RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Yesterday, I got an idea to write a story.  I used to do a lot of writing, but it's been years since I've actually sat down with the purpose of writing an actual story.  I don't know what possessed me to write this one down, but I had a very clear picture in my head and I didn't want to lose it. 

I didn't want to open a word file and write in it, because I don't let people read things I write, (not, like, story stuff. You are welcome to read this!) and people are always on my computer at work.  I never know if they are going through files or what.  So I opened an email and started writing in the body, thinking I'd just email it to myself at home so I could save it or whatever.  I left it open so I could write in between doing, you know, my job, and I'd gotten about four paragraphs into it when one of my coworkers walked over to ask me to do something.  He was behind my desk, and when I turned around to grab something, I'm positive he was standing there reading my story, which was disguised as an email. 

You know, I think I'd normally be angry, because a person who'd read an email over your shoulder is the kind of person who I'd consider a complete jerk-face.  However, because I was writing the story in the first person, and I was writing it in the body of an email, I actually think it's hilarious that he would think I was writing about myself.  Oh, I'm still ticked off that he'd be OK reading one of my emails, of course, but at least he ended up reading something that will make him wonder if I have some kind of secret life!  Had I actually been through with the story, he'd probably really be concerned.

I guess it's lucky for me and him it wasn't some kind of erotica. : )  I kind of wish it had been, now!

2)  For a long time, there has been a bad smell in my car. 

(Don't worry, there isn't a dead body in this story.)

I first thought that maybe something had fallen out of one of my shopping bags after a trip to the grocery store, slid under one of the seats and proceeded to go bad in there.  I mean, that's still gross, but not as gross as, say, a dead squirrel or something. I looked under all the seats and didn't find anything. I looked in the trunk, but didn't find anything there either.  The smell would come and go, and usually it was worse after a rain, or after damp weather.  I finally just figured that it was my car.  It's old, and the top leaks sometimes, and we'd always used it to carry the dogs around when they were alive, so maybe it was just all of that combined.  It wasn't any of those things, exactly.  Friday afternoon, after getting groceries, I opened the trunk to put everything inside and the smell was 100 times worse than it had been.  I also noticed that everything in the trunk (which amounted to some pieces of cardboard and jumper cables) were soaked.  It hadn't rained that morning, to my knowledge, but it had rained earlier in the week.  I closed the trunk to put the groceries in the car instead, and that's when I saw that the entire bottom of the back window of my car had pulled away from the convertible top.  It was wide open and I have no idea how long it had been like that.  I'm going to guess that it had been, at least partially, pulled away for a while now, and the heat and humidity finally made it let loose.  That isn't the best part, though!  I found the source of the weird smell!  When I was looking at the convertible top to see what had happened, I saw that a big, three-ring binder stuffed full of paper was in the well where the convertible top goes when you open it.  I swear, I thought I'd moved that binder into the house, but apparently I'd tossed it back there to get it out of the way and forgotten about it.  It had been catching all of the water that had been leaking into my car for God only knows how long, and had swollen up to twice it's original size.  Not only that, but it had started to mildew and rot!  I was both relieved and disgusted.  I had to put on kitchen gloves and reach through the tear to lift the book out and it had to weigh 10 pounds.  It was so gross.

I stretched a garbage bag over the back of the car just in case it rained again, and figured we'd take it to get fixed on Monday.  However, I didn't stretch it far enough, because on Saturday we had a modest deluge of rain and instead of protecting the inside of the car, the plastic collected the water and then proceeded to dump it in the window well.  There was two inches of standing water in the back of my car.

At any rate, all's well that ends well.  The car dried out and we got the window fixed!  Hopefully it will stay fixed for a while.  I hope so.

3) Speaking of Saturday, we went to a barbecue at Steve's boss's house!  It was a lovely, lovely place.  I was scared to death that I'd be weird.  I know most people don't understand that fear of mine, but you know all the stuff that happened at those Christmas parties, so you know it isn't a completely unfounded fear.  I was very careful, though.  I didn't say very much and I sat very still.  Basically, I pretended to be a completely different person than I normally am, which is boring, but at least I didn't break anything.  I did mention Chewbacca by accident once, but I don't think anyone noticed.  It was a nice party and the people he works with are very nice, too.  We even got to ride on a boat!  It was fun.  The picture Steve took of me on that boat was terrible, but I put it on Facebook anyway, mainly to prove to people that I occasionally go outside.