Big Oops

I've told this story so many times I feel like my memory of the event and its subsequent consequences have been juxtaposed with the tale.

The headline: Concession Stand Bartender Requires Nine Stitches in Two Fingers

The story goes like this:
Only an hour and a half into my bartending shift on Sunday evening (this is a good thing - more on that later), as I was unscrewing the cap of a glass-sized bottle of wine, disaster struck. Instead if the cap twisting off, the top half of the neck broke off in my right hand. Naturally, when the tension released... well, it's like when you're playing tug-of-war and the opponent's tugging really hard, and you just let go, and you get that recoil... so my hand slipped right across the broken edge of the bottle that I was holding in my left hand.

I looked down, and the first thing I noticed was that I had two pieces of glass, one in each hand. Only after that did I see the blood well up from my knuckles. Holding my fingers in my other hand, I wrapped a towel around them while the stand manager called our supervisor, who took me to the ranger station. The ranger on duty wrapped my fingers in gauze and tape to await the Fire & Rescue crew, who always attend concerts, thank goodness!

Got a ride in the back of the ambulance (first time for that) to the hospital, approved for worker's comp by my employer, which is very important. I got to skip the lobby because I rode the ambulance, and sat on a cot in the "sub-waiting area". Chatted with the Fire & Rescue team while they completed their paperwork and I waited for the doctor.

The doctor stitched me up pretty quickly, but I can't say I enjoyed the process. Surprise, right? Actually the worst part was watching my fingers swell with the local anaesthetic - he put so much in my finger that it looked almost twice its normal size (aside from being mangled and bloody). After that, the actual sewing of flesh was not so bad. I read a little, because my fingers looked disturbingly gross. Anyways, what with the ambulance and getting into the hospital ahead of a rush, I spent tops 3 hours total there.

Not much pain yet - I attribute that to shock, then anaesthetic, and now... a high tolerance of pain? Though admittedly banging the stitches on my desk does hurt. And I feel handicapped. Typing with eight fingers, especially for the generations that learned "Home Keys" is intensely frustrating, and I have to put things down before I open doors. Oh yeah, and I have this huge white bandage in place of my index and middle fingers. It's hard to hide, that.

Ten days from now the stitches come out and hopefully I can go back to my normal routines.

America Runs on Dunkin' Freebies

So a new Dunkin' Donuts (really, the reincarnation of the old Dunkin' Donuts) opened up on base today. And of course, to promote the new location (as though we haven't missed it desperately since the old one got demolished) they gave away free donuts, coffee, and, as we discovered to our surprise when we arrived, free travel mugs!!! They replicate the yucky plastic or styrofoam one-use cups you get everyday, and apparently they're so original there's a patent pending on the design. Go figure.

Being the conscientious, preoccupied organic/Green freak, I almost immediately flipped the cup over and checked the number. My memory failed, but happily I found out that #5 is one of the best plastics to buy. Or get for free. Check out the breakdown-by-number here.

Memorial Day

Many people, myself included, forget that Memorial Day is not just another federal holiday - albeit one with parades, festivals, flags and flowers - but is also a day to remember the soldiers, sailors and pilots who fought and perished in our nation's wars. Here's the government's official version on the origins of Memorial Day and other interesting tidbits, covering "Confederate Memorial Day" observances, the "Moment of Remembrance" established in 2000, and even Pericles. (Pericles??)

Incidentally, the poppies in Britain, her colonies and even elsewhere in Europe are ... disturbingly evocative, once you know the story. The short version is that after the Napoleonic Wars, the first flowers to grow in the grave fields of Flanders.

Demonstrating my distressing lack of cultural awareness, the Women's Military Memorial (Women in Military Service for America Memorial, for long) has been holding "one of the major Memorial Day programs in the nation's capital" for 12 years, and I've only discovered it for the first time today. Interestingly enough, the memorial has been on my radar for awhile now, because I've been planning a visit to find records of my maternal grandmother, who was a Lt. Nurse in the Army in World War II. Who deployed to South East Asia. Which is rather exciting!

So. As I prepare for my holiday, I'll take a moment to remember the fallen. And the poppies. And the survivors.

The Missing Link In Your Family Tree

If humans have souls, and if the lemur is an ancestor of humans, does that mean lemurs have souls?

Meet Ida. She's from Germany. You could be related.

I actually find this fascinating. Not that that's surprising in any way... Try this, to learn more about Ida's time period (she lived in the Eocene Era, apparently).

A Weekend of Festivals

May is apparently Festival Month in DC. I didn't know about it until this year, but there's already been a Flower Mart at the National Cathedral, and yesterday Saint Sophia Cathedral held a Greek Festival. Not to mention there were at least two "Taste of" festivals going on in the region. Next weekend, Memorial Day will be celebrated just about everywhere, including my home town, which, although only two square miles small, holds its own Memorial Day Festival and Parade.

I first woke up yesterday, sort of, to the clang of long metal tubes dropping in the street. After falling back asleep for a few more hours, and finally deciding to start my day, I looked out the window and noticed several white tents in the street. I spent a few minutes deliberating over whether I'd seen them last night before actually getting out of bed.

I'd planned on going to Hagia Sophia for the Greek Festival, but walked around my block at the Taste of Arlington first. The setting-up of the festival accounted for the early-morning noises. We passed on the tastes, though some of them looked really good, in order to hit the Greek Festival.

The drive to Saint Sophia Cathedral in NW, DC was certainly eventful. We had directions that said, take ramp "X" off the Rock Creek Parkway to street "A" and turn left. Well, we saw street "A" but figured there must be a ramp "X" somewhere, so we kept going. All the way to the end of the parkway, which was not included in the directions. So we turned around, drove back - all the way back, practically into Virginia again, before we found a spot to turn around (again) and try again. This time we took the exit for street "A" - and discovered the sign meant, "this exit to eventually reach street "A" via ramp "X"! Although it didn't explain in so many words. The ramp, we found, was ramp "X" and the traffic light at the end of it intersected with street "A". So we did a lot of driving we didn't have to do, but saw some very pretty national park in the process! Perhaps next time we'll take the Metro and walk... if there are no delays.

The Festival was small, with Greek music, Greek crafts and jewelry for sale. There was one tent whose merchandise looked "Greek" only becuase it had currently resided in a Greek person's home. Yard sale, anyone?

Almost every jewelry seller had some charms against the evil eye - apotropaic charms, which "turn away" the evil eye curse, presumably back to the one who sent it.

My favorite part of the festival: the gyros!! Mm, they were so tasty. I've recently discovered a love for Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food. I've known for a long time that I like Greek and Italian food, (though gyros weren't included in that category for some reason..) but Lebanese, Greek, Turkish, and even further afield (and not included in the categories above) is Indian. And Bangladeshi. There's this amazing Bangladeshi restaurant in St Andrews, Scotland, which is how I know I like it. Also, baklava has been a favorite of mine since childhood. And I had one of those yesterday, too.

We took a tour of the Cathedral, and the most memorable aspect: the gilding. The whole ceiling and much of the walls are gilded and tiled. It took 30 years to tile the dome, ceiling and walls, apparently. Images of Jesus, saints and angels abound. I've been in cathedrals before, but I don't remember any that looked this ... gold. Even the windows were paned in yellow glass. It was all rather soothing, actually. And beautiful, though I hear St Nicholas is even more pleasing to the eye.

Catholicism is still an unknown to me, but I learned a little about it yesterday. Some of the practices seemed a little strange, some a little more familiar... all in all, I don't imagine I'll convert.

Image courtesy Curious Expeditions.