NoV: Time for another update! .
--
Quote of the day:
"Artificial intelligence is never a match for natural stupidity."
-unknown
--
Angel tugged at Mimi's arms as hard as she could, unable to separate the seat of her snow pants from the pole. Huffing with the effort, Angel said, "Look, here's the deal, Mimi. I'ma go find Roger and Mark and see what they can come up with. Hopefully with their know-how, ingenuity and male mechanical brains they'll be able to get you free."
As if to contradict Angel's kind words about them, Mark and Roger approached at that very moment, with Roger giving the comment, "Mimi, don't you know better than to dance around a frozen pole?"
"We're on vacation, Mimi," Mark chimed in, filming the event. "Can't you spend one day without thinking about work?"
"You guys have ten seconds to shut the hell up and get me unstuck from this pole before I detach myself from my pants and stomp you into the ground!" Mimi growled.
A naked Mimi in public, while alluring, was deadly and quite frankly terrifying, Roger and Mark decided. "We just need to find some warm water to pour on the pole," Mark theorized. "That'll unfreeze you."
"But hot water is what got her stuck in the first place!" Angel protested. "Well….hot chocolate, anyway…."
"It must be something about the elements of sugar and cocoa that bonded to the ice…." Mark replied. "Although….it's highly unlikely and pretty strange…."
"Well, Professor," Mimi said impatiently, "if you're done explaining why there's no scientific reason for me to be stuck here, would you mind working on a theory to unstick me??"
"Uh…" Mark cleverly said.
"Hot water," Roger reminded him.
"Yes, we need to get some hot water…."
"I'll go to the hotel to find some," Angel announced, trudging back toward the lodge so she could secretly check up on Collins while getting the water for Mimi.
--
Collins still sat comfortably in his big cushy chair, the pain pills he had taken for his leg making him more than pain-free. A Swedish looking-woman approached him, carrying a gallon-sized steel thermos and a handful of Styrofoam cups. "Sir," she wondered pleasantly, "would you like a complimentary cup of hot apple cider?"
"Oh, no thank you," Collins replied, presenting his mug of hot chocolate to her, "I've still got some cocoa."
"Okay, well just let me know if you need anything," she said with a ridiculously cheerful smile. The blond woman then mistakenly tried to get to her next guest by stepping over Collins' broken, outstretched leg. She lost her balance because of the heavy thermos in her hand and pitched forward, jarring Collins' leg roughly. Nearly a gallon of steaming apple cider spilled directly onto Collins' lap and even the high dose pain pills could not compete with the pain in his scalded lap and his jolted leg.
"Shit!" he yelled. "You crazy, apple-cider bitch!"
The woman jumped up from the floor in a tizzy. "Oh god, I'm so sorry!!!" she cried. "What should I do?? Get you a dry towel? Call you an ambulance? Do you want me to call the manager?"
"Just help me!" Collins wailed, trying to lift himself from the cider-saturated chair.
The distressed employee ran off to the front desk, all but throttling the front desk worker in her endeavor to obtain towels, aspirin, and a bucket of ice.
Amidst this chaos, Angel strolled into the hotel, thinking all was right with the world. She sidled up next to the blond attendant who was anxiously awaiting her supplies. The front desk worker returned with the required items and handed them to the woman. "What is all this for?" he wondered.
The apple cider distributor threw back a reply as she ran toward Collins. "I spilled hot apple cider all over a man with a broken leg!" she exclaimed.
Angel turned to the man. "Well, I just need a bucket of—oh my god, Collins!" she shrieked, the relevance of what the blond woman had said suddenly sinking in. She ran off toward the lobby where she had last seen poor Collins. She found him being dried and placated by the blond woman, who was promising a free night at the lodge and so on.
"Oh Collins!" Angel said sympathetically. She kneeled beside his chair and took his hand. "What happened?"
Cringing from the pain, Collins replied, "Hey baby….apple cider got spilled on my lap…."
"And I am SO sorry!" the attendant cried. "It was my mistake and I will do anything to make the remainder of your stay here as comfortable and enjoyable as possible!"
"Anything?" Angel asked deviously.
--
After they ran out of "fleeing from the deadly moose" steam, Maureen and Joanne continued to slog through the snow in the dark.
"We're completely lost!" Maureen whimpered desperately. "They'll find our bodies frozen and huddled together, starved and not on speaking terms…."
"If you don't quit whining, they will," Joanne snapped.
Maureen fell to her knees in the snow, ready to give up and cry. "We're going to DIE out here!!"
Joanne rolled her eyes and was about to say something sarcastic when a light in the distance caught her eye. Narrowing her eyes, she determined that they must be headed back toward the lodge. "Maureen!" she exclaimed, trying to pull the sobbing girl to her feet. "The light at the end of the tunnel! Civilization!! Come on, this way!"
"Really?" Maureen sniffled. "Oh I'm so happy!" They both began to run, unimpeded, toward the soft, glowing light. "Oh, warmth! Hot chocolate and central heating and fluffy cotton blankets!"
"Hot baths and warm fires and decaff lattes with whipped cream!" Joanne added.
They made it to the top of the hill, beyond which the inviting light shone with mesmerizing luster. They stood side by side and looked to the ten foot-high pole which marked the path for the ski slope, the lodge nowhere in sight. Underneath the pole, munching on a tiny patch of grass, was the moose.
It took them less than a second to have a simultaneous reaction. Screaming, they both dashed off into the woods behind them, terrified by the moose which surely would catch up with them and eat them.
--
Mark and Roger, trying not to crack jokes, stood waiting for Angel to return.
"It's been twenty minutes," Roger complained. "What's taking her?"
Mimi, exasperated at this point, grumbled, "Oh she and Collins are probably in there having sex while poor, forgotten Mimi remains out here in the cold, frozen to a pole!"
"Should I go in and check?" Mark wondered, really not wanting to walk in on the couple if they were, in fact, engaging, but at the same time wanting to get in from the cold.
Before anyone could make a reply to that, a sudden double-shriek resounded throughout the mountains and drew ever closer.
"Doesn't that sound like….." Roger began.
"Maureen and Joanne?" Mark wondered.
Sure enough, the two frost-bitten girls charged out of the forest, fast as lightning, seeming to not even notice their friends gathered around the pole, looking like some kind of tribal sacrifice ritual.
"HEY! Maureen, Joanne, will you see what's taking Angel so long with the bucket of hot water??" Mimi said very quickly, hoping they heard her.
They kept running, screaming something about a moose and central heating.
"What's gotten into them?" Mark wondered.
--
NoV: What, indeed? Well, hopefully this is starting to wrap up and I'll have the next one up by next week! .