Trick or treating on my

Trick or treating on my street is over, and since it started raining about 5:30, we didn't get anyone other than the local kids. Which translates into: a big bowl of candy for me! Woohoo!

The mail arrived safe and

The mail arrived safe and sound today.

Whew.

I do have an opening

I do have an opening line for my novel which I will share with the world now, but that's probably all you'll ever read of it. The line is:

"The girl in the plastic dress distracted me."

That's all you need to know. It's not that I don't want to tell what it's about (it's a murder mystery), but if I spill to much, the superstitious part of me will blame any failing at this upon my big mouth. So don't ask.

Never a roll in the bathroom when you need one...

Never a roll in the bathroom when you need one...

On Sunday, Bonny and I drove down to Brimfield to pick up her new dog agility tunnel (because we really needed to spend $200+ on more dog agility equipment to store in the basement all winter... but I digress...). It was in that small New England town, known primarily for holding a couple of major antique flea markets each year, that I saw one of the grandest sights ever:

In the town square, which is a small park of grass, maybe 200 feet by 50 feet, there are probably about 20 large maple and oak trees. The maples were completely bare of leaves, the oakes are still working at it. But neither type of tree was bare of toilet paper.

Reams of toilet paper. Mounds of it. BJs Wholesale must have sold out.

There were tissue rolls unfurled everywhere. Ass paper reached the pinacle of each tree and streamed down like Tannenbaum tinsle. It was starting to puddle in the street and stick to the trunks. I figure that 100 kids with three to five roles each could probably have pulled this all off in about ten minutes, but it's hard to concieve of it happening without at least one cop noticing -- or at least one "responsible adult" trying to spoil it. I wish I'd been there. I would have loved to have sent a roll flying to the pinaccle of some aged trunk, and laughed with glee.

As it was, I laughed with glee in the car for a long time as we drove past. It was glorious just to see it.

Crap. Only 26.5 hours until

Crap. Only 26.5 hours until November 1. Can I really pull off writing a novel, even a totally crappy novel, in a month?

What I really wish I had was a title. The title for the short story I'm basing this whole thing on won't work. Well, at least I've got a story. That's more than a lot of people trying to pull this off have.

War with the Post

War with the Post

It would appear our mailman doesn't like us.

Back around the holidays 2000 -- what a glorious time! Live was full of promise and wonder and joy! -- Bonny and I and the mutts took the week off between Christmas and New Year's to travel home and spend copious amounts of time with family. We ate, drank, celebrated (my dad retired) and when it was all done we were ready to go home to our own bed and couch and kitchen and relax.

But the mailman ruined our homecoming.

He'd been stuffing our mailbox for a week with bills and magazines and junk and packages. Along with it was a terse note from him saying we should inform the post office when we're out of town so our mail could be held.

I think we hit this particular letter carrier's pet peeve directly.

Mind you, we live in town, but only barely. We're far enough out that the mailman doesn't carry the mail up the porch and put it in a box -- if so, he could just leave it all piled on the porch when the box is full. Nope, out here in the sticks, we gets us rural boxes stuck in the dirt next ta the driveway. The driver with his steering-wheel-on-the-right vehicle pulls up, slams home the cargo, and leaves. Time is of the essence!

Bonny was fuming. I wasn't pleased myself. Still, you can't fight city hall. So we tried to put it behind us and move on.

Fast forward to this past week. We were out of town for four days to attend my grandmother's memorial service. When we got home on Saturday afternoon, first thing we did was check the mailbox -- a gigantic oversized Rubbermaid contraption, by the way -- and it's emptier than the vacuum of space. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. My assumption: we pissed off the mailman again and he took it all. But there was no note, nothing to indicate that we should come pick it up.

About an hour later, the doorbell rings. It's Marty, the retired cop who lives across the street from us with just his golf clubs and his cat Molly. He's got an armload of mail for us. He took it to hold because the box was over flowing. (Note: Marty hates our mailman, too, and has said so on more than one occasion, so it's not just us being petty bastards. Not that we're not. Petty, that is.) We didn't know just how badly it was overflowing until Monday morning when the UPS dropped off a package and told Bonny that our mail was literally in the street, blowing into the bushes, because our friendly neighborhood postal worker tried to cram so much into the box. Good thing Marty got it for us.

Then, Monday, the mail truck drives by -- and doesn't give us any mail at all. The chances of neither Bonny nor I getting any mail on any day of the week is about as likely as Bill Gates working for spending cash at McDonald's. We were pretty flabbergasted. But we let it slide.

Today, the mail came. I brought it in. It was a huge amount of correspondence -- obviously two days worth. He'd skipped giving us our mail Monday, probably because he assumed we weren't going to be home. Which would have been fine, except for the final salvo from Mr. Postman: he'd included with our mail a "Hold Mail" form and written along the top was "please use in future when not home."

I yelled up to Bonny in her office, "Hey. The frickin' mailman's being a dick again. He left us a "Hold Mail" form and wrote on the top that we should use it!"

"What? Are you kidding me?"

"Nope."

"Call the damn post office!" she ordered.

Now, even when I'm fully enraged and in Incredible Hulk mode, I'm not a very "in-you-face" kinda guy. As much as I feel this particular postal worker has issues, I figured we didn't have a leg to stand on. We did leave town and didn't hold our mail, so he was right, albeit he's being a prick about it. Besides, the guy might really have issues, like, say, anger management issues, and I don't need to be attacked by a crazy postal worker after he gets yelled at by his boss. Though I doubted that would happen, because I'm was sure the local postmaster would side with his guy.

So, I told Bonny, "You call 'em."

So I'm gazing through my new copy of Maxim (I got myself a year subscription to Maxim, Stuff, and FHM all for $6 total a while ago through some deal with my expiring frequent flyer miles. Believe me, it's strictly for the pictures, since all the articles are written for 20-year-old frat boys.) when Bonny yells "Hah! I got his ass in trouble!"

This couldn't be good.

"You called the post master?" I asked, trying to mix supportiveness in to my voice with the trepidation.

"You bet," she said. "I told the guy how our mail was all over the street, and he said 'That shouldn't happen,' and how we've got such a huge mailbox, and that we were out of town for a funeral and contacting the post office was really the last thing on our minds..." She was pretty satisfied. I couldn't blame her, really. The guy deserves it.

"Wow," I said.

But all I could think was, "So... I guess he'll really hate us now, huh?"

And that's what I'm afraid of... because in a war with the postman, he's got all the power. If he wants to "misplace" our checks or my comics don't show up some month or our outgoing mail to the bank just doesn't arrive... well, accidents happen, right?

We're just the terrorists hiding in the mountain caves to his Dubya. Brrr.

You'll have more updates in this war as they develop.

I AM 47% GEEK. I

I AM 47% GEEK.


I probably work in computers, or a history
deptartment at a college. I never really
fit in with the "normal" crowd. But I have
friends, and this is a good thing.
Take the GEEK Test at Fuali.com!

Today is five weeks since

Today is five weeks since I started my new job. And I just posted the first review I've got. But, as my boss pointed out to the big boss in e-mail a few days ago when I was getting told the site looked a little too commercial with the changes I've made, my site has helped increased the traffic at on of my sister-sites by 30 percent. My site is also up 3% in traffic. I must be doing something right. I hope I can figure out what it is.

Yesterday I tried to finish

Yesterday I tried to finish off the last of the wretched maple leaves clogging the yard. I did pretty good with the fenced in part, but I got a bit cocky when I was in the un-fenced side yard.. I saw some viney, thorny bushes sticking out into the yard and figured I'd just mow them down with all 14-horses of power and dual blades of steel-y vegetation death. So instead of going around them, I headed right for them.

That's when I hit something with a gigantic "ker-CHUNG" and the engine completely stalled. I had to push the mower to get it off the mound of vegetation to find out that I'd hit a rock. Not just a rock tho -- this is Massachusetts. The standard yard in this are has boulders buried in it the size of flat-bed pick-up trucks. I think I sheared the top of one such boulders off when I hit those bushes. Which would be fine with me (Stupid rock! Take that!), except the collateral damage to one of the mower blades was enough that now I have to take the mowing deck off to replace it. The blade is bent into much the same shape as the human spine. That's good for walking erect, but sucks for mowing leaves. Good thing this happened in October and not May, or I'd be in such a black mood I might say something truly cross.

Stupid rock.

Today was the true test

Today was the true test of my basement office's ability to hold heat, especially with the brand spankin' new drop ceiling installed. I thought it was feeling warmer over the last couple of weeks, but turns out I was living a dream. When the furnace isn't on (and I'm cheap, so I try to keep it turned down during the day) it's frickin' cold in here.

It just kicked on tho, and now my toes and fingers are getting toasty warm.

Might be time to buy some insulation for the walls. Damn.

Today was the true test

Today was the true test of my basement office's ability to hold heat, especially with the brand spankin' new drop ceiling installed. I thought it was feeling warmer over the last couple of weeks, but turns out I was living a dream. When the furnace isn't on (and I'm cheap, so I try to keep it turned down during the day) it's frickin' cold in here.

It just kicked on tho, and now my toes and fingers are getting toasty warm.

Might be time to buy some insulation for the walls. Damn.

It's dawning on me that

It's dawning on me that writing a novel is young person's work... I joined a mailing list of people here in MA that are also doing the whole National Novel Writing Month thing and they all seem to be between 15 and 22. Yipe. I feel sooo old.

More cool ways to post

More cool ways to post to blogger... I'm now using blogBuddy, a small program that lets me post without having to log on to Blogger.com (or use the somewhat iffy BlogBot on AIM).

Who's Watching?

Who's Watching?

I used to have three things I drew on all my stuff in high school. I drew the dripping "V" from the mini-series of the same name (I admit, I watched every episode of the pathetic TV show that came out of the excellent mini-series). I drew the lightning bolt from Scott McCloud's ZOT!, still my favorite comic book of all time. And I drew the blood stained happy face button that symbolized the book, Watchmen.

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons is the comic book that kept me in comic books. I was 17 years old when it began, and had more than discovered girls and was ready for the real world. I'd been reading comics for 11 years at the time and was slowly growing somewhat disenchanted with them.

There were the occasional glimmers of hope, but super heroes -- the only genre accepted by comics for the most part, sadly -- were slowly becoming less and less of interest. Unless they were really turned on thier heads. There was some of that with Miracle Man (also by Alan Moore, later by Neil Gaiman) and Swamp Thing (yeah, also by Moore). But when Moore decided to make the intricate murder mystery called "Watchmen," I was floored. I collected each individual issue, and remember with fondness (and often madness) about how each of the three last issues came out two months apart instead of monthly. Maddening, and yet, kept me on the edge. (Moore, by the way, also wrote the graphic novel that "From Hell" is based upon.)

Watchmen taught me a lot of things about story telling. One, that it's always good to have an ending. Even series characters with completely open endings need to have some stopping points. That's why soap operas don't work for me. They never end. If I want that, I'll go to real life. (For lessons on not ending when you should, watch "Twin Peaks.") Two, I learned that a recurring motif really works if done right. And three, there's no such thing as a good guy. Just guys who try to be good.

So, now there's news that Watchmen is once again up for Hollywood treatment. In general, I like to see fav heroes on screen if done right. Superman staring Christopher Reeve is among my top five films of all time. X-Men was very well done. I spent months, if not years, living and breathing the first Tim Burton Batman movie. I have high hopes for Spider-Man next year.

But I'll look forward to seeing Watchmen with trepediation. I usually don't put much stock in worrying about the "classics" being mishandled -- who really wants to see every word of "War and Peace" on screen? -- but this is my personal classic and I would hate to see it's reputation sullied. I know I can always go back to the book. I can do that with Spider-Man, the Lord of the Rings, all of them... but Watchmen... please, lord, don't screw that one up.

Okay, so this is funny:

Okay, so this is funny: I have this stupid store on the site (and remember, you only have until Oct. 31 to buy a Squished Frog Stein -- I got one, they're cool!) and a few of my friends and my mom and one person I have yet to identify have bought stuff with my Squished Frog Logo. So, while I'm home in Hornell, my sister-in-law gives me a check from her boss, who happens to be the mother of my good buddy Bill. Bill is one of the original Squished Frog founders from the late 1980s. Bill's mom wants a mug. So she wrote a check to me to buy her the mug. But it's an online store! I told Bill about this, and it turns out his mom doesn't use credit cards anymore. I, on the other hand, don't write checks -- I hate them. Which of us is crazy? I'm not really sure. But I have to go order her a mug.

So I'm really regretting spending

So I'm really regretting spending 70 bucks to register and create the They'll All PAY Web site. I'm just not finding that much to bitch about. That's surprising. Maybe I'm more mellow?

Do I blog anymore? It

Do I blog anymore? It likely seems to many that I don't. But I do. I just let real life get in the way of it all the time. Not that I'm not constantly thinking about blogging. I am. I just can't. I'll try to make up for that as I 1) catchup with work and 2) mentally prepare for writing 50,000 words in 30 days come hell or high-chairs and 3) uh, well, go to my class and watch TV and play with my dogs and that crap. The usual.

The Day We Said Good-bye

The Day We Said Good-bye

Today in Canisteo at the First Baptist Church, we said good-bye to my grandmother. Like most church memorials for someone how’s passed away, it was much more about God and Jesus than it was about the departed. I suppose if you lived your life religiously, that’s the way you’d want it. So I hope Grandma was happy with it. Though it was probably more than she wanted us to do, anyway.

Afterward, a number of my family members went to Grandma’s house, around the corner. The house is now being outfitted for my other grandmother, on my mom’s side. She’ll be moving in so she’ll be off the farm house in Birdsall, NY, which is 30 minutes from Hornell, and thus be only 5 minutes from Hornell in a suburban neighborhood. A touch safer, a touch closer, all around it works out well.

We’d been worried because my mom couldn’t find them, but luckily my grandmother’s journals were found. She keep a daily diary for years – I think I saw at least one going back to 1973 – and it is fascinating to see when certain things happened and be reminded. What’s tragically disappointing is the complete lack of personality or opinion in the entries. Most are of the nature: “I got up 5:30. Got hair done in the morning. David called. Washed car and went shopping at A&P. Gerry and kids stopped by and we had cupcakes.” There’s no indication of how she felt about things, just start objective observations. When my grandfather was in the hospital for so many months in 1987 and 1988, she visited him daily if she could (less when he was in Strong Memorial in Rochester), and usually she just wrote “Saw John at 12:30” or “Saw John, he looked depressed.”

The only time she got into it more was at one point in February 1988 when he was home for his last stretch of time, she wrote one night “John cried tonight and took on again for a while.” It took me a while to realize that “took on” meant he was likely railing against how his body was turning on him. But Grandpa John never complained. His death hit me harder than any other in my life in part because the last day I saw him (Friday May 20, 1988 if you’re keeping score) he was moving about his hospital room, animated, happy, and telling me how sorry he felt for President Reagan that the press was picking on the man. When he died on the following Tuesday, one month before I graduated high school, it was a complete shock. I haven’t been very shocked by a death in my or Bonny’s family since, as all of them in the last decade have been people who had a serious illness before hand.

I hope I’m that lucky with everyone I love. And I hope I’m lucky enough to be by the side of those I love when they go.

Bags are packed, dog food

Bags are packed, dog food is stowed, and the Massachusetts end of the Griffith clan is heading out for memorial services in Canisteo, where my grandmother lived. If you've never heard of the World Famous Canisteo Living Sign, click to see the satellite photo (thanks, Bill).

The day of November 1 is fast approaching, which means on top of my job which I'm already woefully behind on, I've got to start writing my novel. Luckily, I've got the entire first chapter mapped out in my head. After that, anything goes.

This blog page is taking an indescribably long time to load on my system. If anyone else is noticing this incredible lag time, let me know. I want to fix it, I just don't know what's causing it.

That's it. Next post will be again from central New Yuck.

My grandmother, Louise Griffith, died

My grandmother, Louise Griffith, died today around 4:30pm. My Dad, her oldest son, was at her bedside.

Random Thoughts while in

Random Thoughts while in Hornell

Thank god my brother is a cop, because the stories he’s going to tell me are possibly going to let me actually finish a 50k word novel in the month of November. (hey. NOVel. NOVember. Clever.)

---

My brother needs a new computer. He’s still using this Cyrix based system I put together for him about four years ago. It’s not even running Windows 98 Second Edition, it’s still the old Windows 98. But, yet, his priorities are messed up. All he wants for his birthday and/or Christmas is a black (p)leather chair with built in Shiatsu massage.

I guess he can wait. He admittedly only uses it as a big checkbook, to track his one account in Quicken. That’s it. Hell, he and my parents will soon have available to them AT&T Road Runner cable modems and digital cable television--- I wouldn’t mind the latter, and I’d perform illegal acts involving anything from vaseline to dresses for the former. But will they take advantage of either? No. Makes me want to F’ing cry.

---

The house next door to my parents is apparently going on sale, as their neighbor, a Hornell cop who my brother, in the days before he was himself a cop, used to call “Sweetchuck” after the overzealous cop in the Police Academy movies, is moving to make more room for himself, wife, and new baby. The house isn’t a ranch, but I guess the first floor is the only living space, but there’s an attic, and a one car unattached garage. And a lot of land, tons of it, a whole extra lot next door to the house goes with it. The asking price is likely to be (get this) around $40,000. That would be a mortgage payment of about $350 a month.

So I called Bon last night and told her this news and said “I made a down-payment on the house today!” expecting her to soil her knickers.

Instead, she said, “40 grand? You should go look at it.”

That’s how much it sucks to overpay for a house. You’re actually willing to move back to your podunk home town and live that close to your relatives. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Mom….)

---

My dad has not had his hearing checked out, like he told me he planned. I must bug him. (Perhaps living next door to him wouldn’t be all bad, just for the pressure I could put on them constantly, healthwise.)

---

Paul still has half a box of “Wedding Bubbles” blowers left over from his wedding back on July 4. Blowing bubbles instead of throwing rice is apparently all the rage now. I wish I’d had a Lawrence Welk like bubble machine for my wedding now. Or a fog machine, that would have been cool. Or better yet, I should have eloped and saved the money, which I could now use to bribe someone into giving me broadband.

---

Dying to know what I’m reading these days? I’m in the final agonizing throes of Brian Lumley’s “Necroscope.” Lordy, how that book sucks. The dialogue is completely unbelievable, the contrived way the protagonist is going to get to the final battle is deus ex machina to the highest order, and my god, vampires infecting each other using tree sap? What’s up with that? On the Griffith Book Scale of one being the lowest (represented by either John Grisham’s “The Chamber” or Thomas Harris’s spectacular piece of crud, “Hannibal”) to ten as the highest (Any “Prey” novel by John Sandford, Greg Rucka’s “Atticus Kodiak” books), this book rates a 2. It’s taken me over two months to get to the end, and I should have given up a long time ago, but I gave up on this book once before and felt guilty. Now hopefully the book Gods will feel guilty that I’m going to finish it.

Next up, I’ve got a book on home networking I want to peruse and perhaps review for PracNet. Then I’ve got to choose between re-reading “The Fellowship of the King” before the first “Lord of the Rings” movie comes out, or diving into the third and fourth Harry Potter novels. Suggestions?

“How You Doing?”

The reply I got to that question from my Grandma: “Not so good.”

My brother Paul, his wife Jen, and I went to visit my grandmother about an hour ago. We caught her at the tail end of her lunch of meatloaf (which she hadn’t touched) and peach cobbler (which she finished). To call the visit uncomfortable is understatement. To be in a room with someone who’s had the fight taken out of them, that was probably ready to move on a while ago, who you love mightily but can’t find a way to help because, hell, you can’t blame them for wanting to move on… that’s a whole new kind of uncomfortable.

While her health does seem better than I expected, she’s prone to long silences, which many an uncomfortable one as we sat there. Her hearing is next to gone, and her two hearing aids only help if you are animated and loud and you cut to the chase of any statement and end it before it gets too complicated. At least the latter seemed to be what I was doing, as if I‘m talking to a small child with a short attention span… I don’t know if everyone else does this. It made me feel guilty, like I wasn’t giving her the benefit of the doubt.

Her hearing aids also mean Paul and Jen and I had entire conversations between ourselves at normal volume levels, but she didn’t hear a thing. More guilt. But one I’m used to, as her hearing has been that way for quite a few years.

My uncle David, her youngest son, is in town now with his fiancé and they’ll be stopping up to see her within the hour. I’m sure seeing Dave will buck up her spirit’s a bit, as she seldom gets to see him. Tomorrow, Dave and Darlene are off to see her mom, who’s also not doing well. Dave’s former father-in-law, who was also the man who married my parents back in 1968 in Angelica, New York, died last week. It would seem it’s that time in life to say good bye to some folks.

I hope grandma waits a while longer before she says good-bye.

Harp Trip

Harp Trip

I left Hudson MA yesterday afternoon around 2 to head to Hornell for a weekend visit. I’m sitting in my mom and dad’s 'office/den' writing this post. This room used to be, in turns, my or my brother’s bedroom, and at one time we had it for just a play room with a couch, a record player and a lot of books. I liked to call this room “the library” back then).

I came out because my brother’s birthday is in a few days (he‘ll be 31, same age as me, for one month -- it‘s his favorite month of the year), my uncle is coming into town from his home in Virginia and I haven’t seen him in months, and because by all reports (well, okay, mom’s reports) my grandmother’s condition is worsening. As I got in the door last night after 8 hours in the car, however, mom said, “Your grandmother’s doing so well this week, I feel kind of silly having told everyone to come see her.”

Now you tell me.

Be that as it may, however, a trip was warranted anyway. With my grandmother’s inconsistent health, I want to see her when I can. Eight hours in a car with Siren looking like she’s going to puke at any moment is worth it.

While I was in the car, high on the caffeine from a 20 oz bottle of Pepsi I bought at the rest area just outside of Albany, I thought of a lot of stuff I want to blog about, many short little things from my past. One thing I want to mention that I think puts my entire personality into perspective are the three things I always wanted to do to better myself as a kid.

I wanted to learn to juggle.

I wanted to learn to play the harmonica.

And I wanted to learn how to ride a unicycle.

Preferably, I wanted to do all three at the same time.

I owned a unicycle once. I think we bought it at a garage sale when I was about 11 or 12. I never learned to ride it, and I think I eventually gave it to my friend Brian. He was a tapdancer, and if anyone had the dexterity to ride it, he did. I don’t think he bothered, tho. It’s not exactly a skill you need for your resume once you’re out of high school.

I have owned since about the same age a couple of “klutz kits” for juggling and playing harmonica. I’ve got at least two or three harmonica’s laying around my house. But last night, for the first time in probably 15 years, I listened to the cassette tape that came with the “Harmonica for the Musically Clueless” (or whatever the title is). And I learned some important things:

1. You are supposed to pucker when you play, so you can get individual notes.
   
2. You should really have lip balm on when you’re playing, especially in dry weather.
   
3. My harmonica is in the key of C.
   
4. Harmonicas hold an enormous amount of spit.
   
5. You really need two hands to play a harmonica, and that’s a scary thing to find out when route 17 suddenly goes down to one lane and you’re playing Zaxxon between concrete highway dividers.
   

I think I’d better learn to play the ol’ mouth harp while sitting in my office. I’ll try juggling on the next ride home.

These are the top five

These are the top five searches performed on SquishedFrog.com this week:
- 2 for "josie and the pussy cats"
- 1 for "atomz"
- 1 for "bad words frog"
- 1 for "ben"
- 1 for "canisteo porn"
"Canisteo porn?" What the hell... I doubt anyone in Canisteo, NY has ever even heard of porn.

If we had to have

If we had to have a Republican for President, it probably should have been this guy: "More people have been struck by lightning in the last 10 days, I'll bet, than have contracted anthrax. The country badly needs to settle down." --SENATOR JOHN McCAIN (Then again, McCain is smart, and that means he could probably push through more stuff, so forget I said that.)

I love this story --

I love this story -- especially because it's at Inside.com and it's all about the demise of Inside.com. Brutal honesty from a (likely bitter) laid off employee on the way out the door.

RTFN

RTFN

When I was at Access, I had two computers for a while, one with Windows 98 SE, the other with Windows 2000. The Win 2000 system was just for posting stuff to the AccessMagazine.com site, which was a gigantic pain in the ass involving all sorts of extra steps that no right thinking person ever thought worthwhile.

Since the system was necessary to get my job done, but I didn't want to take up anymore space than necessary, I set up a KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) Switch from Cybex (which has since become Avocent). It let me use the same monitor, keyboard and mouse between two computers. Very nice.

But there was a strange glitch... every time I was using a form on a Web page that required me to hold down the CTRL key to select multiple items in a form, my keyboard lights would start flashing and I'd be locked out of the systems. I couldn't do anything. I ended up having to power down both computers and then reboot before I could do anything.

Being a computer guy at heart, did I fix it? No. I accepted it as the price one pays for being able to use a cool switch that worked out okay the other 99% of the time.

Flash forward to today. I've got a Avocent SwitchView MP, a 4-system switch, in for review. It's great for testing multiple PCs in a small space with only one monitor. I hooked up two desktops and two laptops to it. It works just the same as my old Cybex -- you push the button on the switch and in turn it brings up the display of each computer, one at a time.

Then, I did the unthinkable, something I only do when I have to write about a product. I Read The Fucking Manual. And low and behold, the truth appeard: by holding down the CTRL key on my old switch, I was activating a feature, not a bug. Hit CTRL twice, then a letter to match the system's switch placement, then ENTER, and you're jumped to that system. So what I was doing with my old switch was turning on this feature, but never completing it by hitting A or B and then ENTER.

Lesson learned. If it even the most basic of tools has instructions, read them. Or suffer in ignorance like me.

Taking a blow

Recent developments have lead me to believe that my new job is going to be taking more of my time in the next couple of months than I thought. That is to say, I thought I could get away with being a bit lazy -- even though I've been working on the site about 55 hours a week -- and that's not gonna fly if I want this site to rock. Therefore, I'm not going out for the Pirates of Penzance.

I am, however, going to sign-up at National Novel Writing Month and see if my lack of free time allows me to write the average of 1666.667 words a day required to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. I mean, hell, I write almost that much a day for the blog. So here's hoping.

By the way... anyone got a good idea for a novel?

Rate me! Grade me!

Rate me! Grade me!

The Lisa Simpson-esque call goes forth: There's another site out there for rating individual blogs and you can use this form below to help me to the top of the charts. Or not. Hey, I'm not offended if you hate my rambling. Green is good, red is bad (duh). Click away.

Rate Me on BlogHop.com!

help?

Sorry, I should have mentioned,

Sorry, I should have mentioned, if you're into that, you can find the rules for sending to your blog from AIM at http://www.fibiger.org/bloggerbot/, which is also mentioned on the top page of Blogger.com today. -from AIM

Holy crap. I'm now able

Holy crap. I'm now able to post directly to my blog from AOL Instant Messager. This means the tool I use for most of my daily communication can be used to instantly send crap into my blog. Amazing. Technology rules. Or at least clever programmers do.

Customers!

Customers!

I've made 14 bucks so far with all the purchases at my Squished Frog Store. Woo-hoo!

Of course, my customer base consists of my friends Joe and Bill, and my mom.

And Joan Knapp. I've searched my data banks, asked around, and I haven't a clue who Joan Knapp is. Could she be (gasp) a fan?

Joan, if you're reading this... drop me a line and let me know what you thought of the mug. Here at Squished Frog, customer service is job one.

Electra Woman and Dyna Girl

Electra Woman and Dyna Girl

I knew there was a possibility of a new show based on the old Electra Woman and Dyna Girl skit from Sid & Marty Krofft's Krofft Supershow (home of my childhood fav Bigfoot and Wildboy!), but I had no idea it had actually been made. Sadly, the WB didn't pick it up for the new season. Could be they were afraid to go up against The Tick on Fox.

Maybe no new Electra Woman (played in the original show in 1976 by Deidre Hall, who is still on some daytime soap) is a blessing, considering how badly the remake of Land of the Lost sucked. But if you want to see shots of Markie "Night Court" Post as ElectraWoman, visit the Electra Woman and Dyna Girl Gallery

The Clothes Make the Crustacean

The Clothes Make the Crustacean

A few days ago I was writing about all the plays I'd been in while in school, and mentioned the part I played in sixth grade as Lobster Louie, a denizen of the deep in "The Littlest Chimney Sweep." I found this picture of me as Louie taken while I was on stage. My dad has a habit of writing the date on not only pictures but just about everything he makes or buys... it's a habit I wish I was in more, as it's fascinating to realized when exactly things happened. The date on the back indicates that the performance was March 20, 1982. I was 12 years old.

Check out the glasses -- I had to wear them even as a Lobster. I wore glasses in all the plays except Dracula, during my attempt to look just a smidgen cooler by having contacts. My eyes were so bad, I had to wear hard lenses. They were "gas permeable" supposedly, but they still felt like I had rocks on my cornea. They were colored blue, however, and I remember girls in school telling my how great my eyes were with that dazzling blue. Not that having blue eyes got my anywhere with them. Why don't girls realize when you compliment a teenage boy on something, he immediately hopes you want to have sex with him?

This costume was cool, by the way, because when I lifted my arms with the lobster claws, other arms made of pipe insulation tubing were attached and moved around with them. It was like I was an HR Puffinstuff creature, only without the budget or the LSD.

X10 Pop Preventer?

X10 Pop Preventer?

Supposedly if you go to Information about X10 Ads you can place a cookie on your computer to prevent them the ubiquitous annoyances from cropping up every few minutes. I hope this works. Now if I could find one for the "Save Now" ads for Half.com that come up all the time at Amazon....

'Gility Dogs

I've got my USB scanner up and running. I had to go buy a USB data cable to do it and, and ended up getting a USB 4-port hub at the same time. The hub was only six dollars more than the cable. What's up with that pricing?

Anyway, the scanner's up because I've got pictures to share: these shots of Siren (top) flying over an a-frame and Caper (bottom) rocketing through weave poles were taken by JT Pawprints. He took them all digitally, but we had to order prints, so I could scan them and have them digitially again. Whatever. He's a good photographer. Wait'll you see our canine Christmas card this year. Click the image for the big picture.

The Robot I Am

The Robot I Am

It could be worse. I could have been Yul Brenner in Westworld.

Junk Shopping

Junk Shopping

There's was a recent squabble on my wife's side of the family. I won't get into the details so as not to offend anyone, but let me just state that certain dumb-asses don't know how to accept gifts. Though I shouldn't worry about offending, because said dumb-ass(es) also wouldn't know a URL from their elbow, so the chances they'll ever read this blog (I can just hear it now... "what's a blog?") are about the same as never seeing a dog sniff another dog's butt ever again.

The gifts in question were purchased used -- from yard sales. Now, I for one have always found the thought of buying, say, clothing or shows from a yard sale repugnant. Hand-me-downs are bad enough. I had a pair of my late grandfather's pants in a closet for years out of guilt, but never wore them. Maybe that was because he had a size 30 waist, but I digress.

Lets face it, yard sales present huge bargains IF you can find a product in good shape and IF it has all the parts it needs. Mostly, they are people trying to sell junk. But there's always some treasures to be found if you search hard enough. Especially if you're looking for stuff for kids.

The gifts in question above, by the way, were all for a baby that has yet to arrive. Spurning them because they weren’t brand new was short-sighted, petty, and moronic, but it's just a symptom of the disease -- it's hardly the whole enchilada when it comes to dealing with this dumb-ass.

After all the turmoil, I found it quite amazing this morning when Bonny and I were out hitting the yard sales -- in Acton, MA, one entire street was having yard sales, with all proceeds going to two families that lost people on Flight 11 from Boston that hit the WTC -- and I was finding baby bargains galore! Toys. Wagons. Puzzles. Clothing.

(Aside: clothing for grown-ups from a yard sale? No. Clothing for babies: of course. Frickin' kids only wear them once and then they're grown out of it. Wash it in hot water, get that one little mashed peas stain out, and it's still like new. C'mon, people.)

So, I saw the coolest thing: a baby "Happy Camper" that was basically a foldable play-pen with a bassinet in the top and a cabana to go over all of it to keep the sun out. Fifteen bucks. So I bought it. I figure, if they don't want it, someone else in the family will eventually. Maybe we can keep Caper in it.

When we got it home, I set it up. Looks like one my friend Chris had for his son Ben when I saw them back in July. Very cool.... except, the bassinet part is missing, I dunno, parts. Not to mention instructions. The instructions are there for the cabana top -- but the cabana itself is not there. The playpen part works pretty well though.

So, the moral of the story: don't buy anything complicated at a yard sale without setting it up there first. Shop smarter, not harder.

Second moral: don't be surprised when you get home and check the Web site of the playpen's manufacturer and find out that what you just bought was under recall in 1997 because "product can collapse, possibly trapping the child in the "V" formed by the folded top rails." Ouch.

Anyone who's got a kid they want to get rid of "by accident" (wink wink), I've got a playpen for you. Cheap.

Not Feeling It

Not Feeling It

Maybe I'm out of touch. In fact, I know I'm out of touch. During the last few years working, I've developed a taste for listening to National Public Radio in a way that made me feel like my finger was right on the pulse of the nation.

I'll never forget my horror at sitting down for lunch at a Pizza Hut with my friend Kristina in 1992 and she asked me what I thought of about the riots. I'd been so busy working my three campus jobs and working on my senior writing project, that there was only one answer: "What riots?"

Obviously, I couldn't avoid knowing about the September 11th attacks (who could?) but since then, now working from home, my news intake outside of the usual babble and downturn news from the technology world has been severally muted.

So over the last week, I've watched or heard the news on and off and I keep hearing how everyone's panicked! The country is scared. People don't know what to do: should they buy gas masks? Should they not leave home?

So maybe I'm even more out of touch than usual, because I'm not feeling panicked. I'm not scared, I don't feel like at any moment the terrorists are going to strike again. When the Command-in-Thief spoke the other night trying to answer questions about the warning from the FBI, I just couldn't feel in my bones that there was a real threat involved.

It's not a matter of my thinking "it can't happen to me." Believe me, I know it can happen to me and anyone I know. I've got a brother who's a cop, a mom's who's a nurse, and a father who retired after 31 years driving an ambulance. They've all seen incredibly nasty things, and that's just in little hamlets in western New York state. Whatever "It" may turn out to be, I know It can happen. It can, and It does.

I guess I'm just feeling like this "heightened alert" is working. I feel like people are looking out. There's obviously some sick folks still who want to take advantage -- ten to one if they ever catch the anthrax sender in Florida, it'll be some disgruntled reader of the Sun tabloid. In fact, if I'm scared of anything, it's of the huge amount of insane folks we've already got living here. But overall, I feel like Osama blew it, we're fine, and we're going to be fine, especially when we're done getting out revenge jones out on al Qaeda.

Then we can get back to some exuberant, irrational economic growth and pretend the 1990's never ended.

Little Match Girl

Little Match Girl

Original Squished Frog member Bill Kays just reminded me that the play I was in as the Devil was "The Little Match Girl." That one is famous for two of my friends getting major parts, even though drama was not exactly in their blood. Or as Bill put it, "Keith forgot all of his lines and Sterns said shit at one point."

Playing the devil there was simply training for my part as Beezulbub in Bill's production of the Canterbury Tales, perhaps the greatest of the Squished Frog Productions. Sadly, my Satan is never as well remembered as my role as the Wife of Bath.

Conversation with Bonny

Conversation with Bonny

After she read my last blog, Bon started IMing me. It's annotated with things you should know to understand the conversation, with notes imbedded in itals.

Wifey-Poo: ya know
Wifey-Poo: maybe you should get an agent
Wifey-Poo: and go out for commercials
Wifey-Poo: if elaine can do it
Wifey-Poo: why can't you? [[Our friend Elaine is a writer who also does a cabaret act and is trying to break into acting. I think she might have even been in the background of an SNL skit. Unless that fell through.]]
ECGriffith: ha! you phunny [[I think phonetically correct misspellings are hysterical.]]
Wifey-Poo: not phunny.
Wifey-Poo: serious.
ECGriffith: well, i suppose I could. but I'd best get a part in something like
a play first.
Wifey-Poo: shurrrr :-)
ECGriffith: if I can't land the Major General, I won't be doing any commercials.
Wifey-Poo: I suppose.
ECGriffith: but I'd make a great hand model
ECGriffith: or a porn star, like Ron Jeremy! [[It's true. I would. Seriously. Stop laughing.]]
Wifey-Poo: but look at that be-oootius asian guy whose face is everywhere! [[There's this guy who's image was used in some clip art package and now I see him everywhere. He was even on a billboard out in Hornell last time I was there.]]
Wifey-Poo: you could model flannel for the Bears-R-Us catalog! :-) [[Last January I did a guest shot on TechTV's Call for Help. When I got back to the office, I had an e-mail waiting from a guy named "Jim Bear" explaining to me how attractive my physique is to the subset of the gay male world called "bears," AKA big hairy guys. I took it as a compliment and shared it with the office at Access, which was probably a mistake, as many of them still bring it up as one of the funnier (phunnier) moments in the magazine's history.]]
Wifey-Poo: ROTFLMAO
ECGriffith: you suck
Wifey-Poo: LOL
Wifey-Poo: I love ya!
Wifey-Poo: you are MY bear
Wifey-Poo: don't you know I want to make every other bear lover out there jealous?
ECGriffith: well, I guess that would do it.

By the way, Bon's IM screen name is not Wifey-Poo, I changed it to protect her from you crazed stalkers. Buf if there is a Wifey-Poo on AIM, my apologies.

Dancing Ridicule

Dancing Ridicule

I disrespect few people as much as George W. He's an ignorant bully who happens to be in charge of our nation at a time when we could use a really good leader. He ain't it. Thank god the VP is there to pull the strings. That's why it always makes me smile to see the man ridiculed to as much as possible, and why I will share with you the Dancing Bush. My thanks to Laura for sending this to me while she and I should both be working.

All the world's a stage

[Here's a long winded post to make up for my recent lack of blogging.]

One of the upsides of unemployment -- though I was never relaxed enough to realize it at the time -- was my copious amount of free time, and how having it made me feel I could cram in everything I wanted to do and still have time left for more.

Now that I'm doing my 40 hours a week, or more like 55 this week, the way things are going, I find I barely have time to write anything for this blog, which is particularly sad since I've become so attached to it.

Other stuff I'm looking into doing:

I read at Poodlecircus about NaNoWriMo, which isn't exactly an acronym, I don't know what you call it... it's a truncated way of saying National Novel Writing Month. The site provides a place for would-be novelists who can't get motivated to sign up and proclaim, "Yes, I will write a 50,000 word novel in one month, November 1st to the 30th, with absolutely no worries about quality, only quanitity, so I can get my name listed on the site later as having accomplished said task." Which doesn't sound like much of a pay-off. So then why am I sitting her thinking about it all the time?

I also want to take a class on networking from the local tech school one night a week, starting next week and going through the end of November. That would mean one night a week of no writing a novel for NaNoWriMoGoddammit.

Even more time constraints if I pull this off: back at the beginning of the summer, some theater group here in Hudson was putting on Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance." I considered trying out for it, but they wouldn't let me -- they only wanted high school and college kids. I guess it keeps them off the streets, the little bastards. I, however, was bitter, oh, so bitter, at least until I saw the production show up on the local cable access channel and found myself relieved to have not been part of it.

Now, however, a completely different group is putting together a "Pirates" show for March, 2002. Try-outs are in the beginning of November, and rehearsal would be immediately following, every Tuesday and Thursday night. That would be three nights out of the house, which is fine, but severely limiting my time to blog and write the great American No for NaNoWriMo -- IdHavetoWriMyAssOff.

I haven't been in a play since 1988, the year I graduated high school. I'd been in every play since the 6th grade when I played Lobster Louie in "The Littlest Chimney Sweep." My claim to fame was having the coolest costume ever -- hand made by my social studies teacher, Mrs. Cooper -- and wearing bright red grease paint make-up. I got special permission after each matinee performance for the student body to go to the boy's locker room and take a shower to wash it all off. While there, I had to shower with the kid who had been ostracized by the class due to his incredible body odor problem. Turned out the boy had no control over the BO, it was glandular/medical/genetic/whatever, and he actually went to the shower once or twice a day just to control it.

Ah, the glamorous world of the actor.

After Lobster Louie, my career sky rocketed. I had parts in plays every year after.

• 7th Grade: "The Wizard of Oz" as the Narrator. I was also supposed to be the Wizard, but so many kids wanted to be in the play, they split it into two parts. Tom Freeland did the Wizard. I can't say I minded -- the play version was very long winded and boring compared to the movie, and Tom had to pontificate for what seemed like hours.

• 8th Grade: First year at the high school, and I found out that the "drama clique" ruled the roost. Meaning, if you stuck with being in plays the whole way through school, you got all the good parts when you were a junior or senior. Being in a chorus of background players was almost like a weeding out process, not just for those with talent (because there were too few anyway) but also for those with the perseverance to stay with it. Those did were among my closest friends in high school.

  Oh, that year they did "A Touch of Broadway." Our director, Mrs. Pattie Piper (school music teacher and child of the sixties -- I know the lyrics of most 60's hits because she chose them for the choir to sing) pulled all the best songs from great broadway musicals and we stitched them together in a "That's Entertainment" style show. I played the oldest brother in "Peter Pan" (because of the glasses. I must have looked a lot like Harry Potter back then) but my greatest joy was playing Mordred in "Camelot." I got to sing "The Seven Deadly Virtues," just like the great Roddy McDowall (Cornelius of the original Planet of the Apes) did on Broadway. Then I had to put on an evil smile for about 5 minutes straight as I watched King Arthur (a very drunk guy named Chris that I later was in a Star Trek parody with -- he did a great Shatner) suffer. That was the hardest thing I've ever done on stage. My cheeks hurt just thinking about it.

• 9th grade: I started to climb the ranks of the drama clique. First I got another solo in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat." I was actually far more impressed with my drawing skills on that show, because I helped draw and paint the entire backdrop, which was a copy of the cover of the play book, just drawn full size. Unfortunately, we used some kind of acrylic paint that started to flake off about a week after. The art did not survive. Not that the school would have given me a giant canvas backdrop anyway. If they had, I'm sure I'd've been packrat enough to still have it around.

  I think this was the year I also played the Devil in some Christmas play. I can't even remember what it was.

• 10th grade: Again, another solo, this time as the lecherous General Oscar Fairfax. I think of him as lecherous anyway, because the women I was getting to play against in that play were so absolutely gorgeous I couldn't think about much else. 16-year-olds should not be put opposite women in low-cut gowns for that long. I got to sing with the lovely Heather Haley (she was a junior), who I believe is now a nurse and has a sister with with a big-time David Hasselhoff-esque singing career in Germany; as well as a senior, a red head named Rosie Zema (I'm not making that name up) who just about turned my legs to water while we danced around in what was basically a Colorado mountain square dance. She looked great, smelled great, had a smile that would melt the polar ice caps. I don't think I ever saw her again after that play. I hope she doesn't end up on Jerry Springer or something.

• 11th grade: The lead was mine. As Dracula in "Dracula: the Musical" I struck fear into the hearts of all who witnessed my blood sucking crimes. Sort of. Okay, not so much.

  But, that was the high point of the plays for me. I got to bite the neck of Carrie Robertson. My friend Mark Smith had his greatest role as the insane Renfeild-esque inmate. He wore (and ruined, but it was worth it) my fuzzy slippers that looked like gigantic bears feet, complete with cloth claws. Bill Kays and Keith Guthrie did the special effects, including smoke bombs and flying bats. The most memorable moment, and one that Mark and Bill and I were talking about during my last visit to Hornell, was when the rubber bat fell to the stage when the fishing line that was to carry it to the catwalk snapped. The bat fell to the stage with a thud. Everyone froze. Brian Doran, excellent in the part of Van Helsing, leapt to the rescue by kicking the bat into the orchestra pit and crying "The vampire fiend has escaped!"

  Playing Drac was also the first and only time I've actually been in a coffin. I can live without that part.

  I do still have the Dracula cape in my closet.

• 12th grade: It was all downhill this year. My attitude was terrible toward not just the plays but also my friends and school and even my girl friend. I was so rotten and moody and teenaged that I couldn't stand to be around myself. I was obsessed with getting out of Hornell, NY to Ithaca College as fast as I could, thinking that would solve all my problems. It solved some. Not most.

  I had it through my head the summer before senior year that if we did "My Fair Lady" that year, that the ruling class of the drama click -- Mark, Carrie, and me -- would all get the perfect parts. I'd be Henry Higgins, and was already brushing up on my English accent by watching copious amounts of Monty Python's Flying Circus and Doctor Who. Mark would be the splendid comic relief of Colonel Pickering or the even better part of Eliza's dad, and Carrie would of course be the moldable clay of Eliza Doolittle. Putty in my hands, so to speak. Ahem. But my girl-friend, Megan, couldn't possibly get mad over this play, because Higgins and Doolittle never kiss, hell, they barely flirt. They're like father and daughter. Kinda.

  The other big thing done for seniors was, during the final chorus concert each year, the seniors who'd been in choir for years could do a senior solo of their choice. I, for some reason, was obsessed with the thought of singing "Honesty" by Billy Joel (or maybe that obsession started after high school when I looked back with regret wishing I'd had a senior solo). I guess I thought honesty was lacking in my life.

  So imagine my disgust and horror at be told we're doing two plays instead of one and thus no final concert with senior solos. And we weren't going to do the play I wanted.

  Instead, we did "The Fantastiks" in February of 1988. I played one of the fathers, Mark was the other. Carrie was his daughter. My son was played by Arlie, I guy who 1) used to date my then girl-friend Megan and 2) after graduation by all reports became a gay, transvestite lounge singer in Rochester, NY. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And no, I'm not making it up. Though I can't really say with 100% certainty that it's true. But hey, I have no reason to not believe it.

  "The Fantastiks" was one weird experience, but the end was nigh when I lost the lead role in our second play for May 1988: the lead of "The Music Man," Professor Harold Hill himself, was won by Mark, opposite Carrie as Marion the Librarian. I played the Mayor, with Megan as my wife... no foreshadowing there, kids. I had no solos, just a chorus part, but I had some good lines. The term "you watch your phrase-ology!" still comes up often in my life.

  It was beyond depressing, for reasons too numerous and private to go into in excruciating detail. Mark has admitted to me since that he probably shouldn't have had the role, but that's not true. He out did my in the try out just enough that he earned it. He just should have worked harder at it.

  Can say I would have done better? Maybe I would have. Or maybe I would have let my already piss-poor attitude make the part just as bad as the rest of the year. That seems the far more likely scenario. I think I managed to dodge a bullet by not being Harold Hill.

So, 13 years later and I'm considering the hot lights and grease paint again. I'm not nervous about it, nor really worried about getting the part or not. I'm more worried about not having the time to do the other things I enjoy. And maybe a bit about wearing so much makeup I have to shower with the kid with BO.

Archives: Weekly or Monthly?

Archives: Weekly or Monthly?

My ego is apparently only outsized by my waist, because I'm actually worried that all of the readers of Squished Frog Blog might not like the fact that I've got previous blog entries stored by month instead of week. For me to think I've got readers at all, let alone enough to care about reading what I did all last summer, makes me feel like George Bush must now that his approval rating for stealing the presidency is so high.

If anyone cares, please let me know using the Comment link below: would you rather see my archives stored weekly? You can also feel free to tell me that the idea of anyone reading the archives of a rambling formerly-unemployed dog-owner is ludicrous. I might have an ego, but I don't bruise easily.

No more bags!

No more bags!

Like a dumb-ass, I didn't order myself a SquishedFrog.com Messenger Bag from the Squished Frog Store at CafePress. Now they discontinued them, and I can't get one. That sucks. However, it's not to late for me -- or you -- to order the Squished Stein, a gorgeous ceramic 22oz beer stein with gold trim and the amazine Squishe Fro Production's logo plastered all over it like a cheap suit. These are also limited to just the month of October (natch), so get yours today. Buy me one, while you're at it.

Okay, that's the end of the cheap hucksterism. I just want to get in practice for the days when I'm providing for my family by doing infomercials.

They'll All PAY

They'll All PAY

When I got my new job with Internet.com, the first thing I did was buy myself a present. It was part of a promise I made to myself and my friend Laura that we'd start a new blog of nothing but our complaints about stupid people and the things they do. It's called They'll All PAY and it's up and running (and also takes comments! You see the trend here yet, people??) Check it out, and if I know you really well and you want to use it to complain, let me know, I'll set you up with access to start bitchin'.

Comments?

Comments?

I implore you all -- if you read anything here, leave a comment (just click the link at the end of each post). It took me a lot of time to get it to work. Don't let it all be in vain! Let me know how gross I'm being, or funny, or not funny, or whatever. Let's build a little community here, people, that will some day rival that of, uh, I dunno, the Dutch Sewing Circle Chat Room on AOL, and thus be a force for peace in our time.

Ceiling Day I'm finding

Ceiling Day

I'm finding that I don't have much time to blog between the job, the interruptions that didn't seem that interrupting when I was unemployed, and the new TV season. So I'm trying to write this while Will & Grace plays in the background.

My father and brother were in town for the last couple of days, braving the 6.5 hour drive from Hornell, NY to here just to help me put up a drop ceiling in my basement office. They got here Tuesday afternoon and we went to Home Depot to pick up all the materials. $337 bucks and then most of the day Wednesday, were went at it with relish. At least until we broke for lunch. As Paul put it, we probably lost our head of steam after that.

But, the ceiling is up, complete with two fluorescent lights and a track light and looks great. Even better, when I open the office door really fast, all the ceiling tiles float into the air a couple of inches with the back draft.

The ceiling tiles I bought were incredibly lightweight with fiberglass backing. They were incredibly easy to use and cut -- much nicer than those standard flacky drop ceiling tiles that make such a mess. The fiberglass is a mixed blessing though... by the end of the day, Paul and I were feeling little flecks of glass all over our arms and legs. It felt like I'd been rubbing peaches on my thighs and forearms for a few hours.

Later that night, Paul, Dad, Bonny and I sat down to watch The West Wing episode entitled "Isaac and Ishmael," the series special prelude episode that touched upon the September 11th attacks.

I was thrilled inside when my brother said: "Is the show always this good?" I thought maybe we'd made a convert. That all unraveled later.

Dad said, "What was the name of this one again?"

"Isaac and Ishmael," I said. "It's a biblical reference, but I don't know to what specifically. I would assume they were twins." (Which, I found out during the episode they aren't twins, but they were brothers. Hey, I took a class in college on the Old Testament and got a D in it.)

Paul sat on the couch next to me. "Isn't Ishmael from Moby Dick?"

"Yeah, the whale. That's how they'll take out the terrorists."

"Wasn't Isaac in that, too?"

"No, not in Moby--"

"Oh, that's right, he's on The Love Boat."

Sigh.