I took the red line yesterday from work to a little get together in Davis. I dozed off soon after getting on and woke up around Park Street just in time to hear "Next stop: Shawmut!"

I jumped and looked around, wondering how long I had been asleep (for those not aware of the layout, I was heading toward Alewife, Shawmut would be in the complete opposite direction on an Ashmont-bound train). I looked around, realized it was just a miscue in the system like the train I was on last week that was going from North Quincy to Quincy Adams on the inbound track. ANYWAY.

Every stop thereafter is was "Next stop: Shawmut!" and I swear to god the automated voice had different inflections based on its changing emotions. It REALLY wanted to go to Shawmut. At Kendall, he was depressed when he realized he probably wasn't going to Shawmut, like "Next stop: Shawmut? Please?" By Central, he had taken on a more determined air: "Next. Stop. Shawmut. If I have to take over and drive this train using my onboard computer and the help of some friendly rats."

I really shouldn't be surprised, the red line does have the most expressive voice of all the trains. Have you heard how excited it is to go to Braintree? Listen sometime. "The destination of this train is: Braintree!!!!111!!!111!!" I mean, this might be colored by my excitement over the arrival of a Braintree train since I took them so often to get to Quincy but I've pointed it out to other people and they hear it too. Braintree! HOORAY!!!

And finally, speaking of Quincy and the guy on the Shawmut Express reading the latest issues of the Journal of Infectious Diseases ... I got a B+ in Micro! I'm done with it! WOOOOOO!! Thanks for all the well-wishes and thoughts for my exam, they seem to have worked!

Labels: boston, funny, nursing school, observed around town, stories, the t

The 8:20 104 was early AGAIN. Nate and I were running a little late after our wild night in the ER but we were still on time. We were 3/4ths of the way down the hill when we heard it approaching so we started running. We were just about at the intersection waving our arms as the bus was getting there. We started running faster, full on flailing like crazy people and he just pulled away. This happens at least once a week.

HOWEVER. Today, a reprieve. A cop was on roadwork detail and actually stepped out in front of the bus all official-like and forced the bus to stop, then stood there until we had crossed safely and boarded.

Score one for police details, I guess!

Labels: boston, stories, the t

Ugh. On Friday I got this lump behind my ear that I assumed was a zit. It was definitely not a swollen gland. I've had those and this feels way different. It was squishy, for one.

It got more and more painful and seemed to grow and shrink. At least it was on Friday and for a bit on Saturday. Then it stopped doing that and pushing my earlobe out.

Saturday night I barely slept because everytime I rolled over onto that side it'd hurt. By Sunday my entire ear hurt and the area was hot and throbbing. I was all set to get an emergency doctor's appointment today and have it dealt with but then I started getting pain down my neck and into my shoulder.

I called the nurse line and they advised that I be seen in 6 hours. At that point it was after 11 which meant, you got it, ER time! It was a cyst and obviously infected and they don't like to play around with diabetics, I know, so off I went for my 4th ER trip in 6 months. It was empty so we got in right away.

They injected lidocaine into it (that was the worst part, OWWWWWW THE BURNING, and it barely worked anyway) and cut it open to drain it. The PA who did it was really nice. He was explaining MRSA and superbugs to me so I mentioned taking micro and nursing school so we talked about that. He treated the whole drainage process like a lecture in class, which was funny and kept me entertained.

He drained and scraped and did all sorts of unspeakable things to it that make me cringe just thinking of them. Then he put a wick in there (gauze, to help it drain further and keep it cleaner) and taped and gauzed it up. I have a very attractive bandage on my face now. I have to go back today to get the wick removed.

I'd put the pain of the drainage at above infiltrated IVs and just below having my retinas burned away by lasers, simply because this was a lot quicker, I didn't have to have a lens attached to my eye, and I had Nate in the room to hang onto.

Labels: health, nursing school, stories, weekend, whiney

Leave me alone, you smirking bastard!



Hey, it's another Saturday afternoon guest starring the MBTA police!

I was walking across the skybridge from the gym to the Wellington to catch a train home when I heard a kid screaming bloody murder. The kind of ear-piercing shrieking and screaming that makes dogs cower in fear. I could see a bit of commotion at the other end and as I got closer I heard a woman yelling "HELP! Stop! Call the police!" The man passed me at that point, holding the kid in a splayed sort of way while she kicked and fussed and screamed and cried. He wasn't running, just walking purposefully and not making eye contact.

I got to the other end and the woman there was near-hysterical yelling "STOP! You're hurting her! Please! Let her rest!" I looked out the window and saw the police pulling up and the lady started jumping up and down waving her arms so I asked her if she was okay and if she needed anything.

She tells me that this man has obviously kidnapped the little girl and won't someone please stop him? At this point a crowd is gathering and the cops go running by into the skybridge. I asked her what happened and she said that they got off the train and the little girl came up the steps, then said she wanted to sit down and rest. He picked her up and started walking away when she started screaming and crying and he was holding her much too tightly.

She also informed us that he looked just like a predator with thick black glasses and a pointy nose. Plus he was very tanned and the girl was very pale. So he had obviously kidnapped her.

Uhhhhh ... huh. Obviously.

At that point, we were all taking a few steps back, not wanting to be involved in this rapidly developing mess. Then some people came walking out of the skybridge and told us that the cops had caught up with the guy. The girl is his and she has "a disease" that causes her to go into hysterics and he was just trying to get her home.

I left at that point.

I'm all about erring on the side of caution, and something did seem odd about her screaming when I passed them, but lady, step away from the SVU and read a book. A happy one. Maybe give The BFG a try.

I don't think I'm going out on Saturdays anymore.

Labels: boston, daily report, media literacy, observed around town, stories, the t, WTF?

Echoing Amanda and Melissa, this week can suck it, culminating in today's experience on the bus, which I will recount for you now. May contain some Language.

EDIT: I drew this diagram to better illustrate the situation. Enjoy!



So I was on the shuttle bus to the gym today (trains are undergoing maintenance and they're running buses between some stations) and minding my own business when a frickin royal rumble broke out.

Two guys were sitting perpendicular to each other, an old guy and a guy who later turned out to have a knife. I will call them Old Guy (OG) and Knife Guy (KG). OG was sleeping through most of the trip. He half woke up and took his hat off and laid it on his lap, tapping KG in the arm. KG flipped his lid and started in on OG, who was still half-asleep, screaming "You just touched me, mofo! Don't touch me!" He stood up and got in OG's face, shoving him. OG stood up and shoved KG back and it was off to the races.

I was sitting directly across from KG and tried to get out once I saw what was going down but there was no time and I was trapped as these two beat the crap out of each other, often times shoving each other onto me. While the bus was still moving so there would have been nowhere to go anyway, since it was a packed bus. In the back we were screaming to get the driver to stop and he finally did. Fortunately we were at the station by then so a guy in the front hopped off to flag a cop.

Meanwhile, in the back, OG is bleeding, KG has blood all over his jacket. KG's gf was jumping on his back to try to get him off OG and he just shoved her off. KG then headbutted OG in the face and OG fell back, dazed and gushing blood now. KG took this lull as an opportunity to pull out his friggin switchblade and start waving it around. I took the lull as an opportunity to get the hell outta there.

Shortly after that KG took off yelling "I'LL GET YOU MUTHAFUCKA!!!" OG followed him off the bus, threw his bag down and yelled "I'M RIGHT HERE, COME AND GET ME!" Sweet. Other passengers started trying to see if OG was okay but he resisted their advances with such coy remarks as "What the fuck is it to you?" and "Leave me the fuck alone fucker!" He also yelled at several of them to get the fuck back on the bus and fucking drive, only getting angrier when they informed him that they were not actually the driver. Fortunately the cops showed up at that point.

I kept it cool until I called Nate, at which point I all the terror and tension escaped in the form of sobbing. Strangers tried to comfort me, which was nice but mortifying so I pulled myself back together right quick.

I then gave a nice lengthy statement to the police and while I was doing that they caught KG so we all breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn't going to be coming back with his knife or a posse or an uzi.

So KG is presumably in jail, OG is off to sleep it off (I saw the cops tell him he could go when he refused treatment. He was kind of drunk and apparently a notorious homeless/Veteran character in the area), and I'm pretty banged up for having nothing to do with the whole thing but I do have a cool story.

Moral of the story: you can leave your hat on. In fact, the management would prefer it if you did.

The End.

Labels: boston, observed around town, other bloggers, stories, weekend, WTF?

I was at Downtown Crossing waiting for my redline train to work this morning. Nate had an interview so I was obsessively checking my phone to see if he had texted. I pulled it out one more time, fumbled, and it flew out of my hands and landed on the tracks!

Customer Service told me to stand there and wait for the inspector to come so I did. And hour goes by, nothing. I see a T conductor waiting for his train so I asked him if he knew anything about it. He suggested I go back to customer service. I did, they’re amazed that no one has shown up so they send me back down, this time with a T employee to wait with me. Next train that comes in stops, an inspector hops off and comes to talk to me. He was the second guy they called and he rushed right down for me, so that was nice. The train left, they called to hold up the next train, and he hopped down, grabbed it, and gave it back to me. 22 trains passed over it and barely a scratch on it!

Labels: boston, daily report, funny, stories, tech stuff

1. Health insurance
2. 911
3. The good people who drive ambulances for Cataldo.

It just wouldn't be a holiday without some sort of emergency! We went to the Cape, had a great time, came home. I sat on the chair with my laptop to watch the last half of Grey's and ... that's all I remember until I started to focus on the 3 paramedics and 2 firemen standing in my living room. My first conscious ambulance trip later and we were at the hospital. Then 3 hours there.

Now, I'm home and exhausted but wired.

Thanks, Cataldo and thanks, Melrose-Wakefield Hospital.

The story of my new name on my license will have to wait. It's awesome.

Labels: health, holidays, stories

I dozed off reading on the couch this afternoon. It was a perfect day for it, grey and stormy, thunder lulling me to sleep.

I woke up an hour or so later drenched in sweat, confused, heart pounding. With one hand I found my box of gummy lifesavers while the fingers of the other blindly groped for the slippery black pouch containing my meter. Simultanously shoving a tower of 5 gummy lifesavers (15g of carbs) in my mouth and pricking my right ring finger I waited out of the 5 second countdown for the answer I already knew. 51 mg/dl. Instinct overrode good sense and before I knew it I had eaten a full bowl of cereal and half a bag of Trader Joes Unburied Treasure that Nate had left on the ottoman. Oops.

Fortunately I did get a clear enough head to count up the carbs I had consumed and bolused for them. I'm quite glad I didn't have to draw up a syringe and inject with the shakes. I do not miss that. More often than not I wouldn't give the proper amount of insulin and wind up bouncing/swinging.

I love my pump.

Labels: diabetes, health, pump, stories

All of the recent passport hoopla has reminded me of my own crazy passport story from ought-five.

In, I think, January of 05 in anticipation of an upcoming trip to Ireland, Nate and I applied for a passports. His arrived within a month of applying. Mine did not. Then I got an email saying there was an issue with my passport application and it gave me a number to call. I called and the man said "Oh, yes, you were born in Hudson County. Do you know the story of Hudson County?" I said no, and he proceeded to tell me that about a year ago, due to widespread corruption, every single birth certificate issued in Hudson County within the past 40+ years has been rendered invalid.

Here is an MSNBC story from 2004 that mentions the problem and that I wish I had seen at the time.

It all ended happily, though. I was able to relatively quickly obtain a new birth certificate and brought it down to the passport office in Norwalk to get expidited service. The passport, along with both copies of my birth certificate, arrived in time for us to go on our vacation unhindered by bureaucracy.

Labels: funny, stories, travel

Nate just ran in and out from his parents to go to a read-through for a show he may be in. I hugged him goodbye and he turned to leave when I felt a strange stinging yank from my gut. Before I realized what was happening I YELLED, partially because it hurt and partially to get him to stop walking, as every step he took increased the pain and fear. He had somehow looped his arm through my tubing and was now dashing out the door with my in hot pursuit. He gave me a startled "WHAT??"

"You just ripped Sheldon out of me!" I yelled back.
"I'm sorry! It's not like I did it on purpose! Don't be mad at me for that!"
"I'm not mad, it just hurt!"

We then realized that we were in "LOUD NOISES!!!!!" territory and took deep breaths and inspected the damage. There was none, thankfully. We laughed and he continued on his way.

Now I'm sitting here still trying to get my heart to stop pounding, wondering what our neighbors think of us. This all happened right in front of our open apartment door. Sweet.

Labels: diabetes, funny, pump, stories

Today I ate my lunch and went to give my insulin as usual. As I was injecting it, it suddenly dawned on me that I had just injected the dose I usually give of my bedtime long-acting insulin, which is about 4 times as much as what I was supposed to give for lunch. I should have given 10 units and instead I injected 38. Yeah. So, I crammed some coffeecakes, 2 nutrigrain bars, and 2 large glasses of OJ in my mouth to keep myself from crashing and seizing and all of that messy stuff. This all went down about 2 hours ago so I'm going to be fine, as this insulin tends to do its work within the first 90 minutes and is completely finished working after 3 hours. I've been checking every 15-20 minutes and have been A-OK.

Just call me Calamity Jane.

Labels: health, stories

I know I already posted today but this story on Pamie.com had me in tears laughing because it's happened to me.

Sometime recently my coworkers and I became fixated on text messaging. We'd send each other weird text messages at odd times. Amanda would never get said text messages. Then one day I got a new phone with a camera and wanted to test the function where you assign a picture to a person and when they call their picture pops up. So I took a lovely picture of Amanda (Exhibit A: ) and set it up and tell her to call me. She does, no picture.

"Maybe you need to do the area code?" she says.
"I think I did, let me check ..." *pulling up menus, both of us peering at it* "See, I did!"
"...that's not my number," she says.
"What?"
"That's not my number!"
"OH MY GOD!"
At this point we both dissolved into laughter as the full weight of the situation hit us. You see, the aforementioned "weird text messages" usually said something like "I'm watching you" or "Don't turn around."

So, to the nice old lady whose grandchildren forced her to get a cellphone, you can turn yours back on now. I promise, the demons have all been exorcised.

Labels: funny, other bloggers, pictures, stories