Score!

WARNING: Here there be poker content.

Is there a sweeter feeling than flopping the nut full house with a straight and flush draw on the board - along with eight people in the pot?

Fortunately, no one seemed to notice my head exploding when I saw the flop.

This ends the poker content. Please return to your previous activities.

Taxing Back

I woke up with little desire to actually climb out of bed this morning. However, there was plenty to do, and so there but for the grace of God went I.

After a quick trip to the gym, I returned home to discover that one of my freelance clients is continuing his run of not paying me for services rendered. So after filing away my plan to ruin his Monday, we headed to Soulard's Farmer's Market. Loaded with produce, we headed to the grocery store. After that, we returned home.

For house projects, I had two simple tasks this afternoon:

1. Plant grass in the bald spot in the center of the back yard
2. Fix the clothesline I hung for Darcy

However, I stopped at 1 when my back gave out.

Sadly, this is the second time something like this has happened. The first was a few years ago, when I twinged my back playing in a softball double header. I spend the next day cooped up in a plane circling over the state of Florida waiting for the weather to clear. After landing, my brothers and I went to Dave and Buster's, where I wowed them with my McGuire-esque power on the batting simulator.

Let me tell you, people turn and look when you go from saying "THERE IT GOES! ANOTHER DINGER!" to "AIIIEEEEE!!!" and then fall over clutching your back. In a way, I was kind of like McGuire towards the end - except for the millions of dollars and the steroid probes. C'est la vie, I guess.

The next morning was worse - back spasms. While the rest of the family took a boat ride through the Everglades, I spent the afternoon passed out on the couch, unable to move. Apparently, I have little tolerance for muscle relaxants. Fortunately, my brother's 60-lb. Boxer, Allie, decided to keep me company - by climbing into my lap. I didn't even have the strength to ask her to move.

So today, after lugging bags of soil across the yard, I began feeling the first twinge, I figured I'd relax for a few minutes, and then go back and fix the clothesline. Nope. Pain shot down my back and into my legs as I stood in the back yard. Stiff breezes hurt. The sun hurt. Everything hurt. I (slowly) retreated back into the house.

One darvocet later, I can at least function. But this sucks. I can't move. All I can do is sit here and type. From a work productivity standpoint, it would be gold, but I have tickets to tonight's Son Volt concert, and I don't see any way I'm going to make it, at least without loading up on alcohol and pain medication.

Who knows? Maybe I'd enjoy the show more, propped up against the back wall with my head lolling into my chest and drool dripping down my chin, listening to Jay and the boys. But that drive home might be kind of rough. I kid! I kid! I wouldn't drive my car under the influence. Stealing one - perhaps, but my own? No.

Oh well. This should hopefully clear up by tomorrow. I probably will put myself on the DL for kickball, since I want to be healthy for the -ahem- playoff run. (At this point in the season, with our record, the odds of us making the playoffs are about as good as Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin appearing on the cover of Parenting magazine).

But that's alright. I have a computer, pain pills, a freelance assignment (different client), television, and a sympathetic fiance who rules. I should pull through this okay. And I'm sure the freelance client will enjoy what I come up with while on the darvocet. Good times, good times.

The Double Bind

What do you say about a mystery novel that sets itself up as a successor to The Great Gatsby? The Double Bind, by Christopher Bohjalian, populates a world living in the shadows of the roaring twenties, where Jay Gatsby’s palatial home is now a country club, and Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s son, Bobbie Crocker, is a homeless drifter who left behind his legacy – a collection of photos – to the homeless shelter that got him off the street.

Laurel Estabrook, a worker at the shelter, looks through the photos and sees one that possibly contains an image of her on the eve of a brutal assault that left her nearly dead. Laurel begins a journey to learn more about this mysterious photographer, and to find out how one born to a life of unimaginable privilege can fall so low. This journey is one that changes Laurel forever.

I picked this book up with some trepidation. I don’t really like the idea of a novel picking up where Gatsby left off. Do we really need to know what happened to the Buchanans after Gatsby’s murder? But the strong reviews left me intrigued and I picked it up, and after a slow start, I found I had trouble putting the book down. And I nearly threw it across the room when I finished it.

Bohjalian does a fantastic job building suspense as Laurel learns more about Bobbie’s past and begins feeling the walls close in on her. As she withdraws into Crocker’s past more and more, her friends and family begin to worry about her.

However, the book runs right off the tracks when it gets to the “twist” ending. Some of it is foreshadowed nicely throughout the book, with subtle clues placed throughout. Unfortunately, Bohjalian tries taking it too far, and largely ruins what was building into a taut thriller.

I don’t want to go into too much detail regarding the ending of the book, other than to say that it’s the interactions and point of view that hurt this book the most. Had it been written in the first person, it would have been a much stronger – and satisfying conclusion.

5.5/10

When "I Love You" Is Not Enough

Police said the man they arrested lived a few blocks from Crystal and may have had a romantic interest in the girl.

I have to wonder about this guy's thought processes: send cute notes or flowers anonymously? Nah - too cliche.

Talk to her and ask her out? I want to set myself apart from the other guys.

Kidnap her dog, behead it and send the severed head to her in a gift box? Eureka!

Somehow I can't see this elderly couple staring into each other's eyes while reminiscing about how he courted her by acting like Kevin Spacey in Seven.

I suppose it could have been worse - he could have decided to kidnap her grandmother. I hope he's given a little quiet time as a guest of the state.

Much Ado . . .

Turns out I was wrong - it was a leaky water supply after all. Took five minutes to fix. My visions of cracked wax rings and cracked plumbing stacks weren't true after all.

I still don't trust the house. It's looking at me all shifty.

We'd Prefer You Call it a Pee-Pee-Soaked Heck Hole

So I was cleaning the bathroom Saturday afternoon. I know - some people hit parades on St. Patrick's Day; others get stinking drunk; me? I clean my bathroom.

As I'm cleaning around the toilet, I notice water on the floor. Water. On the bathroom floor. I've been there before - many times. You want leaks in the bathroom? I've had them all - the tub has leaked due to cracked caulk and grout, the way the shower head was set up caused water to flow onto the floor of the bathroom, the roof leaked into the bathroom, the faucet leaked, the toilet tank leaked. Generally, it all wound up in the same place - on the kitchen ceiling directly below the bathroom. For a compound that we need to survive, water has brought me an awful lot of grief.

But I digress - there's a little water on the floor. I wipe it up and determine that there's a little water condensing on the water supply for the toilet. No big. I can deal with it, and deal with it I do. I head off to my room to clean in there - because it's how I choose to spend my Saturday. Huzzah.

Later, I return to the restroom to get some other cleaning paraphernalia, where I see a much greater amount of water on the floor - all around the base of the toilet.

Over the last few years, I've become more of a plumbing expert than I ever thought possible. I'm not ready to go pro, but I can usually look at something and say - with pretty good authority - that that's not right. And water pooling around the base of the toilet? Not right.

I wipe it up, flush and see if anymore water pools. Nope. Maybe it was a fluke, but there's one more test. One more test that will prove whether I'm going to fall into my old habit of worrying myself nearly to death about it when nothing is wrong, or whether I have a problem.

Yep. I had a problem. The wet spot in the plaster ceiling confirmed it. A few minutes later, the water to the toilet is off and we're headed off to greener pastures for the night. Darcy only had to spend a few minutes to talk me down from my idea of getting the can of gas for the lawn mower, splashing it around the first floor, lighting a match and walking off into the sunset. Apparently, there's laws against that sort of thing. Who knew?

Frequently, I'm accused of worrying things to death. What can I say? I'm only truly happy if I have some problem to solve - the more Gordian in scope, the better. I complain about my house, and do want to divest myself of it. But I'm trying to be more optimistic about this. A friend once told me that if the water damage to my house was as severe as I feared it, my bathroom would have long ago fallen into the kitchen. So far, that hasn't come to pass.

But the house - and bathroom follies haven't been all bad. I know what to look for in the next house (two bathrooms, ideally) and will be prepared to deal with them.

Of course, it'll be the entirely new set of problems that will tear off and kick me in the junk.

So Bobby, Do You Like Gladiator Movies?

“So the Spartans fight in their underwear?” asked Darcy after I showed her the trailer for 300. Earlier in the day I received a free pass to see in on the IMAX, so I figured I’d give her the right of first refusal – a right she accepted – something about watching 300 scantily-clad men slaughter thousands of Persians didn’t do much for her.

On the other hand, I was looking forward to seeing it – the impossible odds and fighting thing, that is – not the men fighting in underwear thing.

There are many reasons to see 300 – it’s a beautiful film, with scenes that look like they were lifted straight from Frank Miller’s graphic novel. Sometimes that doesn’t work too well (HULK SUCK! -errr SMASH!), but Zack Snyder, the director, and Larry Fong, the cinematographer, chose bright color and high contrasts to bring the pages to life.

Gerard Butler did a fine job as Leonidas, the king of the Spartans, pulling off a nice combination of regal authority and almost homicidal bloodlust.

And the fight scenes were spectacular if not a little repetitive. There’s only so many ways that you can show people being hacked to pieces, and this is where the movie started losing me.

On the one side, you have the Spartans and other Greeks, who all look like they came straight from the modeling agency. On the other side, there’s the Persian army, which looks like the casting call specified circus freaks and lepers. Persian soldiers range from eight-foot-tall ogres with blades replacing their hands to an unholy cross between humans and pigs, and don’t get me started on Xerxes, the Persian king. Rodrigo Santoro was apparently channeling Jaye Davidson in Stargate as he played Xerxes. (For those of you who haven't seen Stargate, let's just say that Ra, Davidson's character, was a very bad - and disturbing - "man").

I also had a problem when the Greeks – the Spartans especially – started spouting off about how they were fighting for their freedom. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I seem to recall that the Spartans weren’t exactly known for their open society.

And finally, I realize that movies like this are not historically accurate. I know this. I understand it, and yet it still irks me. If memory serves, Thermopylae was actually fought between a small Greek army and the Persians. The 300 Spartans stayed behind with a few hundred other Greeks when their position became untenable because the Persians found the goat trail, so the Spartans stayed behind to allow the remaining Greek army a chance to escape. I would have preferred they stuck to the idea that the Spartans were sacrificing themselves to save the beleaguered army rather than cries of FREEDOM! LIBERTY! EQUALITY!

But I nitpick. Overall, I enjoyed the movie for what it was – violent eye candy of the check-your-brain-in-at-the-door variety, and I can safely say I didn’t hate myself for having seen it.

6.0/10

Friendly Advice

Being a good citizen of the world, I thought I would share this little nugget with you: if you're planning a wedding, and your fiance goes to a bridal show, under no circumstances - and I mean NO CIRCUMSTANCES - let her fill out an information card for formalwear places.

As far as I'm concerned, she can fill out any other card she wants, but if the sound of your phone ringing at all hours with guys wanting to lease you the hippest formalwear and best deals around isn't your thing, beg her to hold off.

It's a Dog's Life

Mike Daisey was a slacker. He was content to bounce from temp job to temp job, long enough to make a little money, then he'd quit, live off savings and "perform" in community theater productions until the next temp job.

Until Amazon came to town.

21 Dog Years is the story of Daisey's three years with Amazon; how he climbed from the perpetual night of customer service, where windows were so rare that "grown men and women cried, schemed and had knife fights with letter openers in the bathrooms, where unscrupulous managers would take bets on who would be killed and who would walk away triumphant with a seat that received a few feeble rays for a few hours a day." Daisey hung up on callers and randomly sent free books to Norwegians, to Business Development, where Amazon searched for companies worthy of partnering with - companies with vision, drive and style. Companies like Pets.com, the poster child of failed dot-coms.

I enjoyed this book on many levels - Daisey's a witty writer, and he nails the rush of working in the dot-com world, a world where budgets were optional, profits were a far-off dream, and offices were "a trifecta of Batcave, Fortress of Solitude, and supervillain lair." I think that anyone who worked - even tangentially, like I did, in the dot-com world, can relate to this corporate mindset - where you were ACHIEVING THINGS, dammit, so who the hell cares about something silly like making payroll.

One of my favorite sayings is "It's not selling out - it's buying in!" I always tell friends that when they get the big promotion or new job, and lament about how they're not going to end up saving the world after all. Daisey buys in big-time - at first, but he begins to realize that for him, at least, tons of money and a 9-to-5 aren't the answer.

It's a fun book, and a great look back at one of the more -interesting- times in recent history.

Unsinkable

The old standards flowed from the duet as the lights from the skyline filtered in through the window. Outside, the bitter cold kept all but the hardiest (or craziest) souls indoors.

I sat across the table from Darcy, smiling. Looking at her. Enjoying our time together as we traveled up the river. Around us, couples sat at their own tables, enjoying quiet conversation, dinner or dancing, celebrating Valentine's Day with a dinner cruise up the Mississippi.

BUMP.

The boat shuddered lightly.

THUD.

We glanced out the window to see an impressive chunk of ice spinning away from the side of the boat. I opened my mouth to speak.

SSSCCRRRUNCH.

More ice scraped the side of the boat. Looking out the window, I tried judging how far it was to swim to the nearest shore. They did warn us that the cruise may end up being dockside if ice on the river was too thick, but the captain seemed to think all was well, and who am I to argue with the captain. And we wanted to scope the boat out to see how appropriate it would be to hold our wedding there next year.

BOOM. More ice off the hull.

We continued talking, dancing, trying not to worry as a crewman carried an armload of life preservers across the dance floor to some hidden locker. I began to wonder if they'd renamed the Becky Thatcher to Titanic recently.

"Darcy, I love you. But if this boat goes down and we find a door or piece of flotsam for you to float on, I'm making you scoot over. I refuse to freeze to death when there's a perfectly good door nearby."

She laughed. And then I'm pretty sure she was judging how hard it would be to keep me in the water while she sat high and dry on the wreckage.

The riverboat turned around and eventually made its way back to the mooring, safe, sound and afloat. So while we spent the rest of the evening dockside, it was much easier to enjoy ourselves while not wondering if we'd have to swim for it.

Huh

So I guess my computer thought it was being helpful when it deleted all the files off my iPod sometime last night. And while I appreciate initiative, I would have liked a little notification so I could have maybe, say - reloaded the roughly 19 GB of music and podcasts I had stored on it, instead of sitting here poking it, staring at it and wondering how in the hell I'm going to pass the time this afternoon.

Sweet Jesus, I may have to work.

Trash Talking

The gray skies reflected my mood perfectly; I wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep the day away. Unfortunately, the world still revolves despite my wishes otherwise, and so I had to emerge into it.

At the top of my errand list: the library. Generally, the library cheers me up - all those books, all those words, knowledge and characters hidden away, waiting to be discovered usually causes my heart to grow a size or two.

Why was I in such a funk? I couldn't say; the holidays were rushing up ever closer, and the fact that it was Sunday meant the weekend was drawing to it's inevitable close and the thought of a full week of work just made me want to curl up in a ball.

So there but for the grace of God I went, and of course I arrived ten minutes too early. So there I stood with about 20 other bibiophiles, students and wayward souls.

As I leaned against a pillar thumbing through a book, the voices rang out nearby:

"Is this yours? Here, I think you dropped it."

"What the hell are you doing?" replied a second voice.

I looked up to see a tall, lanky middle-aged man who looked as if he were still living in the '60s - and couldn't be happier, standing next to a dark blue, beaten-up sedan. The driver of the sedan shouted out.

"Don't throw things in my car, man. What's your problem?" And he threw a scrap of paper out the window at the aging hippie.

The hippie, nonplussed, picked up the scrap, tossed it back into the car through the open window. "I don't have a problem; I don't like litterers."

The paper shot back out the window. "You throw that back in this car again and you'll be sorry!"

Back in the window. "There's a bank of trash cans just right there. Use them!"

Out the window, and followed by the driver's side door opening. A younger, thick guy around my age stood up. He was wearing a shirt the same color his car once was and a deep scowl on his face. "Stop messing with my property, man!"

The hippie pointed to the ground. "This is your property too! I'm tired of people messing with my property! Why aren't you?"

The guy stomped around to the hippie and stood in his face. "I don't like litterers either, but I don't like you messing with my stuff."

"I'm just cleaning up after you."

At this point, a third man enters the scuffle. "Good Lord! Here -- I'll pick it up. Why are you acting like this? There's kids around! Just pick it up and let it go!"

He stepped between them and picked up the offending scrap and carried it to a trash can.

At this point, the car owner began appealing/attacking the crowd. "I don't like litterers either, but this is wrong. I'm going to have security ban you and you from the library!" he said this while pointing at the hippie and the samaritan.

People started giggling and rolling their eyes. "The holidays must be getting closer," a woman muttered - loud enough for everyone to hear.

"I don't like trash and litterers either! Why don't you just mind your own business?" the car owner stared whining.

The doors opened and he stormed into the library. Everyone else followed.

Throughout all this, I stood there, leaning against my pillar, trying not to laugh at the utter ridiculousness of the situation. I might have tried to stop the fight had it happened, but I didn't feel any need to get involved otherwise.

However, something cheered me about the exchange. Maybe it was the triumph of the rational people over the goofy litterer. Maybe it was the way the hippie handled the situation. Or maybe it was the fact that I wasn't the only one the holidays were apparently getting to.

In short, I think it helps to know that nothing helps a foul mood to know that there's always someone grouchier and moodier than you.

Or maybe I don't like litterers.

I followed the crowd into the library, took care of business and moved on with the beginnings of a smile on my face.

Goodbye Trudy

You were a great dog; I miss you already.

Only the Strong Survive

Your results:
You are Apocalypse

You believe in survival of the fittest and you believe that you are the fittest.


Click here to take the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz...

Choices

The situation finally came to a head two weeks before Christmas. Trudy, while always a little shaky on the housebreaking thing, was treating the house like her own personal commode. When you fear to tread inside your own house without shoes, it's time to do something.

So I packed her up on a rainy Monday evening, where the vet told me I had a few options remaining:

• Running MRIs, CTs and other mega-expensive tests on her so they might - might - be able to determine what's wrong. This doesn't mean a cure - just an explanation.
• Try giving her new drugs, which if history is any indication, would only help for a few months at the outside.
  
• Grin and bear it.
  
• Have Trudy put down, because she's nearly 15 and this situation is not going to get better.
  

Realistically, it's what I expected to hear, but that didn't make it any easier to deal with.

I can't really afford to run the tests on her, and really, they'd be useless; I know what's "wrong" with her - she's old. At times, she stares off into space for several minutes at a stretch, and she goes through stretches when she acts completely confused by the world around her. It's during these stretches that my dining room, sunroom and landing become minefields.

Giving her the new drugs is simply putting off the inevitable. See the whole "nearly 15" thing.

Grinning and bearing it is becoming less of an option. Darcy is moving in this Spring, and it's not fair to her to have to put up with this. Nor is it fair to me or Trudy; I have to take the time to clean the floors, and I can't help but feeling like it's a little unusual to spend several minutes after work every day trying to figure out where she relieved herself in the house.

So there we are. I could have done it then and there, but I didn't want to have her put down going into the holidays. (Of course, as we stood in the parking lot as rain soaked us through and she refused to get into the car, I wondered how the vet would react to me dragging her back in and saying "it's time!" I held off.)

The hell of it is that she's been great the last week, but we go through this - she'll be great for several days or a couple of weeks and then she follows up with two weeks of constant crapping. And the bad days are starting to outnumber the good ones.

I'm going to miss my little friend. Over the past two-plus years, she's alternated between complete pain in the ass and the best friend I could want. But she's always been good-natured, very sweet and protective. At this point, I've been trying to make her last week as enjoyable as possible.

I called and made the appointment for Monday; I'll leave work early, pick Trudy up, take her to the park for the afternoon, then we'll say goodbye.

A Good Ocean View Can't Be Beat

What do you say?

We all put some money together and purchase a sovereign nation. I like it!

Oooh! Oooh! I want to be emperor!

There's First Love, and There's Brian Love

Possibly the greatest time-waster in the history of humankind.

Engagement Party

"You look like the perfect couple. How you doin'?"

Yellow is a relaxing color, or maybe it's blue. I wasn't too sure. The maroon chairs offered a nice contrast. Plus, they were the most uncomfortable chairs I can remember sitting in for some time. And it's kind of ironic if you think about it. They want you to wait in these chairs. You're supposed to sit in them for a long time. Wouldn't it make more sense if they were easier on your posterior?

"Man, I was shouting 'Yaaaa! AAAAAH!' They had to hold me down."

Darryl was still talking. To us, to everyone around us. People were nodding, trying to be polite. I was trying to figure out exactly how we'd landed in Hell's Waiting Room. But, I realized, that was an inapt analogy. We weren't in Hell's Waiting Room -- we were in Hell itself.

He'd sat down across from us earlier, carrying what looked like a clear plastic cornucopia of gauze and pharmaceuticals. Out in the lobby, a weathered and angry looking old man kept doing laps in his wheelchair and barking at the receptionist from time to time.

"They took one of those sticks, you know - with the cotton on the end - and had it in my stomach. They was rooting around trying to find the pus."

Welcome to the ER Waiting Room on Thursday night.

Welcome to my engagement party.

The day began ordinarily enough - a sunny yet cool start to winter. I followed the routine to the letter: wake, shower, walk dog, eat and head to work. But this day wasn't going to be ordinary; it was going to be special. It was The Day.

Work passed in something of a fog. Basically, I was more useless than usual. Despite my best efforts, I may have actually accomplished something, but it's entirely possible I dreamed that part of it up. I was excited to get through the day. Ready to hit the kitchen to start cooking. I had an exciting menu lined up, great ingredients and new knives. Oh, and there was that whole ring thing too.

I left the office early, met a friend for lunch and hit the gym for a quick workout. Upon returning home, it was time to start cooking.

After a little goofing off, it was time to get my cook on. I started getting my mise into place - using my new chef's knife, I minced garlic, chopped apricots, sliced scallions, trimmed french beans and julienned carrots. It was fun having a really sharp knife to work with, and things were coming together nicely. Cooking relaxes me; I wasn't sweating bullets or fretting. Everything worked according to plan.

One hour out, I browned the lamb, spread the mustard, garlic and bread crumbs to it, and dropped it in the oven. The couscous was soaking up the chicken stock. The table was set, the wine chilled and the ring concealed somewhere handy. Darcy walked in from work as dinner hit the table.

After dinner, I swallowed hard, pulled the ring from it's hiding spot and asked the question.

OK - she said yes.

As Darcy was calling her friends and family, I decided to finish straightening up the kitchen. I scraped the plates, scrubbed the pans and picked up the knife and wiped it down with the sponge. And I was amazed when it cut through the sponge. Wow, I thought - be careful with this - it could hurt. A lot.

I was putting the knife in the dish drainer when it slipped out of my hand.

Darcy knew there was a problem when I shouted a few choice words. One of them starts with "M" and rhymes with otherfucker. We bandaged up the finger.

And bandaged it again after blood soaked through it.

And again.

Two hours and my finger was still bleeding. That's a bad sign. I may not be a doctor, but I hear that when blood seeps out of you for a couple of hours, you may have a problem. So we hit the emergency room -- just in time for their fast track service for minor injuries to close.

So we waited. And met Darryl, who I later saw passed out in the center of the quieter waiting room. Security was getting ready to remove him to somewhere.

We waited some more. And watched the impromptu family reunion as four generations of the James family gathered to find out more about their grandmother who had a stroke. Angry wheelchair man continued stalking the waiting room. I'd lost count, but I think he was nearing his 200th lap. Apparently, this rendered him effectively invisible to the hospital staff, because no matter what he said or did, they just looked past him and moved on to the next person.

More waiting. Darcy nodded off in the seat next to me as Jerry Seinfeld became Hank Hill became the news became Bernie Mac. And still we waited. Finally they took me in for treatment, and decided not to do anything with it other than put the finger in a gauze splint for a day or two - something we could have picked up at Walgreens.

Deep down, I think I was jealous that Darcy got to wear something on her finger but I didn't - well now we were even. While she got to bear a sparkling diamond on her ring finger, I got to wear a sheath of gauze over my middle finger. And I'll get a cool scar. Maybe.

So there you have it. Some people celebrate their engagement by spending time quietly with one another. Others surround themselves with friends and family. Me? I eschew such conventionalities. Give me posture-busting plastic chairs and human misery any day.

Welcome to the family Darcy. Wait 'til you see what I have planned for our wedding day . . .

Apparently, the Axe Handle Wasn't Available

Man attacks another man with antlers in a road rage incident.

I know of people who carry blackjacks, bats, heavy flashlights and even guns in their cars in case they meet some maniac some day. But carrying antlers? I'm all for self-defense, but antlers?

And how exactly does one deal with an antler-wielding attacker?

Pilgrimage

When I started dating Darcy, little did I know that every year, if we had the means, we were obligated to make a pilgrimage. So on a cold December morning, we piled into the car, faced east, and began our odyssey.

We crossed the river without incident, and as the strip malls gave away to farms, churches and intermittent houses, I finally broke down and asked, "Where the hell are we? I don't remember any of this from last year."

"We're almost there," she said. And, on cue, Millstadt loomed ahead of us. We made the appropriate turns and were soon at our destination -- the tree farm. Hundreds of acres of green, living trees, all eagerly awaiting some saw-wielding maniac to cut them down, drag them across town and into his living room - where the tree gets revenge by filling the air with enough pollen to make flowers quiver in anticipation.

Upon reflection, I realized why I didn't recognize where we were -- I was distracted last year. But this year, I was prepared. The night before, I borrowed my mother's minivan. If we were going to act like suburbanites, then by God, we were going to look the part!

The minivan fit in nicely with all the few pickup trucks and other vans that dotted the lot; we grabbed a saw from the counter and piled into a van with a family of four and off we went to the trees.

Climbing out of the van, the driver warned us: "Do all the cutting you want before you hand the tree off. We will not cut it for you back there. Y'all understand?" Satisfied with the nods and grunts, he released us into the wild.

The flashbacks started shortly thereafter. "How about this one?" "No." "That one?" "No. It has a bald spot."

"The needles are dying."

"It's not tall enough."

"It's not wide enough."

It became apparent to me that Darcy and my father would have been kindred spirits, and that's a wonderful thing. I now accept the fact that I shall never truly understand the mind of a tree aficionado. But next year, I'm bringing the hand and foot warmers.

Back at the front of the lot, after they wrapped the tree, one of the workers asked if we wanted help taking it out to our car. I bit back the "Where the fuck were you last year?" that almost sprung out of my mouth. It's good to see the filters still work.

I lugged the tree to the van and heaved it into the back. We were off to my house, where the tree would be residing this year.

Despite a small list to the left, the tree fit perfectly in the corner of the living room. I popped Superman Returns (re-review coming soon) into the DVD player - good Christmas-tree-decorating movies are vital to the operation, and got my decorate on.

Tree decorating is not something I come by naturally. Generally, I just look at a tree and say "Perfect! Just as God wanted it!" However, I freely admit that I could be a little hazy on God's plan, so I obeyed the decorating master and began putting ornaments on the tree. I began worrying that the tree was full, but my folly was pointed out to me; apparently, I am not yet ready to snatch the ornament from the master's hand.

And I'll be damned if we didn't hang that last box full of ornaments onto this (admittedly huge) tree.

So now the tree is decorated, and we're all ready for the holidays. I might complain about lugging the tree across town and into the house, but at night, when the twinkling lights cast a calming spell over the room, I'm willing to admit it's worth the effort.

But don't worry; I'm still going to complain about it next year.