I had made tentative plans to join in a trip to the Sundance Film Festival this week but, due to work, had to stay in California. Margaux, on the other hand, did make the trip to Utah where she partied hard with three-percent (hardly) alcoholic beer, met some actors, and broke her right wrist snowboarding early in the day Wednesday. She has two frequent sayings, “everything happens for a reason,” and “never a dull moment.” She consistently reinforces these mottos. Broken, but splinted, she flew back midday Thursday, and headed to the hospital in the afternoon.

Thursday evening, after dropping Shaun off at the airport, I headed up to the city to join Margaux at San Francisco General Hospital, accompanying her while she went through a process of excruciatingly painful procedures and offering whatever support I could. To be honest, I didn’t expect to be there for six hours and was somewhat panicked when I realized that was the case. But as all good Scorpios would do, I held that emotion back and stayed relatively calm.

The evening started off with an IV administered by three male nurses wearing pink outfits, who decided it was a good idea to take about 40 gallons of blood while in the process, “just in case.”  Needles are one thing that really gets to me, and I started flinching a little bit, but because of Margaux’s insane amount of tolerability to this stuff, I let it go. The fact that they were funny helped a little too; one commented on how depressing it was that he didn’t get compensated for an ambulance ride after getting hit on his motorcycle on the way to work. 

We moved to a room with lots of crazy looking gadgets called the “trauma room,” which I thought sounded a bit extreme for a broken arm until they started the procedures. One doctor asked me if I could go grab the needles, specifically needles, from Margaux’s previous room. I am pretty sure she wasn’t joking, and luckily I got saved by another doctor who exclaimed “no, you don’t have to” and told the first doctor to get them. Phew. They gave Margaux some seemingly ineffective pain killer and started twisting and pulling at her arm.

The first couple attempts didn’t go so well and they had to go at it again with the stronger doctor. This guy put so much pressure on Margaux’s arm I thought it was going to fall off. As he continued to push and pull I started feeling this lightness in my face, like never before, but I stayed still trying to hold Margaux’s hand to give her the slightest bit of comfort. The feeling got worse, and I realized I was one of those people that pass out in these situations. The next few minutes are a blur because I went blind and blacked out. After I came to, I was in a chair in the hallway sipping apple juice getting giggled at because I had walked into another patient in my attempt to maneuver to a chair. Luckily, I never actually went fully out but probably hit 99%. 

They finished up by putting a splint on her arm, which I was able to stay conscience for. While waiting for the final x-ray results we were lucky enough to meet a twenty-something year old named Bart who had chopped off his middle finger. He said that, after laughing about it for a few minutes, he got scared and came to the hospital. They rolled Bart away to a room to get some care. A few minutes later, his friend came in to the waiting area and announced he found the finger inside a glove when he tried to put it on. Gross. We got out of there shortly after that, and despite being in pain, Margaux was happy it was all over (and so was I).

Although it wasn’t exactly an ideal experience, I feel like I grew some respect for medicine, and a ridiculous amount for Margaux for being an absolute warrior. But, you won’t be seeing me in the doctor’s office any time soon; my self diagnosed conditions will fix themselves.

So, I got bored of being so non-material this week, and I decided to go slightly out of character and buy a couple cool things, and it felt good. My first purchase came while sitting at my computer drinking a jug of water (if there were one thing my packratless trait didn’t apply to, it’d be jugs of water). A friend of mine, Narendra, had recently recommended that I check out the KOR ONE Hydration Vessel, which, regardless of its life saving benefits, is wicked sexy looking. I had it bookmarked, but hadn’t given it a thorough inspection. So I read about it, and decided that I buy into the hype that my water jugs contain nasty stuff that eventually washes off and causes a slow and miserable death. Thinking of how uncool it would be to die from water jug poisoning, I bought one. We’ll see how it goes, it should arrive next week sometime.

My second purchase came after walking to work from my car and realizing that my backpack is terribly uncomfortable. I have to park about 100 blocks away from the office because all the other parking lots with permit spaces have 6 month waiting lists. I love the walk, I just don’t love my backpack. To solve this, I decided to grab a small messenger bag from Second Wind Sails, somewhat similar to the one pictured below. Mine doesn’t have numbers, or anything on the front for that matter, but still looks pretty cool. The bags are made mostly from recycled sailing materials and are supposedly super comfortable. If it doesn’t help my backpack discomfort issue, at least I will have something unique to show off.

Second Wind Sails Bag

I am going to make a list of other problems I have that can easily be solved if I just look for them. Regardless of if I decide to get anything else, I am wicked pumped to get some packages in the mail.

Jeff and Nikki '09

Weddings are awesome, but theirs is about a year away so hopefully some of my other friends get hitched soon. I think I like weddings so much because everyone is dressed up, happy, and tipsy. I secretly love dressing nicely even though I do things like wear free wedding t-shirts for a week straight.

On the boring side of things… I’m having trouble focusing in the office, which is most likely due to some disgusting brain malfunction disorder. It is bizarre because I am not disinterested in the least bit, which was my main problem at SGN, but because there is so much awesomeness going on. We launched three new products this week, and have so much in the pipeline. It is amazing that we all haven’t gone insane yet. I am happy. But the focus piece needs to be solved, so I have come up with the following remedies:

• I need to switch my desk to face towards the wall
• Buy new headphones, maybe the bose expensive ones (suggestions?) 
• Stop drinking coffee and redbull

On a less boring note, I am still dying to get a pet. I Haven’t got a chance to go over to the cat shelter yet to see if Franny is still there. I know if I do go, I will be coming back with her so I should probably check with the landlord first.

Franny the Cat

She looks like she could be my best pal. I plan on going down to the animal rescue place sometime this week. My favorite part about cats is they don’t need to be walked and you don’t have to pick up their discards nearly as much as you do with a dog. I need to figure out if my landlord will even allow for animals, there is quite the backstory to my apartment. It has to do with a previous tenant, an excessive amount of cats, and a 9 month refurbishing project required after they left.

Speaking of food, the holiday season is coming up, and I am overly positive this year. Generally, I take a scrooge approach to the holidays for reasons I will never know. This year I had a good birthday and actually celebrated it for once, which made me realize being a grump is pretty lame. So, despite the ridiculously high cost of flights for the rest of the month, I am still thinking of going home for Thanksgiving. I owe it to myself and my family as I haven’t attended a Thanksgiving at home in quite a while. I’m most excited for candied yams.

On another note, I managed to destroy a cold in a matter of two days or so by doing the following:

• Drinking two gallons of water
• 300 situps per day
• Drinking multiple Odwalla super C juices
• Getting a little extra sleep

• Apple, orange, celery
• Ginger, banana, apple
• Carrot, apple, orange