Fragmented Friday - Cap'n Word Herder vs. The Nuclear Man

I have been awake since 3AM for no good reason; cursed insomnia. At around 5Am I decided I might as well go ahead and get up, get some breakfast, and go to work early. When I stopped at the Sonic where I usually get breakfast I was surprised to see the lights were all off, since I was pretty sure Sonic usually opens at 5Am, but since I'm not usually up at 5AM I figured I was mistaken and that they must open at 6Am. Still, since it was only five till 6, I thought I'd just park and wait for the lights to come on so I could order. However, no sooner had I pulled in than a worker came out and signaled me to roll down my window. Turns out my original thought was right and Sonic does usually open at 5AM; however, apparently the person who usually opens didn't show up and so they were way behind schedule, having just started turning everything on, so it was gong to be a bit before they were able to cook anything. I decided to go ahead and wait since I wasn't exactly in a hurry, so I spent the next few minutes just reading on The Bonehunters, the sixth book in Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series. The same Sonic worker came back out before too long and asked what I wanted, telling me they'd go ahead and start cooking my order, and then handing me a couple of coupons for a free drink and free burger. Then, when my food finally came out, the carhop apologized for my wait and told me the food was on them. So, something good came out of my early rise, but I would have gladly paid the 5 bucks for breakfast in exchange for a few more hours sleep.

As I mentioned the other day, I had to go get new glasses because one of my lenses was cracked. On Tuesday I called pretty much every optometrist covered by my insurance before finally finding one who had an appointment on Wednesday; this optometrist operated out of the Wal-Mart building, so after I got my prescription from him I headed into the Wal-Mart vision center to get the glasses made. However, while I was in the process of having them check to see if my insurance would do anything for the frames or lenses I discovered that it would take them 5 to 10 business days to get my glasses in. Since I didn't think either I nor my rickety old glasses themselves could last that long, I instead headed to EyeMasters, whose signs proudly proclaim "GLASSES READY IN ONE HOUR" with the caveat in slightly smaller font "In Most Cases." Hoping that I would me one of those cases I headed inside, handed my prescription to one of the workers and asked if they could get me some new glasses made that day; he took one look at the prescription and said "Maybe." I figured that was probably as good as I was going to get, so I went ahead and let him help me pick out some frames*, as well as talk me into getting prescription sunglasses for practically no cost**. As someone who has pretty much never been able to wear sunglasses, it's taking some getting used to.

Last week was fairly peaceful since The Lovable PigPen was off on a family vacation***; of course, peaceful is boring***, as I no longer had a readily available antagonist****, although Cap'n Shack-Fu did an admirable job filling in for him. In fact, barely an hour and a half after I dropped PigPen off at the airport I was engaged in a wrestling match with the Shack-man, who trounced me, but not without much complaining about the fact that I've improved too much over the months since we last tangled. "Old Todd would have submitted by now!" was his catch-phrase of the day. While knowing that I was a tougher opponent made me feel good, being able to actually beat him would have made me feel even better. Of course, I told him he only won because we were wrestling at his house and he had home-field advantage.

Even if PigPen had been around last week our sparring would have been primarily verbal, as he apparently decided to celebrate the year anniversary of breaking my finger by injuring his own hand. Of course, he chose to injure his left hand and not his dominant right, and probably only chipped the bone on one of his knuckles instead of breaking a finger right on the joint and doing full on tendon damage, but it's the thought that counts. He's currently waiting on a call from his doc with results from the x-rays they took on Wednesday to see how bad the damage is.

I was going to tell the story of The Scottish Fireplug here, but I think that one might deserve its own post; if I don't tell that by the end of next week, someone remind me, okay?*****

I emailed Flunky the other day just to catch up with him since I haven't been able to catch him on IM for a month or so. I of course gave him a hard time about being an uncommunicative son of a gun because, well, that's what I do; he, rising to the bait, replied a few days later thusly:

Flunky Lover is making me write this message because you know I would never respond to you on my own. In fact, I'm making her type this one handed with a baby in the other arm.

In other words, she forces him to do the right thing, and he forces her to be his stenographer and take care of the kids.

The other day while we were driving to pick PigPen up from the airport, Li'l Random was on the phone with B.B.; being the random generator that he is, Li'l Bro made some comment about being the thunder before the lightning, then paused and restated it as lightning before thunder, and then paused again as he tried to make sure which way was correct. I said "lightning before thunder, because light travels faster than sound," but apparently B.B. was saying the opposite. A few days later while we were at the gym, Li'l McEvil brought it up again just to watch us debate******. B.B. stuck firm to his thunder-first stance, I tried to combat it with my logical explanation of lightning-first, which caused B.B. - - who works with the preparedness arm of FEMA that deals with nuclear safety -- to exclaim "Look, I'm a Nuclear Man, I know things! You, you're just a word-herder! Walking around, pushing your carts, shelving your books, herding your words. Don't mess with the Nuclear Man, Word Herder!" Therefore, from now on B.B. has a new nickname:

Wave to Firestorm, everybody. Oh, for the record, oh great Nuclear Man? The Word Herder wins.


*He nixed one pair I tried on saying that another pair didn't make my face look quite so wide; I was tempted to ask him if he was saying I had a fat head, but let it pass.
**Li'l Random, upon seeing my new shades, informed me he's now going to start calling me Morpheus.
***In addition, the Week Without PigPen was really just a warm-up for Life Without PigPen, as it is now only three weeks until he moves out of our place and moves down to Lewisville with Cap'n Peanut.
****His little sister was home on leave from Iraq, so the family decided to spend a week with her down in Cozumel. Feel free to send jealous thoughts his way, I know I did.
*****And by someone I pretty much mean Zinger, of course
******Odds are pretty good that one or both of us was picking on him and he decided to have us turn on each other to spare himself; he's good like that.