I Drank The Water

It was an accident!!!

Tequila and Folded Underwear

Ah... the long awaited Mexico post. I'm sure that three of you were hanging on the edge of your seat for this one. I'm back safe and sound.

Mexico City is possibly the most insane place on the planet. Since I have extremely limited experience in this area and particularly with legitimate out-of-country travel, I will go ahead and declare it "The Most Insane Place on the Planet." Think of it this way... My company sends me into the midst of a city with 20-25 million people (nobody's really sure). Very few traffic lights, no marked traffic lanes. Most highways are roughly 3-4 lanes wide but no speed limits are enforced. At one point, my driver was going 180km/h (something near 113mph) and cracking open beers as we whizzed by a string of ancient pickup trucks hauling unsecured loads down the tollway. Most cars are about 8 feet long so the driver knows where the front and back end of the car are at all times. Thats so you can whip between two other cars moving 80 mph through city traffic if the guy in front of you is going slow or weaving drunkardly (like everyone else).

Oh yeah. And the pollution. I'm sure that you've heard Mexico City lives under a brown cloud of pollution. Well I'm here to tell you that Mexico City lives under a brown cloud of pollution. Everywhere you breathe is like sucking out of the back end of a bus muffler. There are billions of little green VW bug taxis, but I don't think you want to ride in them 'cause someone told us that we'd be abducted or something. We rode in the red ones.

The food down there was unbelievable. It completely destroyed my view of Mexican food in the US. Real Mexican food is just awesome food that comes from Mexico. It may have some spice, it may be made of weird things, but you can be assured... if its really Mexican, its really good.

I climbed two Aztec pyramids outside of Mexico City. The Pyriamid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. Theres a lot of stairs and if you fall you'll pretty much die so it was kind of cool. I looked around from the top and you can see about a million cactus farms. People eat a lot of cactus in Mexico. No kidding. It was good stuff (no spines, silly). The aloe plants are about 8 feet tall and have branches as thick as your leg. Mexico's prized fruit is the little ball that grows at the end of the cactus plant branch. Its a really sweet fruit called a "tuna" or something like that. I didn't get to eat any, but I almost ate fried worms and ant eggs. Its a central Mexican delicacy.

There are probably about a million other things that I could say. I'll just say its beautiful, polluted, and dangerous. Don't go to Mexico City on vacation. I may randomly remember other hilarious details about my trip (like everyone who saw me instantly assumed that I didn't know spanish and girls on the street were blowing kisses at me. I was a celebrity). I was a foot taller than everyone else. That was kind of funny. My little brother is a foot taller than me. He'd have been like Godzilla, but the Norwegian version and minus the scales. Just ask some questions and stuff. I'll probably randomly interject Mexico stuff into other posts too. You know how things come to mind.

Heheheheheh! I almost forgot the most important part! Yes, I tried Tequila. How can I not try it? They drink it like we do iced tea. The service at my hotel was incredible, too. I basically came back one day to find all of my stuff hung up in the closet and my dirty underwear folded and set out... talk about service... I must have forgotten to put the "please don't remove clothing items from my luggage and hang them up" sign on the door. Thats the latin way. Oh....and don't EVER walk in front of a woman through a doorway in a latin country, even if she's preoccupied and it becomes a quite logical thing to do in the US. You won't believe the dirty looks. You American Scum! (Finally! Chivaly lives somewhere!)

Oh yeah, and Amy Breeding is pretty much the coolest single girl that I know. If interested in more information, please see her agent.

...And go out and see the Johnny Cash movie. Its amazing! In fact, if you're a handsome young college man, take Amy to the movie. She hasn't seen it yet.

Voy al Mexico!

Oh yeah... I'm going to Mexico tomorrow afternoon. I'll be gone for the whole week and I don't think I have any access to internet or email - don't expect any posts about me getting my pesos mixed up or walking into a girls bathroom... at least not for a week. I know you'll want to find out, however, if I could keep myself from drinking the water :) . . . to be Continued.

Zombie Arm

I hate it when you sleep on your hands or something and they "go to sleep". This time it was my whole arm - a new experience for me. I could feel all the cold blood moving up my veins when I got the blood flowing again. I've been wondering all day how it managed to recover... or if I'm really walking around with some kind of zombie arm. This is important stuff!!!

The Scoop on Marrow Donation

Right now I'm a potential bone marrow donor for someone. I signed up on the registry a couple years ago and recently got a letter stating I was a potential match for someone. Matches are extremely hard to find, and I'm not going to go into a joke about "well turn the light on!" because thats usually what I would do. I am the guy that constantly interrupts people to interject stupid puns and one-liners. My life is Mystery Science Theatre 3000. My problem is genetic, and I'll leave it at that. Anyways, so I went to get some blood testing done today to make sure that I'm the match. (Hey...maybe I oughtta ask them since they're so good at matching other people to blood and tissue types, maybe they could find ME a match :)!!!. Its not happening, but if I can remember, I WILL ask the next doctor I talk to.) So blood, yeah. They took 5 little vials of blood to send to some people in a lab somewhere via Fed Ex. This is all I know so far. If I find out in 90 days that I am the match, I will then go through with the remainder of the donation process. This is done a couple different ways, but I haven't read all the literature just yet, so bear with me. One of the processes involves putting me to sleep and taking marrow out of my pelvic bones. Thats the painful method and donors usually have a really rough time walking for a couple days. They take the marrow out using big hollow needles or something. The other way is a wee bit like Hansel and Gretel and a wee bit like dialysis. I'll explain. From what I read and what I came up with, they inject you for about 5 or 6 straight day with some whacked-out medical stuff that causes your bone marrow (aka marrow stem cells) to freak out and start making a ton of themselves. I'm guessing a little leftover Bit-O-Honey from Halloween in 1993 could do the trick, but who knows. Once I'm fattened up with the juice - a fully functional marrow machine - they hitch me up to a deal that takes the marrow out of my blood. I don't know if they've got like a spaghetti strainer in there, or if there are a bunch of marrow-gnomes scooping out the little cells as they float by, but its none of my business. They pump the blood back into my other arm and it takes like 4 hours to do. Which method they do probably has something to do with the patient, the donor, the doctors, and the relative ambient level of professional medical sadism.

If you could pray for the patient, I'd appreciate it, and I imagine so would she. She's a 57 year-old woman, and I know nothing more about her. I just know that if she's to the point where she needs a marrow donor, the situation is not good, and I'm hoping that maybe I work out for this woman so she might get another shot at life. At this stage, they tell me I'm about 1-in-5 of being the right person statistically. Potential marrow donors are very few and far between, and matches are impossible to find for many people. We'll know in 90 days.

Eduardo Is My Car's Name

So...

I've been dragging my tailpipe now for 3 full days. I violently range from histeria to severe embarassment, depending on the part of town I'm driving through and how cute the girl is stepping out of the car next to me. You can be sure that I didn't meet the basic "This man will be able to provide for our children," requirement on most of their lists. I find myself quite often stepping out of the car, shaking my head in shame, but only if someone is watching or might be watching me. I usually set my hands on my knees and give a concerned look down toward the bottom of the car, letting the person watching know I know something is wrong. I shake my head and continue walking across the parking lot toward the ritzy little bank office building I work in. I must be trying to act as if the whole tailpipe-dragging thing just happened on the way to work - every day. I half want to kick the thing in front of people just to seem disgusted at its sad condition... (don't tell me YOU don't know what I'm talking about) but deep down... deep down Eduardo is quite magical and I like him just the way he is. If Eduardo were human, I would feel shame for such hypocrisy. On the one I love the feel of crusing down the expensive neighborhoods of an affluent society with my bob-sled brakes jammed on full all the way down the road, around all the corners, over each bump in the road... On the other, well... there are the girls.

I took Eddie to the shop today to get him fixed. Now I know that sounds awful, so I'll leave that sentence for open interpretation. I took him to the Heather Valley Garage. Fortunately it was super-close to my apartment. Its even open at 1030PM. The mechanic set him up on blocks and crawled under with a flashlight to re-strap the remainder of my exhaust system back up under the car. Flawless work. Didn't even get his hands dirty. I was quite impressed. Below is a key for decyphering this paragraph. (KEY: Mechanic = Me. Blocks = Apartment Sidewalk. Strap = coat hanger.)

What is that yellowish stuff on metal coathangers anyway?