That's what my sister is for!

This morning, when I found out I was doing in-house with Zac all day, I kind of groaned a little inside. Zac tends to make jokes so filthy that he even shocks Beth and Rye, and that's saying something. I can take dirty jokes to an extent, but Zac's used up all his dirty joke points for the next six years.

As it happened, he actually wasn't too bad, though. He was pretty polite, and he knocked so I didn't have to, and he's a good worker, and he didn't make any dirty jokes until the afternoon when we were around Beth and Rye again. He also got a new haircut, so he doesn't look like he's got a mop on his head anymore. Frankly, he looks really darn hot. If he weren't usually a rambunctious, perverted jerk, I'd probably have a massive crush on him.

Anyway, as we were finishing up the in-house for the cabins, the people from cabin twelve passed by and said, "By the way, there's some blood on the carpet at the foot of the stairs. We had a little accident last night." The lady motioned at the guy standing with her. "He's fine now, but we thought you should know."

"Yeah, okay," I told her. "No problem." (Ew, I thought.)

I was half expecting a few little spots. The other half of me was expecting a massive pool of blood three feet across. Both halves were expecting dried blood, not blood that was still wet and glistening bright red on the dark blue carpet. (I couldn't tell you if it was still warm because I didn't touch it, okay?) But wet it was, and there were four or five pools of it and streaks across the carpet in a big semi-circle at the bottom of the stairs. Each of the little pools of blood was around six inches across. So Zac and I called up Rye to ask how he wanted us to handle it. He headed over himself with the carpet wet-vac, and we went in to finish the in-house.

"Oh my gosh, Beth is going to be so mad," Zac said from the bathroom.

"Why will she be mad this time?" I asked, following him in. "Oh."

We just got new towels. Beth is the laundry lady and is very protective of her towels--more so now because they're new. By the bathtub, there was a pile of at least five or six bloody towels. "Bloody" means they were almost entirely soaked in blood. There was also dried flecks of blood all over the floor and sink. Wow. What a bleeder!

This kind of thing is my sister's job, not mine! We clean up barf and urine, not blood! It was like something from a horror movie or something.

I'm mildly curious to know what happened. Tripped going down the stairs and hit his head, maybe? Hmm, maybe. Maybe he had that disease (leukemia, maybe?) where when you cut yourself, your blood doesn't clot, so you keep bleeding and bleeding and practically need a tourniquet if you scrape your knee. I don't know. Pretty cool, though. Terrifying? Gruesomely fascinating? I don't know. Zac and I didn't really know how to handle it, so we just made jokes about it the whole rest of the day.

When Rye dumped out the water from the wet-vac, it looked like he was pouring out gallons of pure blood. Very dark and thick. Really gross.

So that was my excitement for the day. Woot!

...or WAS it?

After that, I got a new cell phone. Apparently, Verizon just added several key parts of Alaska to their coverage list thingy, so Mom added me to her phone plan and got me a new phone. If you want my new phone number, send me an e-mail or something and I'll let you know. This weekend, I'll probably be very busy calling several old friends to let them know my number changed too. This phone makes my old phone look insanely ghetto. All sorts of weird flashing lights and various doohickeys, knick-knacks, and doodads. I feel like an old lady from the 1700s being plopped down in front of Windows Vista and being told "Here. Work it."

A few days ago, Spider lost the ring her boyfriend gave her for their six-month anniversary. It was silver and had a sapphire in it. She cried hysterically for the rest of the day when she lost it. I don't think it's going to turn up. I feel bad for her, although frankly, two years from now, she'll probably never want to see her boyfriend again and will have entirely forgotten about the ring. She vehemently denies it, of course, but what do you expect from a sixteen-year-old? What do you expect from anyone who thinks they're in love, really? (Solid marriages don't count.)

Anyway, I was thinking about the ring today, hoping it would turn up. Sapphire, huh? Spider said it was a real sapphire, not a piece of colored glass. Sapphires are pretty. So are emeralds. So are most gems, frankly. I don't know what fool decided that diamonds are the ones that should solitarily adorn most rings, because diamonds, while they look stunningly beautiful when they're accenting other colored gems, are pretty colorless and dull by themselves. Sparkly, yes, but dull.

No, I'm really not trying to hint that anyone should buy me gems. I don't do gems. It's like wearing a big sign that says, "I'm rich and foolish! Rob me!" Maybe someday, but definitely not today.

After work, I got thirsty and decided to wander over to Safeway and get some chocolate milk. Sadly, the only brand they had was Lucerne, and as I reached for it, I remembered that Lucerne's chocolate milk tastes pretty terrible. Well, not terrible, but not good enough to justify the price. So I thought, "Hey, what the heck, let's try something new," and grabbed a coffee-flavored milk.

I've never liked coffee. It doesn't smell good, and spending years scrubbing out burned coffee pots has kind of turned me off of it forever. But, I thought, it has been years since I last tasted it. Maybe my taste buds have changed or something. So I got the coffee milk and wandered off to drink it.

I opened it and started chugging. Hey, this isn't so bad, I thought. Then I stopped drinking and the aftertaste hit and oh my gosh! Anyone got any Listerine? Schnikeys! Gah! Ptooey! Obviously, my taste buds haven't changed after all.

People say that coffee and tea (and beer) are "acquired tastes." Well, they taste nasty and they're fairly expensive and not really all that good for you. Why would you bother acquiring it?

People are strange creatures.