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back to work… forever

I know, two days without writing. Don’t worry though, nothing horrible happened to me – I’ve just been spending time with our guests in from Florida, and taking a break from the daily routine. Yesterday, however, I, like millions of other dragging Americans, made the sad return to work.

Monday though, we took Sharaun’s cousin Mia and her son Tate up to Tahoe to see the sights. Even though we were initially bummed that the mid-80° temperatures that we had last weekend had disappeared in favor of cold, clouds, and rain, we ended up having a great time despite the weather. Once we got home and got all dressed-down we lounged on the couch while Sharaun got on the phone with the Chinese joint up the street to order dinner. Finally we capped off the day-off watching Cloverfield, a movie I actually really enjoyed.

I wish I could take more vacation while they’re here, but I’m all booked up through the end of the year and will have to resort to sneaking out early here and there while I can for the rest of the week. Also, it’s tough to write with company in town… so you’re gonna get a mixed bag of stuff today (and perhaps for the remainder of the week).

Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to work at my job forever. On one hand, I feel like I might like to do just that. I’m good at it, I like it, and it’s not that hard for me. Why wouldn’t I want to stick around and do it until I retire? On the other hand, I feel like there might come a point where I’m just “done” with it. I often fantasize that this will take the form of me finally having my fill of the modern business world and running off into the country with Sharaun to grow alpacas or something… but that’s probably not too realistic. Anyway, I think the whole alpaca thing is a scam anyway. In fact, maybe I should try to invent the next “alpaca.” I could popularize some under-the-radar animal that no one wants, sing its supposed virtues and sell poseur hippies like me on forsaking their careers and disappear into the country to tend to the beasts. If not though, I bet I stick around here for a while. I’m a creature of comfort, you see, I tend to settle into a routine and stay there. Upsetting that routine upsets me.

For now, I plan on taking it one day at a time. Things seem to be moving pretty fast under that approach thus far. Too bad the same days, weeks, months and years I’m at work to go fast that I want to go slow as Keaton grows. If anyone figures that out, let me know, OK?

Goodnight.

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12-20-22, i’d bet on it

Windy windy days in California lately. When I walk through the entry vestibule on my way into work it’s like being sucked through a wind tunnel (whatever that’s like, the phrase just seemed to fit). The decorative dusty-purple plum-cherry trees that line the long sidewalk up to the sawmill are losing their fruits to the gusts, the concrete littered with them, both whole and smashed flat. I didn’t even know those trees made fruit, but I jumped up to grab and eat one just to see what it was like. Not bad, tart.

Tonight I called to cancel our old United credit cards by “folding” them into our new ones (read over here about why we upgraded). Usually, I do all things related to our credit cards – I call once for myself, and then when I’m finished I call right back and impersonate Sharaun. No, I don’t affect a faux-female voice or anything, I just call and say my name is Sharaun. I’ve been doing this for years and years and never once has any credit card company called me on it. I always figured that sex wasn’t one of the immediately visible pieces of personal information the representatives are presented with when verifying they are indeed speaking to the true cardholder. This time around through, I got cold-busted. And, what’s more, I was put through the security wringer in the craziest Orwellian data-mining checkout process I’ve ever participated in. The recount:

1st rep: Good evening and thanks for calling, how may I help you tonight?

Me: Hi. I have two United Visa cards and I need to cancel one or combine them or whatever so I only have the new one.

1st Rep: No problem sir, I can do that for you. May I have your account number please?

Me: (Reads account number off card.)

1st Rep: Thank you, sir. And, may I ask who I’m speaking with?

Me: Sharaun.

1st Rep: Uh, what’s your first name, sir?

Me: Sharaun.

1st Rep: OK, let me transfer you to security sir, please hold.

Hmm…. this is strange, it’s at this point I figure something must be up. The screen in front of the representative must’ve had told her she should be talking to a female, it must have. And, she surely wasn’t. I assume she reacted just as she was trained, not asking any more questions and instead immediately escalating to the account security or fraud department. While the hold music played, I told Sharaun, who was sitting on the couch across from me, “Uh-oh, I think they know I’m not you. We’ll see how this goes.”

Security Rep: Hello sir, thank you for contacting the account security department, how can I help you this evening?

Me: Combine cards, blah, blah.

Security Rep: Of course, sir, I can transfer you to an account representative who can take care of that for you. Before I do, however, I’d like to take this opportunity to verify a few pieces of information with you for security and identification purposes. Is this OK?

Me: Sure.

Security Rep: Very good sir. I’m going to ask you a series of multiple choice questions. All the information I will be basing the questions on is from publicly available records. At any point during my reading back of the possible answers when you hear the correct answer, you can just interrupt me and tell me. Do you understand?

Me: Sure.

At this point, after the security person had given her SAT-proctor style preface, I began wondering if I hand’t got in a bit over my head. I briefly considered hanging up, running. I worried, though, that doing so may set off some alarmist sort of flag and possibly result in a hold or cancellation of the card. So, I dug in and made the choice to tough it out.

Security Rep: Which of the following four addresses in [the town Sharaun and I attended college in] are closest to a location where you previously lived in that city?

I purposely let her get through all the options. She reads four addresses, and ends with a “I’ve never lived near any of these” option. Luckily, having dated Sharaun in college, I instantly recognize the right choice, which interestingly was not her actual address, but an address on the same street she lived on. Tricky.

Me: The one one on Street-X.

Security Rep: Thank you sir. Next, according to your driver’s license, which of the following heights is closest to the height listed.

I let her read them all again. She listed four heights, all in the five foot range, and once again ended with a “None of these heights are close to what’s on my driver’s license” option. Thankfully, I had Sharaun’s wallet next to me and flipped it open to read her ID. Funny, her actual listed height wasn’t one of the options the representative offered me. So, instead of picking the closest, I decided to instead quote the height actually listed.

Me: Five foot five.

Security Rep: That’s as it appears on your driver’s license, sir? (Maybe wondering why I’d not chosen the closest option, and instead given an answer not on her list, but I was feeling bold at this point.)

Me: Yes.

Security Rep: OK sir, just a couple more questions here. Next, can you tell me what month [Sharaun’s dad’s name] was born in?

No multiple choice here, but she did give me the option of saying the person she named was not related to me in any way or I didn’t know them. Problem is, this one stumped me. I don’t know Sharaun’s dad’s birthday offhand. Worried, and again considering giving up, I didn’t immediately know what to do. After a quick “Ummm” so I could think, I decided do the only thing I could think of: I simply asked Sharaun, out loud and with the phone right at my mouth, “Hey babe, what month is your dad’s birthday in?” “May,” she replied.

Me: May.

Security Rep: (Hesitating, stammering a bit as she began, having heard me loud and clear ask someone for the right answer.) Uh… OK sir, thank you. Ah… can you please verify that last four digits of your social security number?

Me: Number-number-number-number. (This was easy, I’ve long had Sharaun’s SSN memorized.)

Security Rep: OK sir, one more question. Can you please give me one previous address?

Me: (Feeling somewhat bulletproof at this point.) Previous to what, to where I live now?

Security Rep: Yes sir.

Me: [Sharaun’s old address in high school, also her folks’ current address.]

Security Rep: And what county is that in, sir?

Me: [The county.]

At this point, I sense that the representative knows she is not talking to the real Sharaun, but is perhaps at a loss to do anything because I’ve aced the security gauntlet. What she must be thinking, I have no idea. I assume she may have figured out that I was calling on behalf of someone I was in the room with, since she should’ve been able to clearly hear me straight-up ask Sharaun for the right answer to the dad’s birthday question. Eventually, she told me she’d transfer me back to the account representative to finish my transaction.

After the hold music, the 2nd representative did end up processing the request – but not before asking me to confirm “my” mother’s maiden name, “my” current address, and “my” current home phone number. All in all, I answered around ten detailed personal-data questions, and it was the nature of the data that really surprised me and inspired me to write about it.

It’s crazy to think that somewhere, in some tiny cubicle late at night, some woman can pull up a plethora of details about you and me and anyone else in the USofA. Your old college address, what county you’re registered to vote in, what kind of car you owned from 1983 to 1991, the middle name of your firstborn, what carrier your dad served on in Vietnam, if you’re an organ donor, how long you’ve owned your house, and your favorite kind of food is based on an one-year average of credit card charges parsed and bucketed according to a “restaurant-name ethnicity” algorithm. Sheesh.

Welcome to the information age, where you exist as a collection of facts in a machine. Better hope you can remember your 7th grade gym locker combination… or you’ll never get that shiny new minivan with the built-in DVD players when the 2nd kid comes around.

There are things they don’t know, though… I still have that over them.

Goodnight and enjoy you long weekend. Love ya.

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love is blind

Internet, I am here again.

It’s something like 10pm on Wednesday night and, luckily, I wrote about 80% of this entry in a “creative” fit last night, only having to come back tonight to add a few rounding-out and closing paragraphs and proofread. It’s kinda long, actually, so I’m just gonna skip the intro and get right into it.

Hey, remember when I used to talk about music a lot on here? I mean, I used to do it all the time. Lately, though, music talk is usually relegated to a couple sentences here and there about a new album I like or what leaked recently or a the show I just went to. Well, for those looking for me to make a triumphant return with a music-centric post today, you’ll be happy. For those of you who typically gloss over the “music stuff,” I urge you to tune in today – as it’s really more of a story set around music, not just me talking about the latest Weezer album or something.

Oh, and, if you really are the kind of person who truly misses all the music stuff (I’m not even sure there are those people, actually), take heart – it’s almost June and that means it’s time for my annual half-best-of list for 2008. Look for it sometime soon, OK? OK.

Hey… have you guys heard that the New Kids on the Block are back together? No? Yeah, me neither.

Ahhh… guys… I wish I could say that, but the fact is that I live with the biggest New Kids on the Block fan I know in this world (yes, we’re talking about my lovely wife). I’ve always known this about her, from our very first encounters with each other back in middle school when she came to school wearing an eight inch round button with their five pubescent faces smiling out from below a neon 90’s paint-splash logo. In fact, to this day, that button resides in a box in our garage, along with a posterboard New Kids collage of images she cut from magazines like Tiger Beat and Bop!. I’m for real.

You may think that, over the years, as her tastes matured, she’d have taken time to reevaluate her love for the “band,” perhaps listening to the with the learned ears of someone who’s been schooled in “real” music by her husband (who, I might add, has impeccable taste). Yeah, you might think that, but you’d be totally wrong if you did. In fact, if anything, her infatuation with the band has continued to be a rolling snowball. I remember shortly after we first moved to California, she took off alone in the early morning hours to drive to San Francisco and stand outside some radio studio to meet Joey McIntyre (the Michael Jackson one to their Jackson-5 mold). And, that, my friends, is only one of the ways Sharaun has kept up her fanaticism over the years. I can, for instance, remember when she absolutely freaked out when the n0w off-air VH1 show “Reunited” tried to get them back together (unsuccessfully), and then of course there was her 30th birthday cake…

So, when rumors began flying around the internet last year about a possible reunion, Sharaun reacted with the unbridled glee of a thirteen year-old girl. She became a regular in the online fan communities, all of them filled with “birds of a feather” from the key New Kids on the Block reunion-fever demographic: They’re all moms now, likely married, most went through a Backstreet Boys or N*Sync phase along the way, and they are all now finally blessed with the liquidity they so fervently prayed for back when they were initially smitten as poor, allowance-funded preteens. It’s brilliant, really, waiting until your insanely-obsessed base finally has disposable funds in the bank to stage a full-fledged get-back-together… temporal marketing at its finest.

Anyway, when those same rumors began to firm up, and it was announced that the band was going to make an appearance on the Today Show, not to play, but only to announce they once again would be playing, she sent out an Evite to all the thirty-something-year-old women we hang out with asking them over at 7am for a viewing party complete with donuts and coffee. I still remember waking up to go to work and seeing ten or so women congregated in our living room, the working of them outfitted in their work-garb, sitting on chairs placed ’round the television all waiting for the posters from their 1989 walls to come to life in front of their grown-up eyes. Some people even came in vintage band-branded clothing… it was, in a word, phenomenal.

In fact, I was home the day the New Kids actually took to the stage together as a group for the first time in over a decade, which also happened on the Today Show, a month or so later. And, friends, when that happened, I saw my wife transformed before my eyes. The braces-wearing adolescent in her broke free from the shackles that thirty year-old Sharaun keeps her locked up in, screaming and jumping her way into consciousness, shrieking with delight as five has-beens instantly became five are-agains before a fawning crowd of aging females in Times Square. I’m for real, it’s still on our TiVo if you don’t believe me… you can come on over and watch it for yourself. They dance and everything, it’s beautiful.

When their new single debuted on iTunes, she bought two copies for herself (because, of course, everyone knows digital songs eventually wear out), and sent eight more as iTunes “gifts” to her friends (thanks for that little bit of functionality, Mr. Jobs), who, I’m almost certain, are all busy re-growing their rattails and practicing trash-talk for all the “sucka MCs” in throes their reunion anticipation as well.

So, when she told me that she’d be spending “some money” on the “VIP passes” to their announced California shows, I, for what it’s worth, gave my blessing. In fact, when she told me how bad she wished she could see a show with Natalie, her best friend from all those years ago, I reluctantly admitted we have enough “extra” skymiles to get her back to Florida for the Tampa show. So now, my wife is flying more than five hours across the USA and back to meet her best friend since 1st grade (when she shared her Garfield pizza-scented scratch-n-sniff sticker) and spend hundreds of dollars on “VIP passes” which include front-row tickets and a meet-and-greet.

I know, I’m a good husband, right? But, if I want to be able to justify the hundreds and hundreds of dollars I plan to spend seeing Led Zeppelin wherever on Earth they tour this summer (please guys, please do it), I figure I better let her have her “one show” too. No, really, I’m willing to pay just slightly under my the-two-dead-Beatles-resurrect-and-they-get-back-together concert ticket threshold. Jimmy, Robert, John, Jason – just tell me how much you want, and I’ll have it in your wrinkled hands before you can close your mouths… and am even willing, just like Sharaun, to get on a plane.

Well, that’s the story of Sharaun’s obsession with the New Kids.

Oh, and, in closing… when I told her I was writing about the New Kids on the Block, she said, shocked, “What are you writing about them? You better not be writing anything bad! You should let me write about them, because I know ‘what’s up.'” I laughed. “I know Joey’s favorite food is Mexican,” she continued, “And his favorite color is green. His middle name is Mulrey.”

See… I told you. Goodnight.

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until then, she’s mine

Hiiii internet. It’s me again. Back for another round of typing. You wanna hang out for a while? I think I may download some music and eat a bowl of cereal. Sit for a while and keep me company, OK? Yeah… you do what I say.

This past Friday we went to a wedding. I’ve written before about how I get at weddings, but, this time, I thought the story of my almost-tears was good enough to expand on a bit.

First off, the wedding itself was set square on the south shore of the incredible Lake Tahoe. The scenery made for quite a backdrop, the endless lake and snowcapped peaks towering all around was the vista from within the reception hall, where the entire back wall was glass.

So, the mood was already somewhat established by the whole man-in-nature vibe the venue itself gave off – this was an auspicious occasion, and, like any wedding, a celebration. The folks who were becoming one flesh that day are friends of ours, but we’re not terribly close or anything. For that reason I figured I would be fine in terms of my typical over-emotional response to the ceremony, not having a particularly strong emotional stake in the matter and all. And, as the reception speeches began I sat proudly dry-eyed, easily letting mushy anecdotes and proclamations of undying cosmic love and friendship bounce right off my tough skin. That is, until she took the mic…

The bride, that is. Her words were fine; heartfelt, kind, sincere. She moved from one person to the next, saying something nice about each. Soon, shifting the sights of her speech around the room from target to familial target, she eventually landed on her father. And then, dear friends, the thick dusty curtains hanging over my heart were rent to bits word by stabbing word. All of the sudden those TV-chimes sounded and I was the me of years from now, at my own daughter’s wedding, Keaton taking the form of the bride before me in the present time – speaking to me.

I can’t remember the entirety of her words, as all my powers of logical thought were lined up in defence of the hostile charge mounted by my emotions, but I do recall some particularly amazing (paraphrased, I’m sure) bits: “And, dad. You made me what I am today; taught me how to be a good person. I credit you with my spirit, the way I never give up. Thank you for making me into what I am.”

Oh, Lord… I can barely write about it without getting misty. To think that one day I’ll be sitting at the “family table” listening to Keaton say something (hopefully) similar, about broke me down. At one point I had to consciously break my attentions and focus instead on some boats scooting across the smooth surface of the lake on a sunset sail. I just couldn’t take it.

The brutality, the pure barbarity of having to, as a dad, “give away” your little girl. Biting back tears of sadness while at the same time damming the flood of tears from the pride and happiness filling you to bursting. You think I’m gonna let some guy take her away from me? Yeah… I guess I will… but not for a long time. Until then, she’s mine.

‘Night. Hold ’em tight.

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and then, at the bottom of the ocean

I dunno guys, just haven’t had much to write about lately. Skipped last night (well, kinda, read below), and not feeling much of anything bubbling to the surface tonight either, for that matter. I mean, I should have tons to write about – We went to an awesome wedding Friday up in Tahoe, spending a Keaton-less night in a cabin/mansion thing on the hill at a party with fire-eaters, an open-air hottub, and piles and piles of revelry. I was even on fire, at one point.

No, seriously.

So… I should have stuff… but I dunno.

Some of you may have seen a “blip” of an entry hit the blog around the midnight that straddled Sunday and Monday (I wrote it that way because I never know if I refer to midnight as Monday morning, Monday night, or Sunday something). I had set my Sunday writing to auto-publish at midnight, like I normally do, but hadn’t every finished writing it (I gave up around 10pm with only a quickly-typed opening paragraph but forgot to turn off autopost). Anyway, I realized what I’d done when I woke for work Monday morning and I recalled the entry. Forgive me the mistake, yes? Those of you with RSS readers can probably go back and check it out, but there’s really no need as I’ve integrated what was salvageable right here.

Anyway, today was a busy day at work. In early for a sunrise meeting with ze Germans, and a quickie lunch with my buddy Ben before coming back to work on a presentation I’m giving in a few weeks – right after we get back from Florida, actually. Thinking about it, I haven’t actually stood in front of a crowd and presented for a good bit of time now – I’m sort of looking forward to all the prep and the rush of “knowing” things when asked. That is, assuming the thing goes well, and not like some of the stinkers I’ve had before (they’re rare, I swear, but they happen). I’ve been putting in some prep time for this one though, and I’m fairly certain all should go well. Anyway – today was a busy day at work, I suppose.

Sometimes I dream about living on a boat. Nothing huge like a staffed yacht or anything, but a large sailboat (with backup power, or something) perhaps. Maybe just a year, drifting on the trades, stopping at small ports for food and supplies, sunning… Thing is, I know next to nothing about boat-life, let alone sailing… and I think there’s quite a bit of science behind the whole thing, and that my ignorance would likely need to be remedied before I set out. But, man, there is something appealing to it. Wouldn’t it be cool to just pack up the family and take a year off? I mean a whole year. Three-hundred, sixty-five days together on the sea, pitching with the current. Like most of my modern-man escapist womb-fantasies, this one too comes with 20th century amenities like music and internet and TV for Sharaun. She’d never go, anyway. Maybe take away the storms and the loneliness and the dangers of being so remote… maybe then she’d consider. But nah… just a lark.

OK, I’ve got nothing.  Sorry.  Before I go, check out Keaton and her friend Jake together from our camping trip a few weeks back over on a recent update to this website right here.

Goodnight.

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piles and piles of dank-dank nugs

The Northern California summer showed up with a quickness today, with our first 100°+ day of the season. It’s that dry, baking heat, the kind that makes the air around you so warm it presses; like it’s a physical thing. The picture accompanying this entry was taken in the Ford as I ran a bunch of errands at lunch. The display read 111° at one point, but I missed the chance to take a picture. And, even though I don’t trust that gauge much, it was still hot as sin here today.

Summer, we welcome you with shirts doffed and feet bare. Pour out upon us your bounty of fermented beverages and fire-warmed meats. We await.

Hey, I’m gonna tell a story now.

See, I’m pretty sure that the house a couple houses down from us is a “weed house.”

Huh? You don’t know what a “weed house” is? Well, let me break you off. A weed house is a home that is used specifically for the purpose of growing marijuana. Sometimes they are called, quite fittingly I might add, “marijuana grow houses.” See, someone purchases a home (usually a newly built one or in a new neighborhood), spends tons of money outfitting it with things like grow lights, automated watering systems, and high-tech air circulation and filtration systems (to avoid the house reeking a telltale stench when neighbors walk by). Oftentimes the owners of the indoor grow operation will bypass the electricity meter, effectively cloaking the massive amounts of power the operations require from the utility company (an easy way to get caught, as someone will always miss 1.21 jigawatts). Then, with a crop planted, the owners simply stay away and wait on the harvest.

Sound crazy? It happens, I swear. They busted a big ring of them a few cities away from here just a few months back, and similar setups are cropping up all over the country.

Anyway, let’s take a virtual walk down our street. See, we live in a new neighborhood, in houses built between four and six years ago (when we moved in). Our house is on the corner, so let’s start walking towards the communal mailbox unit (a modern-day phenomenon which I hate, but maybe I’ll write more about that later).

Oh, here’s our neighbor’s place. They’re nice folk, don’t live here full-time though. Like plenty of “bay” people, they own a couple places – one in the bay and one over here closer to the mountains. They live primarily over there, and show up around here every few months or so. One drawback to this ping-pong arrangement is that their lawn gets mowed really infrequently, and they haven’t invested any time or effort in the back (which comes absolutely un-landscaped when you buy the place). Unfortunately, this means that both their front and back yards are rife with weeds. We’ve actually become friends with these folks, they have a little girl almost exactly Keaton’s age. We’ve had dinner over there, had them over for playdates, and even exchanged e-mail addresses so we can know when they’ll be in town. And, other than their overtaken yard, they seem like right-nice folks.

Let’s keep walking, shall we.

Ah, and here’s our neighbor’s neighbor’s house. This is the weed house, by the way. See, no one lives here. In fact, no one is has ever lived her, nor is anyone ever even here, period. Essentially, this is an abandoned house. The shades are forever-drawn, and, like our neighbor’s place, the front “lawn” has gone to weed and the back “yard” is just a bunch of weed-covered dirt and rocks.

As an aside, it really stinks having two weed patches right next to our house (I’m talking the kind of weeds you kill with Round-Up now, not the kind you chief while listening to “Stir It Up”). All the seed from the bumper crops that grow unchecked in their yards ends up settling in every dirt-holding crack, crevice, and thin patch in our yard. I’m convinced that my personal battle with weeds is as bad as it is solely because I live next to these two weed-strewn lots. Anyway…

The funny thing about the weed house is… our immediate neighbors mow the lawn there. Remember, the ones we are friends with? They mow it. Well, they do when they’re in town, at least. He mows them both. I’ve never asked him if he knows the people who own the house, but I’ve always wanted to know. Seems like he must, since he mows their lawn, right?

Over time, I’ve developed this theory… check it: Our neighbor owns his house and the weed house, that’s why he mows both lawns (duh). He and his family coming into town every few months is just a front for tending the crops. In fact, he’s probably got underground tunnels between the places or something, so he can come and go without fear of being seen. Being (somewhat) serious, though, he could likely maintain and harvest the crop under cover of night, going from backyard to backyard rather than out front – thus staying fairly well-hidden.

Yup, that’s my theory. My neighbor runs the weed house two lots down from us. I even have “evidence,” wanna hear it? OK… get ready: When we were getting ready to go to Mexico on vacation recently, we got an e-mail from our neighbors saying they’d be in town that very week and wanted to get together. We regretfully replied that we’d be vacationing in Mexico that week, and would sadly miss them. Their reply? Commiseration at our bummed-ness for not being able to socialize, and then, this: “Mexico, sounds fun! Do you know if they search all the luggage you take, even carry-ons?”

Huh? What?

Actually, I was just thinking, our neighbors (who we really do like, a lot) may be ‘net savvy enough to pull up our domain based on Sharaun’s e-mail. If so, I kinda regret writing this. Even still, it’s more for funny than it is for accusation – I promise. And, guys, even if you are totally growing piles and piles of dank-dank nugs in that house, we can still hang out – we’re cool. Sharaun, she might narc, but me… I’m on-board.

Have a good weekend, talk to you Monday.

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THE MILENNIUM FALON!

Hi team.

Hump-day is now behind us and we’re off into the home stretch. We have a wedding to attend in the afternoon Friday, so I’ll be cutting out halfway through Friday to head up into the hills for the ceremony. Keaton’s spending the night with a friend from Sharaun’s mom’s group, they have a two-year-old also and he and Keaton get along swimmingly. I think this is the first night we’ve been away from her where one of our folks aren’t watching her, that’s some kinda milestone or something, right?

Let’s talk about the wardrobe problems I had today.

The sock I wore on my right foot was one of those ones where the elastic in the ankle-part has all given up its elasticity, and it kept getting sucked down into my shoe as I walked. Terribly annoying, I just tossed the thing when I took off my shoes this afternoon. Maybe it’ll help even up the sock numbers anyway, since I invariably have an odd numbered total anyway.

That, and I decided to give these new-fangled style of boxer-briefs Sharaun bought a second try. On the surface, they look great. They’re the same style I happily wear each and every day, but with the added bonus of the elastic band around the top also being covered in the softy-cotton material from which the shorts themselves are made. I know, you’re thinking – this could be revolutionary, like when they stopped attaching scratchy tags to undershirts and started silk-screening them on instead. Potential new heights in comfort. Yeah, well, that’s bunk. For some reason, when they covered the elastic, they also shortened the dang things by an inch or two per size. Now they feel great around my waist, but ride up as if my feet were on fire and they are making their getaway.

Clothes can be problematic for me, I guess.

Today at work someone placed a large box in the aisle with the word TRASH written on it. I took the box into an abandoned cube (cubes are what pass for “offices” in the modern corporate world, for those of you yet un-matriculated) and, with a large black marker, appended, To you maybe! With a little imagination… THE MILLENNIUM FALCON. Except I spelled both “millennium” and “falcon” wrong in my haste. Actually, the misspellings likely made it even funnier to the casual observer. Yeah, that’s what I’m gonna think… even funnier.

I think that’s it then, folks. The best part was the writing on the box, right? I mean, other than that there was just the bit about the socks and underwear. Oh, and the wedding and being Keaton-less. Man, I gotta start coming up with the good stuff again soon or I’m gonna lose you all.

I’ll see ya around.