At the point when my finals were nearing completion, I decided that Sunday would be a good day to take a break and relax for a bit. Things were going oh-so swimmingly, when suddenly, because of the guttural cat posturing, we realized that our feisty orange cat, Opie, was still on the porch. I ran to the door to see that our cat had jumped the gate and was now off the porch and in direct line of the un-neutered orange neighborhood cat, whose posturing he was responding to.
No sooner did I have my broom in hand to shoo away the intruder than there was a single ball of screaming, clawing, biting tangle of orange hair at the bottom of my porch steps. This went on for about a half minute, but seemed much, much longer, but when it was over, I could tell that my little bruiser of a kitty had kicked the snot out of the neighborhood ruffian.
I quickly took notice that the other cat had merely retreated and was likely planning a second assault. Not wanting to witness another exchange, I set aside the broom and reached for my cat. It was immediately clear that this was not the best idea. He reacted as if I was another enemy and quickly tore my right hand and arm to shreds- five deep puncture wounds and countless scratches.
Apparently aware that Opie was otherwise pre-occupied, the other one decided to commence with round two, while Opie’s teeth and claws were still in my hand and arm. His attack resulted in four puncture wounds and two particularly nasty scratches on my left hand and arm. The blood was horrific.
On my left hand was an especially gruesome injury consisting of a connecting puncture wound beginning in the webbing of my first and second fingers and extending downward, to just past my knuckles. When I went to initially clean them out, I made the teeth chattering, heebie geebie discovery that when I ran the water on the wound between my fingers, it ran through and out of the wound on the top of my my hand.
Luckily, Marieke managed to get Opie back in the house and was then able to render assistance to my bleeding appendages. Either from the heebidy geebidy nature of my injuries or from the loss of so much blood, I became an unconscious pile on my bathroom floor.
When I came to, I began to hyperventilate and had a slight panic attack. After recovering from that, I was finally able to dress my wounds, and to reduce my level of acute discomfort, I shaved my arm hair around the wounds so that the bandages would not Brazilian Hot Wax the hair off for me.
The most painful of my injuries is on the inside of my right first finger, below the first knuckle. It was just a bite, but I’m pretty sure Opie’s tooth was stopped only by my bone.
I used an entire bottle of alcohol and peroxide cleaning everything out, and have no less than 9 bandages on both hands. It is all really very sore.
I’m not sure how I feel about not having posted a weird, random event in a while. They happened more before we quit smoking. What’s that about?
Having put the porch in proper winter order, we weren’t too concerned with the warning of excessive wind by the 11:00 news.
At 2:34am, I was startled awake by a terrible noise that could only have resulted from a dumpster falling down the steps. I imagined one of the dumpsters in the alley behind the house shaking free of its moorings, only to have plummeted into the shed in the back, which was now at the bottom of the hill in the back yard, pressing against the dining room wall.
The cat was sure we were being invaded, so under the bed he went. Since the dogs didn't seem at all impressed and Marieke was snoozing away, I guessed that it was a dream and Manfred was only disturbed by my reaction. Upon roaming the house, clad only in my skivvies, brandishing a plumbing wrench and flashlight, I found nothing amiss.
Since the front porch is so wide, I was not able to see the front steps from the front door.
The sidewalk, which is where one end of the gutter is resting in the picture, is about 30 or so feet below the porch. The porch is on the first floor, the bedroom is on the second floor. It was hanging above our second floor bedroom windows.
We estimate that it must have fallen about 60 feet. At 2:34 in the morning, I in my drawers, going from window to window in search of the mysterious noise. What a sight that must have been from across the way.
This is the same gutter that came loose during the snow storm last winter. We managed to control that situation by tying string to it and anchoring it to the roof until our capricious landlord remedied the issue. It seems to have suffered some buckling upon landing, so perhaps it is beyond repair at this point.
At any rate, another weird, random event goes into the books.
I think I have subconsciously sabotaged my own computer so that I can avoid my math class... and in royal fashion. However, my life is now turned upside down and it feels like I am missing a huge portion of myself. This is because of the brilliant, smart and intelligent move by the idiot 'Raul', a service technician at KU, whose idea to re-install Firefox without my consent during a session share, caused my bookmarks, user names and passwords to become part of the great wind. Thank you, Raul. May your testicles be clamped for all of eternity and may your face be coated in maggot shit for ten years.
It really does feel like I'm doing much better with this than Marieke is. Last night, she cried herself to sleep because she wanted to smoke. Today, she is a bit moody.
I find that it's hard to concentrate on anything or have any coherent thought. The mints are helping, but I now have an annoying sore on the left side of my tongue. Marieke's sore is actually a giant hole in the left side of her tongue. I'm assuming that these sores come from constantly having a peppermint of some sort in my mouth.
Smoking is pretty much an exercise in instant gratification. I can't tell you how many days I woke up and while making my coffee, would be smoking that first cigarette, getting light-headed, relishing the feeling of the nicotine coursing through my body. Peppermints, conversely, are exercises in patience. As a result, the peppermints usually don't last more than about 2 or 3 minutes before I chomp into them.
What the neighbors didn't realize when they were setting off fireworks exactly 15 days after the Fourth of July was that Oskar does not like fireworks. I'm sure they didn't know this because if they knew what transpired because of their inconsiderate stupidity, maybe they might have reconsidered violating a long standing city ordinance and state law. But they didn't, so I'm guessing they weren't aware that Marieke and I had just quit smoking and having the dogs become upset and excited- unreasonably so- was just fuel to the fire of our discontent.
Oskar had just parked himself on the windowsill in the upstairs hallway when Marieke yelled up to inform me that if the dogs didn't stay on the second floor, they would not see the sun rise tomorrow. I rushed to his aide, trying to close the window and keeping him upstairs. Just as I had both my arms around him, in an attempt to pick him up and move him away from the window, there was a loud bang and Oskar lurched backward, jamming my right ring finger into the wall with his butt.
The initial pain and welling made me think that I had just stoved it. But then my knuckle began to resemble a concord grape and pain began shotting up my arm. When my finger tip listed to the left more so than is normal, it was off to the emergency room we went.
I wasn't really convinced just yet that my finger was actually broken because a broken finger is very expensive and I didn't have insurance. Maybe it was just dislocated or perhaps stoved. The ER doc explained the process of setting a dislocation. It involved needles into the base of the finger, which I was not thrilled about. The x-rays had not come back yet, so I decided to hope for the best and psych myself up for the massive amounts of pain that I was about to have to go through without the benefit of Novocaine.
Marieke and I were able to contemplate in real time the fate of the universe before the doctor came back with good news and bad news. The bad news was that there was no good news. The humor escaped Marieke and I, but not the good doctor. Apparently I had a vertical fracture which had the potential to become unstable. I was given two splints and sent on my way with a referral to the Orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Robert Kaufman, with whom I was to see within 2-3 days.
Just what I wanted on the fifth day of quitting smoking!
In almost all cases of unlikely and random events, the occurrences number three. They are usually connected somehow and generally manifest within 24 hours or so, with the occasional overlap and pauses no more than 36 hours in length (you know... for the real doozies) here and there.
16 February was my birthday. Of all the random things to happen on my birthday, three utility trucks of varying sizes pulled in front of the house bearing the markings of Dominion People's Gas Company, followed much later by a backhoe. The quiet of my birthday morning was jackhammered away by three of twelve people intent on removing large portions of asphalt which until then constituted my parking space.
Just before moving the car to a safer location, I found out they were investigating a gas leak. One of them was smoking.
This is random in that there was a very low probability that this would occur on my birthday. It is accompanied by two other random events which happened the next day at work.
For those who do not know, my duties at UCSUR largely involve dialing a phone and conducting survey research on mostly unsuspecting people who may or may not fall within one or more ambiguous demographic or another. The particular research we are conducting presently is nationwide. Since I have worked for the University of Pittsburgh in one form or another after leaving college, I'm familiar with the habit of dialing '9' and then '1' to procure an outside line; dialing at UCSUR, I assumed, was no different. As a newer interviewer sat next to me, he shared an unusual tone with me that I immediately recognized as that which results from failing to dial the appropriate prefix in order to get the outside line. I instructed him to dial '9' and then '1' before the area code.
The look on his face was a mix between astonishment and disbelief. I came to find out that he had never dialed the '1' in any calling he had done for the research. After finally convincing him to dial the damned '1', the call went through with no problems. Curious as to how he could possibly have not been dialing the '1', I tried myself and found that it in fact worked. How strange. There existed a healthy balance of people who both dialed the '1' and those who did not throughout the office.
My curiosity was satisfied inasmuch as it allowed me to continue with my own assignments without worry of further course in the matter.
Remarkably, when I then dialed my next record with the '1', the phone produced the familiar tones as would any that failed in obtaining an outside line. Owing to my own slip, I tried again, paying close attention to the numbers on the base. No luck. Just then, the new guy said that he was getting the same tone. The survey managers then announced that long-distance dialing was down for the entire University. Opps.
I am not normally one to suggest that mere actions can have such wide-ranging consequences, especially in this situation... but it was, of course, our fault. For the next 45 minutes or so, the new guy and I pondered the connection to our actions and the phone melt down at the nation's 25th largest university. One of the managers did not quite understand the significance of our involvement and I decided it was for the best.
Seriously, though... what are the chances?!
The third random event to occur is only tangentially related by dictionary definition to the first RA of the previous day: construction and the presence of a backhoe.
Nearly an hour before my shift was due to end, I went outside for a smoke and discovered that the fire alarm in the neighboring building was active. An ominous voice warning against the use of elevators accompanied a blaring that could be heard clear over to Posvar Hall. The building is undergoing renovation and the alarm seemed to go unnoticed by any sort of emergency personnel.
I realize that these random events play no outstanding role in my life, but it is helpful and ultimately cathartic to document them.
There is a back-story before we get into Unlikely and Random Event (or URE) II of Saturday, 17 January 2009...
The computer was taking longer than normal to pull the latest RSS feeds into my aggregator the night before (this would be Friday night), so I decided to do without any sort of breaking news (though I did miss that there was video of the plane landing in the Hudson) and retire to the bedchamber. The top of my office window had been cracked to allow for smoke to escape, so I proceed to close it and noticed that not only was there a strange noise coming from outside, it appeared that our youngest cat, Manfred, was at the top of the back steps, stuck.
What's more, the strange noise seemed to be emanating from him. I quickly jumped into action, retrieving my flashlight and throwing on a pair of shoes, leaving my coat behind even though the temperature at that time was 7 below. After running full speed to the area where I thought Manfred was, I noticed that there was nothing but a snow heap that looked strangely like a cat, if one were to look at the heap from a particular direction and at a specific angle. In frustration, I demolished the snow heap with a kick and headed back inside via the side gate, just to make sure that our precious angel had not ventured out into the wilderness of the side yard. Upon regaining entry to the house through the front door and finally making my way to the bed room, I found Manfred quietly asleep at the foot of our bed.
Mystery solved. At least partially. What had made that awful noise? It really did sound like a cat in distress. Oh well, perhaps it was another cat in the neighborhood- we do have alot of those.
Unlikely and Random Event I
During the hitherto quiet Saturday morning, while anxiously viewing the video of the plane landing in the Hudson River on You Tube, I heard Marieke step outside, having called to the front door from the kitchen. Curious, I made my way down the steps to find that she was conversing on the porch with one of the two 'Corgi Ladies' that live on our street, with whom we are friendly, but not acquainted.
At first step out the front door, Marieke turned to me and asked what the name of Kara's first floor neighbor was- I didn't know. Linelle proceeded to re-tell the story she had obviously told Marieke before my arrival. Said neighbor's car, a teal Plymouth Sundance (previously marred by a brick through the windshield not 4 months prior), had been parked in front of their house for at least the past two hours while running. Concerned for the safety of the owner, Linelle had a police car dispatched to deal with the unusual situation.
The police informed her that the car was that of one of her neighbors, but could not provide exact identification. Linelle and her partner, Judy, then attempted to gain assistance from our end of the street, where she eventually came upon us. After failing to succinctly describe the confusing location of the owner's apartment within the mire of Kara's current multi-tenant domicile, I accompanied Linelle to the premises, two doors down, where we discovered the owner to be either not at home or not aware of our exertion to find him.
Finally and as a last resort- and by last, I mean that we had gone to all three of the doors associated with the apartment of the car owner- Linelle asked for the phone number of the landlord.
Oh lord.
His name is Yan. No manner of Pulitzer-prize winning author, or indeed, non-Pulitzer-prize winning author, in either the realms of fiction or non-fiction could possibly define this man by use of any known literary devise, creed or creativity. To describe him as simply a unique individual would be to describe the soon-to-be-former President of the United States (and in all likelihood, the current former President) in the same manner. They both are charming in person and on the surface there is a certain appeal and charm to the manner in which they express their personality. But the policies of these two leave a great many people, including neighbors, associates and those who have unwittingly given them authority, wondering if they are within the framework of any sort of pre-defined and existing law.
Any attempt at further description will heave this into voluminous explorations of sociology, psychology and other such subjects, of which I am ill-qualified to render.
At first contact between Yan and Linelle, the conversation seemed to be hindered by a thick accent on the other end of the phone and the fact that this end was grounded in logic. The second attempt didn't go very far either. By the third phone call, it was apparent that Yan took as much interest in the subject as he did with needed repairs to his properties.
The abrupt conclusion of the conversations led both Judy and Linelle to the unfortunate realization that the situation could not be helped by Yan. We parted ways with well-wishes and a promise to keep each other updated as the situation evolved.
At this time, I am not certain of the outcome... updates forthcoming. In and of itself, it could have just been a Random Event, normally not blog-worthy. The fact that it happened in the same day and within minutes of other Unlikely Events which also carry the distinction of Random, it is a part of this account.
Unlikely and Random Event II
Within minutes of stepping back into the house, I was prompted to fulfill the dogs request to visit the yard, since my absence and subsequent return was obviously an excuse to play in the snow. As I opened the screen door, I noticed an odd looking item that did not fit in with the other odd looking items of my placement in the mud room. It was a can top without its can. I questioned Marieke on its origins and was stunned by her answer.
She had come across the object laying in front of the door in the mud room on the floor, accompanied by the long lighter I use in the summer to start the grill. She then informed me that both the kitchen door to the mud room and the mud room door to the outside were unlocked as was the front door, when she first came down this morning to let the dogs out. Since there were numerous other odd looking items in the mud room, the origins of which she never questioned, as it was sort of my 'area', she didn't really give much thought to it; instead, simply relocated it to a spot where it would do no harm to anyone traversing the room.
Given our location of Greenfield, suspicious activity never came into mind. This was not the first time we had left one or more doors unlocked during the night due to our safety of being situated between two rather long and dangerously cumbersome sets of steps.
I, on the other hand, did not recognize this particular item, for it was so unusual, I would surely have made a mental note of its strange appearance before now.
For at least the past four or five years, Marieke has lovingly persuaded me to wake up by setting a steaming cup of coffee on my nightstand. She has informed me that I usually take this time to regale her in tales that either make no sense or are spoken in foreign tongues. I remember telling her of my exploits the night before that resulted in the kicking over of a snow heap that resembled Manfred, but she took this as just one of my many pre-wake-up, post-sleep deliriums she occasionally suffers through. She also stated that if true, she figured I was again sleep-walking (another of my afflictions she as patiently and understandingly suffered through during our relationship) and had placed the item, along with the long lighter in front of the door in a manner consistent with my unending effort to produce symmetrical lines of things during parasomnia.
I don't normally recall episodes of sleep walking and certainly not in that detailed a manner- and I seem to have trouble with screen doors when sleep walking (a fact which has kept me inside)- so I couldn't have been the night before.
After exchanging looks of puzzlement at the origins of the odd yet interesting item in question, my investigation began.
Of course, one begins such investigations with the philosophies of Sherlock Holmes close at hand: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
Sleep walking was eliminated. Thus, the only logical explanation was that a strange person had entered the house, intent on plunging us into the quagmire of a mystery for reasons unknown, placed the interesting item on the floor in front of the door in the mud room in perfect relation to the long lighter. Without the usual pipe and magnifying glass, I ventured outdoors in search of the quagmire-inducing mystery person. Only one set of footprints were present at the side gate- mine from the night before. The back gate was undisturbed, as was the layer of snow covering the tire kept in front of the gate to keep the dogs from eating the people who walk past.
Marieke suggested that perhaps we had another case of hobos living nearby... the shed in the back, perhaps, since Autumn (who located the hobo guesting in the basement area of our old apartment) had been frequently going in there to sniff around. This was improbable because Oskar would have eaten him by now- and it was too cold to survive. But her suggestion got me thinking about the front door having been unlocked. I went on a frantic search for my wallet because that would be a logical end to these mystery-inducing means. The wallet was in my office. OK. What about the DVDs? Surely, whoever placed such an odd object was throwing us from the theft of our DVDs. They're all there. By the fates- what is going on here?!
The solution presented itself only after the events of the third URE.
Unlikely and Random Event III
For the past five consecutive summers, a blue-jay has been resident in the trees to the front of the side yard. Aside from their constant and irritating screaming every fifth second, they were of no concern to us. Until one of them dive-bombed me and left a gash in my head. Ever the stand-shoulder-to-shoulder-you-mess-with-my-family-you-mess-with-me kind of person Neil is, he scored an amazing shot to the blue-jay with his paint ball pistol about two days after the gash was inflicted.
We identified him later that summer by the yellow paint ball shell still lodged in his wing, when the bird flew into the porch for some retribution; all he managed to do was scream what sounded like a convincing approximation of my name- which duly freaked me out.
After Neil enlisted himself in the US Navy, I was forced to do battle with this bird on my own, though there were no further confrontations. I suspected the bird was 'sharpening his claws', as it were, for battle in the coming spring.
Having a suspicion that the perpetrator of UREII had used the small gap between our house and the one next-door to inflict his mystery on us, I went back outside to look for indications of his/her presence. It was then that the events of UREIII unfolded. On my way to look down the gap between the houses, I heard some rustling from the yard next-door. At first I didn't see what was there. I moved closer to the house to get a better view and to my utter amazement, I saw it.
Quietly, I called Marieke to the door and she saw it too. A Peregrine Falcon had the remains of a blue-jay pinned to the ground with its talons. The bird was near the top of the hill next door, too far away to obtain a better view. Marieke asked me where the camera was and brought it back, handing it to me.
The falcon must have been one of the ones living on the Cathedral of Learning. There are no other Peregrine Falcons within the city.
We watched as the majestic creature began de-feathering its prey.
Simply amazing.
And comforting. No blue-jay attacks to worry about this spring!
It was very cold that morning, so we watched for about another five minutes and would have liked to have stayed longer, but had to retreat back into the house.
Unlikely and Random Event II (conclusion)
Hoping I could get a better view of the carnage taking place mere feet from us, I went upstairs and looked out of my office window to find the event was obstructed by trees.
Satisfied that nature would take its course and the blue-jay would soon become nothing more than a splatter on someone's windshield, I was confronted with the as yet unsolved mystery of earlier that morning.
While Marieke was drying the dishes, we went over the facts that were present so far in our investigation.
We had a can lid without the can that nobody had placed in the position Marieke found it that morning.
Wait a minute.
We had all sorts of cans back there... for Christmas! They were the beverages and we kept them back there because we had no room for the giant ham AND the cans of pop.
Suppose one of those cans was still in the mud room and exploded from the record cold snap!!
Marieke's eyes went wide... that had to be the culprit.
Sure enough, I discovered a can of Diet Dr. Pepper filled with slush and without its lid! I took the lid, looking for a fit and found one. Even the source of the dents in the lid were apparent as I saw that the can was hidden under a plant pot and estimated the trajectory of the can lid upon explosion. It was a pretty good estimation- complete with sound effects and everything!
On the ceiling was a huge mound of stuck on frozen Diet Dr. Pepper. As we looked around the mud room we found several mounds of frozen Diet Dr. Pepper.
At least that mystery was solved. Now, what about the noises I heard that sounded like a cat in distress? Marieke came up with a brilliant solution: it was probably trapped gas in the can seeking escape through any minor opening it could find in the about-to-explode can. I probably missed the sound of the actual explosion in my efforts to save the mound-of-snow-that-looked-like-a-cat.
This may seem utterly random and completely unlikely, but in our house, it's just one of 365 other days on the calendar.
Pronunciation: \ˈhōm\ 1a: one's place of residence 4a: a place of origin
Both definitions define my relationship with Pittsburgh. Only 1a defines Marieke's; Waynesboro, PA is her 4a. It was in this area that we spent 4 days in and around.
Just about, oh, maybe half hour after we had received paperwork from the kind Chambersburg POleece, and we all had calmed down enough to go back to our chambers and retire for the second time that evening, the door bell rings.
We shared a similar thought about who could be darkening the doorstep (though it was well after 1 in the morning, the streetlights are very bright) of this domicile: it was the police coming to give us more information, a forgotten piece of paperwork or something of that nature. We were as wrong as guessing the Pope had been passing through town and needed to take a whiz.
Katy opened the door with an expression of first confusion then more confusion. It was a woman with blond hair and ratted t-shirt explaining that she was almost out of gas on her way to Carlisle from Maryland, her daughter has not eaten all day and her father just passed away and could we spare a few dollars so she could get some gas. And she wanted to know what town we were in.
Random
Pronunciation: \'ran-dəm\ 2a: relating to, having, or being elements or events with definite probability of occurrence
Of all the improbable things to have happen that night, why couldn't it have been winning the lottery or stumbling upon a forgotten gold stash from the civil war. All of these most likely have a much lower probability of occurring than the events of this evening.
Katy looked at Brian and asked if there was any more gas in the can from the lawnmower. As he went in search, our improbable visitor made several passive attempts to enter the house. It was quiet for what seemed like hours before Brian came back with the gas can. I thought it prudent to accompany my host in case something about the woman's story was not quite cogent.
Upon approaching the car (which was running even though it was almost out of gas), I noticed what appeared to be an unmoving figure in the passenger seat which I immediately determined was a dead body, made an on-the-spot diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder and we were next. Luckily the figure moved and at 10 paces I recanted my admittedly hasty diagnosis; the figure turned out to be a 10-12 year old girl, presumably the untoward woman's daughter.
Since the gas cap didn't have an outward devise for release, the woman retreated into her car and proceeded to open the boot. Brian and I exchanged glances just as she returned, noticed the wrong lever had been pulled and remedied the situation. After giving the woman one and a half gallons of gasoline, Brian went to retrieve a 'couple bucks' from the house, which was about half block away. I used the opportunity alone with the woman to gather more information.
When asked where in Maryland she was coming from, her face immediately scrunched as she offered 'That town with the big mall... I don't know the name of it.'
OK.
Either she was advancing some sort of scheme or she was indeed a hapless, desperate person in need of help. Either way, she certainly was adept at avoiding further questions because she began to ask her own questions and get quite agitated about how much gas she had and if it was enough to get to Carlisle.
At this point, it might be helpful to provide a geographic overview of our location. Carlisle is 30 miles from Chambersburg. I-81, which is the highway she claims to have come from, is about 2 miles from where we were. In order to get from I-81 to Brian and Katy's house, one would have to make a sequence of very specific turns and up-down-and-arounds... in other words, it is not a direct route. We later decided she must have had a police scanner in her car and figured that since there had just been an accident in front of the house that we would still be awake (the incident report listed Brian and Katy's address).
Brian gave the woman a couple bucks and directions to the Sheetz before we started back to the house. Marieke and Katy spent the few moments near the front porch and as we approached them, heard the car cough and choke not once, not twice, but three times. There was a moment when I thought for certain that it wasn't going to start, but on the fourth try, the car aversely turned over.
The four of us safely inside, and in unison with looks of bewilderment, said 'What was that?!'
Before settling in, Brian stood on the porch to make certain the car would follow the direction to turn right at the end of the road and that she would make no further stops along the way.
I made the decision that the only logical way that these unapt situations could have possibly presented themselves is if I were in fact asleep and would have to repeat the day over again when I woke up. Therefore, I reasoned, I could do anything without consequences. So, a second helping of leftover potato salad was in order.
Concurrently, Brian made his own decision that no matter what was happening, he was not going to answer the door anymore for the evening.
We postponed our slumber for long enough and finally retired to our chambers for our long overdue rest.
Pronunciation: ˈhōm\' 1a: one's place of residence 4a: a place of origin
Both definitions define my relationship with Pittsburgh. Only 1a defines Marieke's; Waynesboro, PA is her 4a. It was in this area that we spent 4 days in and around.
To recap from Going to South Central...: Marieke and I had been invited by Katy, Brian's wife, to partake in a surprise 30th b.day party at their house in Chambersburg, PA, where we would spend two of the three nights during our visit.
Since our presence in the area was to be kept secret, our destinations before the party had to be chosen carefully. Our first stop was Marieke's bff Stacey, her husband John-Ryan (it is common in the region for names to have such hyphenated nomenclature) and daughter Morgan's house. When last we saw this house, it had just been moved into and lacked a back deck. With the help of his wife, John-handyman-Ryan built one... complete with fire pit, skylights and separate but equal 'grilling wing'. Of all the porches we have heretofore sat, this was the nicest by far.
Our first night passed at the home of Brian's mother, Cindy, on a sofa bed accompanied by a black cat, Magic, whose temperament is questionable, fur manged, idea of morning skewed. Not bad for 23 (that's 161 in people years!).
Brian was ultimately surprised to see us there, among the 8 others attending the shindig. Needless to say, Katy's plotting and scheming was successful. There, of course, was a moment when Brian had to reconcile all of the truths, half-truths and just plain lies he had been told in the weeks leading up to that day, but it all washed out in the end.
Brian and Katy have a beautiful daughter, Sadie Lorelei, whose love of running around the yard is matched by her ability to get into just about everything; doubtless such activities wear her parents to nubs on a daily basis. Our eventually exacerbating visit was made so much more pleasant by this little girl with her big, blue eyes and generally cheerful disposition. If only she knew how much easier she made the whole trip for us both!
In order to fully appreciate the events that next transpired, know that 2 of our most recent 4 trips 'home' resulted in what we like to term 'car drama'. We were left stranded for nearly 9 days when Marieke's Geo Storm died and were forced by circumstance to purchase our spunky '86 Chevy Nova, only to watch as a mentally challenged deer meet an untimely death on the pavement of I-76 after having rolled on our hood, which was crushed, on our very last visit almost 4 years ago.
In Brian and Katy's guest bedroom reside various memorabilia of the Nittany Lions most of which have origins dating back to Brian's childhood bedroom. Having put aside the ingrained dislike of Penn State for the duration of the trip, I was essentially at peace with the situation. But for a brief scuffle with a window fan, the night seemed to be winding down in comfort. And then... it happened.
Only the Big Butler County Fair's school bus demolition derby rival the sounds of screeching tires and metal-on-metal friction Marieke and I heard as we lay in bed just short of falling asleep. Our first collective thought, then immediate verbalization was 'Oh my god- the car'. Knowing that our attempts to rubberneck through the side window would be pointless, we bounded for the livingroom for a visual confirmation. Sure enough what I first thought was a motorcycle turned out to be a red Chrysler Breeze- the missing headlight having been lodged underneath Katy's Tahoe. While Marieke kept an eye on the situation, I dashed down the hallway to let our hosts in on the bad news.
In but one swift step, Katy was out of bed and down the hall. The broader scene on the other side of the front door was of an additional car operated by a female, now outside her car and in bedroom slippers, shouting "Call the PO-leece! call the PO-leece! I know who hit your car!"
Marieke then reported that the man driving the red Breeze had left his car and was now proceeding on foot back down the alley (Shasta Alley, as we came to find out later) which he was driving from just before hitting the Tahoe. According to Marieke, "...he just left his car like he came home from the mall and was going to his house, but not slow, with a bit of a hustle, like he had to pee..."
The shouting woman then got back in her car with the intention to 'hunt him down'. A preliminary investigation revealed that the bonnet of the red car had gone under Katy's rear quarter panel and bumper and looked to be quite stuck.
With a sigh of relief, I found no damage to our own car, but directly across the street were two Acuras, one of which had its front bumper under the back bumper of the other Acura and was missing several layers of paint but had a multi-tiered dent running from bumper to bumper. The mirror was hanging, rather comically, from a single wire.
Katy had run over to alert her cross street neighbors of the incident, when a police cruiser pulled onto the street and parked nearby just as the shouting woman returned in her late 80s Cadillac. She immediately began yelling at the officer that both cars were hers and had been chasing the other one down all night long.
At this point, Katy had her camera out and was taking pictures of the Tahoe when I suggested that she take pictures of her neighbors' cars as well. She proceeded to do so while Brian, Marieke and I began lamenting on the events of the late evening. Marieke never ceased in randomly calling out 'surprise!' in Brian's direction after each stage of the incident unfolded.
I'll spare the myriad profanities that echoed through the quiet town that evening from all parties. All told, there were four POleece cruisers and one K-9 SUV on the street.
In the end, the shouting woman, along with her bedroom slippers, were taken away in one of the units after having presumably failed a breathalyser test and Katy and Brian found new acquaintances in the house-flipping neighbors across the street. After essential paperwork was exchanged, all parties retreated into their residences and we proceeded to evaluate the situation with the help of the delicious leftover potato salad from the earlier party.
Just about, oh, maybe half hour later, when we all had calmed down enough to go back to our chambers and retire for the second time that evening, the door bell rings.
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24 May 2011
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