Schmolite

I made my way to Subway for lunch today (which was lovely, by the way). As I was heading back to my car and back to the office so I could eat and peruse the internets at the same time, I saw a guy and a girl headed in for some 6-inchers – or possibly foot-longs if they were feeling really crazy, not that we’re going down that dirty-minded road at this point – of their own. They were youngish, probably either high school seniors or in their first couple years of college. I thought, “How nice. They’re doing a Subway lunch date.”

Since the timing was just about right, I held the door open for them as I exited. The girl said, “Thank you…” and I couldn’t help but think how nice it is when people – strangers, even – are spontaneously but simply polite to each other, and I started to smile at the the thought when those ellipses caught up with me. Those ellipses can be a total bitch when it comes to dialogue, and in this case the girl finished her sentence, “… Sir.”

At that point I rabbit-punched her in the back of her big, dumb, blonde, luxuriously hirsute head, slammed the door on her falling body, and said, seething, “Don’t. [kick] Call. [door slam] Me. [stomp] SIR!” At that point, I stormed back to my car, any pleasant thoughts about people being polite disintegrating into mutters of “Polite? I’ll show you polite. I got your polite right here, you trollop!”

As I later reflected on the scene and the carnage that resulted, some questions came to mind:

• Was that a proportional response? Does feeling old because of something a teenager said justify assault and battery?
• Does politeness often go wrong like this?
• Is there anyone who actually likes being called sir or ma’am in this type of situation, especially by nubile, young people, when he or she (anyone being called sir or ma’am, not the young people doing the calling) is repeatedly reminded of advancing age by things no less clichéd than back pain?
• Isn’t “hirsute” a great word?

 

P.S. OK, fine. It’s possible that I didn’t actually hit the girl. Or even say anything mean to her. It’s possible that I just kind of grunted something like “Welcome,” and walked (rather than stormed) back to my car bemusedly. But there was some serious, if very well-hidden, rancor in that grunt.

No Joke

For some unknown reason, I tend to think that life is very much about laughter. Sure, it’s about tons of other things, but I seem to cherish the funny moments as much as, if not more than, most others. In fact, I seem to grab hold of a very dark sense of humor when many would consider it inappropriate to make jokes. Lawton and I often trade funny and inappropriate comments in the face of sadness. Those who are know things about psychology could probably explain to me that it’s a coping mechanism of some sort, and I’m sure that it is.

Sometimes, though, life isn’t funny, even when I really want it to be. Like now, when I read this message. My friend Shawn had battled cancer for the last 2 years, and, despite being cancer-free at one point, his battle was eventually a losing one, and I just can’t find the funny handle on it. I don’t know what jokes to tell.

Even though I’m a pretty indoorsy guy, I keep thinking of camping. I’ve heard my friends who like to go out and do camping things talk about packing out what you pack in, that you should leave a campsite the way you found it. Shawn, was unwilling to do that, though. He has left this little campsite of ours, but he didn’t leave it the way he found it. He seems to have managed to make it better for all of us who knew him. And that’s no joke.

Happy trails, Shawn. Rest in peace, buddy.

Too Short

Dear Dad,

When I think about our time together, the freshest memories naturally come first. I think of you in the hospital twice because of debilitating strokes. I think of learning about things like left side neglect, edema, and brain cell recruitment. I think of all of us adjusting to new ways of things. I think of the eventual frustration with being unable to use your left arm, unable to continue working at the job you loved so much. I think of endless trips to Walgreen’s and how, try as we might, we could never seem to provide you with enough blue pens. I think of how you never lost your sense of humor, how, when the Girl and I called to tell you that we were engaged, you inevitably said, “I didn’t even know she was pregnant.”

But those are just some of the recent things I think of. And those aren’t the things I want to think about. As I pondered what to say here, we were looking through some of your things from high school, and I found a poem you liked so much that you had handwritten a copy of it. I think it’s very fitting:

When I quit this mortal shore.
And mosey ‘round the earth no more,
Don’t weep, don’t sigh, don’t sob;
I may have struck a better job.

Don’t go and buy a large a large bouquet
For which you’ll find it hard to pay;
Don’t mope around and feel all blue –
I may be better off than you.

Don’t tell folks I was a saint,
Or any old thing that I ain’t.
If you have jam like that to spread,
Please hand it out before I’m dead.

If you have carnations, bless your soul,
Just pin one in my button-hole
While I’m alive and well today.
Don’t wait until I’ve gone away.

With that in mind the older memories seemed to come more readily, in rapid fire succession, and I think of so many things from while you were alive and well.

I think of you, me, and my big bro playing catch in the yard for hours on end.

I think of us all wrestling on the family room floor.

I think of games of Charades and Blind Man’s Bluff.

I think of all 3 of us taking road trip vacations to Civil War battlefields, of the sudden outbursts of unexplained laughter from the one of us who happened to be reading a Dave Barry book.

I think of shelves full of books stacked on books surrounded by books. Of books in paper bags and on tables.

I think of breakfast meetings at Bob Evans.

I think of the 3 Abs men meeting in a random college town to take in a football game that none of us really cared about.

I think of watching countless hours sports on TV, of going to Reds, Pacers, and Colts games.

I think of sitting in the bleachers of various high school football fields the big bro was playing on, as you invariably leaned to me sometime in the third quarter and observed, “Third down. Big play, buddy.”

I think of foolishly leaving a message on your home answering machine, not knowing that you wouldn’t ever think to check it. I think of how, from then on, I knew, if I needed to get you on the phone, I could find you most easily at work, even at odd hours.

I think of an endless curiosity that reveled in books with titles like Why Clocks Go Clockwise. Those books taught me not only why clocks go clockwise (they were developed in the Northern hemisphere and were based on sundials), but also why firemen always have Dalmatians (they worked well with horses).

I think of how creativity was valued in the absence of knowledge. At one of those Bob Evans breakfasts, I read something off of one of the cards at the table and wondered what it was talking about. Big bro said, “Hell, I don’t know,” and was ready to move on. But you stopped him: “Hold on. We’re about to make stuff up.”

I think of how home projects are measured not in the time or effort or even money they require, but in how many new tools and trips to the hardware store we needed to complete them.

I think of digging through a road atlas, following your instructions to find us a state highway that went in the general direction of where we were going, just to “get off the interstate and see the country.”

I think of how an argument might have been your favorite kind of discussion.

I think of an abiding love of Hoosier basketball. One time in college, I received a letter from you that made my roommate marvel. It wasn’t just that you had sent a letter with the check I needed, although that was pretty unusual. It was that the letter was two handwritten pages. The first paragraph talked about the business at hand. The other page and three quarters talked about the prospects of the IU’s impending basketball season.

I think of how, even for the last six years, you always paid attention to how the Wabash football team fared.

I think of the benedictions I have to offer:

• May you find a place full of interesting books and time to read them
• May the small secrets of universe reveal themselves in interesting ways
• May you see the Hoosiers and Little Giants find victory regularly

Finally, I think of the short visits we had since I went to college, be they to have a beer, watch a game, or just hang out. At the end of all those visits, we both seemed to have the same sentiment, expressed in various ways: it was way too short, but I’m really glad we were able to get together.

Maybe we could say that about life in general, Dad: it’s way too short, but I’m so incredibly glad that we were able to be here together.

Love always,
Abs

Swing and a Miss

So I went out this morning to take part in this representative government of ours by voting. The community center in our neighborhood is our polling place, and I figured I'd swing by the store to grab a morning soda then saunter up to a by-then-diminished line and put my vote in before heading to work. However, maybe other people had the same plan as I -- I don't know, I couldn't see if they had sodas -- and the line was stretched around the corner. So I drove right on to my office.

All these lines are kind of frustrating, although I suppose it's an indication of voter interest. But I'll go back armed with the AbsPod and some other things to entertain myself this afternoon, even though I often argue that your vote doesn't count in the presidential election, both from a purely lottery-like mathematical standpoint and because of the electoral college.

Bah. I hope your voting experience is line- and stress-free.

How Big Is Your Car Hole?

For a long time now I've enjoyed talking about the size of garages on houses. Granted, some people, like Moe on The Simpsons, don't approve of the word garage, as explained in this exchange:

Moe: Garage? Hey, fellas, the garage. Well, ooh la-di-da, Mr. Frenchman.
Homer: Well, what do you call it?
Moe: A car hole.

Still, la-di-das aside, I think what got me started talking about garage sizes was when I heard someone talking about how their house had a "one and a half car garage."

"A 1.5 car garage?! That's absurd!" I said. "Is that for your extra half car that you have lying around?! Reediculous!"

Had I applied a bit of a filter between brain and mouth, I might have been able to figure out that it kind of makes sense to talk about garages that way. I mean, garages can be useful for holding things other than cars. They're dead useful for storing things like tools, lawn mowers, rakes, boxes full of random A/V cables, fishing gear, and other things that one doesn't use all that often and/or that just don't have a sensible home inside. Anyway, after hearing about a 1.5 car car hole for the first time, I started noticing that the size varied quite a bit.

By way of example, Lawton must have at least a 2.5 car garage, given that it can hold 2 decent sized cars with ample space between them for opening doors and even some room left over for storing some other shit. I've claimed for years that my mom has the biggest no car garage in the world, full to the brim as it is with junk and Emergency Backup Furniture just sitting there hoping that some of the Primary Furniture will break or be otherwise ruined thus leaving an opening for EBF to gain entry to the house.

When the Girl and I moved into the Halfway House, I decided that we have a 1.0 car garage. I suppose there are some shelves at the end of  it that make it a tad bigger, but it's not much more than 1.1 at the most. My car is both long and wide, meaning that I have to favor the right side when I get to park in there just so I can open my door enough to get out. I also have to pay attention to how far I pull in there to make sure there's ample room for the door to close. Still, a 1.0 car garage is better than no car hole at all, and I'm generally glad to have it.

As as aside, I should mention that the Girl and I have differing opinions about the garage door and just how important its status is in our daily lives. Whenever we leave together or come in through the garage together, she is always very insistent that she watch the garage door to make sure it closes all the way. She claims that's important for home security, in that it helps make sure no one can enter our garage as the first step in stealing her. Her insistence on watching tends to annoy me, because the garage door is clearly going to close all the way. After all, that IS why we have a garage door opener, and there can't really be a problem with a piece of machinery doing such a simple job that it has done many times in the past. Never mind the fact that there have been a few times when the door allegedly went almost all the way down, only to change its mind and rise up again. That was due to some rakes partially covering the sensor, a situation that I have since remedied. I suppose to give you a complete picture of our differing opinions about the garage door, I should mention that there are times when I will leave via the garage in the morning well after the Girl has gone off to work (having parked across the street to avoid having to move the car out of her way in the morning, thus giving me some extra snooze time in the AM). We have a couple of locks on the front door, and it's much simpler to just hit the close button on the remote than to deal with the multiple locks. A couple of those times, I have received calls from the Girl asking me why in the world the garage door is not even pretending to be closed, and I have had no choice but to sheepishly admit that not only did I not watch the door close, I never even hit the button to tell it to close. So ... we definitely pay different levels of attention to that garage door.

The other night I came home from work after a pretty long day with several work things bouncing around my brain. I parked in the driveway, hopped out, and came in through the front door, only to discover that the Girl was putting in an even longer day at work. So I went back out through the garage and pulled my car into the car hole, still thinking about work. On my way in, I hit the button to close the door, paying its ensuing activity all the attention I typically think it is due, which is to say none. A while later, the Girl finally made it home, and I heard the garage door start to go. I figured she must have also had her mind on work to open the garage door when she knew I was already home and parked in there. No matter, though. I waited for her to come upstairs. And then I heard the door opener start up again. It seemed to be going on for a while. Something was not quite right. So I hopped up and went down to see what was going on. I poked my head out and asked, kind of smiling, "Why you keep runnin' that door up and down?"

"I'm not. I'm just trying to close it. It was wide open when I came home."

"Whaaaaaattt? Oh no."

And I walked around to the back of my car to see the results of my distracted parking. Apparently, I had not made sure to pull all the way inside the garage. Thus, unsurprisingly, the garage door had encountered my rear bumper and absolutely scraped the shit out of it in an attempt to close before deciding that something was wrong and going back up. That sequence repeated itself twice when the girl came home and tried to get the door to close.

The moral of this story? I think there might be several, most of which I'm probably not clever enough to grasp. In fact that may be one of the morals. But the ones that are apparent to me are 1) don't park distracted, 2) don't think about work when you're at home -- or anywhere else outside of work, 3) in the case of car holes size may very well matter, and 4) the Girl may be right about the garage door opener deserving at least a little more attention.

But 5) don't you go telling her I said so.

Public Service Announcement (cont'd)

Way back when I mentioned that I wasn't exactly fond of Crest Pro Health toothpaste. I hope and trust you have all managed to avoid that stuff since then.  Well, I'm back today to point you to this quasi-related post on the Consumerist.  Apparently the mouthwash will put brown spots on your teeth.  I'm thinking maybe the P&G folks need to rethink this brand, unless they're thinking that ass taste in paste form and brown spot inducers are going to be all the rage in mouth care in the near future.

Circling the Drain

When I got out of college (many, many years ago, it seems), I moved from Indy to the Washington, DC, area. I had both an apartment and a roommate that lacked clever nicknames (I think dwellings should have names, really. In college, I lived in Echols House, the Cave, Mt. Olympus, and Joe Bob's Chicken Lounge. Since college, I lived in this generally nameless apartment -- sometimes generically called the APT -- the LUVR Lodge, the SNC, the Pointe, and the Halfway House). The roomie eventually received a good nickname, but the apartment never got one.  I didn't really fret about it, though, because I thought the apartment lacked something much, much more important: a couch.

As I prepared for my move, my grandmother, who was in her final stages of a slow and ultimately ineffective fight with lung cancer, told me to take whatever furniture I wanted from her by then unoccupied house. And take I did.  I came away with end tables, coffee tables, lamps, and perhaps other things I can't remember. I don't think anyone would be confused enough to call those pieces of furniture stylish, attractive, or even not ugly, but they were all well-constructed, and the price was certainly right.  However, I did not come away with a couch, and we started off our apartment dwelling days with a futon performing make-shift duty as a davenport. I kept in mind that I needed a real couch, but I also figured I couldn't afford one I might want.  I didn't really have much money, and I just didn't think furniture was a good way to spend what little I did have.

A couple of months into our lives in the APT, my roomie decided to purchase a kitchen table off of a bulletin board at work. I went with him to collect it, and the seller asked if we knew anyone who needed a couch. Being the savvy shopper that I was, I told her that I wasn't sure, but I might know someone who needed one. She said she didn't really have room for her divan, but it was a good one, really comfortable, that I should sit on it to try it out. I sat down, and maintained my skeptical, wary consumer posture. At least I attempted to, in that I refused to give voice to the impressive sigh/groan of contentment and relaxation that had welled up from deep within as my butt found a place that it would like to spend considerable time. But I couldn't admit any of this to the seller, lest she try to rake me over the coals.

"I guess it's pretty comfy," I allowed.

She said, "I guess I need to get rid of that chair that goes with it, too."

"I can pass that on [to my 'friend' who might want one, remember?]. How much are you wanting to sell it for?"

She crinkled her brow, and said, "I don't know.  Maybe $125?"

"Each?" I asked. I didn't really have $250 to be spending on furniture.

"No. Total," she replied.

Now that seemed like a deal to me. A celestially comfortable couch and a matching chair, both in good condition, for $125?! Still, I couldn't appear to be too eager. I wasn't some rube who just came in with the last turnip truck. (I had driven my brand new Ford Contour.) I told her I'd pass it on. As soon as we left, I told my roomie that I was going to buy them.  How's that for savvy?

And so began the Days of Soft Couch and Brown Chair. I believe that most of you who read this blog have at least sat on them, and several of you have even spent the night dozing on Soft Couch. When the Girl and I moved into the Halfway House, many of our helpers talked smack about the dilapidated state of Soft Couch, and I told them all to shut the hell up and lift. They were probably right, though. Soft Couch has been great, and I don't know how it would work out in terms of Ass Hours Per Dollar, but it has to be an awfully high number, given that it has often had anywhere from one to four (and occasionally five) people on it over the last 11 years. 

However, Soft Couch has begun it's death march. Not long ago it started making clunking noises on the Girl's end whenever she sat down. We were talking about it the other night, and her brother suggested that we should look underneath because it might be a spring and it might be hurting the floor.  Sure enough, it was a spring, and it had torn hell out of the floor. It was a sad moment for me (and not just because we had torn up a spot on the nice wood floors of our rental house). I had to confess that it's time for Soft Couch to go.

So I find myself once again in the position of needing to buy a new couch and not really knowing how to go about it. Should I spend a lot of money on a really nice one, recognizing that I spend tons of time there? Should I buy something cheap, recognizing that I spend tons of time there, and I'm only going to destroy it? How do I figure out who makes quality stuff that won't be uncomfortable in a year? How can I possibly find a couch that will treat me as well as Soft Couch?! Sigh. I probably can't.

All that kvetching aside, I need to move on. But let's not lose sight of the great times Soft Couch has given us all.

Timing is Everything

Wouldn't you know it? Just two days after I ordered a new AbsPod, Apple goes and updates the line, now offering a 32GB version of the iPod Touch. The bitch of it is that my new toy has already shipped. Just administratively, though. It is apparently scheduled to be exported from China within a couple of days. One of the things I didn't like about the 16GB of the touch is that I would have to actively manage my media on there because I have more than 16GB of music. 32GB would mean I probably wouldn't have to do that, or at least I wouldn't have to very much. I suppose I could cancel my order and upgrade, or return it, or something like that. However, I'm not positive that I want to pay another $100. Probably not. Still, it would have been better for me if they had announced this last Tuesday. Very inconsiderate of his Steveness.

Luck Runs Out

No, I'm not talking about the Patriots' almost perfect season here. I wouldn't use the word "luck" in any way when talking about their season. (If I were going to talk about that, the title would probably have been "Cheaters Don't Always Win.") What I am talking about is the AbsPod. Almost a year ago, I wrote a couple of posts about leaving my iPod on an airplane. While it seemed pretty bad at first, I ended up lucky, getting the AbsPod back just one day later, after it had made a nice little round trip jaunt to Grand Rapids, MI.

Well, I wasn't so lucky this weekend. I was talking with the BHK when I arrived home after golf (yes, golf!) Saturday, and I had a few too many things going on as I opened the door to enter the house. As a result, the AbsPod fell right out of my hands. I've dropped the thing several times before, but I typically manage to get a foot under it to cushion the blow or something. Not so much this time. It fell straight down and landed flat on its back on the concrete floor of the garage with a sickening smack. I was bummed about it, but I had other things going on, and I quickly stopped thinking about it.

Sunday morning, I grabbed my standard five things (keys, gym ID card, bottle of water, towel, and AbsPod) and went to the gym, not thinking at all about the stomach-turning smack from the day before. As I started into my work out, I fired up the AbsPod to listen to something, and it did it's normal turning on things, then presented me with a cartoon-ized picture of an iPod with a frowny face, along with this message: "www.apple.com/ipod/support." DOH! I messed with it for a while, but listening to it closely revealed that the hard drive was making lots of clicks and grinding noises, which told me that the hard drive was toast.

I guess I shouldn't be too bummed out about it. I could decide that I've been using it on borrowed time for the last 11 months. I could possibly fix it by cracking it open and digging into the actual iPod molecules and replacing the hard drive, and I probably will. But that's not a for-sure thing. That's just the engineer in me talking. In the more immediate future, I ordered an iPod touch to replace it. The upside of that is that it has no hard drive to ruin.

It's not all bad. For a little anguish and a lot of money, I get a new toy to play with. Still, I hope your weekend was luckier than mine.

Public Service Announcement

Given that my gums are holding their ground about as well as the French hold Paris in wartime, I decided to give Crest Pro Health toothpaste a try based on my dentist's recommendation. The dentist suggested it would fight against any unpleasant sensitivity while still doing a good job battling the nasties that lead to other dental problems. I looked at the stuff's packaging, and it read pretty well. The box stopped just sort of suggesting that it would give me the power to save the world while pleasuring multiple women at the same time. So I bought it in preparation for the day my old tube of normal Crest toothpaste ran out.

Today was that day. So I busted out the tasty-sounding Clean Mint paste and prepared for a heretofore never-experienced session of teeth cleaning. And I have to say that it was most certainly like nothing I had ever experienced before. That toothpaste may very well kick the ass of any tartar-, plaque-, halitosis-, or gingivitis-causing bacteria while whitening my teeth and eliminating all traces of sensitivity. Hell, it might very well just push those gums back to the front lines. I'll never know, though, because of one important piece of information that is suspiciously absent from the box or the website: the stuff tastes like lukewarm ass. Slathered in hot sick. Sandwiched between two pieces of chilled ear wax. So I think I'll be making a run to the store today to buy some of the old toothpaste. I'd rather risk the sensitive teeth (which I really haven't experienced much yet) than have a twice daily lukewarm ass and hot sick on ear wax sandwich.

I just thought you should know. That is all.

Your 2 Cents

As Steven Wright (or perhaps it was George Carlin) once said, "It's a penny for your thoughts, but you have to put your two cents in. Somebody's making a penny." Well, you may have more trouble living up to your end of the bargain starting Monday, May 14th, as the U.S. Postal Service will be raising the price of stamps by two cents. [Aside: I love this statement from their website: " The new price structure will create a more efficient mail system so that the overall cost of using the mail is as low as possible." What a bunch of twaddle! What the new price structure will do, among other things, is make first class stamps more expensive.]

As far as I'm concerned, they're bitches. Not because the price of stamps is going up. That kind of makes sense. Things get more expensive all the time, and, to be fair, we can send a letter anywhere in the country for very little money. Not that we want to, because, being fair yet again, who the hell sends letters anymore, aside from grandmothers giving their grandchildren $12 birthday checks?

Still, once in a great while, I have to mail something, and a book of stamps typically lasts me more than a year. What I don't like is that the new price structure will require me to buy a strange number of two cent stamps that I will then have to remember to put on mailings. I should totally be able to trade my stamps in for some sort of non-priced first class stamp. Sure I would still have to go to the post office to get them, but at least I wouldn't have to remember to put on two different stamps to get the right total postage. Or, there should be some sort of grace period in which my old 39 cent stamps are still recognized as valid. Hmm. I guess that would mean that the same problem would crop up at the end of the grace period. So the trading in is better.

Really, they should just not print stamps with prices on them. They should all just be first class letter, postcard, etc., and they should be valid until the end of time. Apparently, someone actually came up with this idea and implemented: forever stamps. That doesn't really help me with my old stamps, but yadambetcha that I'm not buying any other types of stamps from now on.

You have a good day. I'm going to count out a bunch of pennies to pay for my new two cent stamps.

Good, Bad, and Ugly

This weekend, the Girl and I jetted off to Indiana. Sure, some people like to get away to someplace warm during a February cold snap, but we went someplace even colder. And I know that some people like to go someplace that might be considered hip, where things are happening. However, we had a very specific goal on this trip: to watch our beloved Hoosiers play in person in the Assembly Hall in Bloomington, IN. And watch we did.

We flew into Indy on Friday (going direct and being sure to avoid Atlanta), and managed to borrow a vehicle from my folks that had neither a flat tire nor a cracked windshield, and we headed down to B-town. We saw some friends, had some meals, went to some bars, and watched the Hoosiers eke out a closer-than-we-hoped-but-very-exciting-all-the-same victory against the Illini. Good times. There was snow, I ate a breaded pork tenderloin, and we tooled around in a pickup truck. It was a very Hoosier weekend as far as I was concerned. It was, without question, Good.

While driving back and forth, we used the AbsPod (which is my shiny, relatively new, black 80GB iPod with video) and an iTrip to listen to the tunes we liked on the truck's radio. On the way back to Indy, the battery in the AbsPod just gave out, which was a bummer, since we had a plane trip coming up, and I might need to use it to watch or listen to something to entertain myself while the Girl slept (she typically falls asleep on planes well before take off). Luckily, we had some time to visit with my folks in Indy before heading to the airport, and I took advantage of that time to give the AbsPod a bit of a charge, asking everyone around to help me remember it before I left. They all obliged, and I remembered the AbsPod when we went off to the airport.

At the airport, I got to experience a couple of the ways in which the TSA hates me. There was only a short line at security, but it seemed to be growing rapidly. While we were waiting, one woman just offered a bit of an "excuse me" and ignored everyone's complaints as she weaved through all the would-be travelers in line and eased through the machines. As we were discussing how rude that was, another woman began lifting the barricade ropes and escorting a man to the front of the line. Noticing annoyed looks, she said, "We have a Clear passenger." You could hear the capital letter. "Oh, well, in that case, of course. Go right ahead." I was irked. On her way back, she stopped to tell me that I should pick up their brocure. Rather than punch her in the kneecap for trying to sell me something while being condescending at the same time, I asked if it cost money and sent her on her way when she said it was about $100/year. Now, I know about this program where people pay to have background checks and do biometric identification to get through security faster, but I think has to be a better way to handle it than making everyone who's already in line move out of the way for the royalty to get through. I almost went all Monty Python and hollered, "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!"

But I'm sure I wasn't being fair to these people skipping past all of us waiting our turn in line. I was already predisposed to annoyance because I could see that this security line was making everyone go through a Puffer. For those of you who haven't experienced one, the Puffer is the most irritating fake security measure the TSA has come up with yet. I can't get into a rant about that right here, because neither you nor I have the time, but suffice it to say that these devices make me think that a little monkeying with things would be a good idea. It also makes me think that the TSA is trying to make the airways safe by annoying travelers enough so that they will just not fly anywhere. Planes without passengers are inherently safe from terrorists. Even more irritating is that the Puffer, in conjunction with people constantly cutting through the line, had backed things up so much that they opened a second, non-puffer security line just as I got to the front of the more irritating one. However, since my blood pressure is rising just thinking about all of this, let's move on.

Our plane was a regional jet, and we took off only a few minutes late after the ground crew added some ballast to the cargo hold to help balance the plane. I'm all for the plane being balanced, so that slight delay didn't bother me even a little bit. We also landed on time, but we had to sit on the tarmac for 30 minutes because there was another plane in our gate. Pretty much everyone on the plane thought it was ridiculously annoying, but there was nothing we could do about it. I kept myself entertained by alternately reading and laughing at the flight attndant, who repeatedly marched up and down the aisle insisting that anyone who had unbuckled his seat belt put it back on. I'm not making this up. She was very concerned about those seat belts staying on and told several people that they "needed" to put their belts back on. Every time she heard the click of a seat belt, she raised her head and marched down the aisle to find the offender. By the time we got to a gate, I was pretty irritated, and I grabbed my bag, coat, and book and deplaned as quickly as I could, which wasn't very quickly given that the Girl and I were seated in the very last row. Security irritation and sitting on the tarmac for a half hour: Bad.

Still, we'd had a good trip and a good weekend, and our bags came out of the baggage return very quickly. After a short cab ride, I was back at home sort of unpacking. It was at that point that i realized that the AbsPod was nowhere to be found. In my annoyance, I had departed the plane without retrieving my iPod from the seat back pouch I had put it in when I first sat down. I did some googling to figure out what to do, and it wasn't very clear. So I called Northwest reservations who told me he wasn't sure, but he thought I would have to call the ticket counter at the aiport. Unfortunately, they don't have a number one can call (what?!), so I would just have to go there the next day (they were naturally closed at 9 PM on a Sunday). Instead, I drove to the airport. I figured maybe the plane was still there, maybe I could get someone to get it for me, assuming the cleaning crew hadn't found and kept it. After asking around about what to do, I went to Northwest's baggage services office and explained my plight. The very nice and efficient woman there told me that the plane had already left for Grand Rapids. As I filled out a form, she called the Grand Rapids airport and asked someone there to check my seat back pouch -- the plane had just landed here -- for the AbsPod and to send it back to DCA if they found it. She gave me a number to call this afternoon and no predictions on whether I would get the device back. So I trudged back to my car contemplating the Ugly thought that I might have to replace the AbsPod and that I have once again proven that I am, without question, an idiot.

It's That Time Again...

Time to watch Don Knotts videos?

No, it's time for the sounds of sneakers squeaking on hardwood, of leather bouncing, of the groans of those forced to watch early-season zone defenses. In other words, it's time for COLLEGE BASKETBALL SEASON!!!!

Yes, I'm reasonably excited about it. Maybe it's because the Wahoos are not faring so well on the gridiron this year. Maybe it's because college hoops have been part of my life since I was a wee lad. Maybe it's because this means that there will be sporting events on pretty much every night!

Regardless of why I'm excited, I am. As a result of that excitement, I started looking at the ESPN Full Court schedule to see when they'd be showing my Hoosiers. To my delight, the answer is rather frequently. (Also somewhat frequently are the Hoosier games on ESPNU, a channel which approximately 14 people receive, which annoyed the ass out of me. But I'm not here to talk about how ESPN has become a company I hate for their practices in bilking the people who love sports for more and more money all the time by moving content people already watch from the channels everyone gets to channels they (ESPN) creates out of nowhere just to drive up demand and increase their revenue by claiming they have yet another channel with high-demand content that the cable companies almost have to buy from them. Case in point: no one carried ESPN2HD - probably because they hadn't even filled ESPNHD with HD content, so why bother with a second HD channel? - so ESPN decided to put the entire World Cup '06 on that channel. They're dicks. They are working hard at becoming the Best Buy of the TV world. But I digress.) Man, I wanted to get that Full Court goodness set up for my house since the coverage is supposed to start this Friday. However, given my past difficulties in getting Comcast to sell me the Full Court package, I figured there was no way they'd have it available at the beginning of the season.

For some reason, I browsed through my guide and saw that this Friday's games all showed up on the channels where the ESPN Pay Programming happens. "That's awesome!" I thought. "Surely, they wouldn't put that up there to taunt people who want to buy it. That must mean I can get that stuff!" Laughing about how I shouldn't be calling anyone Shirley, I called up my neighborhood Comcast office and had the following exchange:

Me: I'd like to buy the ESPN Full Court college basketball package.
Comcast guy: Basketball ... let's see here. You want the NBA Season Pass?
Me: [Incredulously, feeling major deja vu, not pointing out that it's the NBA League Pass] Umm, no. I was hoping for the college basketball package. ESPN Full Court.
Comcast guy: Oh. We don't have that available.
Me: [thinking, "Am I Sisyphus here?"] Well, the only reason that I called is that I looked in the guide on my cable box, and the games schedule for Friday night show up on those 700 - 706 channels where they're shown every year.
Comcast guy: Yeah, but maybe that was only in some areas ...
Me: Maybe ... But it showed up on my cable box in my living room.
Comcast guy: [Clearly not expecting that] Oh, well, the only basketball package I have in the system is the NBA one. Maybe the marketing guys haven't put it in there yet.
Me: I could see that, but I'm surprised that's the case. I mean, I'm surprised that I can't pay to watch something that actually shows up in the guide.
Comcast guy: Right. I'm just not sure what's going on. Maybe it's the sort of thing where it will be in the system before Friday but it's just not yet.
Me: [Thinking that this guy clearly didn't talk to me last year] I guessss ...
Comcast guy: Well, what I can do is take down your number, go talk to my marketing guys to see if they know anything about it, and give you a call back when I know something.
Me: So ... You're going to check things and ... then what happens?
Comcast guy: I'll call you back at your number after I talk to them.
Me: Oh, OK. When should I expect to hear back from you? [Thinking in terms of days]
Comcast guy: In about 10 minutes or so.
Me: [Surprised] Oh. OK. Great. I appreciate your help.

Well, it's already been a good hour, and I haven't heard from the Comcast guy. Whey they suck soooooo badly at this, I have no idea, but I expect I'll be calling them a few more times to get it right. Not Comcastic at all. Or maybe it is. Sigh.

Nonetheless, be happy. College hoops is nigh!

No More Fun of Any Kind!

I've thought for a while that our young country is too litigious. People are all the time suing companies to compensate for the fact that they (the people) are clumsy (woman spills scalding coffee on lap, sues McDonalds) or short-sighted (people smoke lots of cigarettes because they like them, get cancer, sue Big Tobacco). But that's not the end of it. All those lawsuits make people overly afraid of being sued and they end up making ridiculous policy decisions as a result. Most of them make me shake my head in sadness. Some of them make me laugh out loud.

For example, apparently some descendant of Dean Wormer ("No more fun of any kind!") is in charge of a school in Massachusetts, which has decided to ban the game of Tag, in fear that kids might get hurt while playing and hold the school liable. (I'm assuming the kids' parents and their lawyers would be the ones trying to hold the school liable, not the kids, but you never know these days.) It's not just tag, though. Apparently the school has banned "any other unsupervised game."

I can see it now... You kids over there! Step away from the Connect Four! You're not being supervised!

Seriously, tag! Now I haven't played tag in a long time, but from what I can recall, the most dangerous thing it involves is ... running. Sure, in the case of certain world-class types, running can lead to steroid use, but I think that's a risk I'd be willing to take.

I don't really even know what else to say, but I hope someone sues that school when their kids all get fat because they weren't allowed to do anything resembling exercise during recess. That would be some serious karma.