Blood from a stone.

We had a blood drive at work the other day, and so I like to get out of work for a little while do my good deed for the month and donate.  The last time they came around, I had a bit of a cold so I had to skip it, but this time I was in pretty good shape.  

They're always after me because of my type O blood.  I get phone calls, and follow-ups, and reminder e-mails about how many lives I'm going to save…sometimes it's more of a guilt-trip than those abused animal commercials on TV.  OK, nothing is worse than those, but you get the idea.  I usually feel really guilty when they call, so I sign up to bleed into a bag and adopt a greyhound or something.   

The day I was supposed to donate, I did something incredibly stupid.  Well,  the stupidity happened the night before, and then just continued on to the next day.  I had driven the convertible to work the previous day and when I got home, the garage door had been locked so I parked and went inside, figuring I'd put the car away later.  Not so much.  Instead,  I forgot the car was out there, top down, and it rained all night.  Really hard.  Buckets.  Then the next morning I just left in the Honda and didn't even notice the other car sitting out there in the driveway making pathetic sloshing sounds.  To be fair, it was still pretty dark when I left, but when my wife called me at work and told me the entire thing was a giant puddle of water, I wasn't real happy with myself.   Also, it was supposed to rain all day again.  My wife can't drive a stick, and didn't have the keys, so all she could do before she left for work was throw a tarp over it.  As a result, I decided to head home at lunch time and at least mop up what I could and get the car inside before the coming storms made it worse.  

This is really just a long way of saying that I showed up for the blood thing unannounced at around 10:30 instead of at my scheduled time of 12:45.  I figured if they had that much of a chub for my Type O, they'd take it when I offered it, and they did.  The only drawback was that I was really hungry, since I normally grab something to eat around 5:30 on my way to work and then eat lunch around 11:30 at the latest.  

They were after me to do the "double red-cell" thing too, which I guess means they filter your blood through a machine that extracts the red blood cells and pumps the plasma back in, but I'm not down with that. Something about having my blood outside my body like it's standing on the corner looking for a job, and then having it pumped back in skeeves me out a little.  It's too much like science fiction.  At least if I'm just donating whole blood, I can lie there and pretend like it's 1453 and the barber-surgeon is just taking a little off the top. 

I was antsy, so the whole prep thing was killing me.  First they made me read the booklet (which looked like it had been handled by a classroom of first-graders after their snack break) and then I had to get tested for anemia and answer a questionnaire about how many men I've screwed (none), how many needles I've shared (none) and whether or not I had been out of the country or in juvie for more than 72 hours.  I'm not sure what happens there at hour #70, but I'm glad I never have to find out.  Then they made me answer the same questions again, only this time on a computer screen. The whole thing was maddeningly repetitive and proceeded at a snail's pace, mostly because I showed up unannounced.  They were nice about it, even though I probably screwed up their schedule a little bit.  They say they take walk-ins but I'm not sure they actually like to.

They finally hooked me up, and luckily the 12-year-old girl who put the needle in my arm was pretty good at it, and I dropped a pint in a little over six minutes, which I think was a new record for me. Apparently even my blood was in a hurry to get the hell out of there.  As she was disconnecting me from the apparatus, she hit me in the eye with an errant hose or something and got really embarrassed.  I told her it was fine,  but it would be pretty unlucky of me to lose a perfectly good eye while giving blood.  She left me there for a bit, and then came back and asked me how I was feeling.  "Pretty good, except for the eye," I said.  I'm not sure she appreciated my humor.

Since I hadn't eaten, I was a little light-headed afterwards, so I sat down and drank a bottle of water and ate some ass-raisins.  I'm not sure where they got them from, but they were the worst, most juicy raisins I ever ate.  It's like they weren't quite done being grapes.  I only chose them because of their sugar content, but after eating half the bag I switched to a pretzel, which was non-juicy. Then I packed up my shit and headed for the car.  I got home just in time to pull the car in the garage before it started coming down hard.  

After I got home I emptied my pockets and found the little info sheet they give you with all the "after donating" tips on it.  This paragraph made me laugh:

"Injury may result from dizziness or fainting after donation.  If you developed a cut as a result of a fall, you may want to request evaluation for stitches, especially if the injury is on your face.  Serious head injuries are uncommon after donation but may require immediate medical attention." 

So basically they're saying, "Hey, thanks for your blood.  Oh, by the way, if you fall and cut your face wide open, you probably should get it sewed up."  That's really good information to know.  

Other weird stuff I stumbled on this week:

Why is this a real thing?  Are people that concerned about their child's "unique astrological chart" that this hot crazy lady can actually make a living off of them?  Whenever I see something like this I always think, "I wonder if they really believe that shit, or if they just saw an opportunity to rip off gullible people?" Then I got a little sad because I realized I would probably respect her more if she was knowingly ripping people off.  That's pretty cynical. But then again, I'm a Gemini and therefore I can see both sides of the issue.

The other thing that made me laugh today was this:

Fifth Third Bank.  The curious bank.  What crack-smoking ad agency came up with that tagline?  Not sure about you guys, but I really don't want my bank to be curious about me.


"Can I help you, Mr. Virgil? 
"How do you know my name?  Who told you my name? I NEVER SAID MY NAME!"
"Don't be upset.  We're just curious about you.  So… are you wearing the boxer briefs today or going commando?"
"TOO CURIOUS! TOO CURIOUS!"


I don't want phone calls at home asking me how I'm feeling and if I need anything and how my garden is doing.  In fact, I want them to stay out of my life unless I specifically ask them to provide me with a banking service and I contact them to get it.  The last thing I want is some teller at Fifth Third asking me inane questions about my personal life when all I really want her to do is read the note and start stuffing the money in the sack.

p.s. - does anyone know why the EFF the spacing is all off on this blogger editor?  Looks fine in the editing window, but all sorts of weird spacing when it's published.

Blue Light Special.

I was sitting in my room reading a comic book when Markie walked in. "Whatcha doin?" he asked. "What's it look like?" I replied.  Markie was unfazed by my sarcasm. "You wanna ride bikes?" he asked. "We could go over to Bumby's bakery or maybe to Midas Muffler to get a soda. Or we could go to K-Mart. I gotta get some BBs."

I wasn’t sure if he really needed them, or if he was just rubbing it in my face that he was allowed to have a BB gun and I wasn’t. I thought about it. A man has to know his limitations after all, and at the time, my limitations were that I could go to Bumby's and Midas because they were both on the same side of Central Avenue, but I wasn't allowed to cross it on my bike.

Yes, I was ten years old and barely allowed to leave my yard. At least that's what it seemed like to me at the time. K-Mart was definitely out because that meant I had to cross Route 155, which my mother somehow believed would result in my instant death.

"OK, I'll go to Midas with you." I said. "I want to go up to Record Town and get that Stealer's Wheel 45 anyway." Stuck in the Middle with You had been stuck in the middle of my head ever since I heard it on Casey Kasem the previous Saturday, and I wanted to get in on the ground floor. They were going to be the next Beatles; I was sure of it.

We jumped on our bikes and took our normal route to Midas, which involved riding through the woods past the big hill and following a skinny trail through a dusty, tumbleweed strewn field that eventually popped out onto the sidewalk of Central Ave. There were easier ways to get there, but none that involved riding through wooded trails at top speed while deer flies tried to snack on your head. I know that doesn't sound like fun, but it was.

I'm not sure what the guys working on cars in the muffler shop thought of all the kids that continuously showed up to raid their soda machine, but we didn't give it a thought. Knowledge of the machine had been passed from kid to kid, and we had only just found out about it the summer before. The soda was cheap and ice cold, and they had Orange Crush. What was there to think about? When we first left my house, neither one of us had been especially thirsty, but by the time we coasted up outside Midas, we were sweating through our shirts and an ice-cold soda was, at that moment, the thing we wanted most in the world.

We leaned our bikes up against the side of the building and walked around front to the machine. "Whatcha gettin'?" Markie asked. "Same thing I always get," I replied. "Orange Crush." I dropped my quarter in, opened the skinny glass door, and looked for the Orange Crush logo on the vertical row of bottle caps. It wasn't there. I scanned the bottle tops again, and realized that in its place was Nehi Orange. Not as good, in my professional opinion, but I wasn't going to pass it up.* It was still better than that Dr. Pepper crap Markie liked. I grabbed the neck of the bottle and yanked it out hard. I popped the cap off with the opener in the front of the machine, and heard it fall onto the pile of other dead bottle caps somewhere deep inside. I took a long, sweet swig as Markie repeated the process and pulled out his bottle of foulness that tasted like a mixture of rotting cherries and root beer. I didn't understand Dr Pepper then, and I don't understand it now.

The only drag about buying sodas at Midas was that the bottles were refillable, so we had to drink them there, and then put the empties in the wooden rack or the owner got pissed at us. I think he might have had to pay for the missing bottles or something. They were twice as thick as a normal bottle and they stayed cold forever. We walked around the building and sat down in the sun next to our bikes, our backs resting up against the wall, and drank our hard-earned sodas. We looked at each other and grinned like we had just accomplished the impossible. We had ridden our bikes to Midas Muffler and purchased Soda of the Gods. It was a good day so far.

"Bruuuuuaarp!" I said.

"Blarrrruuuuuhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaapp!" replied Markie.

"Beat that," he said.

I couldn’t, and we both knew it. When we finished drinking our sodas, we dutifully placed our empties in their slots in one of the wooden crates, making sure that the guys in the garage saw us do it. It was like we were placing an offering at the mouth of the volcano to appease Pele. We wanted to make sure we were welcomed next time — if not with open arms, exactly, then at least with a surly grunt and a nod of the head.

We hopped back on our bikes and took the "back way" to the record store. It probably added another ten minutes to our ride, but it was deemed safer by my mother because it meant we didn’t have to travel directly down the shoulder of Route 155, thereby saving us from becoming I-told-you-so road kill. Ironically, it also meant that we had to cut through some kind of shit hole trucking company storage yard where they parked unhooked semi trailers that were stacked so close they were almost touching each other.

There was no pavement, just a hard-packed clay with a covering of powdery sand. It wasn't so bad if the weather was calm, but even the slightest breeze meant that this dust was lifted into the air and accelerated to an insane velocity by the wind tunnel effect created between the trailers, then flung directly into your eyes and nose as you rode into it. You had zero side-to-side visibility when riding between these trailers, and there was so much truck traffic in and out of the main entrance that, windy or not, the entire place existed in the yellow haze of a permanent dust cloud. Most of the time when you cut through the lot, you had to be extremely careful not to get run over by an 18-wheeler. And you kept your mouth closed, or you'd be crunching sand between your teeth for hours afterward.

When we finally made it out of the main gate, it was only a short ride around the corner to the record store. Markie didn’t have much interest in music, so I went in by myself and picked up my single. While I was in there, I picked up the new Grand Funk single, too; a new song I liked called We're an American Band. It seemed like a good idea because the singles were 99 cents each or 2 for $1.59. I had a stack of 45's that would have made you drool.

When I came out of the store, Markie was sitting astride his bike, counting his money. "Whatcha doin'?" I asked.

"Seeing if I have enough for BBs," he replied. "You wanna go, or are you gonna wait here?"

He knew about The Limitation too, and was, in his own way, casually inviting me to ignore it without coming right out and saying so. It had to be my decision. I looked across the street at K-mart. There was hardly any traffic on the road, and I had just avoided death by 18-wheeler, so I was feeling pretty invincible. It was only two lanes wide for god's sake. We'd be across and back before we saw car one. "Yeah, I'll go," I said nonchalantly, in direct opposition to my mother's rule #234 for not getting killed.

So we crossed, and believe it or not, nothing bad happened.

We rode the shoulder for while until we reached K-mart, locked our bikes outside the store and went in. We messed around in the sporting goods department for a while, and then Markie picked up his BBs. When we came out of the store, there was a kid checking out Markie's bike. That damned Schwinn Orange Krate wasn't exactly inconspicuous. The kid was big, and older than us, and had a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Against our better judgement, we walked over to our bikes, all the while pretending he wasn't there.

"Nice Bike," he said. We ignored him and unlocked our bikes. We stood them up and got on. Just when we thought we were home free, he put his hand on Markie's handle bars, stopping him. "Hey kid," he said. "Didn't you hear me? I said nice bike. Whattaya say I take it for a spin."

It wasn't really a question. Markie immediately (and probably correctly) decided that if he agreed, it would be the last time he ever saw his Orange Krate. "I don't think so," he replied. "We gotta go." I must have looked like I was going to make a run for it, because the kid turned his attention to me.

"Where do you think you're goin, faggot?" he asked me. "You don't leave until I tell you to leave."

I stopped where I was.

"What's in the bag?" he asked, tossing the cigarette away. "Give it."

I reluctantly handed him the bag with the two 45's in it and he opened it up, momentarily letting go of Markie's handlebars. He took the records out of the bag and made a show of sliding them out of the slip covers and flipping them across the parking lot like frisbees. "Hey!" I said. "I just bought those!" He just crumpled up the slip covers and laughed.

It was that moment that Markie made a break for it. His bike was fast, and the kid had been distracted by the obvious pleasure he took in trashing my new records.

"ASSHOLLLLLE!" Markie yelled over his shoulder as he gathered speed. The kid spun away from me and ran after Markie, intent on not letting him get away after such a serious transgression. I jumped on my bike and pedaled in the other direction, then swung wide, picked up some speed, turned around and headed back toward the highway, behind both of them and about 50 feet to the right.

The kid suddenly gave up on Markie, who was easily out-distancing him, and turned back toward me, trying to intercept me as I passed. He grabbed at my bike and missed by inches, and we were home free. Wild laughter involuntarily erupted from my lips as I gained speed. My heart was pounding in my chest and I was pedaling with everything I had, heading toward Route 155. Markie was about a hundred yards in front of me, and he zipped across the street without stopping, perfectly timing a break in the traffic. When I got to the shoulder of the road, I wasn't so lucky. I looked both ways and it was nothing but cars whizzing by, one faster than the next. I looked behind me and the kid was catching up fast. Markie was on the other side, watching everything unfold. "COME ON!" he yelled. "Hurry up! He's coming!"

"I CAN'T!" I yelled back, frantically watching the cars speed by. "There's too much tr----"

A hand grabbed the collar of my shirt and the next thing I knew I was lying on my back tangled up in my bike.

"Get up," the kid said. "Get up and get your fuckin' ass over here."

I stood up, my knees shaking. I thought about running, but wasn't sure I could even walk, let alone out-run this kid who was twice my size. And besides, all I could think about was my bike. I knew that if I ran away, I'd never see it again, and my father would kill me. "What do you want?" I asked him. My voice didn't even sound like my own. "What are you gonna do?"

"I'm gonna make you pay," he said. "And the price is one punch in the face. Now get over here and take it."

I walked slowly toward him. When I was standing within arms reach, he jabbed at my face with his right fist. Just by reflex, I twitched my head back and his fist just barely touched my nose. This infuriated him, because he assumed I did it on purpose. "STAND STILL, ASSHOLE!" he yelled. I froze, trying not to cry, but not entirely succeeding.

He threw another punch and this time it connected. My upper lip and the side of my nose went instantly numb, and I saw stars in my right eye. I don't even remember hitting the ground, but I did, too stunned to even cry. As I tried to get up, he pushed me down again with his foot. Then he just laughed, and said "That's what you get." and then walked away, raising his middle finger to Markie as he did so.

I sat up, but couldn't do much more. A few minutes later, Markie rode back across the street and helped me get on my bike. "You OK?" he asked. "I dunno," I replied, touching my mouth gingerly. "How bad is it?"

"Your lip looks like a balloon," he said. "He popped you good."

"My mother is gonna KILL me," I blubbered through lips that increasingly felt like over-inflated inner tubes. "I wasn't supposed to cross 155. She's gonna kill me when she finds out. And I think my tooth is loose." I suddenly felt like crying again.

"So what she don't know won't hurt her," Markie said. "It ain't that bad. Maybe she won't notice." He looked at my face and reconsidered. "Yeah, she's definitely gonna notice. But we'll just tell her this happened in the parkin' lot of the record store."

That sounded like a solid plan, so we went with it. We rode home slowly, and when we got back to our houses, we parted ways.

"Tthee ya," I lisped. It was really starting to pound now that the numbness was wearing off.

"I snuck in the house and immediately went to the bathroom to assess the damage. The inside of my lip was the color of a ripe plum, but the outside of the lip wasn't split, so that was good. It was a little ripped up inside from where the tooth had jammed through it, but that was the only bleeding that I saw and even that had almost stopped. The tooth itself was definitely a little loose, but it didn't appear to be in any danger of falling out, so I figured it would probably be OK. I took my first punch, I thought. And it wasn't that bad. I cheered up a little.

I hid in my room until dinner time, but the second I walked into the kitchen my mother took one look at my misshapen face and flipped out. "Oh my god! What happened?" she asked, grabbing my face and turning it this way and that and tilting it up toward the light. "Who did this to you?"

"Mom, ith no big deal," I said. "I got in a fight." That was a slight exaggeration of the truth, but a guy has his pride. "I don't know who it wath. Justht thum jerk outthide the record thtore."

She eventually calmed down and got me an icepack and some aspirin and I told her the whole story. She immediately called Markie's mom and she got the story from him, and for the most part Markie backed me up. I think he told her that I "got punched in the face" which wasn't nearly as impressive as "got in a fight" but I couldn't blame the guy -- we hadn't rehearsed that bit. I made sure he knew how it (ahem) really happened before we went to school the next day though. I had an impressive shiner and a fat lip, and I didn't want to waste it.

Of course, I had to repeat the story to my father when he got home, and I don't think I was allowed to go to the record store again until I could drive there. Shortly thereafter, I sent away for this and I started lifting weights that consisted of two paint cans tied on the ends of a broom handle. After waiting a few weeks to see if I was serious, my father bought real weights and a heavy bag -- which I beat the shit out of on a fairly regular basis for about seven years in preparation for the rematch that never happened.

So that's the story of my first fight, if you can call it that. I'm not proud of it, but that's the way it happened. I stood there and got punched, and it pisses me off to this day.

I never saw that kid again, but I still looked for him in crowds.  Even now, I picture him just as he looked then -- black t-shirt, jeans, greasy blond hair and a cigarette hanging from the corner of his sneering mouth -- even though on an intellectual level I know he's probably ten years older than me and has a pot belly, an ex-wife, a loser kid and no hair except for what grows out of his ears.

It's funny the memories that stick with you over the years. The world is full of assholes, and that was my first experience with one, so it stands to reason that it would leave a mark. Or maybe it's because I didn't go ape-shit on him and fight back and I'm ashamed of ten-year-old me.

Maybe the kid had a shitty father who beat on him, or maybe he had some sort of emotional problems and right now he's jacked up to the gills with Prozac. He could be dead, or sweeping the floor at a local high school, or working for NASA. Maybe he became a priest, or won the lottery. Who knows. Chances are, he's still an asshole, but I forgive him anyway. He was just a kid. That doesn't mean, however, that I don't sometimes think about punching him in his mail-order dentures.

After all, a guy has his pride.

*Every once in a while I'll get a bottle of orange soda in a glass bottle if I can find it. In fact, this post was inspired by a can of orange crush I drank not too long ago while standing outside a QuickLube. Orange soda in the summer time brings back those days more clearly that I would have believed possible. I can still picture the smell of that muffler shop -- Sun-baked asphalt, car exhaust, hot welded metal, and an oily mist in the air that you thought smelled really good at first, but after a while started to make you feel a little sick. I loved all of it, and still do.

Taint no big thang.

I was going to tell you the story of my first fight, but instead I'm going to tell you the story of why I can't sit down today. It's not nearly as entertaining, but it's all I can think about right now, so it's what you get. I hope you don't mind. (I'll be right back, I have to get some Advil. )

Last week, I foolishly decided to take Monday off and get the sailboat on the water since we missed last year completely due to me chopping off part of my finger right before summer really started. My father was coming up for Father's Day anyway, so he brought the boat up and we got it ready to go for the morning.

The next morning things weren't looking so great weather-wise. Overcast and cold, it felt more like September than June. We kept checking the weather report, which swore that it was going to get sunnier and warmer. It had been a while since we had everything set up, so we went through a dry run. Mast up, standing rigging set, sails up; everything went flawlessly -- in the driveway, on the trailer, with no wind. So we were set, obviously.

When we got to the lake I noticed two things almost simultaneously -- there were no sailboats on the lake and the flag at the marina was blowing in one direction and the trees were blowing in another. I'm not sure how that was happening, but it was probably a sign of some sort. One we chose to ignore. There were no whitecaps, so we figured "how bad could it be?" and got everything ready to go.

This marina really needs to redo their docks. Unfortunately, they aren't floating docks, and the water level was so low that the dock is about three feet above your boat. It doesn't make things easy since you have to practically jump down into it, which is not easy for anyone, especially my 73-year-old dad. He managed though. We eased the boat out onto the lake using the trolling motor.

When we figured we were out far enough, I climbed up on the foredeck to raise the sails. It was pretty windy, so I knew as soon as I raised the jib we were going to start moving, and we did. I raised the mainsail and then raised the gaff, and that's the exact moment when a gust hit the boat and tipped us sideways. Looking back on it now, I don't think we were in any danger of capsizing, but when I turned around and saw the mainsheet wrapped around one of the damned cleats, I rushed to get back to the cockpit because things were going sideways.

Unfortunately, another gust hit us and I went one way and the boat went the other, and I came down hard on the corner of the hatchway door with the inside of my ass. That wasn't enough for me, however, and I continued on my journey of self-discovery and slid along the sharp edge of the casing and slammed my tailbone on the front lip of the seat. In retrospect, I would have rather fallen overboard, because the pain was blinding. Remember that feeling when you were a kid and pedaling your bike as fast as you could, and your foot slipped off the pedal and you came down hard on the bar? It was like that, only about ten times worse. Right now all the guys reading this are crossing their legs and holding their asses, and all the girls reading this are thinking 'you should have worn more sensible shoes.'

I immediately grabbed my ass and started rolling around, and I think I came pretty close to blacking out for a second. I also treated dear old dad to a very emphatic F-bomb. To be honest, it was more of an F-clusterbomb, in that it started with a really big one and then a series of smaller follow-up bombs. Then I realized who I was with, and also realized that I needed to either finish putting the sails up or take them down. They were creeping back down the mast since I never tied them off. So I crawled back to the front of the boat and finished what I had started. Once we got everything set up, we went where the wind took us, mostly, but also managed to sail to a few spots we were actually trying to sail to.

The wind stayed gusty all day but even so, we had some good runs. We made a few mistakes -- Some we knew were mistakes and some we just sat there scratching our heads and thinking, "Why'd that happen?" We really need to get some lessons and make some improvements to the boat. We are planning to redo some of the rigging so nothing gets caught where it shouldn't when we tack, and we're going to move some of the cleats. And maybe figure out how to raise and lower the sails from the cockpit of the boat. I like that particular idea.

All in all we had a fun day, even though I still can't sit. Well, that's not entirely true. I can sit, but getting back up still hurts like hell. But it seems to be getting a little better every day, so I've opted out of seeing a doctor.

Let me tell you something. I never even considered the possibility that you could bruise your actual asshole, but you can.

Also, doing this is a lot harder than you'd think:

Balls. Of the eye variety.

Back in December, my wife had eye surgery on both her eyes because she had extreme dry eye and some kind of conjunctival lesion that needed to be removed. They pull tissue from another place on your eye under your lid and graft it to the area they cut away. Here's what they did to her. Try not to puke:

When it was done, she couldn't open her eyes. Two days later, she looked like an emo vampire -- her eyes were blood red and she was involuntarily crying all the time.

It's been a long recovery, and while her eyes still bug her a bit, they are looking much better these days. I thought the worst was over -- until I got the bill.

It cost over 10 grand, and luckily a good chunk of it was covered by my insurance. But since we have a fairly high minimum yearly deductible, I'm going to be paying it off until the end of the year at least.

I understand some of the itemized charges, but some of the other line items made me laugh. Apparently eye surgery requires some weird things. For instance, they could be charging us $110 bucks for a pregnancy test and I wouldn't even know it -- oh wait, yes I would because it's itemized right on the bill. Yes, they actually required a pregnancy test before eye surgery. Good thing she wasn't having a pelvic exam -- they probably would have required an eye test. Ridiculous.

Let me share a few of the other items with you. The first one I understand:

Operating Room, 90 minutes -- $3422.00

That's 38 bucks a minute, just to lay there in a room while a light mist of virulent staphylococcus germs settles gently upon you. And this was just to rent the hall - before any surgery actually happens. After the surgery is just more of the same:

Outpatient recovery, 125 minutes -- $545.50

Again, that seems like an assload of money to just lie somewhere watching a 4:3 picture stretched onto a 16:9 TV for two hours. I mean, if your eyes weren't all cut to shit and you could actually see the short fat people on the screen. Why hospitals and doctor's offices can't get the aspect ratio correct on a flat screen, I will never know. Drives me insane.

Eraser Wetfield -- I don't know what this is, but it sounds like the nickname of a hit man you'd hire if you never, ever wanted the body to be found.

Beaver Blades -- No idea on this one. They might have gotten her chart mixed up with someone else. I may have to dispute this charge because as far as I could tell, there were absolutely zero changes to the bikini line.

Esteem -- I never knew you could get this so cheap. $12.88. I should totally load up the next time I'm in the doctor's office. I figure for less than two hundred bucks I could have the ego of Kanye West and Bono combined. I'd be a super-hero in my own mind. I wonder if I'd let myself finish.

Cannula Nasal -- This might be nose oil; I'm not sure. It was only about five bucks, so I guess if it kept her nose from squeaking during the operation, it was worth it.

Drapehead Bar -- I think I got drunk there once in college. I'm not sure what a drape head is, but it sounds like some kind of insult. I think I got billed for it because the doctor had a scotch/rocks right before the operation to calm his nerves and I told him to put it on my tab.

Ondansetron -- On Cupid, on Donder, on Blitzen! I'm pretty sure Dansetron was the gay transformer reindeer who didn't make the final cut to be on the team. Apparently, he now makes hospital visits to cheer up the post-op patients. Too bad he didn't get the Christmas gig and has been reduced to this. You gotta know when not to dance is all I'm saying, Dansetron. It's really your own fault.

Micro spears -- I saw no evidence of a line item for the micro warriors who would presumably be wielding the micro spears, so I'm thinking I got them as a freebie. Kind of like that bag of sour patch kids the cashier missed in my cart last week. I won't tell them if you don't.

Stopcock -- This one was very reasonably priced at $3.63. That's amazingly affordable when you consider that it was completely effective for almost two weeks.

So my advice to you is to double check all your medical bills and make sure you got what you paid for. And if you get charged for Beaver blades, make sure that shit is high and tight. In fact, I recommend checking it before you leave the hospital. Maybe take some before and after pictures just for evidence in case it shows up on your bill later.

Also, don't ever get eye surgery if you can help it. That shit is expensive. And really, really gross.

Welcome to Man Town, Bitches.

One of my friends who reads my blog gave me an early birthday gift this past Saturday because she won't be around this coming weekend. Thanks to her, as I'm typing this, I am surrounded by the scent of Mandles* in (believe it or not) car air freshener form:

So I am here to give you the lowdown on each of these fine scents, but I have to type really fast because all of them together like this is making me a little sick. To encapsulate what I am smelling right now, it's almost like I'm cutting my grass behind the wheel of a leather upholstered, wood trimmed John Deere lawn tractor, and George Clooney is riding bitch.

That will make more sense in a bit, trust me. So without further ado, here's my opinion on each of these masterpieces:

2x4: I figured I'd start with this one because it's the biggest letdown. Sadly, it smells nothing like a 2x4. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it smells nothing like any sort of wood whatsoever. If you really stretch, you might say there is something reminiscent of pencil shavings in there somewhere. I can't exactly place the scent, but in my head I'm picturing a vending-machine vanilla wafer stick dipped in old spice and then shoved up an oompa loompa's ass. But that's my problem, not yours. Just know that it smells bad. Really bad. Like being trapped inside your grandmother's coat closet for three hours. (Also my problem.)

Riding Mower: This one smells like grass. A little too much like grass if you ask me. What do I mean by that? Well, I like the smell of cut grass as much as the next guy. I like the golf course, or when the windows are down in the car and I drive by someone mowing their lawn. It's generally a fleeting, pleasant smell. Now picture yourself being knocked unconscious and waking up here:

That's what it smells like. Overpowering. It smells like when you lift the lid on that giant garbage can full of grass clippings that has been sitting in the sun for three hours at the end of your driveway. Definitely not my favorite. Maybe not as bad as 2x4, because at least this smells like what it's supposed to, but that's still probably comparing oompa loompas to oranges. Although come to think of it, those little bastards were as orange as the cast of Jersey Shore, so maybe that's a bad example.

First Down: My Honda Fit has new leather seats now. At least, if you close your eyes and forget you're in a japanese tin can it does. If you've ever wondered how they get that pricey new car leather smell into pricey new cars, I will bet money that it's put in after the fact with whatever this thing has been dipped in. It smells like a new baseball glove, or a new leather sofa, or a new Lexus. (Or how I imagine a new Lexus to smell, since they generally see me coming and won't allow me on the lot.) This one is not bad at all. I have no idea if the actual mandle smells like this air freshener or not, but I would probably buy it on sale and then light it in the room where I have my cheap pleather couch. It won't stop your thigh skin from being torn off if you get up too fast on a hot day, but it'll make the experience much more olfactorily pleasant. It makes me feel like this.

Man Town: Here is a sentence I never thought I would say. Take me to Man Town and drop me off. This smells like the cologne I could never afford. When you get your first whiff of this, you immediately picture someone in a Brioni suit, flashing an understated Platinum Pearlmaster as they pay for their Grey Goose martini with their Centurion AmEx. In other words, you picture Bruce Wayne. Or George Clooney. But don't picture George Clooney playing Bruce Wayne because that was just total shit, regardless of how you think it might smell.

So I actually like this one. Man Town. Go figure.

My wife: What's that smell? Have you been rubbing that Man Town on your face again?

Me: What do you mean, again? It was only that ONE TIME. And no, I'm not a complete idiot. Even though it's ten times cheaper than that cologne I like, I wouldn't continue to rub a car air freshener on my face, day after day. That would be stupid.

My wife: Yes, it would.

Me: I plan to keep it in my back pocket from now on.

My wife: Man Town deserves you.

*shout out to Domestic Goddess for the totally awesome name that Yankee Candle missed out on. Check out her blog and tell her Johnny sent ya.

These are real.

I found out today that Yankee Candle is now selling candles for men.

I don't even know where to begin. This is either a fantastic idea or the stupidest thing I've ever seen. I guess it depends upon how well they're implemented.

Take Riding Mower, for instance. It's clearly not just the smell of freshly-cut grass, or they would have named it "Freshly Cut Grass." No, this is Riding muthafukin' Mower, so my guess is that it has a more testosterone-y* smell to it. I'm betting this one has a top note of cut grass, however the middle note is probably gasoline and warm beer. They have to throw some realism in there, or it won't work. They can take it too far though, and that's what I'm worried about. If it were really realistic, ten minutes after you lit it, it would suddenly start smelling like you just chopped up a fresh pile of dog shit by mistake.

As a woodworker, one of my favorite smells in the entire world is the smell of freshly-planed pine boards. So I admit to you all that if this 2x4 candle smells anything like that, I'm buying a case of them. Of course, they do cost $27 each, which is not cheap for a candle. I could just go out to my shop, plane some pine boards, stuff the shavings into an old tube sock and hang it on the wall with a nail, but because I have a wife I will (probably) not do that. Not more than once, anyway.

But I'm willing to bet they screwed this up. Knowing Yankee Candle and their propensity toward making candles that smell like various baked goods, it probably smells mostly like wood, but eventually you'll notice the subtle undertone of Keebler Elf sex and underage gingerbread men.

"First Down" has a picture of a football on it, so I'm probably not qualified to judge. I haven't been forced to throw a football since high school, and every one of them smelled like a combination of dirt, wet leather and body odor. I can't imagine this scent would be appealing to anyone, but you never know.

Lastly, there's one they left out of the group shot:

I can't even imagine what this one smells like. Unwashed ass? Athlete's Foot? Moldy jock straps wrapped in a wet towel? In my experience, the whole point of lighting one of the Yankee Candles that smell like Keebler Elf sex is to to cover up anything that smells even a little like "Man Town."

Either way, I'm curious as to how these will do. In the meantime, I have another idea for them -- I call them "Complementary Scents."

So if, for instance, you cooked haddock last night and your house now smells like fish, instead of trying to get rid of it, you can just light up this candle and BAM! - you're good to go:

I'm tellin' ya, it can't miss.

*Testosterony - the other San Francisco treat

Come on over. We'll watch The Voice and have some soup.

I don't generally watch reality TV, but this season I watched a little bit of the Voice. I've learned the best way to watch it is via DVR. That way, I get to skip (a) commercials, (b) background stories I don't give a shit about (c) the long, drawn out, artificial suspense of the actual choosing process, built-up by saying "And the winner is..." and then NOTHING AT ALL for a solid 60 seconds while suspenseful music plays in the background.

So I fast forward until I see someone singing, listen for a few seconds to find out if it's a good performance or a song I like -- and if it's not I fast-forward again. When they're doing the actual cuts, I just fast forward until someone jumps up and down really fast, then I stop it to see who got picked to stay. It's amazing how quickly you can watch a two hour program this way.

I stopped watching it a couple of weeks back when the guy I liked best got cut. I can't remember his name, but he was some older black dude with a great voice. I'm sure someone knows who I'm talking about. I think Christina let him go and kept the opera singer who made every rock song sound like it belonged in a Disney movie. Anyway, my wife told me who won last night, and she asked me if I wanted to see them choose the winner.

So I watched it, however I was not adequately prepared. I mean, I already knew who won, so I was prepared for that -- but what I was not prepared for, not even in the slightest, was the sheer, gut-wrenching roller coaster of emotions I experienced when I saw Christina Aguilera's big sparkly diaper.

What the hell was that thing? I could not look away. At first I thought I was looking at the commander of the Vl'hurgs after someone said "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle." Talk about your terrible miscalculation of scale. I tried not to imagine the horror of three low-paid assistants with plungers desperately attempting to tuck all that ass up into what looked to be some sort of adamantium chastity belt, but I failed. It was like the Klein Bottle of underwear, with no inside and no outside. It was just all over the place and nowhere all at once.

And while I'm on a rant about this show, am I the only one here who thinks Cee Lo sucks? He really cannot sing. I mean, granted, he sings marginally better than I do, but then again, nobody is paying me crap-tons of money for doing something I suck at (contrary to what most of my co-workers probably believe). His voice has the timbre of a dull circular saw cutting through sheet metal and just goes to prove that the music biz is mostly all about luck and who decides you're going to be a star.

At any rate, I couldn't finish watching it, so I wandered out into the kitchen to find something to eat. I was looking for cereal in the pantry, but I saw a little box in the corner that caught my eye. It was a memory from my childhood that I haven't thought about in a really long time. It was this:

When did my wife buy Maypo? I thought, pulling it off the shelf. I haven't seen this stuff in years.

It turns out that was a very good question, because when I asked her, she said she didn't recall buying it. When I looked at the box, I immediately discovered why this was:

Yes, that is a 13-year-old box of Maypo you're looking at right there. Clearly I need to watch less reality TV and do more cleaning shit up. Incidentally, this one was the winner, if such a contest can even have winners. The runners up consisted of about ten cans of soup, a few boxes of crackers, some blueberry pie filling, three full boxes of instant oatmeal, 2 cans of breadcrumbs, a package of chocolate made for dipping fruit, and some unidentifiable dried things that I think used to be raisins or cranberries. Maybe both. Or neither.

Basically, what we had here was an evil pantry of horrific death, because the most recent date on this entire batch of carefully preserved botulism was -- believe it or not -- 2009.

I did take great pleasure in throwing out the Lentil soup though. I hate those filthy little skin-covered bags of sand.

Shiny.

I promised (the one person who asked) that I would post this.

Let the ridicule begin. Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

Blockage.

I'm not sure what's up with me and writing these days. We don't seem to like each other anymore. I feel like Hank Moody, except without all the sex, drugs, money, fame, bad luck and worse decisions. OK, I'm now aware that I should have picked a better example, but you get my drift. I feel I've been walking around in a black cloud of unfunny the last few weeks and I don't know why. Normally, shit just happens, and I write about it, but that technique has been failing me lately so tonight I decided I would just start writing and see what pops out of my tired head.

In other news, I quit the Draw Something, and it appears I'm not the only one. I spent way too much time on it that would have been put to better use writing. It was really fun, and got me (sort of) drawing again. As a result, I'm asking for this for my birthday, but I'm done with the game, at least for now. I think I got burned out on drawing the same things over and over. I'll have to share some of my masterpieces with you and see if you can guess them.

Speaking of things that popped out my head, check this bad boy out:

Not only is it completely grey, but it's insanely curly. And it just appeared out of nowhere this morning. Yesterday, nothing -- today, my head has one of Morgan Freeman's pubes growing out of it, and I have no idea how it got there. If this is any indication of the future I am going to be forced to shave it all off. No way am I walking around looking like this. That's just bad for business all around.

My wife and I have been trying a new coffee brand from Maine called Wicked Joe, and I think we like it. It comes in a black shiny bag, and it's pretty easy to find in your local grocery store. They have a dark roast decaf she likes and it's cheaper than Starbucks. The other day we had this conversation:

Her: "I really like that new decaf coffee I bought the other day."

Me: "Oh yeah? Which one?"

Her: "The Big Black Bag of Joe."

Me: "I'm pretty sure that's not what it's called. However, you have a bright future ahead of you in the field of product marketing."

So now that I've stopped drawing stuff, I find I have all sorts of time to write and no excuses. Your job here, if you choose to accept it, is to bug the shit out of me if you find I haven't updated in a while. It'll keep me honest. Just pretend you're Mick, and I'm this guy:

I went to a musical reunion of sorts last night, and holy shit, it was like the 80's never died. Or a better description would probably be it was like the 80's died, then came back to life looking for brains. I'll tell you all about it this week.

Meet Max.

Consider this my obligatory pet post for 2012. 

We're over the hump.

This week has been the week of doing stupid things. Luckily, I haven't screwed up anything at work (that I know of) but since it's only Wednesday, it's still a distinct possibility.

The last couple of days, my problems have been car related. That's not entirely true, because they're mostly stupidity related, but my car seems to be taking the brunt of it lately. It all began when I got tired of paying someone 70 bucks to put my snow tires on the rims in the fall, and another 70 to take them off in the spring, so I uttered the immortal words of the dumbass*, and bought an extra set of rims. This worked well for 1.5 seasons, and I was feeling pretty good about it until last week when I tried to take the snows off and somehow managed to break off one of the wheel studs with my Bruce Banner-like strength. So instead of paying someone 70 bucks to change the tires, I paid them $120 to fix a busted stud. On the plus side, I just figured out what the name of my new country band is going to be.

So that sort of sets the stage for this week's car idiocy. Right now, for instance, my car smells like someone boiled hazelnuts and old socks in a vat of sour milk and then dumped the whole mess in my car. Of course, you'd have to replace the word "someone" with the word "I" because I'm the idiot that attempted to balance a twenty-four-ounce cup of hazelnut cream coffee on the armrest of the open driver's-side door while trying to reach across the seat and grab my backpack. The cup fell over, hit my knee, and exploded. The top flew off and extremely hot coffee poured down my leg, into my shoe and basically filled up the driver's side floor pan with the other 20 ounces that hadn't been absorbed by my clothes. So that was the start of my Monday. I uttered a few choice words and cranked the windows part-way down, figuring it would help it to evaporate. In retrospect, I think all I did was help it go bad faster.

Since I get to work so early, it was just me and the security cameras. Because I park right in front of the door, I was able to run inside and get to my desk before anyone had a chance to see me and ask if I had pissed myself. As luck would have it, I was wearing a pair of dark brown khakis instead of the white corduroy bell-bottoms that I usually wear on Mondays, so I didn't have to worry about how it looked when it dried. I smelled like hazelnuts the rest of the day, but I suppose I've smelled like worse things.

After lunch, I decided to go for a walk because it was beautiful outside. As I left the building and the sun hit my face, I remembered what my wife said about always wearing my sunglasses to protect my albino rabbit eyes, so like a good little husband I walked over to my car to get them. Unfortunately, I have a habit of locking the car with the remote after I park, and I had done that as I left the car that morning. Also unfortunately, my keys were sitting on my desk upstairs.

So I did what anyone would do -- I reached into the open window, popped the lock, and opened the door.

So here's something I didn't know about this car that I've owned since 2008. It has some kind of half-assed, piece-of-shit, stops-absolutely-no-one factory alarm system, and if you unlock the car in this way, the fucking horn starts beeping in very loud, very insistent one-second intervals. Since it was high noon at the OK corral, there were about a dozen people either coming or going, and my car was parked literally 25 feet from the front door of the building. Another thing about this car I didn't know until just then? The only way to make this hellish noise stop is to either completely destroy the car with high explosives, or produce the ignition key/remote, which was sitting on my desk two floors and three security checkpoints from where I was currently standing.

I ran upstairs as fast as I possibly could, grabbed my keys from my desk, ran back downstairs to the car and jumped in. I slammed the door, jammed the key into the ignition and...the horn didn't stop.

I took the key out and pushed the panic button repeatedly and still nothing. At this point it had been beeping for five solid minutes, but to me it felt like five hours. I even started the car and that didn't stop it. By this time there was a small crowd forming to watch the show, so I did the only thing I could think of -- I put the car in gear and drove it away, horn blaring.

Why yes, I did steal my own car, thank you for asking.

About a mile up the road I pulled over and sat there with the horn beeping, barely able to form a coherent thought. Yes, I still looked like an idiot, but at least I didn't have people staring at me. (If an idiot sets off his car alarm and there's nobody around to hear it, is he still an idiot?) I finally just mashed all the buttons on the remote like I was playing an X-Box game I didn't understand and it stopped. (After a little analysis and a trip to the owner's manual, it turns out the magic button is the one labeled "unlock" which you have to push and hold in, even if your door is already unlocked. WTF.)

After a few minutes of sitting there enjoying the blessed silence, I drove back to the parking lot. Someone had taken my spot near the door, but that was fine by me. I just drove right past it and parked on the other side of the lot, pretending like nothing had happened. Then I ninja-walked my hazelnut-smelling ass in the side door when nobody was looking and finished out my day. It's a good thing I'm taking tomorrow off.

Wish me luck.

*I can do it myself and save a buttload of money.

Stick your family.

Since I spend about two hours a day on the road, I see a lot of vehicles with those stick figure family decals on the back. For some reason, those things annoy me. I mean, don't get me wrong, I know you're happy you have a big family you're proud of, and have a need to share it with the world, and I have to admit that those stickers are marginally better than the Jesus fish stickers, but here's the deal: I don't care how many kids you have, and I don't care how many animals you have, and I don't care what your hobbies are, I just want you to get the fuck out of the passing lane if you're going to go 55.

Most of the time, the stickers just make me judge you, because I know that if you have ten cat stickers on the back of your car, your co-workers are eating cat hair and trace amounts of feces every time you bring cookies to the bake sale.

It got me thinking though. If I were single and rich, I would totally do this:

Full disclosure: I actually just bought a geeky sticker for my car on Amazon. I didn't get it yet, but supposedly it shipped so I should have it soon. I'll post a picture when it shows up so you can all bust my balls.

Step away from the kid, Kid.

I've never posted about one of my dreams before, because I figure it's like posting about your pets -- nobody wants to read it. Most of the time, when you're trying to tell someone about a dream you had it ends up just sounding like you're a little insane. You know what I'm talking about. Everyone has a friend who springs one of these on you at one time or another:

"We were cruising down the highway in some kind of armored car, and you were singing a Katy Perry song at the top of your lungs, except it wasn't a song she's recorded yet, but I still could tell it was one of hers, you know? And suddenly Simon Cowell pulled up next to us in the bat-mobile and he held up a sign that said, "I will make you a star" except he was looking at me not you, and then I'm standing in the hallway at school, right? But it wasn't really like school. It was more like the dairy aisle at Price Chopper, and all I could smell was sour milk, but I couldn't remember where my locker was until all this milk started pouring out of locker number 45 and I remembered that I brought my pocket cow to school that day. I was just about to let him loose and call Matt Damon to mop up the hallway when my alarm went off and I woke up."

Keep in mind, the only reason I'm even sharing this is because I woke up laughing, and when my wife asked me what was so funny, I had to answer, "I was dreaming that Kid Rock and his girlfriend had kidnapped my sister's baby."

So apparently I was babysitting my nephew, and I had taken him to the mall. Keep in mind, I've never watched either of my sister's kids, because she lives in another state and she probably wouldn't trust me to watch their dog. I can't say I blame her because I'm sure I'd do something like forget him on the roof of the car at the gas station, or in a shopping cart in the Lowe's parking lot. In my dream, he could speak in coherent sentences even though he's only two. We were having some spirited conversations about why he couldn't go the Footlocker and check out the new running shoes, and it was really starting to creep me out because on some level, I knew it wasn't normal. The mall we were in happened to be in Tower City in downtown Cleveland. I have no idea why, since we have plenty of perfectly serviceable malls right here in New York.

I wanted to look at one of those new light wave cameras, and for some reason the mall was full of places that sold them. I took my eye off the kid for a second and I looked back just in time to see Kid Rock and his girlfriend scoop him up and start running. I started running after them, but it was useless because Kid Rock is one fast son of a bitch. He must have quit smoking. No, actually that's a lie. It wasn't that Kid Rock is really fast or anything, but here's something weird about all my dreams:

Sometimes I can fly, but I can never run. I don't know why this is. If I need to run, either toward something or away from it, I invariably become some sort of shambling idiot. I'm either running like the hunchback of Notre Dame when he needs to take an emergency crap, or it feels like I'm running through the shallow end of a swimming pool that has been filled with lime jello. Both of them are horrible, but at least with the first one I can cover some ground.

Anyway, after Kid Rock got away, I had no idea what to do, so I sat down on a bench and went over my options. I could look for my nephew, or I could look for my nephew and compare pricing on cameras at the same time and kill two birds with one stone. So I decided on doing that second thing, because hey - I still wanted a camera. So here's where it gets weird. When I came out of one store, OKSeriously was there. I don't know why. Maybe because she doesn't blog anymore she has all this free time to hang out at the dream-mall.

"What's up?" she asked me, probably noticing the panicked look in my eyes. And also my camera brochure.

"Kid Rock and his girlfriend took my sister's baby," I said, rather calmly, considering the circumstances. "I really need to find him or she's gonna be extremely pissed when she gets back."

"Oh man," she said. "You shoulda stayed away from Kid Rock. He's a baby stealer." I was a little irritated at her because obviously he was a fucking baby stealer -- I knew that now. However, being the kind soul that she is, she agreed to help me find him, so I couldn't get too mad at her. She looked like she was into it, too, almost as if last week's baby hunt at the mall got canceled at the last minute, and this was going to be her only chance until next season. "You look upstairs, I'll look downstairs and we'll meet back here in 30 minutes," she said. "I'll text you if I find him." Then she took off.

I walked upstairs, and Kid Rock was nowhere to be found. I did stop and look at a really nice blue lightwave camera, but it was $800 and the salesman was kind of a dick because he kept telling me I was going to have to pay a premium because nobody had them yet. I knew there was like ten different places in the mall carrying them, so I didn't argue, I just left. I got back on point after that, and only stopped at one other store as I was searching and found one for list price. It was the best I could do.

A little while later, my phone buzzed and I had a text message from OKS. All it said was, "I got him. Meet me at the entrance to the RTA." So I went down the giant-ass escalator and saw OKS in the distance, holding my nephew in one hand and a Mexi-Melt from Taco Bell in the other. I never felt so much relief in my life.

When I got close enough, though, I could tell something was wrong. She said, "See? Got 'im!" and then turned him toward me. Except it wasn't him. She had the wrong baby.

"It's the wrong baby!" I said, instantly panicking again. "Where did you get that one?"

"I got him off some lady," she said.

"What? You just randomly stole some woman's baby?" I asked, incredulously.

"No, it wasn't random," she said, defensively. "She looked like someone who would be Kid Rock's girlfriend." She finished the Mexi-Melt and crumpled up the wrapper, tucking into the waistband of the baby's pants.

"Well, it's not him," I said, as something else dawned on me. "Ummm....where's that lady now?"

"Oh, don't worry, she's fine. She got on the Rapid right after I sent you that text," she said, then continued. "What if you just give your sister this one instead? She probably wouldn't even notice."

"It's not like we're in a sitcom and he's a goldfish or a hamster, for god's sake," I said. "I'm pretty sure she'd notice." She held up the baby again, and raised her eyebrows questioningly. "You sure? It looks like a pretty good one."

I was out of options and I knew it. "OK, it's worth a shot," I said. "Can you help me get him back to the car?"

"Yeah, no problem," she replied as we got on the escalator for the ride up to ground level. "And stay away from Kid Rock from now on, because he will steal a baby like it's his job."

She thought about that for a second, then said, "Me too, apparently."

"Yeah, you had good intentions though."

"That's true," she said, reconsidering. "I mean, it's not like I plan on doing it all the time or anything."

I agreed, and held the door open for her. "Maybe that could be your new go-to line to prove your loyalty to your friends. When they ask you if you'd take a bullet for them, you could say, "No, but I would totally steal a baby for you."

"I would, too," she said. "All my friends know it."

"Hey, check out this camera I bought," I said, as we walked to the car. "It's pretty sweet."

And then I woke up and made this: