Each spring, the ground around my house becomes the breeding area for thousands, if not millions, of cluster flies. I can't walk into the back yard now without causing a small cloud of them to arise. Every year this happens and the wife and I discuss what to do, which always comes down to spraying poison on the lawn, which we can't do, because about that time the dogs would decide to go eat whatever blades of grass have the most poison on them. Might be time for some traps, but then I have to clean them, which might be worse than just sucking them into the bug vac when they go to the window.

The temperature is almost up to 60 degrees and the mutts are dying to sit out in the deck and bask in the sun, but I can't leave the door open because if I do, every window in the house will soon be black with the little disease ridden nuisances -- which I just read the larva live off of earthworms as parasites. Nice. You'd think al the earthworms would be dead in the super-saturated post-winter-melt soil.

Later in the year, we'll also get to have the mass earthworm extinction, when a large rain will inevitably drive thousands of nightcrawlers onto our blacktop driveway where they will either 1) drown, 2) bake in the sun when it stops raining or 3) be crushed by our vehicles entering and exiting

Living in the outskirts of civilization is big ass fun.

Glazed I. Hauteur
Idler M. Pledges
Offstages M. Icecaps
Inactive R. Dogmatism
Seduction J. Subsume
Earwig G. Cummings
Pogrom R. Reveled
Settlement D. Onetime
Inbounded T. Fencer
Kurtis D. Spreaders
Filmed G. Shamrock
Carl E. Considered
Infiltrated E. Chuckles
Mike I. Distillery
Exuberantly G. Perennial
Schliemann M. Bouillabaisse
Mortises J. Bulks
Overwrought I. Sequin
Dissuasion E. Moslems
Reassembling C. Truants
Hostilities K. Realty
Washboard H. Component
Yawns V. Fatally
Blessed S. Churchyards
Anvilling R. Pentagon
Counterrevolutionary R. Deadliest
Wreak P. Autumns
Microscopy D. Avasts
Sarcasm D. Ibis
Mutineer V. Plunderers
Relieving H. Prayers
Unsightlier H. Disinformation
Parabola B. Savvier
Forewoman H. Petitioners
Recovery F. Curie
Asking J. Extremer
Tyke G. Decriminalization
Manifestoes L. Hobbled
Slogans V. Locked
Obsessives H. Puppeteer
Knickerbocker V. Genteel
Seaweed T. Mercurochrome
Snowballing R. Negotiator
Overdrawn B. Aptness
Pomade I. Faciliatation
Bundles K. Contraption
Loaf E. Propulsion
Outplay C. Afflict
Bathos Q. Quill
Retrieval H. Messenger
Immunity K. Crusties
Ironically P. Handcrafted
Measurements S. Biopsy
Gnarl D. Latinos
Loggerheads K. Hyphenates
Piggiest H. Maudlin

And in the field:
Skedaddle T. Reporters
Anchorperson A. Wilier

(Could it be this is getting a little out of hand?)

A picture from the second floor of the house taken Saturday morning, showing the shadow of the house encased in frost from the night before.

Taken in the car sometime in 1993, I think. We are still shaped the same, though the hair has changed to protect our reputations.

Some days are filled with the great anticipation of future entertainment. Today is one of them. Knowing that Sin City and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are on the way in April is wonderful enough; season finales like LOST promise to rock my socks; but today I hit the mother lode when I discovered that a sequel has been printed to one of my favorite books of all time.

When I was 22 and fresh out of college with no job prospects in a lousy economy, I got hooked up by a college professor of mine with an outfit in New York City called Spring Creek Productions. They were a film development office, the NYC branch of a larger office in California. The entire goal of such a place was to find properties to develop into movies, whether original scripts or based on something else, usually books. Thus the NYC office—all the publishing houses are there.

I spent the summer of 1992 traveling between the basement I lived in in Montclair, New Jersey and the small two room office (really an apartment used as an office) that Spring Creek had on 57st Street, only a block from Planet Hollywood (the first one in NYC... it has since moved to Times Square) and The Russian Tea Room.

My memories of the place are tempered by my hatred for their easily jammed copy machine and the rolled paper fax machine, on which scripts would be sent in that had to then be copied to normal paper—on the easily jammed copy machine. I was intimate with both those machines far more than I was the Macs. I mainly helped out with whatever they needed in the office—copying, faxing, answering phones, delivered stuff to other offices in town like Paramount, and I did a lot of work on their two Mac Classics (I helped them with a Filemaker Pro database used to log in all the things they were tracking in the slush pile.)

The slush pile is the overwhelming and never shrinking mass of unsolicited items sent in to any publishing house or film producer. Scripts by the ton, of course, but also many manuscripts and galleys for books unpublished or on the cusp of being published. All the book folks want to sell movie rights for the extra moolah. Spring Creek paid a good wage to freelancers to read this stuff and write up what was called 'coverage'—a couple hundred words that spelled out the plot of the script/book and why it would make a good movie. Or more often, why it would not. Writing coverage was how I made what few bucks I earned that summer.

From there, the guys running the NYC office would decide whether it was worth pursuing, and would then pitch it to the California office to debate it some more.

These guys made almost nothing.

At least, it seemed like it at the time, though IMDB says they've made about 16 films since then. In the time I was there I only knew of three: One really good one about Roy Cohn that was on HBO, a non-romantic Meg Ryan movie, and the airplane crash survival flick Fearless. At the time three movies in two years didn't seem like much considering the sheer piles of slush that seemed ready to topple off the back table in the front office there. It was a lot of work going on to not get much done.

What I remember most about Spring Creek though, is Jumper, by Steven Gould. Ostensibly a sci-fi novel for young adults, this book is a masterpiece of entertainment writing for any age about a boy who discovers—for no reason that is ever explained, to no detriment to the story— that he can teleport. Anywhere. Anytime. And what he does with those powers makes incredible sense.

It is no coincidence that to this day I consider teleportation the super-power to have above all others. Flying, stretching, sticking to walls, getting really big while wearing purple pants—all nice, but nothing compares to instantaneous transport.

I read this book in a pre-published form, a galley photocopied onto 8x11 inch paper, a few months before it was due to be published. I randomly pulled it from the pile for something to read on my way home (there wasn't any order to the pile; and some stuff probably never got read, ever).

Jumper hooked me immediately. I ripped through it in one night, starting on the bus out of Port Authority and not finishing until late, late into the night. The next day, I re-read most of it. Then I wrote my coverage, recommending the rights be purchased, a script adaptation commissioned, and Spielberg start work on pre-production ASAP.

My entreaties went ignored. I went back to the copier and the Mac Classic and eventually left the glitzy movie business.

About five years later, with the dawn of the Internet past and the coming of Amazon.com, I realized that maybe that book I'd loved so much had actually been published. After it didn't get made into a movie, I despaired that maybe it hadn't made it to store shelves, either. But I looked it up and there it was. Jumper became the first book I ever bought on the Internet in April of 1997.

And that would be the end of that, except today, low and behold, I found out that my affection for Jumper is shared by others, including author Cory Doctorow at mega-blog Boing Boing. He posted there about a sequel, Reflex, calling it a "brilliant, page-turning sequel."

And suddenly, my oath not to buy any more novels until I get through the 30+ currently on my shelves is out the window. I spent two hours tonight on the laptop, first downloading my latest $100 gift certificate for Barnes & Noble (spoils of paying with my Yahoo!-branded credit card) so I could then go online and buy Reflex immediately. And I threw in about six other books since it was essentially free. (Sorta.)

But I don't care. I feel all fan-boy giddy, like I did when I found out there would be a Spider-Man movie, like when I tried Pop Rocks again after 20 years without them and they were just like I remembered. A sequel to a beloved book by the same guy who wrote the original... it doesn't get much better.

If I, Eric Christopher Griffith, become incapacitated and am unable to direct my physician as to my own health care, this statement of my wishes should be respected and followed.

These instructions shall prevail even if they conflict with the desires of my relatives, hospital policies, or principles of those providing my care.

I wish to direct my health care if I am diagnosed to have a terminal condition or to be permanently unconscious. For both of these medical conditions, I have specific directions about whether I want life-prolonging procedures and artificially administered food and water provided.

Specifically, if I am diagnosed to have a terminal condition or permanently unconscious, I direct that:

• the artificial administration of food and water be withheld.
  
• medicines and treatments be administered to ease my pain and keep me comfortable.
  
• all additional life-prolonging procedures be withheld, including: blood and blood products, cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR), diagnostic tests, dialysis, drugs, respirator and surgery.

(The above is all how it looks in my actual legal doc, tho I really need to get that sucker notarized, bronzed, etc., whatever is needed to make it happen if needed. What's more, I should probably state for the record also that I'm pro-choice, anti-book-burning, loved Clinton, and, uh, I'm gay -- anything to keep a Republican congress away from my potentially vegetative future self.)

Complaint Q. Ymir
Laborers P. Cannon
Lockstep O. Wheel
Trots Q. Sickbeds
Relationships R. Crotchet
Spelling H. Methuselah
Unloved M. Afterthought
Truckle U. Portentous
Convalescents M. Camisole
Scorching P. Macarates
Lichtenstein T. Ninepin
Vend R. Aerosols
Quantifying K Accuses
Hrothgar M. Preferentially
Absorbing D. Briefly
Curtail A. Decalogue
Troweled F. Practically
Theatre K. Appalls
Vitus B. Suggestion
Schlock L. Disadvantageously
Anthropoid V. Stampeded
Appurtenances U. Maladies
Honeyed C. Prude
Warmongering J. Aiding
Sakharov U. Apprehend
Annapolis.O. Predict
Leverages A. Racquetball
Ingratitude Q. Dustiness.

Last time I played poker I won just enough to feel good about myself. Friday night, however, playing with my wife's co-workers, I lost it all: $18.50 I'll never see again. Though at least I wasn't the first one out.

Saturday started on a much more productive note. Bon and I took some more tentative steps toward purchasing the materials for our big project of the year: hardwood floors throughout the first floor of our house (sans the kitchen, which was re-tiled back in 02/'03). We figure 580 square feet so the materials after tax should cost around $2k. I wish I could say I had sticker shock, but it's what I expected. Plus we'll have to pay for nails, renting the airhammer, etc. But labor should be cheap: case of beer for my brother.

After our shopping we finally did something we haven't in over two years: went to a dog park for an unleashed stroll. The park in question is known as the Allan H. Treman Marina Offlease Area, a stretch of land that has been used for years by locals to exercise their mutts. It's some weird mixture of county and state land that unfortunately abuts a marina. Every time we've heard about it, we've also heard words like ticketing and trespassing and harassment charges and the like, so never paid it much mind. It was easier to bitch about not having such a place, since it never seemed a big deal to me -- we've got more than enough yard here.

But last Wednesday, the local Tompkins County Dog Owners Group (TC-DOG), which is trying to legalized the park for canine use, held a meeting which the Wife and I attended to get the full scoop. Turns out the tickets people got were for $10, and a local lawyer has said she would fight any and all of them issued, pro bono. With that kind of backup, we figured why not give the place a try. We took Siren down as an experiment -- she won't wander to see other dogs and has the habit of keep us in sight even more than we keep her in sight, so she was the best choice.

And we found out, yeah, we miss that kind of place. Siren certainly does. She got rid of the bumper we brought to toss for her almost immediately, favoring the taste of a chewy stick her mouth for the first time in months. She only abandoned that when she found something even better: a discarded tennis ball. That saliva-saturated mess now sits in the back of Matilda, our mini-van.

Nice to know there's a place like that. We'll be back.

From there, back home, to have some lunch and the plan was to go into a productive afternoon of getting work done. Bon had things she'd brought home, I had (have) stuff to write that I should have finished on Friday, but didn't. I suggested we watch an episode from season one of The Shield while we eat some leftovers. We'd watched the pilot to the show with Lauren and Elaine in New Jersey last weekend, and Lauren kindly lent us the DVDs collections of seasons one and two (maybe it was more of a trade, since I have her about 35 novels to read).

So we watched the second episode over left over meatloaf and Thai food. And then the third. And found them so compelling, we watched the fourth.

Then the fifth. And so on.

By the time 10pm rolled around, we'd watched 11 episodes, and had only one left from the first season collection. Bon usually peters out about 10pm on school nights, so I turned off the DVD player with a sigh, thinking we'd catch the final episode later (which hurt, since it ended with the riot in LA) -- but she suggested we watch it, I proclaimed her Saint Squanto, and turned that sucker back on, watching right though to the end.

And then I stayed up until 12:30 watching the DVD extras.

Unbelievable.

Not to say the show wasn't fantastic enough by itself -- it is, and I've already set up the TiVo to start gathering the new episodes of season four -- but there's something so compelling about watching episodes of TV shows like this. It played like a 10+ hour movie without commercials, skipping easily through the credits, pausing and replaying scenes as needed. I suppose people do this with TiVos -- record a whole season of something to watch later (especially shows like LOST or 24 or the new and fantastic Battlestar Galactica) -- but the DVD format seems even better suited for some programs. Same for the other programs I've watched like this on DVD, the eccentric Wonderfalls (Buy it. Now.) and Firefly.

In comic book parlance, this is called "waiting for the trade." It's the phenomenon that's cropped over the last few years where fan-boys (and girls!) stop buying regular monthly "floppies" or "pamphlets" as some call news stand comics today, and waiting to buy the big trade paperback (TPB) collection of the same stories to read all at once. It might not save much money, but the story is all there at once and there's no worries of missing an issue.

The problem with waiting for the trade is that, if not enough people buy the monthly, then there's a good chance the comic book publisher won't bother with a TPB, because they assume it would sell just as poorly.

You might think it’s the same with TV shows going to DVD, but I think arguably some shows are finding better success on the collection of discs. Family Guy certainly did, enough so that Fox un-cancelled it. Hopefuly Wonderfalls sales made that same network regret cancelling it (but probably not). Maybe the cost of making DVDs is so cheap that a run for a show is worth it no matter what. There don't seem to be many shows left that don't make it to DVD.

Which is good -- and bad -- news for me. There's a lot of shows I know I'd probably enjoy that I haven't bothered to watch just to save time (Deadwood and The Wire and, uh, I dunno, Queer Eye for the Straight Girl spring to mind), which I'll probably now rent on Netflix and lose even more weekends in my future.

Sometimes the illusion that I have a life takes on a startling realism, like today. Right now, it's not even noon and I'm sitting at a bar down on the Cayuga Lake inlet, waiting to meet with a bunch of vendors of some Wi-Fi product or service. I don't even know what it is, but since they were actually chartering a private jet to come to Ithaca just to see lil ol' me, I couldn't say no. And maybe I can get a free meal out of it. (Actually, there's little question I'll get a free meal out of it... unless they don't plan to eat, which would be just wrong.)

Tonight I'm going out to play poker for the third time in fifteen years. Luckily the last time was only about six months ago, so maybe I won't be too rusty. I won more than I lost last time, so I have a reputation to uphold with this group, which consists of the wife's boss and co-workers, so I must carefully hold my tongue so as not to reveal that I am privy to the darkest secrets of her department... like the fact that no one who works there has a college education! (Just kidding.)

I had to bone up on not only the rules for Texas Hold 'Em but also the damn hands for poker. I still don't have them memorized. But I figure any time I can get three of a kind, I'm probably doing pretty good.

I realized when emailing a friend from college a couple of weeks ago that it was at this time 15 years ago that we took a class at Ithaca College (IC) called Doc Research. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with playing doctor. The Doc is for documentary, and the class was all about gathering information to support a pitch for making a documentary film, then presenting that information and arguing about why a film on the topic would be worthwhile (or worth funding) before a live audience and nit-picky judges that make Simon Cowell look like James Lipton.

It probably sounds relatively easy, but Doc Research -- at least to me -- was never as much about the topic as it was the "playing nice with others." Everyone in the class was broken up into groups of five or six and was stuck with those people all semester for two projects. The grade was dependent on the overall presentation, not individual work. So one person being a screw-up could make or break you. Likewise, having just one person who would do all the work (the situation my friend found herself in) meant the rest of the group could skate.

I had a pretty good group. There was a guy named Mike Faloon who I sadly fell out of touch with after graduation, and four women. One of them was evil and I happily have forgotten her name, but the rest (Tracy, Wendy, and Sherilyn) were fantastic. And hot. But I had me a crazy work-a-holic girlfriend at the time, so I didn't notice such things.

Our topic for the second part of the semester ended up being lead poisoning caused by paint removal, and we had a good hook -- there was a local painting company that did lead paint abatement so haphazadly that employees had contracted severe cases. I never felt more like a journalist than when Sherilyn and I met one of these men at the Food Court of Pyramid Mall and interviewed him with a mini-cassette recorder whirring away. He was distinctly uncomfortable, and we were clueless 20 year olds. But he showed us the loss of muscle mass in his arm and hands, which looked like they'd been flattened in a press, and I knew we were set.

The problem was, the class seemed all geared toward generating stress... and not much else. Some fantastic ideas were there, everything from radioactive dumping to overstressed emergency rooms, but once you got through the presentation process and were ranked amid all the other teams (a prestigious honor then that, really, didn't mean much outside of the thrill of competition), all you had was the grade and an ulcer and memories of staying up far to late in the VAX computer room typing up transcripts while trying not to snap at people.

The professor for the class was the legendary Ben Crane, who all the students at the time knew of because of the reputation Doc Research. (He was also famed for the rumor that he was the son of murdered actor Bob Crane of Hogan's Heroes, but that turned out to be baloney.) After I finished the class he was one of the few prof's I was close with. I took other, much more fun classes with him including Advanced Scriptwriting and a couple of media ethics classes. One of the latter meetings he had as a guest Bob Iger, future CEO for Disney and an IC grad. At the time he was running ABC and the class gave him a lot of shit about canceling Thirtysomething.

I even went on to be one of the nit-picky judges for a Doc Research group the next year, a move which caused one woman I was friends with at the time to think I had personally turned on her. She never spoke to me again. (And to be honest, sucks for her. She was an annoying wind-bag.)

Last month while up on campus, I ran into Ben in the lobby of the Park School of Communications at IC. He hadn't changed much, maybe a few more wrinkles and some flecks of gray in his curly black hair. I said hi and he was nice enough to claim he remembered me, but it's been 13 years, so I doubt it. A lot of punk kids have come and gone in that time. I was there with the Wife and a friend of hers from the marketing department at IC and they got to talking with him about Doc Research. He mentioned some of the great documentaries students were making.

Making? Of course. Unlike back in my day, when the camera's students could get out of the storage area called The Cage all weighed as much as a sack of cement, and then you had to pray for time with editing equipment to make something of your tapes, today any schmuck with a digital camcorder and an iMac can crank out a broadcast quality documentary. And does. The dean of the Park School has a blog and talks about some Park students being in New Orleans interviewing some people about a murder case, instead of taking a spring break.

I remember back to my spring break during my Doc Research semester, which I believe was entirely spent working on Doc Research (and probably working as a waiter) but without anything to actually show for it in the end. Knowing some of the kids up there today will be doing something worthwhile with it all, and not just stressing out, well, yeah, it does make me somewhat "proud to be a Parkie" as the current dean says. Though I would never call myself or an other Park grad a "Parkie."

Mostly though, it just makes me feel like I was born far to early to get access to the cool toys when they would have been the most useful. I like to think that I would have been apathetic enough back then that had a one pound digital camera been available to me, I still wouldn't have wanted to use it.

In the end of Doc Research, my group came in second out of nine teams. To this day, I credit it all with the fact that we made Faloon dress up in a paper suit with the respiratory equipment that any lead paint abatement person should wear. He looked like a negative of a photo of Darth Vader. It's all about the visuals, even if you're not recording anything to video.

From the previous week's e-mail collection:

Cardigan P. Thermodynamic
Outlines Q. Themistocles
Pachyderms F. Bethany
Marigold S. Arthurian
Sumeria M. Outnumbers
Consolidate H. Resignation
Ritualism B. Administrations
Candied G. Gilmore (Joe sez: related to the Girls, perhaps?)
Insidiousness V. Sugar
Backwardness V. Gold
Beefiest V. Outpatients
History B. Tempestuousness
Cheekiness P. Violence
Bolero B. Gawkiest
Lent O. Peculiar
Admirably C. Lethals
Estrogen F. Cryptographer

One I made up all by myself:

Preparation H. Hemorrhoid (GET IT?)

What can I say about Monty Python's Spamalot that won't be said by many, many others professionally and for pay by the end of this week? (The show officially opens on Mar. 17.) Not much. Suffice to say, it was a damn good time, a damn good show. I want the sound track damn bad.

I doubt anyone is going to find the narrative very compelling, despite it taking "years" for Eric Idle to write the book for this show. (In theater, the script --everything that isn't the music -- is called "the book" for some pretentious reason, for those who last saw a play because you had a young relative appearing in a production in the high school auditorium.) That might have hurt other shows, but in this case, it helps keep Spamalot more Pythonesque than ever. Hard-core fans might think the show has too much plot, to be honest.

While its arguable that the show bogs down a couple of times during some lengthy comedic exchanges, those bits tend to be the ones lift directly from the film on which this show is based. Going without them would have been a slap in the face to the fans who've been around for 30 years memorizing all the lines of dialog . Not having them would be like adapting Dracula but skipping that boring vampire stuff. The problem is, they dialog takes a deserved backseat to the musical numbers of this show, which are above and beyond in all aspects. It seemed like out of the 21 songs in the show, easily half of them were giant production numbers that were limited only by the space afforded by the relatively tiny stage of the Shubert Theater.

In the end, we left the theater and it's cramped seats and our imperfect placement (I was situated far enough to the left that I completely missed the Black Knight getting his leg cut off) still with pain in the cheeks from the full two hour rictus of being up able to stop smiling and laughing.

Three years in a row I've seen Broadway plays that have been fantastic. What about next year? Word is that the London show of Mary Poppins might be heading to the Great White Way, and as a kid who knew all the words to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious by age 10, I am very likely to be there.

Except for a visit to the Tops to buy cinnamon—the secret ingredient in the wife's blueberry chutney recipe, delicious over marinated chicken!—I haven't been out of the house all week.

It's been a blur of Wi-Fi (pronounced: wiff-ee), WiMax (pronounced: whim-ask) and ultrawideband, with a pinch of prime time television (no LOST! No Scrubs! Argh!) and a healthy dollop of "The Black Dahlia," a book so well written that when I play the dialog over in my head like a movie, it sounds like poetry. Shakespeare in murderous 1940's Hollywood, loosely based on the real crime. Imagine a 1950's cop movie, all that great dialog, but with cussing. Excellent stuff.

Today however, I break free of the confines of my home to travel to NJ, the mandatory resting place before the day trip into Manhattan to see Spamalot. There, I will likely laugh until milk comes out my nose, without even drinking any milk.

I'm just as likely to be aroused though... the last time I saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail was in 1987. I was 17, I was in perpetual horniness... and I was showing the film to my girlfriend for the first time.

At my house. Sitting on the couch. Alone. No adults at home.

Oh my, yes.

A wonderful night, capped off by the fact that I never saw the end of the film.

Oh. My. Yes.

I doubt the Wife will even let me get to first base while we're sitting in the Shubert Theater, though.

Anyway, I'm off to the Tops for one more trip... I need to buy some groceries for my dad, who in his role as The Nicest Guy In The World is coming out to house and dog sit for a couple of days. Once I give him a half hour drill instruction on how to operate the TiVo (heaven forbid the Nicest Guy also embrace time-shifting of TV...), we'll be on our way.

From today's e-mail collection (and Joe's ):

Eletctrolyte H. Doomsday
Complaintants M. Starching
Hindenburg M. Crepe
Iterated A. Prominence
Evolving Q. Numbered

You can't go home again. Because who could afford it?

When we sold our house in Hudson, Massachusetts back in 2002, the first thing we tried to do is post it on a site called ISoldMyHouse.com, a Web site for New Englander's trying to do a "for-sale-by-owner" to avoid paying broker fees, also known as the greatest financial ass-rape of the modern age. Especially in Massachusetts, where a mere shed on a driveway could probably garner $50,000 if sold by itself. (Sadly, we ended up panicked and sweet talked into giving our listing to a agent. To this day, we can't pass a Re/Max office or a hot-air balloon without setting our teeth on edge.)

Maybe it'll go better for the folks who bought that house. Because as of two days ago, it is back on the block. My friend Vikki, looking for houses for the last year without any luck, was sent the new listing, which went live just two days ago on, yes, ISoldMyHouse.com. And, of course, property values have again gone up. The asking price is almost $80,000 more than we sold it for.

It's painful to see the pictures. Not because it isn't a great house -- it is frickin gorgeous, inside and out-- but because it looks like in one of them they took down the fence in the back yard to, I dunno, park behind the house? I swear I see the fence posts from our professionally-installed, black-coated cyclone fence resting against the shed in the foreground.

Worse, the third picture? That's one I took! It is over three years old. How do I know it's mine? That's my recliner chair, inherited from my father-in-law, the one sitting right next to me in my basement office right now that Caper sleeps in all day when I'm working. That's our swing-arm floor lamp next to the chair. That's the dining room table and chairs I bought off a friend back in 1997. That’s our Labrador-print throw blanket over the back of the chair. If I had some super-high-tech-sci-fi photo software like they use on the tee-vee cop programs, I could probably enhance the image enough to show my own reflection in the back window. Unbelievable. I'm reprinting it here since, well, god damn it, I took the picture!

I loved that house, but it's not like I'd buy it back. I have no desire to live in Hudson again for one, and more so I certainly would never be able to afford a mortgage on the place now, even with all the equity and what little price increase there might be if we sold our place here in Ithaca. But I hope Vikki goes to take a look at it. It would be pretty cool to visit and see if my old basement office is still painted canary yellow. I always liked that. And I want to find out if those idiots took down that damn beautiful, expensive fence.

The Jon Stewart show at Cornell -- pure stand-up -- actually went without a hitch, or, maybe I should say with the expected hitches.

The Wife -- whom I call the Squantomedian! -- and I drove by Barton Hall around 8:40 and didn't see much going on. We continued around the block and scored a parking space in a lot a mere block away. This is better than I ever would have expected already.

As we approached the building, Bon tried to pull me toward what looked like a gathering of people in the back, but I wanted to first check the door at Barton I'd stuck my head in the day before. Turns out that was now the backstage area. We headed down a sidewalk beside the building to a door with no handles, an exit only -- but standing there we could here Stewart already in the middle of his first show of the night (the one people had to camp out to get tickets for... though they got assigned seats.)

Our 10pm show was general admission, and we found out how important it was to be there early when we walked around the back. The line from the entrance was already snaking through the cul-de-sac entrance of the Statler Hotel, Cornell's on-campus lodging run by the school of hotel management. As we stood for the next hour, discussing work and our plans for next weekend's trip to NYC to see Spamalot, bouncing on our feet to keep warm, the line continued to work away from us, past the Statler and out of site.

By 9:40 or so, the area of the line ahead of us seemed to double in volume and students behind us in line were getting upset, thinking people were cutting in to the queue in vast groups. Then a friend of the person behind us told them the line actually had snaked around the entirety of the hotel -- we were actually looking at the end of the line, standing next to the beginning.

At 10:10, the line started to surge forward -- and that's when the end of the line made its move, and as feared it merged with the beginning of the line. Nothing to be done, we held our ground and after about 20 minutes of shuffling our feet toward the door, we were let in.

The floor was huge, with bleaches in the back and on the right side for the cheap tickets. Seating was for 5,000. As stated, the main floor was general admission for this second show, and the center was filled by the time we got there. Instead, we went left and up all the way to the second row and snagged seats that put the microphone at about our 2 o'clock position if we'd stared straight ahead. Great vantage point.

Jon -- I think I can call him Jon now -- came on stage about 10:35. Anyone who couldn't see him could follow on the two huge projection screens on either side of the stage. He spent some time ragging the quality of the stage and the pathetic array of plants Cornell had used to "decorate" it, and even did a riff on Ezra Cornell, picking on the Cornell flag on the stage, etc. All good stuff. He even got in a quick lick at Ithaca College, making a reference to it being the place to go if you want to learn to make a bong out of an apple.

At this, Bonny got a little quiet. I'm so used to dissing the ol' alma mater I was surprised she took it so seriously. I asked her afterwards what had set her off with that particular joke and she said "That's such an ancient stereotype" -- at which I laughed, probably harder than I had at the original bong joke.

No worries though. After he did a bunch of jokes on Bush, Kerry, the government, politics, gay marriage, etc., he really hit his stride with some more typical stand-up topics like his kid and his pets (hysterical story about his pitbull eating it's own diarrhea, the puking that up -- and eating it again.) He won Bon back completely when he described how one of his buttock cheeks is bald, and the other so hairy, that he can do a come-over. Nothing my wife likes more than ass-hair jokes.

In the end he did a very un-serious Q&A with the audience, winding things up after a kid gave him a shirt that said something like "I Like Vaginas" on it. Jon tried to put on but he said the shirt smelled like ass. Instead he used it as a pillow to lay down on the stage.

As the crowd drifted out the doors, he was surrounded on the stage by people trying to get tickets and copies of America: The Book signed. He had a big smile on his face doing it. I did, too. $64 well spent.

I'm nervous as hell about going to see Jon Stewart tonight. The specter of horrible visits to Cornell when I was an undergrad is rearing it's headless corpse on a black mare, ready to run me down in the woods like a squat, fat Ichabod Crane.

The cold is likely to be the worst part — I anticipate that we'll be waiting outside for around an hour, maybe more, in 15 degree Fahrenheit cold. I've ordered the wife into multiple layers. I've been wearing my thermal underwear since 6:30 this morning in anticipation.

Yesterday, I actually went over to Cornell yesterday and reconnoitered the area, trying to scope out parking, waiting areas, etc. Probably a good idea since I really haven't walked on that campus in about 14 years and had no idea what building this... concert? Performance? What exactly is it called? is going to be in. Turns out that Barton Hall is the Cornell gym. I poked my head in yesterday and found a building the size of a couple of football fields and a ceiling about four stories high.

As I walked around what was essentially a four block area, dressed in a thick Carhart jacket, scarf, gloves and ear-grips, I was freezing down to my nads. Had someone flicked my scrotum with a finger, they would have heard the skin shatter like the thin glass of a Xmas ornament. And that was at least in the 20s. Tonight I'll augment with another layer, a balaclava and maybe even my neoprene ski mask over that.

Parking is always a problem at Cornell, there's no chance we'll get within a quarter mile of the place, so that's a crap shoot. Bonny will be on Cornell campus for an agility seminar, so I'm going to pick her up in the Livestock Pavilion — dirt floor and all, such a high-tech campus — and from there we'll drive toward Barton to scope things out, see if we need to get in line. I'm not even prepared for what we do if we don't have to wait in line in the cold... that will throw my plans all asunder and I might just have to go home with the $64 dollars in tickets in hand.

Somewhere in my home, my wife has hidden chocolate-chip-filled sugar-cookies. She claims that they are hidden in plain sight, easy to find if I really wanted them.

I really want them.

And I can not find them. Anywhere.

I'm ready to fucking kill someone.

I was going to write a cute little entry about how I had no idea until today, when carefully listening to the lyrics, that in "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch" (from the Oscar nominated South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut—a musical second only to Singin' in the Rain) that Eric Cartman not only calls Kyle's mom a bitch, he also insults her hair.

Then I went on the Web to find the actual lyrics to the song and was instantly under attack. Two different Web pages I went to from Google tried to install spyware on my system. Luckily it was blocked by a mix of the TeaTimer.exe utility that is part of SpyBot Search & Destroy, as well as the beta of Microsoft's Anti-Spyware utility.

If you're not running these applications on your Windows system, you're probably filled to the hilt with extra crap you don't know about -- just from everyday surfing on this here Internetting. You've been warned. So, as a service, here's the two utilities no WIntel computer should be without to function properly:

• Microsoft's Anti-Spyware
  
• SpyBot Search & Destroy
  
• Lavasoft Ad-Aware Personal
  
• Norton Anti-virus (however, since I'm sick of paying, next year I might try the free AVG Anti-Virus)
  
• ZoneAlarm Personal Firewall

And that's just to protect yourself. Sigh.