Code:

Code: blue.  Heart hospital.  Fourth floor.  Room 2071.

It repeats.

I pretend like I can't hear.  Like the quietly playing NCIS on the small TV in the upper corner of the room is much louder and drowns out the sound.

Code: blue.  Heart hospital.  Fourth floor.  Room 2071.  For the third time.

Or like the book in my hand is so interesting, so engaging I can't even hear anything.

But I hear it.

And I'm glad we aren't on the fourth floor.


We are on the first.  Surgery wing.  He's in the bed.  Waiting for a minor procedure.

Sure.  Minor.  Because when they stick this little thing that connects to your blood vessel so that they can administer chemo without poking you, without trying however many times it takes to find a vein, because you'll get chemo every two weeks for six months, when they stick that little triangular thing that is as thick as a stack of quarters called a power port into the muscle in your chest, it's pretty minor.  It'll just be minor sedation.  An IV knockout.  Not the gas.  With anesthetic shots in the area.

It's no big deal.  It's not like a bowel resection using a DaVinci procedure that turns you upside down and uses four small incisions and some huge machine operated by your surgeon to cut out part of your intestine and a tumor and 22 lymph nodes, one of which is cancerous.  That was five weeks ago.


I guess it is fairly minor.  I wait in the prep room with him longer than it takes for the whole thing to be over.  It takes longer in that small room where I hear, maybe twenty minutes after it sounded the first time:

Code: blue.  Heart hospital.  Fourth floor.  Room 2071.

It's only repeated once this time.


I'm finished eating my $5.50 omlette, with spinach and peppers from the hospital cafeteria where I go after he's taken out of the prep room, when the beeper buzzes.  This beeper, that looks like one of those things you get a restaurant like Olive Garden, tells me I need to go speak to the ladies at the desk where we checked in.  I have an update.

I have two conflicting emotions.  One in the pit of my stomach.  Update?  How did it go?  But before that line of thought can go much further, my humor sets in.  I look at the beeper.  How bad could it be? My table is ready.

And there is nothing bad when I get to the desk with the nice ladies in colorful scrubs.  He's going to his recovery room.  I get a slip of paper and instructions.


I arrive as he's wheeled into the room.  The doctor comes in, does some explaining, hands me the script for more pain pills.  Obviously still groggy, he tells the doctor a joke.  What did the driver say to the one-legged hitchhiker?

Hop in!

It takes the doctor a few seconds to get it.  But he laughs.  He must be feeling fine if he's cracking jokes.  Especially the one he got me to tell on joke day in preschool.

The nurse goes over things, and after crackers, water and a percocet, he's ready to be wheeled to my car.  I leave to pull it around.

I'm walking through the automatic sliding doors, when I wonder if the person in room 2071 coded again.

I didn't hear anything after that second time.

But that could be good.

Or worse.

It's October 3rd

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Tyrion Lannister is a Big Dumb Poopy Butt Whose Butt Smells Like Poop and is Full of Poop

What's with the title you ask? I'm just checking to make sure our dear Tyrion is reading since he hasn't POSTED ANYTHING!!!!! (Btw, if the fact that he's using his gmail account means that he can't for some reason I don't understand about Blogger, I take that title back in its entirety.)

Now, what was the reason I came on POW again? It wasn't just to talk about Tyrion's poopy butt. Oh yes, that's it.

I propose a writing challenge!

As you know, one of our biggest challenges in writing as a group is, uh, not writing anything. Or posting anything specifically to this blog. The other day my mom was telling me about this flash fiction contest on NPR (which is over now) and I got this idea. Since we all know November is NaNoWriMo, why not utilize October in a similar way?

Ladies and gentlemen(man?), it's time for the October flash fiction writing contest!

Flash Fiction October (FlaFiOcto?)

The rules: Write one piece of flash fiction (let's say between 150-1,000 words, we'll apply a pretty liberal use of the term "flash fiction") per day. It doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to be spelled correctly, it just has to be often. (The rules can be modified for Cylon who has no time to do anything ever-maybe write flash fiction if you ever feel like you're head is about to explode. Or maybe, write flash fiction once this month. Sorry Cylon, the timing of this contest is not kind. I know.)

The goal: Come out of this month with a few little snippets of great writing. Not to mention the fact that this will push us to write more. I once met a poet from the Writers' Workshop who said she wrote a sonnet every day for a year to tune her ear to rhythm. This can only be a good thing in developing writerly discipline!

The winner: Anyone who writes ANYTHING. Seriously. I mean, this doesn't have to be a real competition unless it looks like a few of us are writing enough to actually compete. I figure it's like NaNoWriMo in that you win if you try. If we want to put a random number on it let's say try to write 15-20 pieces of flash fiction over the course of the month.

The timeframe: Since it's already October and not all of us read POW every day I figure we can make the starting date Friday-Monday and the end date the last day of October.

Stipulations: You can write more than one piece of flash fiction a day, but no more than three. This is about writing regularly, not writing a lot in sudden spurts. We all know that we can do that.

So how about it guys? Any takers? Even if there's not, I think I will undertake my own challenge just because I've felt such a lack of direction in my writing lately. If you have other writer friends (hahaha, none of us have friends, jkjkjk) feel free to encourage them to take the challenge as well. If you want to tweak the rules, I'm open to that as well. Let me know.

And let the flash fiction begin!

Promise

There is so much held in promise

          You are promised
          You show promise
          You must promise
          You have promised

I hold promise

But the promise that concerns is the one made me

The one
       never formal
                 but there
                       repeated and
                                     insinuated and
   
                                                      gone

        never realized

I was told
If I just

          buckle down
          study hard
          achieve more
          do well
          finish assignments
          get As
          get degrees

It would be there

          Future
          Success
          Security
          Career
          Job

It would be there

I was told

I was promised

Something I should have posted a while ago

Like June.  I had this since June 15, 2012.  Anyway, this is a collaborative poem, written by Cerasi, Cylon and myself while at Java House.  We did two rounds of each of us writing.  We did not furnish a title.


Everything feels bigger
     in here,
Either I shrank
or life is expanding.
Like the hypothesized universe,
     this big bang of life
Now it's slipping out of reach
     it's drifting from my grasp
Empty.  There is nothing here.
I stand here waiting for something to collide
But there is nothing.
It is empty.
I'm waiting for the
     God particle,
but at this point
I'd settle for rent or
a half a handle
of anything.
Is there anything left
     for me?
Not even two atoms to
     rub together
Or someone to ride this
     collision train with me
Where is god?
I have prayed many times with no answer.
May the chemicals in my brain find some meaning.
Higgs Boson was proven
So where is god?

Update from the Battleground!

Hey guys,

By this time you all know I made the decision to do one more campaign before the season ended. You guys know which one, but this time around it is different. Below I will list reasons why I may not respond to our correspondences until November 8th:

Average Week:
Monday-Thursday 9AM-11PM
Friday 9AM-9PM
Saturday 9AM-9PM (if lucky)
Sunday 12PM-10:00PM

This is an 'average' week. So from the looks of it I only work an 80 hour week, but actually for the last two weeks I have been working 100 hours a week. That is 100 hours of nothing but politics.

Average Beverages:
Protein Water (Okay, so it is Special K protein sugar things in a canvassing water bottle)
Coffee (I get it a large latte every morning from an awesome local place) (also i have filled their punch card twice in the past week)
Beer (Blue moon, bud light lime and fat tire, maybe pbr or natty ice if I get desperate)
Soda
Water (I seriously need to drink more water)

Now it looks like taking the caffeine out of Four Loko may have hurt my beverage choices. Answer: Yes, yes it did, but keep in mind I dont drink beer till 8PM at night and only after a LONG day so about 4 days a week.

Average meal:
Nothing.
Bags of pretzels (we got a giant box donation of pretzels recently)
Scones (with coffee of course)
Bagels (there is a really awesome bagel place around the corner that is only open till 2PM)
One time I had thai food
Nothing.

I have gone two days without eating so I have to put an alarm in my phone to tell me to eat. This happens to me every campaign so I went to hyvee at 10PM last night and bought food for my office. I had a PB&J tonight for dinner with a side of mac and cheese. Need more veggies in my diet.

Websites I visit while bored:
politico
gottavote
cnn (specifically their awesome electoral map that all of you should check out and play with)
the hill
public policy polling
rasmussen
campaignsick.tumblr.com (pretty much my whole life on a tumblr)

Outside world things I just learned tonight that do not involve politics:
Pussy riot and russia
that there is a anti-masturbation asl jehovahs witness video that is set to ignition by rkelley
mean girls is on netflix (everyone on my campaign constantly quotes this movie)
not doing your laundry for a month is a terrible college habit i have kept so I am doing two loads tonight
that when i become more tired i cannot capitalize properly
theres a painting in my room
i ran out of conditioner awhile ago and have been using two different types of shampoo when i thought one was a conditioner
that i have missed a lot of pow and i am going to catch up asap

Amount of times I have dropped my work phone onto the ground and thought that the screen had broken and I would be fired since beginning this sentence: Twice

Hours I text Tyrion throughout the day: Inumerable

How much I miss you guys: Indefinable

So this is my life. I will be sending you guys my address and work phone so that we can communicate on fb. I'm sorry if I don't respond immediately to texts or calls, but I work so much that I am a tired mess. I am always on my work phone and always texting my vols (volunteers).

Love you much,
cylon

Because we need to post more

I know we are all very busy.  I am in fact very busy.  Especially right now.  But looking at the count from last year's posts and this year's is saddening.  We are not even to half of last year's number, and we didn't even start blogging until May of last year.

:(

So here's a fun article to read.  About how being smart is such a terrible burden.  And I must be really smart since I suffer from ALL of these things!

Like this!

:(

Anyway, I'm sure you really want to read about the

5 Unexpected Downsides of High Intelligence