Lord of the Den

Send help.

With Wife and Daughter gone for the weekend, Son and I are left to fend for ourselves. What I thought would be a cool weekend of father-son bonding has deteriorated into a struggle for basic survival.

Son is running around in just a diaper. I am wearing tattered Old Navy cargo shorts.

A fire is burning in the corner of the living room, which I was able to start using the lens on my glasses.

Son's face is covered in warpaint. I am covered in the blood of the plump, asthmatic neighborhood kid we hunted down for dinner.

We have been arguing all day over who gets to hold the Little People Schoolhouse. He seems to think it represents power. I am in possession of it now, but I'll be sleeping with one eye open tonight.

I'm kidding.

Things are going great. Little Man and I have had a great day running a few errands and playing around the house. I was even able to clean up some of the mess we've made while he watched an episode of Blue's Clues.

Now it's time to settle into my big brown chair and see if my Florida Gators can get past UCLA.

It's going to be mantastic

It's Ladies Night, folks.

Put some water on the stove for tea. Throw on the pajama pants and slippers. Pull up Oprah on Tivo and learn about The Secret. Eat a scone. Curl the hair. Read InStyle.

Wait a minute. Scratch that. It's not Ladies Night. Tonight is the kickoff of an entire MAN WEEKEND at the MBI estate.

Wife and her mother, sister and our Daughter loaded up in the Odyssey this morning for a weekend with friends in Nashville. Which leaves just me and the boy here to party like rock stars until Sunday afternoon.

So with the females out of the way, there's no limit to what we can do:

• Eat at Hooters
• Watch wrestling
• Walk around Lowe's and look at lawnmowers
• Throw gas on stuff and light it on fire
• Yell
• Leave the toilet seat up
• Break stuff
• Watch Spinal Tap
• Pick fights with neighborhood kids
• Drag race
• Skip bathtime
• Stay up late
• Stab a stranger with a knife

Okay, so we may not get to all of these things. But it's good to have goals.

The party is on, at least until Sunday afternoon. Then we begin the most manly act of all - cleaning things up and covering our tracks so we don't get in trouble with Wife and Daughter!

To the bird that's been anointing my car

Dear Bird That Keeps Unloading on My Car,

It has come to my attention that you have taken an interest in building a relationship (and by "building a relationship" I mean "crapping buckets of waste") with my vehicle. I'm not sure what - other than the massive splotches you have left all over my silver chariot - tipped me off to this.

I would like to humbly ask that you leave me and my family alone and move on to some other target.

If you got to know me, I really think you'd like me. I'm a nice guy with a nice wife and two nice kids. I'm active in my church and I do a lot in the community. I do my best at work to earn a decent living for my family. I really don't think you'd want to crap on my car if you just took the time to get to know me.

I have always been kind to birds. Except for the one time I went dove hunting with a friend, I have never sought to do harm to your kind. I have never knowingly destroyed a bird's nest or touched a baby bird, because they say that's bad.

And it's safe to say - 85% probability - that I have never evacuated my bowels on or near any of your possessions.

I am also at a loss as to what provoked this sudden interest of yours in my vehicle. I have done nothing to provoke you, even going so far as to park in places far removed from any potential perches. Which only serves to make this series of events all the worse, as this is not a passive activity for you. Because of where I am parking, you can't just sit on the limb and do your thing, you have to hose my car with your vicious dung while in flight.

Despicable. You should know better.

Consider this letter as your notice that if the fecal decorations don't cease, I will be forced to seek the advice of an attorney. If we then fail to reach an understanding, I will be forced to seek the assistance of my pellet gun.

And if all that fails, I will be forced to unleash the vials of bird flu I keep in the house. And nobody wins when the bird flu gets unleashed. Just don't make me do it at night, because I store the bird flu in a rickety box under my son's crib, and I wouldn't want to wake him up.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

MyBestInvest

A three-legged dog walks into a bar...

...and says, "I'm looking for the man that shot my paw."

If we ever have another dog - and that's a big if - I'm going to get a homeless guy to train the thing.

The two dogs we had previously, a shepherd/beagle mix and a Cocker spaniel, were not what you might call the world's most well-behaved creatures. Sam, the shepherd mix, was big and hairy and scary. And he liked to run and run and run.

Charlie, the spaniel, had a mind of his own and was best known for loud barking confrontations with his food bowl.

Trying to take the dogs someplace was always a major production. Dog hair all over the place. Dirty paw prints everywhere. Poop all around.

If they caught even the tiniest whiff of unleashed freedom, they would team up on us to break loose. We'd be chasing dogs around for hours.

Contrast those experiences with every homeless dude/homeless dog duo I've ever seen. The dog is the picture of composure, walking only on the sidewalks, looking out for traffic and staying close to his master.

On the way to church yesterday, we saw a great example of this phenomenon. Two tiny dogs trotting along the sidewalk with their buddy, one a few steps in front and one a few steps behind.

Put simply, homeless people have extremely well-behaved dogs. And I want a piece of that action.

Any dog of ours would have been killed by a car or would have run away forever given the same circumstances. Maybe it's because we had sissy subdivision dogs instead of rough, street-smart dogs.

Or maybe there's an element of Darwinism to it. It's possible that the picture I see as a passing motorist doesn't tell the whole story. Maybe the dude had 50 dogs before he found one that was smart enough to stay on the sidewalk. The one I see is the survivor.

Anyhow, next time we look for a dog you can keep your prissy AKC certifications, your obedience classes, and your fancy immunizations. Give me a street dog.

Ants to Stick on Nails

There are plenty of things I don't understand about the minds of children.

• How does a sleeping, calm infant know when you've gone from standing up to sitting down?
• Why does a toddler, in a room full of cool toys, just want to play with choking hazards?
• Why do babies feel compelled to play with their junk while you're changing a dirty diaper?

I don't know.

Another thing I don't know is how kids come up with names for stuff.

Daughter, for instance, called her stroller a "da-doose" for a spell. When her tummy hurts, she says it feels "crooky."

The grand prize winner is the item seen in the photo above. To you and me, this appears to be a hair clip. To Daughter, this was known for a long time as "Ants to Stick on Nails."

Welcome to mowtown

I broke a sweat today for the first time in who knows how many months. Mowing season has come again!

Let's pause and reflect

The 1,000 Visits mark seems like an good spot to pause and reflect on the first few months of blogging.

(I am now blogging about blogging, which should give you the mirror-in-a-mirror effect if you look at your screen the right way.)

I started the blog as a hobby and as a way to document, in a lighthearted way, some of the goings-on of this time in our family life. That's going well so far, though sometimes I jump in with a post on a new story or the like.

I chose to use Blogger to make things easy on myself. I know a lot of more experienced bloggers use other providers, but this makes sense to me.

I am trying to focus on content. For that reason, you don't see any ads or fancy add-ons. I've seen blogs that have too much junk on the page. I want to spend my time and limited brain power on the writing, not goofing with the appearance of the blog. I may put stuff in later, but I'd like to get a year under my belt before I do any of that.

I wanted to start this blog and invest nothing other than my time. I have missed the mark on this one, since I hired a designer to upgrade my template and do my bowtie banner. I don't anticipate a reason to spend any more money on it.

I decided not to post any pictures of people. I have a beautiful family. Absolutely beautiful. But for me, the risk to our privacy of posting pictures far outweighs any value you might receive.

I have tried not to focus on traffic but I am failing miserably at that. I am addicted to my SiteMeter. I like knowing who's been on, how they found me, what they read, etc.

There you have it. Let's do this again at 10,000 visits.

1,000 visits

There it is, folks. I don't know if you can decipher the image above, but what it says is this: Almost four months into this thing, I've hit 1,000 visits!

Granted, many of those are my own vanity visits and Mom and Wife visits, but I'll take 'em all.

A very sincere thanks to everyone who has stopped by to check out the MBI brand of commentary. You've been very encouraging.

Also, in an eerie coincidence, the odometer on my new car will likely hit 1,000 miles today.

I'm a c-list invite, but I'll take it

One of the cool things my daughter's preschool is doing this semester is offering each child the chance to invite a special guest. Daughter's teacher sent the form announcing this opportunity home a few weeks ago, and the Wife and I talked about it over lunch.

"Who would you like to be your special guest?" we asked her.

She threw out the names of a few of her toddler/infant friends (i.e. our friends' new 4-month old baby), so we explained why inviting a newborn might not be the best idea.

After naming a few household goods, stuffed animals and other inanimate objects she'd like to invite, she finally settled on inviting good old Dad to be her guest.

So at 9:30 this morning, I cut out of the office to be my little girl's very special guest at preschool.

I walked in to the classroom to see her face light up as she let out a big, "DADDY!" She was so excited to see me, but I think if the preschool was equipped with a Who-Is-More-Excited-Ometer, it would have read me as off-the-chart excited to see her.

Her teacher, Mrs. B, had a few things left to do in her lesson before it was time to introduce me, so I pulled up a tiny chair and waited patiently for my cameo.

When Mrs. B was done, she brought a chair to the front of the class and invited Daughter to sit in front of the whole group and tell them about me, her special guest. She told the class how we like to play together and read stories.

It was the sweetest thing in the history of all makind.

When she was finished, I told the class a little bit about where I work and what Daughter and I like to do together. Then I explained Keynesian economic theory, currency arbitrage and hedging strategies to them. I also showed them how paprika is made.

Then I read a book about farm animals and went on my way.

In my 30 years, I've received a handful of accolades for academic or professional things. But being Daughter's special guest today beats them all.

Monday round-up

Here's the Monday round-up:

The date with the Wife hit a huge pothole when, after a 30-minute drive to the restaurant we'd been drooling for all day, we discovered the place was closed for a private party. Someone decided a busy Thai place would be just the right spot for their private St. Patrick's Day party.

Remind me to get my reservation in for our Fourth of July party at the Indian restaurant across town.

We wound up eating at a little Italian place less than a mile from our house and had a lovely time.

I finally bought a decent drill so that I don't have to rely on the glorified electric screwdriver I had been using for the last seven years. True to form, I was able to completely obliterate four spots on the wall in Son's room as I tried to install a swing-arm lamp sconce.

I assembled a play structure we bought for Son last weekend. The little man isn't quite big enough to handle the big kid playground in our yard, so we got a smaller one he could climb on.

It took roughly 30 minutes to assemble with instructions printed in English and no parts left over. That's the way it's supposed to be, folks.

We got a call Friday night that a dear family friend (like a sister to the Wife) is getting married this summer. This is great news, and should provide us with a handful of road trips to make in the next several months for engagement party/shower sorts of things.

We booked our vacation yesterday. We have a condo at the beach reserved for the last week of August. This will be our first bona fide, just-the-four-of-us family vacation. It's six months away, but I'm so excited I want to go ahead and start packing.

I've got a two posts featured in this week's Carnival of Family Life, hosted at Digital Rich Daily. Go check out some of the other posts!

Daddy gets around

In an unprecedented turn of events, I have two dates Saturday. That's right, I am quite the ladies man.

Date #1 is actually already in the books.

In an effort to make sure Daughter grows up with no Daddy Issues, I make time as often as possible to take her on little dates. Today, we went out for breakfast to a little neighborhood Scottish restaurant.

Daughter was craving pancakes, and I am almost always in the mood for a Sausage McMuffin with no cheese. (Note: If you ever find that I am not in the mood for a Sausage McMuffin with no cheese, please stop what you're doing and call the paramedics.)

Our date went off relatively well. The only minor glitch was that I chose poorly by first going to the McDonald's closest to our house. It also happens to be close to an exit from the interstate, so it attracts a lot of tour buses and whatnot. Today the place was packed wall-to-wall with high school kids in sweats en route to some sort of sporting event.

I think there's also some sort of bizarre medical clinic nearby because this location seems to be staffed by the living dead. So I called an audible and we went a mile or two down the road to a different McDonald's.

This one was great. Two things at this place made me chuckle.

First, when we walked in, the spacing between people waiting in line was unusually wide. There weren't really any lines, just a scattering of people with a 3-5 foot circle of space around each person. I was the third person in "line" for a particular register and was standing 20 feet from the counter. Strange.

Second, Daughter wanted pancakes so I asked the young lady at the register for an order of pancakes.

Her head tilted to the side like a curious dog and she looked down to scan her cash register for the button labeled, "Pancakes," which she apparently did not find. After what was kind of an awkward span of time, I could almost see the spark in her brain as she looked up from her fruitless search and asked me, "You mean Hot Cakes?"

I knew when I walked in there I wasn't headed into the Jet Propulsion Lab, but I at least thought making the association between Hot Cakes and panckaes was within reach.

Anyhow, with those little issues behind us, we had a spectacular breakfast. We talked about snowflakes and balloons and heaven. We watched the big table of old men next to us finish their breakfast, drink their coffee and share a bag of cookies.

She fed me bites of pancake and I gave her bites of what she calls my "half browns." I offered her a bite of Sausage McMuffin with Egg, but she declined, telling me the sausage was "too psicy."

And no, that's not a typo. She hasn't mastered the "sp" sound, so sausage is "psicy" and dark rooms are "psooky" and time with Daddy is "psecial." (Okay, I threw that last one in just to make myself feel good.)

Date #2 is about three hours away. I'm taking the Wife out for some psicy Thai food and an evening of adult conversation.

Two dates. Two gorgeous girls. One day. One lucky Daddy.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

To mark the occasion of St. Patrick's Day, I thought I'd share a classic with you:

Q: Who's Irish and stays out all night long?

Come to the Comments for this post to find out the answer!

Quick check-in

Here are a few quick thoughts:

In one of the greatest crimes perpetrated against humanity, the Sanjaya chick from American Idol survived another week. Granted, she's got great hair and had on some sweet hoop earrings the other night. But her voice is a little on the masculine side.

The stock market took a big dip earlier this week because the subprime mortgage industry is finding that its customers are having a hard time making their mortgage payments.

Just to remind you what a subprime mortgage is, it's a loan typically offered to consumers that can't get financed through traditional channels. The traditional lenders won't touch these consumers because they have bad credit from not paying their other bills.

So to summarize the situation, these subprime lenders didn't anticipate that their borrowers - who have run into trouble paying their bills in the past - aren't paying their bills now.

It's been a crazy few weeks around our house what with yours truly changing jobs, buying a vehicle, going to school and working a couple Saturdays (boo! hiss!) so Wife and I haven't had much couple time.

Tuesday we met for lunch at one of our favorite places and got reconnected over miso soup, California rolls and spicy tuna rolls. In my book it was as nice a date as any we've ever had.

There you have it. I hope everyone out there is having a great week!

The toughest kid in town

I'm afraid we're turning Son into an indestructible superhuman beast of a toddler. I'll tell you what I mean.

Everyone has told us that boys are simply more rowdy than girls. Daughter, being a girl, is the picture of decorum and 3 year-old elegance. Or at least as much as any preschooler can be. She likes to draw, read and watch Caillou or Max & Ruby. She eats like a bird, rarely finishing what we've served her. To the best of my recollection, she bumped her head once when she was very small, and except for a bloody nose incident I'll blog about later, has been free of scrapes and bruises.

Son, on the other hand, is all action all the time. If he wants to be somewhere, he runs instead of walking. If he wants to play with something, he will climb or crawl or fight to get it. He wants to be on top of everything in our house, including tables, chairs, countertops and Daughter's art desk.

At mealtime, he treats our breakfast room like it's one of those medieval theme restaurants where you get to throw food on the floor and call your waitress a winch. He shovels food into his face with reckless abandon and simply won't stop until the food - Daddy's food, Mommy's food and Daughter's food - is gone. And then he'll pitch a fit just to let you know he's so manly he could have eaten more.

He's very coordinated, but he's also a risk-taker physically. That means that several times a day, we're scooping him up after he's fallen off of something or slammed a limb in something. And several times a day we watch in amazement as he bonks his head on hardwood flooring, granite countertops or flagstone flooring, only to hop right back up, shake it off, and move on to some new adventure.

In a world filled with carpeted floors and nice round edges on things, we kick it old school at our house. The floors are hard and the furniture corners are sharp. And our little man is training in this little boot camp.

He is, very simply, an awesome little creation.

So in a few years, if you hear of this amazing 5 year-old kid from the south who jumped off a building to lift a school bus off a wounded bunny with one hand while fighting off a band of street punks with the other hand, THAT'S MY BOY!

An exciting transformation

Those sleepless nights are beginning to payoff. All the colicky, fussy midnight rocking is beginning to bear fruit. Daughter is reaching the milestone about which every parent dreams. She's turning the corner.

I first observed this phenomenon one day last week, when I noticed an unopened Coke at my place at the breakfast room table when I got home for lunch. As I thanked Wife for fixing my lunch (an awesome pimiento-cheese sandwich and some SunChips), she deflected the praise, telling me that Daughter fetched the beverage.

Daughter, standing nearby, shot me a Aren't You So Darn Proud of Me? look. I was, so I made a huge deal of what a big girl she was getting to be. I was thoroughly impressed with her.

The week before, I got home one night to find the dining room table set for dinner. Earlier in the day, Wife caught a case of the stumbles and hurt her knee, so she was a little too gimpy to fix dinner and set the table.

Who set the table, I asked her. Daughter did. All by herself.

So what's the magical transformation in all this? Well, I'll tell you:

• In the beginning, we had to do everything for Daughter
• Later, she learned how to do things for herself

Now, she's in the greatest place of all:

• She can do stuff for us

I can already picture in my mind the water beading up on a freshly washed car, or smell the freshly cut grass as, in just a few more years, we Teach Our Kids The Value of Work (which translates roughly to Getting Our Kids To Do The Crap We Don't Want To Do).

I should be in marketing

Saturday TV around here is riddled with paid infomercials, typically from the local car dealers. One such infomercial today was giving its We Can Finance Anyone Who Can Fog a Mirror pitch, detailing how they can loan money to those with past bankruptcies, low credit, no credit, slow credit, etc.

They even have a website to prequalify you for your shady loan.

"Go to www.regardlessofcredit.com right now," they said.

Which raised the question in my mind:

Considering the demographic they're going after, wouldn't it be a little more effective to send people to:

www.irregardlessofcredit.com

A few more things

I've got a touch of writer's block tonight about something good to post, so let me expand on the list of Six Weird Things. Here are some more things about me you may not know, probably because none of these are true:

1. I was born on a cruise ship in international waters, thus I have dual citizenship with every country in the world.
2. In the early 90's, I got my hair cut like Jennifer Aniston's.
3. I'd rather be fishing.
4. My other car is a broom.
5. Slash from Guns 'n' Roses is a distant cousin on my mother's side.
6. I constantly quote lines from the movie Turner and Hooch.
7. At the grocery store, I leave my cart right in the middle of the aisle.
8. I'm allergic to turkey, Tylenol and mosquitos.
9. Wife proposed to me.
10. On casual Fridays, I wear a pair of Z. Cavaricci pants to work.
11. I fly remote-controlled airplanes.
12. Karate Kid was loosely based on my life.
13. I would like fries with that.
14. I can double-dutch jump-rope with inner city middle schoolers.

Blog to you later.

Six Things

Darren a/k/a Clare's Dad tagged me for Six Weird Things About Me. If I had a shred of cool in me at all, I'd be all aloof about doing this. You should know by now I don't have half a shred of cool, so I'll go ahead and own it: This is the highlight of my week.

How sad is that?

Anyhow, a big thanks to Clare's Dad, and without further delay:

1. I am freaky weird about my clothes, especially my ties.
Which you wouldn't necessarily know by looking at me, which is sad. When it comes to ties, I'm Crazy OCD (see note below). This morning, for instance, I spent 20 minutes tying the same tie over and over again trying to get it just the right length. To the untrained eye, it probably looked fine the first time, but the skinny part was just peeking out from the fat part at the bottom, which I can't handle.

Just a side note on OCD: there's cool OCD and there's crazy OCD. Cool OCD is the dude that cuts his grass twice a week. Crazy OCD is the dude that flips the light switch on and off 33 times before he leaves the room.

2. I signed out of school sick almost every Monday afternoon of elementary school.
I got nasty migraine headaches every Monday starting in 3rd grade. Incapacitating, kill-me-now, vomiting headaches. My parents took me to numerous neurologists and a psychologist to try to figure out the problem. I think the general diagnosis was stress or some sort of social anxiety. But I tend to think it was that my tiny 3rd grade body wasn't equipped to handle my superhuman genius brain.

3. In college, I thought I was going to be a lawyer.
But the LSAT had other plans. My score was about what a 12-pack of Mr. Pibb could score if it took the test. My dad and his brother and sister are lawyers, and I worked in law offices during summers in college. I thought that's what I was cut out to do. Finally, though, I listened to all the people who told me, "You need to be really sure this is what you want to do before you commit to this."

4. I don't laugh at my own jokes.

5. If you met me, you wouldn't think I was funny.
I like to think I'm somewhat witty when I write, but I'm not very quick on my feet in conversation. Particularly with folks I don't know all that well. Every conversation is a battle to convince the other person I'm not an idiot, so humor is the last thing on my mind.

6. You keep your Scarface and Raging Bull. Give me Anchorman and Talladega Nights.
I get great joy from Will Ferrell and anything he touches. I've just about worn out the Anchorman DVD and Talladega Nights is taking a beating, too. If either of you readers is like-minded, allow me to recommend listening to the director's commentaries on those DVDs. You will lose your shiite.

And an extra or two, which may not be all that weird:

7. I am the board president of a local United Way agency.
We provide free dental care to people living below Federal poverty guidelines. I am not a dentist. Mouth stuff, to me, is pretty nasty. But dental health (or lack thereof) is a pretty good predictor of overall health, so there's a lot of value in fixing teeth to enhance self-confidence, prevent disease and relieve pain.

8. I met Wife four weeks before we enrolled at the same college. We started dating four years later.
She was one of the first people I met when I visited the campus the summer before our freshman year. We were good friends for four years, and then started dating during the last half of our senior year.

Okay, enough. Time for a bowl of ice cream. I'm going to tag AtHomeDaddy, although between kids with fevers and packing for a 10-day vacation, the pressure of doing Six Things might be too much.

But if anyone could pull it off, he could

I'll understand when my son is a teenage alcoholic. With a Camaro. And dreadlocks. And a slutty girlfriend.

I won't be happy with the situation, but at least I'll know why he's that way. It will all be because of the outfit he wore to church yesterday.

Just to refresh your memory, Son is 17 months old. Son is a boy. Son is a climber and wiggler. Son is very strong. And when Son doesn't want to get dressed, he's not afraid to let it be known.

I laid him on the changing table and got him out of his pjs and took a moment to tickle his naked armpits. His laugh when his armpits are tickled is like a drug. So I took a hit, then kept on with the clothes change.

The outfit I pulled out of the closet was a long sleeve blue polo with some overalls that go, well, over it. We traded our best Ultimate Fighting Championship moves while I got the polo and overalls on. I did have to headbutt him once, but that was only after I blacked out from the chokehold he had on me.

By the time all that was done, I had very little physical stamina left. I looked and felt like I was coming out of Fight Club, which I would gladly elaborate on, except we all know the first rule of Fight Club. Anyhow, the only remaining clothing needed were socks and shoes.

I looked quickly for socks in the immediate 18-inch radius around us, and then my eyes caught a pair of crisp white socks on the ottoman. I broke apart the pair to find they had piping and ruffles at the top.

Girl socks.

Moment of hesitation.

Then girl socks went on Son's feet. The ruffles were way up under his knees, well covered by his pantlegs. Slapped the shoes on and off we went.

The variables I didn't plan for in my moment of poor judgment were the riding-upness of the pantlegs and the falling down-ness of the socks themselves. So by the time we picked the little dude up from the nursery, my secret was out.

I dressed my son, my only son, my beloved son, in girl socks. And everyone knew.

Somebody please put me in Daddy time-out.

6 to 10 for illegal dumping

AtHomeDaddy did some cleaning this weekend, which prompted a delivery to a dumpster down the street. That reminded me of this story of a harrowing trash run of my own.

Wife and I are rule-followers. To give you an idea of what that means:

• When going through immigration on our vacation overseas last year, we headed for the end of the line marked "Non-Residents, Nothing to Declare." Before we reached the line, an immigration officer waved us over to his line, under a sign marked "Permanent Residents, Nothing to Declare." Even though a uniformed government official waved us over, we felt squeamish about passing all the other tired, sweaty people in the long line.
• Let's say we're flying somewhere, and the gate agent begins boarding the plane by calling rows 45 and higher. That begins the Pamplona-style rush to board the plane in which 95% of the passengers come forward even though only 20% of the seats have been called. We faithfully stay away from the gate area until our row is called.
• We don't wear seersucker or white until Easter and we put it away after Labor Day.
  

You get the idea. All of that is to say we're not big social risk-takers.

Which is why I spent two hours in a pickup truck the day after Christmas trying to get rid of five bags of trash.

Since I was 1) home from work, and 2) freakin' out from all the crumpled up wrapping paper and smashed Fisher-Price boxes, I decided to make a run to the dump the day after Christmas. However, it seems our municipal authorities didn't anticipate that people might have extra crap to get rid of, so they gave the Copenhagen-dipping lady that works at the dump the day off. The whole place was shut down.

So there I was with a pickup truck with five trash bags in the bed that I sure as heck wasn't going to haul back to my house. I had to come up with some other way to unload the trash.

The only working solution was to unload the stuff in a private dumpster somewhere. Now, since I am a rule follower, I know that dumpsters are property of whoever rents them and community trash such as mine is unwelcome. With that in mind, you can see why unloading these bags of Christmas trash was, for me, the equivalent of ditching a body somewhere.

My route around town was as follows:

1. Big Catholic church near the dump. I pulled in to the parking lot but got spooked. Too churchy. And there was another car in the parking lot. Although the car was not occupied, I have a hunch it might have been equipped with trash-detecting video gear.
2. Big apartment complex a few blocks away. Here I rolled up to the dumpster and got two bags out before I heard a dog bark, got spooked, and drove away with three bags still in the bed.
3. Grocery store parking lot. Turned out the big dumpsters out front were just for recyclable materials. Darnitall.
4. Elementary school in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Pulled up, hefted my three remaining bags, and got the heck out of dodge.

All the while, adrenaline was coursing through my veins as if I was actually doing something wrong. If I had any backbone at all, I probably could have finished the entire chore in under 15 minutes just by going straight from the dump to the apartment complex. But casing a joint and checking all the angles is quite time-consuming.

Anyhow, if you ever get a phone call in the middle of the night, it might be me. I may need you to bail me out of jail for driving in the HOV lane by myself or taking my seatbelt off even though the Fasten Seatbelt light is still illuminated. I hear they're really cracking down on these kinds of things.

It will be over soon...

Tonight is the final installment of my godforsaken Quantitative Analysis class. If you listen closely around 10 p.m., you'll probably hear my sigh of relief.

In case you're interested, here are the results of my research project for the class:

1. There is a significant difference between mortgage debt and consumer debt as components of the overall financial obligation ratios of homeowners
2. The financial obligation ratios of renters is significantly higher than for homeowners
3. There is no link between the difference in financial obligation ratios for renters and homeowners and debt service ratio

Thrilling stuff, I know.

If interesting stuff is what you're looking for, go read some good blogging:

• Long Island Dad has a great post about the Life is a Highway song from Cars. I can remember wanting to shoot myself in high school due to the overplay of the original version. Now the same crime is being committed against our children.
• Stop by Poop and Boogies to learn how one small graphic design change can lead to exponential frustration for parents.
• AtHomeDaddy recounts the origin of the Penny Bet, which reminds me of my favorite TV episode I've seen in years: the Slap Bet episode of How I Met Your Mother.

Blog to you later.