the number one reason I hate summer

I'll give you a hint: it was 90 degrees here today, and we don't have air conditioning.

Oh yes, it is the heat. I mentioned a few posts back that I really hate summer's inevitable itchiness (and I really, really do!), but no matter how bad the itchiness gets, the heat is always worse. After all, heat is the evil from which all other summertime evils spring. If it didn't get hot, there would be no itchiness from sweating or bug bites, because there would be no sweating or bugs!

I DO NOT tolerate heat well. Never have - as a kid I resolutely spent my summers either indoors, in the blissful cool of the A/C, or in a pool, in the blissful cool of the chlorinated water. It's a genetic thing - neither my mom nor my dad do/did well in the heat, either. The summer between my junior and senior years of high school, when we went college visiting in Minneapolis and spent the day walking around outdoors, Mom actually got physically sick from the heat. (I have had similar experiences, but never actually been sick from the heat - yet.) I never got to see my dad in summer, but my grandmother always tells me that he used to turn the air conditioning down to 68 degrees, and Mom would have to walk around the house wearing sweaters. That sounds positively divine to me, especially since I am now living in a poorly-insulated second-floor apartment which, though it never seems to retain a bit of heat during the winter, retains so much heat during the summer that it qualifies as a temporary annex of hell. Some days we leave the house in search of an air-conditioned spot (usually Borders in Carousel Mall, because it's open later than almost anything else in this town), and when we get home at 11:30pm, it's still like, 85 to 90 degrees in here - long after it has cooled down outside!

It. SUCKS.

My usual strategy for dealing with heat like this when I'm stuck somewhere without A/C is to 1) get my hair cut really short, and 2) shower like, three times a day - a strategy I honed during that semester I spent in Singapore, living in a tropical country in an un-air-conditioned dorm. But I can't quite put that plan into effect if I'm hoping to keep my dreads for as long as I was planning to (at least one year). They're falling apart too fast as it is, with me only washing them every other day, and I have less than zero motivation to try to fix them or do any proper maintenance on them when it's this hot. I hate to say this, but I don't think the dreads are going to make it through this summer. Too hot, and way, way too itchy. As I suspected, I really can't tolerate not washing my hair every day when it is this hot out. The dandruff is unreal (ick, I know). I almost hacked 'em off today. I get the feeling that, since I will wash 'em tomorrow, Wednesday will end up being the day they drive me over the edge. I will not be at all surprised if I am bald by week's end. Because once I hack the dreads off, I am totally shaving my head into a cueball. (I will, naturally, post pictures when this all goes down.)

So the plan for tomorrow is to leave the house early in the morning, find somewhere to be all day which is air conditioned (and if it has wireless internet, bonus!), and not come home until after midnight. It'll still be at least 80 degrees in here, but if we just go straight to bed, it won't be that bad. Oh, who am I kidding, it'll still be wretched. Man, I hate summer.

a geeky Where's George update

I have a ton of tabs open in my browser with recent WG hits I wanted to post. I've had a few really interesting ones in the past few weeks.

• My 3rd hit in Mississippi (and my first hit there in quite some time!) - interestingly enough, it went through Branson, MO, which is like Disneyland for rednecks.


• This one took a year and 118 days to get its first hit, but only 15 hours to get its second hit. It was probably sitting in a bank or something for that first year...


• Stripper grandma???


• A new county for me in Kansas, from a bill I spent on that recent trip to St. Louis. This one also went through Branson, MO.


• This one isn't even one of my bills - it's a bill my friend gorontastic found and entered. I highly encourage all of you to enter any WG bills you find - you will make someone's day, I promise you.


• A new county in Vermont, on a bill I spent at Bonnaroo. It has been interesting where those Bonnaroo bills have ended up.


• Bean went to Alaska recently, so I gave her a bunch of bills to spend up there for me. I've gotten two hits so far: this one and this one.


• This little guy is going on a tour of American monuments this summer.


• A 3-year, 42-day + sleeper awakes in Ohio.


• Another one with over a year to its first hit, then with its second hit within days. I seem to be getting more of these lately. I have never heard of Mighty Taco, btw.


• My most interesting recent hit - a grape ape - my second hit in Iraq. I spent it here in Syracuse, so I bet it went over with a soldier from Fort Drum.

Well, that's it for the time being. The only other WG news I have for the time being is that the 3rd Annual Dr. Ask BBQ is on August 19th, and I am hoping to go, but who knows if we will be able to swing it this year? I feel like there is no way we can plan that far ahead at this point. Craziness.

the way to my heart...

...is through my stomach. I discovered this my freshman year of college, when I basically stopped going to the dining halls because they were awful and never open when I wanted them to be. Instead of gaining the "freshman 15," I lost about 20 lbs. I was so hungry. After my senior friend who lived in the kitchen-equipped on-campus apartments fed me one time, I became a constant fixture in his room. He is pretty much the best friend I made at college (besides my husband), and we are still friends to this day (in fact, he is the second link in my "other awesome people I know" section in the left-hand column over there).

My gastrointestinal-cardiac connection was brought home for me again just recently when my husband was out of town for a couple days. I'll explain why he was out of town in just a minute, but first, here's an example of what I ate while he was away.

Monday's menu:

• one bowl of dry rice chex (the milk went bad)


• one glass of juice


• a peanut butter and jelly sandwich


• one glass of water

By contrast, here is what I've had to eat today:

• one bowl of maple brown sugar oatmeal crisp (with milk)


• last night's leftovers for lunch: homemade hummus, pita bread, thai curry chicken with peppers and onions, and rice


• a black bean burrito with chicken thigh in spicy tomato sauce over rice for dinner


• a couple big glasses of water


• an Izze


• a homemade cherry milkshake, which I am enjoying even as I type

You see the difference? Do you see how wretchedly malnourished and dehydrated I would be if I didn't have my husband around? Were it not for my daily multivitamin, I would die of scurvy in a matter of weeks without him. The dehydration might get me first. And now you know why I married him - besides the fact that we agree on all the big things (religion, kids, music, lifestyle, etc.), he likes to cook, whereas I usually can't be bothered. He feeds me, and I love him with all my heart.

Now, why he was out of town: remember that conference in St. Louis I mentioned a few posts back? The one where he was looking for a job? Well, he had several interviews at the conference, a couple of which went pretty well. One of them went so well that they invited him back for a second interview. They even sprang for his hotel and airfare - to Miami. That's right - the interview was with a law school in Miami. As in Florida. Armpit of America, Florida. Where we may - just may - be moving in a month or so. Depending on whether or not they like my DH better than any of the other candidates, whom they will finish interviewing this week.

Nothing is for sure yet. The other interview that went well was with a school in Charlotte, NC, and he is still waiting for the final decision from that place, too. But the school in Miami is the one which flew him out for another interview. And if they offer him the job and he hasn't heard anything from the school in Charlotte, he's said he will take the Miami job (it would pay pretty well. But it is in Miami). And he may not get either of those two jobs (tho' we hope he gets at least one of them - knock on wood), in which case we would be staying in Syracuse and he'd take whatever he could find here on short notice. Which is fine, but not exactly ideal. In the meantime, we are concentrating on cleaning our place up (because it is a sty right now, and 90% of that is my fault), in case we do need to move soon. Naturally, I will post here when we know for sure.

a seven-year bitch

OK, steel yourself - this is gonna be a long one. Here's the kind of day I had today at work:

First, this morning, we had a larger-than-usual batch of urines to go in the Coral machine. This is the machine we use to test people's urine for the presence of bacterial ATP using firefly juice - I'm not even kidding! We get this powdered luminescent substance from fireflies, Luciferin, to which we add a buffer containing the enzyme Luciferase (which helps make the Luciferin glow using the stored chemical energy from the ATP), and we use the resulting solution to check people's pee for bacteria. Seriously. This is SCIENCE, people! Anyway - big batch of urines to go in the machine. I get them all set up, and then I check our reagents - the firefly juice, which is supposed to be clear, instead has chunks in it. WTF? I check with the tech in charge of the Coral machine, M.S. (who, incidentally, shares a name with a well-known "domestic diva" television personality), and she says to pitch it and mix a fresh batch. I got the stuff out of the walk-in fridge, but while I was waiting for it to warm to room temperature before mixing it up, she went and did it for me - so impatient she is, when it comes to her precious machine. I mention her actions not entirely to be catty, but mostly to set up this important twist in the story: I was about to put the fresh batch in the machine when I saw that it had the same clumping problem, so I checked the expiration date (which I was about to enter into the machine in preparation for its self-check cycle). February 2006. No wonder the stuff didn't look right!

So not only had M.S., in her haste to mix the solution, not noticed that it was expired, but the night shift people who had mixed up the previous batch didn't notice, either. They hadn't changed the lot number in the machine - and they wondered why their results were so screwed up, starting last night when they put that batch in. M.S. checked the remainder of our reagent supply, and it was all from the same lot - all expired! How does a whole box of reagents expire in the walk-in fridge, yet continue to sit there for five months without anyone noticing? We had to pitch the whole box, and that's just a shameful waste. The firefly juice is not cheap, so it's costing the company money - and that stuff is not synthetic! They still have to harvest it from fireflies! (Don't ask me how they do it, but that is what M.S. told me they do.) F'cryin' out loud!

So since we couldn't use the Coral machine, that meant I had to plate every. single. urine. that came in today (and I had to toss all the tubes I'd set up for that first big Coral run - that was half an hour wasted, there). Usually most of the urines go through the Coral, and then I only plate the ones we know have bacteria in them. It wasn't that big of a deal, because it takes all of two seconds to plate a urine, but still - it's something that, with proper oversight, shouldn't have happened.

The next thing that happened was with callback, which is this ridiculous thing they make us do - certain test results get flagged to be called back to doctors, either because they've requested it, or because some other arcane thing in the system gets activated when the result is entered... whatever. Point is, callback is a clusterfuck, especially on weekends when most doctors' offices are not open to receive these callbacks. So, if you're really lucky, and it's Saturday, you will be able to catch a couple offices that are open in the morning, and you can give them the results with no hassle. Or if the office isn't open, you'll get the answering service, who will page the doctor, who calls you back promptly and takes the results gratefully. If you're not so lucky, the doc either won't call back (because it isn't his patient you're calling about, it's the patient of whomever he's covering for, so he doesn't really care), or if he does call back, he's all "why are you paging me about this?" (Oh, and it's always the male doctors who are pricks - the women, even when you can tell they don't want to be talking to you, are at least civil about it.) Or, in the worst-case scenario, you can't get in touch with anybody - the phone just rings and rings, no one picks up, no answering service, no answering machine, no surly doctor, and there's no alternate number listed for that physician, not even a fax number where you can at least send the results to CYOA (Cover Your Own Ass, one of the central tenets of contemporary healthcare delivery) and check the patient's record off your to-do list. Seriously, what the hell kind of doctor's office doesn't even have a machine to pick up that says, "We're sorry, the office is closed right now. Please call back on Monday."?? Oh yes, callback - it presents its own unique kind of horror, because you never know what you're going to get. You could get an easy list of calls and be done with the whole sordid business in about an hour - or you could get stuck in an all-day purgatory of phone tag and waiting around for the on-call to deign to contact you. And this mess is all on top of the specimen-wrangling which makes up the bulk of my job - so I've got to field all this stuff on top of receiving the usual drops from the hospitals, which need to be processed right away. It's a big PITA (Pain In The Ass), is what it is.

This weekend I got three annoying callbacks (at least it was only three!). One of them, there was no answering service, just a machine message with a pager number to call to allegedly reach someone, plus a different pager number in the patient's record which I could try. I tried both pager numbers and never got a response - but at least this record had a fax number attached, so while I couldn't mark the callback as completed, I could note that I had sent the information out in a timely manner (remember, CYOA). One of them was the dreaded no-answer, no-machine, no-fax deal, so I couldn't even get this information out to anyone at all. The best I could do was note that I'd tried repeatedly, then leave the thing uncompleted for them to deal with on Monday. The last one was a new twist on the surly on-call doctor routine. On Saturday I called the number in the record, got the answering service, and they told me Dr. Doofus was on call for the patient's doctor, and he would call me back. He didn't. So I tried again today, same thing, answering service told me Dr. Doofus would call. A few minutes later, the answering service calls me back and tells me that Dr. Doofus told them to tell me that he didn't want the results because it wasn't his patient and he couldn't do anything about the results. Say what? That is the first time I've ever heard that line out of a doctor. If you're covering for another physician, you take the results for their patients. That's just what you do. Even the answering service seemed kind of taken aback by Dr. Doofus's refusal to call me. But whatever, I had already faxed the results to the patient's regular physician's office, so I could at least note in the file that Dr. Doofus had refused my call, and get on with my day.

So I'd moved on, I was elbow-deep in something else, I was trying to get through the noon drop so I could go to lunch, when one of the techs comes out of the virology room asking if anyone paged a doctor about a patient of this other doctor's, and I was like, well, I did - but I thought that whole matter was all settled already. Is it Dr. Doofus calling me now? I thought he said he didn't want the results. Why is he calling now? And why is he calling on the phone in virology?? That's not the number I gave the answering service. So I drop what I'm doing and go back there to take the call. It's Dr. Doofus, finally calling me back - but the computer in virology doesn't have the callback program on it, so I can't pull up the results I'm supposed to give him. I have to put him back on hold (which, generally, really cheeses doctors off and tends to increase their surliness), transfer the call up to the main desk, run out there and pick it up, then wake up the hibernating computer (which takes for-ever), start the callback program, log back in... except that the callback program picks that exact moment to refuse to load on my computer, for absolutely no discernible reason. AARGHH!!! So, rush to the other computer, wait for it to wake up, load callback, log in, search for the patient's record, pull it up, finally give Dr. Doofus the results... and then he asks for the patient's phone number. Which, when I am doing callback, I usually look up beforehand, because I know doctors often ask for the patient's number. I have to use a different program to pull that information up, so if I do it beforehand, I won't have to keep the doc waiting while I start up the other program, log in, search for the record, etc. In fact, when I had originally done this callback, yesterday, I had looked up the phone number and had it ready to tell the doc. But he never called, and, thinking the matter settled, I pitched the info. So I had to make him wait through the whole rigamarole of pulling that file up. And in the end, he wasn't nearly as surly as I expected him to be, after all that waiting. But if the whiny little cretin had just called me back when I first paged him, the whole transaction would have been completed in a fraction of the time, and we could both have been on our merry ways. It still bewilders me that he decided to call, like, an hour after saying he wouldn't call - and of course, he had to call when I was smack-dab in the middle of doing something else! I mean, sheez. WTH, y'know?

There was a bunch of other little things that happened on top of that - like, to the point where I just started laughing, because dude. Ridiculous. There was a specimen from Thursday for which we had the work card but which hadn't been plated, so I got to hunt it down. That's par for the course, but usually I can actually find the specimen. Not so, in this case. But I got to dig through two big buckets of little cups of poo and pee and other pleasant things searching for it. Since it was nowhere to be found, we concluded that we must never have received the specimen, and we'd have to call the doctor's office and tell them to send it to us, at which point the whole affair became Monday's problem (yay!). There were a bunch of blood agar plates in the lot we're currently using which were hemolyzed, but before we can pitch the plates that we can't use for whatever reason, we have to note on a log sheet the manufacturer, lot number, date, how many plates we can't use, and why (whether they're cracked, contaminated, hemolyzed, etc.). It's important to do, but it's also annoying to have to keep stopping in the middle of plating to log the dud plates. And then every single drop seemed to bring at least one specimen which had leaked in its transport bag - which, in addition to being icky and a pain to clean up, makes it very hard to get our barcode labels to stick to the containers (which are damp not only from the leaked pee/poop/sputum/etc., but also from the bleach solution I have to use to clean them off). And then the perennial frustrations of my job: if you want a fluid culture, send us the fluid, not a swab; the phones never ringing when I'm sitting beside them with nothing to do, but going off every other minute when I'm busy doing something; the work card printers continually spitting out crap at you when you're trying to sort specimens as fast as you possibly can; etc.

Oh, and while I'm at it - Dear nurses and other specimen collectors at St. Joe's, Crouse, and Community General hospitals - a brief list of Do's and Don't's for you:

Do close all specimen containers tightly. I know you need to work fast, but think how much more time it will take you to re-collect the specimen when we call and tell you we can't do the test because the entire specimen leaked into the transport bag.
Do make sure the specimen labels are adhered entirely to the containers so that they don't become stuck to the plastic biohazard bags during transport and thus impossible to remove from said bags once they arrive at the lab.
Do send the correct specimen for the test ordered/ order the correct test for the specimen you're sending.

Don't use up all the little stickers labeling the containers and biohazard bags (we need those things sometimes!); but if you do use them all...
Don't send us the leftover sticker backing. Just pitch it, sheez.
Don't send us the plastic wrapper that the swabs come in. What on earth do you imagine we need that for? It's just one more thing we have to throw out.
Don't put the requisitions and labels in the biohazard bag with the specimen (especially if you choose to ignore that guideline about closing the specimen container tightly) - that's why there's that handy pocket on the outside of the bag.
Don't order a damn fluid culture and then send us a swab.
Don't order an anaerobic culture without ordering the accompanying aerobic culture. We can't do an anaerobic culture alone.

There, you see? None of those are particularly challenging or unreasonable requests. And those few simple things would make my working life so much more pleasant and efficient.

Alright, I just wrote a damn book (mad props to anyone who has made it this far), but I just had to get today off my chest. For all that I just spent this whole post bitching, today wasn't really that bad. I have certainly had worse days at work. I guess today's frustrations and minor nuisances were just different enough to merit further attention. And now, I'm off to bed.

ugh.

The worst part about puking, for me, is when it goes up your nasal passages, because not only does it burn like hell, but you also smell it for ages afterward. So profoundly gross.

Man, I hadn't puked in ages. I am pretty sure this is only the second time I have ever been drunk enough to puke. Boy, I thought I learned my lesson that first time - New Year's Eve and Day 2002-2003. That was a bad scene, and a story I do not wish to relate here - let's just say there was free champagne, and leave it at that.

That time, however, I was not only up all night puking, but I was in bed the whole next day puking. Definitely not an auspicious start to that new year. I better not be sick all the rest of this day, because I have to fucking work, dammit.

Thing is, I totally did not think I had that much to drink tonight. I thought I paced myself pretty well - I never felt fall-down drunk or anything. I am a total lightweight when it comes to drinking, thanks to both habit and heredity - but I made sure I had far less to drink than anyone else there this evening. Three and a half drinks really isn't that much. Unless the Polish guys were mixing them stronger than I realized. Which, come to think of it, they must've been. Sneaky bastards. Oh, and the fact that I had less to eat for dinner than usual probably didn't help any. And I was pretty dehydrated this afternoon - I guess when you add it all up, you can see trouble coming. Pity I didn't add it all up until just now.

Well, the good thing is I do feel much better now. Maybe not completely out of the woods, but I don't think I'll be bringing up any more of what was left of dinner. Ugh, ick. I turn into such a baby when I'm not feeling well.

beware Polish men bearing vodka

We just got back from driving our friends S & J to a hotel in Liverpool. Maybe I should start from the beginning of this story. We received word that our friends S & J were going to be in town this weekend. S called this afternoon to say they'd be staying at J's brother's place, which is just around the corner from our place. They invited us over. We were figuring on an evening of light drinking and hanging out.

J's brother, Little J, has roommates. One of these roommates is a gregarious Polish guy, M. M's little brother, Little M, was there as well. As you might expect for a bunch of young guys living in a house together, they're big drinkers. We were playing card-based drinking games - I think they were sort of expecting us to try to keep up. We, however (being me, my DH, S, & J), are older and know better. We still put away a good quantity of alcohol, tho'. M just kept pouring. He was one of our hosts, what were we supposed to do? My limit is usually 2 drinks - I had at least 3 and a half tonight. I had quite the buzz on.

It was all fun until M passed out and Little J, who was way past hammered, started wanting to have intense discussions (mostly involving him yelling), first with his brother-in-law S (who tolerated him quite well), and then with his sister J. That ended up with him on the porch screaming at her about how he thinks their father has a drinking problem - her saying well, maybe he should talk to their dad about that, not her - and him yelling about how he can't talk to their dad; all the while S was pulling their car out of the driveway and gathering their things, because there was no way they'd spend the night there with LJ in that state. Little M restrained LJ (still yelling at the top of his voice) while S & J got their stuff (including their dog) into their car and followed us back to our place, where they borrowed our phone book and made reservations at a motel in Liverpool. Then we drove them out there. And that was my dose of drama for the month.

I have to work in the morning - the only reason I'm still up is that I have to finish drinking this big glass of water so I'm not too dehydrated when I wake up. We might have dinner with S & J tomorrow, after the wedding they're attending which is their primary motivation for being in town. S & J are both people who used to drink a lot, I think, and they're kind of over the whole drinking-to-excess-as-recreation thing; but a lot of the people close to them seem not to have reached that point yet. So it goes. Anyway, if we do dinner, it'll be nice to just see them and socialize as like, y'know, grown-ups. And now, to bed with me.

Oh, I will say this, tho' - all the guys were really impressed when I pulled out my knitting and started working on it (even in my inebriated state) during a lull in the card game. I only dropped two stitches, and I managed to pick them back up right away, so no harm done in two or three rounds of the Mermaid sock pattern. Drunken knitting, woohoo!

oh, baby!

Exciting news! I just found out that my friend Rani (the first of my girlfriends to get pregnant) has had her baby!!!

It's a boy, 6 lbs, 19 inches, born yesterday, July 19th. No name as of yet.

Holy crap, I still can't believe it. I was still trying to get used to the idea of Rani being pregnant. I can't wait to see the little guy, tho' - I bet he is super-cute! I will have to find the time to get down to NYC soon to meet him. Yayness!


Here is a pic from our recent baby-shower gathering in NYC. Rani is the pregnant one, and I am the one on the left with the really wretched bad hair day going on. Heh.

1-0-0

Happy 100 posts to me!!! Whew. Finally. Sorry to leave you guys hanging like that. I thought I'd have this whole blog re-do finished well before now, but I definitely underestimated how much crap I still had to coordinate and fix up. But before I get into all that, here's what happened with Jeffistopheles & spookypoop:

Craigmodius saved the day! Jeff ended up using craigmodius's tux (craigmodius being the only groomsman who's anywhere close to Jeff's size). It was still obviously too big, but not nearly as conspicuous as I'd feared. So they had an uneven number of bridesmaids to groomsmen, and craig-o got to sit out the wedding in the back row with me and Diesel (who was a groomsman in my wedding - the only one of the Hellmira crew to make it out to Vegas for that event).

Speaking of Diesel, I have two stories about him. One of them needs photographic enhancement, however, and I can't seem to find the picture I want to show you right now, so those stories will have to wait. I know, it's another cliff-hanger for you! Hey, I gotta keep y'all tuning in somehow. ;)

So this is the new look of the blog. Whaddya think? Please do let me know. Test it out, look at it in different browsers, click on stuff, make sure I didn't break anything. Is it too bright? Are any of the colors hard to read? Do you like the new logo? Of all the stuff that held up the relaunch, the colors and the logo were the most time-consuming to work out - so if they suck, let me know now, so I can get all this fiddling around mess behind me. The best feature of this new layout is that it should - should - render correctly in IE (except for like, IE 4.5 for the Mac. But I expect very, very few people still use that). If not, you'll see a lot more of me banging around and tinkering under the hood in the next few days.

I thought I'd be able to post the new code while I was in St. Louis last week, but I ended up having far less internet time there than I had planned. What was I doing in St. Louis, you ask? Well, there was a conference of law librarians there where the DH thought he might be able to find a job. I'd never been to St. Louis, so I tagged along to help with the driving. St. Louis is actually pretty cool - there's tons of stuff to do there. Before we left, I sought out advice from Diana on what to do and where to go, since she knows the town well. We didn't even get to half the fun stuff on her list, and we found a whole nother bunch of things to check out on our own. I could easily have spent another week there. I didn't even make it to a single yarn store on that trip! Not a one! What kind of pathetic knitter am I?? At least I managed to start a new project during the long car ride - one that I know for sure I'll finish, because it's a pair of socks, and if there's one thing I like to knit, it's socks. After feeling stuck with the two scarves (both 60 stitches wide) I've been plugging away on for so long, it's so nice to have a small project that I actually want to work on. Knitting is my hobby, fer chrissake, it shouldn't feel like a chore.

I would like nothing better than to show y'all progress pics, but it is so, so late and I am tired. I just wanted to get this one post up here before I went to bed so the wondering about the tux wouldn't eat people's brains. Now that this layout tussle is (I hope) behind me, I should be back to posting more often.

is it time to panic now?

The DH and I are in Elmira for the wedding of our friends Jeffistopheles and spookypoop. We are crashing at their place. The wedding is at 10:30 Sunday morning (which, depending on how you want to look at it could be "later today" or "tomorrow"). The tuxedo rental place doesn't open until noon on Sundays.

Guess who forgot to pick up his tux today.

Go on, guess.

.
.
.

Oh, just the groom.

It's going to be an interesting morning. We figure, once spooky's mom stops freaking out, we'll have three possible courses of action:

• Find the name of the manager of the tuxedo place, call him or her at home on Sunday morning, and somehow convince them to open up the store early for us.


• Stall for time - have the planned continental breakfast before the ceremony instead of afterward (this will only work if the justice of the peace can reschedule for two hours later, as well).


• Cobble together an outfit for Jeff from any old suits of his we might be able to find at his mom's place, and maybe his shirt with flames on it (like what Johnny wore for our wedding).

If any of the groomsmen were close to Jeff in size, we could make that guy forfeit his tux for Jeff, but no one is. Jeff's about the skinniest m.f. I know - he would be swimming in anyone else's tux.

I guess I will have to keep you all posted on how this whole thing turns out - there's nothing more we can do about it tonight.

Also - this is my 99th post on this blog. With any luck, I will have a new template to debut with my next post. It's almost a complete overhaul in the nuts & bolts of the code, so with any luck it'll render properly in nearly every browser (including the broken ones). It'll have new colors and everything. So if you like the way things look around here now, you best take a screenshot right quick. The blog, she is a-changin'.