with a finger! who knew!

It's been a good couple of days. Rupiper was in town this weekend, which meant:

• Capital Amber
• momo
• watching the triathloners cross the finish line at the Capital
• buying 45s, Mary Karr books and iced green tea at a street festival
• getting lost on the UW campus
• sitting around on Sunday morning with coffee and cigarettes
• gas station pizza picnics
• massive mosquito bites
• crashing out on Sunday night with a smörgåsbord compiled of sushi, pirogies, cheese curds, spinach salad, raspberries and Ben and Jerry's

Today it rained all day and I watched the clouds roll in from the west from my desk. Writing duties have been light the last few days, so I supplement my days by Wikipedia'ing topics I've always sort of wanted to know about, including:

• Guinea Bissau
• Northern Ireland
• hemorrhoids
  
• skeleton (the sport)
• Judith Martin
• the Winter Olympics
• Irish elk

You learn a lot of things this way, I think, including that the Irish elk was really a deer, and that the last pair of giant auks were killed in 1840 by Irish villagers who were convinced they were witches, and that it would be weird to live in a country shaped like it is throwing up into the ocean. But my favorite thing I came across today by far had to be this bit o' information from WebMD:

Internal hemorrhoids have four degrees of severity.

• First degree: The hemorrhoid does not stick out from the anus.
• Second degree: The hemorrhoid sticks out from the anus during a bowel movement but returns on its own to the anal canal afterward.
• Third degree: The hemorrhoid sticks out from the anus during a bowel movement and does not return to the anal canal on its own. In this case, you can push it inside the anus with your finger and then it will stay in.
• Fourth degree: The hemorrhoid is always outside the anus and cannot be pushed into the anal canal.

In case it's not clear, the next time we all play Trivial Pursuit, I am going to kick ass.