«Bottle Got Your Tongue?»

Six-year-old Mary Kate Person is home recovering after spending 4 days in the hospital. She says it all started Friday at lunch. She was drinking out of an aluminum water bottle.

"I was drinking water and then it just got stuck on my tongue,"

- Potential dangers lurk in water bottles

This may of seemed funny to the father at first, but it's still funny to me. I definitely see how I kid screwing around could get into this situation. I had a red bottle like that I used for a while. Even I would stick my tongue into it idly sometimes when I was bored.

With the water bottle I'm using now it's impossible. The opening is too large to get a tongue stuck in it, and the threading for the lid is more rounded and would not hold a tongue.

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«Children's Stories Gone Wrong (Part 1)»

A very short, real-world modern version of Little Red Riding Hood.

Little Red Riding Hood skipped happily down the path to Grandma's house. She Was a couple minutes later than usually, but thought nothing of it. Grandma was too kindly a lady to care about a few minutes. Just then, she heard the sirens. An ambulance, followed by an animal control vehicle raced by her at top speed. "I wonder where they're going..." And she continued to skip down the path.

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«Happy Independance Day»

For the rest of the world, happy Friday, I suppose.

The fireworks in town last year were canceled due to weather. They were going to fire them off on New Year's, but had to cancel then as well, also due to weather. Today it's overcast and drizzling. I think the wind is more of an issue than the rain, however. I don't know that I'll even be in town to watch the fireworks anyway, even if they don't get canceled again.

I'm not all that into the Independence Day celebrations. It's a bit crowded, and the parade sucks every year. They space out emergency vehicles throughout the parade and they blare their sirens. No shit: they drown out all the bagpipe players and other music being played, making the entire experience annoying rather than enjoyable.

My dad usually avoids town like the plague on the 4th of July. Although he's been talking about going downtown today, after the parade. Just to walk around and see what's going on. If he does, I'll be with him.

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«Over-Response»

Ok, we all know it's best to have too many emergency vehicles respond to something than not enough. But sometimes they seem to needlessly over-respond. I just witnessed such a case at 4 PM today.

There's a daycare below my window at my mom's house. A little girl got her foot stuck in some of the playground equipment. For some reason, they treated it like an emergency and called 911 (or the local number for the fire department, I'm not sure).

Who responded to the little girl's "emergency"?
1 Ambulance.
1 Firetruck.
2 Pickup trucks from the fire department.

All with their sirens blaring and lights flashing. I mean seriously, there were like 10 guys that rushed over to the little girl. One went back to a truck and got a crowbar and freed her. She was fine. I fail to see why such a response was needed.

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