thursday morning i woke up, took my shower and then went downstairs to the kitchen wearing a towel around my waist as i'm like to do. bella was already down there sitting at the counter eating her breakfast.

b: good morning daddy.
d: good morning sweetheart.
b: there's another daddy in the basement.
d: oh is there? that's nice.

one quickly adjusts to the rocketing imagination of a young child and learns to nod and 'uhm-hum' with great frequency. so i got my breakfast together and sat next to bella at the counter eating. then the 'other daddy' emerged from the basement appearing in the kitchen doorway.

o: good morning.
d: oh, good morning.
b: there's the other daddy, daddy.
d: yes, i see the other daddy.

turns out the other daddy in the basement was the exterminator marty had let in while i was showering. marty entered the kitchen and started rapping with the guy. i decided to quickly finish my breakfast and head back upstairs to get ready for work. but, the conversation he and marty were having proved interesting enough to draw me in. it's not often that i stand in front of strange men in nothing but a towel and jaw for 20 or so minutes but (1) i didn't know he was here and (2) it is my house and this is what i do. one may ask what can be learned in such a short span between a man holding a can of bug spray and another wearing a plush green towel. here's a sample of what i now know about this other daddy.

our exterminator ...

1. was one of eight children. four boys. four girls.
2. had a nun ram a pencil into the palm of his hand when he was in first grade. the lead tip is still there.
3. is a book-writing, painter.
4. grew up on a farmhouse built where a lake used to be. in addition to several feet of water they would routinely find salamanders swimming around their flooded basement.
5. went through a horrible divorce where he sold his bar in attempt to get his two sons. he lost the petition and was instructed to give them up and pay child support. when he and his wife exited the courtroom, she pushed the two boys to him and said you take them, but i still want the checks.
6. cried when he dropped his oldest boy off at college. he almost made it out of there but as he was driving away his son looked back and waved. it was here he lost it.
7. almost died from internal bleeding after having colon cancer surgury.
8. wished he had learned to play the piano in his youth, but feared for his safety given his three brothers.
9. tried to domesticate a flying squirrel, mole and just about anything else he could catch in the woods.
10. knows a guy who looks a lot like me.

i had no choice. i told the guy i had to go to work but he would absolutely have to come over for dinner in the very near future. once at work i had the following conversation:

g: hey troy. so what's up?
t: not much. although, i just met the most interesting guy this morning.
g: who was it?
t: my exterminator.

this modest piece of banter culminated with the following life-lessons being passed down to me by a half-circle of the hunting, scratching, full-time-uber-males i work with ...

1. the man of the house should always know, and i mean always know, when another man is in his home.
2. men do not walk around their home in a towel.
3. men do not talk to strangers while in nothing but a towel.
4. men do not invite perfect strangers to their home for dinner.
5. men do not wear boxers. (one guy)
6. men do not wear briefs. (another guy)
7. men switch between boxers and briefs. (and yet another guy)
8. men shower before going to bed and not in the morning.
9. men do not run outside in their underwear to grab the paper.
10. sleeping naked is left to hippies and perverts.

i fear these guys are three minutes away from dragging me to the bathroom to prove to them that i'm actually a member of their gender club.

sex. let's get into it. how have we not yet? bewildering. what kind of naughty stuff should we talk about? pregnant sex you say. hmmm. little peculiar but why not?

couples predominately seem to be on the same page when it comes to relations during pregnancy but i recently heard of a couple who decided, mutually, to not have intercourse at all during their first pregnancy. i can't help but wonder if they understand that you may ELECT to abstain during the pregnancy but that you WILL abstain after the pregnancy.

regardless of what your mind has previously conjured up or what you have been told, sex during pregnancy, assuming the female is healthy, is all good. i repeat, confidence is high. for quite some time your future tike is smaller than a dry roasted peanut and will not be getting in the way. and when he/she is not a peanut, they're an orange for much of the nine months. please forget your inane jokes about causing brain damage with your steely phallus, cause it ain't happening fabio. also forget about your manseed messing up the kid's house. if your deposit causes that sort of mayhem, you and your kid got way bigger problems to contend with.

now after the birth takes place, consider yourself benched. the physical trauma the female's goods go through will leave you simply amazed they'd ever work again. and consider the mental exercise of seeing a human, a gallon of blood/stuff and a placental flank steak come pouring out of your wife's girl parts. while it's not going to wreck you eternally both because it is your wife, your kid and you've been steeling yourself for this vision for nine months, it is certain to cool your jets for a short while. and obviously, the female is a little bit on the re-configured side after all this and it takes time. be patient. and, here's a totally solid piece of advice. don't be one of those eager hard-ons who asks the wife and/or doctor "uhhmm, so how long till we can ... you know ... do stuff". don't be that guy. be the patient guy. it will happen.

but, maybe the cold-turkey couple has legitimate reasons. if so, awesome. and, when you really think about it, it's so not a thing. i also forget that not everyone experienced the adolescent drought that i did. i could do two years without blinking. i could do one year without even realizing it had been one year because i was fully convinced i would never know a woman. i can be viewed as a sex-camel who could go impressive periods between pit stops. i appreciate that not everyone has been so fortunately prepared.

and i guess it's only fair to speak to when walt and i stopped ... you know ... doing stuff. it was definitely when i could see the little nipper swimming around in there, through marty's stomach. an elbow here raking left to right. a foot there dragging top to bottom, doing the electric slide as we were doing the electric, well, let's just say it was at that exact moment i said i'd wait until the third human in the room could be on the other side of the door.

american beauty is a favorite film of mine. i learned last night (via luby) that moments before the movie's release, thirty minutes were cropped off the end. this is thirty minutes of fully edited and polished footage detailing a trial trying to pin lester's murder on the wife (if you haven't seen it yet, wake the hell up!). now while i totally love the ending as it is, i thirst for more of this story with every viewing. luby and i agreed that someone has this, somewhere, and that we need it. how in the hell is it not on the dvd? are they holding off for a second release to fleece their fan-base? does anyone know of this? has anyone seen this? as always, i pay top dollar for satisfaction.

in another movie note, i've been watching/listening to martha coolidge's audio commentary on the making of valley girl, another of the greatest films ever made. one of the things she discusses is how she was contractually mandated to include at least four breast shots in the film. she went on about how disgusted she felt, as a woman, having to meet this gratuitous and forced tactic just to guarantee ticket sales to a movie not, inherently, about woman's breasts. as a married, quasi-experienced, and internet-connected adult, i agree with her. it's a sad statement on the art of film-making in hollywood. but as a 13 year old watching this movie on HBO again and again and again i wholeheartedly agree with and thank the decision-makers of this film for piping those breasts into my home, again and again and again.

surprise! microsoft is launching YET ANOTHER operating system, longhorn. is it just me or didn't they just inundate the planet with a groundbreaking OS (XP) just days ago. i mean, i had just decided that enough time had passed to actually install the product and now it's obsolete before it has even had time to collect dust on the shelves.

excitedly though, the main focus of longhorn is to eradicate the often-required reboots. yeah, i wouldn't worry none about the porous security plaguing every OS you've ever released, i'd definitely go for less reboots. definitely much more import behind that.

dolts.

marty's mother is a freezer. there isn't a culinary item ever eaten that hasn't passed through the walter's super freeze found at the bottom of their basement stairs. milk, christmas cookies, hell, i bet you'd even find nonfood items like light bulbs in that cellar deep-freeze. the two things i've heard my mother-in-law say more than anything else is "oh, sure you can freeze that" and "run down an...

marty left last thursday for a long weekend at her sisters in chicago. she called me that night saying she forgot to put the diapers out to be picked up. i said i'd take care of it. she followed by saying "i usually put the bin in the hall, so i don't forget it." in my best indignant voice i reminded her that i had said i would take care of it, and wouldn't need any advice on how to perform the act. i was in fact an adult who holds a job and is considered by many to be a responsible individual and have long thought i left the days of being treated like a chore-hating adolescent behind me.

so friday morning at work, when i realized i forgot to put the diapers out that morning, i dashed home only to find i was too late and our new bundle of cotton swaths were already sitting on the porch. i'm sure there are those out there thinking the right thing to do would be to own up to the oversight and admit my failing. the people saying that have obviously never made marty's acquaintance. those that do know her understand the only viable option is/was to throw last weeks soiled diapers into the dumpster behind our house and when marty asks about it, snap the newspaper down long enough to say "i said i'd do it didn't i, so i did it".

...

i wish i could say i did this, but i didn't. because the only thing worse than lying to marty is not recycling things used in her home. the term 'divorcable offense' comes to mind. for instance, i reckon most of you think ziploc baggies are used once and then discarded. to marty, ziploc products may as well have a tupperware logo on them. we got a box the year we got married, haven't purchased a box since and still possess and use as many as we had on day one. this is called dedication and i suggest you don't stand in the way of such grim determination to an ideal. i know i don't which is why i'm able to sit her and type this with two functioning arms.

in college i majored in english. unfortunately i was not a member of the cool and sexy camp of creative writing, that was better left to the james kelly's of our world. my specialty was in analyzing the literary greats. while my first college roommate wrote a three page study on the black jellybeans left in the base of his mother's easter dish i was dissecting d.h. lawrence's rocking horse winner, explaining how the young boy was having sex with his mother and dying on the cross all while madly riding his wooden, rope-maned steed (the key was in the eyes, the boy's eyes crack the mystery wide open). i didn't exactly seek this discipline out, it's just what came easy to me, it's how my mind operated, and by the end of it all i was pretty good at it if i may for once make this site about me.

last tuesday night i was forced to use my powers not on the likes of Nabakov's Lolita but instead on Frankel's Once Upon a Potty. the task at hand, making isabella understand what was passing through the main character's skull when she defecated not in her potty but right next to it. many would think that explaining this simple scene would be an eyes-closed kind of exercise for someone trained in the craft. but i spent forty minutes on it before looking into bella's tired eyes and giving up. i accept that in the very near future i will find a tiny, toppled turd on the floor inches from bella's very own portable lavatory, all because i was unable to effectively convey the nuances of prudence's thought processes to my eldest child.

furthermore, when i find this misplaced turd on the floor, somewhere in my home will be a content and proud isabella. when i find her she will be smiling and by the time i pick her up i will be smiling too. but, i won't be smiling for the reasons you may think. my grin will come from the fact that i will feign ignorance of the mishap and marty, ever true to her nature, will be the one to scrape human feces off our breakfast room floor with a not-thick-enough paper towel.

one of my earliest friends was a boy named chris andrews. chris was an incredibly quiet kid. on a true and non-artificial level, so was i and hence our early bond. kids weren't necessarily cruel to chris, they just weren't anything to him. my memories of him are, like the boy, quiet. but, i succinctly remember being drawn to his silent charisma. his most fetching talent was an ability to draw. even in elementary his skill at this was savant-like. as the years passed and chris became more unique compared to his peers we drifted but i always held a private admiration of him.

a few years back i saw him at my high school reunion. the two things most striking about him were his distinct presence and a palpable confidence. but just like when we were kids, it was a silent bravado. no speaking, no posturing just calm ease. this was especially drastic given all the loud and drunken showboating happening between the other ex-classmates in the crowd.

i spoke to him very much hoping his soft manner wasn't preventing him from making a way in the adult world. a few minutes in he recounted how he had just returned from a science expedition to borneo where he charted some previously unexplored caves in attempt to save it from ruin by the local government. six months later i see my man in national geographic.

the other day i sent him an email about the everyman thinking that a well-traveled fellow like himself might have a candidate or two. true to my recollection of him, his voluntary description of one of his photos was leagues better than the actual photo, and the photo is quite good. and, while it may be in poor taste for me to post, the guts of his email are simply too rousing to not share. he admittedly wished he could send more but he was off the next day on a desert trip to new mexico for a cave survey.

this is the last week to enter the everyman. sunday is the deadline. so if you're planning on submitting a pic and haven't yet, you may want to think about getting it together.

that's all.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urging Latin Americans on Saturday not to celebrate Columbus Day, saying the 1492 discovery of the Americas triggered a 150-year "genocide" of native Indians by foreign conquerors who behaved "worse than Hitler.

first, i'm not a huge football fan. i like it, watch it occasionally but am an inconsistent follower. moreover, i've never been a great fan of the tampa buccaneers or indianoplis colts but just in case you are less of an enthusiast than me, something totally awesome happened last night.

to set the stage you must know that it really began long ago. you see, the tampa buccaneers have always sucked ... a lot. they had a couple of good years but the law of averages mandates this.

then six years ago the owners, the glazer family, finally made a bright decision and hired a coach named tony dungy. he is a calm and resolute man and gets results through his intelligent and consistent ways. he took on the global issue of rebuilding this greatly addled buccaneers franchise and achieved remarkable results for a collection of athletes and coaches who were coming off 13 consecutive losing seasons.

four years after his hiring the owners unceremoniously fired him, feeling his results were not as expeditious as they would like. they replaced him, luckily, with an aggressive and equally competent john gruden who picked up where dungy left off and took advantage of his fortunate position.

last night, dungy's new team, the indianapolis colts, came into tampa on monday night and beat the buc's number 1 rated defense in the most spectacular comeback i've ever seen.

to quote al michael's statistician, "no team in NFL history has won a game after trailing by 21+ points with fewer than four minutes left in the fourth quarter."

until now. four friggen minutes. it was absolutely amazing.

welcome to the life of righteous retribution glazer family because you just took a huge drag from the ever-loved karma pipe.

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