I had a heavy attack of histamines this weekend. We’re talking puffy eyes, sneezy, runny nose. And then to fight that off, you get a whole rash of symptoms from the antihistamines.
Benadryl… benadryl is the reason I’m so sure I don’t ever want to do illegal drugs. Hokey smokes. I dislike feeling like I’m floating. I dislike feeling cloudy-headed. I really dislike my heart racing.
You know what’s the worst, though? The worst is having both sets of symptoms all at once. That’s what this weekend was like. Somewhere out there, there’s someone who might actually enjoy that. Not this guy.
Random
Do people really talk like that?
I don’t know what’s scarier — the carefully crafted, excellent-but-unattainable dialogue you find in great TV writing, or the base, gross, unintelligible speech you can observe in reality television. Either way, I think how we speak matters more than our art tends to suggest.
Happy Birthday
The United States of America. I live here. You aren’t perfect, but you’re a good place to live. Thanks for having me, eh. Try some butter tarts. You’ll be amazed.
A thing you'll never see
I spent a good while looking at business related stock photography for a presentation. I never found a chart that shows diminishing results. Apparently there’s no call for that. You bury that in 9 point arial somewhere in the back of the corporate report. Pretty graphics are used to show positive results. Lesson learned.
Fear
The other night, I was driving my family home from my wife’s family Christmas event. We’d had a fun evening, Rebecca and I were talking about some things, it was a pleasant time. As we drove up a windy road, very suddenly there was a vehicle coming too fast in the other direction. He was in my lane, and he was not in complete control of his vehicle. I was in complete control of mine, and I swerved off the road.
Now, thankfully, we were travelling a road which, in spots, has a tremendously well graded gravel shoulder. I was able to maintain control of the vehicle and return to normal travel on the road.
But in that three or four seconds, so many things could’ve gone wrong. I wasn’t sure about the state of the shoulder — if I’d stayed in my lane, it would’ve been a really bad accident. The act of hitting the shoulder could’ve caused a loss of control worse than that accident, if it had gone just right. There were any number of circumstances in which things ended poorly.
Thankfully, they didn’t. I continued on up the windy road until it became unwindy, and I pulled over and caught my breath. Or thought about throwing up, or shook, or maybe all three. I’m thankful that it didn’t go worse, but also… good heavens, experiencing that kind of fear is not fun.