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I should write this down before too much time passes and the situation doesn't seem funny or worth writing about any more. Maybe if you're good we'll have ice cream and camping pictures tomorrow. Today I had the obligatory "new medicine" blood work done. In the last few years I have developed the ability to have a needle meet my arm without the blood evacuating my head, entering a cold sweat, and wishing I had told my family I loved them more. God, I wish I was kidding, but I'm not. I was terrified of needles until my early 20's, and mostly because I knew I was going to be terrified once the lab tech stuck me. It was a self fulfilling prophecy and I am so glad to have it behind me. However, I get my lab work done at Quest Diagnostics who, by most measures, do a great job. The one thing that I would change is to hire more staff. I arrived this morning at approximately 7:35, knowing that I was going to run late. They open at 7:30 on weekdays, and there is always a line waiting for the door to open. I've written before about how horrendous the wait time can be, so I won't go on (too much) more about that. I was about 10th on the sign-in list, and when you consider how much time it takes to confirm someone's insurance information, draw a few tubes of blood, and add some padding to raise the average for that one person who can't tell the business end of a pen from a hole in the ground, you're talking about an estimated wait time of roughly 30 minutes. Needless to say, when I left at 9:15, having taken only about a minute and a half from the time she called my name until the time I walked out the door, I was not very happy. The thing that made this morning particularly noteworthy was that around 7:40 something crawled into my intestines and died. I got the cold sweat, gurgly stomach, and bloating that I can only assume makes PMS so uncomfortable – except in my butt – and it went from zero to "Please, God, give me the strength to keep my butt cheeks closed from here to the restroom," in about 8 seconds flat. Now, I appreciate your continued readership, so I am going to leave the next few details to your lovely imaginations, but suffice it to say, I had been camping all weekend, and that was quite evident. I could just see the cast of Law & Order: #2 Unit crowded into the small bathroom going, "Yup, he was definitely camping this weekend." So after I had done my business, I flushed the toilet. Or at least, I tried to. I turned the handle, but nothing happened. The water just continued to slowly run (I had figured it was just a leaky toilet…). I pushed the handle over and over, and even pulled it back in the other direction. Nothing. The toilet, unlike my face at this point, just refuses to flush. As I started to contemplate how I could hang myself in the corner with my goodbye note written on the mirror with a lipstick substitute (again, use your imagination at will) – to wash away any notion that the lipstick substitute had been brought into the equation for any other reason – I thought to pull the lid off of the tank and check the mechanics of the toilet out. I'm no plumber, but I've been known to fix a leaky toilet every now and then. After fiddling with the seal and dripping condensation from the lid all over the floor, I finally convinced it to fill. Scared that it would start leaking again, I stood there, tank lid in one hand, watching the toilet fill for what seemed like hours. When it got to a reasonable height I flushed, washed my hands, and quietly found my seat back in the waiting room as if I hadn't just saved some poor soul the shock and horror of finding Mr. Hanky and a leaky toilet.