Curse my wife.

First, she takes a full three days to read through my short story. She's such a copy editor at heart now, that she dove in and started making comments and edits instead of just reading through it first to make sure it wasn't, you know... worked. If she can make something fun feel like toil, she'll do it.

She did finally finish though and had given me great insights on some silly things, plus a potential title which she stayed up late on Tuesday to come up with, starring into the darkness, until finally she whispered it to me just as I was leaving consciousness. Neither of us thinks it's great, but it's better than "Untitled."

Now, of course, I've got to go through the story again and pull out some extraneous stuff and add a couple of bits and clarify and weedwack. Which I would have done last night, but I was obsessed with looking at computers.

You see, I made my switch over to Thunderbird as my official e-mail client finally, it works, everything is imported... and it's still slower than the last sloth in a sloth race. It's just Windows. It's bogged down after 18+ months of my installing and uninstalling crap. I was headed toward backing up all the data, nuking the drive and reinstalling XP and all the applications when the wife -- who I call Squanto -- says I'm due for a new computer.

Never mind that I bought the laptop last year -- that's not for work. A new desktop system would be cheaper and would be a write-off as an "unreimbursed business expense," because I get no equipment from my employer, nor any tech support. I'm worth my salary for that alone, I'd wager.

And, after a few months of catching up after some extra vehicle repair expenses, I actually have the money to spend on this. Assuming our vacation to N.H. in the end of July isn't expensive.

So, now, still working on the frozen molasses Pentium III, my brain is a buzz with how/where to back up all my data (two network drives and a FireWire external drive are just the beginning of my options), what I need to do to get dual-monitor support in a new computer, if I should sell the old one on eBay, etc. Oh, and where to buy the new PC. Time to do major research. Because, after all, this should be fun, but I'm going to make it feel like work.

After days of somewhat agonizing heat, tempered only by the fact that I live in my basement most of the time, last night dumped a good deluge on the area. And this morning, I can actually hear the grass in my lawn, that was turning brown and desiccated just yesterday, absorbing all the life giving moisture so it can again start growing. Which is good, because I haven't chopping their reedy, green asses in a while and I have some audiobooks that need a listen.

The world of registered trademarks is a strange place to live, I would think. Companies spend all their time making products into household names, then when everyone starts using those names, the companies have to rush out and prevent the name becoming TOO generic lest it lose all power as a brand and rights to use the name are lost. It happens all the time... you know the world "hoagie" used to be trademarked? And "linoleum"? Even "zipper" and "yo-yo."

I got a little note from some 'corporate paralegal' at the LoJack Corporation for using the name LoJack in a story that wasn't really about LoJack, but compared a product in the story to what LoJack does.

LoJack's legal eagle with her finger on the Google button didn't ask me to take down the mention or anything—I believe it was just corporate due diligence to make sure that, if I start to say LoJack LoJack LOJACK over and over again in every article I write, they'll be able to say, "hey, but, wait! We told you not to do that. We asked nice! Waaaaa!"

In that spirit, I'd like to mention a few brands that I'm sure are quite registered trademarks, just to see if someone will find them in a search engine and send me a nice note:

Band-Aids
LoJack
Kleenex
Speedo
Tampax
Post-In Notes
Xerox
Clorox
TiVo
Windex
ZipLoc bags
Super Hero (the term, to prevent use in comic book titles from other publishers, is jointly owned by Marvel and DC Comics. No kidding.)

And those are only the trademarked products/services I know of in my house. Well, except for the Speedos. No banana-hammocks here. (Find more fun trademarks you can abuse.)

Yesterday, sick to death of the sloth-pace my Microsoft Outlook has been performing at of late (probably my fault, since I put in an extension to strip out all the large file attachments because I thought that would make it go, I dunno, faster), I thought, why not... let's try Mozilla Thunderbird.

If you don't know Mozilla, they make free stuff. For now, just a Web browser (FireFox) and Thunderbird for e-mail.

I tried Firefox last week and gave up on it. I like it just fine, especially the extensions you can install to give it all sorts of wacky functionality, but it was also too damn slow. Say what you want about IE, but because it is tied into the Windows XP operating system, it's a lot faster. (And I don't use straight IE anyway, I use Maxthon, which utilizes the IE rendering engine). I'm still using FireFox on Maui, my laptop, because Maui is faster than all the other computers in my house combined.

Anyway, yesterday, I downloaded Thunderbird, installed it on my desktop, and started to import my Outlook mail. After a couple of fits, it seemed to work -- and then I found that most of my larger folders. only half the messages were imported. I'm too much of an e-mail packrat to throw anything away, especially for work since I have to search through that stuff occasionally, and this was infuriating. Another attempted import -- which can only be done with Outlook running, for some asinine reason -- used up all the free space on my hard drive. Very, very annoying. If you're me, infuriating and worthy of throwing things. Finally, I uninstalled it and then, bass-ackwards, I ran a tool to make sure my Outlook datafiles are not corrupted. And oh, my, where they ever. How could they not be, when they amount to 1.8GB of data?

Now that things are fixed, I might try Thunderbird again... and if it all works, and I find it runs to slow on my more and more ancient Pentium III, well, I give up.

And if you didn't understand any of the above, imagine how frustrating all this crap is for those of us who do know what I'm talking about.

(oh, and I tried to put our air conditioner in last night for the first time, as we haven't needed one before. It ended up with the unit tipped inside, not out, causing a nice flood of condensed water in our bedroom, onto the window sill and then the carpet.

I'm all about the hard work with no appreciable gain.)

It. Is. Done.

At 16,500 words exactly, my short story (called "Untitled Robbery Short," which isn't even accurate... it's about burglaries) is way too long to submit to either of the too many mystery digest magazines. But at least I have a beginning, middle, and even an end. Not sure about my denouement, though. That was much harder and might not work.

That's really the big question. Overall, does it work? Does it flow? Does it make sense? Are the clues in the right place, do the suppositions (and intuitions) of the characters seem, well, in character? Does the romantic subplot drag things down or build things up? I'm afraid that subplot has to go to get down under 14,000 words... but I really like it.

I'm too close to any of it to know, so its time to hit the Trusted Readers, the people who I know I can hand this to that will be somewhat kind, but mostly honest with me about this story, warts and all.

First reader is, of course, the wife. She gets first pass. She knows I'm excited to be done with this story, because, obviously, it doesn't happen every day. This is really my first finished fictional story in 13 years. Which is just pathetic (and I'm not counting the little micro-fiction I've done here on the blog, though some of that is pretty cool, if I say so myself.)

However, because I'm excited, she's holding off because, really, I don't think she likes my stuff. I'm not her taste. I told her already, she doesn't have to like the story. Or the characters. Or their motivations. Or the so-called spelling. All she has to do is tell me if it makes sense.

And then she's got to fix all the tenses and typos.

After that comes friends and family. My brother Paul, the cop, is at the top of the list, but first I have to sit down with him first and explain quite plainly that this is FICTION. Sure, I want a police fact check, but, Christ, just cause he might do something one way doesn't mean my protagonist would. In fact, my protagonist is probably more likely to do things quite the opposite from him in most circumstances. We'll see if Paul can wrap his head around that one. Even I have trouble sometimes... I found myself typing his name into the story sometimes, instead of the main character's.

When all is said and done, it's submission time. We'll see if it'll sell. I'll start big and work my way down, see if it sells to anyone at all. It's a process that is time consuming and demoralizing, but I'm looking forward to it in a way. I think I've learned a lot in the last 13 years, enough to look at the inevitable rejection that faces me—despite how well I believe I've done with this —and use it as a force to propel me, not ground me and crush me. Of course, that's easy to say before the rejection slips come in.

So, on to draft two, a lower word count, a pithy title, and glory.

Or, at least a new line on my resume.

Or something else. We'll see.

Courtesy of my friend Josh, check out the Memorable Quotes from Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith page at IMDB, scroll down, and read the fifth quote listed. As Josh said, "I don't recall it from the movie" -- but it should be.

The wife and I had not eaten any decent Indian food in years until last night, when we finally realized there was an Indian restaurant named Sangam in Collegetown. It is among only a handful of restaurants we haven't tried yet since moving back to this burg three years ago. (Strangely enough, another is a Japanese place right next door).

While dining on delicious Chicken Tandoori, I got to watch the Indian family that runs the place have a birthday party for their little boy. I assume they run the place, since the kid had free run of the place and was in and out of the kitchen like a yo-yo. He was wearing the same Sikh peaked turban that the older men present were wearing—actually, it was the only way I could tell the youngster was a male.

Anyway, at some point the whole family came in, from mom up to grandmom, and they put candles on an ice cream cake and sang a heavily accented happy birthday, and took pictures of the father putting forkfuls of ice cream in the boy's mouth. Usually the photog's flash was delayed and the boy was finished swallowing by the time the picture was taken.

It was fascinating to watch, as most of the time a sheltered white guy like me only sees people of other ethnicities trying to embrace the so-called American way of doing things on TV or in movies, not so much in real life. They gave it a lot more feeling, I think, than most of us born here. We take it for granted. and I doubt that's how they do it back in India... the ice cream would probably melt too fast.

I know it was an ice cream cake because this little boy started cutting pieces of cake, throwing them on plates, and taking them around to every customer in the restaurant. There were only about three tables occupied, so it wasn't like he was giving it all away, but the generosity of the gesture was enormous, especially for a little boy. Growing up in America, you're supposed to covet all your sugar. God knows I did. Maybe the fact that he got The Incredibles on DVD made up for it? Or maybe he was just the nicest kid I've seen in the wild in a long time.

It was about 8:30 tonight, the sun still out, and we were in the living room watching last night's episode of Six Feed Under. Just at the point when Illeana Douglas is screaming out about what a great fuck Rico is (as they, indeed, doing the deed), something that never happens at our house happened: there came a knock on the door.

I paused the show and went to the door, struggling to get the Labradors to back the hell off. Out the window I could see our unexpected visitor was not a family member, or an accident victim, or a rabid deer looking to pick a fight, but was, in fact, a young girl. Yowza.

She was 21 if she was a day, red hair and a freckled complexion, and any boy's dream. She looked like Lindsey Lohan did before she went all coke-addict-anorexic-skinny. She had on those kind of short-shorts made famous by the cheerleaders of the 1970s. Had my dogs made it outside past me, they would have had much white thigh on which to work the goosing magic of their cold, wet noses. Still, attractive as she was, the last unsolicited solicitor on my steps was three years ago when some Guideposters pulled up the drive, a car full of them, decked out in ties and shiny black shoes. This girl looked nothing like them, but maybe the Church of Jesus Chirst of Latter Day Jehovah Witnesses (or whatever) had learned that sex sells and were sending out their recruiters more accordingly. I was wary. Then again, looking at her, I was willing to hear the pitch.

She told me she was a student at such and such college, some place in the Midwest, I wasn't really listening, as I still expected her to say something about "Jesus" and "Savings" (souls, not money). She started going on about all the equipment we had in the backyard, and how she saw it when she pulled up, and that she was talking to all the families in Lansing about educational material for their kids, but she guessed by the equipment that maybe we had dogs. Either that, or we forced our children to jump through tires and jump over bars made of PVC plastic. I seriously doubt that would be bad for any kid, but I realize it's not the norm.

Once it was established that there were no kids about and that I was unlikely to look at, let alone purchase, any so-called educational materials, she said she'd take no more of my time. She did ask what kind of dogs we have, and I told her, and she said, "Labradors, that's the kind of dogs my kids will have some day." Then she was on her way.

I went back into the living room and told the Wife about the girl, and what she looked like, and admitted that, chances are if she'd made her pitch, I'd have bought some text books from her. It wouldn't be the first time a pretty sales person has turned my head. A couple of years ago one talked me into buying a big book of Grimm's Fairy Tales, which I did eventually get and it is the real deal, the old world tales, filled with death and mayhem, so of course my sister-in-law won't let my nephews see it until they're 21. First time was way back before I was even married, and some co-ed got me enrapt to her cause to save the American waterways. Or egrets. Or boats. Something to do with water. I wasn't really paying attention, not even when I wrote her the $50 check I couldn't afford. When I told the (then future) wife about that one back in the day, she made me call and stop payment on the check, that's how poor we were at the time. Or maybe she didn't like me ogling the door-to-door salesgirls.

And then we went back to watching Rico and Illeana in the hotel room on TV.

(An Open Letter, to my friend, Major Bill...)

Hey Kayser,

Just as you and I have come a long way in the last 16 years -- you serving your country and homeland overseas and becoming the father to a family, I sitting in my basement pondering what to spend my money on -- so too has Hollywood's treatment of that character that shaped us so in our college years. Suffice to say, Batman Begins is truly the best depiction of the character on celluloid. Ever. There is no doubt. (Not that outdoing the last couple of flicks was tough. But no one will want to see Tim Burton's version again after this.)

By handing the film over to the man in the cowl, even long before he had a cowl to put on, instead of letting it become the stage for antics by so-called guest-starring villains, the humanity of the character becomes more important than the "wonderful toys" or the sets or the funny quips. And this makes it a film that not just a fanboy can love.

Not that the toys suffer. The production values are such that, whereas we used to think we could parody a recreation of Burton's 1989 version with ease, a parody of this film would cost exponentially more, even for our standards of film making. At least a couple hundred bucks. I mean, supposedly, in this one, Batman can even TURN HIS HEAD. That's how far the costume technology alone has come. (Though I have to say, I kept looking for a big turning the head sequence, and didn't really get that.)

Boo/hiss on Hollywood and the Army for not making sure it was shown at Camp Victory the same time as it came out here. Though you guys would probably settle for decent Kevlar.

So, the best parts of the film to watch for when you get the inevitable bootleg DVD recorded in a no-security theater in the middle of nowhere (screw the MPAA):

[SPOILERS galore, beware!]

1) The OJ-style car chase with the Batmobile (wisely never called that in the film... no batarang or batcave either, though they're all there).
2) The Villain twist toward the end that I, foolishly, never saw coming.
3) The bat backup, stolen right from Frank Miller's Batman: Year One to excellent effect.
4) The setup for the second film in this reboot. (And it is a total reboot... this ain't no prequel to Michael Keaton.)
5) The future Mrs. Tom Cruise in a tight shirt. She's... perky.

Okay though, what is it with modern day superhero films and elevated trains? Spider-Man, the Incredibles, now Batman... I guess they are very dramatic and all, what with being, uh, elevated. But it's time for a moratorium. At least Hellboy was dragged by a regular ol' underground subway.

That's it. Just wanted to let you know, you will love it. Enjoy. Hopefully you'll be home soon so you can take the kids to see it. Or show them the bootleg DVD.

I spent some time on the phone tonight with my brother, Paul, as he was trying to put his kids (ages 2.33 and 1.25 years, approximately) to bed. There are few things more avuncular than holding a coherent conversation with a father as he hauls a screaming child upstairs to brush his teeth.

Paul gave me the latest info on a case he's been working on for months -- which is the basis for most of the short story I'm currently writing. (A short story that is in danger of becoming a novella if I'm not careful.) The names and locations and details -- and in some cases the genders and races and sexual orientations and dominant hands --have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty and the fictional, however. As is right and proper.

I imagine a lot about what Paul's life is like as a cop. In fact, I frequently find myself wishing I'd gone into such a line back when it was more feasible, back before I became the wretch I am today so absorbed with my meager wealth and material possessions and my TiVo. There's also my fear of pain to consider. And I sweat enough without involving Kevlar. Still, I imagine that helping others is fulfilling, and that the excitement and adrenaline rush of criminal chasing is better than any drug. (Though not better than sex. And probably not even better than Internet porn. I have my standards.)

I get this not just from the glamorous TV shows and movies about cops, but from Paul himself. I must stay cognizant of one fact however: my brother is a born storyteller. He's been lying like a Persian rug since he was a kid to get out of anything and everything, whether it was simply things he didn't want to do, or to avoid punishment for the things he did.

That worked until he became a teen and decided that lying wasn't as effective as just not doing things, or bothering to show up, or acting like he cared, even if it was just to piss off Mom. Luckily that was just his long-haired phase, and being the son of a nurse and an EMT, plus working in the hospital with them for some time as a teen himself, set him on the course he is on today. No one is prouder of him than me.

However, when he became a cop, his storytelling ability came back with a vengeance. He knows just how much detail to include, knows to leave out the boring parts no one cares about, and how to build up to a good conclusion.

(If there is a conclusion... first thing you leard when talking to real cops is, not every story has one. And most of the conclusions aren't very satisfying in a TV show kinda way. The bad guys can get off easily, the innocent are easily hurt. That's life.

His encounter with a college student who killed himself with a shotgun is something no human being should have to deal with, yet is a story that I will never, ever regret hearing from him. It pains him to think about to this day.)

Sure, there's some embellishment in his yarns and anecdotes. As I've done ride-arounds with him on a couple of occasions, it is clear that for every one minute of thrilling danger and derring-do that comes with being on the job, there's at least 20 hours of pulse deadening boredom, eons of waiting for something -- anything -- to happen that, in a small college town like the one he works, seldom transpires. Thus every call has the potential to be exciting, every traffic stop becomes something interesting, every drunken college student brawl filled with pepper-sprayed victims is a joyful memory.

While a born liar, I'm lucky in that my brother is not a writer (for writer's are, as Stephen King points out, just liars). Paul doesn't type, he doesn't keep any kind of journal, plus his dyslexia and lack of caring about writing in his youth help keep his spelling at a level only tolerated in law enforcement.

He leaves the writing to me, and he's always asking, "When are you going to write the great American novel?" And I always can tell him, "I'm working on it." And if the day ever comes that something gets done and is out there, the first page will say this:

I'm sitting out in the lobby at the Wi-Fi Planet show in Boston Baltimore [wishful thinking that I was in Boston...]. The third conference session for the day has begun, and the one I set up that's running (out of four concurrent panels) has the lowest turn out.

Apparently, I'm not very good at this 'conference co-chair' stuff.

It's hot in Baltimore, just like it was last year. I'm thinking about going back into the panel room, which has better A/C and isn't under a skylight like I am right now... but I need the outlet, as Maui's battery is almost out of juice.

A vendor I know just told me as I passed him in a meeting "I'd hug you if I could" regarding a story I wrote yesterday. I feel dirty.

I've met a couple of consultant types today that seemed to come from different ends of the geek spectrum -- one with bowl cut and the mannerism to go with, another a handsome dude with the laid-back attitude of a successful former fratboy -- and both made me feel like I don't know what the hell I'm talking about in my daily grind of covering wireless technology. I suppose I should be happy a vendor wants to hug me, at least that means I got the facts straight. At least, according to him.

I haven't been gone long enough to officially miss home, but I'm already happy at the thought of getting back tomorrow. I don't know how people do it that have to travel more than 50% of their work time. They must really hate where they live.

When one spends an hour+ under the sink, wedged between the warped floor board below and the live electrical wires powering the Insinkerator garbage disposer above, holding a pipe wrench awkwardly and trying not to get flecks of whatever the substance is on the bottom of the basin in one's eyes, it's mildly disappointing to find that your hard work was for naught.

Meaning, my leaky sink which I so carefully took apart and put back together better than new yesterday -- sans the silly squirt hose attachment that we never used anyway -- leaks worse than ever.

I wanted to believe it wasn't the faucet. I wanted to believe it was the hose attachment, and bought a small brass cap to cut off where the hose went, which seemed to work well. I bought all new flexible hoses with compression fittings to hook up to the sink. I even put in a nice new soap dispenser to take over the hole where the hose squirter used to go.

And then at 5:30 this morning there was the familiar high-pitched squeal of my water sensor alarm going off under the sink. I've been up since, and it looks like there's really only one conclusion. I need to spend a $100 or so to get a new faucet. This one just has some intrinsic internal leak problem that can't be fixed. Time for this PricePfister to go into the trash and for me to visit the Home Depot to get the new one the wife and I picked out as backup last night. I just called, they've been open since 6am... I should have gone right down there when the alarm went off and I'd probably be done with it by now.

My choices over the next hour:

1. it in the heat and slowly fry.
2. ead comic books.
3. Take apart my chronically dripping kitchen faucet and fix it (or replace it) once and for fucking all.
4. Get to the end of the short story, since I'm reasonably sure I know how it ends now (then I need to cut about one or two thousand words out of it..)
5. Read other people's blogs.
6. Write in my own blog.

Apparently, I went with choice F. Here's a weeks' worth of blogging in a single hour...

We're babysitting over the weekend as my parents left for a few days to visit my uncle in Virginia. Our charges: two neurotic Shelties, one of whom has not eaten anything since my Mom left, he just sits by the back gate looking forlorn. Luckily, he could stand to lose a couple pounds. The other will howl like a wolf if left alone but desiring company, which we found out about 1am last night. Neither skittish dog will venture down stairs into my basement where it's only in the low-70's temp wise and oh-so-refreshing like a cool soder-pop.

Last night the wife and I attended our first play of the summer season at the Hangar Theater main stage, a series of one-act plays under the umbrella title of All In the Timing (read the review by my old writing program professor ). I liked it, it was very good and had more laughs than the last comedy film I saw (Hitchhiker's Guide) but I noticed that my own feelings toward the theater in general have tempered of late. Two years ago, I wanted to act, and write and volunteer and donate to every stage venture I could, I was building spreadsheets of all the local performances—and in this area, I could go to three plays a week during the summer and still miss a few things. This year however, as this first Hangar show rolled around I was just feeling like, who cares? It's too hot, I have nothing emotionally invested in any thing about the Hangar or the subject matter of the play, so why go? Because we have season tickets, that's why.

The musical they're doing this year is The Wiz, however. I saw that on HBO about 20 times when I was a kid and Michael Jackson was still black. Maybe worse, Ithaca College's theater season for the next school year is doing Grease. Yawn. The rest of their seasons are stuff I've never heard of either. No more season tickets, me thinks.

Speaking of the ol' alma mater, I just read on the blog of the Dean of Communications (the school I went to) that they will be using $60K in donations to make the Comm School Building the first on campus to be fully wireless for Internet access. Woo-hoo! Way to catch up to early 2004! Congrats.

This is fascinating... a lawyer in my old home town has setup a Web site because he's P.O.ed about some case he lost and the town making him look bad. He used the site to spell it all out again, and of course some people are screaming it defames them. All very interesting stuff I didn't know about at all, but what really amazes me is that when I read this, I realized there are people in Hornell besides my family and friends with computers that can surf that crazy InterWeb! If this is the case, and so many people have Web access then why does the local paper's Web site still suck so hard? Go read PoynterOnline, people!

Here in Ithaca, there was a bomb scare at the new Wal-Mart last month. Turns out it was actually a bomb, but the cops weren’t really sure of that at the time. So what did they do? They SHOT it with SHOTGUNS. Supposedly, "police had said the procedure fell under appropriate methods taught by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to state and local law enforcement officials." Apparently, the FBI is trying to get as many local law enforcement officials killed as possible, because that's one of the dumbest god-damn things I've ever heard. Oh, yeah, so when they shot it, it flew apart, and because it was made with a battery, a bunch of cops got splashed with acid. No serious injuries, but either they were standing too close or, uh, they SHOT a BOMB. What did they think was going to happen? It would fly apart and lollipops would shoot out, unwrapped and ready for sucking? (Oh, in news story, FBI guy refuses to confirm or deny teaching the SHOOT the BOMB technique. Imagine that.)

FBI is the protagonist of a new show that I want to like called The Inside, (Wednesdays on Fox) which was created (really, re-created and totally re-written) by Tim Minear, who is, if not a TV god, he's one of the disciples -- he was a writer or producer behind three of the all time best cancelled shows, Angel, Firefly (both run by Joss Whedon ) and Wonderfalls. The show also has other Buffy/Angel scribes on it like David Fury, who also wrote some of the first season of LOST (including the episode "Walkabout" where we find out that John Locke used to be a parapalegic before the plane crash).

So it was hard for me to like after the pretty much implausible opening where they [SPOILER AHEAD] FBI team finds one of their own an it turns out she committed suicide by first degloving her own hands -- stripping the skin off -- and then doing more of same to half her face. Or maybe she did the face first, either way, it doesn't matter... that's god-damn ridiculous. I don't care of she was bi-polar and offer her meds and had sharpened Ginsu knives she held onto from her wedding for just that occasion, that's so extreme as to make the 60's Batman TV show look like a documentary. Oh, and why she did it? To draw out a serial killer who was doing the same thing to innocent 20-somethings. Because nothing makes serial killers madder than people who admire their work enough to plagiarize.

I perhaps could have handled it if it had been the fixture of the episode, even the whole season, but by the second half of the show the suicide was pretty much forgotten. As pilot's go, I've seen worse, but I had such high hopes. Here's hoping the rest of this summer season show improves or I might just have to read a book or something.

Just finished reading Broken Prey, and it, like all previous Prey novels, was a corker. I'm reading to other books (well, listening to one) and they are boring the crap out of me. I want to move on to something else, but I always always always feel obligated to find out how stories end. Usually they start boring, they end boring, though there are exceptions (like His Dark Materials trilogy), and I always hold out hope. A lot of people would just give up on them, but I can't. So I suffer through until I can finally get to the next book on the list (by Dennis Lehane... guy that wrote Mystic River. He's good.) I'd say I'm the same with movies, but I've found that I'm more than happy to watch some flicks on the TiVo entirely in fast forward. I just did that with Career Opportunities. Though I did slow it down to watch a 21 year old Jennifer Connelly, who looks like back then she was a D-cup and is now a B....

I can't seem to wash this weird smell of my hands. I think it smells like cork.

So, another whirlwind weekend. Last weekend was all efficiency and hard work, a nice follow up to finally finishing the hardwood floor project. We painted things (a gardening table, weave pole bases, etc), fixed things, Bon got the entire container garden planted, etc. We went non-stop through most of the long-weekend's daylight hours with breaks only for the occasional drink. Sunday we went to Syracuse for some quick shopping (I got new underwear and shoes for my upcoming business trip... sort of a yearly ritual for me. At least with the underwear) and to see my friend Giff, an old college roommate who has stayed in touch better than just about anyone I know from that era. While we waited to pick him up, we sat on a grassy hill and Bon found her self in a clump of four-leaf clovers-- she found eight in about 5 minutes. It's gotten to the point where she brings them in and I shrug. She might as well show me blades of grass she's picked. Shamrocks, ho-hum. Hell, even I found one that day.

This weekend, Saturday at least, was a bit more of the same. We mulched the front flowerbeds with fresh delivered mulch, a truckload my dad and brother got us for free. They delivered it on Thursday afternoon without any warning, just me in my basement office and suddenly hearing my dad yelling down the back stairs, "Eric, hey, Eric!" The dogs freaked out, and I was glad it wasn't the day before, when I stayed in my pajamas all day long through work and into dinner. My brother Paul, Mr. I-Wear-A-Uniform--With-Kevlar, thinks I'm lazy enough without seeing that.

We didn't work as hard this weekend. After mulching, the wife was watering her garden and offered to cool me off with the hose, which felt good. But as I mulched around the deck, she kept squirting me. After a while, I grabbed the other hose and tried a sneak attack on her. She had the high ground, however, and a superior hose nozzle, and dosed me good, including a good shot to my left eye ball. My denim shorts have been outside drying for 18 hours now and are still damp.

Today, I've been up since about 6:30 blogging and writing (900+ on the short story, with an end in sight I think). In a couple of hours, I'm driving out to Hornell to help Paul replace the two 900 year-old garage doors on his garage. The springs on one have sprung completely and it can't be lifted without a car jack it is so heavy. Should be fun.

It was early June and Charles was on the riding lawnmower in his front yard when he got the news that his father, age 72, had died. Charles's wife, Mellie, had come running into his path from the front porch, waving her arms hysterically to get his attention over the sound of the three mulching blades.

The lawnmower—a brand new, bright green John Deere—sat abandoned there in the lawn it was supposed to keep in check for two months.

Eventually, the neighbors approached Mellie down at the market, trying for subtlety at first, asking why the grass was now higher than the tires, why the green hood was being allowed to go to rust, and in the end, what the hell is wrong with Charles?

Mellie worked up the courage to ask her sullen husband about the lawn. She just wanted to know if maybe he planned to get back to mowing, or if perhaps they should hire service (which they couldn't really afford), or at least one of the neighborhood kids...

His eyes flashed with fear at the suggestion. All he would say is, "No children."

Later that night, before he turned out his bedside lamp, he told her: "You can use the mower if you want. But I won't while my mom is still alive."

Mellie stared at her husband in the dark for a long time.

The next day she put on jeans and gardening gloves and read through the first part of the John Deere's manual, learning how to start the tractor for herself. Then she walked out through the now thigh-high mix of grass and weeds to the side of the vehicle and watched it where it sat like a hippo in the water, only its top half visible.

Finally she decided: Her mother was also alive, age of 68 and doing quite well. Why tempt fate? She went back in the house and made some lemonade.

I'm writing this in the mini-van, on the way back from a rug shopping trip to Syracuse with the wife.

I'm lucky to be alive.

The place we went, Shehadi's , is a warehouse full o' rugs, all sizes hanging from enormous arms sticking out of every wall. Inside were a couple of sales people, another older couple shopping, and the Wife and me.

I knew within five minutes that I would be forced to trot out that fantastic saying of yesteryear: "I like whatever you like, dear." And I did. The wife—whom I call Squanto— actually said upon hearing it, "oh Christ, you're trotting out that old saw?"

The other couple entertained us however. It was obvious they were much like us: the wife wanted a new rug, the husband didn't have any opinion on them at all, and she kept asking him for one. Story of any married man's life when it comes to the decorating. You know you can't hang your pennants or posters, so after that you give up.

At one point we heard him talking with the sales man, asking "Can you get blood out of this easily?"

"Yes, with this handmade one you can, sure," the salesman said.

"Good, because there's going to be some spilled soon."

I considered approaching him to form a short-lived, two-member anti-girl shopping club.

At this point, we'd been at the store for at least two hours and I was bored out of my skull. The Wife took this point to look at her watch and point out to me that we'd only been there for 15 minutes.

The Squant-tastic One was trying to stick with rugs that would fit our living room but do so under $500. (and yes, I'm still trying to get over the irony that we're spending money to cover up our even more expensive and sweat-soaked hardwood floors that are less than three weeks old). She found a wall of arms with rugs that would fit that bill, but I made the mistake of having an opinion on one. This of course sent her into a spiral of "really, that is a nice one" that transmogrified into "I'm not sure I like it" to "it's growing on me" to "there's gotta be something else."

Another rug on the same rack came up and she asked what I thought. I liked it. A lot of black and tan highlighted by other colors.

"I think there's too much taupe in it," she said.

"To much taupe," I repeated. "But didn't you just buy pillow cases for the couch throw pillows that are that color?"

"What? No."

I then started to feel that sinking feeling straight men get, where a color has been mentioned that you don't really know what it is. I fully admit to not knowing at all what chartreuse is. Or vermillion. I'm not even sure vermillion is a color, it could be a flavor. Or some kind of scent.

I only know that verdigris is a shade of green because I once named a monster "Verdigris" in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

I thought taupe was like "tan." But could it really be a blue? Some shade of yellow? So I pointed at it on the carpet: "That, there, isn't that the same as the pillow cases?"

"No, those pillow cases are more of a putty color."

"Oh!, " I said, filled with faux-shock, "well, at least they aren't tan. Or, even worse, beige! That wouldn't match at all!"

I'm lucky she had a sense of humor about it all or I'd still be holding my balls.

In the end, she actually picked the first carpet I said I liked (as I knew she would, and told her so during the extra half hour she spent looking at more carpets. During this same time I told her: "I know what I'm going to entitle this in the blog. Weaveworld—the Clive Barker horror store come frighteningly to life!")

In fact, the rug was quite a deal— they let us take it without paying. This carpet place is so old-fashioned, they said we don't pay unless we like it. If we do, but find it too wrinkled, they'll take another one down and steam it flat, and bring it to the house with a pad cut to go under it. We don't pay until we are happy. Which is pretty unbelievable. (Even more so when I found he let us take the $450 rug and all he took was our name, address, and phone number—he didn't even ask to look at an ID.)

I'm considering returning and saying my name is Joe Moran and giving a Florida address, see if I can score a couple of hand-woven models.