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Yeah, I hate the 'Zoom Zoom' commercials, but belive it or not, the local Mazda dealer came up with a more insipid version, 'Scoot Scoot'. But we didn't let their inept marketing keep Betsy from purchasing a new Protege5. A red one, no less. We managed to beat down the sales guy pretty well on price, but he was pretty decent, even though we kept him at work until 9:30 PM. Betsy insisted on saying Scoot Scoot the remainder of the evening.

I sure did miss sunny Hilton Head Island. Let me count the ways.

Betsy's stepmom Carol got me what every unhip white boy needs - a set of slang flashccards. The thing that really makes them funny is the 50's era illustrations of each word used in a phrase, like two guys in suits smoking pipes, talking about fly-ass bitches and such.

It's godawful cold here in the frozen north. Hopefully today I can do nothing but sit on my ass, eat and sleep. Lots of sleep. That is all.

-chris

But my powerbook damn near killed me tonight. As usual, I ran the battery all the way down, then decided to plug the thing in. Minutes later, I detect a strange odor... start sniffing for the source until nicely light-headed... then I noticed that the laptop wasn't charging. Sure enough, when I go over to the innocuous little plastic cube on the carpet, its got a gentle yellowish flame growing inside, and is too hot to pick up. Good thing I didn't put the computer down and head to bed with it plugged in like I planned to.

My Official Porn Star Name is Storm Jammer. What's yours?

I can barely see the keyboard of my computer over my distended abdomen, swollen with pound after pound of turkey and the requisite fixins. And cheesecake. Lots of cheesecake. I suppose this is a milestone to adulthood, (aka the Long March Toward Death), the first family Thanksgiving dinner hosted at my house.

At one time, I fancied myself a mechanically inclined type. I could fix a bike, do a little work on a car, etc. But now, god help me if I try to do something that involves cutting, drilling, or measuring.

My menial task for the evening was to install four stainless-steel handles on the kitchen drawers. Simple, no? Of course not. I found a way to screw it up.

It seems every time I try to paint part of the house, I screw up with unsightly results.

When I was painting the house during construction, I slathered a nice battleship gray on one wall of my living room. Looked great until I took all the tape that I had used to mask the edges. Peeling the tape away revealed nasty jagged edges. Lovely.

When I was staining the outside steps and woodwork, I managed to overshoot the wood with my 12 foot roller-on-a-stick, and plant a big dark smear on the stucco.

The viewing of the leonid meteor shower this evening was slightly less spectacular than hoped for. The weather was nice and cool, but of course that meant an onslaught of nasty little flesh chewing sand gnats. Deborahs' friend proffered some 'organic' bug spray, which proved effective, but gave one the sensation of being spritzed with a zesty basil and lemon vinaigrette.

All in all, we probably spotted about a dozen or so shooting stars before the clouds closed in, and I became very very sleepy.