anecdotes

    There are a few things on my mind right now. The temperature here in Detroit rose to a whopping four degrees today. I guess that is better than the one degree the day started out with. Those three extra degrees really made a difference.  

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    Was anybody else riveted by the news and the image of the sinking USAirways plane in the hudson river? That pilot is a hero. Miraculously, everybody survived. Thank God. Truly. I was talking to my friends about it and said that if I were guaranteed absolute safety of myself and everyone else, I might want to experience something like that. What an amazing story to tell others!

  I mean really, that would make a great blog post. 

  Oh, and do you know the only thing that the pilot said before he landed the plane in the icy waters? Get ready for impact. Just like that. No preamble, no pontificating. Just a sensible, unarguable command. Again, wow.

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  A conversation I recently had with my friend Ian:

Ian: I just saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and it was really good.

Me: Huh...(note I am not putting a ton of thought behind my next question, as you will see in a second) Is that based on a true story?

Please realize that I had seen the previews, I knew the premise...

Ian: Well, Jessica, it's a movie about a man who looks like he's eighty years old when he's seven and then as he chronologically gets older recesses into a tiny infant; you tell me.

Me: Oh yeah, guess not.

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     I totally pulled a MacGyver tonight. Seriously, you should have seen it. But since you didn't, let me explain. 

     Me, Gabi, and Liza were driving to work and had just gotten to the parking garage. I went to grab for the access card we were given on Tuesday and with a start saw that it was not in its regular spot: inside the slide out extension of the sun visor. Without that card, the lever would not lift, meaning I could not park the car. So, I pressed the emergency button and a man came up to me. What's the problem? he asked. Um, we cannot find our access card...I said, still rummaging through any other places it could possibly be. Well, that's a problem, he noted (no, duh, I also note, I was the one who pressed the emergency button, remember?). What if we, uh, never actually find the card? I ask. Then I am gonna start charging you every night. He answers, sounding a little too happy about charging us every night. I mean, does he get to pocket the money he gains from people who lose their access cards or something?!

   He lets us in just tonight he assures us, and we don't doubt him. I park the car and start fiddling with the slidey thing in the visor. Gabi says aha! as she spies the card down in the recesses of the visor, quite out of reach for anybody whose hands are not two-dimensional. 

   Which ruled all of us out. 

    But then I remembered that a theater-specialized tax accountant had recently sent me a nail file included in her info packet. Perfect. I dug it out of my purse  and carefully, so as not to push it further away from our already dubious reach, started jimmying the card. 

  And I jimmied it right out of the visor, back into our hands, once again assuring our free parking for these next three weeks.

  And that is how I was MacGyver tonight. Awesome, right?