last night i listened to a show discussing dream analysis on npr. as i took in the eruditic ponderings of the panel i thought of a dream marty had earlier in the week.

in the dream she woke up in the morning and smelled poop. she called into the kids room asking if anyone needed a diaper change. none did. she then marveled at the proximity and strength of the aroma. she threw the sheets ...

before having two mobile and ever-curious children a productive evening for me might entail reading 100 pages of my book.

now that i have these two humans living in my home, i define a productive evening by simply finding my book.

after the super bowl, everyone debates the best commercial. after the annual ski-boondoggle, the participants ponder the best piece of banter. i'm naming the alpha quip from this year's steamboat trip to be ...

THE VOICE MAIL
setting : bookguy is leaving a message for his boss one morning before we headed up the mountain.

TROY
how funny would it have been if i had said, 'matt, come back to bed' while you were leaving that voice mail to your boss.

BOOKGUY
since saying that would have involved you getting up off the ground, i'm pretty confident it wouldn't have happened.

(now that is what i heard, but in rehashing the moment, bookguy swears he didn't say that but instead, 'since saying that would have involved you getting out of bed, i'm pretty confident it wouldn't have happened'. the fact that each option is equally applicable is not a small testament to how well we know one another.)

and a trip with bookguy would never be the same without a backwards kudo which can be seen in the runner-up conversation ...

THE COMPLIMENT
setting : bookguy and i are driving to the yellow sub with snake

BOOKGUY
i still think the most sincere thing you've ever posted on your site was the anniversary note to marty.

TROY
it's interesting you'd pick that out of everything.

BOOKGUY
it just wasn't the typical troy bullshit.

TROY
do you mind if i use that as an advertisement for my site.

BOOKGUY
what's that?

TROY
dearmitt dot com, just a bunch of typical troy bullshit. i think it has kind of a smart quality to it, not to mention, very flattering to the ear.

what bookguy saw friday @ 4pm

(click to enlarge)

what i saw thursday @ 4pm

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what i saw wednesday @ 4pm

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what i saw monday @ 4pm


and, what i saw tuesday @ 4pm

these were the first words said to me after waking up yesterday morning ...

my high school was doing a production of the little mermaid. i was the mermaid but was replaced when i became too difficult to work with.

and, here is the second thing said to me after waking up yesterday morning ...

ivana from the apprentice was there but i couldn't remember her name so i kept calling her maggie.

and, this was my first thought yesterday morning ...

i would pay some serious jack to have marty and ivana in the same room getting haughty with one another.

you just don't know how a day that begins with such beautiful randomness is going to turn out. life excites me.

a guy i know listed me as a reference for a job he is applying for. when talking with his potential employer on the phone yesterday, this memory kept creeping into the room making me neurotic about all of my word selections.

TROY
so i think i may have hit the wall yesterday.

MARTY
what? you? you mean you call falling asleep in the middle of a party with 10 people in the room and the super bowl blaring on the tv, hitting the wall? no, that's totally normal behavior.

smart john once told me that a leading theory about yawning is that we yawn when our bodies aren't getting enough oxygen. you do this a lot when you're tired because your body is getting lazy and not drawing in enough oxygen.

smart john went on to say that yawning is contagious autonomically; a biological survival deal. if you see the guy sitting next to you yawning, your body vibes that there isn't enough oxygen in the room/cave/space and thinks it also needs to yawn so you can get a big ole mouthful of air as well.

i have no idea if this is true but i liked it when i heard it. it's become a rubik's cube of sorts sitting on the coffee table in my brain. a curiosity picked up a few times a year and spun aimlessly, knowing i have no prayer of making sense of the riddle but oddly compelled to study it for a few yawn-free moments every now and again.

last week we paid $4,000 to replace our home's furnace which had been acting flaky. after the installation and seeing that our new furnace was equally flaky we surmised that it was instead our $100 thermostat that was having issues.

this is called putting one in the L column of home ownership.