Buster: The Cat Who Hated Christmas!

Our newest cat, Buster, is quite the riot. If he were a person, he'd be the epitome of today's "extreme" (or is that X-treme?) generation, and no doubt he'd ride a snowboard/skateboard and wear a goatee. He runs around like crazy, sometimes literally climbing the walls, and he's fascinated with running water. When Lisa takes a bath, he'll sit on the side of the tub and shove both his forearms into the suds all the way up to his shoulders. He's actually a very cool cat, but much as some folks have to "childproof" their house, we have to "Busterproof" ours, being sure not to leave small, shiny, breakable items on tables or on the window sills.

Thus, I knew I was tempting fate when I constructed our annual "Christmas alter." We usually don't have a tree because hauling one is a lot of trouble if you don't own a car, and the cats would knock it over anyway. I thought, however, that I might be able to build a nice holiday display where Lisa and I could put our presents:



What was I thinking?...





That's okay. He's really a good kitty. But you can see that a real tree would be a real problem!

Deutscheland or bust?

A few days ago, Lisa found out that Portland State University had room for her in their "study abroad" program (insert silly "study a broad" joke here) . This would be for summer school -- approximately mid-April to Mid-July -- and an excellent opportunity for her, as a German major, to study and learn the language under ideal circumstances, i.e., in Germany. Because there's no reason that her application won't be accepted (they have room, she has more than completed the prerequisites and her grades are great), we've been going on the assumption that the trip will happen.

Ideally, I'd like to be with her the whole time, but there are a couple problems with that. Primarily, we're uncomfortable with both of us leaving Buddy for three straight months. Also, her housing is paid for if she lives in a dorm, so it makes sense to take advantage of that (especially given the crappy dollar/euro exchange rate right now, thanks a bunch George W. you deficit-spending chimp). Although each student has their own room, it's still a tiny space with shared common areas. And as much as we love each other, spending three months in a room the size of a walk-in closet could be difficult for us both. Plus, I lived in a dorm during my first two years in college, and I have no burning desire to repeat that experience. To put it mildly.

So right now we're planning that I fly over with her, spend two/three weeks, come home, then fly back at the end of her stay for two/three weeks and have a bit of a belated honeymoon in Europe.

All fine and good, but that means a lot of planning.

First, what to do with the pets? My sister Tavia has graciously offered to take Buddy for the duration, but I'd have to get him out to Ohio and it doesn't solve the problem of what to do with our three cats. Luckily, my brother Steve has tentatively agreed to move out to Portland and house sit during that time and mind the boys and the homestead. It works out well for him because he's been wanting to spend an extended time here -- with a possibility of the move being permanent -- and this would give him a chance to live rent-free and look for a job from a stable home base. Plus he loves the animals and they love him.

Second, I want to learn at least a bit of the language. I've heard that many Germans speak at least some English because it's widely taught in their schools. But I want to make the effort to converse auf Deutsche while I'm in Deutscheland, as I think it's rude to expect them to know YOUR language when you are in THEIR country. So I signed up for a beginning German class at Portland Community College. (This has the added benefit of me not having to pay back my student loans right away -- ha ha!).

And third, I need to get a passport. I've always wanted to get one but never had the impetus. Now I do, so I ordered a copy of my birth certificate, and today I went downtown to the Post Office to submit my passport application. With that, I really got excited about the prospect of going to a completely new country and expanding my horizons (literally). The helpful woman at the Post Office noted that on my application under "occupation" I'd put "writer." She said, "This should give you something good to write about!" And how!

Lots can happen between now and then, but I'm looking forward to the trip already. Many of my relatives are from Germany, and also, I've heard they have beer there. Just a rumor, probably.

Wingding Explained

For reasons that defy explanation, Argotnaut's sister (the good Doctor Lizardo) has asked that I explain "Wingding*," an activity my siblings and I enjoyed when I was a kid. Well, who am I to resist the charms of a beautiful woman? I'm only human.

First, some background. I am one of five kids. We average about two years apart in age. I'm the second youngest. If you haven't met us Heckmans, it will be difficult for you to image the tumult of five Heckman kids, all between the ages of five and 15, gathered in one place. The noise level was akin to a thousand gas-powered leaf blowers blasting up the asses of a thousand ornery mastodons. (The carnage level was also roughly equivalent).

Anyway, the first floor of the house in which we grew up had a layout similar to a square...there was a sort of central core that contained the stairs to the second floor, as well as closets and the door to the basement. This created a natural racing circuit roughly 20 feet on a side; if one was so inclined, one could run around the central core over and over.

Thus, "Wingding" was born. All five kids would run this circuit one after the other. Understand, this was no game in the usual sense. There was no "winner" as such, as Wingding was not a race, but rather a cruel test of one's survival instincts and reflexes. The object, such as it was, was to sabotage the path of the person running behind you. Just about any obstacle was in play. For example, you might toss a throw rug or towel behind you so that your pursuer would wipe out on the hardwood floors like a drunken Mario Andretti taking a header at Le Mans. Dropping objects in the path -- magazines, toys, the occasional handful of jacks -- was par for the course. The coup de grace, however, was to fling open the door to a closet or to the basement so that the person flying blind around the corner would slam into it face first: FWAM! It was even better if the pursuers plowed into the face-planter as he or she stood stunned and immobilized, staring dazedly at the door as it vibrated from the impact.

Thus, we created own version of the chariot race in Ben Hur, with a nearly equivalent amount of sweat, bloodshed, flying bodies and scar tissue.

It goes without saying that Wingding was played only when our parents were away. It ended only when the final runner stopped running, either for reasons of exhaustion or through attrition. Finally we would hurriedly pick up the discarded tripping hazards, glue or otherwise camouflage broken furniture or decorative items, affix any necessary bandages and tell our parents when they got home that any broken crockery or knick-knacks "just, I don't know, fell off the shelf or something, I guess." I doubt if they were fooled.

Some of my siblings read this blog and I welcome their recollections of any particularly violent and/or hilarious episodes.

* Webster's Dictionary indicates that "wingding" is one word, although in this case, I think "Wing-Ding!!" with two or three exclamation points would be the appropriate spelling.

Red state/blue state

Well, it's been a week since the election and the United States hasn't slid into the sea (seas?) However, there's been much yappin' by pundits that the U.S. in actuality looks a little something like this:



It's easy to focus on the whole "moral values" issue that exit polls indicated was so important. It's fun, too, because everyone can make pronouncements about Bud-swillin' NASCAR dads and right-wing survivalist nut jobs and bible-thumpin'"Babtists," (as Joe-Bob Briggs likes to pronounce it.)

Personally, I think the reason Kerry lost was the reason that Gore "lost." He's a stiff! The zombies in "Shaun of the Dead" had more personality! Neither candidate had the charisma to sell a used car, much less convince voters of their qualifications for running the country. And let's face it, that's what the President is: a salesman. He (or perhaps she in 2008) can set policy, but the administration has no legislative power. All the President can do is make a sales pitch and hope Congress goes along. Or, barring that, gain favor with the populace, which controls Congress.

So the presidential election always comes down to a popularity contest. And in times of uncertainty, people stick with the devil they know, or at least the devil with whom they're most comfortable. Thus, the most likeable candidate usually wins it in a walk (see Reagan vs Carter, Reagan vs Mondale, Bush I vs Dukakis, Clinton vs Bush I, Clinton vs Dole, etc.). Likeability usually trumps other factors. Thus, Clinton was re-elected in a landslide despite his questionable ethics because 1) people liked him, and 2) Dole was a big stiff. It's hard to imagine a person who comes across as a bigger stiff than Bush I (although I respect the man), but damned if the Democrats didn't manage to field Mr. Excitement, Michael Dukakis.

I think the only reason W had trouble in his election the first time around is because people didn't know what to expect from him. Based on ability, Al Gore should have cleaned his clock. But Gore came across as a golem, particularly in the debates. To paraphrase Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness, voters couldn't shake the feeling that if you poked Gore with your finger, nothing would come out but a little dirt and some straw.

Same with Kerry. I think the only reason the election was close was that Bush had made such an enormous mess in Iraq. But the masses were willing to overlook that because, gosh-darn it, they just liked Bush more, despite the fact that W is (arguably) the most reckless, irresponsible president the U.S. has suffered in the last 100 years. Yes, yes, the presidential election should be about who is the more capable candidate. But it hasn't been decided on that since the advent of television. And probably before that.

So the Democratic Party can talk all they want about unity and finding common ground. But what they really need is a candidate who doesn't remind voters of the robotic bears at Chuck E Cheese. Let's just hope Bush & Company don't completely mortgage the future of the country in the meantime with deficit-exploding mix of military spending, deferred-payment health care and tax reduction.

Processing...

My mood has improved a bit since the deep election day gloom. It didn't start out well today with the headline in the paper saying "Bush calls for unity." Well, yeah. He said that four years ago, and he then created the most polarized electorate I can remember.

The subhead was "President reaches out to those who voted for Kerry," and I thought, "Sure, you seek to unite as long as those people a) aren't women who want the right to choose, b) aren't gays or lesbians who have the temerity to seek equal protection under the law, c) aren't middle and lower class Americans who want health insurance, d) aren't parents who fear that trillion dollar deficits will saddle their children with a debt that they'll never get out from under. Unfortunately, that leaves out everybody except your wealthiest one percent pals, so good luck with that unification thing, Dubya.

Perhaps now that he doesn't have to worry about being reelected, Dubya can be a bit more conciliatory. But there's no reason, really, is there? The GOP gained in Congress, so the politics of fear and divisiveness are working, right? Pick a fight with some towel-heads and all the NASCAR dads and cranky old uncles will be on your side.

So what's left for us? In the immortal words of Joe Strummer from The Clash on Know Your Rights: "You have the right to free speech as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it!" Steve Duin, a columnist in "The Oregonian" who basically serves as the paper's conscience, said essentially the same thing in this morning's column. Don't shut up...Karl Rove & Co. don't win unless we roll over.

I'm not going to roll over. Are you?

Bush & Co.

I don't have the time or, really, the inclination to do a big post about election results, even though I'm sure I'm the ONLY blogger who will do so.

Instead, here's an e-mail I sent to a friend of mine this morning which pretty much sums up our mood here.

"Yes, there's been much snorfling by the missus this morning. She's really upset. It ain't over yet, but it looks like another four years of the smirking chimp and his weapons of domestic destruction. However, this too shall pass. What's more discouraging to me is that most states that had the measure on the ballot approved bans of same-sex marriages, effectively approving the writing discrimination into state constitutions, based on religious reasons no less. That even happened here in Oregon, which was a shock. Lisa and I will take a couple of days to process what it all means, but I wouldn't be very surprised if we became Europeans in the next six months or so. Portland State University (where Lisa is attending class) has agreements with many foreign schools that would allow her to continue her studies uninterrupted and still get low-interest loans. Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Scotland (Edinburgh) and even New Zealand are under consideration at the moment.

I don't blame Bush for the debacle this time...I blame the 51 million Americans who voted for him despite his track record. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on the electorate. It really makes me feel that I have nothing in common with my fellow Americans, but it's important to keep in mind that nearly half of the country feels the same way we do. I just can't fathom why anyone in good conscience could vote for a president who has lost a million jobs, rung up the biggest deficit in the nation's history and gotten thousands of service men and women killed in a war that we didn't need to fight. "

Maybe more later. Maybe not.

You shall know them by their geekiness

As I stated in a previous post, I am a certified weather geek. I come by this honestly. My Dad was a private pilot and also a flight instructor. When I was a kid, he often taught "ground school" at our house, where several aspiring pilots would gather to watch educational film strips. These film strips seemed old THEN, and if I know my Dad, they were probably made in the 1950s, because according to him nothing manufactured after the 1960 Nash Rambler was ever worth a damn. The film strips came in little canisters like 35mm film does now, and were accompanied by LP records. You would stick the beginning of the film strip into a special projector that had a record player built in, and start the LP; "bleeps" on the record would tell you when to advance to the next slide. The projector was delighfully low tech and had a really cool, "3-in-1 Oil" smell.

Dad would often let me sit in on these ground school sessions and run the projector, as long as I kept my mouth shut. Thus, I was learning about occluded fronts while other boys my age were learning about RBIs (that's a baseball term for "runs batted in," Lisa). Personally, I loved the stuff and found it endlessly fascinating. I mean, how could you not? We're talking cumulonimbus here!

Weather is a big deal to pilots for obvious reasons. It's also a big deal in the agrarian Midwest. One of the few things I miss about the Midwest is the apocalyptic thunderstorms, when the lightning is strobe-like in its frequency, the rain comes down as if through God's own spigot and the huge cottonwood trees in our back yard would flap around in the tornadic wind like giant stalks of overripe celery.

Lisa, bless her, appreciates my weather geekery and for my birthday got me a weather station ( a Weathertech FX 6000....oooooooh.) It consists of two pieces placed outside the house (an anemometer and a temperature/humidity sensor) that communicate via radio waves with a base station in the house. The base station looks like this


As you can see, it also has a barometric pressure sensor and, for enhanced geekiness, a moon phase indicator and a clock that gets its time from the U.S. atomic clock! I have put the outside bits in a temporary location in front of the house; being new homeowners, we have yet to get a ladder so I can put the anemometer on the top of the house where it belongs. Maybe I can do that this weekend. Might as well clean the gutters while I'm at it, since every weathergeek Portlander knows that the monsoon is soon to arrive!

$12.50 My Ass!

Our newest cat, Buster, is a very active and inquisitive boy. He's a riot because he's one of those cats that wants to play with everything. By the same token, he also needs lots of stuff to keep him occupied (maybe he has ADHD?)

I noticed that he liked to intentionally bat his little furry mouse toys underneath doors and the stove and then have fun trying to dig them out. So the last time I was in our neighborhood pet store, I seriously considered getting him a "Bizzy Kitty Entertainment Center," which looks like this:


However, the thing cost $12.50! So I thought, "$12.50 my ass! I can take a cardboard box and carve holes in it."

So, that's what I did, using an empty cat litter box. Not a very highly designed looking piece of engineering, I admit. At first, Buster (and Buddy) where a little confused by the thing.


But once I shook it to let Buster know there was a mouse in there, it was "game on!"



Ha! Just like in the ad! Another mission accomplished for "dull edge man!"

The great dull-edge challenge

Now that I have a chance to spend more time doing arty stuff, I've been having trouble finding the motivation. Not a new problem, but one I've decided I'm going to try to solve this time. So I thought back to the days when I was writing a lot of music in my late 20s/early 30s. What was I doing then that I'm doing differently now? That's a complicated question, but an inescapable factor was the fact that I didn't do much drinking at home during that time. Certainly, I would pound a few when I was out with friends or at band rehearsal. But I rarely had beer or wine at home. So I've decided to knock off drinking at home.

Now, I didn't drink that much, rarely more than 2-3 glasses of wine or 2-3 bottles of beer. But I've been doing that every single night. And since I've been showing signs of being mildly depressed -- not interested in things I used to be interested in, not a lot of energy, general apathy, just kind of "existing" -- I figured a good approach would be to maybe knock off the depressants. Duh!

Currently, I'm in day three of no drinking, and it seems my energy level is already up. The last couple of days, I've spent the afternoons finally getting the house in order. I mounted a coat rack on the wall by the door, mopped and scrubbed the floors, and just generally tidied and organized the living room/kitchen area. That's not big stuff, but it's stuff that I've been meaning to do for several weeks and just haven't "gotten around" to even though I've been home all day with plenty of opportunity.

Today I went to a local department store (the mighty Fred Meyer) and got an entry way table in which we can store our dog walking/poopy bag/grungy out-and-about paraphernalia. Again, something I've been meaning to do for weeks but now suddenly had the energy to accomplish.

It will be very interesting to see how this pans out. It would put me pretty square into the "straight edge" camp, a philosophy of no alcohol, no tobacco, no casual sex (no problem there, happily). Hard-core straight edge types tend to also eschew meat products and caffeine, the goal being a unencumbered and unfiltered awareness of one's own body and mind. I don't know how far I'll take it, but so far, the great "dull edge" challenge is promising. At the very least, we're saving a lot of money.

If it works out, I might have to see how a more hard-core approach works. I've already reduced my caffeine intake to half of what it was, and I may eliminate that entirely as well, because it really affects my biorhythms. Too much coffee makes me ready to take on the world one moment, and then a half-hour later, ready to take a nap.

I know Lisa would like me to do the vegetarian thing, and I'm pretty much a "meat reductionist" as it is. But I don't have a big problem with eating meat. After all, in the wild, most animals end their lives in the mouth of a predator. It's just that our societal standard is meat with every meal. Meat abuse, as it were. I kind of compromise with a meaty meal once a week or so, but I insist that it's free range, rather than raised in a cage in a factory someplace being pumped full of chemicals. We Americans just eat too much meat, and junky meat at that; in fact, we eat too much junky stuff, period.

Anyway, so far so good. I like that I've actually got energy throughout the day, and that I seem to have a bit more discipline about actually doing things rather than just think about doing them. Other benefits may become apparent as I go along. We'll see!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yup, October 3rd was another birthday for yours truly. I was hoping the Cubs would give me the gift of two...count 'em...two consecutive trips to the postseason. Too much to ask for. I guess that surviving 'til age 43 will have to do.

Lisa, knowing that I'm a huge weather geek (yes, it's true), gave me the gift of geekery: a handy-dandy weather station, complete with one of those windspeed...cup...twirly...thingies. You mount the sensor stuff outside, but the guts are inside, so you don't have to go OUT in the weather to see what's going ON with the weather. Haven't set it up yet but it looks like hours of weather-geek fun!

After the present-openin' interval, we went to see "Shaun of the Dead," the new zom-rom-com (zombie romantic comedy). What a great flick! I highly recommend it for those who enjoy British humour and can handle the occasional gore. Only one scene is truly squirmy...in other bloody scenes, the gore is played for laughs much like Monty Python. The bit when the two heroes are using record albums as weapons and trying to figure out which to throw and which to keep is priceless!

Finally, we went to the Moon & Sixpence, an English pub (just the ticket after watching a movie featuring much drinking in an English pub). Lisa wanted me to try the "Yorkshire fish cakes," which according to a well-informed Limey source consists of fish between two slices of potato, which is then deep fried. I wasn't in the mood that night, but must try it soon.

In non-birthday news, I finally finished my first short story and I'm preparing to send it off. Once I get things cleaned up enough around here to reach "easy maintenance level," I'm going to start on the next story. I haven't been writing as much as I'd like because I've been busy doing investment research to determine how to invest the settlement. Of course, the only thing that makes Lisa's eyes glaze over faster than sports talk is financial securities talk. But I'm pretty close to having that figured out.

D'oh! It's started raining here and my weather station isn't up yet! Ain't that just the way.

New Day Rising

I've often heard it said that "life is full of surprises." Well, given the last couple of months, I would have to agree -- with a VENGEANCE!

After looking for a job in Portland in between surgeries and moves for about a year and a half, I finally landed a job at Alling Henning Associates in mid-May. AHA! (as they like to be called) is a smallish (about 30 people) marketing communications firm based in Vancouver, Washington. I was ecstatic when I got the job and looked forward to working there for a long time. However, "life" intervened. In June, I settled with the insurance company of the woman who ran over me two years ago. The result is that Lisa and I, if we're very frugal, can live off the investment proceeds of the settlement.

Many times I've heard people say that they wished they didn't have to work for a living. But that begs the question, "If you didn't have to work, what would you do?" After giving the matter a lot of thought, I decided to get serious about fiction writing. Unfortunately, working at AHA! required not only a nine-hour day, but a 50-60 minute commute each way. When I got home, I'd usually be too tired after cooking dinner and walking the dog to even recall my name, much less knock out a couple pages of decent prose.

The solution, I thought, was to work part-time. AHA! is a great place to work, with good people to work with and good people to work for. However, such an arrangement wasn't in the cards...it wasn't fair to many of the writers who'd been there far longer than I, and also the workload dictated a full-time writer, not a part-time one. So it was either full time or no time.

I had last weekend to think about it, and on Monday I gave them the answer: I'd put off my fiction writing dream long enough. So I told my boss "thanks very much, too bad we couldn't work it out, when should my last day be?" And she said, "Well, the pay period ends Wednesday."

So it was a bit abrupt but actually good timing as I was just finishing up a big project and the next big project was just getting started.

So. Here I am unemployed again. I'm hoping to work part-time somewhere, partly because I like to work and also because I benefit from the structure imposed by having to be somewhere at a given time. We'll see how it works out.

In the meantime, I'm working on some story ideas and hope to begin actively writing very soon, say, tomorrow.

So my question to you is: what would YOU do if you didn't have to work for a living? I look forward to your comments!

Homesteading

Yesterday, Lisa and I went to sign the stack of papers to finance our new house. Well, Lisa did the signing. The line of credit is in her name.

Funny story...well, not funny but, rather, annoying. Now that we have the settlement, we have assets on hand to buy the house outright. But I chose not to do that because a) we can use the mortgage interest tax break and 2) interest rates on a 15-year mortgage are only about 5.7% right now, so I figure I can invest that money and make more than 5.7% a year with it, thereby coming out ahead in the long run.

Problem was my credit rating. Before the calamity, my credit was immaculate, after having climbed out of debt after my first marriage. Unfortunately, after the calamity, we had many health care vendors knocking on our door asking "Uh. You owe us $250,000. Where's our money? Or are we gonna hafta muss ya up?" All I could tell them was that my injuries were the result of an auto accident, that the case was in litigation, and I'd give them the dough soon as I could. (This being America, everyone was familiar with auto accident injuries, on account o' they is ubiquitous. But that's another screed and I digress). I thought I'd contacted everyone, but apparently, a few of the bills were sent to collection without my being told.

The upshot of this blather is that my credit didn't allow us to get the low mortgage rate. However, LISA's credit rating is sparkling. But as a part-time employee, her income is not very high. So the nice mortgage lady ("props and a shout out" to Liana Gulzow at Washington Mutual) suggested we get a line of credit in Lisa's name, which is contingent on her credit rating (excellent) and assets (plenty, with settlement in hand). Then we use that to purchase the home and lock in the low rate. So we had to do some dinkin' around be we ended up getting what we wanted.

So, as of the county's receipt of the papers today, Lisa and I are officially home owners!

Yikes!

After the signing, Lisa and I had a lovely late lunch at the Reinlander German restaurant here in PDX, and discussed how we're going to fit all the stuff in the yard that we want -- solarium structure, deck/patio, Asian garden, regular garden, cat coop/dog run. I think it'll work because of the way the lot is set up: the house doesn't really have a back yard. Rather, it's surrounded by a strip of land about 15 feet wide -- not usable as a traditional back yard, i.e., a volleyball area, but perfect if you want to put in a lot of small installations. Plus, no mowing in back!

Next up: moving day, probably this Monday!

Stupid Loin Girding!

Time to get ready for another busy week.

Tomorrow, Lisa and I go to sign the stack of papers to make the new house ours. Well, technically, it won't be ours until all the fees are paid (ching), the papers are couriered over to the court house (ching) and I give them a cashier's check for the 20% down payment (cha-(infix)-CHING!). At least Lisa and I won't really have to sweat this part like many people do, but I still expect the blood to drain from both our faces when confronted with the reality of home and mortgage. Already, the amounts we're dealing with don't actually seem real to me. They're just numbers, like when Carl Sagan talked about the Milky Way galaxy containing "billions and billions of stars." You can't really comprehend it beyond the fact that, "Yup. That's a whole lotta stars."

Also, I won't know whether the other writer I've been working with on a big project at work will be there tomorrow or for the next three weeks...his wife's due date was last Friday, and she appeared to be poised to drop their first kid at any time. When that happens, he's taking three weeks off, then working part time for the next three weeks. We're both fortunate to be working for a company that has such an enlightened policy toward paternity leaves, but it also means I'll be handling the load for the six weeks. All I can say is, it's a good thing I hate being bored.

And finally, Lisa and I will want to move into the new place as soon as we can (we should get the keys on Friday). Luckily, as I told my half-brother Stuart, this time we can manage to do a "dream move," meaning we pay somebody to pack the stuff and we pay somebody to move the stuff. Meanwhile, Buddy will be vacationing at the beautiful "Howliday Inn" resort in exciting SE Portland, and Lisa and I will be downing margaritas. That oughtta take the sting out of the living hell that normally is "moving."

I also would like to finally get the "frinkenstein.com" page up and running at least in some form -- featuring abundant links to fun stuff and the AMAZING "Andrew's rotating pelvis page, with 3D CAT scans of my pre-op pelvis -- but I don't know if my loins are ready for THAT much girding. "ow Ow OWW!"

Let Blogger do the work

After many grandiose fantasies about how I would create my own blog from scratch, I've finally decided --aaaaah, let Blogger do it. It already automates just about anything I would want to do, and anything else, I'll load onto the Frinkenstein site, which will be forthcoming very soon.

So for you multitudes of readers who want to keep track of my exciting life, well, Christ! Get a damn hobby! But in the meantime, I'll try to update this with all the pertinent stuff, and likely quite a bit of impertinent stuff, too.

So what's been going on? An easier question to answer would be, what HASN'T. Here's the short list:
New computer,
New job,
New house,
New cat

Hell, the new hip is OLD NEWS!

Lisa has been doing a splendid job of recounting many of the recent events. If you haven't already bookmarked her site, you should do so.

It's 9:30 now here in Portland, and I'm pretty beat, but I wanted to finally get this site up so people would have a place to go. Idmonster is officially deceased (good riddance, ya ugly bastard), but I've saved all the posts and I hope to archive them when I have the opportunity. All the original "Stranger in a Strange Land" posts remain on the old, old site. Look through them for a larf, it you want to see what life was like before the calamity, as well as life immediately after.

For now, I will say that life is good. More to come, though. I promise. Really!

maybe I will, maybe I won't

I doubt if I'll use this...I just went through the rigmarole so I could post comments on another blogger's site. But I do like the templates.