Decrapitation

I realized yesterday that I've been surprisingly busy for the last week.  In addition to the Blood Drive database/website fixes I volunteered to do for our facilities group, I've been in class three mornings (in Search of Excellent Requirements - surprisingly, not so excellent), at a company CLE event one morning (GLBT and the Law, great presentation), sick one afternoon, tied up one evening and some of one morning helping my friend fix his Visual Basic application he uses to raise money for scholarships (which involved his computer at my house attached to my screen/strip/mouse/keyboard, his corrupt copy of VB, a butter knife to try to make his floppy drive work, what might have been a failing CD drive and enough beer to make it all bearable), spent some time fixing the donations database/application, spent some time looking at other applications I worked on as a consultant (over three years ago now) for DSG/Help that are moving from Windows 2000 boxes to Windows 2003 boxes, talking to the new offshore/onshore team that's here for training, pretending that my coworker who's in Japan's work can be ignored although even ignoring it takes enough time to verify it can be ignored, doing some picture uploading/positioning for Brad (negligible, but still busy work) and trying to be a good dad and husband by spending at least a little time with my family (Eryn learned that having Daddy throw her three or four feet so that she lands face first on a bean bag is lots of fun - I'd do the same for Jen, but she just wanted to watch "Supersize Me" instead).  You can tack the Veep debate onto that whole pile, but truth is I'm only 40 minutes into the tape - I needed a nap.

 

So why "decrapitation"?  Because I could have possibly put an end to all this business yesterday if my reflexes had been a bit slower.  I was on the long road home for work when I noticed a silvery round object bounding down the road toward me, sort of like a drunk mini-ufo.  It took me a fraction of a second to realize it was a rapidly moving hubcap. I started to swerve to avoid it (abrupt stopping seemed a good way to meet the car behind me and he didn't look like anyone I cared to know), and then came to the rapid conclusion that my current course of action would put the hubcap at about head level at right about where my open driver-side car window resided which, coincidentally was also where my head resided.  I snapped back left deciding a broken windshield (just got rid of glass insurance, damn) or chunk out of the car would be the better course of action.  So I took the hubcap on the car frame right where the driver window and front window come together - sounded like it was ripping a fist-sized piece of my Saturn loose (you may wonder why I didn't duck, pondering whether I feel that I'd like to see death coming, meet him head on instead of hiding, but really it just didn't occur to me), but closer inspection at home didn't even reveal a scratch.  Hopefully that covers all my near-death experiences for the next few years.