Yeah, I just bought the one on the left at Wal-mart -- but I've had the other action figure (sitting down) since I was 11! I also own a web-shooter than sprays silly string. And I'm proud of it.

This morning, I was full of glee to see that above the fold the Boston Globe Arts & Entertainment section cover was completely devoted to one movie subject. This elicited my usual response of late. To which my wife said:

"Honey, I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but I'm getting really sick of hearing the Spider-Man theme song."

I sat in silence, uncomprehending such blasphemy.

Spider-Man, Spider-Man
Does whatever a spider can
Spins a web, any size
Catches thieves, just like flies
Look out! Here comes the Spider-Man!

Okay, maybe I've been singing it to much this past month. But I don't care.

I can truthfully say, this movie is one I've waiting for my entire life. Sure, there was a point as a kid that I was much more in tune with Batman. Blame it on Adam West and the high-quality of his television show. I still have the Batman cape my grandmother made me as a kid (she probably made it so I'd stop ruining all her towels with clothes pins to make capes). There are still firemen in Hornell that worked with my dad that, to this very day, should they see my brother and I together will say, "Hey, it's Batman and Robin!"

Is he strong? Listen, Bud!
He's got radioactive blood.
Can he swing from a thread?
Take a look overhead.
Hey there, there goes the Spider-Man!

But that all changed when I finally was old enough to learn to read, and in the 1970's, the best place to get started was not at some dumb ol' school, but in front of the TV watching The Electric Company on PBS. A show that's never been rivaled, I might add. But it was never greater than when depicting Spidey's Super Stories! The silent Spider-Man in a perfectly rendered costume always caught his enemies in a Web at the end, using a spriral arm move I worked for hours to duplicate.

At age six, when I was old enough to buy my first comic books on my own, I choose The Amazing Spider-Man #170 (which I didn't understand at all, but loved it anyway). I still have it. Later, I got several trade paperbacks that reprinted in living color the glorious first adventures of the wall-crawler from the 1960s. I was so enamored by these early stories that I wrote a letter to Stan Lee at Marvel comics to tell him how great I thought they were. Of course, by then Stan had already moved out to Hollywood to begin his years of trying to get Marvel properties on tv and in the movies.

In the chill of night,
At the scene of the crime
Like a streak of light
He arrives just in time

It's been said before and will be said again, probably ad nauseum in the next month, how Peter Parker was and is the every-man of comics. Despite the fact that a spider bite granted him powers beyond any we could imagine, Peter remained the constant loser. For every up moment, there were so many down. For every time he got the girl, he'd lose her in the most embarrassing, foolish, or sometimes quite horrible ways.

The one time he was really in the money, his ego and attitude left him without the man who raised him. Proving that with out great responsibility, his great power meant nothing.

I read a quote once years ago that's always stuck with me: Batman is driven by the need for revenge (over the death of his parents). Peter Parker, on the other hand, does good deeds out of guilt.

Spider-Man, Spider-Man
Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man
Wealth and fame, he's ignored
Action is his reward
To him, life is a great big bang-up
Wherever there's a hang-up
You'll find the Spider-Man!

I don't think action is his reward, nor do I think guilt is all that drives him. I think the tale of Spider-Man is the ultimate place for adolescent boys (and all else who bother to listen) to learn they must take responsibility for their actions. I know that's how I learned.

So, yeah, I'm jazzed beyond all belief to go see this film, a live-action marvel (excuse the pun) that promises to not only bring to life perhaps the greatest comic creation since Superman, but also might single handedly revitalize the comic book industry in the United States of America. Go see Spider-Man on May 3, and then take a quick trip to the local comic book store with a kid you like on May 4 for Free Comic Book Day. Everyone in the door of just about every comic shop will get, as the name implies, a free comic.

Oh, and what if the film sucks? That's a risk I take, especially since I'm so excited. I'm sure it won't be perfect – find me a film besides Weekend at Bernie's that is – but it would have to be pretty stinky for me not to love it based on what I've seen.

Heading downtown today, Bon and I made a stop at the mail box first to see if we'd received anything good.

"Money, money, money!" she said with glee, and handed me the envelope from the Internal Revenue Service. We'd mailed our taxes in over seven weeks ago, so it's about time.

However, inside was a statement saying that our "estimated taxes" had been written down wrong, they'd adjusted them, and we'd be getting a refund. Well, no crap Uncle Sam, we were already expecting a refund. Now the question was, how much have you screwed us out of you frickin' overzealous bean counters?

We made our trip to the post office and the hardware store and the market and grumbled every time the topic came up. We'd gone through a mess last year with our taxes because we'd filed them with some inaccuracies, and we'd gone to great lengths to get it right this year. Getting money taken out of our pockets again this year when we hadn't done anything wrong was an unbearable prospect.

We got home and I pulled our copy of the 2001 1040 form and went through it... and lo and behold, they did change the amount we're getting back. To $50 in our favor. Looks like our account had a typo when he put in the numbers and left out $50 Bon had paid in on her quarterly taxes.

Thank you, frickin' overzealous bean counters!

The young ladies of Random Blog Quotes picked me as a, uh, random blog quote for today (its the one about my unfortunate meeting last week). I have to say, it's even funnier out of context. I'm just proud to get the words "sticky," "spittle," and "uncontrollable flatulence" reprinted anywhere. (Go visit them and rate my quote as a 10.)

There are not many things my wife and I disagree on.  We certainly agree on the important things in life:

• We're both pro-choice Democrats who hate Bush.
• We like meat and trees but not so much that we want to watch animals slaughtered or that we wouldn't cut down a tree to start a fire for life-giving warmth.
• We both agree that Deep Space Nine was the best Star Trek ever, that the first Survivor was still the best, and that Picket Fences was perhaps the best television show ever when David E. Kelley was still writing it. Neither of us miss Ally McBeal or The Practice, however.
• We both like ice cream.

However, one thing we always differ on is medical care. When it comes to dogs, she's all for it. But for human's, she's not fan.

Case in point: This week Kylie, our youngest of three Labrador Retrievers, has had a hot spot. For those who don't know what a hot spot is, it's that point in the porno film where the guy — no, wait, that's something else.

A hot spot or "Moist Eczema" is a spontaneously appearing moist skin sore filled with bacteria. Since Labs like to swim or get wet, and because of that they have a thick undercoat of fur to keep them warm, it's easy for water to trap by the skin and cause a problem. Dogs sometime lick them and make them even worse. My brother's late Great Pyrenees used to get hot spots the size of a paperback book on his side in the summer.

We've been treating Kylie with Gold Bond Medicated Powder, a spray on astringent, and a powder we had from a previous vet visit for a spot Caper had last year. Kylie's sore is still oozing and wet, no matter how much powder we put on. So, this morning, Bonny proclaimed (as she'd been threatening to for the last two days) that Kylie must now go to the vet's office.  

I don't think we should. I know what will happen, which is what happens 90% of the time we take the dog to the vet for a limp/sniffle/cough/soreness/pus-oozing-wound – he'll tell us to do what we're already doing.

Meanwhile, if this sore was on Bonny's neck, she'd just wear a turtleneck for as many months because she thinks all doctors are quacks. (I'd do the same thing, probably, but not because I don't trust doctors. I'd do avoid it because I'm invincible to pain!)

Anyway, tomorrow Kylie gets to visit the vet, which she loves, because people there give her cookies and pet her and coo over her.

Actually, if there was more of that for me at the doctor's maybe I'd go in more often, too.

Lite Mayonnaise. It is perhaps the most tasteless and dreary substance that has ever existed. Yet it is all I have in the house for my sandwiches, and it makes me sad.

Today I had a meeting with someone I wanted to impress and I managed to not spill ink on my hands, split my pants, emit bodily noises, or spit. Things are looking up!

First, note that my current house cost $227,000 when we bought it 1999.

Second, note that according to Boston Magazine, real estate prices in my town shot up about 19% in just the one year from 2000 to 2001.

Third, we got a call from Re/Max the other day, asking us if we'd like a free appraisal of how much our house might sell for – they're so desperate for places to sell, that they're offering appraisals sight unseen in this town.

Fourth, Bonny noticed yesterday that a house down the street from us was going up for sale. Driving by it today, we saw that they were having their first open house, so I whipped around into a u-turn and drove us back so we could take a look.

As usual in an open house, the sellers were not there so as not to blurt out something inappropriate to a potential buyer ("yeah, that toilet's never worked right" or "We never could identify what that smell was..."). Instead it was just the realtor from Prudential. The house is much like ours – a three bedroom, with no garage – but a bit nicer inside. They've got granite counter tops and tile floor in the kitchen, almost half the basement finished off, etc.

I signed the guest book with my name, started to write the same street, and almost wrote the same town, but decided to put Hornell at the last minute so as not to answer a bunch of questions of the realtor got noisy. (She did start asking if we were on this same street and I kind of pointedly told her, uh, no, we're from New York. I then headed up the stairs leaving Bonny to extend my lie: "Oh, we have friends out here, so we might move...")

All told, this house is really not that much different from ours.

Asking price: $359,900.00.

The knowledge that my house could sell for anything close to that – for I refuse to believe that house could be worth more than $40k more than ours – and that we could clear anywhere from $80 to $100k over what our mortgage is, is like winning the lottery. This house has gone from being an invisible investment to the most important thing in our lives.

All afternoon the wife and I have been daydreaming about what it would take to make the place salable, and then coming back to reality to consider that we don't really know where we'd go even if we did sell. While I'm not nervous that my current job is in danger, but I'm not convinced that any company or job will last forever, and I don't want to move to, say, central New York and then end up not working...

Still, that doesn't stop us from being giddy. Bon just called me to tell me she saw a listing for a four bedroom house on South Hill in Ithaca (same hill as our ol' Alma Mater) for $59k.

Fifty. Nine. Thousand. For a four bedroom house. In Ithaca.

Thank you, house. You're like a lottery ticket I can cash in any time I want.

Monster.com, arguably amid the top three Web site brand names that even those without Internet access have heard of (along with Amazon and Yahoo), apparently doesn't feel the brand is strong enough. They plunked down $800k for the URL "jobs.com."

Now, in most blogs, that information would be enough in and of itself, to post. But not for me. Because Monster.com and I have a history. It's not long or complicated, but it's a story worth telling, if for no other reason than to give you all warning.

You see, in October 1999, the Web site I worked at, WildWeb.com (view the archive if you like... I'll wait), bit the dust. On Monday the 18th, during a power outage, we were all given the news that by Friday, we'd be out of a job unless the management pulled a miracle and got us new funding. No miracles were forthcoming.

On that Monday, I started working the phones. I'd been laid off before, and I knew that I had to start networking immediately. Somehow, someway, I got on the horn with someone from Monster.com. I knew their offices were in Maynard, MA, only about five minutes from my home. A job with them would have been great. However, there were no specific openings. Later that week, still at WildWeb, which had now become more of a morgue than an office, I got a call from my Monster.com contact. Knowing that we were all about to be unemployed, he invited the entire staff to attend a big party at the Monster.com office in Maynard that Thursday night. I, of course, said I'd be happy to. I told the group at the office, but no one was interested (though I think one of our interns went and got a job there later).

Anyway, Thursday night rolled around. I grabbed some resumes, threw on a shirt and tie, and drove to Maynard. It was a clear, beautiful night – great October weather. I parked in the gigantic parking lot and walked to the building.

Monster is located on the fourth floor of an old mill building called Clock Tower Place. Just it's one floor is probably the size of six football fields. It's filled with cubicles. In the middle was a gigantic gathering space called "the Monster Den" where people could get gourmet coffee and play pool or ping pong. That night, the Den was thronged with young people dancing as the CEO played DJ. But I didn't know any of that yet. I was still walking toward the building.

I was starting to feel a little out of my element. I could see people in the building lobby holding beers and hanging out, and here I was in a tie acting like I was there for a job interview. My mind continued to wander and worry as I got closer, and I decided to bypass the revolving doors and just use the open lobby entrance ---

BAM.

That's when my face smashed right into a seemingly invisible barrier. I bounced backwards. I rubbed my nose.

I'd walked into a window.

Every face in the lobby had turned at the sound and watched me hobble backwards a few steps. I, no doubt, turned a brilliant crimson. I could tell my skin temperature went up, as the sweat started to pop out in beads all over my face and back.

I skirted inside via the revolving door as fast as I could and got in the elevator and went to the party. I never found my contact so I could give him a resume, never saw a soul I knew, hell, I didn't see anyone that looked older than 23. Eventually, after wandering a bit, I found the back stairs to avoid the lobby and beat a hasty retreat.

The morale of the story: Be sure a door is a door when you try to use it.

I'm thinking about the god damn novel again. All the damn time.

I had dinner with my friend Naomi in Northampton a few weeks ago and we were talking about writing and how I find it so unbelievably impossible to get my self to work on this thing even though I think about it all the time. All the damn time. I probably fail at it, I told her, because I psyche myself out of it all the time.

She told me about a chapter in a book she'd read by Anne Lamott (of Salon.com fame) that was all about writing, and she addresses that very problem. Seeing as I'm addicted to reading about how to write, as opposed to actually writing, I decided to check it out.

So, a couple of weeks ago, Bonny and I were at a Barnes & Noble. She was having a meeting with some of the Crazy Dog Ladies (CDLs) from one of her clubs (I really can't keep track of them anymore... like if I were a member of the Eagles, Moose, Elks, and Royal Order of Water Buffalo, she could tell the difference?). So I got an hour on my own to wander around the store and read. This is damn close to heaven for me.

So I decided to go straight to the Elysian Fields: I grabbed the Lamott book off the shelf and, feeling the need, hit the head.

That's right, I took a book from the book store into the toilet. And read the chapter in question, which is quite good, all about how we all have a radio station in our heads called KFKD or K-Fucked that plays constant noise about how we suck or how we're derivative and that we must all tune it out... but that hardly seems as germane when you're all probably expressing horror at the very thought of what I've done with a book in a book store. Get ready for your full onslaught of terror: When I was done with the chapter, and with my bid-ness, I walked out and put that book right back on the shelf. (I had to wait for a woman in that same aisle, who saw me exist the restroom, to turn her back.)

Now I know people who express disgust at former co-workers of mine who took a newspaper into the john and then came out and left it on the counter for others to read. I realize my little transgression with the book qualifies me for the stocks with some people, but, come on people – I wasn't using the pages to wipe with. I was careful to place the book under my arm as went to the sink to wash my hands.

So, I admit my crime but I feel no guilt. Besides, I didn't see a sign on the door telling me "no reading material." How stupid would that look in a book store?

If it's any consolation, KFKD is playing loud and clear in my head. Still. Even tho I think about the novel all the damn time.

92 Degrees. That's what it says on the thermometer on the front porch. Weather.com says only 90°F "but feels like 89°."

Either way, that's hot for April. And glorious.

Especially because here in my basement office, which was like a cold, dank cave all winter, it's an even 65 or so and feels fantastic. Life is good.

Yesterday I was meeting with someone that I wanted to impress. I'd like to think I did, but it was through no help at all from me.

First, I sat down with this gentleman and as I tried to position my self on his low couch, I heard a small, tell-tale tear. It wasn't like I'd opened up a sheath from my lower back to my crotch, but my new pants obviously didn't care for how I'd positioned my legs. (A later check revealed no obvious holes in the slacks.) Still, this got the sweat glands going.

Next, I sat and took out my hand-made pen to take some notes. My mom's current hobby is turning material on a lathe (wood, Formica, tin, human bone, you name it, she's probably turned it by now), insert pen "blanks" into the material, and making beautiful looking hand turned writing instruments. She made me one out of green Formica Corian last time I was home. It's a beautiful pen, so that's what I took with me.

I'd forgotten that I'd accidentally run this same pen through the washing machine last week.

Instead of twisting it, I reflexively pulled the pen apart, realized my mistake, and pushed it back together without looking. The damage was done. A couple minutes later I realized my hands were... sticky. And what were those smudges on the paper? I finally took a closer look -- my fingers and the pen were both coated in black ink.

I wasn't done yet. He pulled up my Web site on his computer to take a look at my handywork. Of course, there was a broken image on the top page.

I wish I could have finished up the meeting by accidentally hitting him in the eye with spittle as I spoke. Perhaps a nice spontaneious bloody nose, or uncontrollable flatulence of the "silent but deadly" persuasion. I settled for shaking his hand with my ink-stained fingers.

It's past midnight. I'm still up in my office, deciding about what to put on Ebay tomorrow, what to give to the Salvation Army, and what's worth donating to the local high school, if they'll take what I've got (lots of old copies of Symantec Norton programs I can't sell). I'm actually going to sell off my entire collection of Doctor Who novels, which I bought and read while still in high school. I should pull some comics and sell them, too. Good-bye, memories and treasures I adore! I need some cash.

I keep coughing. I think I swallowed a lot of dust today, either when I was vacuuming out the ash-pit under my fireplace, or when I was grinding rust off the bottom of the lawn tractor's mowing deck. Or both. Yes, I spent my day cleaning and getting my basement ship shape. This after a walk at the park with the dogs, and a quick trip to the greatest ice cream stand in the world, Erikson's in Maynard (just reopened for the season today), where they make it themselves next door in the dairy. Bon and I split a small dish of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream – we're dish people, no cones for us. Erikson's also gives out free doggie ice creams to any doggie at the window: a Styrofoam plate with a scoop of vanilla and a dog biscuit on top. We got one for Siren, since we didn't make her a big ol' meatloaf cake like we'd promised her the day before on her birthday.

Instead of meatloaf making, the wife and I hit the multiplex last night to watch the horror flick Frailty (if anyone can explain the title's significance to me, I'd appreciate it.). I won't say anything about the film, as it's one of those that's best if you don't know anything about it going in. I think I liked it better than Bon, but not by much. Bill Paxton is one shitty actor.

Oh, before I forget: I was in the bathroom the other day when Bon yelled to me, "Whatcha doin'?"

I said, "Spiking the punch!"

I got a million of 'em.

Six years ago today, there popped into my life a little bit of joy. Okay, actually, she might have been born today, but it wasn't until May of 1996 that Siren, the queen chocolate Labrador, became a part of my life. But today is her birthday.

She's been everything we could want in a dog. She's cuddly (if it's her idea), she's playful (though her idea of play is more like rigorous torture to others), and always happy to see us (if we've got a tennis ball or cookie in hand). She's healthy (despite the arthritis) and clean (except for the monthly vomiting of bile) and happy (if she thinks we're heading toward the door to take her out for more rigorous retrieving).

Sometimes, she really pisses me off.

But she's my oldest daughter, the one with her own ideas and ways of doing things. She listens when she has to and the rest of the time I can tell she's looking at me thinking "God, dad, you're such a spaz."

I love my little brown pooper-doggie to pieces, and wouldn't have her any other way.

(Though I swear to god, if we ever clone her, I'll raise her up right!)

Squished Baseball Jersey availabe in the store.
ONLY $17.99! Buy three!
Buy me some peanuts and crackerjack, then I can spill them on this cool shirt.

Warning: The following post contains the usual scatological meanderings you've come to expect from this blog. If you don't want to know about the bathroom habits of modern married couples, stop reading now.

My wife, in her upstairs office, seems to always yell downstairs, "Whatcha doing?" when I've sat myself down on the throne. (Yes, we've been married a long time and don't close doors for such trivial matters as defecation.)

I usually just tell her what I'm doing, succinct and to the point. She says, "Oh," and that's that. I return to reading and voiding.

However, yesterday, just as I'd settled on the ring, she inevitably yells down, "Whatcha doing?"

I'd been waiting for this moment, and replied, "I'm downloading from my broadband modem."

With almost no hesitation, she says, "Ew! You're gross!"

Almost as if on cue, I had a bout of loud flatulence. Then from upstairs she quipped:

"Sounds like there's noise on the line."

I signed up a long time ago to participate in the Peer-to-Peer Review Project, which means I review a blog, someone reviews my blog, and we keep doing this for a while until the entire world sees every blog every made. Obviously, this was at a point when I thought such a thing mattered. Then I didn't hear anything, until two weeks ago, when I suddenly got an e-mail telling me it was time to review some blog I'd never heard of. My heart isn't in it. But I said I'd do it, so here tis:

The Reel Irish Dancer is, despite the name, not about movies staring Michael Flatley. Based upon the five available posts at the site, I have gleened that this is the blog of Nara, a female college student in the United States, studying for a computer science degree (I assume it's CS... she had to build a relational database for class and I don't know many step dancer who have to do that).

Being a blogspot.com-based Weblog, the site suffers from the blogspot induced standard boring, yet functional, design and the blogger-induced bugs in the archives (a post on the top page shows a 3/9/2002 date, but that doesn't appear in the archives. All easy to overlook, as Nara's posts can be very interesting when she takes the time. Her treatise on hearing the words "I Love You" without broaching them herself, and then still never hearing from the guy again was nicely put, and I look forward to more entries like that.

As of this writing, it appears that all the wet PCs (see below) are functioning within normal parameters. The Epson Color Printer, however, is still soggy as a bowl of Cheerios in milk, and I don't antipate printing any fancy color graphs anytime soon.

I had a very nice weekend. All day Saturday and Sunday we spent outside working on the yard, the garden, etc. getting things ready for the onslaught of summer. With help from a friend who was here for the weekend, I cleared the dead tree in the side yard, aerated the lawn to promote growth, and replaced all the bad sidewalk blocks in the front path and using the leftovers to create a little mini-patio under the stairs out back, all the better for storing equipment and tools. Bon got the garden cleared and weeded, and we put down some week killer in the garden path and seeded the dead spots in the lawn.

What's more, the glorious coming of Daylight Savings Time had put a smile of pure joy on my face – I love this time of year.

So, I suppose, karmicly, I was due for it to blow up in my face.

Bon and I noticed this morning in the downstairs shower, that for some reason the water had backed-up into the tub, leaving a nice residue of gunk. We washed it down and chalked it up to hair in the drain, and decided I'd go get some Drain-O at the supermarket after I had a chance to check e-mail. I started a load of laundry as Bon headed out the door to her latest eye doctor appointment (by the way, she's seeing 20/15 in each eye—that's better than 20/20. Don't be a pansy-faced-wuss, go get LASIK surgery if you wear glasses).

I grabbed a copy of my current favorite magazine, CPU, and was, ahem, administering to some necessary bodily functions up on the second floor when I heard the splashing.

With all necessary haste I made my way down stairs with my pants barely up to my knees. I was convinced the clothes washer had begun to overflow due to whatever problem had hit the tub earlier. So I checked the laundry room (on the first floor) and found no problem. I trundled to the bathroom next door, now with pants up at least to my ass, and found the following scene: green water filled with detritus that could only be small amounts of fecal matter was flowing copiously from the toilet bowl all over the floor (and filling the bath tub also, but that was not flowing all over the floor). The deluge was heading into the hallway.

I got on my knees in the overflow and turned off the water shutoff to the toilet tank—no effect. Then I realized the H2O draining from the washing machine was what was coming up. I ran back to the laundry and hit the shut off. Back to the hallway, I grabbed every single towel we owned from the linen closet and started to sop up the mess on the floor.

I was wiping for several minutes before I got it all up, stopping only to throw towels out the back door onto the deck.

I got it under control, and thought, maybe I should check the hot water tank. Since it had been the subject of so many problems in the past, maybe it was also to blame here. I went down stairs and found nothing amiss—in fact, the perpetual leak the tank intake line has had since my brother and father installed has completely stopped.

Then I heard the dripping.

I started to walk the circumference of the basement, past the stairs and the work bench, finding nothing. By the back door that leads outside, I saw a drip coming down. But that wasn't the source of the noise I heard. And now I could already feel my insides growing cold.

I slowly opened the door to my office and my worst fears were realized. The table I use for most of my computer equipment was a ¼-inch deep with puddled water. The two desktop computers on top were laden with drips. Drops had splashed on to my router and a wireless access point I've been testing for work. My laptop thankfully had the lid shut, but water was collecting on it.

I really don't know what I did next. I was so filled with overwhelming panic that I think I just moaned. I probably repeated "no, no, no" over and over again. Perhaps I slapped my face like McCauley Culkin.

I can only imagine how it feels to pull up to your house and find it ablaze with the fire department shooting water into every window. But this gave me a taste, I think. Don't think I love my computer equipment so much I can't live without it. Some of that stuff is antique or seldom used—but all of those products I use on a regular basis for work and without it, I'm dead in the water when it comes to doing my job. And my company didn't provide any of it, so I need what I've got, because I'm not getting anymore from them.

I finally pulled myself together. I unplugged everything first, then took items out. Once the equipment was out of the line of fire, I grabbed what semi dry towels I could find and went to town on table and floor, trying to get them dry. I grabbed two fans and got them pointed at the carpet. I looked up and realized the only thing that helped much was the drop ceiling... one touch of the two tiles in the corner revealed that they were holding a large amount of water.

Now I was pissed. Whatever was causing this block was going to feel my wrath.

Having experienced a couple of clogs in my day, I own a couple of drain snakes/augers. I tried going from the bathtub down, but got nowhere, I checked the main trap on the line that goes out to the sewer, but my snake couldn't seem to reach any clog. I checked three other traps, managing to get the auger 20 feet in each but still didn't fix anything.

I had two traps left to check when Bon got home. She calmly and carefully explained to me that I was a god damn idiot and that I should call a plumber. To me, this sounded almost as good as letting my wallet plug up the toilet, but I'm her willing slave. I called, explained my dilemma, and they had a two man team here within 45 minutes.

The pros knew what to do. They tapped the convergence pipe where all the drains come down to the main sewer drain and could tell just where the block was. They got an electric auger – something I didn't even know existed – and went to town. They pulled down a bit of gunk and one of them showed it to me on the end of his snake – it looked like a giant wad of wet paper towels.

"Feminine products," he said, with a smile. I have no doubt feminine products account for 90 percent of any plumber's income. He snaked it a couple more times for good measure, and we could heard the clog break like a fat-guy's gas after too much sausage.

I know Bonny didn't flush a pad down the john – when we were in college working at the dining hall, she had to work a shift once where the entire dining hall basement flooded because the ladies in the all-girls dorm overhead had flushed enough tampons to choke the Alaskan Pipeline. The stench and rot of that night had taught her long ago, never flush anything that absorbent. I won't blame the friend of ours who was here this weekend, who old enough to know better -- but she was present at the last major flood I had at our old house, too! She's a goddamn jinx.

The plumbers had me go up and flush everything, run the washer, wash out the tub, and it all worked like a miracle. They left, happy to have helped, and told me the bill would be coming. Yip. Pee. I can't wait.

So now, the floor appears to be almost dry here in my office. Towels are washing. The ceiling tiles are still drying outside. The first floor had been mopped to disinfect us from the overflowing poop-water. I've got a space heater running to dry out my desktop PCs. The laptop's okay, but I'm not sure about anything else yet.

And I have become the new mortal enemy of Kotex.

Die, CIPA, die. Like the much scarier CDA before you and the already neutered COPA, I hope you flame out as another footnote in the early days of the Internet.

Bonny got her second eye laser corrected tonight. All went well. She's sleeping off the Valium now. Believe me, Valium is needed – even when I was under a triple dose when I had my laser eye surgery four years ago, I almost twisted the head off the teddy-bear they have me to hold as they sliced a flap in my cornea.

(Just saying that I've turned so many people off of LASIK surgery, but believe me, it works, you wusses.)

Not much else new to report. There seems to be much time inbetween vignettes worth posting about here. I'm working steady at the job, got lots of CBLDF updates to do, need to fix a friends Web site design, and I need to take a chain saw to a tree that feel in my side yard. It fell as we were out playing with the dogs in the fenced in back yard mind you – we watched it fall in the spot where we usually throw the ball for the dogs. Would have crushed them like bugs, easily.

Still, this weather has me crazy. I'm actually eager to go weed flower beds and rake dead plants from the garden. It's likely to be the only weekend of the year I'm inclined toward such work, so the Wife had best take full advantage.

Yesterday Laura and I came up with the ultimate peace plan for the Middle East.

Bon and I got home last night from the weekend away in central New York where we had Easter dinner on Saturday with both her family, and mine that traveled out to my in-laws (hey, free meal).

I finally got to meet my nephew, and even fed him. He did not spit up on me, which I consider the height of politeness.

We were too tired from another four hours in the car to want to make any dinner, but just about all the restaurants and take out places in our lovely hamlet of Hudson, MA were closed because of the "holiday" – except for the Chinese place on Main Street. Thank god for those God-less Chinese.

We drove down to get the take out and as we were leaving, I courteously thanked my spouse for paying for our dinner. She, in turn, thanked me for driving.

"Well, of course," I said. "That's because I RULE." I added that last part with a brief flourish of my hands like Doug Henning, to underscore my point.

"No, no, dear," she replied. "I rule."

"See, you're using 'rule' with a completely different definition. Your rule means 'control.' My rule means I rock, I'm great, I'm an extra-super-wonderful guy."

"So..." she ventured, "what you're saying is, you're my bitch, and I control you?"

Silence.

"Yes."

She laughed all the way home.