So there I was, vacuuming the lobby of the building where I work, encountering a slight bit of trouble at every turn because I was surrounded by swarms of my adoring fans, and they tended to get in the way. Suddenly I looked up and, through the crowd, caught sight of Shannon, one of the girls I work with. She was walking through the door of the lobby, pulling behind her a bucket of water on wheels. I waved to her, but then my crowd of fans got in the way and I lost sight of her again, so I diligently continued my work until I heard her calling.

"Fiddlesticks!" Shannon yelled. She sounded frantic, like she was in desperate trouble. "Oh Fiddlesticks, please help! I need you!"

Instantly, I turned off my vacuum and extricated myself from my fans, making sure they wouldn't follow me by magically freezing them in place until I came back to free them. Shannon was on her knees sobbing into her hands beside a huge puddle of water on the floor. I saw immediately that the bucket she had been pulling had overturned itself. Shannon looked up at me through tear-filled eyes. "Oh Fiddlesticks! What can I do?"

"Never fear, Shannon!" I said, striking a pose and flexing my muscles. "The carpet cleaner will suck up all this water in no time! All we have to do is find it and use it to clean up all this water!"

Shannon sniffed. "Really, Fiddlesticks?" she said hopefully. "You mean it? That's all?" I nodded, and she climbed to her feet. "Then I'll go get the carpet cleaner machine!"

"No, no, my lady," I told her. You just make yourself comfortable here. Don't put yourself to any more trouble. I'll go get the carpet cleaner."

"But Fiddlesticks," she said, "I can't wait here! I'm scared! What if someone comes by and doesn't see the water and drowns in it? I can't swim; I wouldn't know what to do! No, you stay here and guard this, and I'll go get the carpet cleaner."

So I agreed and stood guard over the puddle. For three days and nights I kept my vigil, not sleeping at all because every 7 minutes, someone would come by and fall in the puddle and I would have to rescue them.

Finally Shannon returned with the carpet cleaner and with her fiance (but with a little thing over the E) Stephen. "There!" shouted Shannon, pointing straight at me. "There's the person who came over and shoved over the bucket while I was trying to bring it to you!"

"What?" I asked incredulously, which meant I couldn't believe she would say that. "I can't believe you would say that!"

Stephen ran over and jumped on my back and held my head in the puddle, trying to drown me. Fortunately, I have retractable gills, so it didn't work. Not wanting to hurt him, I didn't fight back, and after a while, he saw that drowning me wasn't going to work. He released me and I sat up.

"I didn't tip the bucket," I told him. "I don't know why Shannon would tell you I did, either. I was trying to help her."

Shannon pointed at me angrily and shouted, "You did it, you did it! And then you ran over and started jumping in the puddle and then you tried to drown me in it and then you came after me with a knife and told me to get something to clean it up before you killed me! Stephen, please will you get rid of this evil person?" she sobbed, throwing herself into Stephen's arms.

"It would be my pleasure," said Stephen, trying to draw his sword with a flourish but failing because, let's face it, it's hard to draw a sword when there's a girl hanging off of you. When she saw the sword, however, she let go of him and drew her own two daggers. The two of them together came after me.

Fortunately for me, I was wearing my handy-dandy jet pack, so all I had to do was press the button and whoosh! I was off before they could kill me. So now I type up this story to give to my boss to let him know the truth, and in case he doesn't believe it, dear readers, I share it with you so that the world may know that I, Fiddlesticks, did not knock over Shannon's bucket and try to kill her.

Thanksgiving is a magnificent time of year, when everything is decorated in orange and brown, children dress up as Indians and Black Leprechauns - I mean Pilgrims - for school plays, and extended families group together, pick a victim, go to Victim's house and eat all their food and use all their toilet paper with the excuse of "we're family, and we're just happy to see you."

The children run around outside, playing games that usually involve chasing each other, breaking things, and otherwise getting underfoot. The women stress over whether the flowers and other decorations are the right color and whether the food has been cooked to exactly the right texture, and the men take all the comfy chairs and talk about technology, politics, and sports. The teenagers usually find unpopulated corners and try to avoid eye contact with everyone else, especially the older women, who are likely to come over and make comments such as "My, look how much you've grown!" and "How is school going?" Occasionally they'll find a cousin who is close enough to their age that they can discuss the more recent evil deeds of their parents and teachers.

Children between the ages of 3 and 18 have food piled on their plate, whether they ask for it or not, and are expected to eat everything in front of them, no matter how gross it is. Older teenage boys and men eat until their stomachs expand and they have to loosen their belts before their seams burst, wolfing things down so fast they barely taste it. Women daintily eat whatever's left, taking care not to take too much, lest there not be enough for everyone else, even though they see that everyone has had some, and there's still half the pan left. This is their way of saying either "Men are gluttonous pigs" or "This food is disgusting, so I'll eat some to be polite, but to avoid having to eat more, I'll say I'm saving some for everyone else and make sure my children eat large helpings." The children, needless to say, are never very pleased about this.

The best part of Thanksgiving is when all the relatives finally leave - usually leaving tire marks on the grass or flattening a mailbox on the way out - and the Victims get to clean up all the dirty dishes and the crumbs spilled in the couch and the mashed potatoes flung on the walls by the babies and the broken toys and furniture and the Coca-cola that was spilled in the carpet. Fortunately for the Victims, the reason they have a big house is usually because they have children, so at least they don't have to do the actual cleaning.

I sent someone an important e-mail today, and after it sent, I took a moment to glance over it. To my surprise and amusement, the name that has been going out with all of my e-mails has been the name of the person who invited me to use Gmail in the first place. So now everyone I've e-mailed lately thinks that I'm really Tiger. This is especially funny because I e-mailed Tiger's little sister, who already apparently thinks that I actually AM Tiger, and this isn't going to really help convince her otherwise.

In response to someone's comment on my last post: yes, this blog could be titled Rantings from the Dorm. But it's not. It could also be titled What to Do When Your Cheese Turns Green. The word "rant" meants "to talk loudly and wildly" or "to scold violently". Since I'm neither scolding anyone or being loud, I would prefer not to imply that that's my goal. "Ramblings" might fit, though. The reason this blog is titled The Best Medicine is because laughter is the best medicine.

Case closed.

We had cleaning checks today. According to our checklist-sheet, I had to use newspaper and Windex to clean the mirrors. What on Earth? Wouldn't newspaper get ink smudges all over the mirror? What do you do, put newspaper over the mirror and spray the newspaper, then peel it off and wipe it clean, or do you wipe off the Windex with newspaper? Isn't newspaper stiff enough that it would scratch the mirror? And isn't the ammonia in Windex really bad for the glass? (The answer to that one is yes.)

"How ridiculous," thought I. So you know what I did? I used plain water and a rag. The mirrors are clean now.

I did follow the directions for cleaning the kitchen sink, though. It said I had to use Shower Power to clean it. The kitchen sink isn't really a shower, but I used the stuff anyway. I'm not sure why, though, because judging from the instructions on the back of the bottle, the people who make it, or at least the ones who bottle it, aren't all that smart.

"Cleans and shines without abrasive scouring action. Deodorizes too! Leaving your bathroom smelling minty fresh."

That's such bad English it makes me want to cover my face and scream. The phrase 'abrasive scouring action', to most idiots in the world, sounds like a good thing. 'Don't we want abrasive scouring action?' they probably think. 'Well, it says it cleans and shines, I guess. That's good enough for me.' Next, we have "Deodorizes too!" That isn't a sentence. It's a pathetic add-on, and it sounds cheesy, but not nearly as bad as the next sentence: "Leaving your bathroom smelling minty fresh." That's the part that gets me. That's the worst sentence fragment I've heard in probably six years. Furthermore... "Minty fresh"??? I'm not even going to go into that! I wonder how much people get paid to design these labels, because I'm fairly sure I could do a better job than they. Moving on!

"Directions for use: 1. Point nozzle away from face. 2. Turn nozzle to ON position."

And this, my friends, is a perfect example of a product designed for the common-sense-impaired.

The end.

I fully intend to get a cat as soon as I move in to a house. I told my friend Jean so today, and she informed me that she intended to get a snake as soon as she moved in to a house. I assumed that she wanted a snake merely because she was obsessed with reptiles, but I was sadly mistaken.

"I want a snake so I can cuddle with it, because I don't have any boys to cuddle with!"

That, my friends, is the definition of desperate.

The topic for today is: thumbtacks. Don't ask why.

Why do you suppose they're called thumbtacks? Is it short for "thumb attacks" because that's what they do if you push on the wrong end? Or a variation of "thumb tax". Maybe they used to charge people small pointy objects for having thumbs. If you didn't pay, you got your thumbs chopped off. Or maybe they were originally the size of your thumb, and over time, they've grown more compact. Like computers.

My brother used to have a cartoon thumb-tacked to his door. One day it fell off and I stepped on it and got the cartoon tacked to my foot. I could have pulled it out easily, but I thought it was hilarious hopping around with a cartoon dangling from my foot, so that's what I did.

I wonder why so many people call me a dork.

I'll never understand why it is that pizza tastes so much better after being refrigerated overnight and microwaved for breakfast. Every time we've had pizza, I've always enjoyed it that night, then kept the leftovers and enjoyed them even more at breakfast-time. How odd.

It's also easier to eat certain kinds of pizza that I don't usually like if it's left over. For example, I'm not usually a fan of supreme pizza, or ham-and-pineapple. (Yech. Pineapple does not belong on pizza!) But after it's been reheated, it tastes just fine.

Not only that, but I can eat more of it when it's a day or two old. I usually eat two or three (maybe four, if I'm really hungry) pieces of pizza when it's fresh. But the next day, I can microwave four or five pieces and still have room for more. I don't actually know what my limit is, though, since there's usually not enough left over to see.

Pizza is a very mysterious invention. There is still much to be learned about it. Maybe I should ask for a research grant so I can explore the deep, unanswered mysteries. (Of course, they're unanswered mysteries because if they were answered mysteries, they wouldn't actually be mysteries anymore and I would have to think of a whole new term for them.)

I really should be studying physics right now, but I'm not. Instead I'm wasting time on the computer making this "blog" so I can more easily waste time in the future. This is what I get for having friends who "want to keep up with me." As if talking to me every single day isn't enough. But hey, that's fine with me.

Well, while I'm at it, I may as well tell you a story.

Once when I was five or so, my mom cut my fingernails. Well, okay, to be honest, this happened more than once, but there was a particular time I remember which I'm going to tell you about. Anyway, she finished cutting my fingernails and said "Okay, I'm done, you can go now." My brother happened to be walking past at the time.

Being the experimental child I was, I wanted to know just how sharp my fingernails were now that they were short. So I ran up behind my brother and scratched him on the back.

My fingernails were short. Very short.

So short that instead of saying "Mom, Fiddlesticks just scratched me!" he said "Mom, Fiddlesticks just came up and hit me for no reason."

Then I got in trouble.