong.

It was lunchtime, and Sarah and I were looking for a picnic table in a park. We found a picnic table, and there was the most disgusting thing I've seen in a looong time. A squirrel had died on it, and it looked like it had been there for about a month. Sarah looked at it a lot longer than I did...she says it was in disbelief. I think she's just disturbed...(grin). The next weekend, we were there again to eat lunch...and we saw a family munching away at the "squirrel table". We assume (hope!) that the table had been cleaned (there's a nasty job...scraping rotting squirrel off a picnic table...ug), or replaced. Moral of the story...examine your outdoor dining surfaces closely before commencing chow-down.

It was a lan-gaming frenzy one night, and the guys were arrayed around the room, doing their hard-core gamer impersonations. After burning a bad cd, I decided to dispose of it by folding it in half, like a taco. Little did I know that folding a cd causes it to EXPLODE IN A BLAST OF DEADLY SHARDS, NARROWLY MISSING ROD'S HEAD, AND STRIKING THE WALL BESIDE HIM. Rod made a puddle, and I decided not to do that any more.

Late one night, I saw a bit of a gardening show. They were highlighting a hotel that has a large flower garden, in which the guests can roam around with scissors and make their own bouquet for their room. I think it would be amusing to take all the flowers, cram the whole shebang in your room, lock yourself in, and laugh until you hurt...(heheheh).

Arg! I have no tan! Rodney the Pit-Dweller has a better tan than me!

The Three Rivers raft race was cancelled this year because the radio station that sponsored it couldn't handle the insurance costs. Quite a letdown, but Mark, Rod and I went to the parade to see Sarah. Rod got fondled by a big chicken on rollerskates. Mark and I enjoyed it greatly.

I'm not doing so well, minor injury-wise...I kicked a bowling ball (not my brightest moment), and got my right hand crushed in an elevator door...

Grr. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, buying a cheap K-Mart watch. But when it has the word "AquaTech" on the front, and the back claims it's water resistant down to 100 feet...it's really annoying when swimming for fifteen minutes renders it dead.

I have learned an important lesson. Slipshod application of sunblock results in freakish tanning patterns.

I hit a deer for the first time. It was really scary. Not much damage to my car, and I'm reasonably sure the deer died quickly. As far as deer accidents go, it was a pretty good one, I guess.

While driving some friends around, I suddenly noticed that my hand had multiple cuts from...a stray knife? A shaving incident earlier in the day? NO! My car's shifter had a loose piece of fake chrome, and it had been slicing and dicing my hand the whole night...I only noticed it when it hit some nerves and blood vessels.

[This happened quite a while ago] I am now a member of RHC (Resident Hall Council). My powers are beyond mortal comprehension. Mock not the awesome position that is...Male Representative of Trinity West. Lightning and comets will rain down on your pointy little head!

This didn't happen to me, but it's still amusing. Mark was entering a quik-mart thing, and holding a door open for the local dog-catcher. The guy turned toward Mark and said "Shut up, or I'll break your legs!". He was talking to a dog that was barking in his truck, but Mark didn't realize it for a second, and feared for his safety.

Eric, Rod, Mark and I participated in the Three Rivers Festival Raft Race. We built the raft the night before. People made fun of it. We braved hostile water-balloon-flinging crowds, overly-competitive racers, hungry river parasites, and back-breaking rowing. We came in 18th out of about 60 entries. Here are some pictures I took.

• Here are Mark and Rod standing next to the mighty craft (which is upside-down at the moment). Godizilla started out as a fun mascot, and ended up serving as a shield against the killer water balloons. Note the logs on the underside of the raft...they weighed about two tons, each. The white barrel was our stabilizer.
• Here's Mark, as the race officials push him out into the raging river. Note how high in the water the raft is. Is was a lot lower with everyone on it.
• Here we all are, rowing like mad (except for me). I was being yelled at for standing up.
• Here's Rod, the blood of our enemies spattered across his face. Ok, it's actually just the effects of river water getting on the film...but it's a great look.

Mark, Rod, Andy, and I went to see Big Bad Voodoo Daddy at a local club. Neither Rod or I are big fans, but the music wasn't too bad. We couldn't find a place to sit, so we stood for the entire thing...pain for the legs. There were some interesting crowd people...there was Hand-Waver...some drunken 40-year-old guy was very enthusiastically waving his hands. It was mostly amusing because no one else was. There was also Werewolf Girl...she was dancing like a maniac right next to Rod. After stopping to howl, she whacked Rod. Great fun.

While in Scotts, I happened to see institutional pudding. 7 pounds of chocolate pudding for $3.50. I was most pleased. I bought it. Well. It's not very chocolatey. It's just sort of goopy. Oh well.

As we were walking along on night, Eric suddenly shined a little key-chain light in my eyes...now...my brain said..."fast approaching object attached to key-chain heading toward face", and when the light hit my eyes, it said "unexpected thing has happened"... and classified the event as a pepper-spray attack. Needless to say, I flinched big-time. No shame though. I've got the reflexes of a cat. RAH!

Eric had Rod, Andy, and me over one night...he was guarding his parents' house from TP-ers (his mom's a teacher, and her students annually TP their orchard in front of the house). We were drafted as extra guards. Well, we were watching a movie, and didn't check the windows for a while...by the time we did, they had come and gotten a pretty good start. When Bock opened the door to look, they fled, dropping TONS of unused rolls. We saw four cars drive off. We figured they'd be back, so we decided to take it all down. Between the four of us, it didn't take too long (it was kind of neat...like anti-TP-ing). We had a huge pile in the driveway, which we set ablaze. At the most opportune moment, the TP-ers drove by to survey their work...and there it was, a bonfire in the driveway. It was pretty cool. Rod was disappointed...he didn't get any hand-to-hand combat.

I was driving Eric and Mark home from watching movies at SFC, when we passed a truck that had shot off the road and into a deep ditch (this was during winter, btw). Eric suggested we stop and let the guy use his cell phone. We go toward the truck. I approach the guy while the two chickens hang back. I ask him if he needs help. He says nothing. He just stares at us for what seemed like a *very* long time. I was thinking "He's insane. He's going to kill us all. I'm going to be a "911" story. Shatner's going to talk about me." Then he asked, "Do you believe in angels?" Our fright was multiplied. Anyway, to shorten the story, we drove him into town, and listened to him talk about angels, how pure we were, and how unimportant this life was (that was a really scary part). And when we dropped him off at Scott's (he wouldn't tell us where he lived), I wished him luck with his truck, and he kind of laughed and said "MY truck...". It was wild stuff.

Also while in Scotts, I saw some of those slimy toys...they were labeled "Slimy Reptiles." Upon closer inspection, I noticed that there was a rat in one of them.

I'm really sick of chocolate pudding.

I was listening to WBNI (Public Radio), and the volunteer spinning the cds sounded like he was losing his dentures. It was really weird.

It was early morning, when Andy, Tony, and I were eating breakfast. Andy hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, and was sitting with his head down, and the hood of his red sweatshirt up. He looked like a red blob. Then, without arising, he snagged one of my glasses of cranberry juice. He was kind of like a cranberry-juice-snitching-red-blob-monster. Tony and I decided he was kind of like a failed Classic Star Trek alien (like the Horta). Kirk would have blasted him.

I found out how to make somebody hate you. Hate you so much they curse, swear, flip you the bird, and tell you how they're going to hurt you good. Wrap'em in duct tape. So just their nostrils are poking out. Then make them hold uncomfortable positions while you fiddle with your camera and ask them if it's hot in there. (heheheh)

I had a tongue spasm last night. I was trying to scrape some Butterfinger filling off my teeth, when all of a sudden a muscle in my tongue went nuts. It hurt a lot. I couldn't talk for a while.

While picking out a tux for Chad and Ethel's wedding, I saw some lingerie, apparently available for rental. Rental. Underwear. For rent. Yig. Well, I guess it could have been for sale, but still, just the thought...nasty.

I got my wisdom teeth out...it was amazingly painless/bloodless! Before the surgery, I played with the heart monitor...it was fun making the meter freak out. It doesn't work as a lie detector, however.