Help answer some questions

We have a nice array of cable channels at our fingertips here in sunny North Myrtle Beach. And since this is vacation - and almost anything goes when you're on vacation - the kids have been getting their fill of Noggin and Playhouse Disney.

Those of you who subscribe to these channels can help answer a few questions that have cropped up in my head:

Does Pizza Guy from the Higglytown Heroes stand a chance of passing a random drug test? That guy has "stoner" written all over him.

Should they buy some looser-fitting clothes for the orange guy who hosts Yo Gabba Gabba?

Is it bad that I'm a little intimiated by Diego? I mean, the kid travels with a baby jaguar. That's pretty tough. I probably couldn't keep a tabby kitten under control, but he can lord over a jaguar?

Any input?

Adventures in dining out

Wife and I manage our spending money in envelopes by category. Each paycheck, we budget for all the ways we spend cash and stuff an envelope accordingly. Our restaurant money goes in the envelope labeled "Dining Out."

After eating out a few times on this vacation, I can sat this: I have made better use of Dining Out money. That's for sure.

But I have to remind myself that I'm on vacation, so everything I know about the value of money is null and void.

One of the reasons we rented a condo for this trip is to get access to a full kitchen. With a kitchen, we can prepare our own meals and aren't at the mercy of restaurant schedules and prices.

When we checked in at 5 p.m. on Saturday, the place hadn't been cleaned (despite the rental agency's promise to have it ready by 3 p.m.) so we had to get lost for a while so the housekeepers could get their clean on.

We piled back into the Odyssey to backtrack to the Olive Garden we passed on the way in, because what says "vacation" like eating at a restaurant that has a location within two miles of your home?

We pulled up to the OG to find that it had been stormed by people who apparently didn't realize that it's just the Olive Garden. Having to wait in line wasn't going to work with two little angels who had been trapped in the car all day, so the OG plan was quickly scrapped.

We headed back toward our condo and saw a place called The Spring House Family Restaurant. From the outside looking in, it had everything we were looking for: the word "family" in the title, meaning our kids could be as obnoxious as they chose to be, and only a handful of cars in the parking lot.

The "only a handful of cars in the parking lot" should have been the tip-off.

Once we were seated, I asked Wife, "I wonder how many times I've been in this restaurant?" And she knew exactly what I meant. Obviously I had never been in that restaurant, but you've all been in this restaurant. It just goes by a different name where you live.

In this place you can get breakfast around the clock, a host of fried entree platters, and a handful of Italian dinners. I had the chopped sirloin platter and Wife got fried chicken. We got Son a little pizza and Daughter had chicken strips. All of this was served to us by the World's Surliest Waitress.

Since it was a "family" restaurant, we let the kids goof off a little bit. After all, what are the chances that our kids would be the worst-behaved that a restaurant in Myrtle Beach has ever seen?

Ultimately, the meal got us what we needed: time out of the condo while the ladies cleaned, and food in our tummies. And we've got fun memories of The Spring House Family Restaurant.

On Sunday, Wife made a staple of our household: spaghetti and meatballs. On Monday, I made jambalaya. Tonight, we ventured out again. The result was even more interesting than The Spring House.

I'll tell you all about it soon.

Let's go to the beach

Greetings from glamorous North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina! The Family Vacation is in full swing.

We pointed the Odyssey out of our driveway yesterday morning and barrelled down the road ready to have some family fun. We stopped for a brief visit at the little college where Wife and I met, and dropped in on some friends in Columbia for lunch.

I could write a dozen posts just on the good time we had traveling yesterday. And I just may.

But for now, Daddy's weary from an action-packed morning on the beach and in the pools, so I'm going to put a hurtin' on the bag of potato chips.

Busted air conditioner update

I know the suspense has been eating you alive.

The air conditioner...

...is...

...fixed.

Thank heavens. It was a rough 12 hours or so on the second floor of our house.

And here's the beauty part - I fixed it myself.

That bears repeating since it's so seldom that I can make that claim - I fixed it myself.

The problem was that the hose that siphons off the condensation was clogged, which meant all the water drained into the pan under the unit. The pan is equipped with a little floater that cuts off power to the unit if the water is about to overflow.

All I had to do was vacuum out the water pan with a wet-dry shop vac and we were back in business.

We all slept in 73 degree bliss last night.

At least she's thinking of me

Daughter is making some huge strides with her drawing and writing.

To encourage her, Wife gives her a few words to learn each day. Wife writes the word on a piece of paper, then Daughter copies it onto her own piece of paper.

Usually after looking at the word once or twice, Daughter learns the word and doesn't need the paper Wife prepared.

So far, she's done her own name, her brother's name and the name of the cat.

Judging by the little piece of paper I found in the kitchen tonight, it looks like I was the subject of today's lesson:

Kickin' it crock pot style

If you touch my kids with a fork today, they just might fall apart.

All of us here at the MBI Estate had the pleasure of slow-roasting in our own juices last night because...

(wait for it)

...the air conditioning on the second floor decided to go haywire yesterday.

And just to put things in context, this is the third week of August. In the South. The muggy, muggy South. In oher words: IT'S HOT.

I tried to work my magic on the thing after dinner last night, but I couldn't make any progress. And that's not a total surprise when you realize that my a/c repair techniques consist of:

1. Sliding the thermostat to each end to see if the air starts blowing
2. Turning the a/c unit on and off at the thermostat
3. Checking the heat pump outside to make sure it's not clogged with debris, like sticks or leaves or a neighbrhood kid
4. Throwing my hands up and saying, "Forget it! What do I know about a/c? I'm just a (insert name of cushy office job here)!"

So today we'll call the repair guys to come out and get the thing running again. In the meantime, I can toddle off to the office and Wife can keep the kids down on the main foor, where he a/c is working fine.

And yes, I know that I've just cursed myself by saying that the a/c is running fine downstairs. I'm sure I'll be posting tomorrow morning about how the downstairs unit has died.

Nashvegas wedding recap

Despite my lifelong dream to sell everything I own and hit the streets in Nashville looking for a recording contract, Wife convinced me yesterday that we should probably drive home and pick up our children.

She said we can go back to Nashville at some point in the future and I can pursue my lifelong dream then. In the meantime, I can learn how to sing and how to play musical instruments. I hear those two skills will help me crack into the biz.

Anyhoo...Yes, the wedding in Nashville was nice. Here's a quick list of thoughts:

- Wife was a bridesmaid and looked absolutely gorgeous. Dress was flattering. Hair was just right. Everything was working for her.

- The happy couple left Sunday morning for a 5-day honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas. We're praying that they're not impacted too severely by this hurricane that has its sights set on Mexico.

- The Holiday Inn Express in Hendersonville, Tenn., puts on an impressive continental breakfast. If you've traveled even a little in your life, you know that breakfast isn't always done well.

- The food at the reception was top-notch. The highlights were the sweet-and-sour meatballs and the prosciutto-wrapped asparagus spears.

- During the ceremony, the pastor gave a short lesson using the story of Jesus turning water into wine. He offered a perspective on that piece of Scripture that no one else I talked to had heard before.

- The father of the bride offered a very moving tribute to Wife's late father during the reception. It was a very nice moment.

- Since the reception wrapped up around 5:30, there was talk of going out in Nashville Saturday night. We declined. Instead, we hung out with the parents of the bride and ate leftover reception food.

- When we got back to the hotel, Wife took 22 bobby pins out of her hair. It was sprayed so thoroughly that it barely moved when she took the pins out.

- We could not believe how big our kids looked when we got to my parents' house to pick them up yesterday. It felt like we had been gone for a year.

- Wife and I were so tired that we barely slept last night. Luckily, there's a beach vacation just around the bend. I'm sure we'll get plenty of rest at the beach with a preschooler and a toddler.

That's it for now. Have a great Monday.

This is what happens when you're trapped in a hotel room with your laptop

The Wife and I are in Nashville for a wedding this weekend. As such, we are enjoying all the amenities the Holiday Inn Express has to offer, including both soft and firm pillows, continental breakfast and cable TV.

We have cable at home, but we subscribe to ghetto cable: we get about 20 channels for $10/month. We booted the "expanded basic" from the house around the time Daughter was born. The purpose was two-fold:

1. We wanted to save some $
2. There's a lot of stuff on TV that wants to steal childhood from children, and we didn't want that stuff in our house

For the most part, we haven't missed the expanded channels. I mean, once you've seen a handful of episodes of Trading Spaces, you've seen them all. But we do miss a few things, like the Saturday morning VH1 Countdown.

In the days before kids, we'd read the paper and drink coffee with the VH1 Countdown on. Then we'd nap or go see a movie or eat in peace and quiet - whatever it is that people without kids do. It's been so long I can't remember.

There's a point here somewhere. Let's see...

Oh yeah. So we were watching the VH1 Countdown in the hotel room this morning and they played the video for Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls."

This Sean Kingston kid is pretty interesting. He's 17 and has a couple of extremely catchy songs on the charts. Part of VH1's intro of the video told about how he makes a point of writing without using explicit lyrics.

Then they played the video.

If you know the song, then you know part of the chorus goes, "You had me suicidal, suicidal when you said, 'It's Over'"

VH1 apparently thought the word "suicidal" was inappropriate and muted it each time it came up in the song, which prompts me to ask the question:

Are we, as a society, such a group of paranoid wusses that we think our kids are going to haul off and do something stupid just because they hear a word in a song?

-and-

Is VH1, which I think is a Viacom brand, so spineless that they just mute the word rather than risk getting sued by the family of someone who does something stupid after hearing the song?

-and-

By muting the word, isn't VH1 essentially saying, "Yes, we would be responsible if someone did something stupid after hearing this song. That's why we're going to just mute the word in question"?

-and-

How is it possible for one blogger to detail in the same post how he: 1) removed cable from his house because there's a bunch of garbage on it that's not good for kids, and 2) chastise a cable network for pulling potential garbage from their network?

I'm a pretty complex dude. By which I mean I'm a hypocrite.

Incidentally, the song isn't even remotely about suicide. If the kid was suicidal when his girl broke up with him, he wouldn't be around to write songs, would he?

Maybe it's time to lay off the coffee and go take my shower.

Because I've been in the market for non-fictitious strength

Some things are just plain funny.

Wife just received a piece of spam email with this as the subject line:

This strength John Barleycorn gives is not fictitious strength

For some reason, that struck me as being one of the coolest email subject lines of all time.

The old is new again

I've finally confirmed that - just like the Bible says - there is nothing new under the sun.

The irrefutable proof of this came when I turned the pages of the Brooks Brothers catalog that arrived yesterday.

Featured within the first 5 pages of the catalog were two ties that I bought six years ago but that had since disappeared from the seedy underworld of men's business apparel.

The ties I own are from different makers, but are the same ones in the new catalog. The first one, which I will call Red With Skinny Blue Stripes, I found at a Polo outlet for $15. The other, Red With Thicker Blue Stripes, is a Tommy Hilfiger tie I found at Steinmart for $10.

Note to self: You have enough red ties with blue stripes.

To buy the ties from Brooks Brothers right now would set me back $170.

Looking like a has-been in these ties for the last six years has been TOTALLY WORTH IT, because for one brief season, I will once again be in style.

I took my rug in for service

For those of you who know me, it might come as a surprise to you that I do not wear a toupee.

My thick mane is the real deal, even though most of the time it looks like something you might see on a 1970s game show host. But since it is all natural, that means I have to get it cut periodically.

On Monday, I decided to try a new place: SportClips. I don't have a regular place to go since I gave up on the pricey, by-appointment-only, salon I used to patronize about a year ago.

I learned upon my arrival that SportClips is targeted exclusively at men. The dozen or so TVs broadcasting football games and heavy use of red, black and gray (a la Craftsman tools) were dead giveaways to this marketing strategy.

Overall, I had a good experience at SportClips. Here are a few things I noticed:

• The store is decorated in a locker room theme. I'm sure the executives who picked that motif thought it would evoke thoughts of pro sports. Personally, I've always been a little distrustful of guys who really like being in locker rooms.
• Their system for managing customer flow seemed to be a little off. At one point, there were five of us in the waiting area and no one back with the stylists. I'd think that they would want to manage the flow in a way that keeps chairs coming open every five minutes or so, if only to give the impression that things are moving right along.
• I was impressed that the girl cutting my hair didn't automatically reach for the electric shears. She actually cut my hair with scissors, which was a refreshing change.
• Services are bundled into packages with names like the MVP and the Triple Play, which I thought were names of menu items at Denny's. The bundles consist of haircut, shampoo, and neck massage in various combinations. My hair cutter seemed surprised when I explained that I just wanted to get my hair cut and get out as quickly as possible. I'm not sure why a place targeted at guys has packages that involve spending a lot of extra time on shampooing and nonsense like that.
• Compared to the el cheapo place I've been going, I was amazed at how much the owner must have spent to build out his store. There were so many TVs and so much locker room stuff that, even though they charge more than the cheap places, I wonder how good the economics of the place are.

Obviously the lines between my real life and the case studies I'm reading for school are getting very blurry. And the lines between sleep time and awake time are getting blurry, as I have just noticed that it is 12:10 a.m. - way past my bedtime. Good night.

Our little signmaker

Daughter has an assertive personality.

That's a nice way of saying she's bossy.

Here at the new house, Son has been playing with the cabinets. In particular, he likes to open the two tall pantry doors, since that's where his snacks are kept.

Daughter is not a fan of this behavior, and after asking him several times to cease and desist, she has had to resort to tougher measures to keep him out of the pantry.

So she sat at her little table, grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil and made this sign. We asked her to read it to us, and she told us it says:

KEEP OUT, BROTHER!

Then she taped it to the pantry, where it has been hanging ever since.

What's lamer than lame?

Is it being married that makes me this way? Or is it having two females in the house?

Could there really be enough estrogen floating through the air here to overpower my raw, almost primal, manliness?

How else do you explain that I'm capable of tearing up while watching...

(pause for effect)

...golf on TV?

Seems a little silly, no?

I first noticed this strange phenomenon in 1997, when Tiger Woods won his first Masters. When he finished his final round, he walked off the green and into his father's arms and cried his eyes out.

That gave me goosebumps because I had just watched a young life's work come to a very impressive result. My eyes were still dry, though.

In the years since, a number of the icons of the game have played their final rounds in various venues. Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, in particular, have played their last competitive rounds at St. Andrews and Augusta National, perhaps the two best-known golf courses in the world.

Each time, the TV network poured on the sappy "this is the end of an era" junk with footage from past victories. They really laid on the emotion, and that's when I began to soften up. My eyes got teary.

At this year's Masters, Zach Johnson walked off the 18th green to hug his wife and kiss his newborn baby. In a brief interview, he thanked Jesus Christ for walking with him during the round. Family man + newborn baby + strong believer = grown man tearing up in front of the TV.

This past Sunday, Tiger Woods won the PGA Championship. It's his 13th major and his second win in as many weeks. The win pushed him even further into the history books.

And it was his first win since his daughter was born about a month ago.

The camera followed him up to the scorer's tent, where he signed his scorecard and made his win official.

Waiting patiently in the background, swaying back and forth in constant motion in only the way a parent can, was his wife and his little baby girl.

And I got teary.

I have reached new depths of lame. So to toughen myself up a bit, I'm off to watch the first half hour of Saving Private Ryan a few times.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Furniture Purchase

Keanu Reeves waited on me at Office Depot on Saturday.

I went to buy some furniture for my office in the new house. Once I made my selections, I stood around in the furniture area looking like I needed help for about 10 minutes. No help came, so I asked someone for help. She, in turn, got on her radio and asked for help helping me.

Eventually Keanu showed up. Okay, so it wasn't Keanu. But this guy had the same vacant look and a similar hair-do.

I told him which pieces I wanted to buy and then he disappeared to get them from the back.

When I returned, I caught him out of the corner of my eye. I was looking at a magazine killing time and heard him saying, "Hey dude."

I kept flipping through my magazine.

"Hey dude," I heard him say again.

I finally realized that he was talking to me. It took me a while to catch on, though, because in all my years in the business world, I've never had someone use "Hey dude" to get my attention.

Keanu escorted me to the register, where I was helped by a 19 year old girl who, like her male counterpart, hadn't had much experience in the customer service arena.

I could write an entirely different post on my experience writing a (gasp!) check, but for now let's wrap things up with what I feel could be some good pointers for these young Office Depot folks:

1) Your customer is "Sir" or "Ma'am". If you happen to know their last name, you can call them Mr. (Last Name). That's it. Your customer - not your store manager or district manager - is your boss. As such, your customer should be given the respect due to a boss.

2) Try staffing the areas with the big-ticket items. The school supplies and mark-down items had plenty of coverage while I was there. I spent 30 minutes in the store and paid $700 for my order. With a little staffing in the furniture area, I could have picked the stuff, had it brought out from the back and paid in about 15 minutes. That would have freed up an additional 15 minutes for Keanu to put the hard sell on someone looking at a 99-cent spiral notebook.

3) Explain the check verification process to your customer. The girl at the register took my check, scanned it in the register, and then called someone on the phone and gave them my name, address, checking account and routing number, and driver's license number. All of this happened in earshot of anyone standing at or near the register. I had her explain to me why she needed all that information, and it makes perfect sense. But it's probably best to do it discreetly for the customer's protection.

Okay. I'm off my soapbox for now.

The alumni newsletter, version two

Alrighty folks. Time for second half of the Alumni Newsletter meme.

If our DSL here at the new house wasn't so slow, I'd link to the previous post and link to BooMama, where I found the meme. But it is sooooo slooooow.

If you read the Version One, you know it's the glowing, picture of perfection stuff that we all send in to our college alumni magazines. The second version is supposed to be a little darker and a little more true.

I haven't yet decided if I'm going to go to the trouble of adding any truth to this one. But here goes:

Version Two
MyBestInvest recently landed his fifth job since graduating nine years ago. In his new role, he will be responsible for the timely production and delivery of french fries and milkshakes. He has been told that if he works really hard, there's potential for him to one day be responsible for the manufacture of both sweet and unsweet tea.

MyBestInvest has made lackluster use of his political science degree. His pat response when asked about current affairs is, "They're all crazy." He particularly likes this response when discussing the Middle East. He is totally out of touch with the political system, but occasionally tunes into right-wing talk radio. When he wants to hear how Democrats feel about things, he simply turns on the nightly news on CBS, NBC, ABC or CNN.

MyBestInvest has been married to Wife for eight years. For their 10th anniversary, MyBestInvest is planning to fly Wife to the Poconos, where he will make them sit through a timeshare sales presentation in order to get the weekend paid for. Once the sales presentation is over, they will spend three days and two nights in a deluxe suite with a tub shaped like a champagne glass and heart-shaped bed. She will spend the weekend in the room alone, too embarrassed to accompany a man who wears a fanny pack at all hours.

At their wedding reception, MyBestInvest insisted that their first dance be The Humpty Dance.

MyBestInvest and Wife have two children. Both are smarter, better looking, and have accomplished more in their lives than their father.

MyBestInvest has traded cars every three months since graduating and consequently owes $166,000 on a 2007 Honda Accord. He thinks health insurance is a scam and doesn't trust his mailman.

He eats more kielbasa than one man should be allowed to eat and wouldn't know a green vegetable if it jumped up and smacked him in the face.

His hairline has receded significantly since college, but not enough to make him bald. Just enough to remind him that he's not 20 anymore.

Using the skills he learned at the college newspaper, MyBestInvest recycles the same four jokes on his blog, My Best Investments. Despite the mediocrity of his work, he has pieced together a respectable following of readers, all of whom either view him as a circus sideshow attraction or as a mission outreach.

MyBestInvest litters when he drives. He's a horrible tipper in restaurants. He refuses to listen to any music other than the Bon Jovi album Slippery When Wet. He cheats at Monopoly. He gets mad when his pastor is "too preachy." He's terrified of cell phones.

++++++

That's all I've got. If you want to do the Alumni Newsletter meme, consider yourself tagged. But you may want to trace the thing back a few steps and see how it's really supposed to work. That's it for now!

The alumni newsletter

The tiny shred of imagination that I can harness from time to time has eluded me lately, so I've been hearing a droning "Duh..." in my head for the past few weeks.

I'm not too concerned. The "Duh..." sound has been there for about 30 years. It's just been louder these last few weeks.

That's why I stole this great idea. It's called the Alumni Newsletter meme. Or something like that. I'm not good with details.

Anyhow, here's what you're supposed to do:

The idea is to write two blurbs for the alumni newsletter, updating your life. The first should be the perky, show-offy kind that everyone writes. The second should be the darker side of honest.

I'm even going to take it a step further and remove any shred of truth from both pieces. You should be able to glean absolutely nothing about me from the next two items, but it will be a fun exercise for me.

Version 1
MyBestInvest recently joined the PGA Tour as the first-ever non-playing player. In his new role, he will be responsible for showing up at the nation's most exclusive country clubs, wearing nice golf clothes, eating hot dogs and collecting large checks. From time to time, he will be asked to pick up a golf club.

MyBestInvest makes great use of his political science degree and has invented an entirely new type of political science. Using techniques he learned in the college computer lab, he created a business which pays him $1,500 each time the words "Barack Obama" appear on the Internet.

Using knowledge gained working for the college newspaper, MyBestInvest publishes witty, heartfelt content daily at his blog, My Best Investments. In front of computer screens around the world, readers are so moved by his content that they weep openly. Many readers are so moved that they experience a condition known as getting "My Best Invested" which is a cross between post-traumatic stress disorder and rickets.

MyBestInvest and Wife have been blissfully married for almost eight years. MyBestInvest is the greatest thing that has happened to Wife. She swoons when he enters the room. Inspired by MyBestInvest's writing prowess, Wife recently signed a seven-figure deal to write a book about life with the perfect husband.

MyBestInvest and Wife have two children, a three year-old daughter and one year-old son. The children wear hoods and long clothing in public because their beauty would destroy the self-image of children everywhere. MyBestInvest's children have produced a best-selling set of DVDs teaching manners to other toddlers. They whisper and clean up after themselves in restaurants.

MyBestInvest is the president of every civic club in his town. Billy Graham calls him for spiritual guidance. Lance Armstrong has been emailing MyBestInvest for years looking for advice on overcoming adversity, but MyBestInvest is often too busy providing free root canals to blind, HIV-positive bald eagles.

MyBestInvest will be the next president of our distinguished alma mater. This fall, the school will be renamed MyBestInvest University.

***
Alright. That was fun. I'll do Version 2 tomorrow.

Let it snow

It gets better.

I was providing some training in one of our company's other locations yesterday, away from the scene of the horrible bloodbath in my office.

One of the folks who works in my main office drove over for the training and gave me an update on how the clean-up efforts are coming along.

She told me the carpet cleaners had come and bleached a big spot in the carpet. Just in case I wanted to forget that my place had been covered in Type O Negative, I've now got a big bleach spot to remind me.

Apparently some blood also got either onto or into (I'm not sure which) the lighting fixture. That blood dried over night and began FLAKING OFF AND FALLING ONTO MY FURNITURE.

Thank heavens I didn't trot in there with my open coffee cup, because it's now SNOWING BLOOD in my office. And I'm no doctor, but I can't think it's very healthy to breath flakes of someone else's dried blood.

That's it. Just thought you'd appreciate an update.

I suppose it could be worse

I got this call from my office yesterday:

Office: "We just wanted to give you a heads-up that things might look a little different in your office when you come in tomorrow."

Me: "Okay."

I pondered all the meanings that "different" could possibly carry.

Maybe I had been promoted and they had added a flat screen TV to my office. Or one of those little ferris wheel things they cook hot dogs on at convenience stores.

Or maybe they decided that they no longer needed my services and all my stuff would be in a box on the curb.

Me: "Different how?"

Office: "Well, we cleaned up some stuff in there this afternoon. Some of your notebooks were thrown away but most of your stuff is still there."

I was perplexed by the need for clean-up in my office, since our building contractors handed me the key to it only 10 days ago. I'm not messy enough to screw up an office that quickly.

Office: "You see, the air conditioning guy was working in there this afternoon and he made a mess."

I was picturing a few drops of condensation from the A/C unit or some dust from the ceiling tiles.

Office: "He cut himself while he was working on the unit and BLED ALL OVER YOUR STUFF."

(Emphasis added by me.)

Office: "We wiped down everything we could and threw out the stuff that was just TOO BLOODY TO KEEP. And we'll have the cleaning crew go over your office a little extra tonight. Anyhow, just wanted to let you know."

Books don't have feelings, do they?

As I mentioned in my most recent post, Wife and I have turned over a new leaf. We are trying to channel all of the energy that we've spent hording things into getting rid of things.

Our new house was built in 1913 with features that allow for the presence of live-in domestic help. In particular, there is a back staircase that runs from the second floor down into the kitchen, and there is a cozy little bedroom with a tiny bathroom at the end of the second floor.

(Just as an aside: Whatever happened to the days when it wasn't politically incorrect to have live-in domestic help?)

The cozy little room at the end of the second floor was used by Wife's dad as a study. It's a great little place for a man to do what men do when they have a space all their own: think about how to provide for their families, how to properly raise their kids, and how many different meats would go on a sandwich.

This little room will be my office someday. And "someday" depends only upon how quickly I can sort through the many boxes piled up in there.

Yesterday Wife unloaded boxes upon boxes of books onto the shelves in the office. There were college textbooks of mine, novels that Wife has read, and a mish-mash of other books. For instance, if anyone needs a copy of Microsoft Money 99 for Dummies, I'm your man. Likewise for Coming of Age in Mississippi and Gideon's Trumpet.

Today we took dozens of those books back off the shelves and boxed them up. I put them in the back of my car and hauled them to our town's used book store. Twenty minutes after arriving, I left with about 40 fewer books and $56 in store credit.

Being new to the used book store scene, I didn't quite know what to do with the books I brought that they wouldn't accept for trade-in.

"Do I just leave these here?" I asked the lady behind the counter.

She explained that they could take the books, but that she couldn't guarantee that anything good would become of them. Most likely they would simply be thrown away.

For a moment she had me thinking that I had brought a box of puppies or an unwanted baby to leave behind. Could I really leave them here not knowing for certain that they would be cared for?

"You could take them to the Salvation Army or Goodwill," she offered. "They may be able to give you a receipt so that you can take a tax deduction."

Then I remembered that we were talking about a box of stinky old books. And that the time it would take me to make four different stops trying to unload this heap of books is worth exponentially more than whatever sort of tax break I could glean from the deal.

"Okay. I'm just going to leave them right here," I told the bookstore lady.

Then I got out of there before she could catch me to try to change my mind.

I drove home feeling 50 lbs. lighter and comforted in knowing that $56 of store credit will keep my kids in books for a long, long time.

Moving, Part One

As seems to be the case pretty consistently around here, anytime I do anything of actual consequence I can't condense it all into a sensible post. With that in mind, here's a hodge-podge of thoughts from the last few days:

***
I'd like to shake the hand of the person who came up with the idea of having someone else move your stuff for you. Actually, I'd actually just like to wave respectfully to that guy, because his handshake would probably kill me.

***
One of the guys moving us was named Huff. I learned this bit of trivia over the course of a few hours, because every time this guy would go into the moving van to pick something up, one of his counterparts would shout, "Cream Puff Huff! Cream Puff Huff!"

***
The guy shouting, "Cream Puff Huff!" was one of the largest men I have ever seen. Wife and I referred to him as Big Guy all day. He was also one of the smelliest people I have encountered. But he had a heart of gold. Big Guy was my favorite of all four movers.

***
Big Guy went home with a red gingham couch that we were ready to part with. I hope it matches the neon Budweiser sign in his living room.

***
Over the course of three truckloads and hundreds of pieces moved, the movers only damaged one piece of furniture - Son's crib.

***
Wife's mom brought coffee and breakfast for the movers to eat. She had it ready for them when they arrived. They settled in to eat about two minutes after I signed their contract saying I'd be paying them $100 per hour until the work was done.

***
It didn't really bother me that they ate on the clock. I wanted my movers to be happy. Just like I want the cooks in the restaurants I frequent to be happy. And the pilots who fly the planes I ride on.

***
Our furniture actually works in the new house. We were afraid we would have to either ditch our current furniture or do a bunch of painting to get things to look right. So far, we've only had to paint Son's room. We'll probably do the master bedroom and the kitchen too. But overall, we've been pleased with how well our stuff works here.

***
We were extremely convicted on moving day by the amount of stuff we have managed to accumulate over seven years of marriage and almost four years of parenthood.

For the first few years of our marriage, we relied heavily on hand-me-down furniture since we hardly had two nickels to rub together. We took literally anything people would give us.

We're also both pack rats, so we've got a bunch of stuff we haul around for sentimental reasons. As of Wednesday, those days are over. The amount of junk those guys moved for us was truly embarrassing, and I think Wife and I both committed mentally to getting the clutter out of our lives.

***
It was exciting to watch our furniture fill the new house. The more pieces the movers hauled in, the more it began to feel like home.

***
Once the movers finished, Wife and I headed to our favorite little Mexican place for chips and salsa and a margarita. Then we hit Bed Bath and Beyond for a trash can and dust ruffle. We opted for the $19 trash can over the $129 model.

If anyone can explain how you get $129 of value from a trash can, please jump in with a comment.

***
We set the kids' bedrooms up when we got home from our Mexican meal. Stocking their rooms with all their familiar stuff was the best part of the day.

***
On Thursday morning, I discovered that the creakiest hardwood floors in the entire galaxy are located in our bedroom. And the creakiest board is just outside the bathroom door, about 18 inches from Wife's pillow.

***
That's it for now. As soon as I can find the camera cable, I'll try to find some pics to put up.

Be good.

This feeble body aches

We did it.

All* the stuff from the old house is here in the new house.

I'm going back to the office today, and Wife is bringing the kids home from the World's Most Incredible Grandparents' house to see their new rooms.

I'll tell you all about the move later, but for right now I need to hunt for my razor and shower stuff. I think the folks at my office will appreciate the time I'm going to spend locating the shower stuff.

Thanks for all the encouraging comments during these last few days!

* There's a closet on the patio full of gardening stuff that I still need to move over.