So yesterday was Brandon's last day.

He was in remarkably high spirits, laughing and joking, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that he has completely fucked his life up.

We all went out to lunch at a Mexican joint, where Allison asked him some of the tough questions that had to be asked, like what exactly his plans where. "Well" says Brandon, "I got a party to plan..."

"You're going to ... plan a party... that'll take ... ummm"

"Well I also got some projects planned: Crystal left this big round table that her grandfather made. I'm going to take off the, the linoleum and engrave some playing cards into the wood, you know, and cover it with plastic or something, and then I'm going to have Poker Night!!!"

"Oh I see" says Allison.

Granted, there's nothing classier than a poker table with playing cards engraved into the top, but linoleum? Who the fuck covers a tabletop with linoleum???

"Also there's this new video game I want to try out and- "

"Oh, so you do have some serious plans then." I cut in, which made Scott laugh.

Since his house is being foreclosed upon and he's no longer paying the mortgage, Brandon sees no reason to throw himself back into the daily workaday grind. Enjoy a well-earned rest. He says he doesn't plan on looking for a job "for another month or so"- waiting for that busy holiday hiring season, no doubt, where all the good jobs are. In fact now that he's unshackled from the responsibilities of being a responsible person, he seems to view his post-Crystal future as being a non-stop whirlwind of parties, poker nights, and debauchery. New girls every night! Beer and porn! He's almost salivating with anticipation!

Admittedly, I'm no expert on the feminine psyche, so I'll have to put it to any female readers out there. What about it, girls? If you were to meet a guy who: doesn't have a job; is in the beginning stages of a divorce which is already getting ugly and only looks to get uglier; who is in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings; who will run out of cash the moment the first child support payment is due; who will be homeless just as soon as the bank can arrange foreclosure; who displays such utter disrespect for his wife and the mother of his child; who has no ambitions beyond making a poker table- if you were to meet a guy like that, assuming you are not a crack whore with a side hobby in crystal meth, is your first reaction going to be "Dude! I want to party with YOU!!!"?

Anyway, I don't want to sound too harsh, because I do like the guy. And certainly, this is a major transitional point in his life and he is entitled to his moment of sunny optimism, and to take some time to contemplate the direction he wants his life to take. But it's hard to watch someone you care about make a series of such staggeringly bad decisions- decisions which will have major negative consequences for the rest of his life. He can carry on in such blithe disregard of reality for only so long, before reality asserts itself with all the sublety of a croquet mallet to the back of the head.

So I wish the poor delusional sap the best of luck. Friday was his last day at work, and on the same day it was reported that unemployment hit ten percent.

Monday Brandon gave his two weeks' notice at work. This took us all by complete surprise- none of us had had any inkling- I should point out that Brandon has worked with us for about seven years. He's generally well-liked around the office- a bit of a goof-ball- but competent enough. He has a wife and baby to support as well; Crystal doesn't work (and neither does young Bryden, for that matter). So naturally we were all astonished! What is Brandon's deal??? As your reporter here, I undertook to find out- and the answer astonished even me! Heartbreak! Betrayal! More twists and turns than a python at a cat convention! And plenty of pure comedy gold, if, like me, you are entertained by the spectacle of people behaving like jackasses.

Tuesday, Brandon and I went out to lunch (Chinese).

"So you really quit your job????"

"Yep."

"Whatever for???"

"I'm sick of working with Scott."

"You got anything lined up?"

"Nope."

Brandon added a few remarks about Scott's unreasonableness- apparently Scott was of the idea
that Brandon should, I don't know, do his job instead of texting all day, and we walked up to his car. Except it wasn't his car- it was Crystal's. "Where's your car?"

"Gone."

"Gone? Gone where?"

"Just gone"

I was starting to get a bit irritated at his gnomic responses by this point, but once we got in he began elaborating: "Bankruptcy court's taken it. Yeah we filed last month."

"What???"

I'm matey enough with Brandon at work of course, but I wouldn't say we're close personal friends, and his personal life is one of those things we've never discussed (as heretofore I have had absolutely no interest in it).

"We're going to lose the house too, of course."

"What??? Oh wow... that sucks... what are you going to do?"

"Oh, find an apartment I guess. I'll probably start looking over the weekend.... What Crystal doesn't know is that she's not coming with me."

"What!!"

The bombshells were tumbling out now fast and furious! One revelation after another!

"Yeah, I'm leaving her... My God she's so fucking stupid."

(This actually wasn't much of a revelation. Crystal is dumber than a sack of walnut shells)

The next day at work I learned that the Plan was to move to Cincinnati the day after his last day at work. Apparently it turns out Brandon is seeing some little chickadee down there who he met on the Internet- CLASS. I guess he's been seeing her for months- and she's the reason he always calls off on Mondays. "Yeah, she'll let me stay there till I get back on my feet!"

"So you're just going to up and leave Crystal? With no job? In a house that's being foreclosed on? .... What is she going to do???"

"Oh, I don't care"

Delivered with a cold complacency and calm impersonal contempt. He speaks as though it's the normalest thing in the world.

A word about Crystal. I don't want to be mean, but ... well, oh okay. You talked me into it. Crystal is no prize. She is homely as a turnip (and about the same proportions), dull, ignorant as a plank, and while not actually trying to be hideous she is about as drab as she can possibly manage. She lacks any grace, wit, spark, style or flash. To be fair, it's not like she let herself go after her marriage. Truth is she never had it going on to begin with. She is not without her good points, though- she doesn't have a spiteful or malicious or vindictive bone in her body. I've never heard her say anything mean-spirited about anyone. Possibly this is because she doesn't have the imagination to come up a worthwhile zinger.

Now, personally I myself would never want to be married to Crystal, and if I found myself in such an unfortunate predicament, I too would take steps to remedy the situation, so I can understand Brandon's motivation here. But the fact is that Brandon is married to her, and he
did so under his own free will, and there's a right way and a wrong way to end marriages and
it seems to me that skipping out in the dead of night without warning, leaving your wife to fend for herself, with no money, no job, in a house being foreclosed upon, is a pretty shitty way to do it. And to consider that he's leaving his infant son in the bargain adds a whole order of magnitude of shittiness to it.

The next day at work Brandon is all "best night's sleep I ever had!" I try to ignore him.

"Yeah. I slept in the car with a bunch of blankets!" "Wasn't it a little ... cold?" "Well yeah but NO Crystal!!!"

The next day at work Brandon is "So do you want to see some pictures?"

He's got a bunch of photos on his computer of his house, ransacked. Turns out Crystal left. When he was at work. Crystal took all her clothes and personal effects, of course, and the baby, and all the baby's accessories, and all the food out of the 'fridge and all the food out of the freezer and all of the cleaning supplies and a fair selection of furniture and the microwave oven and the kitchen stove and the dishwasher.

She also took the dead-bolt locks out of the front door. This is turning out to be our own personal Jerry Springer show!

"Good for Crystal!" I thought. "Wow jeeze!" I said.

"She left the table her grandfather made. I wish I could see her face when I send her the video of that table going up in flames!"

I have no idea where this malice came from. Even Brandon admits that the stove and dishwasher and locks were bought by Crystal's family. Brandon seems to be under the impression that these photos will help him when they face off in court: "yes, your honor, she took all her things when she left!"

The next day at work I learn the Plan has changed. Brandon is no longer planning on moving
to Cincinnati; with Crystal out of the picture he's going to stay in "his" house. Since he's in bankruptcy apparently he doesn't have to pay his mortgage ("Free rent!" he says with thumbs up. "What a fucking scumbag" says Allison) They won't kick him out for six months, maybe a year! He is looking forward to all the fun he is going to have! I wonder what happened to the Brandon I used to know. It's like he's having a mid-life crisis, but he's only 27 or so... Kids today!!!

He doesn't seem to have any idea how much he's fucked his life up. He seems to think maybe he's going back to a simpler time, before he was married, before he had a kid.

It's like he wanted to hit the reset button, but instead he hit self-destruct.

First the first time in living memory I got a tax refund check in the mail! Generally of course I have to send the IRS bucketloads of cash, confident in the knowledge that the government will blow it like a crack-addled spend it wisely on ... um, something or other which is probably pretty important. Now I know that generally speaking, folks get refund checks in ... ? ... well I guess probably in May or something. I wouldn't know. I never get refunds. But I got one of them automatic six month extensions, because the fact of the matter my record-keeping these days has gotten somewhat lackadaisacal in this era of mp3s- I write stuff down of course, like on the back of envelopes and things, and I ALWAYS put the envelopes ... someplace. I don't know. Long story short I got an extension because I really had no idea what I had paid in estimated taxes, and even with the extension I couldn't really recall so I just kind of guessed.

Turns out I must have misunderestimated what I had paid, because I got a refund check for a full two hundred dollars above what I was expecting! This is one of the benefits of slap-dash record-keeping. Now, I've never really thought of the IRS as the kind of bureaucracy which would say "excuse me, but let us give you a little more money" but I'm an open minded kind of guy and I'm always perfectly happy to be enlightened.

Also: Daylight Savings time starts. Why? What are they saving it for?

Lately the Internet here at my house has been out- I tried everything I could think of to fix it, of course, but seeing as how "everything I could think of" basically just entails my turning everything off, waiting a couple minutes, and then turning everything back on again, I was unable to restore it. So! Looks like probably what I ought to do was call Time-Warner! Off to the phone! The number to call? Mmm, okay, I don't got any phone books of course.... Time-Warner's not on my speed dial these days... kay, I'll just look it up on the Interne- oh.

Surely they put their number on the bill, but as bills don't make very memorable keepsakes, I don't generally keep them handy. After much searching, I did manage to track one down- a bill retained only because I had jotted a note down on the back of the envelope- and called and (after punching a bunch of phone menu buttons, telling the Time-Warner Phone Computer all the details of the nature of my problem) I got through to Beth, a very nice young customer service representative, to whom I had to tell all the details of the nature of my problem.

"Okay!" Beth said, "What I want you to do is turn everything off, wait a couple minutes, and turn everything back on!" Perhaps unsurprisingly, this worked no better then when I had tried it before. "Okay... " says Beth, never at a loss for ideas, "this time turn everything off.... and unplug the coax cable, wait a couple minutes, plug it back in, and turn everything back on again."

This time it worked like a charm! No no, just kidding, of course! Beth was clearly at her wits' end by this time. After all, we had turned everything off and on several times now, to no effect whatsoever. "Um, I think we're going to have to send someone round...."

In unrelated news, I've found the time recently to do the dishes, sweep the apartment, clean the cat-box, read a book, do three loads of laundry, mop the floors, do some more dishes, fix something to eat, do the dishes resulting from fixing something to eat, clean the bathroom, start another book, take a nap, and generally tidy things up a bit.

Saturday it was about as full a boat as I've seen in a while: my sister of course, and Dave and Roseanne, and David, and myself. October can get pretty chilly, what with the wind whipping off the lake, but despite the cold, October sailing is delightful, because you have the wind whipping off the lake. So although we were sailing to nowhere in particular, we were getting there fast, at five, six knots or better. For sailing, this is easily the best time of the year. And the company couldn't hardly be improved upon either, and when David missed the dock and fell into the lake, we all had a good laugh- even David (who I think was a little bit intoxicated (Old Alt never stints on hospitality)).

Sunday, we took a sunrise cruise, joined by Rich Craft. I don't get to go sailing with Rich as much as I'd like- he really is the ideal boat-mate- and the winds were again perfect. But we had to get back to the dock so Myfanwi could drive to New York and be home at a reasonable hour. Myfanwi left. I took down the mast in the afternoon, effectively ending the sailing season- this is by far the worst time of the year. I always hate this time of year. I broke a tooth at breakfast. The mechanics told me that I need new rotors as well as brake pads. Everything always goes wrong this time of year. I think I'm going to be late to work today.

You know how I told you my Dad suffered a stroke? Well turns out I was wrong. Turns out the doctors were all wrong.

Turns out my Dad has a brain tumour instead.

I couldn't get up to the lake much before nine thirty or so, so I was pretty sure that my sister would already be there. As I couldn't find her on my boat, I was pretty sure she'd be on Dave and Roseanne's boat, and that was in fact where I found her. Myfanwi, faced with the uncomfortable prospect at arriving at the marina well before myself, and therefore having to sit around in the cold and wait for me, had (not unreasonably) called Dave and Roseanne to see if they were at the marina and if so could they please let her in.

Turns out Dave and Roseanne weren't at the marina, they were home in Canton or Akron or wherever it is that they live, relaxing and minding their own business, but once they caught the gist of my sister's predicament, they up and lead-footed it off to the marina to help her out: changing all their plans! dropping whatever they were doing!- just so's they could help my sis out, and also, apparently, to ply her with booze (she was truly looped). That is the kind of rare gems Dave and Roseanne are- if you haven't met them yet, I encourage you to do so: you won't be disappointed!

Thus it was that on Saturday, poor Myfanwi wasn't feeling her best when we set sail for Kelleys Island. Steve's wife Mary Anne, along with Steve's brother and sister-in-law were going up to Kelleys, so one thing led to another and Steve kind of finagled an invite to sail with us out there. Good thing, too, because Steve is an experienced sailor, and the winds were delightfully strong- twenty or so knots- so it was nice to have an able hand, seeing as how my sister was feeling a bit hung-over indisposed.

The weather was truly splendid- the wind was right parky, five foot waves crashing away. Steve is a good friend, but he's one of those guys that it's best to go on short day-sails with rather than a weekend cruise, because he's one of those guys who keep on talking long after he's run out of interesting things to say. Personally one of the things I like about sailing is the sounds of the water and the waves and the creaking and the clanking of the rigging. It's very relaxing, I find, and puts me in a contemplative mood, attunes me to nature, one might say- the boat rising with the swell, the feel of the wind... the waves hissing by.... the rollers expiring under the lee quarter with a mighty "kssssshhhhh", the sun occasionally breaking through in all its brilliance- sparkling over all the ripples and the wavelets, the rail buried in the hissing foam. And all the while, Steve babbling on and on and about nothing at all. Mmm, yes- remind me: no more sailing to Kelleys with Steve-o.

The wind- staying strong- backed more and more into the west, forcing us to sail more north and south and north again. We were going five, six knots all the while. And it took us eight hours to cover 25 miles over ground.

In the morning the howling wind in the rigging woke me at five, and the lake was a mass of whitecaps. I admit to feeling somewhat trepidatious, but the actual sailing turned out to be amazing. The wind was, say, 20-25 knots, and the waves four to six footers, but it was all on the quarter. It's grand sailing, before the wind like this. We averaged high fives, low sixes, hitting the sevens when the waves threw us along, twisting the boat forwards and around like a corkscrew. You can't steer hardly but it's exhilarating enough that you don't care. At one point, we hit 8.38 knots for a half a second, easily the fastest I've ever gone on my boat.

We made the return passage in four hours forty five minutes.

With the long holiday week-end, I had been hoping to sail off to the Islands, but Saturday the wind was rather lame, and as I'm not the sort who likes to sit and listen to diesels rattle for hours on end, it looked like the Islands just weren't in the cards this week. That's a shame, because I haven't even been to the Islands once this summer, and now summer is dribbling to a close.

Instead, it turned out that Steve had scored a bunch of VIP tickets to the Cleveland Air Show on Sunday (his son Chris works at the airport there) and he invited me along with his wife Mary Anne and his friend Rich to go watch the planes zip around. So! Off to the Air Show! The VIP seats were pretty choice indeed, front row right in the center, and of course separated from Cleveland's unwashed masses. The planes indeed did zip and swoop and thunder right in front of us, which was pretty cool. On the other hand, we were also right in front of the announcers- I guess I never knew that Air Shows had announcers, and fact is I really don't think I ever thought much about whether or not Air Shows have announcers, but it turns out they do. And it also turns out that our announcer today was one of the shining lights in that competitive field of Air Show announcers; in fact he was even in the Air Show Hall of Fame. Naturally, I was delighted that there was such a thing as the Air Show Hall of Fame- how wonderfully preposterous a concept!- but I really can't think of any reason for him to be in that or any other Hall of Fame, other than for his preternatural ability to talk non-stop for hours on end.

And talk he did, even when he really didn't have anything to say. Naturally, any Air Show announcer worth his salt will tell you what plane it is currently zooming past, but our boy went far and above the call of duty, showing us why he belonged in the Air Show Hall of Fame by treating us to an endless stream of banalities and noninteresting factoids, yukking it up with tired jokes that he himself didn't even seem to find all that funny (a view shared by the crowd as well, if the conspicuous absence of mirth at what I'll call (for lack of a better word) his punchlines was any indication), and, when all other topics of conversation dried up, he informed us that there were all kinds of food and drink for sale, helpful on the off chance anyone had missed the rows upon rows of concessionaires all up and down the airfield behind us. I'm pretty sure sure he was paid by the word, perhaps with deductions made for any silence exceeding a length of 1.5 seconds.

On occasion, he relinquished his mike to various military spokespeople (the majority of the aircraft flying were military) who tended to be far more entertaining, if (understandably) somewhat given to glorifying the militarism of the whole event, and expounding the martial virtues of honour, duty and sacrifice, and the simple joys of scaring the bejesus out of anyone who lives in any of those benighted backwaters where folks persist in hating America. Indeed, the whole show had the air of a ritualized exercise in conspicuous patriotism, the speakers backdropped by not only the thunder of jet engines but also those sort of stirring patriotic songs that I've always found somewhat tedious. I guess I'm just not wired for patriotism, and I've never even really understood why patriotism is considered a virtue. I did quite like the Army Parachute Team, the Golden Eagles, though, because their name sounds like they're a high school football team.

Still and all, it is quite an awesome thing to see the fighter jets- they streak silently towards you over the lake, then bank and turn and suddenly you are engulfed in a deafening roar, the very ground shaking, and then you look and they are already five miles away. They zoom vertically upward, three miles up in a matter of seconds, silently spinning and tumbling and sparkling in the sun before rocketing back down to Earth, clearing the surface of the lake by mere yards and then accelerating off again. Aesthetically it's all very pleasing. The planes can certainly speak for themselves; I only wish the announcers would have let them.

It wasn't long after the last echoes of the departing Thunderbirds had faded away before the natural aviators of Burke Lakefront Airport returned, squawking sea-gulls returning to feast on the trash strewn all over the ground by the receding tide of Cleveland's aeronautical enthusiasts and patriots.

The wind was blowing strong from the East- I bet a guy could have made it to the Islands in pretty good time today.

Every now and again you see something that brightens your day. Today, for example, I was riding my bike home after work and passed the new burger joint that's opening up soon on Fifth Avenue. This is something that speaks of the resilience of hope, even in these tough economic times- that someone would invest his heart, his sweat, and possibly even his life's savings in such a venture, going out on a limb and risking it all on a chance to fulfill his life-long dream of opening his very own burger joint! O the boundless optimism of Capitalism, nothing less than a tribute to the very Human Spirit!

And sure that's great and all, but really I could care less about that. What gladdened my heart was the minor editing job done to the sign (I assume) by some juvenile-minded hooligan:


(click on the picture to magically make it bigger)

Yesterday was my folk's 49th wedding anniversary, and we had a nice dinner at the rehab facility where my dad's been since they let him out the hospital. Lobster salad and gazpacho, and they let you have a private room if you ask. It's a pretty nice place. My sister is here too- she's been in Columbus ever since he had his stroke. Thank goodness. she's probably singlehandedly responsible for keeping my mom from going out of her mind with worry- I try and do my best of course but I got to go to work and shit and anyway I'm not too good at that kind of thing. Sometimes I just don't know what to say. I don't know what to say to my mom when she says how old and drawn and sad and old Dad looked today.

She comes home without her husband. It is her anniversary, and she breaks down in tears.

And I just don't know what to say.

The doctors all say Dad got off real lucky, if "lucky" is a word you can correctly use in a sentence which also includes the words "had" "a" and "stroke". By all events it seemed to have been a minor stroke, and fortunately occurred in an area of the brain responsible for personality- thus not a part of the brain Dad typically requires on a day-to-day basis. He is very weak, but it seems so far that he has suffered no physical disability. Mentally he seems to be more or less present as well, but it's hard to tell for sure as they've got him pretty much doped to the gills. His speech is clear, although his voice is weak, and he has at best a tenuous acquaintance with lucidity. He picks agitatedly at his I.V. tubes. He seems to be under the impression that he is on a cruise ship. I guess this is probably better than him thinking that he's in a hospital, all things considered. Because cruise ships are fun.

He is beginning to suspect that the nurses are drugging him. I'm not quite sure what tipped him off- was it the I.V. in his arm? The pills they keep giving him? He looks around and narrows his eyes suspiciously:

"I've only had three or four glasses of beer since I got here today... I'm not the kind of guy who staggers around like this after only two or three glasses of beer...."

When the time comes I have to leave, he looks kind of puzzled. Where am I going? Whatever happened to mother? Is someone going to come to pick him up later? I try to make sure he has his cell phone and ice-water handy.

On the hospital bed he looks so small, so weak, he looks so all alone.

And it breaks my heart.

My Dad is seldom happier than when he's with his children, and although he's never admitted it in so many words it's long been perfectly obvious that of his three children his favorite is his daughter. So he was very happy as we sat there in the garden, chatting, having a glass of wine, my sister deadheading the flowers. He was very happy indeed, right up to the point where he suddenly fell over backwards, flat on his back, his head landing only inches from the 4X4 supporting the fence on one side, and the large rock which marks the final resting place of Spike the Cat on the other.

The X-rays this morning showed that he hadn't broken any bones. The CAT scan of his brain showed that he does, in fact, have a brain, which should lay that particular rumour to rest.

It also showed an abnormality on his right frontal lobe: apparently he had either suffered a stroke or he has a brain tumour.

This is, well, this is very bad.

It was around ten o'clock, maybe even eleven, when Myfanwi informed that me we were going to Trapeze School. See, they have a a website where you can see videos of such luminaries as Tony Danza and Al Roker trapeezing- not at the same time, of course- that would be just too awesome for words- but still, good good stuff! Obviously, we had to learn to trapeze.

We spent Saturday training- doing chin-ups on the hand-bars in the subway cars, drinking carrot juice and riding the Cyclone at Coney Island (solely to get used to acceleration- we take a scientific approach to trapeezing)- the usual sort of preparation one does for acrobatics. Friday we went to go see Superchunk* at the Seaport, which naturally involved a lot of jumping up and down: this is also good preparation for Trapezing, I hear. Observant readers might notice me jumping up and down here, I'm the dude intermittently seen jumping up and down in front of those two stiffs who just kind of stand there. I don't know what it is with stiffs who just kind of stand there when Superchunk is playing, but there you have it. Those of you enamoured/disgusted by the long blond hair I got in the video will be distressed/relieved to learn that it is all gone now. See I don't mind sporting the Surfer Dude look, whatever, but it's a pretty fine line between Surfer Dude and Dirty Hippy Dude, and it's a line you don't want to cross. I simply have no intention of being Dirty Hippy Dude. Anyway if you're going trapezing, the last thing you want is a bunch of hair weighting you down. So Saturday morning I had the immigrant barber lady cut it all off (It took her a while to realize that I wanted it cut real short: "what!" she says, "he is not even drooonk!" to nobody in particular.) The Trapeze School is on top of a building on the west side of Manhattan, overlooking the Hudson, and even though rain had been forecast it was clear as a bell and so we had a beautiful view of the downtown skyline and the Jersey shore.

I don't like to think I'm scared of heights, as I've gone up the mast countless times. The mast is probably even taller than the trapeze platform, but of course it's completely normal and natural to climb a mast, and generally speaking you don't climb the mast with the sole intention of leaping off it like some bargain-basement Tarzan. Standing on the edge of the platform, with
your toes sticking over is nerve-wracking- you stand there, leaning with your center of gravity over the void while the Trapeze Lady holds your harness so you don't fall, and you reach out for the trapeze with your right hand. You take your left hand off the support and grab the bar with both hands, and there is no way that the Trapeze Lady, a mere slip of a girl, can possibly keep you from overbalancing and falling to your doom-- this is a simple matter of physics. This lasts for two or three seconds, a terrifying eternity.

"Readeeeee.... Hup!" and you jump.




*After the show we were hanging out with some of the dudes and dudettes that we had been jumping up and down with. One girl had come from Washington D.C. to see the show, one guy from Canada. I didn't think I was no slouch, coming from Ohio, but it turns out there was one dude came all the way from Norway to see Superchunk. He won, hands down.

My sister was all "yeah, he only ever comes to visit me when Superchunk is playing.. " Shamefully, this is entirely true. So, on the off chance that any Superchunks are reading this, let me ask you to play NYC more often. So I can see my sister more.

Or hell, just come to Columbus. Really, that'd be way more convenient for me.

Its always delightful to take off in a jet plane- the exhilarating acceleration- the rumbling bumbling run down the run-way, the last jolt as the tyres part company with the ground, the swaying motion as the nose of the jet points skyward. You look out the window and you realize that you must be hundreds of feet above the ground already. The city is spread out like a diorama beneath you, and it all looks too life-like to be real: the plane banks around and you can recognize the Horseshoe, the downtown buildings, and you try and pick out the street you live on. This is easily the most dangerous time of the entire flight, for if a wing were to fall off or something, we would all be goners, for sure. There is just no way you could survive a crash from such an altitude, and why they go through that nonsense with the seat-belts is beyond me. Nobody ever survived a plane crash because he was wearing seat-belts. What we need to do is climb up high enough so that if the plane crashes we won't hit anything. The plane moves so slowly in relation to the ground - even though surely we must be doing at least sixty, seventy mph by now- that there is no possible way we are going fast enough to remain airborne. I always get uneasy at take-off.

We gain altitude: the individual houses and cars blur and become indistinct and then disappear altogether. The regular checkerboards of the inner suburbs give way to the curvilinear streets and cul-de-sacs of Pickerington and all the outlying subdivisions, and you begin to notice the major roads assume the larger pattern of section lines. We rise, and the scale imperceptibly shifts and now the roads are no longer roads at all but elements of the vast grid of township, range and section lines, overlaid upon an irregular geometry of fields and shining snaking rivers, impossibly flat, impossibly vast, which stretches half a continent. The plane is no longer flying above anything near so dangerous as the surface of the Earth (certain death to fall upon from any great height) in fact we're not even flying at all: we are drifting serenely and detachedly above an abstract quiltwork of mist. We are only going at a walking pace now, and if you could open the window I bet you could almost reach the ground from here. A cloud drifts below us, solid enough to walk on. It is now safe to walk about the cabin.

We were late taking off, of course, but even so the sun sets remarkably fast when you're flying away from it. I'm not sure exactly what ground our flight plan passed over- possibly Zanesville? Crooksville? Scranton PA? Bleak places all I'm sure, and scattered in between all the appalachian burghs and hamlets, all the dreary nowheresvilles in the middle of nowhere that no-one ever wants to go to. With darkness falling all over the hills and hollows of eastern Ohio they glitter like handfuls of spilt diamonds. I'm flying to NYC to see my sister.

It was Myfanwi and I on Old Alt, while David, assisted by Steve, sailed his lovely Alberg 30 Full Measure. The Alberg 30, as one might suspect, was designed by Karl Alberg- also the author of most of the Cape Dory designs- so our two boats were more or less cousins. This was the day to have an Alberg-designed boat, as the wind was blowing twenty five knots and more, and six-foot waves were crashing over the break-wall.

"You're absolutely crazy!" says Roseanne. Dave and Roseanne hardly ever take their boat out, but when they do, they sail to the Bahamas and are gone for six months. You'd have thought six foot waves would be nothing to her. "Wear your life preservers!"

"Where're you going?" says Dave. "Vermilion and back?" He gauges the shockingly forceful gusts. "Huh. See you in an hour".

So! Out past the breakwater, with the breakers crashing and exploding into spray all around us, until the reefed main and staysail caught the wind, and we heeled over and began to seriously MOVE. I'm not much of a lad for rolley-coasters, but I if I were I bet they'd be something like this. We caromed off the short Lake Erie chop, and packets of water flew aft scrubbing all the birdshit off the deck, and cannoned off the bows like fireworks. We gained a knot surfing down the back of each wave, only to lose a knot as we crashed into the next one.

Old Alt had chosen a different course than Full Measure, making a little more north out of the harbour- the wind was dead west- and pointed a little higher, so we could fetch Vermilion without tacking. David, pointing a little lower, was moving faster through the water, but he was making far too much south- clearly he would have to tack- and we would eat him for lunch. In fact although he was pulling away from us, he wasn't making any more west than we were- only more south. Clearly, we had him!

By and by though, around Beaver Park, the wind started to shift... we were forced south... we would have to end up tacking too! This was horrible! What's more, the wind was diminishing, and we were underpowered trying to bash through the leftover waves... Out came the reef! Let fly the genny! It was no good- we were only managing two or three knots, and that to the southwest. To our horror, we saw Full Measure (well far to the south of us by now) turn and slant up across the wind towards Vermilion! Evidently the wind had shifted enough that David could slide straight to the finish line, and judging by his speed the wind must not yet have faded over by land. This was sickening. He was going to beat us by at least an hour.

With all sails flying we made our tack and stood northwards, dejectedly, making a good five knots, but five knots in a direction ninety degrees from our destination. It was delightful sailing- the lake had already lain down quite a bit- but it was all as ashes to us. By the time we had sailed a few miles north we couldn't even see David. He had already turned up the Vermilion River.

After two or three more tacks, and at least an hour and a half or two after David, we finally reached the river. Bar the odd french fry, David and Steve were about finished with lunch.

I glumly waited for the inevitable reproaches and mockery, so richly deserved after our dismal performance. I mean, it wasn't a formal "race", but to be so shockingly out-sailed....

Steve: "So, you sailed the whole way?"

Us: "Yeah..."

Steve: "Ah. Well, we weren't getting anywhere by the time we got to Beaver Park, so we fired up the engine and motor-sailed in."

There are, as you know, all manner of chores that must be done on a boat, and this was the weekend I was to accomplish this! I had my turpentine, my sandpaper, pots of varnish, a twelve pack- in short, all you need to get a lot of shit done. And, perhaps most important, I was of a mind to work! No distractions! Old Alt would sparkle like a champ!

Five minutes later, Steve had noticed my arrival at the marina. "Huw!" he called, ""Huw! C'mon! we're sailing to Vermilion!"

"Ah, thanks Steve-o, but I got a lot a work I gotta do." It was time to get cracking!

Twenty minutes later we were under sail for Vermilion.

Captain Rob, of course, insisted on sailing his own boat, his lovely Irwin 30 Nirvana. As it was early in the season, I too insisted on sailing my own boat. As it was blowing something crazy, Steve insisted on not sailing his own boat. The Blue Dragon, a lovely Catalina 27, is a delightful boat but perhaps not quite the thing for heavy weather. As Nirvana sports an autopilot, we decided it'd be just as well for Steve to come with me.

Oh, how we flew! The wind was blowing strong, sure, and due out of the west, so we were as close-hauled as ever we could be. Rob, with his autopilot, kept a true course for Vermilion, but I was having all kinds of trouble with my Steve-o-pilot, because Steve kept getting entranced with speed and falling off ("Look! Six point nine two! Six point eight! Seven!!! SEVEN POINT TWO TWO!") and so I was "Yeah, we're sure going fast alright... although not towards Vermilion..."

Because of this Rob beat us handily to Vermilion. We rafted up off of Nirvana at the restaurant, and despite the crowds we were the only two sailboats there. All the others were powerboaters. We could here them murmuring about how pretty our boats were, but frankly I couldn't help but notice that all the powerboaters had crowds of gorgeous young ladies on their crews, whereas I had... Steve.

Maybe it's about time I re-evaluate my boating decisions?

This morning at work we had some kind of meeting about 401 k plans, apparently a new benefit of working for Landmark Survey Group Inc. Naturally I was late of course, so I spent the meeting gazing longingly at the coffee tureen, while Stephanie the 401 k Lady talked about 401 k's, and Brandon gazed longingly at Stephanie the 401 k Lady. It was pretty clear where he wanted to put his employee contributions! The meeting was presided over by my boss Paul's pal Mike Kozick, whom I had last seen at the company Christmas party, when he drove his Mercedes smack into the concrete median divider so hard that he not only blew out the tire but also broke some mechanical doo-hicky, or rather thingamajig, which makes the wheel like, I don't know, turn or something. Fortunately he was good and drunk at the time, else he probably would have been pretty pissed off indeed.

Anyways the interesting thing about the meeting was the reactions of my various co-workers. Dennis, for example, was all impressed with Kozick, in that as Kozick, a man of style, was impeccably dressed- tie and everything- therefore he was obviously a master of the esoteric world of High Finance, in which all the acolytes are always sharply turned out, and wear ties. "Yeah" says Dennis. "Yeah, you can tell he really knows what he's talking about!"

Mohamed, evidently under the impression that Kozick was really named John Hancock (the name of the firm for which he works), had an entirely different take. "Did you see John Hancock's car??!" Obviously, any financier who wore nice clothes and had a nice car got such fine things by stealing them out of the mouths of the Working Man. After all, there are only so many dollars in the world, and it's not like bankers do any actual work. By now Mohamed was going off to me about some guy he had seen on the news ("You hear about this guy? This Bernie somebody guy?") and I thought he was talking about Bernie Kosar, the Cleveland Browns quarterback from back in the day, who had been in the news lately for going bankrupt. "Oh yeah" I said, "yeah, that sure was a shame!" I don't really care so much about Bernie Kosar, of course, and I couldn't imagine his relevance to finance in general, let alone to 401 k plans, but you know sometimes you got to be conversational. "Fifty billion dollars! Fifty billion dollars! Where did it go? Where did it go?" says Mohamed. If there had been a table nearby, I'm pretty sure he would have banged it. "ah, well, ah I don't know?" I mean, fifty billion? I had no idea that quarterbacks made that kind of dough. Honest to God I thought they only made like, millions or so. Don't get me wrong I know my money and everything but I'm pretty sure that even Bernie Kosar couldn't fritter away that kind of money on hookers and blow, which is what NFL stars generally fritter their money away on, as everybody knows.

But it turns out that the Bernie that Mohamed had in mind was actually Bernie Madoff (so aptly named, because he made off with so much money! Get it? Madoff? Made off? Ha! Ha Ha!) who was also in the news- at the very same time- after having been caught perpetrating some truly monumental ponzi scheme which left thousands of morons broke, from coast to coast.

"Man!" said Brandon. "Did you see that Stephanie?"

Tonight I'm pleased to report that I've seen the Meat Puppets twice in one week, which is surely some kind of record. For me at least. Because I've never seen them twice in a week before.

Wednesday Nick was all like "Guess what! Meat Puppets are playing tonight!" So I'm like "Huh? What?" And Nick's like "No, swear to God, they're playing some dive!" Meat Puppets? Playing in a dive? Naturally, this called for further investigation, as I am fond of dives.

Turned out it Nick was completely on the mark- the Puppets were indeed playing and the venue- joint called the Summit- was about as divey as they come. How they rocked it out! And what's more, the poster said that Saturday, they'd be playing Cleveland! As I was going to be up at the lake anyway, there was NO WAY I was going to miss that show!

Turned out that Cleveland doesn't really share the sort of enthusiasm that the rest of us have for the Pups. Guy at the door, looking genuinely puzzled, "Tickets? Awrr.. ?" It took several minutes of patient explanation before he cottoned on to the fact that I wanted to buy a ticket- to actually put up perfectly good money in return for admission- something that apparently was beyond his experience as Door Guy. "Sold out? Ah er no, um, they ain't even close to being sold out.." Which is true in the larger sense, I guess, although the Puppets were perilously close to selling out back in the early nineties, if only anyone were buying.

What I like about the Meat Puppets is that before the show, when you go to the pisser to take a pre-emptive pee (the last thing you want to do when the show starts is have to go pee), when you're standing there at the urinal, who shows up next to you but Chris Meat Puppet! So we shot the breeze and everything, and I tell you what- it turned out I didn't actually even have to pee after all! But I stood around anyway, holding my pretending to pee, all so's I could, uh, hang out? and bother Chris Meat Puppet while the poor bastard peed.

I got to admit that when the show started, I was kind of disconcerted that they played more or less the same set of songs that they had back in Columbus: 'The Touchdown King', "Plateau', 'Station', 'Coming Down', 'Sam', 'Some New Song Which Involves Whistling' and so forth. Not that there's anything I'd rather do than hear the Meat Puppets play 'The Touchdown King', "Plateau', 'Station', 'Coming Down', 'Sam', 'Some New Song Which Involves Whistling' and of course I realize that they only got like what? four hundred songs? so OBVIOUSLY there'll be some overlap, but I felt kind of, I don't know, a faint disquieting feeling like maybe someone let 10 psi out of my tyres, but then they busted out into 'Look at the Rain' , and it was like a switch had flipped- I don't know, maybe their drugs had begun to kick in- but they proceeded to rock out in so astonishing a fashion that I was completely astonished.

After the show I hung out with two teenage dudes from some small town near Canton outside, snickering at the various whackos, loonies, freaks and nutcases that wander the streets of Cleveland at three in the morning, and then the band came out and so I bought their CD and got it signed- which makes only the second CD I've ever had that's been signed by the band, that and my Aunt Beany's First Prize Beets CD.

I know, I know. I'm a total dork.

Well I know its been a while since I wrote anything here. This is not due to the usual reasons (that there has been absolutely nothing of any interest, however meager, happening in any area of my pathetic excuse for a life) but actually for the exact opposite reason: I've been just too busy. No, seriously.

At work, I've got the new kids to train, and of course I've got to write all the programs for them to use and actually have everything work, a process which is not exactly sped up by having management or the surveyors changing their requirements, field codes etc. on an almost hourly basis. And with the onset of spring my own regular work is starting to pick up.

And of course, there's all the usual springtime boat-related work to do, in fact more than the usual amount, because not satisfied with cleaning varnishing waxing painting scrubbing one boat I went and got me another. Cookie is a little rough around the edges, but with a little sandpaper, epoxy and wood-filler she's shaping up pretty sharp indeed. She has the nicest lines and rows like a champ (Cookie's a little mouse pram I bought off Rich Craft a few years ago, brought back to Columbus, and never figured out how to get back to the lake) .

But I've spent even more time trying to be useful to my parents. They had made the decision a year or so ago that the house was just getting to be too much and it was time to find a retirement community. After much looking they finally found a place they liked. Brand new, still under construction in fact, all kinds of programs specially designed for old fogies, it was everything and more. They had a well-thumbed but still shiny brochure, chock full of pictures of happy oldsters wandering sun-dappled trails. It's mostly my mother who wants to go, of course, in fact my Dad doesn't really want to go at all, but they are both getting excited about the coming move. No more cooking! No more stairs!

There's a world of work to do before that could happen, of course. There's forty years accumulation of crap to deal with in the house- the detritus of a lifetime- boxes of pictures, books, clothes that were possibly fashionable in the seventies, Christmas gifts which, never fully appreciated, still couldn't be decently thrown out and sat in the closet for decades. No less than seven umbrellas.

All this stuff has got to go.

So they've been cleaning and sorting away, ruthlessly disposing of everything- all the garden tools, perfectly good stuff, sold on Craigslist for peanuts. All the pictures off the walls, because nobody buys houses with pictures these days, apparently, and so all the nail holes have to be spackled and the walls painted. This is a lot of work for old-timers like my folks, so I've been trying to help out in odd hours in the afternoon and evenings when I can. Marty and I painted the garage. After all this, the house (a "project" house, a "fixer-upper" or "handyman's delight", which is to say a "dump" when my folks bought it) a house that my parents had been working on almost continually for forty odd years, was finally finished, finally the way they had always envisioned it. They signed the papers and put it on the market on Monday.

On Wednesday they got a call- their retirement community had gone belly-up.

Today in the mail I got tickets to see Yo La Tengo next month. As you can see from the accompanying picture, it appears that Yo La Tengo is the opening act, and furthermore the opening act for some outfit going under the name Girl Talk, of whom I have never even heard. I'm blessed with an open mind though, and I like Girls, and I like Talk, so Girl Talk- okay what the hell.

It did get me to musing though, about how lately all the shows I've been excited about seeing it's always the opening act which has caused the excitement. Last winter, for example, I went to go see Quintron, who was opening for some pack of losers called, if memory serves, the Black Keys or something- who all were, it should be noted, strikingly white in complexion whatever they liked to call themselves.

But it's kind of cool when it's the opening act that you're going to see, because generally speaking nobody else in the crowd is, so you are assured of a good spot right in front of the stage to jump around and make a fool of yourself. And then, after the set- when Quintron is standing forgotten and alone by his merch table, you can go and hang out with him, and make a fool of yourself all over again because you've had too much too drink. Also you can buy one of his CD's that you've never even heard of from the man himself: "Oh man! this is totally fucked up shit!" says Quintron- you assume that by "totally fucked up shit" he means that it's pretty good stuff indeed, and so you buy it. Turns out that, really, he meant "totally fucked up shit" in a literal sense. It is pretty much totally fucked up, and it is pretty much shit. Those are nine dollars I'll never see again. But it's worth it to hang out with a legend like Quintron and, like, slur your words.

A few years back I went to see Superchunk, opening for some pack of losers called the Get-Up Kids. I don't know why they called themselves "Get-Up", as their outfits didn't seem particularly outlandish by normal rock-star standards, but Superchunk rocked out as per usual. For those of you who don't know how much Superchunk usually rocks out, I ask you to contemplate how much a regular Chunk would rock out, and then to consider how much more a Superchunk would rock out; that will give you a pretty good idea.

But again, it was pretty much the same deal- here were legends- Superchunk, dammit!- and nobody in the crowd paid the slightest attention. I tell you, sometimes I despair for the future of our nation. Between sets I hung out with them- Jim Superchunk was pretty cool ("Hey man! Good to see you again!") although it was pretty clear he didn't know me from Adam. "Well look I gotta go home", I say, "I gotta work in the morning" (another benefit of being an Opening Act Groupie is that the hours are much more agreeable, that and no icky sex with the drummer). "Aw no" says Mac Superchunk. "You gotta stay and catch the Get Down Kids! They are awesome!" I'm like "Well you know I'd love to and all but really I gotta get up pretty early"

"That's cool" says Mac. "But still you oughta stick around for a song or two. After that, hell, they all kind of sound the same anyway. You heard one song you heard 'em all"

Well, this morning when I went down to my bike to go to work, I was delighted to discover that during the night some clown had stolen the back wheel off my bicycle. Although since he had left a spare bike seat on the ground, I guess technically that makes it "trade" not "theft", and I appreciate the difference, but still... I wish he had asked first, because really I don't have much use for a second bike seat, whereas the wheel came in rather handy indeed. Maybe he could have come up with something more useful to me.


Also: what the hell do you do with a stolen back bicycle wheel? Did he make his getaway riding off on it, unicycle style?

I think I would have liked to see that.

Well so today was the day that Paul was interviewing candidates for his new position. As it's becoming increasingly clear that Cornelius J. Duffner is no longer under active consideration, I strolled back to Paul's office between his tete-a-tetes with a stream of fresh-faced young job-seekers (one of whom Brandon described uncharitably, if entirely accurately: "That dude! Looks just like Garfield the cat!!")

"So, you get some good prospects reply to your ad?"

"Yeah, we got quite a few... some of them seem really pretty well qualified... we got a lot of people laid off from EHM&T... blah blah blah..." I'd pretty much stopped listening by now of course, for the excellent reason that other people's resumes is one of those things that I don't particularly care about.

When Paul dribbled to a close, I said: "So, did you get the resume I sent?".

Paul stared at me for all of about a half a second before he busted up laughing. "You?! YOU sent that Corndog resume?! Ha! Ha!" Then we spent a few minutes guffawing about the hapless Corndog and his resume and the preposterous cover letter which had accompanied it. Turns out that Paul had identified it almost immediately as some sort of joke.

I got the sense though, that even though Paul had seen right away that the resume was fraudulent, he was kind of saddened to have his suspicions confirmed. I think he really wanted it to be real; deep down, bosses are just like real people. Deep down, they- like us- want to live in a world where Corndogs earnestly send resumes listing such prior work experience as Puck Boy for the local hockey team.

Well, I've been checking Corndog's e-mail, like, ten times a day and still no response to the resume I sent out. I'm beginning to suspect that Corndog isn't in the running for the opening.

This is a pity, because I've mapped out a whole persona now for Corndog, voice and all. He's kind of a moron, sure, and a loudmouth too- but an amiable dolt all the same. To the bafflement of my friends and/or telemarketers, I've taken to answering my phone "Yo! Corndog here!" on the hopes that it might be Paul calling, but it never is and I think that frankly I'm sadder about my fake resume not getting a response than I've ever been for any of the times my real resume went out in a blaze of hope and earnestness only to die forgotten and unloved in resume oblivion.

I know that recently I've been boohooing about the fact that work has been pretty much non-existent lately, so it may come as a surprise to report that my company has placed a help-wanted ad on Craigslist.

The deal is that my boss, Paul, wants to consolidate some of his more further-flung operations under one roof, and to do that he'll have to fire some of his more distant minions and replace them with local help.

As my own personal workflow is pretty threadbare, I decided to send a resume in response to the ad. Maybe I'll get the job!

(Note to any prospective employers who may be reading this: Don't get too excited, this resume is almost entirely ficticious. My own real resume is nowhere near so compelling.)

A Word of Advice

You know how sometimes when there's music playing you cut the cheese all on the sly like, because- with the sonic camouflage- you know that nobody'll hear?

Well, tell you what, just because you got your headphones on and the Ipod going, turns out that even though you're rockin out it doesn't mean that anyone else is too.

What I'm saying, is it'll be a while before I show my face in that Kroger's again.

Those of you who follow the news may have noticed that it seems to be all the rage lately to report upon the rather bleak employment situation. I can tell you that where I work, we are certainly getting into the spirit of things, and we're doing our little bit to contribute to the unemployment rate. Rex got let go over a year ago of course, Sulser's been long gone as well, then they laid off Aaron, and then Matt got the old heave-ho. Last week, apparently having gotten bored with axing single employees one-by-one, they busted all remaining full time employees down to 32 hour work weeks. Myself, I'd be downright glad to get thirty-two hours- I don't work a set schedule, just long enough to get my work completed, and turns out lately there's been precious little work to complete. Since my job just isn't the gold mine it used to be in happier days, and before it gets to the point where I have to buy off-brand cat-food, I figured it was time to scout around for supplemental sources of income.

My first thought was to look for a second job, but of course looking for a second job presents its own set of problems. Foremost among these is the risk that I might actually find a second job, and then where would I be? I'd be stuck going to some sucky job, that's where.

So long story short, what I decided to do was sign up to be a contestant on the TV game show Jeopardy!, and short story shorter, what happens when you sign up to be a contestant is that you have to take this qualifying test online to weed out the morons. And today was the day for all us Jeopardy! hopefuls to take the test, today at 8pm EST.

The way the qualifying test works is that you get a series of questions, and have fifteen seconds per question to type in the answer, and the goal is to get at many correct answers as you can. As you would expect from Jeopardy!, they do a pretty classy job with the test, although I think it would have been even better had they played the Jeopardy! theme song while the test ran. But I can see how maybe they thought that might distract some people, and anyway you can just hum the theme song in your head if you're so inclined.

The questions generally are of the type where either you know the answer or you don't, and if you don't know it you're pretty much screwed because fifteen seconds isn't really long enough to cheat and google the answer. For example there was a question about what actress played Benjamin Button's love interest Daisy, and since I've never even heard about no "Benjamin Button" (which I gather is a movie or something) I was kind of lost... I knew they made a Dukes of Hazard movie, and I think there was a Daisy in the Dukes, but thing is I didn't see that movie either, however I'm pretty sure that it was that Simpson chick who played THAT Daisy, but for the life of me I couldn't recall whether Daisy Duke ever even had a love interest- I mean, sure she was always kind of sweet to Enos, but that don't mean she was sweet ON Enos, hell, she never was sweet on Nobody in Hazard County, far as MY eight-year-old-ass could tell, and given the sorry specimens of inbred rednecktivism on display in Hazard County I can't say I blame her. What I'm driving at is I'm pretty sure I got the question wrong.

I did keep track of those questions which I'm reasonably sure that I got correct, though, and face it when your first impulse is "great wall of china" or "sword of damocles", it's probably right, so I'm pretty sure I got 30 questions right. "Thirty Questions!" you say- "Fabulous!" Well, I wish I could share your enthusiasm, but sadly those 30 probably correct ones were out of a possible total of 50. And I'm pretty sure that those remaining 20, well, I got them wrong. As it's unlikely that my default answer ("Batman!") was correct in more than a small minority of those questions.

I DO hope they grade on a curve. But if not, hell, there's always Wheel of Fortune.

It's been startlingly cold around here lately, as you probably know if you've been outside. Going outside was unavoidable for me yesterday, as I had to go to work. So I know first-hand just how cold it was.

I was planning on taking the bus to work, but since as usual I was running late I was going to have to ride my bike to the bus-stop, but since it was so cold the bike-lock was all stiff, and when I tried to force the key anyway it up and busted on me (the key did) and so I had to go back inside and get some pliers to turn the busted key-end in the lock to get it (the lock) to open, and by then it was too late to catch the bus anyway, so hell with it, I decided just to bike to work. Turns out, when you got a wind chill of minus 20 or so, riding a bike to work is a singularly unpleasant experience. Even my eyebrows began to hurt. I had never even suspected before that eyebrows were equipped with nerves, seeing as how they are only made out of hair mostly, so I guess I can say I learned something new. Halfway I stopped at the Marathon station to defrost a little, and the Indian man behind the counter just sort of glowered at me contemptuously the whole time, not even trying to disguise his irritation. Apparently maybe in India it's some sort of faux-pas to be cold? This is another new thing I have learned.

Naturally, I was quite late to work- even more so than usual, I mean- and so Allison was like "S'matter? Your watch stop?" So I was "Well no, see it was so cold that I had to stop at the Marathon station to warm up but it turns out that it's really bad manners in India to do so I guess. Also I don't got a watch." Allison accepted this excuse at face value, because obviously anyone who doesn't have sense enough not to ride a bike to work on the coldest day of the year can't really be expected to know the finer points of Indian etiquette. Even after I got all my work done, I still hung out at the office for a while because hanging at the office was preferable to going back out into the cold again. That is just how cold it was outside.

So that's why I'm sitting here writing this today, as it's far too cold to leave the house and find something more entertaining to do. Not that it isn't freezing in here, for that matter. I'm reluctant to turn up the heat though, because in what turned out to be a remarkable instance of poor planning, when I moved in I set up the kitty-litter box next to the intake vent for the furnace. In retrospect, that was a pretty poor decision. Because when the heat comes on the air comes out faintly tinged with the aroma of cat-turd, especially at those times when the cat's just gone and done her thing. When it's all said and done sometimes you're better off just staying cold. I'd move the box, but now the cat has gotten used to it being there, and you know how cats are, and it'd be a shame to move the box only to have the cat continue to poop in the same place anyway. For one thing, it'd probably ruin the floor there, and then I'd never get my deposit back

For another, I'd have cat poop on my floor.

Last weekend, I zipped off to the store to get some things. Unbeknownst to me, the store was hosting some sort of Post Holiday New Year's Blowout Extravaganza Sale-o-Bration at the time, and as a result the checkout area was completely jam packed with glazed-eyed shoppers. Shopping carts mounded over with discount markdown holiday crap. Naturally, I sidled over to the display of fake poinsettias on clearance and discreetly ditched the queen-size sheet I'd been planning on buying (ain't nothing like new bed-linens, I always say), and hot-footed it to the door. On the way home, I got my first flat tire of the year. Then it started to rain.

My New Year wasn't starting out optimally, is what I'm trying to say.

Checking my credit card receipts, I see that I've incurred expenses involving flat tires on 11/29/2008, 12/02, 12/16 and 12/22. I also got a flat over Christmas, because Jesus hates me. Apparently. This is getting to be a weekly phenomenon, this flat-tire business, and I for one am getting heartily sick of it. I've gone through an entire pack of patches in only one month... What I ought to do is invoice the city for my removing all the bits of broken glass and nails from the pavement with my tires... it's really quite a public service I'm performing after all... Hell, it's not like I even need to run over anything anymore, these lousy tires. Just look at them the wrong way and they go flat.

This morning, riding to work, I got yet another flat.

So, after work (by this time, the other tire had managed to go flat too, for good measure, despite the bike being parked all day) I moseyed on over to the bike shop and bought two new tubes and two brand new tires. Screw it ! I'm just going to replace every damn thing in sight!* No more flats for me! This is my New Year's Resolution!

Now, you might be thinking "Preposterous! You can't make a New Year's Resolution to get no flat tires! It's the ninth already! You'll just have to wait till next New Year's." But the fact of the matter is that my New Year's Resolution from last year- to not be such a terrible procrastinator- well, let's just say that resolution didn't pan out too well.

*When I left the bike shop, I told Bike Shop Dude "See ya later" and Bike Shop Dude said "Yeah, see ya... tomorrow!"

Like most Americans, I was enthralled with the recent Wall Street bailout, which was all over the news, like, a while back. I'm sure you heard about it, it was the one where Congress decided to pony up wheelbarrows of cash to flush up a bunch of Wall Street fatcats who, together, have managed to singlehandedly steer the US economy straight into the ditch.

Frankly, I was outraged. Like all of you were, I am sure.

And like all of you, I was thinking "Sure, its all well and good to shovel out the dough to incompetent ninny CEO's as though free money was going out of style, that's great, but if we're going to bankrupt this country just for the hell of it, where THE FREAKIN HECK IS MY CUT. "

So I was tickled to learn today that the good people in Washington hadn't forgotten about me after all! I take back every mean thing I've ever said about our wise and distinguished lawmakers! Turns out, buried deep in the bailout bill is a provision that sends a little do-re-mi my way, to the tune of twenty dollars a month! I saw this on the TV news, and confirmed it on the Internet*. If it says so on the Internet, you know that it's true.

The provision is worded as though it was some sort of tax credit for those who use bicycles to commute to work, but obviously that's just some fancy rigamarole to disguise the fact that Congress wants to send a little green my way but without everybody else getting jealous. It's not like they could have just written:

BE IT RESOLVED: henceforth Huw shall receive, as an expression of the thanks of a grateful nation, twenty rutabagas on the public dime- on account of him being a pretty ok dude.

without all those other clowns who entertain out-sized opinions of their own awesomeness- Judge Judy, for example- lining up and saying "Hey! Where's my twenty clams?!" But clearly, this little windfall is aimed just at me, I mean, who the hell else in this country rides their bike to work everyday, other than me? Nobody, that's who.

Well now, so with this little unexpected largesse- courtesy of those fine folks in DC- I can afford to stretch out a little now! I think I'll just take those twenty smackers and buy me some gas, and drive to work like a normal person from now on.

*Those of you who are unfamiliar with this "Internet" thing I keep talking about may find it helpful to keep in mind the words of longtime senator from Alaska Ted Stevens: "And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes."