Quantum Shaving Foam

Today's post title comes from Quantum Foam and Shaving. Since I'm not a physicist and am currently sporting a (manly) beard I'm not qualified to discuss either.

In what is probably an overzealous display toward something I will soon grow bored with, I've now posted two days in a row.

First I'd like you to turn your attention toward this page's links, over there on the upper right, yeah there, right below the machine-gun-toting-gopher. That top one is my Deviant Art page. I've got a collection of my photography over there. It's pretty much restricted to landscapes, waterscapes and graves so... you should check it out.

And it's fun story time again! This one I like to call, "Double-O Negative" - a title borrowed from The Goonies.

As most of you know, my mom had surgery this past spring to remove a tumor from her throat/mouth area. This story takes place during the actual surgery at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. A bit of back-story will serve us well here. First off, my dad and I had combined for about 5 hours of sleep between the two of us and I think 4 1/2 of them belonged to me. My sister wouldn't be there and the surgery itself was expected to take somewhere between 6 and 8 hours. To put it simply, both of us were bored, tired and totally stressed out.

The hospital itelf has several waiting areas so it's nice to be able to wander around from place to place while you wait. After about 3 hours I'd gotten the idea that I needed to take some pictures on my camera phone, maybe I was thinking of comemorating the event... maybe I just wanted to show someone the sign I'd a given stared at vaccantly for half an hour, either way I took the picture, entirely disregarding the news report I'd seen a few days prior about how terrorists are using camera phones to case possible bombing targets. Anyway, not 3 minutes later, Double-O Negative shows up. Dude is dressed in a black 3-piece suit, sunglasses and an earbud. I kid you not, if I saw this guy pull up in a black SUV in front of the hospital I'd start looking around for the president.

On top of that, the guy doesn't even try to be sneaky. I'm not sure if that was due to his arrogance or his awareness that it was pointless to attempt incognito behavior since his outfit made everyone expect Sean Connery to come around the corner and yell, "You're the man now dawg!" at him. Anyway, he positions himself about 20 feet ahead of us and against the left-hand wall. I noticed him immediately (how could I possibly miss Baby Hughey in his secret service outfit?) and pointed him out to my dad, who is immediately pissed off. The guy then makes his presence even more obvious by strolling back and forth from the wall to the front enterance and chatting with the valet guys, presumably hoping I would take another picture with my cell phone to send back to some terrorist sleeper-cell.

During this time, as Double-O Negative strolls back and forth, a patient in a wheel chair begins suffering from Nostophobia (fear of returning home) or possibly Stenophobia (fear of narrow things or places, it was one of those turnstile doors) or maybe some other issues (thank you phobialist.com) but the practical upshot was, she refused to move through a door and was openly weeping at the prospect of doing so. The only thing that could've made our situation more absurd was if the Marx Brothers had come strolling down the hallway re-anacting their old films (I'd horse-whip ya boy but I don't have a horse!).

Finally, fate turned in our favor when our phobic friend decided to go through the door, trapping Double-O Negative out in the vestibule. Seizing the opportunity, my dad and I made a break for it, losing our hanger-on and, I'd like to think, costing him his job or at least the pay bonus he would've received for catching a possible terrorist suspect.