BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Please note that this is not NPR. However, I would like to welcome you to Morning Edition…

Day 2 of 2009: A WillyCon Odyssey (The following takes place between the hours of 5:30AM and 12:00PM. Events occur in real time) <— I tried to get Sutherland for that bit of narration, but he was busy….

5:30 AM – AWAKE!

@mrsellars – There is no java in my room and the Student Center doesn’t open til 7… Oh, Coffee, why hast thou forsaken me?

@mrsellars – Watching morning TV in Wayne NE… Original Adam West Batman movie on… O_o

@mrsellars – Local news is well… Local. Rather be watching @VirginiaKerr and @PaulCooked…

@mrsellars – Jeez… I’m pretty sure I have socks older than that news anchor…

6:30 AM

@mrsellars – @cellphone: boop, boop, beep, bahp, beep, beep, boop, bahp, bahp, beep, boop… Ring… Ring… Ri!

@EK – Hmnomnip?

@mrsellars – Are you up?

@EK – Yam nonno nam nip mmm.

@mrsellars – Okay, just making sure. Didn’t want you to oversleep since I’m not there to wake you up like usual.

@EK – Uhmm nimna hibbit nomma.

@mrsellars – Okay, I’ll let you go then. Love you.

@EK – Wubtoo moo.

@mrsellars – Shower. Check… As coach Verby used to say, “Clean minds, clean bodies.” Well… At least my body is clean.

@mrsellars – Students call cafeteria here the “Gag”. Funny… Noms here are wayyyy better than when I was in College thir-koff-koff years ago.

@mrsellars – Srsly. Noms here really good. A ton to choose from too. Sandwich bar, tostada bar, soups, prepared meals of the day, etc… And they switch up all the time according to what I’m told.

@mrsellars – Had Swiss steak (Northern version = mushroom soup instead of tomatoes and onions, but not bad), steamed veggies, and a salad for dinner last night.

@mrsellars – Salad bar even had beets and unsalted sunflower seeds. How cool is that?

@mrsellars – Looking forward to good noms for breakfast.

@mrsellars – Someone above my head is moving furniture…

@mrsellars – Hmmm… That thud didn’t sound good.

@mrsellars – Wonder if there was a body involved?

@mrsellars – Why yes, now that you ask, everything REALLY IS book material.

@mrsellars – Local weather dude calling for foot of snow, blowing drifts, whiteout conditions.

@mrsellars – SF faculty advisor tells me they’ve been hearing stuff like that for the past couple of weeks and it never comes to fruition.

@mrsellars – Maybe their weather guy needs to talk to Matt Chambers in STL… Pick up a few pointers.

@mrsellars – Hmmmm. Is it Nebraska or is it the fact that it’s a college campus? Man in shorts when 24 degrees not fazing anyone.

@mrsellars – Of course, students are wandering about in t-shirts and ripped jeans. I probably fit right in.

@mrsellars – Familiar odor lingering on the air as I walk to student center. Cow manure. Smells like back home in Kentucky.

@mrsellars – {attack of nostalgia}{wistful sigh}

@mrsellars – Morning noms good. Eggs, pancakes, sausage, mini blueberry muffin, and COFFEE!

@mrsellars – Wonders what these kids would have called the cafeteria where he went to college. :-/

@mrsellars – Hmmm. Place looks almost empty. [Looks Around]

@mrsellars – Oh, wait… A couple of the SF club students I met last night are sitting over there. I should probably sit with them so they don’t think I’m full of myself or something.

@mrsellars – Walkies…

@mrsellars – @students_at_table: Good morning!

@student_1 – [STARE]

@student_1 – Goom nana. Ermm.

@student_2 – [STARE]

@student_2 – Grunt.

@mrsellars – @students_at_table: How’s it goin’?

@student_1 – Nerm goona, arbba tay. Ar ermmm. Nib.

@student_1 – [STARE]

@student_2 – [STARE]

@mrsellars – Umm… Yeah… Klattu Verada Nikto.

@mrsellars – [move to end of table. Enjoy morning noms in silence]

@mrsellars – Remembers his college days… Silently empathizes with the two students.

@mrsellars – Visited with faculty advisor. Signed book. Signed poster. Got more free nom passes for cafeteria.

@mrsellars – SCORE! Found coffee shop on campus. I haz large StarMakeABucks in hand. Life is good.

@mrsellars – Dorm room is about 12 x 24. Two smoke detectors. Must be looking for some pretty sneaky smoke…

ON TWITTER:

@mrsellars – Curse you, Perry the Platypus!

@ perryplatypus – @mrsellars GrRrrRRrRrrRRRrRRrrRr

@mrsellars – Bwuhahahahaha! That just never gets old…

BACK TO PSEUDO TWITTER:

@mrsellars – Temp at 5:30 AM – 24… Now, at 10:30 AM – 44. Supposed to hit 57 before it starts into a nosedive. Then the white shit falls on our heads.

@mrsellars – Camera is loaded and ready.

@mrsellars – Fox squirrels EVERYWHERE. Fat bastards too. Used to see them in MO, but all I ever see there these days are the smaller greys.

@mrsellars – Named one of the reds Skippy this morning. He sat with me and ate acorns while I drank coffee. No shit. Damn near right next to me.

@mrsellars – Tamer than the family of greys I feed at home, and they’re pretty damn tame, so that says something.

@mrsellars – Prevailing theory – the squirrels buddy up to students and sell them the answers to exams. Squirrels are sneaky like that.

@mrsellars – Taking camera with next time.

@mrsellars – You know… Now that I think on it, animals can predict weather even better than Matt Chambers…

@mrsellars – My “country boy sense” is saying these little farts are telling us the sky really is going to dump on us tomorrow.

@mrsellars – #fuckme

11:30 AM

@mrsellars – Coffee empty. Library with coffee shop across campus… Go for more, or relax for a bit and get some when I go for noontime noms?

@mrsellars – Decisions, decisions…

And there you have the morning edition…

More to come…

Murv

It was pretty much a typical Friday morning as Friday mornings go.

I rolled out of bed at 5:39 AM. A bit later than usual, yes, but only by around 9 minutes, which is the span of time allowed by a slap of the snooze button on our alarm clock. Not really a big deal. I just wouldn’t have quite as much “quiet time” alone in the office as I normally did prior to the hustle and bustle of getting E K off to work and the child off to school. I could easily live with that.

I hit the ground running… Or, these days, shuffling just a bit. I fixed breakfast for E K and the offspring, packed E Kay’s lunch while the coffee maker sputtered and steamed, downed a cup or two of the java once it was finished, answered some email, checked my Facebook and Myspace pages, and even took a quick look at the local news on the idiot box. (I prefer K M O V channel 4 here in Saint Louis, just in case you are wondering. They seem to have fun, and Matt Chambers is one of those honest weather guys who prefaces his forecasts with, “This is what we think is going to happen”.)

But, lest I digress…

In keeping with the regular Friday routine,  (as Friday has a few more steps than say, Wednesday, for instance), I had already run about the house  on a mission – gathering trash and replacing the bags in various refuse receptacles, then cleaning the cats’ litter boxes, (not one of my favorite tasks, but hey, it has to be done), and finally delivering the bountiful haul of garbage out to the street corner to await removal by the big, blue, noisy truck that arrives every Tuesday and Friday (except holidays, of course).

All was good… In fact, even with getting a bit of a late start, I was now actually ahead of schedule by just shy of 10 minutes. Not only had I made up the 9, I’d added 9 and some change to it. I was feeling a bit proud of myself.

I figured I could take advantage of that extra time on the back end of the morning, so rather than stop in front of the “toob” to admire Julie Chen and Maggie Rodriguez on The Early Show,  I just kept plugging away. As the clock continued ticking forward my routine progressed with little deviation from how it has gone for countless Friday mornings past.

My initial chores of the day were finished, (though there were many more on the docket for later), the offspring was in her room obsessing over exactly what to wear – as female offspring often tend to do, and E K was finally out of the shower. Since I was next up in the scrub-a-dub-dub queue, I slipped into the bathroom with my lovely wife and proceeded forward with step one of  “Murv’s Morning Routine Phase 2”.

Advancing mechanically through my usual order of tasks I had already run my toothbrush over my teeth, dragged a comb through my hair, and had even made it so far as to whip up a passable lather with my shaving brush,  (trying to be eco-friendly, I’ve used old school shaving soap and a brush – when not on the road – for several years now, as opposed to cans which just end up in landfills). At this juncture, my face was full of rapidly dissipating foam and I had just dragged a trio of  insanely sharp, cold metal blades resting on the end of a short, crooked stick, across my cheek when the demand hit my ears.

“Move over,” came my wife’s voice. “I need to wash my face.”

I gave the end of the screaming metal skin scraping stick a quick rinse and shuffled to my left. I was an inch away from dragging it along my jawline when I stopped, cocked my eyebrow, then turned to look at my bride. Her hair was wet and I knew she had just climbed out of the shower moments before. Still, not being one for taking things at face value, with a vague questioning tone I said, “I thought you just took a shower?”

“I did,” she replied. E K didn’t seemed surprised at all by my query. Of course, after 22 years together she has grown used to my random verbalizations of various thought processes and simply accepts them as old hat. I’m certain this will serve her well later in life when we are both sitting in rocking chairs, side-by-side, and I am talking to myself for no apparent reason.

I pondered her answer for a moment, then gave her excessively damp, red tresses a one-eyed stare as I added, “And, you washed your hair.”

“Yeah,” she answered. “I did.” She still didn’t seem at all fazed by the fact that I was currently channeling Obvious Man.

At this point, had I bothered to look in the mirror, I’m sure my eyebrows would have been see-sawing back and forth like a puppy trying to figure out whether to pee on the carpet in the living room, or on the tile in the hallway.

“So…” I started, then paused.

“So, what?” E K asked, amusement now welling in her voice.

“So, if you took a shower and washed your hair, how did the water manage to miss your face?”

“It didn’t. My face got wet,” she chuckled.

“Okay…” I paused again. “But, you’re saying it didn’t get washed while it was wet?”

“Of course not,” my wife replied. Her tone had made a drastic and sudden change. It was now one of sympathy for someone who is obviously a bit slow in the brainpan, so by way of explanation she added, “I have different soap for my face.”

“Different soap,” I said.

“Yes,” she replied. “Different soap.”

She reached past me and rummaged around in the medicine chest,  so I watched on in silence, now taking notice of the countless weird shaped and various sized bottles, tubes, and jars lining the shelves. I’d never really paid any attention to them before. After all, they are on her side of the medicine chest, not mine. Of course, I have to admit that I had always wondered why her side of the three-paneled chest consisted of both the left and the middle as well as a portion of the right, whereas mine was just a small sliver of said right.

Now,  my curiosity was piqued, so I focused my attentions on her task.

Oddly enough, upon initial and even secondary inspection, I didn’t see any containers with “soap” written on them. I  did, however, see things like “anti-wrinkle cow placenta apricot avocado P H-balanced age defying micro-bead moisture-rich scrub“… With “scrub” coming in at the end of the title, I suppose that stuff would qualify as soap, but it seemed to me “face soap” would have saved some ink when the bottle was being labeled. But, that’s just me, I guess.

There were other products as well, each with equally descriptive and endlessly confusing names like, “glycolic facial peeling solution masque,” and  “collagen infusing pore cleansing makeup removing pre-wash.” I figured that last one probably had pig in it instead of cow, what with collagen being first in the title.

One of the bottles that did make perfect sense had adopted the simplicity in labeling scheme I suggested earlier. It was titled, “nail polish remover.” I pretty much got what they were saying with that, so it seemed like a pretty good marketing move to me. I mean, if E K were to say, “Honey, could you hand me the nail polish remover,” I was all good. But if she were to ask me to retrieve her “face soap”, I’d probably be back to deciding whether to pee on the carpet or the tile. By the time anyone found me I would most likely be doing the “potty dance”.

There were other bottles, jars and tubes – more than I could count really – but I can’t even begin to pronounce their dozen word, semi-foreign, hyphenated and fancy-script-fonted names, (nor would I want to, unless of course, I was considering a career in Dermatology).

“I see,” I finally muttered, even though I really didn’t.

After a couple more swipes across my face with the stubble scraper, I gathered enough courage to ask, “So, do you have different soap for other parts of your body too?”

By now, E K had dried her freshly washed face and was lining up various bottles of differently named products along the edge of the vanity – each of which thankfully ended in the easily definable word, lotion. This helped reduce my confusion, but only just a bit given that there were so many containers that ostensibly all contained the same thing.  Once the linear arrangement was complete, she began working her way down the line, applying different amounts of each to various different areas of her person. Had I not been somewhat preoccupied with my confusion at this point, it probably would have been fun to watch, in an adult amusement park sort of way, if you get my meaning.

“Don’t be silly,” she chuckled in response as she adopted a Marlene Dietrich-esque leg-hiked pose, using the toilet lid to rest her foot, then proceeded to slather, smooth, and rub various lotions into the shapely appendage.

I was actually taking some amount of solace in that answer until she snorted, “Of course I do.”

I didn’t pursue the conversation. A quick glance at the clock told me I had used up my almost 10 minute surplus of time and was instead operating at a deficit, now being a little over 3 minutes behind schedule. I figured I’d better pick up the pace, because since E K had been in the shower first, I knew I was going to be spending several more minutes just looking for the shampoo amidst all of those different bottles she had lined up along the ledge around the tub.

At least now, after 22+ years, I knew they weren’t just decorations…

More to come…

Murv