if you suffer from heart disease, low or high blood pressure, or are under 4 feet tall, please strongly consider NOT reading the story below--this is not for the faint of heart:

surprises, i'm finding, are not always a good thing. and the scary thing is that any kind of surprise can come at any given second, whether YOU like it or not. ryan found this out on friday night, and while i probably would've dry heaved had the following happened to me, rawkins has dealt with it pretty well and we just spent the last couple of hours talking about "it" and related stories. i don't want to steal the story from ryan, but i've asked his permission AND i'm including it as i find it comforting that weird things commonly happen to him as well.

on friday our team hosted an open mic night. the place where we held it (which i will not mention because they were very good to us and cannot be blamed for what took place there) was a little inconspicuous, so i decided to meet some friends at paradise street bus station and walk with them the rest of the way.

the event started at 8pm and i arrive at about twenty past when ryan approaches me with big eyes and a shocked grin and is all, "you will never believe what just happened to me...." the way any good story starts out.

he proceeds to tell me that he had headed to the gents facilities and like a good boy, reached for the soap dispenser, and washed his hands. while lathering up his filanges and such, he notices a smell that is probably reminiscent of a bathroom, but that hadn't been there just a few seconds before. he thinks little of it and exits only to notice that the smell seems to be following him.

could the soap really smell THAT bad?

he walks up to danny.

R: Danny, have you been to the bathroom yet?"

D: No, why?

R: Smell my hands.

D (not a good move): UUUUUGH. What is that? Your hands smell like....crap (literally).

The two decide to investigate and find that someone has RELIEVED himself INTO THE SOAP DISPENSER miraculously. We still haven't figured out exactly how this went down. One could only speculate.

Ryan washed his hands with poop soap.

He informed the management and was given bars of soap--and he washed his hands about 5 times.

Tonight, the fact that this happened randomly popped into my head and i started laughing. A few friends turned to me and asked what I was amused by and I say, "Ryan washed his hands in poop!"

When he entered the room I got more details about what it went down simply because I was trying to understand how he overlooked such a thing--so that I could inform friends of the warning signs in the future:

B: So, did you not notice--anything--you know, color--with the soap?

R: Well you can kind of see through soap through the glass on the dispenser a little and I thought at one point that the color seemed weird for soap, but I just thought it was a really nice soap with extra nutrients and I was actually a little bit excited to use it (an eruption of laughter from the listening audience).

B: Was the texture--soapy?

R: It lathered. There were little bubbles, but it felt more like I was just smearing something around.

R (his reaction when he starts to think about these answers): I WAS SO CALM LAST NIGHT. I was all, "Oh...that's gross. Oh well." and got over it, but SOMEONE POOPED IN A SOAP DISPENSER. WHO DOES THAT?!? COME ON! I should've been a lot more angry than I was.

Rightfully so Ry. Rightfully so.

I would try to find some lesson, either practically or morally, in this story---but I'm not quite sure what it is yet. Readers you can suggest a proverb from this story if you want, i think ryan deserves one.

I'll start us off:

Proposal #1: a bar of soap in the hand is worth.....everything when there is poo in the dispenser.

i feel like every couple of months, i come back to the theme that weird things happen to me all of the time.

i'm wondering if i put myself in these situations, but honestly readers, i don't think i ask for half of what happens. i must have a big black mark across my forehead that says, "say and do weird things to this girl."

i kind of like it though.

#1--it makes my blog interesting.

#2--i get to laugh about it for days sometimes.

i have a few stories to tell, but i think i'll just stick with the strangest one in the last 24 hours.

today while eating lunch with my friend, jo, in the scholar's bar at john moore's university a student who i've seen around in the past approached jo and i. he didn't just approach us, he stood over us from about 12 inches away and stared until we directed our attention towards him.

i look up and he mumbles something that i can't hear and so i smile and say, 'what?' he then says:

I think you are a very beautiful woman.

i'm a little thrown off by this comment and start squirming a little in my seat, but politely reply, "thank you."

he then says:

i bet you have a boyfriend though, huh?

(christian principles kick me in my face and i tell the truth)

"Um actually no, but i'm not really looking, sorry."

and this is my favorite part of what this bold, but incredibly socially awkward gent says to me during our brief conversation:

if you were my girlfriend i would take you on a date in the city and i would never cheat on you.

my grin really starts to crack through at this point and i say, "well that's really sweet, i'm sure you wouldn't cheat on me. but i'm sorry, i'm not interested."

he then continues to look at me as though jo is not there but talks ABOUT her--i always find conversations like this really surreal:

i bet your friend has a boyfriend, huh?

i look apologetically at jo and say, "um, no she doesn't but i...."

do you think she'd go on a date with me?

he's still pretending jo isn't there and he's just staring at me.

"Um..."

jo butts in and says, "Sorry I'm not interested."

the conversation ends and he walks away.

HOW RANDOM IS THAT?

And we didn't even have time to get into the man who approached me and asked me to buy him a chop suey roll last night when sarah and i were walking down hardman street, to which we agreed, and then he bought a quarter pound cheeseburger.

i love my life. i love that it's been designated so that weird things happen to me all of the time because i really enjoy them.

i've been thinking a lot lately--

and the same subject seems to keep springing to the forefront of my mind.

i like a guy who can wear pink.

amazingly enough, this subject has come up approximately three times in the past couple of weeks with three different people--and not at my own intiation (except maybe once).

i just don't get what you're so afraid of men? is it that you'll be mistaken for a baby girl, if you wear that light hue. maybe you're afraid that you won't be able to match that fuschia polo with a nice pair of trousers and shoes. maybe you feel like your complexion will look yellowish if you're caught sporting this variation of red. or maybe you just feel like you won't be able to pull it off.

my suspicion, however, is that ya'll are just afraid that someone may think your too light for your loafers if you wear anything of the sort.

i say, 'RUUUUUUBBISH.'

you don't see girls avoiding the color blue just because it's associated with boys, do you? you don't see girls diverting their eyes from the football on the pub's big screen simply because her girls might just think she's too boy-ish for her own good. girls don't avoid boy things because they're afraid of being "too boy-y."

and you just can't bring yourself to wear a color for heaven's sakes.

the other day while talking to a fella at john moore's a guy called mike approached our table very proudly wearing a light pink polo. this was our first meeting ever and immediately i knew i respected and liked the guy. i said, "you know mike...i really like a guy who can wear pink."

to which he replied, "yup. just means that i'm comfortable with my sexuality."

DING. DING. DING.

guys either way, you know yourself--i'd hope anyway. who cares what the little scally pack on the 75 says? they're 12. or that your football mates take the mick out of you? really? they're just jealous of your confident ways.

i'd like to give big ups to my brothers who done the fairer sex's socially determined hue.

real men wear pink.

although a little blurry, a different mike that i've known for a while is looking SMASHING in my argyle pink scarf. way to go different mike!

i will never joke about stepping out in front of the 86 again while having a bad day or use it as an illustration of how i just want to get out of this world and be with Jesus.

i wasn't paying attention and today i accidentally did just that. i was pretty close to being flattened by a big ol' arriva.

i realized that's not very funny.

but it kind of is too.....

heh heh heh.

this weekend the team, minus one, headed up to edinburgh, scotland to visit some friends and see the city. it was a good weekend for me. i got to have some fun. i got to chill out. that's my kind of short weekend away.

have you ever had a night out at a place that was so unexpectedly fun that you were convinced if you went by there the next day that place would no longer exist? it'd be replaced by something like a butcher shop or an old ladies hair dresser. it just would've been a magical night--that you could never possibly duplicate again? think a wardrobe, a minataur, and a couple of talking beavers . that was our friday night.

once we arrived the team and alasdair grabbed dinner at an italian restaurant that al had never noticed despite walking down the road it's on a regular basis. we went in and i fear that my request for an exchange between ham and chicken for my alfredo set our waiter, joe, into a mindset that may have been overly accomodating.

after a few cheeky comments on his part, sarah started to shimmy to some song with a wicked latin beat. joe notices and wants her to get up and start dancing in the middle of the empty restaurant, save a drunken, toothless scotsmen and his introverted wife. at that point sarah gets really embarassed, but he keeps on pressing her to dance and so goes behind the bar, puts the song on AGAIN and turns the lights off--the perfect clubbing atmosphere in the most un-clublike place.

so eventually he coaxes 4 or 5 of us onto this makeshift dancefloor and it doesn't stop there, he has a revolving "ball o' light" that he wanted us to dance by the light of. yes, HE HAD A BALL O' LIGHT.
that was the highlight of the night.

my highlight saturday: oh it was chocolate soup.

sure there was a castle, and kilts, and bagpipes, and a small mountain, but PEOPLE i've been waiting one freaking year to get back to chocolate soup. it's literally like you're having a bowl of melted chocolate, and so a very appropriate name. i got the white chocolate caramel chocolate soup. i couldn't finish it. i would've upchucked everywhere. it kind of does that--makes you wanna throw up in a really good, but quite possible way.

other things that i thought about this weekend:

my favorite uncommon word: massachusetts
my favorite semi-common word(s): conjure and suss
thing i say a lot and didn't realize it: "it'd be worth..."

the fact that listening to damien rice's album "O" on a train in england, even if single, is one of the most romantic things that anyone can do.

running for trains that i think that i'm not going to make makes me feel like i'm in a movie where 8 american 20-somethings are backpacking through europe. i hope it's a cool indie film and not a cheesy predictable one where people are best friends forever and you can totally tell who will fall madly and deeply in love with each by the end though.

i'm finished. hey, mad props for all of the comments on the last blog. i feel so loved. maybe i should stagger them more in hopes of getting more feedback??

upon mentioning my departure for england just over one year ago, i commonly got the following reactions about the weather:

the grandmother response--

ooooh my, it rains there quite a bit, doesn't it?

the practical friend response--

bring your umbrella.

and my personal favorite the response of the pessimist...

oh wow, i hope that you won't suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)

however, last year really wasn't that bad. i was expecting so much worse. i thought i'd constantly be toting my umbrella around looking for shelter from the wrath of the monocloud.

this year has been different.

it's rained more in the last 5 weeks then it probably did in the first 5 months i was here in '04. and the more i'm out in it, the more i realize that my reaction is veering in two possible directions--rage and loathing directed towards the climate or comedic insanity and just an overall willingness to laugh at how ridiculous it is that my pants are soaked all the way up to my hip and that my columbia coat is soaking through onto my inner layers.

i'm fighting the meterological system though. if this doesn't improve i'm simply going to blow up pictures of flowers and summery things and put them all over my walls and get about 3 more lamps to make it really bright. then i'm going to wear my swimsuit and maybe put a little bit of sand overtop the carpet and trick my brain into believing that i'm on a magnificent holiday on the med. and i will never, ever leave my room--ever.

someone will have to drag me kicking and screaming.

try and thwart my plan, i dare you.

this weather will NOT bring me down.

so i just got in from our night of booty shaking and although it wasn't the most fun that i've ever had during a night out (no st. patty's day '04)--it was one of the more memorable nights.

we arrived at mood as a small crowd, as i had forgotten that there was a women's convention in leeds today. once angie, kc, sarah, jo, and i got there we met up with a student, gill and her friend and our good buddy maurice.

angie had consumed a cadbury trifle, 2 brownies, a small snickers, truffles, and a malteser before leaving and so was feeling a bit ill, but was an amazing sport. almost immediately, a pretty intoxicated guy approached our group of mostly girls and tried to dance with KC. when she rejected him, he obviously was at a loss so he say, "I have to know. Are you guys lesbians?" when she tells him that we're not he asks, "Where are you from?" she says america and he was all, "ooooh, that makes sense." whatever that means.

as that was going on angie said that she felt like she was going to be sick and so i decided to go up to the bathroom with her.

it was a false alarm.

we head back down because i thought some H20 would do her some good and on our way to the bar I'm smacked full on in the butt. i have NO idea who did it because we had just walked through a crowd of guys. i walked on, a little alarmed...a little violated.

only shortly after our return to the dancefloor sarah and i get a whiff of some sort of burning substance. we decide to ignore it and dance on. kc, being a bit unsettled by the smell, looks over and notices that our jackets, which are on the floor near where we are dancing are exuding smoke. she decides to investigate.

some genius had decided to throw their lit cigarette onto the wooden dancefloor, but instead it had just so happened to land in our pile of clothes. it had strategically placed itself on gill's jacket which was now burning.

sarah toth, associate team leader and part-time firefighter grab it and stamped it out. gill has a lovely hole on her right sleeve now.

we stayed long enough to have another very intoxicated man dance circles, literally, into and around our group. i had to give him credit though. he was very committed to the art of dance. it was an early night for an evening on the town. i got back to ol' hereford around midnight to find danny and rich by themselves, wrapped in fleece blankets and nearly asleep in our lounge.

what a weird night.

good thing dancing is one of my favorite things to do, but for tonight, i probably would've perferred to do something else on my top 7 instead. all the same....good company, good memories, and a very laughable night.

i've got a fever....

and the only prescription is to BREAK IT DOWN.

yeah, that's right. buildng up within my soul at this very moment is the urge to go out and dance until i can't dance anymore.

i haven't yet made it out into the city for a night of gallivanting and booty-shaking since i've been here and i think the time has come.

i can't describe what dancing does for me, but i might have to place it on my top five for favorite things ever. (my number five spot is constantly being adapted, so maybe i should develop a top 7 or something). i guess that can be deceptive because it's not as though i'd go out dancing EVERY single weekend, both friday and saturday night.

no, no--i allow the vibe to really build up so that when i finally do go out, it's like murder on the dancefloor. i've been known to make those standing with 3 leagues, 6 cubits in my distance drop dead because of my dangerously good moves.

for those who know me well, i can assure you that there will be no sliding on the floor this time. i'm still highly upset and distraught at the state of my feet (please see entry from april 25, 2005). the night of dancing at mood, where i took things too far will forever be with me, mainly because that horrific incident has been etched into the tops of my feet forever.

but...

that my friends is just an outward display of my dedication to perfecting my moves and dancing with blood, sweat, and tears...literally.

who will join me tomorrow to up the ante of dancedom? WHO?

okay, i was a little put off from blogging about this concept because i was fearful about the backlash that i might receive from my faithful readers.

however, joanna recently blogged about her disdain for the slothful, arrogant, domestic creature that is the cat and i was reminded of a website that was shown to me a while ago.

no worries, my dear friends--it was shown to me by a cat lover with a great sense of humor--so it's not just for people who hate cats and their evil ways.

so with my highest approval, i suggest that you check out this site, with the foreknowledge that it is a JOKE. start to read through it some--especially the methods section and if you have a sick sense of humor like mine, you'll keep coming back for more. i love that people have too much time on their hands and that they create things like this.

maybe i can do the same.

bonsai friends?

do i have any volunteers for the demonstrative photos?

has anyone ever noticed that i'm really animated?

i've been told i have an expressive face. i even remember when i was younger, i was speaking about a missions experience at a church and there were some punk kids imitating my hand gestures in the back. i thought, "surely, it's not THAT obvious."

however, it hasn't been until recently that i've noticed the magnitude of my animation. i move my hands in big sweeping motions when i talk. they're not small motions that are close to my bodies, but i will expand my arms the length of my wingspan and then swoop and flail my arms around as i'm having a conversation, as though my movement makes what i'm saying more understandable. i must look like a circus monkey.

it's unreal.

today while standing and trying to figure out directions to my friend jo's house (which resulted in my making big sweeping hand motions about where i should go) an older gentlemen was passing me from behind and because i didn't see him, i hit him as he walked by.

real nice brit.

it would be okay if it was an isolated incident, but it also happened the other day on hardman street. these unsuspecting pedestrians are innocently passing me, trying to obtain a sense of mental quietness in the midst of the busyness of liverpool, and some animated american girl comes swooping in on them and hits them just because they pass close enough for my freakishly long arms to give them a good whack.

i think i'm going to work on making smaller swooping motions that don't require my arms to be totally outstretched. i'll let you know how that goes.