Cheesesteak Fry-day

The good thing about birthdays is that, if you're signed up for restaurants' e-clubs, you can eat free (or nearly so) for two or three weeks. Don't worry; I'm sure to tip the waitstaff based on the total before the discount.

On Friday, Miss Kitty, Froggy, and our administrative assistant (whom I can't recall if I have a nickname for) and I went to Skippy's college roommate's barbecue restaurant near Nashville in honor of my upcoming birthday. (You are a very careful reader; you noticed that Skippy himself did not go. He attended a funeral.) Skippy's boss and his boss's wife joined us there. (The boss paid.)

Even though it was my lunch, I nearly didn't go at all. Less than an hour before we were to leave, one of my employees (31 years old, 6'5" tall, a shade over 300 pounds of muscle and fat) complained his chest felt sore. "Sore like you overworked your muscles or sore like an elephants stepped on your chest?" I asked. "Sore like someone just punched me," he replied. Well, he didn't feel any soreness in his shoulders or upper arms, so we chanced it. "Now I'm having trouble breathing," he said.

Uh-oh is right.

Would you believe that the student health center was closed that morning, so there was no nurse to evaluate him? (Just because classes ended the day before and camps don't start until today doesn't mean there aren't people on campus who are liable to be stricken with something.) I took him to the office to get Skippy's advice whether or not I should take the employee to the hospital, but Skippy wasn't there. The employee said his pulse was fine; he thought it might be heat stress. I gave him two cups of water and an aspirin and told him to call me in the morni... er, to let me know after the morning break how he was feeling.

I was worried, but I left for the restaurant anyway. That night, on my way to cheesesteak, I stopped by his house. He was fine, and I scored bonus points for caring enough to check on him.

After we returned from Nashville, I phoned Skippy to tell him where I had put the to-go order we bought for him. (I mean, in which refrigerator.) He said he was at one of the hospitals with his daughter, who had nearly severed her thumb. I sent him a text message after cheesesteak (since he seems to like them -- text messages, that is; I don't know if he likes cheesesteaks -- and since I didn't want to interrupt whatever they were doing, wherever they were doing it, with a ringing cell phone) to check on her, and he said her thumb was broken and needed 30 stitches. (He'll probably tell us all the gruesome details in this morning's meeting, so let me know if you're curious what happened.)

This morning, I had a voice mail from an employee who received a summons to appear in court today and one from an employee who said his wife shut the truck door on his hand yesterday, so, all in all, it wasn't a good weekend for everyone but me.

I'm tempted to cower in my apartment until all this (whatever this is) is over. No, wait. Then I couldn't use any more of my birthday coupons. Oh, what a dilemma.