Had a most wonderful weekend. It started out hellish enough. Put in a 50 hour work week which really spaced me out. I tell you true that I laid awake in bed one night last week and saw stars. From my bed. Without benefit of a telescope or even a window. When you can gaze upon the universe while looking up at your ceiling, you know you’re losing it. Came home late on Friday exhausted. Missus wonders why I didn’t call because we’re supposed to go see her grandmother (freshly discharged from the hospital after hernia surgery). I thought she was going without me. Anyhow, walk into the house, hit the can, walk back to car and we’re on the road again. Turned a normally chatty 1.5 hour car ride into a near silent hour long road race. I wasn’t angry, nah, not me.

My grandmother-in-law tends to get pretty spacey after surgery (side effect of anesthesia) and usually goes on a tear about everyone and everything. Tonight she was ranting herself stupid. Complaining about how no one believed she was sick, how everything she eats makes her want to vomit, how much her new pills cost, on and on. We got her to calm down long enough to explain what happened to her, what day it was, when she should take her pills and managed to get some food into her. She has me do some odd jobs around her apartment (rig a new clothesline, for one) and nearly bites my head off in the process of helping her. I’m not in the mood, but she’s not herself, so I let everything slide. Then we go over to the in-laws. Drink some hot tea to revive while the Missus and Co. discusses everything about Grandmom in minute detail. Then rehashes the minutia. Missus says we should go soon and goes back to talking about Grandmom from the start. The kitchen counter is one of the few things keeping me upright by this time and I rather unceremoniously put on my coat and wish them all well. The Missus follows my cue and heads to the car. I manage to drive home by meditating on the lines of the roadway for most of the trip. I was not a happy camper.

Wake up early on Saturday (don't ask me why my body hates me) and spent it in a flurry of cleaning activity for International Food Sunday. One of our friends from college, Ange (a Greek-American), and her husband came down. The deal was this: Ange would make Greek cookies for her family and we would make Polish cookies for ours. We would swap out some of each other’s cookies along with the recipe. She made some Greek cookie (to say the name of them would require removing my tongue with pliers) that looked like little puffy wads of dough with powdered sugar on them. We made chrushchiki (pronounced "croosh-CHICKY") which is little more than an eggy dough rolled paper thin and fried in oil. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, eat and repeat as necessary. A staple of the Missus’ family holiday, I only learned about them after marrying her (I am Polish in name, but we don’t have many long standing ethnic traditions). She makes the dough, rolls, cuts and folds them (they have a strange shape, like a diamond rolled into a bow) and I get to work the fry line and clean up afterwards. Fair trade if you get the chance to eat them afterwards.

Suffice it to say it was a resounding success. We got to visit with friends and get some holiday busy work out of the way at the same time. All of us briefly channeled the Great Spirit of Julia Childs and provided those Important Tips and Tricks no recipe ever seems to include. The Missus demonstrated the rolling and folding technique for chrushchiki and let Ange try making a few. I showed Ange’s husband how quick they fry up and let him have a go at it. He burned a few (a very easy thing to do) but then he took over for me for much of the rest of the time. We sampled the other’s sugared delicacies and marveled at the other’s creation. Ange's cookies had a ultrafine texture and a taste not unlike marzipan. Ours turned out to be an exceptional batch (the taste lies a lot in the details). Ethereally light and just about melted on the tongue. The result: come Easter time, we show Ange how to make perogies and she will help us to create spanakopita.

The Missus and I both watch the show, so it becomes less of a flesh fest and more of an abstract discussion on style and beauty. For the most part, I wasn’t impressed this year with either the models or the outfits. I’m long tired of the stick figure looks most of the women sport (note to fashion designers: bring back the full form of Bettie Page again! Please! The 50’s Sweater Girl works on so many levels.) Heidi Klum looks to be the heaviest of them, although I’m certain I’ve owned hiking boots that weigh more than she does. Too add to the horror, several of the models sport close cropped haircuts. John Lee Hooker said it for me the best: sure don’t want no woman whose hair ain’t no longer than mine. I’m staring at the screen thinking that I tapped into some sort of transvestite parade when they walk by.

(Sigh.) I can’t wait to see next year’s show.

What a wonderful Friday this is. The Wizard of Oz grade windstorm from yesterday has cleared out most of the leaves from my yard (in the words of Homer J.: WOOHOO!). I’ve got half a day at work, not by choice, but by corporate design (double WOOHOO!) And for the war whoop trifecta, Friday is Bagel Day at work and it’s my turn to bring them in.

"…and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey." (Exodus 16:31). Bite into a good whole wheat bagel and tell me I’m lying. (Wow, I never thought I’d find myself quoting the Good Book here. But such is my passion for bagels).

The trick is finding a good bagel. A good bagel has a firm outer skin formed by boiling them briefly in water before baking. If you walk into a bagel shop and don’t see something akin to a giant cauldron of steaming water, leave. Immediately. (Stick the board of health on them while you’re at it.) If left out for a few days, a good bagel will make short work of a plate glass window and doubles nicely as a hammer in crunch situations (although I don’t recommend using it to remove nails). Various companies like Lenders and Thomas’ make "bagels" (Dr. Evil should be here making quote marks in the air), but they’re really nothing more than puffy English muffins. And don’t even get me started on those horrid things that Dunkin’ Donuts churns out. Avoid these puffy bits of frippery aimed at running local bagel shops out of town. If you want something good, you’ve got to go local.

Talked with my dentist about the root canal work. Tried to cajole her into extracting the tooth instead. She gave me that "Aw, why would you wanna do that?" speech in a tone normally reserved for four year olds who won't do what you ask or for really cute puppies. If I was the puppy, I would have peed on her shoes by now. Looks like I'm working overtime until Santa Claus brings me my new teeth. All high-carbon steel with hydraulic action (140 pounds of pressure per square inch!).

That's it for now. If I get time tonight, I'll add to this. But I'll leave you a list of nicknames I've been compiling. Maybe you can add to it.

You meet someone, a stranger, and you don't have time or need to find out their real name. What do you call them? Here's a list I've been called in the past (no particular order):

• Buddy
• Chum
• Pal
• Boss (or Boss Man)
• Bucko
• Sport
• Champ
• Tiger
• Slick
• Brother

Feel free to add any that you can think of. Until later...

Went grocery shopping with the Missus last night. I like shopping with her. Really. I know this will probably marked me "Banned for Life" among the Tough Guys Union (Local 6), but I’ve tried shopping on my own. A week ago, to be exact. Granted it was with a list and coupons from her, but for me it is the Scavenger Hunt of the Damned. Trying to figure out which aisle has what, trying harder to determine if the item you wanted was five aisles back, actually finding the item and then decoding the coupons to see if any of them apply (or expired, meaning you just killed 10 minutes of your life for nada). It takes the mind of an air traffic controller, the packaging skill of a mail clerk (why can’t everything just come in a box?) and the eyes of a handwriting expert to make it look smooth. If I had to do it on a regular basis, I’d live on Cheez Doodles and ginger ale. Maybe some instant oatmeal to make sure everything keeps moving.

Shopping with her is great by comparison. Push the cart. Stop the cart. Load heavy item(s). Push the cart. Stop the cart. Get item(s) from high shelf. On and on, ad nauseum. And she’s a great shopper, to her credit and to my digestive tract. She can spot a sale item from three aisles off. Handles meat like it was plutonium. Handles chicken like it was plutonium mixed with the SARS virus. Keeps a mental list of what she needs, what we already have at home and how much we should get. Knowing just how much we should get is a very tricky thing and, especially with the Missus, it’s important that she knows when to say no to a good deal. My father-in-law is something of a pack rat when it comes to food. If four cans of tuna for $X is a good deal then twelve cans are a better deal, or so his logic goes. It’s only him and my mother-in-law living at home, yet he shops like he’s hosting the Brady Bunch for the next year. I won’t expose you to the horrors of his basement, but suffice it to say that he has enough canned goods to easily repel small arms fire. I'm hoping that set of genes doesn't click on in her one day. Otherwise I'll be building coffee tables out of expired cans of butter beans.

Now, in the politics of the food world, I like Kashi. They make some great cereals, all organic, pesticide free, and proceeds of each sale go to war orphans (well, nothing on the box about proceeds, but the rest is true). They have that environmentally friendly, holistic business outlook that makes you feel good to buy their product. After reading the Kashi box, you can envision whole rainforests being clear cut to bring you the cartoon likeness of a toucan for your breakfast enjoyment. Up yours, Toucan Sam, I’m down with Kashi.

But the taste of this particular Kashi product, oy. Seven Whole Grains and Sesame, proclaims the box. Packing foam and fossilized spitballs if you ask me. The banana I added to the cereal was the only source of flavor. I’m debating eating the box so I can get the most out of my purchase price. If this was their sole product, they’d have closed down within a week of starting. Fortunately, their other products feature both taste and ingredients you’ve met before. Have you had any triticale today? I have, thanks to Kashi’s Factory Floor Sweepings.

Take half day off work that day and head to the dentist. Correction: referral to a dental specialist from my dentist. Been having pain in my back teeth for a few weeks and Ye Olde Tooth Driller wants a second opinion. The guy is nice for an endodontist (a fancy name for someone who causes great pain at your expense), but he must have way too many older patients. Everything he says to me IS SPOKEN AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE WITHOUT APPEARING OFFENSIVE. After the exam, he tells me that I HAVE A FRACTURE IN A TOOTH AND I MUST UNDERGO ROOT CANAL WORK. This was only supposed to be a second opinion, nothing more. Now I’m suddenly told I’ll be back here in this office a few weeks later under the ether. And one more visit to finish the job. I’m a cheapskate, especially when it comes to some 8 Benjamin’s worth of dental work on one tooth, so I ask if it would a smarter idea to have the tooth pulled. Plus I had what I thought were some valid reasons for an extraction:

First: after having numerous fillings in the offending molar, there isn’t much left to save.

Second: my wisdom teeth have actually pushed some of my existing teeth crooked and I figure removing a tooth would allow for some room.

Third: my family has a horrible history with breaking crowns.

So I ask about removing the tooth. ABSOLUTELY NOT. YOU’RE YOUNG AND YOU HAVE ALL OF YOUR TEETH. UNLESS THAT FRACTURE IS TO THE ROOT, YOU DON’T NEED AN EXTRACTION. I WOULDN’T EVEN CONSIDER IT. I don’t know whether he was just using his Outside Voice or he was ticked at my suggestion. I didn’t even bother with the Valid Reasons.

I know this is more about my mouth than you ever wanted to know. I can already hear Al Pacino from "Scent of a Woman" chiding me: "How fascinating. ’A History of My Dental Work.’ Hoo-ah. You should be posting this on a web site. You’ll be getting hits like the Tet Offensive."

The computer is still down for the count (Second Evil Force to park on my doormat). The ITGAW was running the equivalent of computer intensive care on it over the weekend and the machine had effectively flatlined. Now the possibility for problems may lie with the CPU. At this rate, I’ll have rebuilt the computer for what it would have cost me to buy two computers. Suddenly an abacus is looking very good right now.

On an up note, we went to visit some friends up in Connecticut this weekend. Nice trip, all in all. Spent a lot of it doing housework for them (they’re expecting their first child soon, thus reducing their house staff and groundskeepers by 50 percent). Didn’t mind doing the work, especially since I got to glue up some nice oak dining room chairs for them in the process. There’s something about working on chairs that I really enjoy more than most furniture. Chairs are really great time capsules and each one has a different story to tell. I always try to consider who might have sat in that chair before I got my hands on it. Did someone famous (or infamous) park their butt on this very seat? Was it a young child sulking about having to eat broccoli? A newly engaged woman? A father receiving news of the death of his son? It tends to elevate the nature of my work and makes an ordinary chair take on a life of its own.

Yes, my one annual diversion into the insane. By most accounts, I am your Average Joe Nowhere Near A Millionaire, with an Average House on an Average Street in an Average Town. But come February, I don a bathing suit and some sandals and go screaming into the Atlantic Ocean.

Sometimes even in costume.

Willingly, mind you.

Into water that, if it were fresh, would be frozen solid.

It’s actually a charity event held by the Law Enforcement Torch Run and donations go to Special Olympics. Billed as the largest polar bear plunge in the world (an estimated 3,000 plus swimmers last year) it turns a chunk of the Point Pleasant boardwalk into a poor man’s Mardi Gras. Drunkards, costumed nutcases, and half clothed people (point of note: most of them are cops) diving into 30-something water for a good cause. Fat Tuesday plus the Jerry Lewis Telethon plus Titanic. Minus the dying. If you’re in the area on Feb. 29, 2004, find a parking spot (insert Edna Krebopple's derisive "HA!" here) and follow the crowd to the boardwalk. Look for the hat (polar bear on red knit hat, pictures coming soon) and say hello.

Although losing the Internet has opened my eyes to things I pretty much forgot about (the mark of a true junkie). The Honey Do List from Hades Town is one of these things.

"Let’s see…plumbing, basement lights, bookcases?!"

When did I ever agree to build bookcases next to the fireplace? Although there’s plenty of blue collar blood in my body, the woodworking genes never crossed over. Rewire a lamp? Sure. Solder a pipe? It involves fire, so I’ll give it a shot. Cut a straight line in a board? Not with a laser, a jig built by a team of German engineers and master carpenter Norm Abrams directing my every move. I’ll probably never aspire to the lofty heights of Norm and his antique walnut corner cupboards. Then again, if I had the 50 grand worth of tools Normie has in his shop, I could get trained chimps to turn out Chippendale furniture inside of a month. Companies that make things like Gorilla Glue and wood putty bank their future sales on people like me and our multi-thumbed offspring.

My big thing, strangely enough, is furniture restoration. I know furniture is made of wood and that wood is my archenemy, but restoring it usually doesn’t involve cutting or nailing anything. BIG difference here between resto work and carpentry. I scrape off the old finish (or finishes as is often the case), give it a sanding, slap on a new coat of finish and either deliver it to a room in the house or add it to the ever expanding pile of yard sale items. I even repair cane seats (big bonus at yard sales, ‘cause most people overlook real gems because of the seat repairs). I’ve learned most of the work, from cleaning to seat repair, at the hands of my parents. My family is very tribal in that respect: the elders teach the younger set and they in turn impart that knowledge on to the next generation. No books or videos, just watching and hands on work. Plus, once you nail the basics, you can’t believe how many people toss out perfectly serviceable furniture. People are willing to get rid of something made of solid wood only to buy new furniture with the structural strength of cracker meal. Junk is a 20^th century concept and needs to be overhauled. If for nothing else, I need fewer projects to work on.

So what has my e-addiction (and the feeble attempts to break it) shown me? That my basement looks like the autopsy of an Ethan Allen store. The broken bones of chairs in one corner, a legless table in another, the carefully dismantled carcass of a child’s roll top desk spread out across the floor. I get partway through some (read: most) of these projects only to be called off on more urgent needs (like beating my high score in Solitaire). I return months later wondering where half the parts got off to and spend a weekend trying to get back to where I left off (on the furniture, not the Solitaire). I’ve managed to curb my trash picking tendencies (the will is strong, but the flesh is weak and the car trunk is empty) and still the basement fills with an inanimate forest of legs, drawers and seats. Even more projects are finding their way to me, usually through neighbors looking for a cheap repair or well meaning relatives out trash picking (in my civilized family, it’s called "pearl diving"). Surprisingly, the Missus has said little if anything about the squalor that is my workshop. As long as she can make it to the canned goods and cranberry juice, my half of the basement doesn’t exist. I know it will reach critical mass soon enough, so maybe the hard drive crash is an electromagnetic blessing in disguise. Time to start scraping the paint off that roll top again.

By the way, if you have elections going on by you get out there and vote today. Google the candidates names, learn something about them other than their name and then head off to the voting booth. You don’t like the choices? Put your own name in. Just vote. It takes very little time and gives you license to bitch when taxes go up or inane referendums get passed.