the day began with a game of "see if i can bite your finger". marty and her siblings played this when young. in it, one player has their mouth open wide and eyes closed tight. the other player then sticks their finger into the open mouth and tries to get it out before the closed eye person bites it. towards the end of their saturday cuddle marty and anthony started playing this. a surprising amount of laughter ensued. after a bit of play anthony peered into marty's gaping mouth and began charting what he saw. "i can see your teeth mom. oh, i can see your tongue mom. oh, i can see your vulva mom."

childbirth, she do take a toll.

and, i got cash money that says anthony's speech therapist has never been told to work on the enunciation nuances between uvula and vulva before.

a surprising number of our family hikes have been spearheaded by the youngest member of our troop. when you combine his near indefatigable stamina with the ambitious end-visions he gets in his head (e.g. i want to hike to the tippy top of a mountain), the boy is the driving force of many of our family adventures. he is also the motivating factor that oftentimes gets us to the end as there isn't a ...

upon arriving at anthony's school (before summer break) the mother of anthony's best friend, grady, called for us to wait up. after reaching us, grady and anthony exchanged morning "heys". then grady's mom reminded her son about something. to this, grady began digging around his backpack. after finding the item he handed it to anthony who offered his upright palm. grady dropped alex's small swiss army knife into anthony's hand and said, "i can't keep this anthony". after i apologized to the mom who moved on, i knelt down and asked anthony to explain why his friend had alexander's new swiss army knife. anthony looked at me guiltily. grady's family moved on. i knelt next to anthony to begin discussing what just happened. part of the exchange:

TROY
now what will make me happy anthony is you telling me the truth about the knife.

ANTHONY
ok. i will tell you the truth but it will sound like it's not the truth.

TROY
ok. i know you'll tell me the truth because that is what will make me happy.

ANTHONY
i was at school and got a package. it said it was from alex and to anthony and in it was the knife.

i think we can collectively applaud anthony's intuition that that his answer may sound a bit askew. after a touch of work i learned alexander made some trespass upon anthony, making anthony quite perturbed. it retaliation, anthony snuck alex's new swiss army knife from its nail on aleo's bunk, stuffed it into his pants pocket and gave it to grady at school telling grady he could keep it forever and ever. when grady looked in his palm asking "for real", anthony replied, "yes for real".

after anthony, who is five, goes poop he loudly calls from the bathroom "i'm done" and waits for someone to come and wipe him. if someone doesn't respond soon enough he calls, more loudly, "i said i'm done!". whenever i am home and hear this cry i try to be the one to respond since marty has certainly wiped enough ass that's not her own in the last eleven years i figure any soiled cheeks i can take off her hands is deserved and appreciated. last week when i pushed the door open and walked in anthony groaned. i asked what was wrong.

ANTHONY
i'm bored of you wiping me.

TROY
bored of me? you should be bored of mom.

ANTHONY
but mom does it better.

TROY
impossible.

ANTHONY (exasperated)
dad. i've been bored of you wiping me since after the first time you did it.

well. i do apologize that you find my company while cleansing your feces smeared buttocks so unappealing. how insensitive of me to not be more engaging during the wondrous opportunity you are affording me. please accept my most humble apology.

if you're thinking a child who is five should be wiping his own ass, i'm of the school of thought that no one should be left to that task until they think a job poorly done is a problem. anyone who doesn't mind a less than perfect outcome, in my eyes, is not ready for the task. and yes, i do appreciate that under this definition we all know people in their thirties who, technically, should still be wiped by a parent.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. don't walk

the teachers at anthony's pre-school had the kids make these books. they also had them make (not pictured) a small fabric pillow to be hung on a door knob that reads "do not disturb". while cute, i fear the frilly token may not be honored as one might hope.

in all the hubbub i never finished our topsy-turvey tale. i left off with me having knee surgery (see topsy turvey part 1 for the detail). so i had my surgery on a tuesday and everything went fine and well. prior to the procedure i asked what to expect recovery wise. i was told i would walk in and i would walk out. i took that to mean it would be like nothing at all had happened and that my life would resume as soon as the anesthesia wore off. with this understanding, i told my office i'd be be out tuesday and back on wednesday. the first sign this was not the case was the prescription for 60 vicodans they handed marty on our way out the door.

in addition to the prescription there was the direction to keep the knee perpetually iced and elevated for the next 72 hours. while the week was shot to three kinds of hell, on the good side of all this dour news, marty and i discovered downton abbey. while laid up and bored in bed, i trolled the netflix hallways looking for anything of interest. something took me towards downton abbey. i watched the first five minutes of it and hit pause. i called for marty and said she should plan on having lunch with me in bed as i had a show for us to watch. so we sat in bed, my knee wrapped in ice and atop four pillows, eating sandwiches and discovering a 1912 english village while our children were at school. possibly our most quaint and romantic workday afternoon since our college days (and certainly our most peaceful moment in recent weeks).

i gingerly returned to work on friday to begin the dig out. it went slow but steady. at three in the afternoon marty called. she said the principal from the high school she used to teach at called. a teacher had taken ill and they needed someone to fill in for three weeks ... (pause) ... starting monday. after another pregnant pause i noted that by her calling me at work and positing the question, she was expressing interest. yes. after a third pause in the conversation, i said i supported whatever she wished and said we could talk about it further that night.

before children, marty taught for nine years (at this same school that was calling now). marty then took off nine years. returning to teaching is something that has definitely been on her thoughts especially now that our youngest, anthony, is slated for full day kindergarten next year. but next year is the earliest we'd ever thought about her return and would have, in an ideal world, preferred two years to give marty one year to breathe and collect herself before returning to the fray.

marty was interested on several levels which i'm sure i'd botch if i tried to represent them so won't. suffice it to say marty's brain was above an idle with the notion of challenging her mind beyond innovating on what went in her kid's lunchbags or reading a new goosebumps book to her five year old. i get this need. fully. when i returned home that evening and saw how lively her eyes were, i made three points. i asked that she didn't start monday because the still-broken fridge was scheduled for repair on monday. i asked that she not let this sudden jump back into a professional routine, taint her notions of returning for real because she wasn't giving herself a chance to re-enter work life with a proper amount of time to plan and prepare, professionally or mentally. and i said, i could handle the kids in the morning but she had to find places for them, especially anthony, when they got out of school. within twelve hours she returned the call saying she would do it. fortunately, because of paperwork she couldn't start on monday anyway so the fridge got repaired (thank gawd!!! as post-knee surgery is not the time you want to be without a working ice-maker).

her first morning of work she left at 6:00 am. i woke up early to make her breakfast. as she ate i confessed this was only a "first day back to work after nine years off" treatment and she shouldn't expect it everyday. i also made her a lunch and stole a little note in there in case she was getting treated poorly by the day or the kids. then she left. after a short bit of quiet, i started prodding kids out of beds.

the kids knew my getting them ready was going to be different. marty is definitely far more accommodating that i am. she is known for making them pancakes, kraft macaroni and cheese, or even crazy time-consuming waffles. when they ask me for such things, i look at them as if i didn't understand the questions, which in some regards is true. in the early days, they'd repeat the question and i'd tell them to go get a muffin and yogurt. now they don't even repeat the question. they just look at my face and head to the muffin tin all on their own. progress! and, if i'm known for anything in the morning it is when i am ready and they are not i stand in the foyer and yell, "you're putting me behind schedule Dufresne. don't make me come up there and thump you." rabid fans of shawshank redemption might recognize this loose translation of one of my favorite lines from the film. my kids obviously have no idea what i'm talking about or who this Dufresne cat is, but they get the gist that i'm getting irritated and they best up the pace.

i wasn't too intimidated about getting the kids off to school. this is something i usually do on wednesdays so i have a sense for what is involved. but there was one variable i failed to consider. every time i've taken the kids to school on my wednesdays, marty was there, in the house and part of the morning. we'd really not gone through the drill without her. the problem stemmed from anthony's morning ritual, which goes like this. when anthony wakes up you will often here a stretch and a yawn. this gets followed by hearing the creaks of the slats in his upper bunk as he moves to the ladder. once down, you hear a quick patter of feet, and might see a flash in the hall, as he quick steps it to the bathroom. urination. more patters—this time to marty's side of the bed. then you hear one word in a very business like tone: cuddle. with this marty's arm raises the covers like batman might swoosh his cape and anthony lithely slides into the warmth of her space and the covers drop, engulfing him. this is followed by three to ten minutes of silence which is broken, always, by the same question: is it a computer morning. computer mornings are weekend mornings where the kids get a few hours of computer to start the day.

on the first day marty was away anthony woke, he went to the bathroom, then the empty bed, then came and found me.

ANTHONY
where's mom?

TROY
at work. remember she's going to be working for a few weeks.

ANTHONY
but what about my cuddle?

TROY
oh. i can do your cuddles while mom's away.

ANTHONY
but you don't know how.

TROY
i'm sure they won't be as good but maybe you can teach me.

ANTHONY
now i'm doing nuthin'! and i'm not going to school!

with this declaration anthony turned and ran back to his room, climbed his ladder and cried for the next ninety minutes. although to say he cried at the news is like saying i was merely disappointed when i re-injured my knee. what he really did was screamed for a full hour and a half that we wanted his mommy. bella, alex and i quietly ate breakfast to this upstairs tirade. as i told bella and alex to suit up to go, alex asked me what i was going to do about anthony. i answered honestly that i didn't know.

i climbed the stairs and entered his room. he repeated his missive that he wasn't going to school. i told him he had to. it was the only choice. no one was going to be home. he said he didn't care. i said i wished i could leave him but i just couldn't. it wasn't safe. he pleadingly said he'd lock the door and not answer it, no matter what. i told him i wished that was enough but it wasn't. he was just too young and he had to go to school. when he said no again i had to pull out the big gun, the one thing for which anthony seems to have no defense: 1-2-3. immediately after i said the single word "one" anthony yelled, "okay stupid head, i'm coming." and he did. he immediately came down the ladder descended the stairs, headed toward the kitchen but i stopped him saying he missed breakfast and now there was no time. without protest he sat down and i put his shoes on. he put his coat and backpack on and headed towards the car without breakfast and still in pajamas.

he sulked on the way to bella and alex's school. he sulked after their drop off and on the way to his school. when we pulled up he got out of the car still fully under protest and began a slow walk into the building. just as we started i saw anthony's best friend grady get out of his car. i called hello to him and when he saw us he yelled a gigantic, arms-in-the-air, ANTHONY!!! he then charged towards us and ripped his coat open showing a large scooby doo shirt. he said his mom let him get one just like the one he gave anthony for his birthday. astonished anthony unzipped his coat to show his scooby shirt and the boys happily marched into school arm-in-arm.

that proved to be the turning point for anthony and i had no more problems after that. in my second week i was heard to say things like "did you get your milk out of the freezer and put it in your lunchbag" and "don't put your shoes there because you won't remember them in the morning." which is really good news because after marty did her three week stint filling in, the school offered her the job, full-time, starting next year ... (pause) ... and, she accepted.

we got a report from anthony's teachers that while walking down the hall he bumped into a girl with his shoulder. after the girl reported this to the teachers they called anthony over an asked him about it. first he said he didn't remember it happening. they challenged this saying it just happened and he must remember it. his demeanor stiffened and he said to the three teachers, the teachers told us they didn't proceed after that because they were trying to stifle their laughter and couldn't press him further. before the circle broke anthony added that maybe he was blinking (and in his retelling he began blinking wildly) and maybe he didn't see the girl given his blinking attack and maybe he accidentally, gently, sorta, kinda bumped into her.

i don't know if i'm more excited or anxious to hear what these stories sound like when he's sixteen instead of five.

anthony has been described as a lot like bella but all boy. only those who are familiar with our eldest child's early years have a proper sense for what this implies. ...

i have a spring cold. i caught this one from anthony. upon getting up in the morning and realizing i was fully sick, i said bye to the kids and then let my office know i'd be out for the day. i then fell back into bed and didn't wake until 2pm when marty and anthony came home. it was a beautiful day so i moved out to the porch to get some fresh air. in time, marty had to go get bella and alex from school. anthony didn't want to go so stayed with me. as soon as marty biked away anthony came up to me and asked if i would read to him. i said not today. he asked if i would play with him. i said no again. he asked why not. i told him it was because i wasn't feeling well and needed to rest. i said he'd have to go find something he could do by himself like play in the backyard or ride his bike. he proceeded to make a booby trap for robbers in front of our house with a ball of twine while i sat on the front porch with my eyes closed, occasionally coughing. after one of the rounds of coughing, anthony came up on the porch.

ANTHONY
i just heard you cough and then suck snot in your nose. that is what i do so do we have the same kind of sick?

TROY
yes. i think we do. i think i caught my cold from you.

ANTHONY
then i don't understand why we can't play together if we have the same kind of sick.

TROY
because i still don't feel well.

ANTHONY
but i'm still sick.
(here he makes a fake cough followed by a tiny snort of his nose)
see. and i'm playin'.

i have a couple of friends who give me nudges like this to coerce me into things i'm not up for. i'm far from thrilled to see my children (esp my five year old) prodding me similarly. i now don't know if the problem lies with me or them.

ANTHONY (age 5)
i've got a new chore.

TROY
yeah. what is that?

ANTHONY
rubbing your back with that thing you like.

TROY
oh. ok.

ANTHONY
and then you'll give me a allowance.

TROY
i see.

ANTHONY
i need more chores because i'm saving to buy something.

TROY
yeah. what's that?

ANTHONY
a house. for when i leave here. so i have a place to live.

this is how it began. good to his word, later that day he appeared before me with the wooden back-massager in hand and said it was time for my scratch. in full need of a twenty minute nap anyway, i readily obliged and took my place on the bed face down. anthony positioned himself by my side and began running the four wooden balls up and down the length of my back. having been the recipient of many a child's back-scratch, my expectation was this would continue for less than two minutes and he would announce he was tired and move to his next distraction. instead, he drove the object around my back for at least three minutes. then i sensed a shift and waited for the "i'm done, this is boring" proclamation but it didn't come. the movement was just so he could switch hands. another three minutes. another shift. this third shift had moved to both hands and he was over me like someone doing chest compressions.

the next thing i recall he was pushing my shoulder and whispering in my ear that my scratch was over and could he have his allowance. i barely managed to ask if i could pay him after my nap. he said sure and scampered off the bed and i went back to the meadows in my brain.

if anthony's new scramble for money encroaches on any child-labor laws i might have a problem on my hands because while i've yet to ask him for one of his dollar scratches, i've yet to turn one down once offered.

over a decade ago i made the decision to close my kid's dedicated photo galleries after their fifth birthday (and one hundred photos). now that anthony has crested both of those milestones i find myself without an outlet to capture and share the occasional image of my people. while maintaining this website over the past twelve years has tortured me in a number of ways, it has also spoiled me in many more. my expedient ability to fix this sudden case of the jitters being one of the good sides. thus, allow me to introduce you to our family scrapbook.

i can't tell you the number of events we've been late too because we can't find a child's shoes. this has happened with all of them but these days anthony, given his age (5), is the usual culprit.

i can't tell you the number of times we said, your shoes have a home, please see that they get in that home so you know where they are when you need/want them again. it's a plea/declaration/mandate/threat that's been called through the house so many times i'm a little shocked the children don't mockingly pantomime our words as we huff them out.

i can't tell you the number of bizarre configurations in which shoes have been discovered. it's not like, oh here they are under the coffee table. it's more like one shoe is in the top bunk of the second bedroom and the other shoe, its matcher, is in the third row seat of the van parked in front of the house. these searches are definitely part of the advanced set of problems.

i can't tell you how surprised i was when the i looked in the bin and saw that anthony had finally, with only one ask, put his shoes in their home, which for him is also the family sock basket.

and i can't tell you how my expression fell when i saw his just put-away shoes were covered, ankle-high, with fresh, sludgy mud as they rested atop all of our laundered and paired socks.

in looking for anthony's hundredth, and final, image for his personal gallery, i scanned my picture archives, wanting this last one to be solidly representative of his personality which i thought i managed for both baya and aleo. a few of his pics along the way have captured his spirit like here or here. after spinning through my folders though i didn't find any that hit the mark. so this last weekend i called him to the foyer asked him to stand on the landing thinking i had the chops to capture my son's essence, which is always about him.

what you're about to see is one of anthony's more peculiar takes on the world. he has it in his mind that when someone says they are going to take his picture, he, the subject, is supposed to strike and hold a series of poses, a different one for each picture. and as you'll see each and every one of his poses are without argument bizarre. i'm not sure what input or stimulus led him to create this repertoire of poses but whatever it was, i've never met a person who came to the same conclusion.

below are a few of the shots taken that day on the landing. after each beep from the camera he quickly and precisely re-contorts his body to the next chosen position. at the conclusion of the shoot, i didn't feel any of these hit the special mark i was looking for and i thought yesterday's image better captured the mood of our boy. but just because they weren't suitable to close out his gallery doesn't mean they're too highbrow for the monorail.

anthony initiated a most unexpected play-date. it was unexpected because it was with, of all things, a girl. i say unexpected because to date most of anthony's sentiments regarding the fairer gender have been more along the unoriginal, five-year old "i don't like girls--they are dumb" lines of logic. this time not only did he acknowledge this play-date, the morning of the play-date, he announced the following in the foyer while putting shoes on:

ANFER
i'm going to marry with edie.

(to this everyone in the family raised their head up from what they were doing)

BELLA
but i thought you were going to marry with me.

TROY
and i thought you were going to marry with mom.

ANFER
nope. now i'm marrying with edie.

MOM
does edie know this? usually both people have to agree to such an arrangement.

ANFER
yes she knows. yesterday at school i said i was going to marry with her and she said she was going to marry with me.

i would encourage edie to consider upon a longish courtship. this way she can see if anthony outgrows his near perpetual need to incorporate the word poop or penis or butt into every conversation, regardless of their contextual relevance. there are other points i could raise regarding a cautious entry into matrimony, i just don't think there's need to add evidence to an already sound position.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. bathroom words

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. acting out

it began with a jokey comment made by a five-year old anthony to marty in front of me. he leaned in on her and intentionally said loud enough for me to hear ...

ANTHONY
i love you more than i love daddy.

MARTY
well yes, that is true right now but it will change soon enough.

ANTHONY (perplexed anthony raised up)
what?

MARTY (without looking away from her paper)
there will come a time when you will look to dad to teach you how to be a man and when that happens, he will become more important in your life.

ANTHONY
and you can't tell me how to be a man?

MARTY
well no, i can't because i'm not a man. i'm a woman. it's my job to teach bella how to be a woman. what i can teach you is how to be a man that women would want to be with. but it's your dad's job to teach you how to be a man.

without even throwing a brotherly or conspiratorial nod my way given this newfound bond between us, anthony turned and walked off calling for his ten year old sister.

ANTHONY
bella? bella? where are you bella?

BELLA (calling back)
i'm in the kitchen anthony. what do you want?

ANTHONY (yelling out as he walks towards the kitchen)
bella, did you know mom is going to teach you how to be a woman ... and dad is going to teach me how to be a man?

MARTY (to me)
that sounded a lot more innocent when it came out of my mouth.

TROY
anthony, is there anything you would like for christmas?

ANTHONY
i would like bella to be called pinhead.

obviously i caught him in a moment of angst, an occasional artifact of living big. while i would contend we need to return to the well for another option, i fear marty's going argue for the name change because we can actually afford that.

phone etiquette and kids stands as a most schizophrenic affair. they come across, sometimes simultaneously, as both more and less mature than they really are. how someone hasn't dedicated a show to capturing these early fumblings is a real miss. obviously my kids are no exception. here's a present observation on each of mine.

BELLA (age 10)
four out of five times bella answers the phone one of the first things she says is, "no, this isn't marty. this is bella. marty's my mom."

ALEX (age 8)
anytime alex calls home from somewhere else, the first thing we hear is, "hello, this is alex, alex dearmitt." conversely, whenever he answers our home phone he says, simply, "what?".

ANTHONY (age 5)
someone called the other day during marty's morning BM. upon hearing the ring she decided to let it roll to voice mail. then she didn't hear a second ring. what she did hear was anthony's voice from my office saying in a business-like tone, "my mom's going to the bathroom". then without another word of discourse or courtesy she heard the plastic clack of the phone being returned to the cradle (yes, we use decades-old, corded, wall-mount phones — of course).

while guarantees in life must be issued judiciously, i feel safe in promising that the phone skills coming out of my house will do nothing but improve and improve dramatically in the years ahead.

while walking home from our dad-day lunch, anfer he found a penny on the ground. upon spying the unexpected treasure he let out an unabashedly excited, 'oohhh, penny', crouched down, and raised it in his pinched fingers. he held it inches in front of his eyes as if inspecting a fine gem. suspicious, he held the penny higher for me to observe. he asked if a real penny could be this skinny. i lowered my glasses on my nose, glancing at it. i confirmed it looked to be the real deal. he responded with a hushed "yesss" as if he didn't want any passersby to learn of his luck. he then looked down at his right hip, patting it with his hand checking for a pocket. finding none he swung his gaze over to his left hip. again no dice. without pause he slid the thumb from his free hand under the waistband of his shorts and underwear and pulled them them both away from his body. he then held the penny over the open chasm as if lining it up for some sort of carnival game and let it drop into his shorts. once it disappeared his thumb released both elastic bands and they tautly snapped back in place. confident his treasure was safely concealed he resumed his wistful march towards home.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. problem solving

imagine anthony nestled in a top bunk piled high with blankets and pillows given the fall morning chill, after his wake-up pee, flipping through the colorful pages of the first three installments of the Amulet, due to the thankful release of the fourth in the series, wearing nothing but a loose pair of shorts - backwards, no underwear, and with more than an hour before the school bell rings. that is a pretty good start to the day. and he doesn't even know how to read. jealous, jealous, jealous.

before hearing this story, you need to know one small detail about anthony: he vigorously contends that he is a robot, or at least that he has robotic innards. anytime i compliment him for doing something surprising or impressive his countenance sinks in frustration and he says, "dad, i keep telling you, i can do those kinds of things because i'm a robot. why can't you remember that?" and i apologize and say i forgot to which he gives an exasperated huff and moves on as if wondering how a boy robot got saddled with such an lacking human parent.

now the story. we were at our city park for alex's soccer game. bella was sitting on the bleachers reading. i was on the sidelines helping coach. marty was chatting with a friend and anthony was killing time on the playground. at one point marty looked over and saw anthony crossing a tall set of monkey bars. given their height she kept an eye on him. he had shimmied up the vertical upright to get started but once across, his legs couldn't reach the other upright or the top rung of the ladder. seeing him struggle marty ran over to help but before she got there, his grip gave and he fell, landing on his side in a hard, horizontal thud. given the height and the awkward landing, marty feared the worst.

when she crouched down next to him he pushed himself to a sitting position. marty asked if anything was hurt he. he grabbed his side and marty rubbed it testing his response. finding none, she commented that he was lucky he didn't break anything. in response, he explained that his side is his "metalist" part.

a few more feats like that and i may start giving some credence to the boy's claims of robotic componentry.

i was awoken by anthony rushing into my room waving his fist above his head. he moved right next to me, either not realizing or not caring that i was asleep just four seconds earlier. undeterred by my addled response, he instructed me to ask a question. the easy manner in which he did this would have told someone watching that we were ten minutes into a conversation and not that one of the participants was just pulled from a deep sleep. compliantly, yet groggily, i asked why he was waking me up and not someone else. to this anthony vigorously shook his hand back and forth a few times as if making a cocktail, and then stared at his palm. after a moment a deep baritone voice said, "the magic meatball doesn't think so." at this declaration, anthony shrieked with delight saying, "ahhhh! he doesn't think so dad! you lose." dropping my forearm over my closed eyes i retorted in a partially involved voice, "you do realize anthony he didn't really answer the question i just asked, right?" like with the sleep, anthony either didn't realize or care that his sage failed him. nor did he seem interested in talking to his real-life father over this mindless plastic bauble which, by my count, paid as much attention to the actual conversation at hand as my overly self-interested college roommate did back in the day.

as this experience, and volley of questions, continued i found myself ranking this waking to my list of worst wake ups ever. bella's cannonball into the small of my back has proven to be a real gamer that no one has ever come close to matching. while finding this moment's spot in the list, marty entered the room and after a pert, already-showered hello said to anthony:

MARTY (with a mischievous glance my way)
ask the magic meatball if dad is going to get busy today?

ANTHONY (excitedly to the toy in his hand)
magic meatball, is dad going to get busy today!?!?

MAGIC MEATBALL (with bravado and confidence)
the magic meatball says YEEESSSS.

ANTHONY (even more excitedly)
aahhh! you're going to get busy today dad!

anthony's rejoicing at my imminent fortune had both marty and i laughing heartily. and i may have been hasty in my judging of the meatball. he seems ok to me. but, before we stamp any thank you notes, i should add that his prediction may not have been as prescient as he led on because at the time of this writing, i'm rather busy-less. and i assure you no one is bluer on that count than me. truly. in fact, i'm miffed enough to consider a rebranding effort for the magic meatball to something a touch more accurate. fortunately for me, he already mostly has the appearance of the moniker i'd been toying with.

UPDATE: so after i posted the above and before midnight, the magic meatball's promise of good fortune came to be. my apologies mr. meatball.