I've been curmudgeonly saying bad things about 2004 over the last few days. When the topic of the New Year has come up I've said things like, "begone, ye epoch of eee-vil!"

Though I'm not sure why. Outside of the election's results, it was a pretty good year. So here's my quick, off-the-top-of-my-head list of all the great stuff that came out of aught-four.

Great vacations:

One thing on TV that did make me cry was watching the documentary on HBO called Shelter Dogs. It was an amazing piece of work about an "upstate" New York animal shelter and the trials it goes through. I recommend it highly. Nothing I hadn't heard before, of course, but the focus they had on a doberman brought up deep memories of the dobie we fostered several years ago and how hard it was for me to give the big lug up. So I wasn't crying much about the show, more about that handsome pup we called McBain, who used to eat socks and vomit them up whole, who once ate an entire case of microwave popcorn, who put fear into the hearts of all the people who saw him -- people he would have gladly knocked down and kissed. I haven't seen him in eight years. He's probably not alive now. But he always will be in my heart whenever I see a black Doberman.

Posted by Eric G. at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)

We're closing in on the end of the year. It's the traditional time to take stock of all one has accomplished— and not accomplished— in the preceding 365 days.

But screw that. I'll take stock in March or something.

Right now, I've got to fit in three more days of total relaxation. I mean, I could really get used to this. I wish my wife would have surgery every year at this time, giving me an excuse to go no where and do nothing.

Well, next to nothing. I do have to fluff her pillows and make her lemon tea and do all the laundry on top of my usual daily back-breaking duty as dish washer. But my god, it's been nice. A few entries back I complained about her not embracing her recovery properly and she felt guilty so we've watched more hours of tube than was healthy. Though, I think, still under the national average for most kids today. We're not even close to watching all we've got stored on the TiVo and on DVD in the cabinet (Hellboy and Firefly... good times.) (But when the hell am I going to watch all these Looney Tunes on DVD?)

My version of doing nothing is very busy, as I'm trying to cram in as much entertainment as possible. In the last week I read not only the comics I was saving (not Cerebus yet though) plus a few novels (I finished Strange & Norrell, huzzah!), and I got the wife to read the entire print run of Strangers in Paradise. I've got pictures of her reading it and smiling to prove it. It only took me about five years of cajoling her about these books and she finally acquiesced. Perhaps it helps that she was captive in the house and high on pain killers.

I supposed her recovery isn't all about my entertainment. She's also doing very well, no longer sick or sore or anything. A couple more weeks of rest (she's off until Jan. 17) and she should be good as new. Better, actually. Oh my, yes.

There is a lot to do in the next three days, however. I want to install at least one of the two ceiling fans I got for Xmas in the upstairs bed rooms that need them. One is a replacement for an ugly-ass kid's ceiling fan in rainbow colors, so if you want the old one, let me know, its free to the first person who asks. I also need to take down our fake Xmas tree and all the lights outside (ladder fun!). I need to change the oil in the tractor and the snow blower while the weather is warm (the tractor won't start easily below 20 degrees). I want to upgrade the CBLDF.org site to the latest MovableType software to combat the comment spam over there. Etcetera.

And if I don't get to it, well, la dee da, I'll have done something more important, that is to say, virtually nothing at all.

I dreamed the other night I was on the cast of The West Wing. (No doubt, playing a very Josh Lymanesque part, but I can't remember.)

Martin Sheen and I were in the commissary getting something to eat (it looked a lot like the White House cafeteria set they used once) and all I can recall saying to him was, "You see, the difference between eating at home and eating out is that at home, you don't mind eating this with and icky skin on top."

At that, the faux president of the United States turned his back on me and walked away.

One other thing I worked on today was finally upgrading the blog to use the latest version of MovableType on the back end. This I did entirely to thwart the comment spammers... some ass-hat has targeted this here blog as it's personal spot for trumpeting some online poker site. Upgrading gave me the opportunity to accept comments from both registered users (you register with the free TypeKey service) or unregistered version. The problem is, if I leave the unregistered option on, the spammers still send their automated crap. And if I leave it to just the TypeKey registrants, I don't think anyone can comment. Or at least I can't. If you've got a TypeKey account or want to sign up for one, please try and leave a comment here and let me know what you get.

This is the strangest Xmas Eve of my life. With the annual orgy of material-goods goodness (AKA holiday gift exchanging) over last weekend, there's no anticipation here, no last minute buying, and thus nothing to look forward too.

Except for our breakfast plans tomorrow—pancakes and bacon. Excellent.

Remember when I said Bon was having a good recovery? I'd spoken too soon. All that was typed before the 36 hour wave of nausea and vomiting hit. We think the sickness was caused by the pain meds and antibiotics. They kept her safe from infection, but also kept her from ingesting anything more than two pieces of toast in that time. Once we got the doc's permission to take her off them and got some anti-nausea pills that cost $160 for four pills (we didn't pay that, thanks to our high-quality U.S. medical insurance, so take that, Canada), she got her appetite back fast and has progressed quickly from oatmeal to home-made chili and kettle chips.

I've taken the time while she's been napping to do some much needed cleaning in my basement office. I hadn't vacuumed in a couple of months...I usually wait until the dog hair dust bunnies can bark. I've been organizing some comics that need to be filed. Some still need to be read, too. It's good stuff that I saved: the entire run of Stray Bullets (some of it I've read but not all), the color graphic novel of Jack Staff and the B&W volumes of Kane (all by Paul Grist), various reprints of the later Grendels. And maybe Cerebus if I can bring myself to dive into the final issues.

I've actually been kind of annoyed with my wife during this recuperation time. She could be using this time to read all sorts of stuff... but she has no interest. She could be watching tons of movies, but it's been a challenge to get her to watch even the dumbest crap I've recorded on the TiVo (she called Steve Martin's Cheaper by the Dozen physically painful to watch... hard to argue that.)

I've got the next nine days off to play nurse maid, and I intend to watch every unwatched DVD in the house (the entire season of Firefly awaits), even if I saw the films in theaters (Hellboy! Two-thirds of The Lord of the Rings!), more crap on the TiVo (Sylvia, Wonderland, some Peter Sellers films) and more books and comics.

Even though I haven't had surgery and I'm not sick, I'll show my wife how to properly recover no matter what it takes.

The wife is home for her convalescence. So far, this is pretty damn easy. She's able to do just about everything for her self (I feared the worst for the bathroom... for better and for worse only goes so far until someone is in a nursing home).

All I have to do is cook. Which has so far consisted of making her a slice of toast. My mother-in-law is also here and they're chit-chatting away, so Bon's not bored with me yet. Since I have to work tomorrow and Thursday, she won't get a chance to be bored with me until Xmas Eve, which won't feel like Xmas eve to us since we already had our holiday last weekend. To me, the season's greetings are over, it's time for season's sitting around.

As I write this, I'm sitting in the waiting area of the Ambulatory Procedures ward on the third floor of Cayuga Medical. The hospital seems to have several wireless networks available, but all require a log in that I don't have, so I'll post this when I get home later.

The wife went under the knife approximately two hours ago and should be in recovery in about an hour. It was a good day to drive at 6am for some surgery, with a high expect of 7 degrees today, and wind chills around -25˚, and roads slick with frozen powder. I figured we'd beat all the doctors in to work. Hard to tell though since things always move at a snail's pace in hospitals, maybe to make up for the frenetic bursts in the ERs.

The glacial pace is actually probably to make sure no one screws up. No less than four times this morning, nurses and the anesthesiologist asked Bon to say her full name and birthday while they checked it against paperwork or her paper ID bracelet. One time they faked her out and asked for the address, and she started to say her birthday out of habit. Tricky bastards.

I think all hospitals are in a constant state of construction. St. James in Hornell was in pieces for years as I recall. Last time I had to spend some quality time around a hospital, that one (in Marlboro, MA) was also in a constant state of repair.

That was in 1999, when I had a little scare that I might have something unwanted cropping up near in a testicle. I had two different ultrasounds done of my scrotum, and eventually the diagnosis was that I have what's called a spermatocell. It's basically a harmless growth sticking out of my left teste (though large enough to be a third ball) probably caused by some minor trauma. I blame my dogs, who think when I'm in my bed that my groin is a starter's block at the track meet.

Aside: One of my favorite jokes, I think courtesy of Mel Brooks:
First guy to his angry friend: Well, you're a little testy today.
Angry Friend: Oh yeah? Well you're a big dick!
(get it?)

Outside of that, my time as a patient in a hospital is pretty limited. I've never spent the night in one, not even when I had my single (to date) kidney stone episode. I've only broken one bone in my life (my arm, though damned if I know what bone), and never even got a cast. I think I was about five.

I've never had stitches except for in my mouth when I got my wisdom teeth taken out at age 17, and earlier this year when I got the bovine marrow graft in my mouth so I can put in a cap, which I probably won't bother to do as I'm pretty used to not having that tooth there.

Not counting the LASIK surgery on my eyes, all my surgery has been oral.

Most time I've spent in a hospital in the last ten years was actually on Feb. 7, 2003, when my nephew (Monkey John) was born.

Despite not being much of a patient, my familiarity with hospitals goes way back. My mom and dad met while working in one (St. James, of course) —Mom still works there, running the local LifeLine service (aka The "I've fallen, and I can't get up!" Service). My brother worked there for a while as well as an orderly along with Dad. Dad's main job was as an EMT on the city ambulance... he just did the orderly job I think to make enough money for the 'rents to put extra into an Xmas club account all year.

I've had enough hospital food and smelled enough hospital smells in my life that I don't feel to grossed out or put off by either... well, depending on the food. Those non-meat burgers they used to serve were pathetic even compared to the plastic taste of tofu. The burgers alone made the school cafeteria look like Spago.

It felt kind of like going home again today to wander the halls of Cayuga Medical and get a sense of the place. I got lost in the basement because I didn't bother to read the signs, and went the wrong way looking for the cafeteria. I passed the big laundry with machines that easily date back to the 1970s and was probably on my way to the morgue for all I know, but I got turned around and found myself in a severely understaffed cafeteria.

I had some cold bacon and luke-warm scrambled eggs with my bagel and frozen, unspreadable butter. I wanted a hot chocolate, but the only water available was cold, so instead I grabbed a chocolate milk. Anywhere else—like say, a hotel I recently stayed at—this same size meal would be $20, but here it was only $3.50. I guess you're paying for the presentation (not to mention the warmth) at the hotel.

I expect the docs to come out at any minute to give the good word on the wife's condition. A couple of times over the last week I've pictured myself sitting here, wondering at my own reaction if they should say the words, "there's been complications."

Anything can happen in any kind of surgery, after all. My sister-in-law lost a puppy once when all it did was get a rabies shot. People react badly to anesthetic all the time. Drunk doctors knick the wrong thing or amputate the wrong appendage (her Doc didn't smell of booze though, so I think we're good).

I don't think anything negative will actually happen— I'm not worried about any complications at all. I've always tended to think that once I work through all the worst case scenarios of something in my head, none of them will come true. It's not always fun to think like that, always on the dark side of fate in my head, but it seems to have worked out well by making sure that very little badness happens in my real-life.

It's probably prevented many an airplane crash. (That's a cool idea for a story: the thought that the psychic energy of people on a plane worrying about a crash is what prevents crashes from happening in the first place. What if every crash ever was caused by plane loads of people who just weren't worried?)

I'm so not worried that I've written almost 1000 words this morning on chapter 3 of my novel (wherein our hero first sees the body, though he has to argue to get even that far). I'd like to be that productive on it over the next couple of weeks as well, while Bon's recovering and I'm taking vacation time off to help her out with everything.

Tonight I'll start by making a giant vat of homemade chili that will at least sustain me through the rest of the week. She'll probably just be drinking tea and eating Metamucil crackers. (I've tried them, and they don't taste bad... something you continue to realize for the half hour it takes to chew through one. They're like gum in cracker form.)

Productivity isn't the point though. If I can't accomplish that on a regular day off, I should not expect it while playing nurse. My goal is just to make Bon comfortable and happy. If she happens to learn what all the buttons on the new TiVo remote control do while she's sitting there, that's just gravy.

I'm sitting here in a funk, vacillating between melancholy and rage.

Not that I have much to complain about, my life is great, I'm healthy and got money in the bank and blah blah blah, but I've had a week of little annoyances and grievances and they're starting to fester in my brain and piss me the hell off. And the stupid crap, both self-inflicted and external, always seems to happen in clusters.

Little things like annoying comment spam and shit-bird trolls on my blog got things off to a good start. Trolls are the douche-bags who pop in to a site, anonymously insult the proprietor and then bail, hoping to get a rise... may they all have the fleas of a thousand camels lay eggs in their armpits.

I went down to Time Warner earlier this week to turn in its craptacular DVR and was told I couldn't close my account because I still had a cable box outstanding. Which was utter nonsense, as I didn't have one. I told them this repeatedly and pointedly, making sure they understood that this was their mistake, not mine—I never had another cable box.

Of course, this morning I found that unused cable box on a shelf in my basement utility room.

(Also, please note people, that even a craptacular DVR is better than watching TV the old fashioned way. I guess, however, there's no convincing some people people no matter how much I evangelize... such people still just enjoy writing paper checks and reading ink-stained newspapers and churning their own butter and turning the cranks on their Model-Ts, I guess.)

Last night I put on my suit and got out of the house to go to the Ithaca College yearly holiday party, held at the McMansion that the college president lives in (on the college's dime) and found it an overcrowded exercise in wondering what the hell I was doing there. (Free booze, though.)

I've cranked up the Visa debt for the holidays, cramming in all the shopping so we can do Xmas with the families this weekend, a week earlier than the actual holiday, all to accommodate the Wife having surgery on Monday morning. This will be followed by a month of recovery time, during which I will be her house slave. (Hopefully she'll sleep 90% of the time so I can finish reading Strange & Norrell.)

Whenever the holidays come around and I only budget for gifts, it's inevitable that something else comes along that needs immediate paying for. Case in point: we took our much hated Subaru Legacy Wagon into the shop this morning for a 90k mile tune up— which was already ridiculously expensive at around $600— and found out that it's got three different oil leaks in the engine. So crank that bill up to $2k. Nice.

It's just been that kind of week.

Only the agonized screaming of the little people gives me the solace I need to get through the day.

Let's talk about going to the bathroom in public. (Yes, this gets scatological, so avert your eyes if you're weak of heart or stomach.)

I've never been afraid of public toilets, despite seeing some horrific ones in my time, including the Grand Central Station men's room, complete with homeless men living in the stalls. I didn't use any of those toilets, even though I was in the beginning throes of what would later become known far and wide as "the Tequila Willie's Incident."

Back then, 1993 or so, I used to stand by the Macy*s store on 34th Street in NYC and look at the toilet across the street. They'd installed this gigantic booth on the street that was a self-cleaning public toilet that was homeless proof—anyone who over stayed their welcome would actually be ejected by the moving walls of this high-tech outhouse. After someone used it and left, it would also self-clean, hosing down the walls, toilet, floor, etc., so the next person would find it minty-fresh, albeit, I assume, damp. I could never bring myself to use it because it cost money to get inside. I'll pay for a lot of things, but not to eliminate my own excrement.

Aside: This morning my brother, the cop, told me the story of the Mad Crapper that struck our hometown of Hornell a few years ago. We got on the subject while talking about how some criminals are put on the sex offender lists for stupid shit like answering the door naked when pizza is delivered, and yet people who do full-on murder don't have a list at all.

One guy he knows of in town is on the sex offender list—the guy did answer the door naked all the time, and once ran out of his bathroom "naked and jerkin' it" (as he put it) and knocked a guy over who was in the apartment. The guy knocked over brought charges, thus the offender is on the sex offender list. What the offender is not on the sex offender list for is being the Mac Crapper, simply because he was in his teens at the time. He was breaking into people's homes and getting so sexually excited by it that he had to offload some freight. This he would do on a kitchen counter. Then he would leave the house without taking a thing.

While I do have got some standards for public toilets, I also have my rituals (and I'm talking a full sit down here, not urinals, which are uniformly gross due to man's inability to take aim). For example, I carefully hang my bag and/or coat on a hook. I flush before I even undo a button even if all appears clear. I grab a wad of toilet paper and white down the ring, then flush that.

But I never use those paper ass guards.

I tried one for the first time a couple of months ago and got exactly the result I'd always expected. It was in the way, made me slide around like a fawn on a patch of ice, and when all was done, it stuck to me like, well, exactly what it was: thin tissue paper. Peeling it off my thighs was one of the more sickening things I've felt in a while, right up there with almost upchucking a big-ass pancake in Hawai'i.

I've used toilets in airports all over this great nation (and the U.K.!) and usually found them to be among the best you can get in a public venue. Perhaps it's because 90% of them have the self-flushing function. Even the ancient underground rest room of the JetBlue terminal at JFK —with toilets you have to flush by hand!—get cleaned regularly, and besides, what more do we really need? Much as I might admire the bells and whistles of a self-cleaning water closet, what out does a roll of tissue, a ring upon a throne, and a good book? Nothing, my friends, nothing.

Well, a bidet might be cool, at least to try. Though I suspect that would mean too many towels in the laundry.

I am totally enamored with what they've done with the cans at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. Not only do they have the obligatory self-flushing, the johns automatically dispense a seat cover. It rotates around the ring like the skin on a snake, disposing of itself after every use. You're supposed to pass a hand over a sensor to get a new cover, but I was a little nervous that it would try to rotate a new one while I was dropping anchor, perhaps slicing my rump with thousands of paper cuts. However, it worked quiet flawlessly. Watch a video of it in action.

The world should be working toward a standard of excellence for all public facilities: foaming soap dispensers (quite the rage in Calif., I noticed on my last trip), sell flushing bowls, automatic seat covers, etc. Only then will I think it's truly safe and worthwhile for the homeless to move into the stalls at Grand Central or elsewhere.

Another Aside: Another quick cop story from my bro: They once had on a surveillance tape a college student who walked into a bank vestibule, squatted in a corner to pinch a loaf, and then proceed to pick up his own feces and smear it on the ATM. He actually tried to deny it when they picked him up, and when they showed him the tape he simply copped to the charge without any explanation. Drugs and alcohol were supposedly not involved. This man is NOT on any offender lists anywhere. He's loose. Remember that the next time you use your ATM card.

Survivor's time with us may be fleeting. The show that I raved about back in the summer of 2000 to anyone that would listen just finished what I think is its ninth season, but the ratings for the finale were the lowest of any Survivor ending show... even lower than the one Rosie O'Donnell hosted (shudder).

Tho it's still a winner for CBS it probably only has a shot at a few more seasons, and thus it's time to put myself on the line: This afternoon, I filled out the application for Survivor X. Now I need to shoot a video, and luckily I've got the technology. I will make the Wife help me shoot it out in the snow over the weekend, and get this puppy in the mail.

I need to get my passport updated to be eligible, so there's $55 I need to mail out. TANSTAAFL , as a wise man on the moon once said.

I'll miss Palau... with my luck, the season after that, to film next summer, will be the first time they try to do the show in the Arctic.

So it's been four days of waiting but it looks like in the next hour, I might finally have TiVo back via DirecTV, including all the local channels (sans UPN however, since no one locally carries it... no Veronica Mars for me unless I go with BitTorrent, I guess. Which is for the best.) When the installer came on Monday to put up my second dish -- that's right, my house as TWO 18-inche DirecTV satellite dishes on it now! -- he was in a hurry to get back to Binghamton for his bowling league night, so he split after hooking up the new multi-switch (which combines the two satellite signals into one) into my old multi-switch, which is apparently a no-no. THat meant all my local channels came in blank.

DirecTV tech support was no help, but that was to my advantage... they sent me a second unit to hook up and it turns out to have 70 hour recording capacity, double that of the one I got at first for $50. So now I get to keep the new one and all I did was lose four more days without TiVo. No big deal, because the craptacular cable DVR was still hooked up. Soon, life will be as it should be.

At least until the ads start popping up as I fast forward through commercials and/or DirecTV splits with TiVo and tries to make me use something else. But they'll have to pry my DirecTiVo ut of my cold, dead hands before I let them take it away.

I was reading the very funny advice column they've started on MediaBistro called ColumnTK today....

(Aside: If you don't know what a TK is, you don't work in publishing. So I'll let you in on our dirty little secret: Sometimes, when people write things for a living, they don't really know what they're talking about.

Or, at the very least, they don't have all the facts or information they need. When that happens, the writer will generally put in the letters TK in place of whatever is missing or unknown. For example: "The world economy takes in $TK collecting whale feces" or "George W. Bush spent TK [number] of years as a cheerleader in college before becoming president."

The TK stands for "to come," but I don't know why it's a K. It's one of those things that every editorial assistant asks and is told "it just is." And so, it just is.)

The top question in the column was from someone working for a public radio show, wondering if they were obligated to contribute during pledge time to the station where they work. The worry was that maybe it was expected, or on the other hand, perhaps giving was crossing the line and "somewhat incestuous."

The answers (from fellow readers) stated that non-profit orgs actually expect staffers to contribute to fund-raising efforts the organization is making. People working for public radio —everyone down to the part-timers—made donations back to the place of work according to another reader who worked for public radio.

That's the stupidest god-damn thing since New Coke.

Why on earth would you give money back to the people who PAY YOU? You work there. You probably work more than you should, especially if they're a non-profit. Time is money, but not if you love your job? Horse hockey pucks!

What kind of bargaining chip do you have with the boss when it comes time for you to ask for a raise? None—you're giving money back to the company already! He should just take some away.

What chance do you have of NOT getting a pay cut if budgets are tight? None—you've basically already taken a cut by giving money back to the company!

Look, I do volunteer work for a non-profit, and I make donations to them. That's fine, I'm doing my part work-wise on the side of my day job and helping with some cash at the end of the year. But if I worked for them as a real employee? I would not donate to their coffers. The point would be to work harder to get other people to donate.

I don't care if it's a non-profit or corporation that greedy to the point of starting a Division of Alchemy to get more ingots for the coffers, it makes no sense for an employee to give back money to its employer.

I admit, I've worked at least one job where I would have gladly taken a paycut just to keep the job around.... but no way was I giving anything back without that good a reason.

This is something the Wife faces occasionally. Ithaca College, our ol' alma mater and her current much-beloved employer, is always screaming poverty. This year they might actually have earned the right since a slew of students they accepted decide to go elsewhere, taking their beer money tuition dollars with them. But even in its least lean times, the College solicits for cash every year by having freshmen make phone calls to every single graduate they can track down to see if they'll give back to the site of their most inebriated learning.

I actually have gotten to the point of enjoying the call each year, as 1) I seldom get to talk to women age 19-22 on the phone when it doesn't involve the number "900" and 2) I love to slowly and candidly tell them exactly why I won't ever give to the college (thus taking up as much time as I can so my young solicitor can't call another fellow alum who might decide to buy another brick for the wall... with their name etched on it as a keepsake to find years later during Alumni Weekend). I consider it a service.

I have my reasons not to give to IC. Primary among them has always been the mistake of getting married on that same campus after graduation to the tune of several thousand dollars. (The location was the mistake, not the marriage, but ask me again next time the Wife is mean to me.) I think IC has seen enough of my parent's money and mine.

At least it has at my current rate of pay. I'm not saying if I had some Trump-esque cash I wouldn't be pushing for a Griffith Hall (all naked sororities all the time!) or willing to setup a Griffith Scholarship (for the Television/Radio student most likely to do the least with their degree by going into a different field).

I've told Bon on every occasion where the topic has come up that we might want to give something to the school—and it comes up a lot—there's no way in hell. We buy tickets to see plays and concerts there. We pay the exorbitant fees to have the occasional dining hall meal when I visit her on campus (always going back to the same dining hall where we met, worked, fell in love, got it on once in the kitchen, and got married. Not all on the same day, by the way).

And, oh, there's the fact that she's woefully underpaid for the amount of work she's putting in. And I'm underpaid having to hear about the politics and nonsense she puts up with.

If the college doesn't get the census back up next year then people might lose their jobs. (But do these places ever actually float the ability to anyone to take a paycut across the board so someone doesn't get laid off? Hell no. I'm sure the president, provost and other six-figure muckity-mucks won't take a cut.)

But I digress. Back to the point: Donate back to your employer? Please. You can always find another charity. Like your spouse.

When Bon is the president of the college pulling down six figures (which I figure will take until about 2018, tops) and I can finally stop working and be a house-husband (but with a flock of full-time French maids at my beck and call)...we'll give some back then. Though really, there's no point, because once she kicks the bucket the college would name some dorm after her anyway.

My best buddy Joseph is once again blogging after a several month hiatus. Go and read his harangue about those silly ass "ribbon" magnets that are now all the rage for showing "your support of troops, diseases, boobs, whatever. He's spot on and I wish I'd written it.

He'd never thought of his wife as 'mother of the year,' and, admittedly, sometimes thought of her maternal abilities as sub-par at best. Even so, what she said to him now was like having a fork stuck in his abdomen and slowly twisted in his man-giblets.

His amorous advances of the evening had seemed so promising, headed in the direction of a few minutes of passion perhaps outside of the bedroom for the first time in the eight years since Toby was born, which excited him almost as much as her seeming willingness to succumb to his unsubtle overtures there at the dining table, next to the sideboard filled with the carefully chosen china and crystal from Tiffany's. The heat they had been generating was dizzying. Intoxicating. It made him say through the lusty, hazy fog over his thoughts, "no, but don't worry about it" when she asked "do you have a condom."

That was when he found himself physically pinned to the wall. Belinda wasn't a little woman, she was more than his equal in both height and weight, but he was still caught completely off guard by the ferocity, the unexpected violence. Her knee went against his buttocks (his pants were already around his knees) and smashed his pelvis into the wall. She held his face against the hand-screened wallpaper with the ivy design with one hand, and his left wrist was twisted sharply behind his back, as if he needed more pain to get his attention and kill his tumescence. She put her mouth close to his ear as she spewed forth her pent-up vitriol, not whispering, not shouting, just evenly modulated speech filled with an even-handed spite:

"Don't worry about it? Jesus Christ, Harold, you would risk that, you selfish prick, risk impregnating me again? You have not idea what that was like to carry that thing inside me for those months, like a parasite, a giant bulbous tapeworm forcing me to eat, to sweat, to piss myself; you don't know the half of it, you fuck, you selfish fuck. I was ready to give you the world just now, all you had to do was show a little courtesy to me. Like I want another fucking child, like one isn't enough, isn't already too much, you selfish bastard. You think it's my duty, some kind of honor, to carry and raise your fucking brat? Like I'd want another. Jesus, Harold of all the most selfish, thoughtless things I've put up with from you, this might take the cake."

She pushed up on his wrist slightly, and he felt his shoulder ready to dislocate. A tear leaked out of his eye, and he wasn't sure if it was from the pain, or what she said.

Meanwhile, only a few short feet away, eight-year-old Toby sat under the dining room table amid his Thomas the Tank Engine toys, listening to every word.

So far, so good. I'm sitting now in the JetBlue terminal at JFK, home of a terminal-wide free hotspot and the best new airline in years. I think I like SouthWest better -- first (and last) time I flew with them, the entire flight attendant crew was like a comedy team entertaining the passengers, which was a nice change -- but JetBlue gets my thumbs up most of the time. Can't go wrong with DirecTV at every seat. Though only one major network, that's just a tease.

Also, nice that they only put the outlets designated for laptop use on the most uncomfortable bench seats in the whole terminal. Smart way to make sure they don't get used too long. At least, that's how it worked in my case.

On the 5.5 hour red-eye, I only got about an hour of sleep. The rest of the time I coughed and read Strange & Norrell (Strange has just left Norrell's magical tutelage, and what's the deal with the thistle-down haired man's plans?) and watched an old episode of Detroit Animal Cops on Animal Planet without the sound. And an ancient Happy Days on TVLand that I all but convinced myself was an episode of Love, American Style because of the way Tom Bosley was dressed, he didn't look like he was in the 50's at all, but then there was Richie and Joanie and all was right with the world of reruns.

Three more hours and I'll finally board the flight to Syracuse, fly for an hour, then drive for an hour. It's almost as many hours of travel as I had on the way out with the missed connection, but feels so much nicer because it was planed ahead of time. Not that much nicer, but close enough for jazz.

Time to buy a Krispy Kreme.

Great Goggaly-Moogaly!

It's Zachary T. Paleozogt in plastic. I'm not going to explain to you people why, just accept the fact that I MUST HAVE THIS. Put this at the top of my Xmas list, ASAP people. Buy it here.

The blog comment spammers have finally found Squished Frog and embraced it. I'm both annoyed and relieved. Annoyed because now I have to combat them, but relieved that they consider my modest ramblings worth of their automated postings which desperately try to get their sex/drug/casino sites higher up on the Google listings. I wonder if the volume will stay low enough for me to delete them individually for a while... i hope so, at least long enough for me to install MovableType 3.1, which is way overdue anyway.

Speaking of spam, in three months the wife and I will be off to NYC to see our third Broadway play in three years (following Little Shop of Horrors and Avenue Q) -- the new SpamAlot, which is based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Starring Hank Azaria (he does voices on the Simpsons) and David Hyde Pierce (Frasier's brother Niles). Sweet. I especially like that we're seeing all of these shows with the original cast, sometime while they're still in "previews."

I'm once again in northern California, the third time in three years, and on the east coast at least I'm 35 years old. Here in sunny but frigid (what the hell is up with that?) CA, I've got another hour-plus.

I wish I could say the trip out was unremarkable, but it took me 13 full hours to get here from the moment I left my house to the landing gear hitting the tarmac at San Jose Airport. Because of weather, they kept the plane on the ground for an extra hour in Syracuse so when I got to Chicago for my layover, the connecting plane was long gone. So I was put on standby for the next plane to San Jose, which was, of course, one concourse over. This always happens in Chicago—you never land in the same place you're supposed to again take off from. It happened on the way to and from Hawai'i. I've come to expect it of O'Hare Airport. And I still like it better than Dulles.

So, I waited for an hour at the gate for someone to show up so I could confirm that I was going to get on, all the while reading Strange & Norrell, which I can say is enjoyable, but goddamn, it's the heaviest book I've ever read. And I don't mean that metaphorically. It's 780 pages and I think they were printed on cardboard. As I waited, the screen behind the desk at the gate went blank. I went and checked the departures board and, yes, they changed the gate due to a delay, so I had to again go to the other concourse.

There, I waited another three hours to find out that the plane was full. They said I was on automatic standby for the next flight to San Jose— which, oh, is in half an hour. They didn't tell me that, I found it while taking what I thought could be a leisurely stroll to—you guessed it—the other concourse.

This plane I got on. That's when my semi-dormant cold decided to kick in and play out in stages. First came the runny nose. I was blowing it every 5 minutes, much to the disgust of the man sitting next to me on the aisle. His constant shifting and sidelong glances made me want to grab his sweater sleeve and wipe off. Then, that stopped, and the sore throat kicked in. I skipped the pretzels (no meal on the super-cheapo United coach class apparently) and went for the ice.

Finally, about an hour before landing, my left ear started to ache—maybe the worse I've had since I was 11 and took my first plane ride to Florida to see my grandparents. That was a doozy but it had a gaggle of hot stewardesses (we could call them that back then) surrounding me, filled with pity and trying to soothe my aches. This ear ache I had to suffer in silence like a man. I wanted to cry. Try as I might, I couldn't equalize, blowing my nose did nothing, chewing gum, yawning, all the tricks, nothing made it better. Not until we touched down and the pressure equalized.

An hour later, after I got my rental car and checked in to my hotel to find I'd been set up by our most excellent events coordinator to get a mini-suite room, I blew my nose again.

And I swear to god, my left eardrum exploded and started to ooze down my lobe onto my cheek. At least, that's what it felt like. The pop was enormous, the pain was like a sharp pencil jammed in there and twisted. Luckily, it didn't last long. The pain fell away and that was that. I was in California.

This was hardly the worst airport experience of my life. That was the 16 hour trip last year to Oregon through Dulles. I'd rate this as worse than the 8 hour wait for a plane in San Juan Airport though, because at least there I was with the Wife (whom I refer to as... Squanto!). She's back home dealing with her pain-in-the-ass job and the three idiots all by herself and I'm sitting here turning a new age that officially puts me closer to 40 than to 30. I'd almost forgotten about it until I was on the phone with my Mom tonight and she wished me a happy. She probably remembers it only because of the pain it caused her in 1969. Here's hoping when I climb on the red-eye tomorrow night that I don't remember my b-day of 2004 for the same reason. Though I'll take the sinus pain over passing a human being through my system.