Witnessing a random act of kindness

I received an e-mail notice that payment for my P.O box was a few days overdue, so since it was my day off and because USPS.com didn't want to cooperate with me, I decided it best to haul ass across town to both empty the box which I hadn't visited in a while and pony up the payment.

When I got in line to pay there were about four people in front of me and of course only two people working the counter. The two customers at the counter seemed to have large, difficult requests, so nothing I could do but summon up a little patience and wait.

Not a minute after I'd joined the queue, a 30-something lady with came in with what appeared to be a 2- or 3-year-old kid. And the kid was screaming. The kind of screaming that makes me doubt any past or future desires of mine to ever procreate. She kept telling the kid in a menacing tone to 'be quiet,' but of course he didn't listen. That's when her phone rang, and she answered it. He kept screaming while she chatted for a moment. He kept grabbing her keys, she took them away, he wailed, she finally decided to hang up and focus on trying to keep her kid quiet. I did my best to stare straight ahead and fight a grimace that kept creeping on my face.

That's when the lady in front of me, probably in her 40s and now in the front of the line, smiled and turned to the other lady and said, "You can go ahead of me."

"Really? Are you sure?" the other lady asked with clear gratitude on her face.

"Of course. I have three kids, I completely understand."

It was then that I first felt A. doubly irritated, then B. in awe of the older woman's kindness and C. completely ashamed of my own reaction.

I was ashamed that I thought of nothing but my own irritation at the lady and her son and then had a brief moment of irritation at the older lady allowing the younger one to skip both her and me with her gesture. The younger lady was obviously struggling with juggling her son and her daily errands and a simple act of kindness from a stranger that cost the stranger nothing but an extra two minutes of her time appeared to make the woman's day. Why couldn't I have opened my heart like that?

And then something even more wonderful happened. When the woman and her son approached the counter, the boy stopped wailing. Instead, he started chirping, "Hi! Hi!" to the counter worker and anyone else whose gaze he could catch. He was smiling, and with every "Hi!" he drew a chuckle from those in the post office.

CYOB: Time to get spooky!

This post is part of NPW's Choose Your Own Blogventure, Spooktacular edition! If you got here from Definitely RA, keep reading. If not, visit NPW for the beginning and hopefully you'll get here eventually.

(Eds note: If you read this post between the hours of 9 and 11 a.m., I had the links screwed up, so read again!)
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I looked at Julie. Her gaze was fixated on the trunk, and she didn’t appear to have noticed the book sitting on a table next to one of the armchairs. I knew I had to grab the book. If I couldn’t watch the rest of Haunted Happenings, I could at least read the rest. Plus, it would be so much less scary without the images of the trunk that seemed to be torturing Julie.

I yanked Julie’s hand and pulled her toward the entrance of the library set up. She followed me, still distracted by the sight of the trunk up ahead. I began to hear the sound of a thumping heart. It grew louder with every step we took. I looked toward the gramophone as we approached it and saw two glowing red spots just beyond it.

“CA-CAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW!”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Julie and I screamed in unison as we were met face-to-face with a black object with glowing red eyes that had lunged from behind the gramophone.

We collected our wits in about 30 seconds and realized the thing that was staring us in the eyes was a fake but realistic looking raven perched on the end of a long stick. Holding the other end of the stick was a man with shaggy eyebrows, a shaggy moustache and wavy hair. He was wearing a long black coat and gazing upon us with an amused look.

“Ohmygod, he looks JUST LIKE THE PROFESSOR!” Julie said in the loudest whisper I’ve ever heard.

“You half-wit scaredy cat burglar! He’s supposed to be Edgar Allen Poe!”

Julie shot me The Look as I grabbed her arm and pulled her further into the library.

As we passed the armchairs, I grabbed the Haunted Happenings book. It felt hollow and made a rattling sound. I couldn’t look inside yet, as we were still encountering characters. Along the way, Dante popped out from the center of the fireplace, and Lovecraft’s Cthulhu had been hiding near the chess set.

Finally we made it to the door. I opened the book to see what was causing the rattle. It was an ancient iron key, just like the one Annelise had held in her hand in the movie. The glow of the porch light made the key sparkle, which pulled Julie’s gaze away from the trunk.

“What’s that?”

“It’s ... it’s ... it’s a key,” I responded.

“Ohhhh, no, no, no, NO!,” Julie said. “Let’s just knock on the door, get our candy and get the flip OUTTA HERE! ... Wait, no. I changed my mind. Let’s just run. I don’t need the candy. I’m too old for this shit anyway.”

“No way, I’m not leaving here without my candy at the very least. Besides, I want to see if there’s more haunting inside the house. And, I’m still curious about the trunk.”

If you think Kate and Julie should try to open the trunk, click here.
If you think Kate and Julie should knock on the door to get candy, click here.

Why smile when you can wink?

Some inspiration for your Thursday which I found inside a bathroom stall at a bookstore:

Some housekeeping

Two things:

1. Friday is the third annual installment of Nancy Pearl Wannabe's Choose Your Own Blogventure, this time with a spooktacular theme. For the rookies, Choose Your Own Blogventure is very much like those Choose Your Own Adventure books we all checked out from the school library as a kid, except easier to jump around thanks to the ease of computers.

Yours truly will be participating again, but as is customary, NPW will kick things off with the opening chapter. So on Friday, GO TO NPW FIRST BEFORE ANY OTHER BLOG. I'm super-serious about this. Also, budget a good two hours or so to get through every prong of the CYOB tree. Here is a link to her blog. Bookmark it NOW.


2. Noelle at The Daily Tannenbaum gave me an idea for a blog series the other day, and I wanted to see what you all thought. Noelle wrote about the new pedestrian bridge that crosses the Hudson River in her town in the Hudson Valley. She included a link to some Flickr photos of the area.

I loved seeing the little window into her world there, and I thought it would be really neat if we all posted a few photos of our own stomping grounds -- our houses or streets that we live on, the drive we take to work, the coffee shop we frequent, etc. We all live in such unique places and know so much about one another, but sometimes it's hard to picture a setting where your life stories are taking place. Would any of you be game for that? (And if so, I'm open to cutesy titles for such a blog series).

Grocery Store Musical

Because you all know of my love for choreographed dance moves, I'm sure the following revelation will come as no surprise to you. I am a huge, huge, huge fan of musicals.

There's just something so optimistic about a world where people break out into song and dance to express their feelings. Sadly, my own personal hell was God giving me such a love for musicals and then not giving me a singing voice to go with that love. Singing voice or not, I still belt out every word to every song in Grease (right down to 'There are Worse Things I Could Do.') A mere mention of anything Oklahoma related will have me spouting off about waving wheat and surreys with the fringe on top. And my love of musicals had me roller skating in sparkly clothes (a la Xanadu) through the park in 40-degree weather many years ago for a high school film class project. That, my modern friends, is dedication to the genre.

Now, I'm guessing most of you are familiar with the genius that is Improv Everywhere, an improv group that plans out public missions that create often strange or awkward situations but end up being hilarious. Like the no pants subway ride. Or when 3/4ths of the people in Grand Central Station froze at the exact same time.

The point of this post is this: Improv Everywhere did a musical. A grocery store musical. That appears to be about fruit ... but on second thought, maybe it's about something else ;)



I love how they manage to find the stoner to talk to after the musical's concluded. He probably thought the fruit were singing.

Today's another day left to find you

This made me happy this morning:

I especially dig the Light Brites. I totally had one of those as a kid.

Take On Me cover
Shiny and the Spoon

Snow, football, The MF and a bet

Well, hello there.

Busy season has gotten super-crazy-hit-me-over-the-head busy, so it's been kind of hard to do anything of the blogging nature. I did want to stop in and tell you all I'm alive and haven't cracked under the pressure of busy season yet (though I'm sure it's coming).

The Modern Fella has been handling busy season quite well. We have to squeeze whatever time we can get together in since his teaching hours don't completely jibe with my working life. Even with the moodiness that seems to spring forth at least once a week and the fact that I'm late to everything, he hasn't appeared to want to kill me yet, and I think he might actually still like me too, so bonus. This past weekend was my only completely free weekend out of 13 weekends, so we got to spend a lot of time together, and it was wonderful.

Speaking of The MF, here's an anecdote and bet that needs to go on the record for posterity's sake. (And it's not really about football, I promise).

The MF and I share a love for the same NFL team, that team unfortunately being the Tennessee Titans, now better known as the Tennessee Titanics after they lost 59-0 to the New England Patriots this weekend and dropped to 0-6 overall. If you saw a single highlight of that game, you'll know it was snowing. Not just snowing, but SNOWING!!! I can't seem to find how much snow actually fell, but it looked like it was in the feet department rather than foot or inches. **

Anywho, down 38-0 a minute or two before halftime the Titans had to punt. Again. Which is bad, of course, because in football punting means you failed to score points. For the Titans it's doubly bad because their main punter is super-injured so they signed some unknown guy out of nowhere to get them through until main punter gets healthy again. It is a serious crap shoot whenever newby punter punts (which is all the time, of course). Add in a dose of heavy snow, and well, I should have just closed my eyes.

Ok, so down 38-0, just before halftime, newby punter punting and he punts it 21 yards -- which is at minimum about half as far as you want him to punt it -- and the following conversation takes place:

MF: 'Ahhh, I totally could have punted that farther.'
MG: 'Oh really? In the snow?'
MF: 'Yes. I could have punted that farther in the snow while naked.'
MG: 'Oh really?'
MF: 'Yes.'
MG: 'You know we're going to test this theory out the first time it snows in Knoxville this winter.'
MF: 'Fine. And if I punt it farther than him, I get to be known as The Modern Love Machine on your blog.'
MG: 'Fine. But only if you punt it father than him in the snow while naked.'

The MF has wanted his name changed to The Modern Love Machine for a while now. I told him I'd have to lose a bet for that to happen. So now you know the terms of the bet. And we're just waiting for it to snow in Knoxville. And you can betcha we will find out if he can punt a football farther than 21 yards in the snow while naked.

I may even YouTube it.

**Modern Jennifer reports it was just a couple of inches. (see comment below) I guess the TV camera adds a few inches to snow just like it adds pounds to a person.

Green your Halloween

I've got a few posts brewing in my head, but I worked pretty much all weekend, so I'm just now getting caught up on life again. In the mean time, check out a post I did yesterday for The Greenists on greening your Halloween celebrations.

Also, while we're on the topic of Halloween ... I don't know that I'm going to get to fully celebrate Halloween this year because I have to work that day (I just don't know whether I'm working during the day or at night). Whether I'm free Halloween night is probably going to impact how much effort I put into a costume this year, but I'm looking for ideas. What are you planning on being and what's been the best costume you ever wore?

Nut up or shut up

Rule No. 1: go see Zombieland. It is hilarious and good. I love a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously.



I went to see Zombieland with the Modern Fella earlier this week. After the show we discussed our own plans for surviving a zombie outbreak. We know where we're going to get our guns (and it's not any of the obvious places) and we talked about which rules were important (I'm especially concerned with rule No. 3, which is just a general irrational fear of mine). It's good to have a plan.

Sometimes houseguests smell after just one night

The Modern Roomie, Modern Fella and I were standing in the front yard chatting last night when a car stopped and the man and boy inside asked us if we'd seen a black pug. We hadn't, and didn't think to ask these people were they lived or what their phone number was on the off chance we did see the pug.

The Modern Roomie decided to take Lucydog for a walk, and lo and behold she came home announcing she had seen the pug and was going to take her car back to the corner where the little pug was camped out, obviously confused about where it was. It was cute with its little pug face and wheezy breathing and kind of curled up in the Modern Fella's arms.

We drove around for the next 20 minutes looking for the man and the boy, hoping to flag them down and return their dog. When that didn't work, we split up ... I drove around, the Modern Roomie camped out on the porch with the dog. Still, nothing. Meanwhile, Juicycat wanted to pounce on the pug and Lucydog kept looking at it apprehensively.

As it got late, we knew it was a lost cause for the night. We printed flyers, but because it was A. dark, B. supposed to rain overnight, we knew it was futile to hang them around the 'hood before the morning. I tweeted a message about the dog and posted a message on our neighborhood e-mail listserv, but still nothing.

The thing about having a strange dog as an overnight houseguest when you have two humans and two animals already around means someone is going to be whining about the sleeping arrangements. Lucydog would have nothing to do with the pug in my bedroom, so the Modern Roomie tried keeping it in her room at first but ended up putting it in the bathroom because of its constant crying.

Let's just say it was a long night, and neither one of us got much sleep. We kind of just stared at it like zombies as it ran around the house this morning. We put the flyers up and found the owners within an hour.

"I was kinda disappointed," the Modern Roomie said tonight. "I was sort of hoping she'd be here when I got home from work today."
"But you also didn't really want to spend another night with her," I said.
"Absolutely not," she said.

The moral of the story brought to you by extreme fatigue is: make sure you ask those people looking for missing pugs where you can find them.