It's been a while since I've reported on the landlord situation, for the perfectly good reason that it's of no conceivable interest to anyone. However, as nobody ever reads this, I'll bore my approximately zero readers with the news that my now ex-landlord Jane has taken full advantage of the worst housing market in decades to sell the place for a mere fraction of what she could have got just three years ago.

The first noticeable change- apart from my receiving a notice informing me of a new address to which I should send the rent of course- was the appearance into the vacant apartment downstairs of two (at least two, though possibly more) small businesses. This I know because everyday at nine am two cars pull up and park in the yard, each bearing advertisements on the driver's side door- one saying "Bibles For America!" with an official-looking logo, the other with the charming couplet "LOSE WEIGHT NOW ASK ME HOW". It pleases me no end to know that as I sit here typing, that just one floor beneath me- not twelve feet away!- there are people working feverishly at this very moment to solve the two most pressing crises facing our country in these tough times: the obesity epidemic and the crippling nationwide shortage of Bibles.

Despite my delight at these new neighbours, come springtime I may vacate this apartment anyway. One of the miracles of the Internet Age is that it doesn't really matter where I do my work, so long as there happens to be an Internet handy. This is a blessing entirely in addition to Internet Porno. Imagine! Instead of clicking and mousing away here in boring old Columbus, I could be doing my clicking and mousing in some fabulous exotic locale- Paris! Tahiti! Cleveland!

That's why, at the Company Christmas Holiday Party, I told my boss Paul that I'd like to move to sunny Cleveland. Paul was fine with the idea; indeed, Paul is generally fine with just about any cockamamie idea I spring on him.

Paul is a very low-key sort of Boss, you couldn't ask for a better Boss. In fact, Paul only ever even bothers to show up at the office maybe once every four-five months (and then, presumably, only to collect all the checks that've been piling up and go cash them) and again at the Company Holiday Party. Prolonged absence is a wonderful quality for a Boss to possess, and Paul has it in spades! I wish everybody could have Bosses who are hundreds of miles away!

This is my Christmas wish for the world!

Truth be told, I'd broached the notion of me moving away to Paul a year ago (possibly even the last time I'd seen him?) and he was ok with the concept then, but because at the time Allison had been diagnosed with Cancer just recently, he thought it'd be better were we to wait until Allison's health issues got resolved. I know, right? Cancer! What rotten luck! Here I am, all wanting to move, maybe, but don't you know, I have to put it off because someone has gone and got cancer! I'm telling you, the universe has got it out for me.

Well, naturally I couldn't much argue with Paul's reasoning, but I'm happy to report that Allison has since pulled through like a trooper, and seems to be all free and clear. So, with all good here on the home-front, if everything pans out, come springtime maybe I'll be Cleveland bound!

Not before then, though. It's damned cold up there right now, and I think I'd like to live on the boat when I get up there.

Turns out its Thanksgiving again. In a land as blessed as ours, I think everybody should have a nice story for Thanksgiving. Here's mine.

A while back I had to get a prescription filled- never you mind what for, you nosy parker, it's really not relevant to the story- and so I went to Kroger's, see, and it just so happens they had some deal going on: the deal being you get a prescription filled, they give you this coupon good for one free turkey dinner. Now, I'm kind of hazy on the details, but it seems to be some deal where you get a coupon good for some turkey, some potatoes, stuffing, crap like that- possibly wrapped in tinfoil or something- you throw it in the oven for a while and then Boom! what you got is one free turkey dinner. See, this was right before Thanksgiving that year.

Myself, I'm not much of a lad for turkey, what with being a vegetarian and all, and anyways I generally head to the folks' for thanksgiving dinner. Even so, I am generally loathe to see a perfectly good free turkey dinner go to waste, so I figured well what the heck, let's give this here dinner to the homeless. After all, this is the season to share with the less fortunate. And I am very generous when it comes to giving away crap that I don't have any particular use for.

Since I'm not all that fast at getting things done, it wasn't until the Wednesday that I got around to shuffling on down to the Faith Mission. I walk up to the lady at the desk. "Um, you guys have a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving, right?"

"Well, yes"

"Well see okay I got this coupon for a free turkey dinner, I thought I'd give it to you."

"Uhhhng, Thanksgiving is tomorrow you know..." she says, as I hold out the coupon.

"Yes, well I know that, see, that's why I thought I better get it here to you today."

She looks at me, takes the coupon and stares at it for a while, looks back at me.

The Faith Mission Lady looks at me with that expression which is a curious mixture of concern, bemusement, indifference and disdain, the sort of expression that only the Faith Mission ladies can ever really master. The sort of expression which, when you are on the business end of it, you know that you are SOMEBODY now. You have truly ARRIVED!

"O.K.... first of all, look, you don't need no coupon.... you just come back tomorrow.... all you got to do is go to the men's commissary, across the street, they'll take care of you..."

Well, so, I received a text message from my pal Rich the other day, in which he said "I miss mine". Naturally, I assumed that what he was missing was his boat Easy Street, a lovely Bayfield 25.

So I texted him back (what a perfectly horrible word- "text", when used as a verb): "Seriously! I miss mine too. What am I supposed to do on weekends now anyway?"

Meaning, of course, that I too regretted the inexorable march of seasons which has obliged me to put up my sail-boat for the year, and that I can no longer go sailing.

Then I noticed that Rich had sent me a previous text message, evidently some sort of vulgar and fairly unhilarious joke about transsexuals who, no longer having any testicles of their own to play with, are fond of playing with those belonging to other people: a joke to which the message "I miss mine"- the message I replied to (inadvertantly inappropriately, it turns out)- was apparently the punchline.

It wasn't far from Mansfield, Ohio, when the borrowed tire on the borrowed car blew out with a mighty "thumpa-whumpa-whump!". So, after a pleasant interlude spent on the berm of I-71 attempting to locate wrenches and jacks and things, I was off and running! Well, not running too fast, as the little Mini-Spare said not to go above 50mph. This was written on a big yellow Caution sticker, in capital letters, so I can only assume some poor chump somewhere went 52mph and crashed and died and his heirs sued the Miniature Spare Tire Corporation for millions. As I envisage a far more glorious end for myself than cashing out in a borrowed Hyundai by a cornfield in the middle of nowhere, it was at a cautious pace that I set off in search of a tire shop.

First up was JR's Tires, a prosperous looking joint with plastic signs advertising tire brands I've actually heard of. This reassured me: as everybody knows, those brands which are most heavily advertised obviously are those of the highest quality. Unfortunately however the place was shuttered. A helpful local, a burly mountain of a dude with a pony-tail halfway down to his ass, informs me "You might try Eddie's, up the hill a piece.
"
So! Off to Eddie's! The behatted old-timer at the counter (Eddie perhaps?) looked at me suspiciously for a while, like maybe you just can't trust someone with car problems (I would have thought this prejudice to be somewhat of a drawback, considering his chosen profession of car mechanic). He takes long pauses between saying things. I must say that those pauses were not wasted: obviously Eddie is a far more cerebral type than he looks, and clearly spent these intervals deep in thought. After I explained the car wasn't mine, he cottoned on pretty quick, saying "so I reckon you're not looking to spend a whole lot of money..." You could almost hear the gears grinding away inside his skull!

Sadly Eddie, despite being a mental titan under those dirty overhalls, had no tire to fit, not even after he focussed his prodigious brain-waves RIGHT ON THE TIRE. He stared off into space for a spell, then gave me directions to a place he thought might be able to help. Like all good directions, it covered half a page and started out with "head west on route 30 for a while...."

Oddly enough, I did actually find the place, a cinderblock shack with peeling paint and a 70's era RV and no fewer than five broken down vehicles in the field surrounding it, and stacks upon stacks of used tires. The place was called- seriously- "the Wheel McCoy". The dude in charge -well, I assume he was in charge, if for no other reason than he had more teeth left than the rest of his crew combined and wore a bandanna patterned after the US flag- russelled me up a tire and asked me a most disconcerting question for a tire salesman: "Now, yew ain't plannin' on doin'a whole lot a highway miles with this, are yuh?" But plainly, he was an expert in his field- after looking at the Hyundai, he says "that other front tire, that one's pretty wore out too. I wouldn't want no tire like that on MY front wheel, uh-uh. Blow out any time. What you wanna do,is rotate that tire to the back wheel there, and put one of them back tires up here. yuh. I'd do that 'fore winter, I was you."

Then he instructed his minions to change the tire, being sure to include the direction "now don't forgit to grab that jack over there!". Now, while its difficult to envisage a tire-shop employee who would contemplate changing a tire without the benefit of a jack, and you might think such an instruction unnecessary to any but the most severely retarded of tire-changers, I prefer to think of it as a sign of the perfectionism of my gap-toothed benefactor, whose attention to detail is such that he will overlook nothing in order to ensure a satisfied customer and a JOB WELL DONE.

Its always painful, of course, to pack up the boat for the year. This year was no exception. Indeed, this time was more painful than most, on account of the fact that I somehow managed to sprain my ankle but good, as a consequence of jumping off the boat.

By Sunday in the a.m. my foot was all swolled up like some damn Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float in some damn Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade... the toes sticking out like some sort of afterthought... but in and of itself an over-inflated foot isn't really all that comical (despite looking kind of like Popeye's forearm, which is sort of comical)- so I'm somewhat mystified as to why Rob and Steve got such a kick* out of my foot.

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" says Rob. "I know it's not funny... but... it's PRETTY DAMN FUNNY!" Of all the people I know, Rob derives by far the most merriment from the misfortunes of others. Possibly not incoincidentally, Rob is also one of the most generally cheerful guys I know. This particular Sunday we had gone out to breakfast at the New York Grill (the finest breakfast joint in Lorain, Ohio- although that's not saying much- I give it two thumbs!) They offered to help me try and tarp up the boat but I'm all "ah the Hell with that... I'm just gonna go home... oh ow, oh damn my foot hurts..."

"Ha! ha! ha!" Rob says again.

Home, of course, is a total disaster right now: sailbags stacked everywhere, piles of lines: sheets, halliards, outhauls, downhauls, reefing lines, docklines; bags and boxes and buckets everywhere all over the place, crammed with all sorts of gear, gadgets, geegaws and gizmos... not to mention doo-dads ... I pretty much managed to wrestle most of the stuff out of the car, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna shlep all that crap down into the basement with a bum ankle! Screw that! what I ought to do is just move somewhere in the middle of the night and not leave a forwarding address. Yeah, I'd do it, too, alright, if only walking wasn't such a pain.

It's pretty cool how my foot's been turning all these sweet colors- mostly red, of course, but huge swaths of purple and blue and all kind of shades in between. I have a sunset on my foot. The thing to do, see, is get all hepped up on leftover Vicodins and just kind of groove out on all the pretty colors. It's a pretty good deal!

* sorry.

The Great Crash of 2008.

As is so often the case at night, it was dark out. Matter of fact, it was real dark. It was so dark I couldn't hardly see nothing at all. I certainly couldn't see that other dude until he was, like, ten feet in front of me. I don't know if it was me or him that hollered "WHOOOOAHHHHH!" (I'm pretty sure one of us did) then: kapow! The very next thing I knew I was on the ground looking up at the stars, both those in the skies and those in my eyes. If I was a cartoon character, I'll bet I would have had those little cartoon birds circling my noggin!

I've never even heard of a head-on collision between two cyclists before. I'd always just kind of assumed it was cars that I had to worry about.

I hadn't been going all too fast, what with not being able to see where I was going and all, but that other dude must have been seriously moving, because he slammed into me so hard my tail-light broke clean off. My front wheel was all bent to hell, but the other dude's wheel was knocked right out of the forks. So, clearly, I won the crash.

I don't know how it was possible that neither of us got really hurt but somehow that seemed to be the case.

The other dude was surprisingly cool about the whole thing. We inquired civilly about each other's well-being, and felt around the bike trail for any missing body parts. Some other guy, who evidently likes to hang out all by himself by the bike trail after dark, came running up to see if we were okay, and very decently offered a ride home. As myself I prefer not to accept rides from dudes who hang out by themselves by bike paths after dark, I politely declined his offer and, after shaking the last lingering stars out of my head, I set off pushing my poor bike back the way I'd come from, back to my parents' house.

In the morning's light I could better inspect the damage. I ended up having to buy a whole new front wheel- the old one was just too mangled, with a big old dent in the rim, and my bike helmet is now spiderwebbed with a network of cracks. Better that than my head I guess. And what's more I even decided to spring for a headlight this time.

My shoulders and neck are all kinds of sore today.

Ever had some giant monkey mistake you for a Rubik's cube, and try to solve you? That's how I feel today.

So, to reprise a semi-occasional topic that semi-occasionally appears in this space: What I got In The Mail Today.

Gold.

Ha ha, yes! I bought some real mail order Gold. This is because lately all my investments have turned out to be crap. Stocks, of course, are in the crapper these days, and as savings accounts don't pay a rate of interest equal to the rate of inflation, savings accounts are a losing proposition. Their only (and somewhat dubious) claim-to-fame is that they don't lose money quite so spectacularly rapidly as do stock funds these days. What's a guy to do! Obviously, what a guy should do is emulate my personal financial guru, Scrooge McDuck, and obtain a swimming pool full of gold coins in which to do high-dives. Doubloons! Pieces of Eight! Arr, matey, there's romance in them there gold!

Now I, too, can sit there like Midas counting my gold coins. "One... Two... Three.." I'll say, and then I'll start again: "One... Two... Three..." This is because I only have three gold coins. That was all I could afford.

Fun as counting to three is, sooner or later the best thing to do with Gold is stash it somewhere, and hope you remember later where you stashed it.* I stashed mine in the sugar jar. I stashed my in the flour bin. I know it'll be safe there! Who would look in a flour bin for Gold? Seriously though it is not in the sugar jar. That was a typo. Seriously though just stay the fuck away from my sugar jar, okay? Thanks.

*Did you ever find a twenty that you stashed a decade ago, maybe in like a book or something, a book that you never read, and you've totally forgotten about stashing the twenty, and then for some reason one day you pick up the book and there it is? Isn't that so totally sweet? Isn't the joy of finding a forgotten twenty far far greater than that pain (which you never felt anyway) of forgetting about stashing the twenty in the first place? Maybe I'll just scatter my gold about in random hidey-holes around the house and forget about it. Just think about how happy I'll be when I'm, like, eighty six or some shit, and find a gold coin in the heating register!

By one of those strange paradoxes, the best sailing days are often those very exact days that nobody goes to their boats.

Saturday, for example. The only people on the whole of E-dock were Joe and Phyllis (who is generally called "Audrey" by her family, for reasons which remain at large), Dave and Roseann, and myself. Joe was telling me about some cruise he had been on, possibly on Friday?- I didn't catch quite when- about how they were just flying along and how it just felt like they were floating.

"Good" I says, "You should always feel like you're floating, you know, when you're on your boat."

Dave, who for some reason had stuck his head up through his hatch at this exact moment, caught the exchange, said "Yeah, you don't want to get that sinking feeling, ha ha" and disappeared back down into his hatch.

Joe looked mildly irritated, but merely said "Yeah ,well, we're going out for a sail here in a little bit... Wanna come?"

"Thanks Joe, but I think I'm going to take my boat out."

There was such a nice breeze, fifteen, twenty or so out of the north-east, that it would have been positively criminal to have a sailboat and not go sailing. Joe, evidently of the same opinion, shoved off with Phyllis/Audrey to go sailing. Soon afterwards, I was shoving off myself to do a little singlehanded sailing. First stop: the fuel dock, to get a pumpout. As I'm there, who motors by but Steve in the Blue Dragon!

"Huw! Jump aboard! Give me a hand docking, will ya!"

He swings right by the end of the dock and I hop on- Steve has just come from Kelleys, five and a half hours on the water. "Steve! after we dock your boat, why don't you come out on mine?"

"Aw jeeze, you know I'd love to, but I've just been out for five and a half hours... there's five foot waves... I'm kinda beat..."

"Steve.... ?"

"Oh all right, I'll come."

Back at Old Alt on the fuel dock, Steve borrowed my cell phone to tell Marianne that he'd be late. It started to rain. "Oh and honey, can your bring me some dry shoes when you come?"

The rain didn't last long before it kind of petered out into a misty drizzle, but it was enough to send Joe scurrying back in. As he passed the fuel dock we hollered out "What's it like out there?!", but if Joe said anything back it was lost under the throb of the diesels. Although I think I saw him give the "thumbs-down" sign.

When we got out there, the drizzle past over fairly quickly, and we were left with the delightful breeze and the splendid waves. They were every bit of the five footers Steve had warned of, but this sort of weather is specifically made to order for Cape Dories. We simply crashed through the larger waves, sending jets of spray twenty foot to leeward, but remarkably little came back aft: Old Alt is a singularly well-mannered boat. With the genny furled, just main and staysail flying, the sails are self-tacking, so all you have to do is steer. So simple even I can do it! Along we flew, doing high fives and low sixes. "You know, Huw, I'm sure glad you talked me into this!" There is nothing better than Autumn sailing; you're not broiling under the hot sun, the flies are gone, the winds are generally perky, and also the flies are gone. You have that bittersweet tinge that this might be the last perfect weekend of the season, you might not even get the chance to sail again till spring.

Coming back to the dock, Joe and Phyllis were waiting to give us a hand docking. People are always like that here, always ready to give you a hand, although I think that in some cases its only to watch the fun as some incompetent comes barrelling in, screaming at his wife, and desperately trying not to cause too much damage.

Another sailing paradox is that the skill with which you dock your boat is inversely proportional to the number of onlookers. You bring it in perfectly, there's never anyone there to witness it. You make a hash of it, there's always a crowd on hand gawking and guffawing. So with Joe, Phyllis AND Steve about, I felt kind of nervous. The odds were not in my favour.

But in spite of it all, Old Alt came in perfectly- despite the wind, she came in so softly, you could have had laid an egg alongside the rail and it wouldn't have cracked against the dock. It would have fallen into the lake of course, but it wouldn't have cracked.

In what passes all belief, I actually received a letter today from Clement W. Pyles, Attorney-at-Law, containing an actual check from my Crazy Ex Landlord! Staggeringly, it didn't even seem to be written with exploding ink or be sprinkled with anthrax spores or anything! Granted, the check still has to clear the bean-counters at the bank before I can consider the case officially closed- and I wouldn't put it past Isabella to pull some sort of deranged last minute stunt- but it appears that I am finally done with my C.X.L. and all her attendant lunacy, a mere 183 days after I won my judgment, 543 days after I left that apartment!

For reasons best known to Isabella, she actually wrote the check for a full twenty seven dollars above the agreed sum, although I'm guessing that whatever those reasons are, they probably have something to do with the vast raging gulf of insanity between her ears.

She also got the date wrong.


Naturally, with all those long-anticipated simoleons rattling around the old banco accounto, I felt somewhat indulgent coming home from work. I stopped by Target (it sounds classier if you give it a French pronunciation: tar-JAY) and I must admit I went a little bit overboard- I got a box of Hello Kitty (R) bandaids, on Clearance for only $2.48! You just know a boo-boo has to get better that much quicker if you give it a Hello Kitty (R) bandaid... This only stands to reason.

Well that was a fine weekend, I must say.

The folks opted out- what with their electricity still being out- although personally I should have thought that if your electricity goes out (and this means that your TV goes out too, remember) you'd say "The heck with this!", lock up the old homestead and head for greener pastures. Possibly the folks have grown fond of sitting around in candlelight and staring at each other?

I should point out that some freak wind-storm blew through town last weekend, and knocked out power to at least twelve people I know, and also at work. The newspapers suggested that more people- possibly even a couple hundred thousand or so- also lost power, although myself I can't vouch for the veracity of that report. Turns out that Hurricane Ike struck Galveston TX or some shit, thereby knocking out power to Central Ohio.

Anyways, Myfanwi and I set sail Friday in the a.m. to sail to Middle Bass. We had a delightful wind for the first hour and a half or so, zipping along at six and a half knots. Sadly, we began to lose our wind, going slower and slower, till finally we had nothing left but slapping sails and banging spars. You can't get anywhere going 1.2 knots. We had to start the engine. And motor we did- I've never once been able to go all the way to the islands and back under sail alone, a fact which is sufficient by itself to disprove Leibniz' proposition that this is the best of all possible worlds.

We got to Burgundy Bay about four thirty or so, or sixteen thirty or so I should say- what a delightful little marina! Only about 30 boats or so, but how exquisitely charming! I tell Bob (the proprietor) as much, adding as how I'd never even so much as heard of the place before. "Well, you know, this is a private club.... We don't allow transients in... if it wasn't that you were here visiting the Rotheys, we wouldn't allow you in..." The dockage fee was a preposterously small $20.

Speaking of the Rotheys, Scott showed up shortly afterwards- he had seen us come in, and indeed had been jumping up and down on the shore. Myfanwi and I had confessed to each other that we were both secretly afraid that meeting the Rotheys might prove to be awkward, as neither of us had seen them in thirty years and although they had been a fixture in our childhood they were really our parents' friends, not ours. But Scott quickly dispelled such fears. My goodness, it's pretty clear why the folks liked the Rotheys. They are eminently likeable people.

Scott took us back to his place, an unbelievably beautiful cottage right on the lake, with views of Rattlesnake Island and Sugar Island. Martie showed up about then, and I even recognized her from my childhood! We had a fabulous dinner watching the sun set over the lake and talking about the half-forgotten figures of my past, Davey Bruck, Brian Sekora (with his gold tooth), the Trices, Pooftah, all the rest. The weather, apart from the lack of wind, was ideal. I wish my parents could have been there.

The way back was again plagued with windlessness. We left Saturday in the pm and motored to Huron, the first time I've ever come into a strange harbour after dark. The people in Huron proved to be snooty- no problem, fuck them, we're off bright and early. About Vermillion the breeze picked up, we spoke, we saw Capt. Rob, and we flew eastwards. We got home in time for me to drive Myfanwi to the airport in time.

It turns out that I am from the future.

We had been making plans for ages that we were going to sail out to Middle Bass Island, me and my sister, where my folks' longtime friends the Rotheys (Scott and Martie) have some sort of house, cottage or domicile, and the folks were going to take a ferry up (they not relishing the idea of sailing six hours) and we were all going to have a nice jolly time of it. THAT WAS THE PLAN. Myfanwi was going to fly into Cleveland Hopkins on Thurs., at 7:30.

"So, ya gonna be there to pick me up? ... I'll be there at 7:30 ... " And I'm all like "7:30? Jeez, I don't know... by the time I get off work .... jeez I don't know ..." I mean, I gotta work, if I'm taking Friday off. So she's saying all this noise like "what, I got ta sit around Cleveland doing nothing? Sheee-oot! Why don't you just leave work early... Shit!..."

So I'm all "Jeez, look, I'll be there when I get there" (an answer that, all things considered, didn't really seem to suit Myfanwi, if her audible "Snoot!" was anything to go by) but then I proceeded to bust my ass! I worked like ten demons to get all my shit taken care of at work! I'm telling you, I was like some kind of goddam machine! I would be there- waiting for her- if it was the last thing i ever did!

So- all my job-related-tasks all well in hand, I went 'round to the folks to get my car. "got to drive up there RIGHT now!" I says, "can't let our little princess wait...", unnecessarily sarcastically. My Dad looked at me with that querulous, bemused expression that he often has when he has no idea what the hell nonsense it is I'm talking about. "'Our little princess'?" It's true I've never referred to my sister in such terms before. "Well" I say, to change the subject, "so, when are you driving up? Tomorrow?"

Sadly, this befuddles poor old Pops even more. "Driving up? Up to where?" He really seems to have no idea, poor guy. I sigh, and patiently remind him that we are all going up to meet the Rothey's. "What? Are you taking a whole week off?" he replies, exasperatingly. How can he be so out of touch! I mean, seriously! "No, Dad... We've had this planned for ages... Go up to the Rothey's... you remember..." I don't even know what to say...

"What? Up to the Rothey's? No..." he tells me, "No, I think that's planned for next week."

I didn't believe him at first of course, but all the ancillary evidence comes thudding home! Like when I spoke to Rapid, saying how it was now almost three weeks since the C.X.L. had settled, but I still hadn't got a check and Rapid was all "Three weeks? Hmm, I thought it was only two?" And like when I called Scott Rothey to confirm our plans, and told him that the weather forecast didn't look so good for next weekend, and Scott was all "Oh, okay, hmm.. okay", as though he was too polite too suggest that next weekend's forecast was rather irrelevant to our plans for the weekend after?

It was difficult to believe at first, of course, but now I clearly see that lately I have been living in the future. One week in the future, to be exact. Either that, or I'm some damn kind of moron.

There is no other explanation that makes any sense.

I don't regret being from the future, but I can't help but think that it would have been nice if I could have thought about writing down next week's winning Lottery number.

I got a call from Rapid today- the Crazy Ex Landlady has agreed to settle on our terms!

Apparently as late as last week, the C.X.L's attorney Clement W. Pyles was still labouring under the absurd misconception that he could somehow talk us into settling for $223, a sum which is over five hundred dollars less than the original judgment- a judgment, I remind you, that I had ALREADY WON. Possibly he came to this amount through a defect in arithmetic skills, I don't know, but it certainly illustrates how far he's fallen from those heady days when he was threatening countersuits and demanding I abandon my victorious judgment.

Much of this change in attitude, I suspect, came about when Rapid shared with Mr Pyles the contents of my Evidence Shoebox. That same mass of cancelled checks, lease copies, chinese take-out menus and whatnot which had first convinced myself, next the Honorable Antonio Paat, and then Rapid of the righteousness of my cause had a similiar effect on Mr Pyles himself, and faced with this unassailable mass of documentary evidence, Mr Pyles must have glumly come to the conclusion that for his client to still be protesting her innocence, she must be as crazy batshit insane as everybody keeps saying she is. (I kind of like to picture Clement W. Pyles, Attorney-at-Law (whom I've never met) as sporting an impressive snow-white handlebar mustache, looking like Wilford Brimley maybe, if Wilford Brimley sported an impressive snow-white handlebar mustache. Also I'm pretty sure he wears a hat)

From recent conversations with Rapid, I got the idea that Mr. Pyles had been hinting to Rapid lately that he (Mr Pyles) fully realized that their threatened counter-suit was patently ridiculous, and now that he was faced with incontrovertible evidence that Isabella had failed to refund my deposit as required by law and common decency, he probably didn't relish the idea of standing before a judge and having to think up something to say that didn't sound too pathetic. In fact I got the idea that the only thing stopping Mr Pyles from accepting whatever terms we should choose to offer on the spot was that he was obliged to get his client's consent first and to do that meant that he'd have to hammer at least a glimpse of reality through Isabella's Armour of Insanity. No wonder he was so glum!

With court slated for next Wednesday, he only just came in under the wire. Not that I really expect to receive a check in the mail anytime soon- I'm sure my C.X.L. still has untapped reserves of idiocy to bring to bear- but in theory, at any rate, they have accepted our terms.

Our terms are the amount of the original judgment.

What with my being male and all, I sometimes find that I exhibit some of the cartoonish stereotypes frequently attributed to males by those who prefer their humor simplistic. For example: I often start "hey let's build something" type projects- and don't get around to finishing them!

Just considering the boat, the Active File contains (at least) the following projects in various stages of incompletion:

-The new and rebuilt 'fridge. (which has reached the satisfactory stage in which the ice-box is now well enough insulated to keep ice for three days or more, although on the other hand anything you put into the ice-box comes out tasting like epoxy)

-An Ingenious Sea-going Rack for the Stowage and Preservation of Wineglasses

-Redoing and Varnishing the Cabin Sole

-Rewiring the Mast (technically complete, although the wires aren't actually hooked up to anything)

-Constructing a Canvas Sun-Awning

-And Much More!

This list excludes, of course, all the myriad bits of splicing or sewing or rope-work that I've sort of been meaning to finish up if only it wasn't such a pain in the ass to do so, and also those more lofty projects which remain in the Planning Stage, where- in some cases- they've been germinating for years.

I mention all of this, not because it is the least bit interesting, but because I wish you to realize what a momentous thing it is that I can report that I have actually finished a project. Yes! The swimming-ladder is complete! And a beautiful article it is, too, all shining stainless and gleaming varnished oak! You can hook it up to the side of the boat through these clever connectors of my own design, and you can climb up and, if you like, climb back down again.

Or at least you could have, until Saturday. I was showing my swimming-ladder to Dave, and the blasted thing slipped right from my hands and with a soggy "Sploop!" sank from sight, lost in the lake for ever!!

I shall have to make a new one.

Ah well, I needed a new project anyway.

Well, what a delightful weekend it was for sailing! Saturday was really quite splendid as Myfanwi and I zipped lakewards with a reef in the main. The NOAA Weather Radio Robot-Man was repeatedly and unemphatically bleating his mechanically voiced storm warning for the central lake-shore counties. Robot-Man- a Dr. Spocklike creature of cold logic- is obsessed with facts that (like , for example, windspeeds) that can be expressed in numbers. Bless his transistorized heart, he fails to realize that the magic of sailing- indeed, the very point of going sailing- is to have wind, and to have wind in abundance. I don't care what the speed of the wind is, numerically, so long as the answer is "enough". No matter how monotone his voice as he bleats his warning, Robot Man would not deter us from a good sailing breeze! Out we went, until we realized how frankly ominous the purple sky looked in the north. "Well, maybe we oughta tack, stay closer to shore". The sky was turning a vivid Apocalyptic shade of ugly, and all the fishing boats which had so lately been cluttering the horizon were racing for harbour just as fast as ever they could. Even with only a reefed main and staysail, we were making better than six knots! Truly, there is no better time to be out in a small craft than when they issue a Small Craft Advisory!

Back inside the breakwall I got the sails down just minutes before the squall broke, with forty knot winds and horizontal rain... no time to leave the helm now to get my fancy new foulies.... I was getting wetter than a fish's galoshes! Obviously it would be foolish to even think of returning to my slip under such conditions.... We were turning about in the inner harbour when I saw Rich on the fuel dock shouting and waving his arms around like some deranged meth freak doing jumping jacks- we were only about thirty or so feet from him, Old Alt parallel to the dock, and so I let the wind blow us sideways down to the dock and Rich helped us tie up, and we hung out in the fuel shed until the squall blew over, all of us drenched to the bone and laughing.

Sunday was, if possible, an even better day for sailing! Steve joined us and we went out, cautious at first, with the genny half furled. It was blowing in the twenties and more, sure. About four miles out we met up with Rob, coming back from Kelleys singlehanded in his lovely Irwin 30 and Lou (who had gone out to meet Rob) in his lovely Sabre 28. "Man! Lou's boat just flies!" says Steve, but a day like this is a day that's just made for a Cape Dory. We seldom went under six, occasionally hitting the low sevens. Steve kept asking me to luff up so he could talk to Rob, but really, there'd be no excuse for such a shocking waste of such breeze. Instead, we shook the reef out the genny and simply walked away from Rob and Lou, leaving them far, far astern. "Lou's boat- that sure is one fast boat!", says Steve, squinting as Lou's boat became more and more indistinct due to its steadily increasing distance behind us.

After tacking around, all three of our boats lined up for the dead downwind run back to harbour, Rob first, then us, and then Lou, with his little speedster, bringing up the rear - all of us wing-on-wing, a glorious sight. Even dead downwind, we were doing five and a quarter knots.

After we got back, Joe and Phyllis invited Myfanwi and Steve and I around to their boat for cocktails and apps., which was an entirely satisfying conclusion to an entirely satisfying day.

Years ago I was hitch-hiking in the hinterlands of Minnesota when a van-load of teen-aged Bible enthusiasts picked me up. Perhaps they were going to a revival, or maybe off to compete in a Biblympics somewhere? I don't know, but I can tell you this: those kids, they sure loved their Bibles!

As you might imagine, it wasn't long before conversation drifted around to subjects Biblical. Sure, like any right-thinking American I'd seen my share of Cecil B. DeMille films and all, but other than that, it was kind of a wash. When I was a kid my parents possibly might once have had a bible somewhere, but if they did I'm pretty sure I never read it.

Oh, but how this excited my new-found friends! I was virgin territory, evangelically speaking! In two shakes, they were already ponying up money... taking up a collection...real honest-to-goodness dollars!... all so's I could go and buy myself a Bible! They were so thrilled! I was all like "no, seriously, you don't gotta do that" but they were all like "no, really, its no big deal! Just take it!" They were falling all over each other to give me cash! They were practically throwing the money at me! This was the exact opposite of my understanding of how Religion usually worked.

Then one of them gets the big idea that they don't got to give me money to buy a Bible-THEY GOT PLENTY OF BIBLES RIGHT THERE ON HAND! They got Bibles practically all over the place! Why, you couldn't walk three steps without tripping over a stack of 'em! In addition to their own personal Bible stashes, they had the Big Box 'O Bibles in the back, and doubtless additional bibles hidden throughout the van in case of emergencies. Gosh how their eyes lit up- surely this was the will of the Almighty! They started digging through their bibles, trying to find the edition most suitable for such a lamb as I. The King James Version? The New Standard Revised Version? I had had no idea there were so many variations of the word of God, each one GUARANTEED TRUE! I'm telling you, these guys were real connoisseurs! They knew their shit-no fooling!

In the end, they decided on a nice well-thumbed NIV bible for me. The more enlightening passages already pre-underlined for my convenience! You couldn't ask for a gospeller gospel!What with all the excitement, they even forgot to ask for their money back!

I have no idea whatever happened to the Bible they gave me.

The $12? Why, I blew it all on crystal meth and dancing girls, of course.

Landlords! What is it with them, anyway?

My sister is coming into town next weekend, bringing Megan and Ed along, so we can all go for a nice sail over the long holiday weekend, maybe go cruising up around the islands or something. We have been planning this -literally- for weeks. Weeks, I tell you! But I'm sad to report that our plans may be derailed by the devious machinations of my sister's landlord.

She's long had problems with that gentleman, as she has a rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan for which she pays an astonishingly low sum- five hundred a month, or thereabouts- and her landlord, not unreasonably, suspects that if only Myfanwi were out of the picture he could rent that self same apartment for well over a thousand, although maybe he might have to actually fix something first, and from past experience it turns out fixing things in her apartment doesn't seem to rank very high on his list of priorities.

Anyways, the latest plot from hatched from his black, black soul has been to not cash the last couple rent checks she sent and then turn around and sue her for non-payment of rent. Despite having several months of rent-checks in his very clutches, the fiend! My sister has been told that the court date is set for next Monday, and as she can't very well be cavorting about the islands AND sitting in court at the same time, this dastardly scheme is highly likely to put the kibosh on our holiday plans!

I told her to get a continuance- as my own landlord-related woes have been dragging on now for donkey's years, I can't imagine the wheels of justice turning so quick as to require her presence on that particular day, but she sounded kind of dubious about the prospects of success.

Speaking of blackhearted landlords, my very own Crazy Ex Landlady's lawyer Clement W. Pyles called me the other day. My CXL has turned down my generous offer of settlement, and we will meet again- in court!- on the 23rd July. Although Mr Pyles mentioned that probably he would have that postponed, as he would need to review the court records of the original trial. Evidently, poor man, all he knows about the case is what he has been told by my C.X.L. And she is NOTORIOUSLY INSANE.

He also informed me that they will press a counter-claim for nine hundred or so, although he did, decently enough, offer to drop the countersuit if I in turn dropped my claim, a claim for which I have ALREADY won a judgment. As my suit is based on reason, truth, and the Landlord-Tenant Act, and their claim is based upon nothing short of the most goggle-eyed lunacy, I declined his offer. He repeated his request that I provide him with a copy of the lease- my C.X.L. apparently not thinking such a document worth retaining- and told me further that I had to do so. I told him that I would do no such thing without I spoke to my attorney first. Or at least I tried to, but he cut me off in the middle with "ok, bye" and hung up. What a disagreeable little insect nice man.

So I called up Rapid, to tell him the news. Rapid- of course- rallied round, of course he will represent me, and informed me that to get the lease, Mr Pyles would have to serve me with papers formally requesting it, and had to do so at least twenty-five days before the hearing. As the days twixt now and then are dwindling, and as Rapid observed that as our adversaries are unpleasant, it would be just as well if I didn't volunteer a copy, as there is no need to make things any easier for them.

Also in the landlord front, the sign out front my building has changed from "FOR SALE" to "SALE PENDING". My current landlord Jane, the one stand-up decent landlord I've ever had, is selling the place out from under me! (not to disparage my former landlord Pat- he was as decent as ever you could ask. But on the other hand, he was so lazy that he never even raised the rent. Laudable as this unprecedented talent for indolence is, laudable at least where rent (and the raising thereof) is concerned, I leave it to you to imagine his approach to "fixing a roof that's so damn leaky that my ceiling collapsed right on to the damn floor". Hint: if you think the answer involves "doing nothing much" you are probably on the right track.)

I can't help but think that, given my and my relations' experience with landlords, that there can be no good whatsoever that comes from Jane selling the place. I wish her all the best, of course, but I'm distraught to lose her. My future (pending?) landlord will, no doubt, be an average landlord. And with "average" being (mathematically) synonymous with "mean", I can't think that this change will be for the better.

Friday was the big day, launch day in fact. How delightful to be in the water again! For the first time ever, I had decided to step the mast myself this year, with the little hand-crank crane they have. Obviously, for an operation like that, you need to gather a crowd of the right sort, so that other people do the the actual work whilst you supervise. By "supervise", of course, I mean "sit on your ass and drink beer". Fortunately, mast-raising is the kind of boat-related labour which your fellow sailors actually want to assist with- unlike, say, waxing the topsides or scraping crud off the hull- and I had no shortage of people who promised assistance. Indeed I could have rigged Noah's Ark itself had everybody showed up who said they would. Tim, Rich, Bob, Dave and RoseAnn, David, Steve all volunteered - unasked- for the privilege of providing unpaid labor.


In the event, the key volunteer was Don, a fellow I didn't even know beforehand, although I'm sure I'd seen him around. He was working on his mast in the yard, while I was working on mine side-by-side not fifteen feet away. We got to talking and the conversation (perhaps unsurprisingly) drifted over to the subject of masts. It turned that we were both of us stepping later that day! Naturally, I offered to be of whatever feeble assistance I could be, and Don very decently returned the offer. And it turned out that Don's end of the tacit bargain was far far more generous than my puny offer of assistance. For unlike myself, and unlike all my other hopeful rigger's apprentices, Don actually had practical experience in the stepping of masts, and further he had a variety of unforeseen-but-clearly-necessary devices to streamline the process. Everything from an ingenious mast-trolley to cart the mast from yard to crane to the machine-oil required for lubricating the ancient cranking machinery on the crane. A very valuable ally, is Don.

So I helped Don, his wife Rose, and his friend Bob step his mast- he has a Columbia 28, a beautiful little vessel. Steve- honest fellow!- showed up right about then to help, so Rose and Bob's wife Joan could go sit down and drink Mimosas while Don, Bob, Steve and I tackled my mast.

(Later, Steve, Rich, Rich's brother and myself stepped Rich's mast. I'm getting to be pretty accomplished in the esoteric arts of mast-steppery. And then I went sailing).

Everybody knows that my crazy ex landlord is completely batshit insane. But what I'm beginning to think is that her attorney, Clement W. Pyles, may not be paddling with both oars in the water either.

For those of your who may not have been following along at home, my crazy ex-landlord (hereafter referred to as C.X.L.) isn't exactly thrilled about being on the losing end of our ongoing legal battle, and so has retained the services of the illustrious Mr Pyles, apparently in order to funnel even more of her money right down the drain. I received a letter from said Clement W. Pyles today, a letter filled with some especially choice gems of incompetence. Particularly risible was his contention that, in my tenancy with Isabelle, my security deposit was $500 per month. No doubt there are some renters whose leases require them to plunk down a deposit each and every month, but I imagine that such cases are tolerably rare; I suspect most tenants in Ohio pay just one deposit, at the beginning of the lease, and thereafter merely pay rent on the monthly basis. This was certainly the case with me, although the deposit in question amounted to somewhat more than $500. Curiously, the amount which Isabelle (belatedly) returned to me wasn't $500 either, but I'll chalk up the difference to general moronicism on the part of her and Mr Pyles.

Then Mr Pyles went on (in his letter) saying that in any event it was a mistake that she returned anything; actually, what she had meant to do (but I guess had forgotten to do) was charge me $900 and some change because of damage my bicycle caused, and that if I didn't just drop my claims and walk away, she will countersue me.

Granted, if left unattended, a bicycle can go shockingly awry, wreaking immense destruction left and right (that's after all why we cyclists generally lock them up when we aren't riding them) it seems to me rather odd that only now- after I've been out of Isabelle's place for well over a year, and have in addition won a judgment against her, that she recalls that my bike ALLEGEDLY may have behaved badly.

So once again I called up Rapid- a good and true man, an attorney who could out-lawyer this two-bit blackguard pettifogger Pyles with one hand and a couple of fingers tied behind his back- and while Rapid had some impenetrable legalistic terms, even including such rigamarole as a "statue of limitations" (must be quite a beautiful sculpture, seeing as how it HAS BEEN MADE INTO LAW), his professional opinion was much the same as my unprofessional one: viz, that Mr Pyles' threat was a ridiculous and transparent bluff.

So! Time to call Mr Pyles! Mr Pyles was somewhat surprised to learn of my opinion that $500 was not in fact the amount of the original deposit, and further seemed rather fascinated that I had something called "a copy of the lease", which apparently would settle the question of the deposit once and for all. He was all a-quiver! Could he see this, he asked? Could he see this "lease", of which I spoke so highly? "Oh, I'm sure my crazy ex lan--, I mean, I'm sure Isabelle has a copy- hasn't she provided you with one?" Mr Pyles informed me that no, she hadn't, and in fact she didn't seem to possess a copy, which was unfortunate, it was very sad indeed, but he should very much like to see a copy regardless, and would be very grateful should I be so good to fax him one.

As much as I dislike disappointing my fellow man, I told him that I didn't have a copy with me (I was on the phone at the time, after all), and further that I had no intention whatsoever of walking away from the judgment- I would perhaps settle for $100 less, just to get it all over and done with- but if Isabelle insists on appealing the judgment, and if we go back to court, state law allows me to ask for "reasonable attorney's fees". I hadn't claimed that before, as I had been self-represented, but now that Isabelle has engaged such an EMINENT LEGAL SCHOLAR as yourself, well, I would be a fool to go before the court without counsel, wouldn't I?. Naturally I would therefore ask for reasonable attorney fees in addition to the judgment.

Rapid deserves no less, he is reasonablest attorney I know.

Well today I had lunch with my co-worker Brandon. He swore me to secrecy of course but I hardly expect that that should apply to posting shit on the Internet. See, Brandon- who does a lot of the technical stuff for the computers at work- was telling me about one of our fellow employees-a colleague, if you will- guy named Matt, a nice enough guy, you know, pleasant enough, a polite well-mannered young man. Now, I'm a bit vague on what exactly it is that Matt is supposed to be doing for the company, but I'm prepared to accept that whatever it is he that he is supposed to be doing is probably pretty dull stuff. At any rate, Matt has apparently decided (and I daresay he's probably correct on this) that whatever his legitimate work is it is nowhere near as interesting as watching hot girl-on-girl naked action on his computer all day long. Turns out that porno is just as close as the nearest Internet! Just imagine! And Matt has an Internet right there on his very computer! (And for the record, no, I don't think that watching sexy porno stuff is what they hired him to do.)

Now, I'm blessed with an open mind, so if a man wants to spend his workaday hours frequenting websites with names like tightteens dot com, more power to him, I say! It was personal initiative, and the refusal to toe the company line, that was the sort of thing that made America great, back in the days when America was great! But really, I think that if you're going to be doing this sort of thing at work, you might want to clear out the history page of your browser every now and again. Jeeze Louise! What a moron!! They totally busted him redhanded! Okay, well maybe not REDhanded, if you know what I mean (and I think you do) but he is totally busted and is going to stay busted!

We were absolutely howling away about it at lunch... I should say, Matt does live with his girlfriend... Possibly she's one of those rare females who finds it irritating when her boyfriend spends every waking hour ogling photos of women degraded to mere sexualized objects? Maybe his girlfriend's just not hot and/or lesbian enough for his liking? Whatever the case may be, obviously, she's so shrewish and tyrannical that she's browbeat Matt to such an extent that he only dares to indulge his perv fantasies at work. Instead of wasting his work time by screwing around looking at internet cartoons like everyone else.

Next Friday almost everyone is taking the day off because of the long weekend- myself included, by the way, I'm launching that day, be gone all weekend- and Friday afternoon it seems that Matt is the only person will be working in the office. So Dennis (whose pure mind, of course, is completely innocent of any notion of Matt's ... um .... preferred leisure activities) is asking "So nobody's working but Matt next Friday? what exactly do they think he's going to do here, all by himself??"

And Brandon looks at me and we lock eyes and it's about all either of us can do to not just completely bust up laughing...

Okay, so well I went and saw X last night. I'd tell you all about it but the truth of it is I'm kind of wore out today. So instead, I'll just cut and paste my impressions of the last time I went and saw X- from my Top Secret Personal Files. I'm sure X will forgive me the repetition; after all, it's not like they bothered to come up with anything new for their act this time, either. Oh and by the way, the opening act was different this time so feel free to disregard most of the following.

13 Aug. 2006

Back in the day, I had a little lizard, Larry- Larry the Lizard, actually he was an anole (genus anolis), who lived in one of them big ol' jugs that cheap wine comes in. At least I think he was a he, it's kind of hard to tell with lizards. Anyways, he'd perch there on his stick, all lizardy and leathery, and glare balefully at the world outside his bottle through his malevolent, unblinking eyes- graceless posture, abrupt and jerkily spastic movement, a fondness for eating flies. I'm telling you this because for all the world Larry was exactly what Henry Rollins reminded me of Friday night, when I saw Henry and his band, the accurately (if somewhat unimaginitively) named Henry Rollins Band at the House of Blues in Cleveland. The shaven-headed and inexcusably shirtless Mr. Rollins scowled and snarled his way through what, just possibly, was the lamest and least rockingest hard-core show in the history of ever. The singer, who must be pushing fifty or so, bellowed out his songs of teen-age angst and alienation while striking of variety of lizardesque poses and grimaces which I imagine were intended to be "intense" or whatever, but really just came across as comical and somewhat pathetic. Doofus! The band apparently never got the memo that in hard-core shows, you really ought to shoot for a tempo a little faster than that of, say, a Lynrd Skynerd cover band on cough syrup. They even had a drum solo (I know!) which kind of threw me for a loop. I mean, it not being 1978 anymore, I didn't even dream that people still did drum solos. I was thinking it was just yet another bad song. All in all I just bout crapped myself laughing at them, especially seeing as how every time I saw the (air-quote) singer (air-unquote)I pictured my lizard up there on stage. So if you're a big fan of the Henry Rollins Band, well, I'm sorry to have be the one to break the news to you but really they pretty much just suck.

Needless to say, I didn't swing by Cleveberg merely in order to catch H. Rollins and crew. Granted, I hadn't known that they would be so freakin' HILARIOUS, but even so I probably wouldn't have crossed the street to see them. The plan was to see the headlining act, X, who I haven't seen in forever for the perfectly good reason that they broke up a forever ago. So I took me a detour on the way to Lorain and swung through Cleve-o-pork-chop-o-lis. Billy Zoom just sort of stood there, and beamed benevolently- if somewhat simplemindedly- at the crowd, like the retarded uncle who shows up at family reunions and doesn't really have anything much to say. DJ Bonebreak is getting far too bald and far too grey to still go by a name like "DJ Bonebreak". Exene looks like she's led a hard life of dissipation and intemperance (which, to be fair, she probably has). John Doe looked sharp. Anyways, they tore through all the old hits just like you'd expect but they really sounded pretty good.

THE CHAIN OF CIRCUMSTANCE:
A STORY WITH A MORAL


As I was already running late Friday morning, it was with no great pleasure that I noted my trusty bicycle had developed a flat tire over the night, for reasons which still remain mysterious. I had no time to deal with it right then and there; I had to run to catch the bus so that I would only be my usual twenty minutes or so late to work. After work, I'd have to find a way to get my bike to the shop. I mean, if it was just the flat I'd fix it myself of course, but I needed to get the front wheel trued anyway- I managed to bend it up pretty good by smacking into a massive great pothole a week or so ago. It was a pothole bigger than a fatman's bathtub, but you can't blame me for not noticing the pothole. Not when there was a pretty girl RIGHT THERE ON THE SIDEWALK next to it, just a-moseying along, clearly with no other reason for being there than to divert the eyeballs of hapless bicyclists, thereby luring us straight into the pothole. What else could she possibly have been doing there? Siren!

(Now, no doubt some of you are reading this and thinking "Saaa-ay! This riding smack into a huge gaping pothole thing: is this an effective way of impressing pretty girls? Tell me this is something I need to know" Sadly I must report: No It Is Not. Basically, pretty girls just kind of smirk and keep on walking.)

Anyways, there is a only short window of opportunity between the time I get out of work and the time the bike shop closes up for the day, and during that brief span of time the clouds opened up and it simply POURED DOWN LIKE CRAZY! Well, no way was I going to walk fifteen blocks in the pissing rain pushing a disabled bicycle! I have my dignity! Alas- this weekend shall be bikeless...

The rain relented shortly after the bike shop closed- too late for me of course, but it was forecast to rail steadily up at the lake until late Saturday. So I figured there wasn't a whole lot of point driving up there first thing- instead, I decided to go to the gym in the morning and then drive up later. With the bike out of commission, I had to drive to the gym- only to find out that I'd forgotten to bring change for the meter.

"Oh, bother!" I cried. "I've forgotten to bring change for the meter!"

So I had to drive off twelve blocks or so to find streets without meters. By coincidence, it just so happened I found a nice spot right by my old apartment, on Third Street. As I walked past my old place - good times! - who do I run into but my old landlord Pat! It's always great to run into old Pat - especially when he says "Hey! Don't I still owe you that $300? Wait here- let me grab my checkbook!"

Three hundred smackers! I'd pretty much given up on ever seeing those particular simoleons again, and here they are practically falling out of a clear blue dreary gray sky! And you know what, without that parade of inconveniences and setbacks- my oversleeping, the flat tire, the pretty girl, the bent rim, the shitty weather, the lack of change- if it weren't for every single event, happening in exactly the sequence ordained by Fate, I'd never have been in exact place at the exact time to run into Pat and I'd never have seen my three hundred rutabagas again! Everything happens for a purpose!

The moral to this story? Well, I should have thought it would have been obvious: For that series of petty irritations, clearly, to put up with all that I DESERVE A HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN A MEASLY 300 BUCKS.

Clearly.

Ah, this weekend I went up to untarp Old Alt! The season has finally commenced!

Old Alt was lovely as ever, of course, but there have been sinister change afoot! At the yacht club, Terry the Barmaid was all "Huw! How are you doing! How was your winter! Give me a hug!- Oh, by the way, you're not welcome here any more... you'll have to leave." No, it was nothing personal, no egregious transgression on my part- they know me pretty well there, and there's little I could do to get much more than a raised eyebrow- but -get this- the club has decided to NOT ALLOW NON-MEMBERS IN ANYMORE. Frankly, I find this a little preposterous. What the hell kind of club is this anyhow? Won't allow non-members in? What the hell kind of nonsense is this?

Well, as Joey G. says, if some private concern decides it wants to go bankrupt what business is it of mine. Joey G. is right of course, on both counts. Not that it is my liquor business alone that has singlehandedly kept Westlake Yacht Club financially solvent, but there's a whole lot of paying customers that they're now deliberately turning away. George was already convinced last year that they were losing their shirt. As far as business plans go, this one seems singularly ill-advised, if not even hare-brained.

Bill and Sandy were there, who kindly offered to invite me in as their guest. So I wasn't immediately thrust out into the cold, but when dinner-time came me and Jeff (another non-member, and one whose liquor business is of an order of magnitude that possibly could keep an otherwise struggling establishment afloat) had to be off- we headed to the Castle to go eat Mexican.

Sunday morning, I was up with the chickens at 6:30, as is my invariable habit. Also as per usual, I moseyed over to use the facilities at the yacht club, where to my chagrin I discovered the second major change.

The bathrooms are now kept locked.

Now this was something I hadn't foreseen! The members-only policy extends to the crapper too! This is serious! So I hopped in the car and busted over to the marina- it was locked up too! Even the nasty Johnny-on-the-spot is gone, not yet set up for the season! At this blighted hour there is simply no place in Lorain for a guy to go! Things are starting to get urgent. Do I need to remind you I ate Mexican last night.

I had to sneak down by the river, in the woods, to, you know, to make like a bear. Frankly, the woods in mid-April leave a little to be desired. The foliage is not yet much advanced... the shrubbery is bare... You lack the necessary cover, the camoflage.... You do your best to try and look inconspicuous, of course, but...

You feel like you're all just kind of hanging out...

Well, it came in the mail to-day, a letter from the splendidly named Clement W. Pyles, Attorney-at-Law, who evidently is now representing my Crazy Ex Landlord. Mr Pyles has filed an objection to the Magistrate's decision of last month.

There were several pages detailing the faults he found with the judgment, all of them ludicrously inaccurate. Even the details which you'd have thought he'd have gotten right, such as the date of the original trial, were incorrect. Except for the part where he explained Isabelle's absence from the trial, apparently due to the fact that her aged father had been suffering delusions and needed Isabelle's care. That sounds extremely plausible. Of course he'd been suffering delusions. Of course there's mental issues in her family. It only stands to reason. You don't get as manifestly bat-shit insane as Isabelle is unless you've got a little help from genetics.

Anyway, I bear no ill-will to the old gentleman, but frankly this whole lawsuit deal is getting to be a pain in the ass. Evidently, the Crazy Ex Landlord is getting bored with it as well, because Mr Pyles wrote that she would prefer to settle if an agreement could be reached. So I called up Mr Pyles, who told me that she wants this all to "just go away". I pointed out, politely, that if she just simply paid the freaking judgment, this unpleasantness would indeed do just that: go away.

Needless to say, the CXL is reluctant to pay what the Magistrate ordered, which really isn't surprising, because it was her strange reluctance to pay my security deposit back which has occasioned this whole legal folderol to begin with.

Mr Pyles, who doesn't appear to have taken the time to acquaint himself with the facts concerning the case, asked me how much she shorted me in the deposit, and offered a ridiculously low-balled figure to settle. Needless to say, I refused that out of hand, but when he asked what figure I would agree to, I had to admit I was stumped. Obviously, if we go back to Court, the possibility exists that I might lose the entire judgment, but on the other hand, if Mr Pyles thought he had an unassailable case, he probably wouldn't be so eager to settle.

I believe I should get legal advice. I believe I should speak with Rapid.

Amateur hour is over.

I'm starting to reconsider some of the career choices I've made. It's starting to become increasingly clear that what I ought to have been is a big-shot trial lawyer. Sure, I may not have all those fancy diplomas from fancy law schools plastered all over the walls, but I've seen my share of "Law and Order" episodes, and what's more I have that one thing that any trial lawyer would give his habeus corpus for: a 100% success rate pleading my case before a judge!

As you may already know, I've been entangled in legal entanglements with my Crazy Ex Landlord for almost a year now. Oh, she's nuts alright, that's been well established! Well, today was the day that our little dispute came before the Franklin County Municipal Court, Small Claims Division, the Honorable Antonio Paat presiding, and today was the day I heard those sweetest of all words: "Judgement for the Plaintiff".

I must admit, I was quite nervous going into the courtroom. I mean, you know, you never know how these things will turn out. Sure, I had a briefcase packed with evidence, and not all of it made up. Cancelled checks! Postmarked envelopes! Sure, I had put on a tie and kind of combed my hair, and tried not to look so glassy-eyed and vacant. But the thing is, who knew what sort of stunt Isabella was going to pull? I mean, you knew she was going to pull something, given her manifest looniness, it just remained to be seen exactly what sort of unorthodox legal shenanigans she had in mind to short-circuit the Small Claims machinery.

Even though I was expecting something extreme, I really didn't expect she'd adopt the unprecedented strategy of NOT BOTHERING TO SHOW UP TO SAY A WORD IN HER OWN DEFENCE. Frankly, that didn't seem to be a winning strategy when it comes to impressing the Honorable Antonio Paat. In fact, he saw right through that ruse. A wise and perceptive man, he didn't even need to look at my collected bank statements, phone records and horoscopes to know that she was guilty as all hell.

With a mightily gavelled "Bang", Judge Paat pronounced me the victor of my litiginous contest! He informed me that I'd get a copy of the judgement in the mail in seven-to-ten days. Presumably, Isabella will also get a copy of the judgement in seven-to-ten days.

Which means that in seven-days-and-five-minutes to ten-days-and-five-minutes, I'll receive a phone call from an enraged- and completely mad- Crazy Ex Landlord.

Over the weekend, we got hit with what the TV weather people gleefully (and incessantly) reminded us was the largest snowfall over a twenty-four hour period to fall on Columbus, either in forever or just for a real long time. We ended up with, I don't know, well over a foot.

Remember Travis Bickle? "Someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the street..."? Well, until that day comes, I for one, am perfectly happy for a real snow to fall.
It may not wash away all the scum, but it does cover it up. Along with all the empty cans, litter, dogshit, cigarette butts. Indeed, I've never seen Columbus look so pristine, so - so actually attractive as it does when it's concealed under hundreds of tons of snow.

Sunday was especially delightful- the storm had passed, and bright blue skies shone down over the exquisite, sparkling expanse of Neil Avenue. Down the unshoveled stretches of sidewalk, the pathway is reduced to a series of startlingly deep footholes in the snow. People walk along placing each step carefully into each successive foothole, as though afraid to sully the unbroken snow with unnecessary holes. The difficulty of doing this in deep snow gives our gaits a look of comically exagerrated caution, like Elmer Fudd hunting wabbits.

Everybody is cheerful. Strangers help strangers give a shove to wheel-spinning but otherwise motionless cars, and gangs of neighbours-who've probably never before exchanged more than a dozen words- laughingly team up to excavate the cars parked on the side of the road. When one of the neighbour-teams does manage to exhume a car, it hesisitantly trundles off down the road with such caution that it looks like it is driven by one of those drunks who, realizing that he's loaded, tries to look inconspicuous by driving excessively slowly and carefully. Nobody is in a hurry to get anywhere anyway, even if they did have someplace they had to be, the've got a pretty unassailable alibi. Such goodwill and cameradamie among strangers is a wonderful thing, although I suspect it might not long persist if we got a blizzard like this every week.

The saddest thing about blizzards is how ephemeral their beauty is. In a few days the perfect white evenness will increasingly look disfigured and walked upon, the margins of the roadways becoming a grey sloppy soup of slush and filth. Every day a little more of the snow will melt away, unnoticed in its passing, until you realize that there's nothing left but the cold craggy remnants of the heaps once pushed by plows into the corners of parking-lots, grey and gritty and not so much snow anymore as just broken-down ice.

Blizzards are a lot like falling in love.

If you go to the same gym I go to, your only avenues for mental stimulation while treadmilling or fake bicycling or whatever are:

1) Watch CNN with the sound off.

2) Flip through month(s)-old copies of People Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, Rolling Stone, and/or Martha Stewart Living.

As watching CNN without sound is only marginally more interesting than watching CNN with sound, naturally I generally gravitate towards Option 2, so I can catch up on all the latest news like how heavily favored Senator Clinton is in next year's Democratic Primaries. Basically, she has a lock on the nomination, and will face Mitt Romney in the general election. Well so anyway that's why I was reading an article about the long-defunct snooze-rock band Luna, and learned that it was the band members' firmly-held belief that you could tell how people at their shows make love by watching how they dance.

"Whaa?" I thought. "Preposterous! Who could possibly believe that malarkey? People dancing at a Luna show???"

But it got me to musing about how people dance at shows. You always have the Hippy Girl doing the Hippy Twirl, of course, and the pogo-ers, the hip-shakers, fist-shakers, toe-tappers and knee-slappers, the headbangers and their more sedate cousins the headbobbers. You get those creepy dudes who pretend to be dancing but really are just trying to cop a surrepticious feel. There are tons of people who just stand around like so many catatonic frogs, way too cool and/or sober to do something gauche like dance. There's always people talking on cel phones at concerts: I do not know what the deal is with THOSE people. If you're at a show worth dancing at, you dance. You don't call someone and tell them about it. Myself, I'm partial to the school of thought where you throw yourself into the music and dance with wild abandon. If you don't rock out from time to time, YOU MAY ALREADY BE DEAD. When I bust a move, it stays busted. Now, I'll admit that I'm not the most co-ordinated gent in the world. Especially after a cocktail or two, you know, to loosen up. In fact, it generally wouldn't be inaccurate to describe my show-time dance technique as "Awkward, clumsy thrashing about, no discernable rhythm, singing/hollering off-key and loudly. Sweaty. Usually drunk." Moreover, I---

Hey, wait! th- that EXACTLY describes my love-making style!

I-I probably shouldn't have just said that!


(bonus points for readers who were thinking that when I'm dancing at concerts: a.) I'm not wearing any pants or b.) I'm dancing by myself)

Up and down the dock, they all shook their fists at us... "Fools!" they cried... "Lunatics!... Don't you know its the middle of November???... " They predicted horrible deaths for us... each prediction more grisly than the last... Gales! Sleet! washing up blue faced and bloated next spring by the East 155th Street pier!... Except for Steve... he wanted to come with us... he's retired now, you know.

Well, Saturday was truly grand... One reef in the main... plenty of wind, all right... we got to Kelleys in only about four and a half hours... that's not too bad... Loads of sunshine... why, this was better than we'd of had a right to expect even back in October. Bunch of fools on the dock!... what do they know anyways!... we were the only boat on the lake.

Sunday morning we awoke to an ominous howling in the rigging. It was disconcertingly breezy. We stop by the ferry terminal, its the only place in town still open this time of year to get some breakfast... we ask the lady there if she knows the forecast. "Well" she says, "I don't know what its like out there right now, but they're callin' for 50 mph winds."

50 mph? It was with a thoughtful fork we pronged our omelets. Silence descended upon the table and we became conscious of a sense of impending doom.

Its perfectly true the radio's calling for winds up to 45 knots... waves building 6 to 9 feet in the open water!... that's pretty rough!.. really, its only fools or lunatics would go out in weather like that... we start getting the boat ready for departure.

We never even got out the marina... as soon as we cast off our lines, the wind takes us and smacks us straight into the dock opposite... good thing there aren't any other boats around... we're spinning like a top... George's eyes are popping out of his head.-even more so than usual!... after all, its his boat... we're completely out of control... its all we can do to not get pounded to pieces... oh, its howling out there now... we finally get the boat tied up... I got seagull poop all over my jeans... why haven't those damn filthy birds flown south or something?... go shit on those Florida docks... hell, its the middle of November after all, Christ! its practically winter. At the dock, the boat's heeling 15 degrees from the pressure of the wind... and that's with no sails up at all. It's no good. We're completely windbound. And hereabouts the bars don't even open till one on Sundays!

Monday we had to motor home all the way. There wasn't the least breeze at all.

Well, I was really going to go to the gym today, I was really meaning to, but when I got home it turns out I just didn't feel like it. Oddly enough, the VERY SAME THING happened to me yesterday! I didn't feel like going then, either! So I'm going tomorrow. Definitely. Unless I don't feel like it.

Well, it snowed like all hell last night, I mean not like it snowed like all hell, but it was forecast to snow like all hell, and that alone was enough to totally freak out Allison at work. Depending on who you listened to, we were going to receive either six, eight or maybe even ten inches of snow! Fabulous! I don't know why this should freak Allison out, as everybody knows that Central Ohio never gets the full quota of snowfall we are promised. Nobody except Allison even pays attention to the forecasts anymore.

Needless to say, we didn't get the promised six, eight or ten inches. We did get maybe three or so, so I trekked on over to the folks to shovel off their driveway. You got to get over there pretty quick, because otherwise they'll get it into their head to go off and shovel their drive themselves, sooner or later. Nobody wants that.

Well, it didn't take long to clear off their snow. Not least was because the snow changed to rain. It's been a steady dreary drizzle since, so I'm pretty sure that even had I not sweated away with the snow-shovel, the rain would have melted away all the parental snow regardless. Lesson learned? Trying to help = Pointless

Anyway, I did get to spend some time with my folks, and I haven't been able to do that for, I don't know, at least a good couple days. Mum's looking pretty good, she's had her drainage device removed. Fucking thing always creeped me out. From what I understand, she won't have to do the chemo thing or the radio thing, and that is pretty damn cool. She'll probably have to do this hormone therapy thing, which is kind of a drag I guess, but doesn't seem to be all that odious.

I'm starting to think that the only things I ever bother to write about are my parents and their medical issues. BOO TO THAT!. Seriously, why don't they get their own blog THEREBY SAVING ME THE BOTHER?

Today's the Big Game, the Super Bowl I guess.

Turns out that it's the Giants v. the Patriots this year. I don't imagine I'll be watching it.

As a foreign national of unremarkable stature, I can't say I feel any particular natural affinity to either team in tonight's contest.

So instead I've been gathering up all my assorted W-2 forms and things. Yes, once again, it's Tax Time, baby! That means, of course, it's time to take a cold hard look at the old financial data! I love to do that so much that sometimes I look at dollar bills just to memorize their serial numbers! That's the kind of hard-core financial dude I am, and you never know, that kind of info might come in handy someday. Well anyway, this year I can't honestly say I much like what I'm seeing. See now I was looking at my mutual funds here. They got all kinds of charts and stuff, and obviously I'm all in favour of shit like that, but the thing is, they got some stupid graph bragging about how well they're doing against - get this - something called the "Standard and Poor 500"! Well I should certainly hope they can beat it, I mean, come on now! Standard? Poor?

Now, I'll admit I'm no Donald Trump here but on the other hand it's not like I'm a complete retard either! Who the hell cares about this standard and poor crap anyhow? I tell you what, I ain't bustin' my ass like this just to wind up "standard and poor"! "First-class and Wealthy" all the way for me, baby! And five hundred? Uh-uh, no way, Jose, a cool million, that's where I'm headed!

Now I know its only about noon or so now, and I'd hate to think that my day has already peaked in terms of excitement, but I should mention that I mopped the floors today! Plus, I DID THE DISHES!

My troubles are behind me now! Today in the mail I got a letter from Saint Matthew's Church of Tulsa, Oklahoma! (http://www.biblicalprayer.com/ )

Opening with the truly compelling salutation "Dear ... Someone Connected with this Address," the letter goes on to explain all the blessings and gifts of divine providence just waiting for me -and all I have to do is PRAY! Health! Financial Blessings! A New Car! Why, this religion deal is even better than getting on a Game Show on TV! All this -AND MORE- can be mine, thanks to a God just busting over with benevolence, and the Amazing Jesus Power of the enclosed Church Prayer Rug (also referred to in the letter as, variously, the Prayer Rug of Faith; the Bible Faith, Church, Prayer Rug; the Biblical Faith Church Prayer Rug; the Holy Ghost Bible Prayer Rug). The good people at St. Matthews, my gosh, but they couldn't be more excited to tell me these Glad Tidings!! The important bits in the letter are not only capitalized and in bold-face, but underlined in fake-handwritten-blue-ink as well- as if they were SO OVERCOME WITH EMOTION by this Message of Hope, that they JUST COULDN'T HELP but call the printer up and tell them to put in the fake underlining!

For all the build-up, I must say the Church Prayer Rug itself was kind of a let-down. I have to admit that I was expecting more than a folded 11x17 sheet of paper with a four-colour print of Jesus' Face inside a frame that looks kind of like an Oriental Carpet. What kind of loser cheap-skate God is behind this racket, anyhow? If this is the best "rug" God can afford, how the hell is He going to pony up the kind of serious cash I expect to be Blessed with? But I must cast aside such doubts. After all, it is said that the Lord works in mysterious ways, and also because the letter states that praying with this rug is "going to be like you are kneeling before God All Mighty at the altar inside a great church of blessings." You can't tell me that praying with just any old cheap Xerox would be like that!

Fortunately (because if you're like me, well, you don't got a whole lot of experience praying with 11x17 paper prayer rugs that come in the mail) the Church Prayer Rug comes with instructions:

"Look into Jesus' Eyes you will see they are closed. But as you continue to look you will see His eyes opening and looking back into your eyes." (and I bet you will, too, if- you know- you happen to be really really high at the time) "Then go and be alone and kneel on this Rug of Faith or touch it to both knees."

Just in case I had any doubts left as to the efficacy of the Church Prayer Rug, an enclosed leaflet has excerpts of letters of those who have received the Blessings of the Almighty, all thanks to the Church Prayer Rug, which is all to the good, because really there is no better way to prove a thesis than by testimonials from credulous semi-literates:

• "Dear [Saint Matthew's], My husband listed 7 things that he wanted God to do for him.... GOD BLESSED US WITH $10,700. HE WENT OUT AND BOUGHT US A CAR." writes L.B. of Maryland. Although I suspect L.B. means that it was her husband, Mr. B. of Maryland, who bought the car, the exact wording is somewhat ambiguous, and I am charmed by the idea that maybe it was the Lord of all Creation Himself who was haggling away at Honest Sam's Value Car Mart (motto: No credit? No Problem!), maybe rubbing His chin, saying "well, Sam, yes, it's a nice car... sure... but I don't know... 140,000 seems a lot of miles... hmm"

• "...GOD BLESSED ME WITH OVER $5,000.00" writes C.D. of Pennsyvania, who presumably wouldn't have written in all caps if he knew that he was blessed with less than half the sum that L.B. got. "Ouch!" to you, C.D.!

• "Our Lord... has blessed us with a BIG 6 ROOM HOUSE..." adds Mrs. T.F., in what may be my personal favourite.

Apparently, more testimonials of answered prayers are available for your reading pleasure at their website, but frankly I'm just NOT BORED ENOUGH to look them up. Anyway, with the glittering examples cited above, WHO NEEDS MORE PROOF?

Get outta my way, it's time to pray!

I helped Dad gather up some firewood this morning, a nice big old pile o' logs. You know there's little he likes better than a good blazing fire, so long as the fire is in the fireplace. Mum likes fires too, and that's good- he's got her installed in the easy chair opposite the hearth and what with the Percocet washed down with wine, she's not going anywhere.

Her convalescence continues apace, in fact she's looking real good, a lot better than anyone really expected. Even right after the operation she looked good. Tired, but good. She's really starting to get the hang of this whole "surgery" thing now- thankfully, seeing as what a fiasco her last operation turned out to be. That was the deal with her knee replacement, three years ago now, and still not right. She was the lucky one in two hundred or whatever to be afflicted with something called neuroma (or something like that) following the replacement, apparently some sort of nerve damage which, if not incurable, is at least well beyond the curative ability of her surgeon. "Getting old is the pits" she tells me, the only time I've ever heard her use the expression "the pits".

Dad seems to be enoying his newfound sense of purpose, fussing about like a mother hen, starting fires and attending to mother's medical needs. Foremost among these is dealing with her drainage device, a small rubber sac attached by a tube to her wound, the size and shape of a hand grenade, but packing (when full) a far more distasteful payload than any mere hand grenade. I simply can't bear to be around when he decants the fluid within into a specially calibrated beaker, swirls it around, and holds it up to the light as though it were some precious liqueur. I'm long gone by this stage of the procedings, of course, so I can only guess as to what nefarious purposes he has in mind for the stuff. At the hospital, they have a signpost in the parking lot with an arrow pointing the way to "Patient Discharge". Before now, I had always kind of assumed there was some sort of innocent explanation for the sign. But I'm not so sure anymore.

Tomorrow Mum learns her fate, what further deviltry the doctors have decided to inflict upon her.

I hope they've had their fill of torture. I'm not so fond of seeing my mom in pain.

Things are starting to look kind of bleak. I still have not heard back from Gwen, which leads me to suspect that my Crazy Ex Landlady is so totally Crazy that she is opposed to having our differences resolved on the nationally televised forum of "Judge Mathis". I have to admit, the unplumbed depths of her insanity has taken me quite unawares: I never could have foreseen that any of my ex-landlords - a pack of nuts if there ever was one - would have been so far gone as to not want to be on a daytime court TV show, but apparently Isabelle is even loonier than I gave her credit for, and that's saying something! I would almost admire her, what with being so crazy, were I not so worried- what if when we go to Small Claims Court she should plead not guilty by reason of insanity? What can I say to dispute that? I'll be so sunk!

Our original court date was to have been tomorrow, but I got a continuance last Friday. Because of how I learned Thursday that my Mum is scheduled for surgery tomorrow. I can't be mucking about wasting my time in court or anything, not when I'll be needed to make awkward small talk in the hospital waiting room, hoping my Dad doesn't get too worried. Mum will be getting a mastectomy.

I-I don't know what to say.

Justice is the kind of thing that some people spend their entire lives in search of. On the other hand, sometimes Justice arrives right in the mailbox, in the shape of a form letter from Judge Mathis.

I hadn't previously been aware of the good Judge, but he evidently had known about me! Actually, as much as I've bitched to my friends and co-workers about my Crazy Ex-Landlady, it's not surprising that he caught wind of the wrongs done me by the C.X.L... by all accounts, he's a stand-up guy... devoted to Justice, devoted to seeing Justice done... Really, it was only a matter of time until Judge Mathis swooped in like Batman or something to see to it that Right prevails. That's just the way he rolls.

Anyway, for those of you not in the know (and until two days ago, that included me), Judge Mathis is some manner of TV based judge, who has the unique ability to guarantee that, in the bold-faced words of his form letter, "YOU WILL receive the TOTAL judgement awarded in our court". That's for me!

After conferring with my sister -who, with her mad Googling skills- ascertained that Judge Mathis is indeed a real judge, and that "Judge Mathis" is indeed a real TV show, I was all "Hell Yes!!!" So at work the next day I called up the toll-free number on the letter and spoke with Gwen, a very nice young Production Assistant. We talked all about my Crazy Ex-Landlady for quite some time, and I made sure to sneak in several examples of my C.X.L.'s looniness. Gwen told me that if my case was selected, they'd fly me to Chicago, put me up in a hotel, and even give me $100, all FREE, completely gratis, and all I had to do was go on national TV and talk about how crazy my Ex-Landlady is. Hell, I've been doing that for nothing all this time!

The only catch is that my C.X.L. has to consent to settling our dispute in this fashion, rather than in the more orthodox venue of the Franklin County Municipal Court, Small Claims Division. I don't think I have anything to worry about, though. Who wouldn't want to appear in a nationally syndicated reality-based court show? Hell, I know my C.X.L.'s crazy, but nobody's that crazy!

Tomorrow I'm going over to spend some time with my Mum. I only have to decide what sort of chocolates I should bring.

She has to make up her mind by Friday if she wants to receive a full mastectomy or a so-called lumpectomy.

Well, the folks came back Friday. As they'd flown in all the way from Santiago, Chile, I figured their arms'd be tired so I went to the airport to collect them. They did look pretty shattered and zombified by their stratospheric ordeal, and it took a couple seconds after I imposed myself into my mother's personal space before her expression of terror at this latest intrusion gave way to one of recognition. Dad grumbled about the airport employee who'd been pushing my Mum in a wheelchair, and who had had the effrontery to look insufficiently grateful after being presented with a $2 tip.

It was the work of mere seconds for me to collect their luggage, whisk them back to their house, and shoot a glass of wine at them. Now, as they started to relax, I knew I was going to be the very first to hear their stories of exotic lands and adventure! Why, they had been to the very ends of the Earth- you know they had to have some epic sagas, tales of pluck and courage and derring-do amidst some of the most inhospitable waters in the world! Shipboard romance! Mysterious and exotic foreigners!

I was not to be disappointed.

They told me all about the Aukkers (or possibly the Ockers), the overly-ambitious team in the morning trivia contest who used means both fair and foul to dominate the contests, taking more than their fair share of the cruise-line-corporate-logo-bearing tchotchkes offered as prizes. My dad, normally a model of equanimity, insinuated that skullduggery had been afoot! Then he gave me one of the prizes he had won, a little LED keyring flashlight which if you shine it in your eyes, it makes you wish you hadn't just done so.

They told me all about New Years on the High Seas, during which the waitress tried to sell them a bottle of champagne well in advance of midnight, despite knowing full well that at midnight they give you a complimentary bottle. " 'The free stuff really isn't all that good...' she told us!"

They told me all about the Great Laundry Room Drama, in which there weren't enough dryers for the quantity of washers present, leading to various acts of washroom hooliganism, washroom vigilanteeism, and culminating in actual washroom fisticuffs!

Ah, but that was enough adventure for one night! My intrepid globetrotting parents were starting to droop with fatigue. There'll be more stories later, but for now I'm back to the mundane and the day-to-day.

Well, it being the New Year and all, it's time for my favorite annual New Year's tradition! Yes, it's time once again to count out all the pennies from the can on my bedside table! I've been doing this for years now, and I've got all them pennies saved up and locked away in a special bank account THAT'S ONLY FOR PENNIES! I don't mean to brag, but by now I've amassed literally DOZENS of dollars! So you can see, this is one tradition that is not only educational but lucrative as well.

It's so simple even a child could do it- you just sleeve them up in these little paper tubes in quantities of fifty, and each completed tube is then worth fifty cents. You can either count them out in ten stacks of five pennies each, or five stacks of ten pennies each. I guess you could also just count out fifty at a time, but I bet that'd be waaay too much work. You can also roll up nickels- worth $2 a roll, or even dimes, at a whopping $5 per roll! Legally I think you can roll up quarters as well, but nobody has that many quarters just laying around. You'd have to have, I don't know, literally dozens of the fuckers.

If you pay attention while you count, you can learn some pretty interesting facts. For instance, I can tell you that they made pennies in every year so far in the 2000's, every year in the 90's, every year in the 80's except 1983, and in 1972, '73, '74, '76, '78, '79, and 1962. Also, they've gotten a lot better at making pennies nowadays. You know how bright and shiny a new 2007 penny is? Well, pennies weren't always made to such a standard! Back in the '80's they made 'em all dull and bleah-colored and sometimes with all this greenish crud on them- just like the cars they used to make back then.

Well, I've about got all my change rolled up now, so me and my eight dollars and fifty cents are rolling off down to the bank!