Band-Aids For Sucking Chest Wounds

At least twice a year I think about downsizing my collection of collections. Being a Renaissance Geek like I am, I have a pretty good collection of stuff from a gazillion different Fandoms and THAT leads to a very cluttered house! I do enjoy when my various nieces (honorary and blood-related) bring their potential suitors to my house to show them off and the young Nerds react as if our living room is some crazy Willy Wonka Candy Factory of Pop Culture (which it is), having to try on every Clone Trooper Helmet and drink from every McDonald's Collector Glass and play with every Transformer... but I need to FOCUS. I need to make room for expanding the collections that really matter to me!

Unfortunately, every collection I consider downsizing does NOTHING to free up space in our house!

If I were to get rid of all my DVD's, that would free up one half of one bookshelf.

If I were to get rid of all my non-comedy record albums, I'd free up 2 milk crates worth of space.

...And really, that's all I'm willing to give up right now. Everything else is just *too perfect* for me :)

Perks of Illness

NOTED FOR POSTERITY: If you take a shot of DayQuil and then wash it down with hot coffee, it tastes just like toasted marshmallows! CRAZY!!!

Gullible

Spent the day with my dad, aunt and sister driving around and doing stuff. During our travels, my sister (who lives in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island) told me about the most amazing thing - A man on the island who COUGHS UP GEMSTONES!

Not being able to tell if my sister was being mock-serious or SERIOUS-serious about this, I let her continue.

So apparently my sister knows a guy who has witnessed this miracle and it's TOTALLY LEGIT (still unsure how serious she is). This friend of hers spent the whole day with the gem-cougher, had lunch with him and everything... and then the guy just started COUGHING UP GEMS! Some so large, he needed help from other people to get them out of his mouth!

My sister is excellent at deadpan humor, so I finally had to say "Really? I mean... You... REALLY?!?!"

She replied with "Really! Rare stones! You sound like you don't believe me!"

"REALLY?!?!?" I freaked. "Off the top of my head I can think of three different ways to pull off that trick! So he just out of nowhere starts coughing and then these gems magically appear in his mouth???"

"Yup! They had lunch and then The Guy went in to his private meditation room because he needs to meditate in private before a performance, then he came out and - "

"REALLY?!?!?!" I just couldn't take this. "So he just does this for free and gives away the gems, or..."

"Well no, you have to pay to see him do it... but then he just gives away the gems! It's really amazing from what I've heard!"

So apparently there's a con artist working the new-age crowds on Friday Harbor. In this day and age, it boggles my mind that there are still people who fall for what is in essence the old "Look there's a coin behind your ear" trick. A good magician could make a real killing over there!