Close Encounters of the #2 Kind

Sorry for being so MIA lately... work, travel and teaching have taken me away from this most worthy past time. But, I found it very important to relay one of the most amazing things that's ever happened to me.

I stepped in human feces while wearing open toed shoes.

Yes, that's no joke.

Let me tell you how it happened:

It was an unseasonably warm Wednesday morning in downtown Cincinnati. Being the industrious person I am, I tried to get in to work earlier to start my day off right. As I turned the corner from the busy rush hour street into my office's doorway, key card in hand, I smelled the most amazing smell....

You know that saying "What crawled up your ass and died?" Well, I think that's the best way to describe the rancid odor in the doorway. Unfortunately, the complete shock of the nauseating aroma caught me so off guard that I didn't notice as my foot landed in the ginormous pile of shit.

Immediately I thought: Oh shit! It's shit! Dear God! Open toed shoes...tetanus... AAAAACCCCCCKKKKKK!

I immediately pulled my foot out of my shoe, pulled the shoe (did I mention it's one of my favorite pairs?) from the steaming pile of poo, and hopped to the curb where I fruitlessly scraped my shoe against it, hoping it would easily come off.

That was not the case, since apparently the person in question had a very loose bowel movement, creating a concoction similar in consistency to cement with similar adhesive ability. I hopped into the office and into the restroom, where I went through a lengthy process of scrub. gag. scrub. gag. exit bathroom for air. scrub. gag. Is that corn? sweet god. scrub. gag. scrub.

20 minutes later the shit was gone, yet the pungent odor still remained. Luckily for me, I once had to write an article on removing bodily fluids and odors for a janitorial trade publication. (Who knew THAT would come in handy some day?) So, I filled a bucket with Lysol and laid my shoe in it to kill the odor causing bacteria responsible for the rancid odor. It worked. No more odor.

But sadly for me, I still have not recovered, and I'm not convinced that I ever will be able to wear those shoes again. Just thinking about them makes me smell shit. It's quite unfortunate.

So that's the story of me stepping in human shit. I didn't even go into detail about the overall havoc it wrought upon the office, as I was not the only victim of the foulness.... I just had the most severely foul interaction.

Ah the joys of working downtown!

Fall TV Is Back!

Longtime blog readers by now know that I have nothing going for me in life that doesn’t involve TV. I live for it. I make plans (like sleeping and eating) around it. To me, new episodes of my favorite TV shows are like smack, or what I imagine smack to be like since I grew up in Paducah, KY, and the most hardcore tale from my youth involves stealing a pen from K-Mart when I was seven. My mother made me return it later. So I guess what I’m saying is that, to me, new TV episodes of my fave shows are like the high a seven-year-old gets from stealing a pen.

Anyway, since Fall TV is back, I’ve been gearing up for the return of old favorites— such as The Office, How I Met Your Mother, Friday Night Lights, Heroes (yay for bringing in Kristen Bell!) and even Grey’s Anatomy, even though it was all sad and weird the second half of last season with the ferries crashing and the dying and coming back to life and the Derek hitting on Meredith’s sister and the Addison leaving Seattle Grace to chat with an elevator. I’ll give it another chance. The music was still good, anyway.

There’s also new shows, and the ones I’m most excited about are Pushing Daisies, Bionic Woman (although stunt casting Isaiah Washington for an arc isn’t doing it any favors in my book), and Gossip Girl. I actually saw the pilot of Gossip Girl last night, and it was pretty good in that guilty pleasure kind of way. It stars Blake Lively (the blond girl from Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants, which you know I loved), and it’s pretty much The O.C. set in New York City. Let’s just hope it’s The O.C., seasons one and two, and not three and four when it got terrible.

Other shows I’m planning on tuning into (and have reasonably high hopes for) are: Private Practice (despite the terrible pseudo-pilot, I’ll watch anything that includes Tim Daly); Cane, and Women’s Murder Club.

Anyway, so today I totally mapped out my fall viewing schedule. Once everything premieres, here’s what it’ll look like with some nifty DVR maneuvering (assuming I like the new shows I want to see and stick with my favorites from last season.)

Sunday

9 p.m.
Cold Case
Desperate Housewives

10 p.m.
Brothers & Sisters

Monday

8 p.m.
How I Met Your Mother

9 p.m.
Heroes
The Hills

Tuesday

10 p.m.
Boston Legal
Cane
Law & Order: SVU

Wednesday

8 p.m.
Pushing Daisies

9 p.m.
Bionic Woman
Gossip Girl
Private Practice

10 p.m.
Lost

Thursday

8 p.m.
Ugly Betty

8:30
30 Rock

9 p.m.
Grey’s Anatomy
The Office

9:30
Scrubs

10 p.m.
Mad Men
Without A Trace

Friday

9 p.m.
Women’s Murder Club

10 p.m.
Friday Night Lights
Numb3rs


I'll bet you wish I knew how to link to a blog page because this post is taking over the whole homepage! I don't!

Cars, cars, cars

I recently decided to nickname my car--a trusty 1997 Buick Century--Agnes, because it's sturdy and also because it sort of looks like a lunch lady. Agnes is almost at the 100k mark--just about 200 miles away--but she's still soldiering on.

Although I plan to drive Agnes for quite a bit longer, I've recently had to come to terms with the fact that one day Rob and I will either need to replace Agnes or at least have a trusty second vehicle on hand. Also, although I love Agnes' reliability, she's a bit large, and I feel kind of like I'm driving a boat.

Anyway, I thought this article from Forbes was pretty cool--it lists 10 frugal new car picks. I've always been more of a used-car gal, but I admit that I'm kind of into the new sub-compacts, and these cars certainly provide a lot of bang for the buck.