I blog to you tonight from Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania.  If you are an authority figure in the state of Pennsylvania looking to collect the bounty on my head from my 2005 $107.69 garbage bill that I REFUSE to pay, you’re too late.  I’m already gone.

I am participating in the third installment of a monthly training seminar for work.  Three down, three more to go.  When I go on these trips I travel with one of my co-workers who from henceforth shall be known as Bonds.  If you are a Forgotten Realms fan, it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out her real first name.  If you are not a Forgotten Realms fan, now don’t you regret not being one?

You should also know that everyday I consume at least two large French Vanilla ice coffees, light with cream, and with four Splendas that comes from Dunkin Donuts.  With the ice coffees usually comes a plethora of brown recycled napkins that I tend to collect in the middle console for those inopportune sneezes or hacking coughs I might experience.  As Poppy will surely attest to, I usually have quite a wad on the console or between the console and the seat.

So Bonds and I are driving down I-95 last night.  We’re movin’ and we’re groovin’ to the iPod‘s current selection of Wild Thing by Tone Loc.  It is during this song that I decide I need to partake in a little nicotine fix.  Bonds, who is only an occasional partaker, decides she will also partake provided I give her access to a flame.  I lit my little cancer stick with a match because my wonderful Bic lighter had already flicked its butane guts out.  I then pass Bonds the book of matches.

This is where things go horribly wrong.

With my window cracked, she lights a match and puffs her cigarette to life.

Before blowing out the match, she cracks open her window.

The cross winds snap the lit match head from the stem… and it falls to the floor.

Bonds promptly alerted me to the situation with a blood curdling scream… as the wad of Dunkin’ Donuts napkins that had unintentionally slid to the floor from the console became engulfed in flame.

Did I mention I had three oxygen tanks in the truck?  Yeah.  Eye ez smaht.

So Bonds starts stomping out the napkin as I begin swerving across the lanes to try and reach the shoulder of the road before my mirrors are completely obstructed by the copious amounts of smoke winding their way through the truck.  Luckily we make it over, Bonds jumps out struggling with a water bottle in hand, and I instinctively splash the napkins that are roasting my Radioshack inverter with none other than the dregs of my afternoon ice coffee.

I then jump out, and fighting the air turbulence of the 75mph travelling tractor trailers make my way around to the passenger side.  I reach in past Bonds and scoop out the remains of the smoldering napkin.  I toss it on the ground and Bonds hits it with a squirt from the Poland Spring sports bottle she finally managed to uncap.

And that, my dear friends, is How Dunkin Donuts Almost Killed Me In A Blaze Of Flaming Glory, which was the alternative title to this post.

So has anything exciting happened to you lately?