I Read The News Today Oh Boy: (For Sunday, March 1, 2009)

Sunday! March 1! The first day of spring! (Yes, it was!) Let's see how I spent the day:

8:00 a.m.: We go to church every Sunday, except when we don't. This was one of those Sundays where we don't, so instead, I'm heading off to the office. This is the car we let Middle use; it was parked behind mine, so I gave her the choice of moving her car, or letting me take her car. She opted to sleep in, and because of that I'm not going to reimburse her gas money.

It's only a 15-mile round trip to my office anyway, but Middle complains that I "use up all her gas." Sweetie then usually gives her $5 or $10 to reimburse her, at which point I usually comment that she's making a profit off of us. They all go back to ignoring me right after that.


8:15 a.m.: Middle has this peace symbol hanging from her rearview mirror. I was stopped at a stop light when I took this. Hippie Thought of the Morning: Wouldn't life be better if we saw everything through a peace symbol?

Nostalgic thought of the morning: Off to the right is the dorm I stayed in my first semester of college, way back in 1987. If I squint right, I can almost see me walking out of there at 7 a.m. on one of my rare trips to chemistry class before I stopped going to chemistry class.


8:25 a.m.: The printer in my office. The office manager got each lawyer personalized letterhead, which required that each lawyer have a personal printer. My printer was "down" for the past few days, forcing me to share with the staff. Shortly after I took this picture, I realized the problem was I was out of ink.

While you might think it strange that it took me two days to realize that I was out of ink, know this: There are three lights on the printer: Toner, Drum, and Error. The "toner" light was on. When I ran the "troubleshooter" program, it told me to take the toner cartridge out and move this little slidey thing, so I did that. Several times.

It never told me You're out of ink. Even my printer at home does that. Calculators do that.


11:50 a.m.: Getting ready to leave. This is my boss, Dave. We'd just finished going over all of our mutual cases and updating each other. In those meetings, he tells me what new cases we'll be working on and gives me business advice. I assure him that for another week, I've still not been disbarred.


11:57 a.m.: After taking his picture, Dave for some reason says "Do you want me to take a picture of you and your thermos?" I have to explain to him again that it's a "travel mug," not a thermos. Thermoses -- thermi? -- are reserved for construction workers in the 1970s.

I am carrying my travel mug, a short story I'm mailing to a potential publisher, my "idea notebook," and my Ramen noodle container from Friday's lunch. You can't see it, but my iPod is cued up to "After The Fall" by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

Here's that song, for some reason paired with anime:


But the person who posted this to Youtube took pains to explain that they are "in NO way associated with the anime or the orchestra." Only that person is wrong; he or she is associated with both, now, by virture of posting that song.



1:30 p.m.: My new thing that I try to do is the "Sunday job." I have this theory that motion begets motion -- the more you do, the more you'll have energy to do stuff. To put that into practice, I try to do one job around the house on Sundays. (One reason I set them aside for Sundays? Then I don't have to feel guilty during the week about not doing the jobs; I can say well, that's one I'll do Sunday and buy myself some guilt-free free time.)

Another purpose of the job is to make me feel as though I pitch in, since "recapping during dinner all the comics I read during the day" doesn't seem to count as a chore according to my family.

Today's "Sunday job" is cleaning the two closets on our middle level. The one shown here is the closet where we keep cleaning supplies and where Mr Bunches likes to go to get the dust mop to play with.

I threw away six phone books, dating back to 2003. I don't know why we had a 2003 phone book in there. Or any phone book. Who uses phone books, anymore? Not me. And not the kids; I once gave a phone book to Oldest and told her to look up a number she needed, and she responded "How?"

2:00 p.m.: I'm going to do a little 'puting, but before I do, I scratch my knee, which hurts, and it feels a little bony and edgy, and then I wonder if I didn't do something to it to injure it (forgetting that it takes physical activity to cause an injury), so I check it out. It seems to be nothing. But I decide to take it easy, just in case, and go upstairs to watch an episode of Lost from season 3. Eko died!

4:30 p.m.: People always think I'm kidding about how often we go to Wal-Mart. I'm not. Why would I kid about that? This is the second trip to Wal-Mart this weekend; this time it's to get a new vacuum cleaner, which by my count is the 175th vacuum cleaner we've had to buy during our marriage.

I don't recall my parents ever replacing our vacuum. I think we had the exact same vacuum my entire childhood. I'm positive, in fact, because we had the old-fashioned kind that had a long hose attaching the brush to the base of it. We never got an upright vacuum cleaner when I was a kid. I think upright vacuums were looked down on in our house; I'm pretty sure they were considered lower-class.

That's Mr Bunches in the picture. He'd gone on strike again, because we walked through the snack aisle and he saw Sweetie grab some of the kind of cookies he liked. So we had to bribe him with those to get him out of the store.


4:40 p.m.: Checking out. Ever since I heard Ellen DeGeneres say it, I, too, like to see what needs brought other people to Wal-Mart and imagine what was going on when they decided to go to the store.

Our cart had cookies and a vacuum cleaner -- obviously, there was a cookie explosion at our house, one that left a mess beyond the capabilities of our old vacuum to clean up.

These people, right in front of us, had anti-freeze, tissues, sandwich cheese, and jerky spice. I'm picturing them making homemade jerky, but needing the tissues because it makes them sad since that's what great-grandpa used to do with them. The cheese and anti-freeze were supplies for the long trip back to the Yukon.

If you don't live in the Yukon, then what are you doing making your own jerky?


6:15 p.m.: I'm in charge of making dinner, but I've opted to make cookies before I start dinner, and that's slowing things down. Mr Bunches got hungry, so he gets a glass of milk and a banana to tide him over.


6:30 p.m.: Still working on the cookies, which take longer than I remembered, but they're for Sweetie. So Mr F gets his dinner -- macaroni and cheese, and Cocoa Puffs.

Mr F and Mr Bunches are the world's pickiest eaters. Just prior to this shot, I tried to give Mr F some peanut butter to see if he'd like it. I put a little on his lips and he licked it off and then shuddered, and when I tried to give him some more, he stiff-armed me and ran upstairs.

6:55 p.m.: The cookies -- oatmeal scotchies -- are done. Time to make the BLTs and french fries. The Boy has been nosing through and complaining.

7:30 p.m.: Okay, you can't tell at all what this is. It's a picture of a large orange cylindrical pillow which The Boy had in his room for a while. I made him clean his room today, and he wanted me to take the pillow downstairs, but I repeatedly refused. Then, everytime he moved it out of his room, I snuck it back in. First, I put it in his blanket. Then, on top of his door (which is what is shown, or not shown, here.) After he found this, I stuffed it behind the headboard of his bed. When he found that, I managed to cram it into the drawer where he keeps his blue jeans.



8:30 p.m.: Winding down. This is Mr F, jumping on the trampoline and watching "Little Einsteins." Note the protective fence around the television. Mr F can get over that in 0.01 seconds. From here, I'll put the boys to bed in a few minutes, then try to jump on the trampoline while watching Demetri Martin, then it's yoga and bedtime myself.