avoided disasters – Imaginary Sunshine

About cars, children and stupidity

Michelle — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:48:44 +0000

I was reading about different forms of compensation one can claim after accidents and all of a sudden I had this idea that I was going to talk about my first day of classes, what I liked and what I disliked so far. Instead, I’m going to talk about what happened to me this evening, sometime before 7pm.

I was driving the car (not the car that I’m used too, this one is larger, still a sedan, but larger, easier to go fast in, quieter and just a car that I’m not used to driving) to pick up my sister at the train station. I’m still considered a Novice driver by my license. I haven’t taken my second road test yet, so I’m still considered a “novice”. This was also the first time that I was driving this particular car by myself.

I was going at 50km/hr (the speed limit was 50km/hr, I rarely speed if I can help it). There were cars parked on both sides of the road, but it’s a two lane street. I was going at 50km/hr when a ball is somehow thrown into the road, I press down on the brakes hard because just a few seconds after the ball appeared into my view, a small child (probably younger than 4 or 5) runs out into the street from between two parked cars to retrieve the ball.

I stopped about a foot away from the child.

The child didn’t look up, just retrieved the ball and then ran back between the parked cars on the side of the road to the front yard where he was playing.

There was no one else in that yard. There was no adult sitting outside, the curtains were drawn closed, the front door was closed.

This child, from my vantage point in the car, had no adult (or any) supervision.

And I just nearly ran into him with a car.

I mean, I didn’t, but the fact that I nearly did was enough for me to make my sister drive after I reached the train station. My hands were shaking a little and I was just mostly pissed. Pissed because the child had no supervision, no one to tell him not to run out into the street, no one to yell for him to stop. Pissed because the child should win a freaking Darwin Award for not even realizing that they were out in the street where there are cars. It wasn’t even as if that street’s not busy. I lucked out in that there was no cars behind me when I slammed on the brakes. That child lucked out in that the person driving was actually going to speed limit and not flying down the hill (most people go around 70-80km/hr in that stretch, which is pretty bad). There was so many different factors that if it had been a little different, someone would have gotten hurt, or worse.

Now I need chocolate.

Walking on glass

Michelle — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 02:45:26 +0000

So I have a glass light fixture thing over the lights in my room (on my ceiling). Last night, the screw cap got loose and it came down. The light fixture is in the centre of my ceiling. The corner of my bed also happens to be in the centre of my room. The glass fixture comes down, hits my bed and then (thankfully!!) bounces off of my bed and then hits a pile of library books. If it had bounced the other direction, it would have been my head. As it was, my hair had shards of glass in it and I’ve been vacuuming up little glass shards all day.

Needless to say, not entirely impressed. My light bulbs got switched something around New Years from regular light bulbs to the energy saving ones and my sister had put my light fixture back up for me. The best guess is right now is that because there’s been a lot more trucks passing by the house (closest to my room) since the delivery entrance to a strip mall has opened up again, my room vibrates a lot more now due to the trucks. The guess is that all those vibrations loosened the screw (and not that my sister has it out for me and was trying to kill me, although that was joked about for a few minutes).

I heard the crash (from after the light fixture fell onto my bed and then onto the floor) and then woke up. I’m really thankful that I didn’t brush my hair back with my hand prior to anything else or else I’d probably have more cuts on my hands than I currently to (currently sporting two superficial cuts on my right hand and one superficial cut on my back of my head that’s covered by my hair, yay). There wasn’t that many pieces on my bed and most of it was on the ground (covering library books, a few pieces of clothing that got handwashed while wearing rubber gloves and a few other things). This prompted me to clean up the floor of my room (I got a cut on the bottom of my foot, then I switched from wearing just socks to wearing socks and slippers).

My mom offered, today, to take me out shopping to get a replacement glass fixture. I just stared at her for a moment and then said that I was absolutely fine with never having a glass light fixture over my bed ever again.

I almost wish that I had taken a photo of all the glass pieces on my bed/bedroom floor… Because now, thinking about it, it was quite pretty. But, uhh, I was more preoccupied with the thought that there was a) glass everything and b) glass in my hair and c) what could have happened if I was just sleeping with my head turned the other direction.

Hello, 2010!

Michelle — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:43:27 +0000

Whee, new theme for welcoming in 2010! The photo was taken by my mom when she was on vacation. I’ve also rearranged things and removed some things from my sidebar *points to the side*. I changed the number of Flickr images that show up and just changed up the way things show up over there. Also, some pages have been organized (for example, all my past layouts are now on a page by themselves) as well as some being removed so things are getting cleaned up around here, which is nice. Umm… Let’s see, what else have I gotten done lately? (Also known as me dumping all my new website stuff in one go!)

Ames got a new layout (grey, slightly monochrome), Chelle-Chelle.com got a little change with the header and I’ve written a few articles lately and also been working on Heartbreakee.net (not open, yet!). Oh, I also went pro on Flickr – go add me as a contact!

Oh, I’m also talking to my friend J on msn and she goes:

J: If I go over in the summer*
J: you wanna learn pole dancing?
M: ROTFL
M: Seriously?
M: Sure

* She’s currently out of the country for school – a school where she has classes on Saturdays.

Ahh… Anyways… I went to a friend’s boyfriend’s New Years party last night. J (the friend, not the same one mentioned above!) and N (her boyfriend) were hosting it. And I only stayed for a little while, because N has douchebags for friends as one of them dropped a pill into my drink (a screwdriver, for all those who care, which was quite good before it had a bright blue pill floating at the top). I dumped the drink of that guy’s head, by the way, before I left. So I walked to one of the train stations downtown, and got home super early (way before midnight) and worked on some online stuff when I got home, as well as taking a nice hot shower and watching a chick flick while eating potato chips.

School starts on Monday – wtf. I only got 13 days off from school =/ One of my friends has been off school 10 days before me, so she got 23 days… Oh, the unfairness! Anyways, today is all about purging out my wardrobe (boy, that’ll be fun) as well as cleaning up some things and hopefully being productive (and cursing my psychology prof for not issuing our final grades yet!)

Hope everyone’s been having a wonderful first day of the new decade!

Certified (but not insane)

Michelle — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:34:49 +0000

So today was the conclusion of my first aid course. I slept in this morning! My mom walks into my room a minute or two after 8am and goes “What time did you have to go to your first aid course again?” and I looked at the time and I instantly went into panic-mode in the whole “Oh no!!!!” kind of way. Luckily, my parents were planning on going out this morning so they gave me a ride and dropped me off for my lesson. Which went well, by the way! Today we learned about bleeding, how to deal with various medical conditions (diabetes, convulsions, asthma, allergies), bone and joint injuries (splints and slings!), head, spinal and pelvic injurie. Many senior attorneys says that people can also find an attorney even for a minor accident to claim compensation and you can also know how to find slip and fall attorneys serving in Highland in case of accidental injuries,how to avail DUI attorneys, how to hire injury experienced lawyers after injury, how to care for wounds, rescue carries, how to deal with burns, poisons, bites and stings and, lastly, what to do when someone is too hot or too cold. But if you have met with a fatal accident, find attorneys for construction accidents to help you out.

The lesson that my instructor drilled into our head was: Always have padding underneath your knots (for slings and splints). Why? Because the patient will get a blister and it will get infected and they will die.

It was a good day. I passed the course (yay) and got my certificate for “Standard First Aid – Health Care Provider” with my certificate for passing the CPR portion of the Coast 2 Coast First Aid Courses as well (CPR for Health Care Providers – whoot!). I’m quite pleased, it’s already in a page protector…

Also today, I’ve read for one of my classes this week, watched part of the Emmy’s (not sure why anymore – half the shows that get mentioned are only available through special channels, i.e. HBO, and I don’t get that channel and have never heard of some of the shows that get nominated) (it was a very small part of it). I also read a novel that wasn’t required for any of my classes (shocker). It’s been a while since I’ve done that… I’ve missed reading for fun (I’m a huge reader, but lately the things I’ve been reading include the newspaper and my textbooks so…).

Shoot the messenger

Michelle — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:25:15 +0000

I got a phone call this morning at (I just checked my cell phone for this) 5:29am. Very early, considering I technically don’t need to be awake by 11am (but I usually am, out of habit). It’s one of my friends from school (N) who also happens to be dating one of my other friends from school (J). Now, I’m better friends with J (the girlfriend) than I am with N (the boyfriend) because I met her first, but he’s still pretty cool.

He calls. He asks if he woke me up (… really? You need to ask that?) and then tells me that he ha something important to tell me. I was too tired to comprehend this so I went “Sure, go ahead.”

Then he proceeds to tell me that he just cheated on J.

My reply was “You realize that I’m better friends with her than I am with you, right?”

Want to know what he said in response to that? I bet you want to know…

“Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m telling you, so you can tell her instead of me.”

…

What kind of BS is this? He tells me that he’s cheated on his girlfriend (whom he says that he loves, by the way, they’ve been dating for over four years now) because he knows that I’m better friends with her and wants me to tell her instead of him having to do it himself. I really don’t see the logic in it. I’m not her best friend, I don’t really talk to her that much outside of school and IM, I kind of ignore them making out while I’m in class and he’s sitting in on the lecture. He even told me that it would be a ‘good idea’ for me to tell her today during one of the classes that we share together.

He can do his own dirty work.