Me and my ghostly pallor

It's one of those days at the office. I always know it's getting bad when I start fantazing ways to kill myself with office supplies. I could make a noose of paper clips, for example, and hang myself from the doorway. Or I could go the Sylvia Plath route and stick my head in the oven. Either way, it would at least give me something to do.

And speaking of death, do you ever imagine death scenarios of your own? Sometimes when I am walking down a flight of stairs my mind is suddenly flooded with images of myself tripping and tumbling down the steps, leaving me in a tangled, broken heap. Or occasionally when I am driving on the interstate, I just know a tire is going to blow on my car and send me skidding across four lanes of traffic. So far I've been wrong. Thankfully.

I had an experience last night that brought a fresh, new death scenario to my mind. After 25 years of being a firm believer in avoiding skin cancer by NOT trying to be Ms. Tropical USA, I (gasp!) WENT TO A TANNING BED. I know, I know, I can't believe it either. But I'm just so pale, and I miss summer, and the winter has left me feeing washed out. Let's face it, I look like a sheet of copy paper. As my sister often says to me, "Casper called, and he wants his skin back." So off I went to HotSpot Tanning Salon in a desperate attempt to put some color back into my skin.

Needless to say, I was nervous. Was this going to give me skin cancer? Did I put on enough lotion? Finally I convinced myself that going once was surely not going to give me cancer and that I was going to be ok. Besides, I'd be getting in some vitamin D, right?

I went inside and selected my bed. The girl at the front desk took one look at me before deciding to put me in for only 5 minutes, saying, "You don't want to go for the full time, right?!" (It's a 10 minute bed). She was right. I went back to the room, put my little goggles on-don't want to lose my color vision- and got in. As the heat washed over me, I thought, this is actually kind of nice. Not bad at all. Until I suddenly remembered a story I had heard in high school about a girl who had gone to a tanning bed so much, that she literally COOKED her insides. (Pretty sure this is fictious, but scary nonetheless). As my body heat increased under the bed's bright lights, I just KNEW that I, too, was going to be burned alive. I knew that I was being ridiculous, though, and so I forced myself to count to 30 before jumping out early. And it's a good thing I did, too, because guess what? I have a mild sunburn. I guess being a living ghost isn't so bad after all. :)

In other news, my 5k went well. I ran the whole time and finished in 31 mintues. In two more weeks I am running another one and hope to get my time under 30 minutes. Somehow I missed seeing any animals at the zoo run, although my friends who ran it with me said they saw monkeys, cows, and a tiger. Figures!