Zombies, Skeletons, and Cholera, Oh My!

(Caution: not for the very squeamish.)

It's been one of those weeks.  The Unconsecrated are roaming infecting people, forensic anthropologists are solving gruesome murders, and another epidemic is killing tens of thousands by ghastly dehydration.  No, I'm not watching the news or bringing you a breaking story of the zombie apocalypse, I'm just sharing my reading and television watching for the week.  This week, for two of my library science classes, I have been reading The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, and The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson.  On top of this I have been watching Bones, which my friend Libby recommended, and I am really enjoying (if I can say that without sounding creepy).  So my week has gone something like this: 

"I look death in the eye.

Her fingers are all broken; some have bone pushing through the flesh.  Her arms are ragged yet she flings herself at me with a passion that will not end until her body is too spent to stand and still she will crawl onward."

Okay, horrible, especially since once being bitten by an Unconsecrated (read: zombie) there is no chance at all of not becoming one yourself.  So to lighten things up, I switched a non-fiction account of the cholera epidemic in London in 1854,

"The cholera toxin ultimately disrupts one of the small intestine's primary metabolic roles, which is to maintain the body's overall water balance. . . .the cholera toxin tricks the cells into expelling water at a prodigious rate, so much so that in extreme cases people have been known to lose up to thirty percent of body weight in a matter of hours."

Dying by dehyrdation while all the water is sucked out of your body but you are still lucid, and your heart tries to pump think blood with no water through your body, is pretty high up on the list of ways you don't want to die.  And though I'm not especially squeamish about description, hearing about the "rice-water" fluid that gushes from the victim while trying to eat my oatmeal was a bit much even for me.
Unfortunately, part of my reading through the Bible plan has me in Leviticus.

"If the offering is a burnt offering from the flock, . . .he is to offer a male without defect.  He is to slaughter it at the north side of the altar before the Lord, and Aaron's sons the priests shall sprinkle its blood against the altar on all sides.  He is to cut it into pieces. . ."

Ick.  So not helping.     

So I decided to watch something on Nexflix online.  I couldn't find anyhing that sounded right, but then I decided to start the first season of Bones, and got hooked.  The first episodes weren't too gruesome, but right as I texted my brother saying I liked the show, a particular corpse situation was just too creepy.  Not not helping! 

So right now I am feeling very surround by death, dying, and the undead.  Thankfully right now the sun is out, I know that if I get cholera by some bizarre circumstance, I can survive it by rushing to the hospital and being rehydrated (which is good, because I can't look at drinking water the same way right now.)  About dying there's not much I can do except trust God, and as for my Z-day plans. . .well, hmmm, maybe better just hope that doesn't happen anytime soon. And that I find some lighter books to read!

Beware, Vampires--We wait with Bated (Garlic) Breath

Spring break this year was a mixture of vampires, after-dark egg hunt fiascoes, and homing pigeons. (This is also, no doubt, the plot of a new genre-bending mystery novel, coming soon to bookstores near you.  Seriously, after Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, is this really so far-fetched?)

Break started with my mom lost in the depths of the Twilight series.  She wanted to read a book critiquing the worldview of Twilight, but decided that in all fairness she couldn't read that without reading the books first.  She started the first one at 8 p.m. on a weeknight, and finished at 3 a.m., without even a break for a drink of water.  By the time I came home, she was devouring the 3rd and 4th books.  She is how happily reading the criticism of the books.

I promptly suggested that we watch the first movie together over break.  It was rather fun (of course), though she insists that Robert Pattinson is gross looking (maybe you had to mourn him as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter to connect with his Edward Cullen).  But while all was fine with those watching our vampire flick, little did we know that trouble was brewing elsewhere in the house. . .

Lukas had been kindly entertaining Clara and her friend E. for much of the break--playing soccer with them, laser tag, and boardgames, and as we watched Twilight they were making lots of noise and laughing in the kitchen.  This was annoying in and of itself, as the climax of a movie is something less climactic when you can't hear the lines for the giggling and yelling from the other room.  But when they came charging in during the last five minutes, vampires wouldn't be the only ones to want to flee the room.

My mom had bought a 3 lb. canister of peeled garlic cloves (don't ask me why).  Lukas had decided it would be funny to pay the girls to eat a whole clove of garlic.  He ate one too (at least he doesn't lead others where he won't follow. . .not that it's a place worth going to at all).  Then they came charging in to breathe on us.  Gross!  Julia and I complained loudly, my mom got sidetracked wondering why the Twilight vampires aren't bothered by garlic, crosses, or sunlight, and of course the normal chaos of our house ensued.

 

On Saturday, a group of us adult gals had decided it would be fun to go to the Adult Egg Hunt at Queeny Park.  This is a nighttime event during which hundreds of adults go running through the woods to pick up plastic eggs (paying for the privilege, of course).  Our group consisted of my mom, Aunt Debbie, Aunt Pat, our friend Melinda, and me.  My mom was looking forward to it as a fun event with friends, "It's not about the prizes" she announced beforehand.  Like heck it's not, I thought, competition here I come!

When we got there, my mom's heel had been hurting all day.  "You run ahead to pick up the tickets," she told me. "I'll slowly make my way over there." Oh, this is a great start.  She's going to go running through the woods?  We're never going to get any eggs! I wailed to myself.  We we got our group together, we decided to split up based on style.  "I'll go with Aunt Pat!" I cheerfully volunteered--she had called us to ask if we had a strategy earlier in the day.  I was torn between being a dutiful daughter, or playing this game the way I wanted (but feeling guilty about it).  Playing won.  See ya!   

The crowd gathered in the waiting area as it approached eight o'clock.  They had told us beforehand that it might not start exactly at eight, and they would give instructions before sending us off.  So as it hit eight I bent down to retie my shoelaces.  Some guy gave a whoop and everybody started running.  I straightened up, and everyone in our group exchanged bemused glances, and we slowly started walking. "Were we supposed to start?" "I don't think so."  "No one's calling us back." "Too late now." "They can hardly disqualify everybody."  And so we joined the rush.  Turns out adults can't follow instructions any more than little kids.

After the first rush into the woods, with no eggs in sight, we came upon swathes of them, lying in piles.  The rules state that you can only have 10 eggs plus 1 golden egg (which was actually a camo egg in our events--turns out people like to drop fake ones, so they keep what it will look like a secret).  8:05, and Aunt Pat and I already had at least ten eggs each (we had lost the rest of our group in the confusion).  Now what?  Well, keep searching for the "golden" egg, and decide which eggs to keep.  I decided that a strategy was in order for deciding which eggs to keep.  Each egg had a plastic number taped on it, ranging between 001 and 080. 

 Theory #1: High numbers are good.
    So we wandered through the woods, replacing our eggs with higher numbers.  But we found lots of them.
Theory #2: Rare numbers are good.
   So we replaced our eggs with those that we felt we had seen less often.  But it was still only between twenty to thirty minutes into the hunt.
Theory #3: Low numbers are good.
    This happened after I found a number 001.
Meanwhile, I keep wondering, how creative are the designers? Did they pick predictable numbers, like 10 or 25? Or weird numbers?  Did they spread them out, or did they just go 1, 2, 3, 4 are winners?  If *I* were running the hunt. . . but of course I wasn't.  How much thought had they put into this?
Theory #4: Underlined numbers are good.
    Forty minutes into it I found the first underlined number. Oho!  Jackpot! So it's not the numbers that make you a winner, but that each underlined number corresponds to a type of prize! Wow, and they just dumped them all the same place.  Here's another! And another!  I felt really really good about this theory.  You could only redeem 3 eggs for prizes; I wondered how we would choose.  We met up with Debbie, Melinda, and mom, and they all picked up lots of underlined eggs too.   

Well, we go inside, and my stomach sinks when I see the banner saying "winning numbers."  Uh-oh.  Still, we had all made sure we had ten different numbers in our bags.  So we wait for the unveiling of the winning numbers.  It's something like 23, 46, 64, 73.  Not one of our 50 eggs is one of the numbers.  Stupid random non-strategic setup, I mumble.
  So we wait for the grand-prize drawing and the "second chance drawings," for those who didn't win anything.  This is a wait of 45 minutes.  They have the drawing, and we don't win (of course).  Then the host announces that they have more prizes to give away, on a first come, first served basis.  "Look at your tickets. . . if they end in a 2, 4, or 6, go claim your prize." 
Watching the remaining half of the room go running was probably the funniest part of the whole evening.  Not one of us had a ticket ending in 2, 4, or 6.  What are the odds?  There were lots of people who left without prizes, but groups who left without anyone winning?

Seriously.  We should get a prize for that.   



(Do I already have theories for next year?  You bet.
New Theory #1: Pick a range of numbers and collect ten in a row.   Then sit down and read a book.)