For a look at how I've spent the last couple of nights, check out www.cbldf.org. The site is live with the new redesign and using Movable Type as a publishing system. Yippee for me. (No doubt if I knew PHP it would have been even better).

So it's Halloween. No candy here. We're remote enough to not have any trick or treaters (and just in case there's anyone willing to make the trek, I'm turning out the lights so they don't have any desire to visit). Not that I don't want them, but I don't want to disappoint the one kid that might brave the traffic on our road.

Best Halloween ever: actually just three years ago, in 1999-- Indian Summer hit big time, we were in the new house in Hudson, MA, my parents were out to visit. I spent the day relaxed, even washed the cars in the heat. We sat on the porch and handed out candy, and the dogs got to sniff the neighbor hood kids. My next door neighbor's kid was dressed as Batman.

I said to him, "Hey, I bet I know your real name!"

He said, "I'm Jeffrey!"

"Oh," I told him. "I thought you were Bruce Wayne."

Eight years ago today, I married the most wonderful woman in the world.

She makes me smile involuntarily at least once a day and it's only with the depth of my feelings about her that she can make me as angry or as happy or satisfied as she does. She's my rock, my conscience, my better half, my provider, my sweet-hot-snookie-wookums, and my friend. She's the cream in my coffee, the sunlight on a cloudy day, her body is a wonderland. Tonight I will give her a gift and take her to dinner and tell her for the billionth time what she means to me and it won't be enough, as she deserves so much more.

Bonny: She's a good thing.

Joe was up for a visit a couple of weeks ago. Joe and I both use Netflix to rent DVDs. Thus the stage is set for this morning's conversation via instant messages...

ECGriffith : you owe my wife thanks...
JoeyJoeJoe : Of course I do.
JoeyJoeJoe : Why?
ECGriffith : last night I booted up my laptop and was going into Netflix to change my queue and lo and behold -- I got up the account of one Joe Moran!
JoeyJoeJoe : Oops!
ECGriffith : I just startedt to giggle uncontrollably. I was going to fill your queue with all sorts of stuff...
ECGriffith : but Bonny said I couldn't. :'(
JoeyJoeJoe : Forgot to set that back, eh?
ECGriffith : you would have been flooded with all the gay porn I could find on that site had it not been for her!
ECGriffith : and if not gay porn.... Teletubbies!
JoeyJoeJoe : Same thing!

(Thanks to my cousin Michelle for sending this image.)

Here's a good reason to living in Ithaca --- in the space of a month, I've managed to catch two radio shows devoted to broadway music. One on NPR, naturally, which I can't find again because this area has about 20 versions of the same NPR station (WSKG Binghamton) because the hills and lakes disrupt reception so much you must switch around constant to get a good signal.

But my own alma mater's FM station, WICB, has Best of Broadway on Sundays from 10 to 11am. Followed by Breakfast with the Beatles for another hour (which they had even when I was a student... the web site says the Broadway show has been on since 1957)... it's a couple hours of bliss amid the pop stars.

I mean, they're playing "Ed Sullivan" from Bye-Bye Birdie, featuring Paul Lynde (okay, so it's the movie sound track, who cares?)! How often do you think that tune get's air play? I'm betting this might be the first time, world wide, in ten years.

During his visit this past weekend, Joe saw something at the local super Wegman's store that he just had to have: a 1.5 liter bottle of what he considers one of the finest fermented beverages ever, Grolsch Lager.

I admit to having some admiration for Grolsch, but it's entirely based on the bottle. I think Grolsch has some of the best packaging ever. I've seen the bright green bottles reused for everything from salad dressings to salt shakers. Seeing a beer in a thick glass bottle over one foot tall is an impressive site.

Joe managed to drink about half of the bottle (in addition to helping me polish off a case of Smirnoff Ice and a magnum of champagne he'd bought us years ago – he brings out the lush in me), and was too much of a baby to take the rest on the plane with him back to Florida. So approximately .75 liter of lager is in my fridge. And seeing it there, thinking I'd begun to form a taste for beer after a few months of various "beer-ish" beverages (Skyy Blue, Smirnoff Ice, Mike's Hard Lemonade are my drinks of choice), I thought I'd give it a try.

I almost puked.

That grog is the very definition of the canned cat piss people tried to make me like in high school and that instead turned me into a teetotaler until I was out of college. It tastes like the bitter run off of the ass-crack perspiration of a thousand gibbon apes. I'd sooner let squirrels gnaw my testicles than let that swill come within a meter of my cake hole ever again. I'm pouring it out with extreme prejudice.

But I still think the bottle is pretty cool.

It's official: the local Fox affliate has proclaimed that they will not let me access the Fox national feed via my DirecTiVo unit.

The other three networks (WB and UPN aren't even an option) have said nothing.

I'm off to talk to the Magazine Writing class in a few minutes. Probably not smart that I stayed up late paying bills and got up early to get work done, so I'm running on about five hours of sleep and starting to feel tired. I can sense a lot of "um"s and "uh"s to come in my talk. I think perhaps I'll ask the students to count them for me.

Bonny sat with me this morning (she couldn't last night... she was too busy playing "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on our new Xbox... she's an addict!) and came up with some "talking points" for my tongue wag to the victims of higher education. All good, salient points, methinks, but I could only think about how my jobs of the last decade have lead me to what seems an ever expanding relationship with corrugated cardboard.

From the beginning, when I started as an editorial assistant (notice that I wasn't an editor -- just an assistant to others in editorial), it was all about boxes. My first job was to call makers of 17-inch monitors and get as many of them in as I could for a review. I set a bad precedent by getting in over 27 monitors. Each weighed about 60 pounds. And I had to cart most of the boxes around the 10th floor of One Park Avenue.

At FamilyPC, things got worse. At least in NYC we had a mail room, so those guys would come throw monitors on a cart for me and take them to shipping. At FPC in Northampton, we had no mail-room staff, so I was constantly lifting boxes and carrying them up flights of stairs, onto elevators (we only had one that was not exactly user friendly-- you never knew which of the two doors would open), and even putting them in my own car to transport to our photographers.

The boxes I've lifted have taken all shapes and sizes. The biggest was probably the 32-inch TV/Monitor of the Gateway Destination -- Gateway's attempt at 'convergence' of the PC into the living room. I got to set one up at home for a while, but almost threw my back out doing it. It weight about 150, I think.

Even now, when the largest box I'm sent is usually a four pound router, I'm surrounded by boxes due to my move. The constant shuffling of cardboard and packing paper has made my hands so dry, I look like I've got dandruff on my palms.

So, to me, that's what being an editor and writer is all about: Boxes. I hope the students I'm speaking with will enter the field and find editorial work means something different to them. Like gum. Or toilet brushes. Anything but corrugated cardboard.

If you love me... if your REALLY love me... you'll got to this Web page righ now: http://mergerinfo.hughes.com/5060/index.jsp. When you get there, click "Voice Your Support" and fill out the form with complete honesty and have Hughes send a letter on your behalf to the many, many idiots in government who have control over mergers. And then you'll pray that Hughes and Echostar form a marriage that show those pikers at AOL Time Warner how it's done. Oh, yeah, and it'll mean I get my local channels on the DirecTivo without any more hassle, either.

Because you're dying to know about the washer and dryer -- we bought new one's at Thayer appliance last week. They were delivered this past weekend, and almost didn't fit in the closet set aside on the first floor for laundry. However, we squeezed them in and they work fine. We got a front loader washer, the new wave in cleansing your garments. My brother has been raving about his front load washer for years... you know you're old when you are raving about appliances. (TiVo doesn't count as an appliance, so shut up.)

I had breakfast this morning with my writing professor from college, she who shepherded me through many a class, a senior project (still unfinished), a job as a computer consultant, and into an unpaid post-graduate internship. She's the only part of my academic life I've stayed in touch with.

Now, a decade later, I'm back in Ithaca, Barb (my former prof) is still teaching Magazine Writing, so I told her jokingly a while back I'd speak at her class.

Horrifyingly, she took me up on it.

Next Tuesday I will be speaking to a class of 22 juniors and seniors about writing for (or trying to write for) magazines and Web sites. Barb also sent an e-mail out to the entire writing faculty and every single Writing Major student who wants to stop by.

It's a good thing I'm not afraid of public speaking, or I'd be all clenched up. I actually am a little, but that's not because I'm nervous...

Last night, I hooked up my new Xbox. I got it almost/sorta/kinda free -- I took points I earned on my credit card, got a gift certificate at Amazon.com, and bought it with a game I've been dying to try, Halo. (Back when I worked at WildWeb Games, Halo was like the Holy Grail -- the game that was going to change it all and especially make the Macintosh a powerhouse of gaming. Then the developer got bought by Microsoft. Sucks for Apple, because Halo became the major launch title for the Xbox).

Anyway, I hooked it up, got the game going, and played the first person shooter for an hour. And got sick to my stomach. I was physically ill. Not because the game is revolting... the motion of running around this simulated space ship had me feeling like I'd just jumped a chasm in the General Lee with dem Duke boys.

The is humiliating since I've been busting on my friend Lauren about this same reaction from her when playing Doom for years. Perhaps it is my now advanced years coming to get me. I'd much rather be sick about the prospect of public speaking.