The Five (#6)

1. So if two-thirds of the time I haven't remembered to post on Friday night, I'm changing it from, "The Friday Five" to just, "The Five." I will still aim for Friday but then I won't need any kind of disclaimer when I miss... This is really just for my own mental housekeeping, but welcome to my brain. I'm a little out of sorts because Michael tested positive for COVID mid-week and I stayed home from work Friday because I wasn't feeling well. He is feeling crummy but he'll survive; we're still waiting to see if the other shoe drops. 

2. Illness is absolutely everywhere - so many students are out sick with strep, flu, COVID, and other nondescript ailments. But we're pretty sure Michael got it through his volleyball team, several members had tested positive ahead of their tournament last weekend, those players didn't attend, of course, but the whole team had been exposed. And if he didn't get it from his specific team, it's more than likely that we were exposed in Cleveland:

There were 30-ish volleyball courts in the convention center so, um, a LOT of people. I know COVID is just something we live with now, but it doesn't mean I want to get it. 

3. At that same tournament I took a volleyball straight to my nose/glasses during the team's warm up on Sunday. I may have been looking down at my phone and not paying the amount of attention I should have been, given my court-side seat. Lesson learned. I got some ice from the lovely trainers and strict instructions to come back to see them if I started to feel dizzy, which, thankfully, I did not. But my nose is still sore to the touch on one side. Sadly it was hard to tell whether I had a bit of a black eye or if my eye bags just always look that dark.

4. I have a chicken recipe I make with relative frequency that involves shaking some chicken breasts in a bag of seasoned flour. I'm not a person who is necessarily fussy about name brand vs store brand items, but I do feel like the store brand "Ziploc" style bags are of far inferior quality. Last week one of the bags split open, not at the "zipper," when I was prepping the chicken. Here is the photo I sent Matt with the message, "No more store brand bags:"

There was flour everywhere! I had to vacuum the counter before wiping it down and disinfecting everything. Fortunately the actual chicken did not go flying from the bag so dinner was salvageable after a thorough kitchen clean up.

5. On the way home from a high school volleyball open gym a couple of weeks ago Michael and I got pulled over. I was driving and I was so confused because I knew I wasn't speeding, my lights were on, I had used my turn signal before the turn I'd just made...So when the officer asked if I knew why he'd pulled me over I honestly said I had no idea. Well it turns out my registration was expired, by OVER A YEAR! Whoops! The sticker on my license plate had, in fact, expired in November of 2022. And, since we apparently failed to renew it in 2022, we never got a reminder to renew in 2023, so I've bene driving an unregistered car around for quite some time. I cannot fathom how I hadn't been pulled over for that before now. I ended up having to take the title to BMV and basically get a brand new registration since my car was no longer in the system. The officer kindly gave me a warning, instead of a ticket, and suggested I take care of it sooner than later. I was really, really, tempted to call the police department and try to leave him a message that I had, in fact, had it taken care of the very next day, proving that I am an upstanding, law-abiding citizen, but even I know that would have been a little over the top. So let this be an PSA to you to check that you've updated your sticker and/or your actual registration!