So in the course of human events when it becomes necessary to decide upon a “just woke up with a cold” breakfast food, do not opt for Cheerios sans milk. The reason I say this, as well as the reason I know this, is because oftentimes when a cold has made itself known to your immune system, your immune system reacts by way of creating an inhospitable environment for said organism. ergo, a sore throat. Sore throat + unmoistened Cheerios = supreme discomfort.

Hypothesis tested, lesson learned. Noted.

I think soup may be in order for lunch. If I can make it to lunch. I am dying, after all.

Ah. Interesting segway here. Ready? Here goes.

So. Wednesday. Walking to work from the bus stop.

I take the bus to work, and as such I usually have a good 3/4-mile culmulative trek from my front porch to my desk. More often than not this is a nice, pleasant peaceful stroll through some of the more eccentric parts of Pioneer Square.

Eccentric can be a rather subjective term.

So. As I said. Wednesday. Walking to work from my bus stop.

As I turn the corner onto second ave. south I feel a tug at my sleeve. I look down, and find myself trapped in some random Japanese-horror flick remake.
Attached to the hand tugging persistently at my sleeve was a ragged-looking old woman, seemingly homeless with thinning hair and – I shit you not – blind in one eye.

Like I said. Japanese-horror flick remake. Right here amidst my Wednesday morning stroll.

The fact that she tugged on my sleeve is not what I found startling. Nor was it the scraggly gray hair, the no-longer functioning right eye. No, it was none of these things which completely jarred me and threw my entire morning into one befuddled turmoil.

It was her words.

As she peered up at me, with her one good eye, she rasped at me out of the corner of her gnarled lips, drooling slightly as she spoke…

“You’d do well to make your peaces, missy…”

side note: what the $@$%&*!@???

I’m sure the confusion registered completely on my face as she continued:

“I see a curse…over your head…”

Ahhh…hmm. Yes. You know, I was just thinking that same thing. Thanks for clarifying that for me.

When something like that happens to you before your day has even begun, it tends to set a tone, despite your best efforts…

It was at this point when Dan reminded me that he had experienced a rather odd feeling on the previous Monday that something unpleasant was going to occur to someone in his life. Brilliant. I had forgotten about that, most likely because I had brushed it off as I believe not in such things.

And I still don’t.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must call my mother and apologize for tormenting her when I was a teenager.