Tonight, my wife was watching one of her favorite shows, Rescue Me. We both enjoy Dennis Leary’s humor, and this show is a lot of fun. Leary’s character has been juggling several different women with an estranged wife and a newborn at home. This is one aspect of the show I just can’t enjoy. I know we are supposed to see his character with all of his ugly warts exposed, but I tire easily of this sort of prattle. She likes Desperate Housewives too. Shows where cheating spouses are a central theme just annoy me. I find it difficult to enjoy anything else the show has to offer.

I may be wired differently than most men. Within a few minutes of meeting someone, especially women, I find some way to bring up my wife in the conversation. It’s completely subconscious. A friend of mine once took me to a club where we met several VERY attractive women. This one particular young lady had taken an interest in me and within five minutes I was telling her all about my beautiful young bride. I am completely uncomfortable in situations like that.

Right after Lindsay Lohan came of legal age, and before she became anorexic, I was having this wonderful dream. I was at a party and she was there. She was dressed in a green satin soccer uniform, and she was gorgeous. In my dream, we talked and laughed. We went outside and kicked a soccer ball around, and fell in the soft grass laughing. She rolled over and leaned in to kiss me. I put my finger on her lips and said, “I can’t, hon, I’m married.”

IN MY OWN DREAM!
What kind of fair is that?

Walking up the driveway this evening I found this beauty emerging from his skin and drying his wings. Once every 2-3 years, this particular brood of cicada surfaces to moult their skins and mate for two weeks. Then they die. Science geek that I am, I watched him for 15-20 minutes before I had the wherewithal to go and get a camera. He’ll spend the next two weeks hopping from tree to tree advertising with that long chirp that cicadas are famous for. It translates roughly into, “Here I am ladies! Come and get it!” Kind of how I met my wife. He’s a little early, so I hope he finds a mate.

I am an avid reader. I read the cereal box at breakfast, every piece of junkmail that comes to my house, even my bathroom looks like a library. I almost always have a half-dozen or so books lying around that I am currently bouncing back and forth with. I don’t know if it is simply the joy of escaping with a book, the reading process itself, or if I just crave more information and stimulation.

I find that with my day job, there are many hours spent on the road desperately trying to entertain myself. I listen to talk radio, but by Tuesday, unless something major has happened, they have said everything important they are going to say that week. I rehash conversations I have had, or rehearse ones I want to have. I even fantasize about stories and books I have read or want to write. After a short while, though, this begins to bore me and I just resign myself to singing along with the radio.

Enter “Books on Tape”. I often wish I had a copy of one of the current books I’m reading on a recording that I could plug in and hear as I drive those long LONG miles. When my wife and I were dating, we had the unabridged version of Anne Rice’s “Servant of the Bones.” Listening to it together proved to be a bit of a challenge. Whenever one of us had to go somewhere without the other, there was a terrible temptation to listen ahead. Dang she would get mad at me for that. Another problem was arriving at our destination during an exciting part of the story. I can’t tell you how many times we ended up driving around the block until the end of a chapter. With gasoline prices where they are now, that would be way too expensive on our limited budget. For me, though, the biggest problem was that there were no pages to turn. There is no way to quietly enjoy the solitude of a good book-on-tape. These are the things that have hitherto prevented me from checking out an audio book from the library when I go on the road.

Lately, I’ve had an epiphany. There are a ton of books out there that are good stories written badly, books that would be good if you didn’t have to drudge through the writer’s style. A great example of this for me is Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear saga. With some 500 pages, half of the book is dedicated to describing the native flora and fauna of the Neanderthal world. It just makes me want to scream, “GET ON WITH IT!”

Other types of books that would be great for me in this format are instructional books. I could learn economics, history, politics, self-improvement, etc. This is something I believe I should definitely look into. I could start with Spanish, but since we’ve been teaching the baby American Sign Language, I believe I’ll start with The Joy of Sign.

Wednesday night television bites. Just a few years ago, the now defunct WB had Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel on Wednesday nights. The wife and I looked forward to that every week. When that was gone, the wife began watching Gilmore Girls. Now that’s gone too. What are we left with? Crap, that’s what.

So anyway, the wife and I ended up watching The Celebrity Fit Club marathon on Vh1. If you’re not familiar with it, this is a reality show where former famous people get on to lose weight. We get to watch them laugh, fight and cry in their struggle to get from “snot” to “hot”. I don’t care if Maureen “Marsha Marsha Marsha” McCormick did get down to 116 pounds, she and Tiffany still look old.

What is this fascination with dieting reality shows anyway? Celebrity Fit Club, The Biggest Loser, I’m a Big Fat Fattie… for this kind of entertainment, I can go jiggle in front of a mirror. The upside of this was that it prompted my beautiful young bride to bake some cookies. Nothing like watching people work out while consuming Domino’s Pizza, beer, and cookies.

I’ve always enjoyed this painting by Salvador Dalí. I have no idea what he meant to say while painting it, nor do I care much. The feeling I get from it is how time just melts together. The days just run one into another.


As a child, summer lasted forever and Christmas was always a year away. Now I wake up and find a whole month has flown by while I’m still trying to get my dreams lined up. Child psychologists refer to this phenomenon(doo doo do do doot) as “Kid minutes”. 5 minutes seem like an hour to a five year old. At 36, an hour seems like five minutes. Days go by like lightning. But day in day out, there’s still that sense of waiting. The sense that it’ll be better tomorrow. I’ll get to that just as soon as I get through with this. And then it’s July…


“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” – John Lennon