Arr, the Kraken

5 days ago a friend of mine tried to kill himself. Thankfully unsuccessful, it's not really clear how serious he was in his endeavor. He's not one of my very closest friends but close enough, and closer to friends who I'm closer to so that it affected me a fair bit. Over at the Etrurian house during game night there was a furious pounding on the door - it was assumed someone was trying to get us to shut up (we can be somewhat noisy at times) but instead it was someone looking for a key to get into this fellow's apartment to try and find out what he'd taken. The rest of the evening can be summarized as breaking into the house, finding six empty pill bottles (thinking "oh man, what have you done"), helping the paramedics, talking with the police and holding a crying friend for a half hour or so.

As a practical matter I'm glad I've inherited my pop's sense of "right, let's get done what needs to be done" mentality during crisises - making sure at least one person around could do what, well, needed to be done, but it also means I don't really get to process a lot of whats happening the moment it's happening and I'm left to rehash it later when my brain takes it back down a notch. In this particular case it was the next day at work during a meeting at around 2 in the afternoon - no feeling really concrete enough to place a nice label on, just sort of a depressed sense of "wow". Some of my general thoughts...

I've felt low before, after a breakup, whatever, but I don't think my mind has ever gone to that little potentiality so the fact that someone's would is a pretty foreign concept to me. Maybe it was the pills (combined with alcohol) that lead to that - frightening since I take one of them as well, maybe something to talk about with the doc? What's it going to be like when he gets home from the hospital, is this something that will ever be talked about? Even if it is, since I'm of distant friendship will I get to know about it?

Like I said, hard to focus on the meeting.

So there you have it, that explains the last week of silence - the proceeding three probably from struggling with an escaping dog and what that may entail in terms of fixing the problem. Oddly enough this all just motivates me more to find someplace to travel to since I really miss writing and wanting something a little more positive to write about. That or learn to write in a third style. Patrick, pointers?

I went into another friend's (mass) office today and found michael sitting there, contemplating a mountain dew can. I asked what was up, he said that they'd been weapon testing the dart. So far it had destroyed a little paper cube and put a few holes in the wall but that they weren't quite sure if it had the strength to puncture skin or aluminum (the dew can).

"Give me that!" I say and grab it from michael's hands. He struggles a bit and emplores "no" but I wrench it free and fire into the can. Whack! A clean hit and this jet stream of mountain dew shoots straight out of the can. Success!

It is, of course, only at this point that I realize the stream of mountain dew is firing - laser like - directly into my pants, right on the crotch. So now I sit here, mountain dew "piss" soaked pants and shirt tails slowly staining while mass cleans up his office desk, being generally lauded all around for having the "testicular fortitude" to embark on experiments no one else considered (rightly) a wise course of action.

I'm sure I also did some work today but it's sort of hard to focus on that right now.

The plate in question reads: R N G E K Y O
The plate frame says: "Trauma Team"

Justyn and Erin came up with a couple of possible ideas, the most plausible of which is "Registered Nurse, Geek, Yo!". I keep seeing "Range, Kentucky, Oh" which makes a little less sense but the pattern recognition portion of my brain seems to be stuck on that.

Thoughts?