See the calendar image at right?

See the cute airborne chocolate Labrador on the cover?

That's my little girl, Siren.

Go buy this 2003 Agility Calendar at Clean Run, and tell them you're only getting it for the cover image. (Like I am).

Bon bought a big ol' jug of Cranberry Juice before she left town and never finished it. So I've been trying to empty it off a little at a time with breakfast each morning. I like to pretend everytime I take a sip that it's curing whatever fictitious maladies my urethra might have.

So, it's true. You can't have everything.

Here in MA, I have reveled in the glory of my DirecTV/Tivo combo (called "DirecTivo" by those in the know) like Scrooge McDuck in his money bin, rubbing his underarms with gold doubloons. Similarly, I'd rub the TV Guide on my pits and giggle and cackle as I scheduled tapings and fast forwarded through just about every commercial of the last 7 months.

Yet, of course, as you know, when it comes to Internet access, I was a pauper. Picture Oliver Twist (or is it David Copperfield? One of those damn Dickensian urchins) saying "More Please?" but holding a coaxial cable instead of a bowl of gruel, and that's me.

Now, I've been making some calls, and I find my high-speed Internet access options are amazing. Not only could I get RoadRunner though TimeWarner Cable, I can get other providers if I want -- and I did. As of September, I'll be an Earthlink Cable customer. They're cheaper in price, have full-time dial-up backup, and they're network friend.

But when it comes to DirecTiVo, I feel like I've been lashed to a fence made of concertina wire and had my back laid open by a cat-o-nine-tails. Well, maybe it's not that bad (or good, depending on what you like). Get this:

DirecTV, even if they give me the waiver for getting the networks, won't provide the WB and UPN. The just don't have national feeds for them. Well, that's not so bad, I can get basic cable from TimeWarner, right?

Sure, I can -- but still no UPN. There's no UPN station serving the Syracuse Ithaca area. Even with the expensive digital cable there's still. No. UPN.

What the hell is this, the fucking STONE AGE?

So. That's it. No more Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'm going to miss the entire 7th Season of my favorite show. The fact that I'm willing to pay an exorbitant amount for this doesn't matter (just like it didn't matter that I would have paid through my arse for broadband here in MA).

You can't have it all. Not digitally, anyway.

Woohoo! First day of freedom!

So what did I do exciting on this rainy day in the fine state of Massachusetts? I started packing. I managed to fill five boxes of candles and candles sticks and knick knacky antiques-- three of those alone were just candles. I'd have to live without electricity for about a year to burn through all that wax.

As a Collector with a capital C of many different items that I actively seek out (Books by John Sandford and Neil Gaiman, statues of Hellboy, and of course the god damn comics that probably added a full $1000 to the estimates from the moving companies), I've always expressed to my wife that perhaps if she had a nice collection she pursued, maybe she'd find it very enjoyable.
However, having the next 36 days (and counting!) alone to myself in the house and having already spent half a day snooping into her stuff, I've discovered she's always had collections, she just never treats them as such.

Candles are just one the tip of my wife's collecting proclivity iceberg. All around the house, as I aggregate like items to pack, I'm finding:

It's coming down to the wire... in four days, my wife will be leaving to spend the month of August in central New York as she begins her new job. Her first real job in eight years...

That is, if you can call the soul crushing surroundings of cubicles and red-tape-laden bureaucracy and egotistical dim-wit employers a "real job".

Actually I guess that's pretty much the definition.

That means as of Sunday the 28th, I'll be on my own. Alone in the house save for two female dogs who will look to me for sustenance and entertainment.

I, on the other hand, will look to the cupboard and refrigerator for sustenance. I've pledged to not shop for groceries if I can, so as to minimize the amount of food to move to the new house.

As for entertainment... well, there, you got me. August is pretty much a black hole for entertainment, in my vast experience. I guess lots of DVDs and whatever reruns of Scrubs I can pull up on the TiVo. And I hope to see all the friends I do have left that haven't already fled the area like rats deserting the sinking ship we call the Boston job market (Jill, Vikki, Josh, this means you, goddammit.)

I'll also be packing. A lot. I want to do a couple hours worth every night. I want it all ready to go for the first week of September. (Mental note: go get boxes.) Anyone looking for a work out and lots of paper cuts any evening in August, feel free to drop by.

I had a crappy day. My wife split for 7 hours to have lunch with friends (I miss that about unemployment myself... though that's about it) and I was home alone with the dogs. I got hate mail from readers of my site (not this one, the one that I get paid to do) and had a true scatter brain moment that could have been really bad.

I was out back playing with the dogs. Siren is easy -- she'll retrieve a tennis ball if I only kick it five feet. That's all she wants in the world. Ever. Kylie's almost as bad, but she knows enough to stop when she's close to over heating like a busted Ford. Caper is the hard one -- he doesn't like to play unless he's the object of complete attention, so I was getting down in his face as much as possible to get him revved up.

What I usually do is toss individual tennis balls for Caper and Siren, and toss the big "jumbo ball" toy for Kylie -- it looks like a hand held version of the old blow-up toys we used to sit on in gym class in elementary school and jump around on. (Without helmets... be that wouldn't happen today). I made a big toss for Siren and it went over the fence. No big deal, this happens a couple times a day. What I do is, let Siren out of the gate nearest me and she runs around the full circumference of the fenced area to where the ball fell, and she'll look for it until she falls.

I let her out, and continued to play with Kylie and Caper, occasionally yelling to Siren "Find it!," her cue that the toy is still in play. She was searching the under brush in circles... she'd narrow in on it eventually.

I was by the window to my office (it's in the basement, and our basement walks out the back to the living room) and heard my phone ring, so I raced inside to see who it was, since I was expecting a mover to come by to give us an estimate this afternoon.

I don't recall who it was, but after the call, I saw some e-mail I had to reply to.

Then I got sucked into some publishing issue on the site. And then some more mail. And I think I might have even gone to the bathroom.

And then it suddenly occurred to me I'd left Siren outside the fence.

So I dashed outside and Kylie and Caper were there and I started to shout "Si--" with my head whipping in all directions looking for her... and there she was. Waiting by the gate, ball in mouth, waiting to come back in.

Perhaps it would be best if my brother doesn't leave is impending papoose in my care after all.

I think most people who know me think of me as easy going. Maybe even a panty waist. I know my wife thinks I'm a spineless sea critter some times. For example:

Today, I'm on the phone with our buyer agent in Ithaca. After we'd toured the house for the inspection Monday night, we saw some things we wanted the sellers to take care of. Nothing major, no deal breakers: they had a swing set for the kids, but since we doubt the dogs would use it, we wanted it removed. There was a piece of vinyl siding down, we thought they should replace it.

They sellers said okay to those two, but (apparently they were asked to fix them while in a bad mood we're told) they balked at our request to replace a single roof shingle missing from the garage, and to spray the bumblebees that have bored holes into three different spots on the porch in which they now reside.

Our agent, to her credit, said the bees really need to be sprayed even if she goes up there with an out-of-date can of Raid to take care of it. But I told her on the roof shingle, fine, whatever, I'll take care of it when we get moved in. Bon was listening as I talked on the phone and said with visible disgust:

"Why are we letting them skate on this?"

Yes, why? I'd say it's because it's not worth the hassle. Which perhaps boils down to the same reason I let my wife handle the negotiations with car dealers? The same reason I don't yell store clerks? That I don't hand out negative feedback on eBay? That I don't flip people off while in the car?

Fear of confrontation? Sympathy for other parties? Hoping to duck under the radar until I'm back in my happy land of gumdrops and cotton candy? Pure wussy-ness?

Perhaps all those things.

However, there's one thing I continue to do and fight for, even in my own small pathetic way (get your hip waders on, here comes the sermon-slash-commercial).

Turns out another poor soul might be losing his shirt to a corporation.

Not Enron this time. This story won't make the local news, sadly. This is the story of an artist, someone who works to make a life just to entertain others. Years and years ago, he took a nickname for himself - King VelVeeda - and for years he used it with no hassle.

Then Kraft Food finally realized that he existed. For years the food giant made their millions without any idea. But once they knew, they had to defend themselves against him, right? After all, his nick name and their Velveeta Cheese are practically the same thing, right?

Even though they're spelled differently. (Parody, anyone?)

And that the artist in question, Stu Helm, never made a buck that would have gone there way. You've never heard of Stu, so you know he's not rich.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund took Stu's cause as their own, but sadly, the first round is lost. Some asinine judge said he can't use the name in any commercial context. Now he might lose his entire life -- if he loses to Kraft, they will make him pay their 6-figure legal fees and punitive damages.

I've been thinking about quitting my job as the Web-guy for the CBLDF lately. It's not the same as it used to be, but just today, finding out that this case is ruining someone's life like other lives have been ruined before, made my decision: I'll stay with the Fund, I'll do what I can, and I'll fight for these guys.

At least with douche-bag companies like Kraft, I have no fear of confrontation.

I can't think about anything but moving.

Once we had the new house under agreement, my mind took a sharp right turn. Where I'd been saddened on a daily basis as I thought about losing the house here in Hudson after a scant 3.5 years, a house I truly love and think suits us perfectly in so many ways -- as soon as I knew there was a new place to move, my brain instantly wrote off the Hudson house. Bye-bye, time to move!

Now all I think about is the move. The mortgage. The lawyers. The closing dates. The Packing. And maybe more than anything else, all stuff we need to buy to make the new house our home (the list flies in all directions, going from light fixtures to paint to fence to carpet to flooring to, just maybe, a hot tub).

All this moving talk had Bon and I counting up: since 1992 when we graduated college, we've each moved seven times (usually together, though once not.) I was also thinking about where I'd spent the summers of that last decade and even before that, so I started putting together a reverse chronology of my summers:

• Summer 2002: Planning the move out of MA to Ithaca, NY, to take advantage of my greed.
• Summer 2001: The summer Access Magazine died on June 4 -- I started the blog and looked for work all through June, July, August, and most of September. It was both fun and horrible. (Go read the archives for details.)
• Summer 2000: The glorious summer when I was at Access, the best job ever. Bon and I vacationed in the Adirondacks for a week of August with the dogs.
• Summer 1999: Just after moving to Hudson MA after the implosion of FamilyPC and my pathetic attempt to work for Andover.net, I started June 1 at WildWeb.com. It was a great ride all summer. (WW became an early blip on the dotcom deathwatch -- and this was before FuckedCompany existed.)
• Summer 1998: Perhaps the first time I felt fully happy and secure in my job at FamilyPC (I loved the place and the people, but the job and I had some issues) -- I traveled out to San Fran for a business trip, a big ZDNet meeting, and as part of it had to make my own dinner at a culinary arts school.
• Summer 1997: What the hell did I do that summer? I can't remember for the life of me. I'm guessing I didn't do god damn much.
• Summer 1996: I remember being in the back yard of my (first) new house in Easthampton, MA, mowing the law. Bon was in the garden and Siren, just a puppy about four months old then, was running about. I remember the scene with crystal clarity and that I was thinking: "It will never get any better than this."
• Summer 1995: I don't really remember this year. It was my first summer as a married man, but that seems to have left no lasting impression on me.
• Summer 1994: I'd just left Wappingers Falls, NY, just below lovely Poughkeepsie, to work at FamilyPC. Bon and I moved in June into our three bedroom apartment that set the stage for us needing big houses just to hold all our crap. Bon left her job. I proposed to her for the second time that summer, June 11, at Taughannock Farms Inn near Ithaca while we were out staying at our favorite B&B. This time it stuck, and she spent her unemployed summer planning our wedding using my old Mac IIsi by reading Usenet Newsgroups (this was all pre-Web, if you can believe such a time existed).
• Summer 1993: Bonny was living in Albany working for Macy*s, but got a job in NYC at Ziff. So that meant we could move back in together. We got an apartment in Wappingers Falls, the same town I'd been living in for a few months, and in July we moved in together again, she started her job, and I survived the Tequila Willie's Incident and my first PC Expo. Good times.
• Summer 1992: Following Graduation from Ithaca College, Bon and I moved to New Jersey and lived in the basement of a house owned by the crazy mother of our friend Amanda. Bon was in Macy*s training and I worked for free as an intern at Spring Creek Productions, a movie production company that made Citizen Cohn for HBO and produced the movie Fearless with Jeff Bridges. By September I was working for Ziff Davis at Windows Sources.

I must be missing some important memories, but that was the exciting stuff that sprang to mind.

We're heading out to NY again this afternoon, this time for the structural inspection on our new house. Actually, we aren't getting the full inspection -- it was already done for a guy who wanted to buy the house before, but he backed out. He was kind enough to just give us the report. So we're going to walk around the place with the inspector and get some questions answered and save big money all around.

That should offset the nickel-and-diming on this end as our buyers want our port to be fixed. This is the same issue we had with our current house when we moved into it. The previous owners did a band-aid fix but it didn't take, cosmetically anyway. The porch isn't going anywhere, but it looks like its settled down an inch, so of course we're going to lose a few hundred over that. Better than a few thousand, tho. Hell, we're giving them the pot rack that Bonny's father made by hand from an antique wagon wheel, it's practically a family heirloom, so I'd say the porch shouldn't matter. But, of course, it will. That's how these things work.

Give-take. Back-forth. Push-pull. That's the "fun" of house purchasing and selling.

In case it wasn't clear since I haven't had time to post much this week: as of Friday, we not only have our current house underagreement to sell, but had our offer to purchase on the house in picture below accepted, PLUS Bon was offered the job at Ithaca College. She accepted, and will start in just two weeks. Thus we'll likely live apart for a month until we close on the new house. Anyone wishing to stop by evenings and entertain me is welcome.

The boredom of the holiday was quickly forgotten as of Friday last week. We were on the road to central New York, not looking forward to trying to rush around to see family without adequate time, to probably look at a bunch of crappy houses in Ithaca that we wouldn't buy, and then we'd have to wait around for Bon to have a job interview on Tuesday (and her with nothing to wear).

We started out pissed – our buyer agent didn't make any appointments for us to see places on Saturday, so we ended up having to plan on Monday house viewings. However, that did give us a couple days in Hornell to see my family. We some nice dinners out, hung out with my brother and his wife (I made lots of pickles and ice cream jokes), and went swimming in his pool with my dogs. I even bought new swim trunks for the first time in years. I let Bon pick the color (blue).

Monday, back at the in-laws house, I was up by 5am and working so I could get as much done as possible for my sites before we went to see houses in Ithaca, a process that always takes about three hours longer than it should. This time it was worth it, though– we saw no less than three frickin' houses that were great. We also saw four houses that I wouldn't even recommend to the homeless, and in one we were almost attacked by a vicious dog when we woke the sleeping owner. It's all action and adventure with us.

The house I liked most was, of course, far out of our price range. That's why one should never look over their money cap. I started calculating ways to get the price down as soon as I saw it, but sadly most of my plans involved kidnapping or threats.

The other two were great. One was brand spankin' new construction that included a heated floor in the finished basement (how could I resist??) but it had very little land and was a bit too expensive. The other house (at right) was only five years old and much cheaper because it has high radon levels, so it needs an abatement system installed to suck the carcinogens out the window, plus it's on a very busy road – but, otherwise, it's got it all. Lots of land (1.8 acres), set well back from said busy road, four bedrooms, 2.5 baths (including a master bath with a large tub and a separate shower stall), fully finished basement, two-car garage attached… it's damn nice.

Oh, and as we drove back to my in-laws house, we called our broker in Mass and found out our current house has a second, better offer on it.

We're taking it.

After two months of house hunting/selling suffering, everything came together in about 36 hours.

Today, after Bon had her third job interview at Ithaca College (she's a shoe-in, but I think that's despite finding a suitable dress and shoes) and after a nice lunch at the ol' Tower Club restaurant where I used to be a waiter and dishwasher, we went back to the house we liked so much and took lots of pictures (I'll post some when we get home). Then we went to the realtors and did the paperwork to make an offer.

As of tomorrow, I hope we'll be official with an agreement to sell and buy and then we can move on to the really fun part: lawyers and inspections and mortgage commitments and packing and moving. Yippee!

It's a holiday, and I'm spending it at home all alone (unless you count the two bitches sacked out on the living room floor in the 90 degree heat).

Today I plan to do work. Sad and pathetic, but so much non-paying stuff builds up in life as the paying stuff gets done, that I'll take free time at the PC when I can get it. Besides, it's at least 10 degrees cooler down here. Though I wish that made a difference in the way my pleather chair sticks to my thighs.

I'll be working on automating the CBLDF.org site today. I hope it works, though I have a sneaking suspicion this will backfire on me... not that the automation part, but that when I do it, it'll require the Fund staff to make more content for the site than they really have time or desire to do, and I'll end up back with static HTML pages to keep it going. We'll see. At least the new design is done, which I had nothing to do with, by the way.

I'm going to buy this for my wife on the proceeds from selling previous items on Ebay. This is not out of love as much as it is to have the one day a month where she's grinding meat to not be a high-blood-pressure fest as her old grinder slowly craps out.

I will probably get sucked into looking through old boxes of stuff I own, too... It's amazing how much I never was able to unpack when we moved in here. I started that last night, but had to put the boxes away so a realtor could show the house. They viewers stayed so long that by the time we got home (one must vacate one's home to make potential buyers feel comfy), it was too late to go see Men In Black II, which pissed me off royally (I have this thing about seeing films on opening night). Still, staying a long time means they probably liked it, and I need people to like my house now. Because I want all of their money. In great big bins that I can swim in, preferably, ala Scrooge McDuck.

Today, I might even write some stuff up for work to make my Monday next week a trifle easier. Mr. Forethought, that's me.

Of course, all this could go awry and I might spend the day performing CPR on gerbils for all I know. Life is unpredictable. Well, maybe not that unpredictable, but I'm told truth is stranger than fiction. Must be it's just not stranger than what I tend to read.

My brother is only 31 years old, but he's thrown his hat in the ring to become the chief of police in the town where he works. This is scary on so many levels my brain can't even compute.

No actually, I think he'd be a great boss to the guys there: fair and fun and with no ego to bruise. Well, maybe a touch of ego...his last name is Griffith and we have standards to maintain.

He said the other day that he was required to get three letters of recommendation and managed to get (lucky) 13 of them. Unfortunately he told me after they were due. I offered to write one for him anyway, but he quickly declined -- he feels one stray nasty tale of his childhood might sink the whole enterprise.

That just hurts... that he thinks I would use a story from childhood to sabotage him, when there are plenty of good stories from his adulthood.

Still, I thought about it, and even though I'm past the due date, I have composed a letter on my brother's behalf anyway, which I'm making public here.

Dear Village of Alfred Committee in Search of a Brand Spankin' New Chief of Police:

My name is Eric Griffith, and I'm writing on behalf of my brother, Paul, a police officer/patrolman in good standing currently in the employ of the Village of Alfred. Paul is a candidate for the currently open Chief of Police position (what I like to call "head pig" -- get it?) and I'd like to explain to you why I think he's a perfect candidate.

My brother takes no guff from anyone. He won't be a patsy or kowtow to any of you that may be out-right corrupt, or maybe just want him to look the other way when your wife gets a ticket or your kid gets a little ride to the slam after he hits the wacky-weed. Just ask my mom, Paul won't do anything she tells him, and she used to be his boss for a while. And he still won't clean his room.

My brother is a crack shot with a paint ball gun (we don't count the time he hit that window in Erie, PA) and I'm sure could track down a serial killer if one came to town. (Which I'm sure will happen soon, if all the novels I read are any indication of how many serial killers there are in the world. There's at least five in Allegany County right now, I'll bet. Lock your doors.) He's also tough, he could take on any five "perps" (I love to say "perps"), even when he's drunk, and come out of it only minutely scathed. Maybe even unscathed if he was behind the wheel and they were lined up on the sidewalk.

My brother drives his patrol car with the utmost care and diligence, however. That time he put one in the ditch was found to be a mechanical error! There was a nail in the tire, or sand in the gas tank, or something! C'mon! He hasn't actually hit anyone or anything since he borrowed my car back in 1993 and drove it into the back of a parked state trooper sedan. (Hearing that news was still the only time in my entire life I actually fainted, but I forgave him, just hours ago in fact.)

Most of all, I think you should know this about my widdle brudder (that's just a little nickname I have for him):

He's one of the good guys.

Best regards,

Eric Griffith

Paul's Older Brudder