Did you know that a group of kangaroos is called a mob? On a completely unrelated note, I spent the majority of Friday in the hospital. I received a prank phone call on Saturday from two social media rock stars that I respect and admire. I thought I was dying again on Monday. And I had my store’s best inventory ever on Saturday, immediately followed by an email confirming that a local network television station would definitely be covering Tattooleetup. How’s that for a wild ride on the WTF rollercoaster?

Let’s start at the beginning. On Thursday night, Katy, Noah and I ordered a Chicken Bacon Ranch from Vito’s Pizza. Nom nom nom! Those things are so good, it’s ridic. Anyhow, after my little man and beautiful wife called it a night at around 10:00, I stayed up and played around on the internets for a couple hours. I climbed in bed at around midnight and fell asleep pretty quickly. At about 2:30, I woke up to the most excruciating pain that I’ve ever felt in my life. My stomach felt like I was digesting broken glass. It was awful! I made the mistake of stumbling out to the couch to curl up in a fetal position. I realized the error in my ways when I called out to Katy, but was too far away for her to hear me. The pain was so intense at that point that I could no longer move long enough to get back to the bedroom. This lasted for close to an hour.

I guess I eventually got so exhausted from grimacing and whining like a little girl that I passed out on the couch. When Katy was leaving for work at 6:30, she woke me up for our morning cigarette, kisses, and hugs. By that point, the pain had decreased substantially and localized itself to the lower right side of my abdomen. She convinced me that I should get in with the doctor. After a brief examination and some painful experimentation, my doctor urged me to head straight to the emergency room. He firmly believed that my appendix was coming out that day. So did I.

My arrival at the hospital was expedited by the fact that my doc had called ahead. I was in a room within five minutes. Within thirty minutes, the staff had drawn blood, taken a urine sample, run me through a CT scan, had me change into a hospital gown, and started an IV. I was going under the knife. No question about it. Except I didn’t. When the blood and urine tests failed to show evidence of appendicitis and the CT scan showed an appendix that was not inflamed, my symptoms became a mystery. Let me clarify that. My symptoms became a mystery to me. The hospital staff, on the other hand, were less concerned. After an afternoon in an uncomfortable bed watching CNN, I was released within ten minutes of their findings.

So I didn’t die, which is always a plus. But they never did determine what caused the symptoms and they still aren’t completely gone. What they did do is get me Saturday off work. Awesome. I woke up on Saturday feeling about the same way I felt Friday, sans the adjustable bed and CNN marathon. Katy and Noah left for a birthday party in Bowling Green at around 11:30, so the house was my quiet domain for the afternoon. It had been a while since I’d posted at SocialSev, so I wanted to knock out a general social media observations post while I had some uninterrupted time. That never happened.

I’m going to go ahead and get sidetracked here for a minute. I know that it breaks up the flow of the story, but it’s also a bit of a back-story to the story. Whatevs. If you don’t like it, go start your own blog. At any rate, I started this blog to separate my personal posts from social media discussions filled with jargon that my mom wouldn’t understand. I also wanted to put a more professional face on that blog as it is part of My Five Year Plan to be working full time in social media. It’s probably not much of a surprise that Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, Techdirt, and TechCrunch consume the majority of my daily reading time. I’m one of those geeks who looks up to the social media “rock stars.” I admire their accomplishments and learn as much from them as I can.

This brings me to my next bullet point. At about 12:15 on Saturday, I popped outside for a quick smoke before starting on my next blog post. When I came back in, my cell phone was making all kinds of racket to alert me to the fact that I had a new voicemail. That voicemail was a prank “shenanigan” call from two people that I admire the most in the social media industry. I’m not going to mention specific names as I’m not sure how they’d feel about being mentioned in this context. But one of them has been lovingly referred to as “funemployed” by Lalawag and the other is a high-ranking guru at one of the four blogs I mentioned above. In an industry where who you know is more important than what you know, it was a weird feeling to have these guys take a moment out of their day to include me in their shenanigans.

Holy jeez, man! This thing is getting a bit lengthy. That’s seven paragiraffes already and I’m only halfway through the week. Let’s put this thing to a vote. Who wants to hear the rest of the story? I assure you this isn’t some hare-brained scheme to put off writing the rest of this post later. Yes it is. Go vote.

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