Shigella's

To catch up a bit, the semester finally ended (much later than it was scheduled to go). The week after finals I was packed away in a tiny prison cell for five straight days frantically trying to bust out a nightmare of a paper we'll just call "Satan" before returning, for the 256,127th time (give or take 4) to the Contract paper beast I feel I have sacrificed any hope for a social life to complete since January. Sometime toward the end of that fiasco, I packed up everything I own (which currently consists of a paperback "Crime and Punishment," sheets, mismatched art and souvenirs from various third world countries, leftover prescription medications that have all gotten mixed up and are now a part of what I like to call "the surprise variety pack," that horrible lice-ridden shirt I bought in Mexico a year and a half ago, 10 toothbrushes, and enough pin-striped slacks to clothe several impovrished countries) and moved to Uncle Will's basement in Salt Lake to start my new job.

The move did not go without drama, unfortunately, as exactly 37 minutes after arriving at Uncle Will's house I abruptly ran my car into the side of his garage. Fortunately he wasn't home at the time which gave me a few minutes to gain composure, clean up the pile of debris (which by the way seemed to be more massive than the pre-crash car was itself) and quickly try to come up with a story that began "you won't believe what happened!" and ended "and that's why none of this was my fault." Fortunately and miraculously the big crash did absolutely no damage to Will's house, causing me to forfeit what may have been the most sensible plan: to immediately drive back to Provo and call Will to tell him I wasn't going to make it after all. Also, miraculously, Krishelle and I were able to use bright-red duct tape we found in Will's garage to bandage the vehicle back together so that it no longer looked like a recent participant of a monster-truck show. This was a huge relief as I was absolutely convinced immediately after it happened that the mysterious they would have to tow my car, along with half the neighborhood, to the nearest junkyard.

48 hours later I received my very first ever speeding ticket. Two weeks shy of my 10-year driving anniversary, they finally caught me (I like to look at my relationship with the police as a hostile fugitive situation). Pathetically, the ticket was for going five over down a street on which I thought I was actually going too slow.

Naturally I was more than ready to ditch the country for Mexico with Krishelle and Will last Wednesday. I was warned that the town we were going to, San Felipe, had not had fresh edible food since an accidental delivery in 1967 but I thought all would be well as I've got pretty low standards anyway (but not as low as my last roommate who I saw one Sunday afternoon eat a cold hotdog covered in cheese from a can, mustard, mayo, sour cream, and wrapped with two different kinds of lunch meat, causing me to give up food for 40 days even though Lent was months away). Wrong. Immediately after arriving in San Felipe, several hours south of the border and away from anywhere with people, we plopped down in a restaurant that every major world humanitarian organization would put all efforts into shutting down if the roads to San Felipe were reasonably driveable by something other than army tanks, and ordered what seemed to be the safest option on the menu. Something, which I am now convinced had literally been eaten at least two times before, was molded into the shape of a burrito and delivered to us on a cracked and stained plate. We spent much of that afternoon laying on our backs, moaning and wondering whether we would ever be able to eat again. Sometime around 4:00 Will informed us that it wasn't a surprise that we all felt sick as that was the exact restaurant that gave him Shigella six years ago, which the doctor told him he had gotten from consuming someone's feces (that only explained part of the flavor. Oddly, everything we ate in San Felipe tasted like seafood, and not the good kind of seafood but the kind that that kid in the first grade used to refer to in his daily joke at lunch when he would say, "Do you want 'see food'?" And then he would open his mouth and point at the chicken-fried steak soaked in expired chocolate milk he had just gnawed through. His name was probably Brad). Krishelle and I both gave Will blank stares for the next 12 minutes, wondering why on Earth anyone would ever return to a restaurant that gave them Shigella. Then I remembered how many times I've gone back to Beto's and it suddenly didn't seem so crazy.

We then spent the next several days laying on a gorgeous hot beach, making our best efforts to do absolutely nothing (including returning to the restaurant that we had now nick-named "Shigella's").

And now here we are. Work has been great and the break from school has been nice. Here's hoping for an exciting and strange summer-

~It Just Gets Stranger