Tuesday, August 4, 2009

A few humorous stories: work and life

Is this a picture of my neck after surviving being attacked by a serial killer? bitten by a pack of foxes? a snapping turtle attack? A pirhana bite? Read on to find out
A different perspective of my new neck wound (which still looks kind of bad even 4 days later).








My first story is about how my IronGirl practice swim went horrible awry. In fact it was not until a few hours later that this became apparent. (although I sort of realized I was having a problem during the swim).

As I was swimming my ~1 mile I was having pretty bad pain in my neck. I didn't really think anything of it but was a bit irritated that every time I turned my neck it was getting more and more painful.

Ultimately I started thinking I was getting attacked by pirahna (hey if there are serial killers in VT, why can't there be pirhanna in MD lakes?). Or perhaps it was small gators.

Not to be stopped from my practice swim I kept going. Upon returning home, I showered in preparation for work and had excruciating pain on my neck. I still had no idea what was going on because it was in my "blind spot" and just figured it was a figment of my wild imagination.

My husband comes home on Friday night and says, "Nice hickey, where did you get it?".
"WHAT???!!!" I exclaimed.
Apparently I had a giant welt on my neck from my necklace. And it was pretty inflamed. Luckily my husband could easily observe that this welt is very close to my Umstead 100 necklace (and of course he goes with the simplest explanation is always right) so did not seem concerned.

Now (a few days later) my husband says my neck looks like I was slashed by a deranged killer, so my new reverse hallucination is that in fact I was attacked by a serial killer during VT100 but it took a few days for this wound to show up:-)

On a different note, a few days ago I had a bizzare experience at work.

I was in a meeting discussing some statistical concepts. The topic was Bayesian Statistics, which essentially is a component of statistics that uses previous information when performing statistics (as a simplified example to predict weather, Bayesian statistics would use the previous hour, day, week, or years weather to predict what will occur in the future). This can be used for medical products as well and is frequently used for devices.

As a motivating example, a colleague used a players success at free throws in an NBA Basketball game, for example Shaq who historically has a very low probability of success.

A supervisor was not pleased with the use of NBA Basketball free throws as a motivating example and suggested a different example should be used.

This colleague then suggested using free throws in high school basketball.
It cracked me up!!!

Sadly I think I might have been the only person to get how hysterically funny this was (as if switching from NBA to high school basketball really makes a difference). Alas I don't think any of my colleagues thought this was funny.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's my very serious, very important question: did you take these photos yourself of the back your neck? That would be as impressive as a two-week-delay-wound from a VT100 attack.

joyRuN said...

Your reverse hallucinations are cracking me up :)

Runner Tammy said...

Shane,

In fact I did take these pictures myself. Sadly by the time you became my "official" pacer I had dispatched my camera (and yet I carried 5+ lbs of other junk the entire 100 miles!)

I am pretty good with the camera and in fact in the Reston Runners I have become the object of inspiration (or is it the butt of jokes) for my ability to whip out my camera and take a picture.

Joy,

You should think about doing a 50 miler after the Richmond Marathon...then we could have reverse hallucinations together. Or we could laugh at each others speculation on what is going on.

I still am so bummed I do not seem to imagine attack bears, chipmunks, and other forest creatures during ultra's. Maybe at Javalina 100 in late Oct/early Nov. I will have some.

Happy Running,
Tammy

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

Hey, sister! Nice neck wound! Vampires are everywhere! Even on the cover of this week's EntertainMe Meekly, so maybe THAT explains your neck wound!

And by "that" I mean a nasty paper cut from the latest issue of EntertainMe Meekly which may also have been doing a practice swim at the same time and place as you.

Take THAT, Occam's Razor!