It's my 5th Unbirthday!

5 years, two jobs and a whole lotta drama ago, I was leaving the office after 5, when I was delayed by a conversation with my boss - not even a work conversation, something about the wine he'd discovered. When the chat finally wound down, I picked up my purse and dug out my car keys and headed for the door. I got about three steps outside his office when an elephant fell on my head. I swear, that's what it felt like - my knees buckled and I was on the floor, with not really a pain, but an enormous dark weight on my head. My vision went black, but I was still conscious and thinking inside the blackness. I remember many details, though the timeline is blurry, as that dark weight kept persuading me to take a nap - I remember trying to stand, and everybody telling me to stay down, somebody yelling, "Call 911!" I remember my co-workers sitting around the ER waiting to find out what was going on. I remember being loaded on a helicopter and joking with the crew. Then it was naptime again. The next week is really fuzzy, but I attribute that mostly to the drugs. I remember many details, I just can't put them in chronological order. It was quite an adventure. Not that life has been dull since that day - you'd think I gave at the Drama office by now and could just kick back, but apparently not. I just like to acknowledge it as my rather amazing second chance at life. Just think - if I hadn't stopped at my boss's door to hear his latest story, I'd have been in my car when the elephant fell. Anything could have happened, but the best case would still involve delayed treatment and who knows what different outcome. So, every year on February 22nd, I celebrate the randomness of life, and how lucky I am to be here. Just thinking of all I would have missed makes me feel all weird. And I get myself an Unbirthday Gift. This year's very necessary Unbirthday Theme has been Tech Upgrades, and my gift to me was a new camera. Best Buy had a sale and a trade in deal on the Nikon J1, and between their sale price and my trade-in, I paid way less than the price on the Nikon site. It'll be great for grandchildren AND work - oh, the visual tours I can create! I am up to my eyeballs in work stuff. This is a far more complicated market than the one I left, the learning curve is far more technical and the market is wildly different in every possible way, but this is home, and I know WTF I'm doing. I miss Asheville, I really do, but a girl's gotta eat.