let me paint you a picture of what it's like to be a new parent on new year's eve.

i started drinking beer with dinner (coffee stout to go with coffee stout beef stew, which is absurdly good). we had friends over for dinner (howler monkey and whorcus) who left at seven or so. put baby to bed. continue beer drinking , though we switched to highlife for the sake of economy, and because it is the champagne of beers. roughly ten-thirty, siouxs! goes to bed. i tuck her in and stumble back downstairs to continue drinking and watching kung fu hustle. add several glasses of water to drinking queue. at eleven fifty-eight, i switched to network tv, but couldn't find any celebrity spokespeople, so went upstairs to give siouxs! a kiss for the new year. stumbled back downstairs, grabbed another beer and another water, stumble upstairs to read in bed.

happy new year, everyone, and by everyone, i mean both of you.

so i went golfing for the third time in my life on sunday. in case you haven't been outside lately, most of the u.s. is going through a heat wave. st louis is no exception. it was 100 on sunday, and my fellow crooked-stick luggers and i probably sweated at least a half gallon each.

i've decided i enjoy playing golf, even though i am against it as a means to class distinction. i find sixty acre country clubs to be disgusting. i think people who want to live beside golf courses should have to build on the fairway and consider their swimming pools to be water hazards. i think that millions of illegal immigrants who work minimum wage (or less) jobs at country clubs should be allowed to run down elitist sons-of-bitches with high powered mowers. golf is fine, it's just the sense of entitlement that so often goes with it that makes me ill.

fortunately, dear readers, we went to tower tee par 3 course. this is the people's golf.

let me start by saying that we had it a lot better than most, as we had our power back up and running seven hours after it went off.

(wednesday) the storm itself was freaky. the (cliche) sky was green, and when i went on the porch, the wind changed directions 180 degrees four times in two minutes. the followup storm that was supposed to be thursday night didn't arrive until mid-day friday, and i was making deliveries in the worst part of it.

work was a joke. we had to scramble to rent a generator to keep our ac working and our wine uncooked. the generator we found was basically an old big rig engine without the extras like steering and brakes. i shouldn't complain, as it did the job, but i'm even more deaf that i was before i stood within a quarter mile of it. after that was done, we still made some deliveries, but mostly just sat around talking about what we should have for lunch.

(thursday) thoguh our power was on, a non-electric entertainment source is suggested. begin 1491 piece jigsaw puzzle of butterflies.

(thursday/friday) after trying to drive with traffic lights out all over town, i'm going to need an operation to remove the murder from my heart ( called a cydectomy).

(saturday) washington avenue music fest could have been better, but enough places had power to make it interesting for a few afternoon hours, and it was refreshingly nice out. skip and krowbar got a much improved temperature for the outing, as their power stayed off until yesterday.

also, really starting to hate those butterflies.

(sunday) fast eddies bon air. six beers, steak kabob, chicken wing kabob, pork kabob, french fries, and half a dozen boiled shrimp: $25. enough said.

peace is made with at least the purple butterfly.

all in all, quite an experience. i don't know if anyone died from the heat, but overall, not as awful as it might have been. a four/five day reminder of what life was like 100 years ago.

so this week i am running the show as best i can in the office, as both of my bosses are in south america for the week. i hope they have a good time there, because i have a feeling it's going to be murder here. i have covered the office for a few days before, and it's usually quiet, but there will likely be at least four times this week when i am so stressed out that i threaten sales reps on the phone and/or let the frustration in my voice leak out when i'm on the phone with a customer (work enough customer service and you can say just about anything with a smile, just letting the bile trickle out the back of your head). anyway, if the week warrants, there will be updates.

jack had a pretty good weekend. we barbecued a little saturday, but did next to nothing else all weekend long. this is a very good thing, as the next several weekends will contain a trip to tennessee and a lesbian wedding among other things. i think every weekend between now and july is spoken for somehow or another.

enough for now. more when something exciting happens.

fuck bush.

good weekend. jack has more personality everyday. yesterday, we barbecued the stuff we bought the day before he was born (purchased in an effort to get him going... obviously, it worked). i broke the landlady's birdfeeder, we invented a new sport (tongball), siouxs! picky sister ate shrimp. a good time was had by all.
i'm sure i have voiced my distaste for wal-mart at some point on this blog. i'm not alone in hating the monoculture bohemoth, but it seems that our dear friends in organized labor are standing up to fight. on the whole, i am pro-union (at least when they are actually fighting for their members, and not just to keep union brass salaries high), so needless to say, i'm right behind them in this one.
do we really need to be funding the chinese economy to the extent that wal-mart is? i have nothing against china, but in our quest for ever lower prices, we're managing to tank our own economy. at the rate we're going now, at least by the time jack has kids of his own, he may be the one doing the "outsourced" job (eventually, americans will be forced to do jobs at less than the going rate for the indians and chinese who are getting them now.) if this sounds paranoid, so be it. i'm strongly against pure capitalism, and i'm sure it comes out in these rants.
stop sam walton's monster or pay the consequences!