Wake Up Call

When Alex was still at the Academy, a bunch of the EOD guys would get together and play water polo in the morning. Once he graduated, the people who were still around kept the games going, and even got the new EOD midshipman involved after service selection. They usually play around 5:30 a.m. Because I guess if you dispose of bombs for your day job, intense physical activity at 5:30 on a Friday morning sounds fun.

So this past Friday, Alex gets up around 5 to go in to the Academy to play polo. I wake up briefly as he's leaving, and he tell me he'll be back before I wake up.

Famous last words.

Around 7:30 I'm woken up by a phone call from Alex. The first thing he says is, "Hi, everything's fine, I'm in the ER." I don't know why that didn't strike me has an odd sentence (If you're fine, why are you in the emergency room of a hospital?) but I was like, "Oh, ok. Cool."

He tells me that one of his friends accidentally hit him in the eye while they were playing polo, it's fine, he's just at the hospital as a precaution, and there's no reason to get out of bed. So I wait around for a little bit, and we're texting back and forth, but when they still haven't released him after 2 hours (He was there for a 1/2 hr. before he called me) I decided to go meet him at the hospital.

His friend who accidentally hit him had driven him to the hospital and stayed the whole time with him until I got there. He is such a nice guy and he felt so terrible about what happened.

So I get to the hospital, and after waiting for a bit, I see Alex walk out from the examination room and into a different part of the waiting room. His back is to me, so I get up and go tap him in the shoulder.

He turns around, and there is a RIVER of blood GUSHING from his swollen, bruised eye. The entire white part of his left eye is filled with fresh, bright red blood, and he's having a hard time opening the eye very much. He's having intense double vision. When it happened, he briefly went BLIND in that eye. Oh, yeah, sure, just a little hit to the face, no a big deal.

It turns out that his friends finger had been rammed into Alex's eye, slicing both the white part of his eye and leaving a small scratch on the cornea. A bit more than just a hit to the face.

I remember our first exchange going something like this:

Alex: Oh hey Jessie thanks for coming.
Jess: OH MY GAWD, MY BABY, YOUR EYE, YOU'RE DYING! CALL THE DOCTOR! GET THIS BOY A GURNEY! WE NEED AN OPTOMETRIST, I MEAN AN ORNITHOLOGIST, OR NO WAIT, AN OPHTHALMOLOGIST, WHATEVER, OH MY GAWD! NO, YOU'RE NOT DYING, NOT ON MY WATCH *administers CPR* BREATHE DAMMIT BREATHE *slap slap slap* I'M NOT LOSING ANOTHER ONE! NOT LIKE THIS! NOT! LIKE! THIS!

So this is Alex's eye late Sunday afternoon, a solid 3 days after the incident. And it looks a lot better than it did on Friday.



And here's another one, just in case there are any bloody eye enthusiasts out there.



Yup, still bloody.

But there is good news to the story! Alex gets to wear an eye patch, and he looks a lot like this guy:

The Official Bad Ass Eye Patch Kit comes complete with doublet, hat and sassy plume.

So anyway, we spend about 5 hours at the hospital, and then they send us over to an ophthalmologist in Annapolis to get more specialized care. He was really nice and helpful, but he reminded me A LOT of Dr. Spaceman from 30 Rock.

He kept making jokes about how I was the one who actually did this to Alex and then sent us away with a bottle of steroids and no care information. Like really, NO care information. He was like "Ok, yeah, your eye should heal up pretty good, I mean I think so at least, so um, yeah take some of these, they're the good stuff haha but seriously you'll feel so good. Ok well see you guys around, maybe at Pussers? You guys go to Pussers? You like to party?" Alex and I just nodded uncomfortably and tried to keep inching toward the door as he was talking.

But I took one of the free pens they have out on the desk so we're even.

The biggest reason this event freaked us out so much is that he leaves in 1 week for dive school. He needs to be in the best health possible to get through school. But he's doing much much better and so I know everything will be fine.

Until then, we're enjoying all of the eye humor (Eye ya yai!) and domestic abuse jokes (Alex tells people he fell down the stairs...) we can!

Funny Things That Make Me Laugh

The other day I was hanging out, by myself, and I thought of something that made me laugh. And then I thought to myself, Wow, I have a great sense of humor. I should share it with the world.

So behold, a short list of funny things that make me laugh. Enjoy!

1) Snapple facts is dear to my heart. Alex and I actually saw Pete from Snapple Facts at an Improv show in DC last year, he was part of a UCB ensemble. I just expected him to start reciting Snapple Facts every time he talked.

Also funny story about the word improv. I was on an improv team in high school, and we were making posters for our show, and I hung mine up in the cafeteria. It said, "This Friday, Improve Show!"

...apparently there's no "e" in improv. Someone crossed out the "e" and wrote "retard!" above the "e". It still makes me laugh when I think about it (although retard is derogatory to the mentally handicapped, I wish they had called me dumb instead but I suppose it doesn't have the same ring), and every time I feel good about myself, like yay I graduated college, or nice I just got into a whole bunch of grad schools, I remember that I am, in fact, an idiot.

Anyway, here is snapple facts. It makes me laugh.



2)Sassy Gay Friend. I love them all. I debated which one to put up, and I almost put them all up, because I'm not a big fan of self restraint. So in the end, I picked 2. Because they both make me laugh a lot.



sassy gay friend- Hamlet



And what would this list be without some sort of adorable animal video.




Fin.

Wawa

Alex had to meet his advisor tonight and hand off a project they are both working on. As it so happened this meeting occurred at 11:30 p.m. in a dark Wawa parking lot off of a busy interstate highway.

Anyway we ended up going into Wawa for snacks, and I was telling Alex how I've never had a Wawa sandwich. They look really good, and I want to get one, but I've gone so long never eating one that I kind of don't want to break my streak.

I've never had a nose bleed either.I don't know if lots of people have never had nose bleeds but I choose to think that I'm special. I want to keep my lack of nose bleed streak going forever. I already told Alex that when/if I die, I want my headstone (or the door to my mausoleum) to say "Jessica Talson. She never had a nosebleed."

I feel like people would walk by, and go "huh." (They would also be like, what the hell? Does she know that you have to pay by the letter for these things? ) But they might think about it for a second or two, and imagine what kind of person I was. I think it would be kind of interesting if every headstone had a little fact about the person it represented. Like if they said that this person could put together Ikea furniture ridiculously fast , or that they always drank Coke, never Pepsi or they talked in their sleep. I like knowing those little things about people.

I love knowing those idiosyncrasies about people you're close with. I like knowing that at restaurants Alex likes diet coke with very little ice and I like regular coke with extra ice (but only if the refills are free...I'm not made of money. And soda is just syrup and carbonated water it's not that expensive the idea of not having a free refill is outrageous and unAmerican.) And the waiter will always try and put the diet coke in front of me and give Alex the regular. Ah, gender stereotypes :)

Anyway, so the sandwich, they looked really delicious and I was hungry, but I didn't get one. (I know...everyone was on the edge of their seats.) I'm a woman of few principles, but the ones I do have I stick with. So Alex and I went to Dunkin Donuts instead and I got a Boston Cream. (creme? I guess it depends on if you're fancy or not.)

Now they can write on my headstone "Jessica Talson. She never had a nosebleed, and she never had a Wawa sandwich, but she loved Boston Cremes." And then when people walk by 100 years from now, they can go, "Yeah I guess the obesity epidemic in the 2000's was real."

And we're back

I can't believe it's December.

The last few weeks have been very good to me. We had a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving party at Alex's place and it went really well. I was planning on making hand made invitations and sending them out in the mail to all the guests, but I ended up sending them to 3 people, only 2 of whom received the invite before the actual party. Ah well, procrastination is my specialty.

We had a whole bunch of really good friends over and I think everyone had a really good time. We combined Alex's dinner table and desk to create a long table. We covered them in table cloths and I finally got to use my fall seasonal candles that I bought from the Museum Store like 2 years ago. We had a mish mosh of plates and utensils and chairs and everyone sat around and ate together.

We had about 16 people at the sit down dinner, and then a couple more friends who were able to make it later in the night. Both of my siblings were there, as well as 2 of my cousins and some of my best friends.

It's nice having family and friends close. Sometimes I wish everyone just always lived in the same town that you grew up in, so that you never had to say goodbye to people. Although some of the people who I'm saddest about saying goodbye too didn't grow up in this state, or on this coast for that matter. So I guess if I was an optimist I would say that it's wonderful that people can move around and have friends all over the world. But I'm not an optimist so instead I'll say that everyone I love is leaving me and I'll never see them again ever.

Speaking on people I love leaving me, my little sister is spending the spring semester in France and will be leaving within a few days of my boyfriend leaving me. Ok, so maybe I spent a semester in Rome and left her all by her lonesome, but...well I don't have an answer for that. I'll just miss her a lot :) Also my brother moved to Brooklyn so it will just be me hanging out with the roommates.

I'm terrible at saying goodbye. When I said goodbye to my college roommate before I left for Rome, I just couldn't bring myself to say it. I think we were standing in the living room of our apartment, and we hugged and then just stood there (I think I was crying) and I just looked at her and was like, "well...I'm just gonna go to the bathroom. Be right back." And then I left.

(Don't worry, she knew it was my loving way of saying goodbye! She knows my body, man. Shout out to Renee Lorenz!)

I love people that you mind meld with. They make you feel so much more comfortable in your own skin.

Saying goodbye to Alex when he leaves in January is going suck. He'll be going to Florida to continue his training for the Navy. For whatever reason, I started to cry a bit this morning. Alex asked me why I was crying and I tried to blame it on "lady problems".

His leaving just feels so close. I know with the end of the semester and then Christmas break, the time we have left will just fly by. I'm really happy for him, because he is already incredible at everything he does and I know that he'll really be in his element down in Florida. I've met some of the guys who will be down there with him and they are all really nice people.

It's just hard to deal with change. I know that he is really ready to dig into his training, and I'll be working on my master's up here, and Florida really isn't that far. But I still have that feeling of dread when I think about it.

Oh well, it's really not that far and I'm already building up my southwest points so I can come visit him. And I'll probably have time to pick up a new hobby or something...

Having a blog is awesome. It's a way to avoid doing work and be completely self indulgent, writing ridiculous stream of conscious details that I'm sure no one cares about. :)

I guess I should do my homework now...

I am nothing if not a procrastinator.

In fact, I finally decided to write a blog post because I'm avoiding doing homework that is due in just a few hours. I had originally created a blog called Life So Far with a matching URL. I procrastinated so long in writing a post that I forgot my user name and password. I had to create a new Life So Far blog with a different URL, because lifesofar.blogspot was taken...by me. Ai yi yi.

edit: this post originally started on 11/19/10. current date: 11/21/10

Anyway, back to procrastination. In my media law class, we had an assignment that involved interviewing a professional journalist about a specific article. It's a big assignment, and we've been talking about it throughout the semester. Around mid-September, I contacted a journalist and he said he would be willing to talk to me. We exchanged a few e-mails and tried to set up a time to do the interview, but then things got kind of crazy. Through a combination of missed e-mails and busy weeks, we fell out of communication. I was so busy trying to keep my head above water each day that I didn't really think about a paper that was due a month from then.

Fast forward a month. It's Friday, and my paper is due on Tuesday. I'm freaking out, convinced that there's no way the reporter will talk to me. I'm sure I'm going to fail this class, have to drop out of grad school and be forced to play supporting characters in a string of Lifetime Original Movies about eating disorders and unwanted pregnancies. I wasn't ready to deal with that hard, cruel life.

I nervously e-mailed him, apologize profusely and asking if there's any way he'll talk to me within the next 3 days. Luckily, he happens to work Sunday-Thursday, and agrees to talk with me Sunday morning.

I talked to him this morning, and he was so incredibly nice. Very helpful, very intelligent, more than willing to share information that he has accrued over years of working for one of the most respected newspapers in the United States to a lowly grad student. He took time out of his day to help someone that probably can't help him back.

Sometimes people are really mean for no reason. They cut you off while you're driving or say nasty things to a person they don't even know. But sometimes people are really nice for no reason. They can't get anything out of it and it might even be a little inconvenient, but they do it anyway. Mean people can ruin your day in a few short minutes and put you in a bitter mood. Most people always remember who was mean to them, who slighted them. It's important to remember the nice people too. I really hope I can remember the people who were kind to me when I had nothing to give them, and return the favor 10 fold.