I don't know why I am such a magnet for life's little oddities, but the strange stuff seems to cling to me like velcro. Not a day goes by that I don't find myself saying "well that's a bit odd." And today has been stranger than most.

Since Verizon still hasn't got my DSL working, I've been leaving for work early each morning to check my email and see how many TrackBack spams I've got piled up. That in itself is not odd, but the fact that the killer geese were back and waiting for me as I was leaving was. I still have no idea what I have done to get these birds so pissed off... but there they were running around and honking all over the place while I was trying to get to my car. As I was scraping the frost off my windshield, one particularly sinister goose decided to run over and honk at me personally. I finally screamed at it to "shut up!" after which it just stared at me for a bit, then turned tail and wadled away to discuss the matter with his evil geese brethren (or so I would imagine). I'm certain that tomorrow the geese will have devised some kind of revenge, so if you don't hear from me again, I was eaten by angry birds.

Once at my office, I eliminated the twenty-or-so TrackBack spams and then moved on to my "real" email. By far the most intriguing of which was a letter from somebody who stumbled across my Flickr photo album and was wanting to know if I was single and looking to "hook up." At least, it was intriguing until I noticed that the email was from a bloke named "Brendan." Not being quite that desperate for companionship (at least not yet), I had to write and politely decline. The odd bit here was not that I got the email (who am I kidding, I'm about as masculine as Michael Jackson on a good day), but that I was inexplicably flattered to have received it. I suppose I'll have to analyze that when I have some spare time available.

Then, as if a sign from a higher power that I shouldn't have dismissed that email so quickly, I received an unexpected call from my ex-ex-ex-girlfriend. And here's where I struggle to find the words that can properly sum up my feelings toward this woman because "scorching bitch from hell" just doesn't seem to cover it. Perhaps I should consult Mr. Jerz or something, because even more descriptive profanity such as "sack-licking whore" utterly fails to adequately describe my loathing. Resisting the urge to just scream "f#@% YOU BITCH!!" into the phone and hang-up, I grit my teeth and ask what in the heck she could possibly want. Turns out her mother wants my address and she was wondering if I had changed it. And here's the odd bit... I HAVE NEVER EVEN MET HER MOTHER!! About a million thoughts go running through my head, all of them profoundly bad. The only conclusion I can come to is that this is some kind of clumsy attempt to get back together, so I end up screaming "f#@% YOU BITCH!" after all and slamming down the receiver. Now I'm wondering if her mom just saw my picture or something and wanted to send me cookies. Crap! I like cookies!

Wishing I had some calm-inducing drugs, I instead take out my passport so I can get a current photocopy. Every time I return from a foreign trip I update the copies in my safety deposit box so that there's a proper record if I should lose my international identity. So there I am flipping through the pages, looking for an EU stamp from when I went to Germany last month... only to find out there isn't one. The immigration guys in Amsterdam didn't stamp it! Then I notice I didn't get one for my previous trip to the EU either. "Well that's odd" I say. I didn't think the USA had such an understanding relationship with our European forbearers, but there you have it. I guess it does eliminate those embarrassing self-stamping-related accidents at passport control, but now I'll never be able to fill up all the pages in my passport as I had hoped.

And then my mail comes. Included within is a sample packet of laundry detergent, which is odd because I so rarely wash clothes at work. As if that weren't enough, I also get some kind of advertisement which is written in what I think is Portuguese, with no English translation. I'm tempted to run it through Alta Vista's Babelfish translator, but I just don't care enough. Perhaps if there was a screaming monkey on it or something.

So here I sit on my lunch hour attempting figure out how I can wedge in a trip to Stockholm in April so I can attend the "Rocky Stocky" Hard Rock Anniversary Event, all the while wondering what could possibly come up this afternoon to top my morning. I'm sure the aliens will be landing any minute now.