News Tidbits

This time it’s not really my fault- there just hasn’t been a lot going on.

We did have my mother-in-law come into town this past weekend, and that was fun. We took her out to Chili’s on Friday and she reciprocated by taking us to Brixx on Saturday, ostensibly for my month-ago birthday. This made a nice weekend backdrop for the back-to-back Carolina wins over Gonzaga and Oklahoma, which were quite convincing, I must say. Hopefully in the Final Four, we’ll fare better against Villanova than we did against Kansas last year. Geez, even I wish I hadn’t brought that up…

Also, for the record, this past weekend, it was Seattle-like yet again. Shelly grown weary of me asking, in sarcastic tones, just how many days of water the state has left now. Really, I’d honestly like to know! A year ago, in the midst of the drought, I probably heard that figure five times a day ("The state is down to 43 days of water! You’re all going to die of thirst!"), quoted in breathless tones by reporters and TV personalities with an apparent lack of actual news stories.

On Tuesday, Erika invited us to… (wait for it)… Brixx yet again! Shelly, set on having Chinese food, was initially reluctant, pointing to the trip we’d taken there just three days before. "And," she added sullenly, "you even made a frozen pizza for yourself last night", as if that had any bearing whatsoever on me wanting nothing more than to spend time with friends, who just happened to want to spend time with me at Brixx.

Brixx treated us well, once again. Charlotte stole the show, though. She’s apparently started requesting Shelly and I’s presence on a daily basis now, and was overjoyed to see us. Spotting us coming from across the parking lot, she beamed approvingly as we approached.

Multiple trips to Brixx aside, there were other small bits of news. Shelly and I completed our tax return the weekend of the 22nd, but I only got it to accept the e-file just this morning, after several will-to-live-sapping phone calls to the IRS to confirm last year’s AGI and PIN numbers. The actual people I talked to there were surprisingly helpful as government employees go, but after probably a grand total of an hour on hold listening to "The Nutcracker Suite", Shelly narrowly missed being able to take a "widow’s credit" next year.

Shelly’s Facebook addiction continues unabated, with her list of friends continuing to grow exponentially. Tomorrow, it’ll be bigger than the Windows XP Users manual; next week, printing it out would run a Best Buy location out of ink toner; and by month’s end, its storage requirements will overwhelm all hard drives known to exist on Earth. As to my wife, her simple, basic social skills have begun to degrade; last night, bleary-eyed from Facebook, she wished to request that I go downstairs to get her a glass of filtered water for her nightly remedies. However, finding her vocal cords atrophied from prolonged lack of use, she merely managed a grunt of "Wah-der", which only won her a look of confusion. Only after she’d procured said glass of water herself did I finally understand what had been requested.

OK, that’s about all for news, such as it is. This weekend we’re traveling down to Charlotte for… for… well, you know, Shelly tells me we’re going and I just pack. I just know it has something to do with a shower… oh no… oh, PLEASE GOD, NO!!!