the fifty fourth story

Leaving the show today, I put 10.01 gallons in a ten gallon tank. For some bizarre reason, I'm really proud of that. I'm also REALLY glad I pulled off the highway for gas when I did. There was another dude pumping gas. I went over to him, showed him the receipt, told him I had a ten gallon tank, and we high fived like we were in a movie. Then I drove off into the (long passed) sunset

the fifty third story

When I was a kid, there was a partial solar eclipse. I was thrilled. Made the pinhole box to watch it, went outside and realized, much to my surprise, that the spaces between leaves did the same thing; that the dappled light under a tree was, at that moment, thousands of tiny crescents. Science is magic.

the fifty second story

When I was 9 years old, we were moving away from Florida. My mom wanted us to wake up early enough to see the sun rise over the water, and to look for turtle nests hatching. We were too late for the turtles, but there was one little one that wasn't making it past the breakers. My mom carried it out, but it washed back up, anyway. We took it to the turtle rescue place, and they told us that its flippers had been chewed by crabs and it wouldn't be able to swim, but they would send it to the aquarium, and it would get prosthetics. I believed them. I believed them until I was telling this story, not more than a year ago, and got to the point of saying the thing about prosthetic flippers and realized, all those years later, that it was almost certainly a lie you tell to children.

the Fifty First Story

When I was first riding a bicycle in Boston, it was a little old upright English three speed. She was a great, easy little bicycle. Her name was Daphne. Riding to work one day, I was hit by a car. There was no serious damage, either to me or my bike (those things are tanks) and the driver was not confident in her legal status, so I sent her on her way. The biggest issue with the bike was that the seat post had bent, so I pulled up onto the sidewalk to try to straighten it enough to continue on my way. In about 3 minutes, the BU cops showed up. I said I was fine, and sent them on their way. Then a Boston city police car pulled up. I explained that I was fine, and they left. About 30 seconds later a firetruck pulled up. I explained that my bicycle was unlikely to explode, but while we were still talking, another firetruck and an EMT guy showed up. Yet again, I explained that I was fine. Then another policeman showed up- the EMT guy took over the job of pointing out my lack of injuries. Finally, about 10 minutes after the crash (longer than I would have been held up there if not for all the interruptions) an ambulance showed up. The EMT guy told them I was ok, and just fixing my bike. They wanted to take me in just to check things out. I was already late for work, knew I was uninjured, and was not going anywhere. They tried to insist. I said no. Then one of them piped up with "well, at least let us clean your road rash". I was going to work and didn't have a  full first aid kit with me, so that actually sounded ok, until he followed it with "just step into the back of the van, and we'll get it cleaned up right away. I looked at the EMT guy. He shook his head and mouthed "no". I said I'd be happy to sit on the curb while they did it. They looked really quite pissed. I am utterly convinced they would have kidnapped me to the hospital.

The Fiftieth Story

It was raining very hard today, so I had the big door closed but left the little door open for ventilation while I was soldering. When I was done with the torch, I turned it off, put it down, and turned around to see my UPS lady standing right outside the little door, under the awning. She said she hoped it was ok that she had stood there; she didn't want to put my packages on the wet ground, but it looked like what I was doing required concentration, and she didn't want to startle me opening the door the rest of the way to bring them into the shop.
I have the best UPS lady EVER.

the Forty Ninth Story

Before I had my own cross country ski equipment, I would run down to the EMS and rent a set for a day in the winter woods. There was this one time when things just weren't quite right, but I didn't realize till I was out in the woods, and being stubborn, I still went for a full day. I came home a bit sore, but these things generally take some time to sink in. I went to work the next day, and while things hurt a bit, I was pretty much ok all day. I wasn't doing anything real physical- just cutting apart a model car to make a maquete for a piece the guys were doing that would be an exploded view of an Indy 500 car. I left a little early, and sometime about halfway through my ride home my muscles started locking up. By the time I made it home, I was pretty much out. I was so out that I left my bike, freelocked, leaning on the side of the house, and that's pretty damned far gone, for anyone who hasn't seen me with my bike. I went in, and found the muscle relaxers I got when I first started forging. Now, I only ever took half of one of these things, as I'm extremely sensitive to most drugs, but I was already basically gone, and the idea of trying to cut one in half was just too much- so I took a whole one and went to bed. Dustin came home a few hours later, and, seeing my bike beside the house, knew something was up. He came in, and I was in bed. He asked me what had happened that day. In my drugged stupor, I waved my hand in the air and said "The car. It exploded." He asked for clarification and I, rather annoyed that such a clear statement could cause confusion, simply repeated, louder and slower "The car. It exploded". Dustin responded with the only appropriate thought "so, you won't be eating dinner?" and carried my bike in.

the forty eighth story

happens on the same trip as the forty seventh. We were both young, and silly, and one of the things we most loved to do together was to get lost. Inspired by the previous day's events, we decided to go ahead and deliberately do so, together. So we wrote up a plan. We would get on the metro. We would wait till we saw someone in an orange shirt, and take the next possible transfer, and get on whatever train we saw first. We would get off at the fourth stop, and go to the left exit off the train. We would turn left on getting to a road. We would take the third right, and walk past one bakery before turning left. Two blocks and turn right. And we would eat at a restaurant on the third block*. We ended up at a Russian restaurant with only two tables. It had red walls, red curtains, red tablecloths, red napkins, and red shades on the lights. We ourselves were red, with the tinted light coming in from the windows and through the lampshades. There was an open window to the kitchen, through which we were handed (red) menus. The menu was in Russian. There was a (red) wax figure of an accordion player sitting at the next table- except that, as we were trying to figure out how to order, the wax figure leaned over and very kindly asked, in very broken French, if we needed help. We were very happy to have any help, but it turned out we really could not talk with this man- he had so little French, and we had so little French, and there just wasn't much overlap. He kept apologizing, and finally, we told him to just order for us whatever he thought best. We ended up with Boscht, and some sausage dish, and some meatball type thing- a whole lot of food. We took much of it home with us. The next day, for dinner, we opened up our takeout containers, and you can only imagine our childish surprise at realizing that the food itself was all red.

*these are not the actual directions, but a recreation of how they were done. The actual ones were much more convoluted, but you get the idea