A few weeks later, I got the phone call. The gerbil gift might have been a bad idea. Frodo had eaten Bilbo’s tail. Two weeks later, there was another phone call. Bilbo had retaliated for his missing tail by opening a huge can of rodent whoop ass on his cage mate. Frodo was dead.
Even on the best of days, flying out of Chicago’s O’Hare airport is more painful than a dry-fingered prostate exam. On a Friday afternoon, with a week of business travel behind you, a ten-dollar beer in your hand and the odor of poorly maintained public restrooms filling the air, you wish air travel had never been invented. At that point, it would have been better had the Wright Brothers gone into haberdashery, or pursued western real estate. I just wanted …Read the Rest
The folks in Arkansas are very nice. All that smiling and waving, the courteous nods and warm handshakes. “Thank you, sir. Have a good day, sir. You come on back now sir, you hear?” Arkansas should change its nickname from the Natural State to the Polite State. And even though I’d screwed something up with their inventory, my customer was no different. “It’s okay, Mr. Kip,” said Bobby-Jo, the project manager. “My mama taught me everyone is allowed to make …Read the Rest
Obviously, I didn’t plan it this way. The Nordic Warrior Queen and I were visiting my daughter in San Diego when I saw the TV commercial: Comic Con, at the San Diego Convention Center, starting Wednesday. I’ve wanted to go since I was a little kid, when Comic Con was still the Golden State Comic Book Convention. I would dress up as Captain America and pose before the bathroom mirror, wishing I could be a superhero. Woohoo! It was the …Read the Rest
My boss called me last weekend. “I need you in Arkansas, ayy-sap.” No please or thank you here. Just ayy-sap. “Sure, what’s up?” What else can you say when your boss calls on a Saturday morning? “Customer’s in trouble. Just go.” She hung up the phone. The email with travel instructions arrived seconds later. Fly on a SUNDAY? No effing way. I immediately called her back. “I thought we agreed no weekends.” “I know things you don’t,” came the curt …Read the Rest
Driving through downtown Ottawa, Kansas this week, I got stuck behind a black Ford Fusion with a license plate that read OLDLUVR. At every stoplight, this impatient love machine scooted through the red exactly three seconds before his turn. Perhaps he was rushing home to a hot grandmother, blue pills at the ready. I was in no hurry, but his actions irritated me somehow. Why should he break the law and go unpunished, while I continue to pay my taxes …Read the Rest
After the Dancing with the Stars affair, I had to change restaurants. No more sports bars for me. Those Texas baseball fans are crazy. There’s a Coco’s close to the hotel where I was staying, but they don’t serve beer. So I went to Chili’s instead. It’s a little farther, but the Nordic Warrior Queen says I can afford to lose a few pounds, and I decided to walk. It was a beautiful evening for Texas: 100 degrees and 90 …Read the Rest
Ever since the Nordic Warrior Queen and I started dance lessons, a terrible feeling has come over me. Don’t get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoy doing the two-step with my wife. But I’ve begun to have thoughts no man should have to admit. I can’t stop watching Dancing with the Stars Poor Dorothy Hamill. Brave Zendaya. The titanic efforts of Wynonna Judd. I’m not proud of my obsession. I admit, however, that while out of town on business recently, eating …Read the Rest
My grandson Logan and I were sitting on the couch watching Terminator when the kid turned to me. “You know something, Papa?” he said. “Linda Hamilton is hot.” I looked down at his chubby face, the splotch of crusted breast milk on his t-shirt. “Dude, you’re six months old. How would you even know?” A thin runner of drool trickled down his chin. “I especially like the part where she says, ‘Watch it for me, big buns.’” I tried to …Read the Rest
Sam Champion’s been making a big hoopla lately over the comet PANSTARRS, Earth’s most recent once-in-a-lifetime interstellar visitor. Every morning he explains the details of the comet’s appearance, going on about perihelion and secular light curves, terms as foreign to me as Sam’s gassy traveler from the Oort Cloud. It’s all over my head, but still it’s exciting to hear Sam Champion say words like magnitude and astronomical units, especially this early in the morning. “It’s been in the southern …Read the Rest