Embarrassing injury of the year

Well, not "injury" per se. I woke up Monday morning with an ugly deep-red bruise on the uppermost part of my right thigh. I moved most of my things up to Evanston on Sunday with assistance from Drew (assistance for which I can't possibly thank him enough, since the mere idea that I might be able to complete the move on my own, which had crossed my mind in advance, seems so ludicrous in retrospect that I might actually have died trying), and at first I thought that the bruise might be related to that, although I couldn't recall any blow I had taken to that area. A little while later, it occurred to me.

Saturday night, Alma and I went out with her best friend Dana, Dana's husband Tom, and a handful of their friends as part of a birthday celebration. We went to a place in Niles that does shabu shabu, an interesting Japanese cooking method (of Mongolian descent) in which each guest gets their own individual hotpot on the table, in which vegetables and pieces of meat can be cooked. It was a fun novelty, at any rate. Afterwards we went back to Dana and Tom's condo, where Dana, Alma and I played the video game "Rock Band" (if you're not familiar, think "Guitar Hero," plus "Drum Hero" and "Singing Hero"). For most of the songs, I was the singer since I knew more of them (when you're the singer, knowing the song is pretty much a must; for any of the instruments, it probably helps not to, so that you can focus on hitting the right buttons). At any rate, the singer is also the tambourine and cowbell player, which is accomplished by hitting the microphone against something. Most people would probably use their hand, but - in case you hadn't guessed this by now - I was hitting it against my upper thigh, clearly (in hindsight) with a bit too much gusto.

The upshot of this story is that I gave myself a bruise while (effectively) singing karaoke. Maybe not as embarrassing as breaking a tooth while eating a donut (and certainly not as problematic), but kind of stupid, no?