Great Moments in Humility 2004

It's that review-your-past-twelve-months-on-this-planet time of year, and tonight I've been going over my 2004 journal (sparse though it is). I think I must resolve to live, in 2005, a more interesting life:

18 March 2004

I felt like an idiot standing at the first aid cabinet in the middle of the shop, browsing for the appropriate band-aid. People here do things like fall from ladders and sever their fingers on the table saw, and what do I get? Freak hand-washing accident. How, you ask? Well apparently, when the handle of the paper towel dispenser is wet -- as it is when you are using your wet hand to pull on it, in an attempt to get the paper towels to come out so that you may dry said wet hand -- it's liable to slip and catch the skin next to your thumbnail. It's my right thumb, and it hurts, so now I'm trying to train myself to use my left thumb on the keyboard spacebar. Mr. Blech always tried to tell us to use both thumbs to move the spacebar, but somehow I never developed that good typing habit. Who's sorry now, right Mr. Blech? Yes, that's right. I am.

HE YHE YHEY

Saw a billboard today advertising the "Fat Albert" movie. What took me by surprise was that the letters in the title, bright red capital block letters, were so poorly spaced on the billboard that I did a double take.

FAT ALBERT became FATALBERT, which my linguistically bent mind only took a split-second to see as FATAL BERT. Which, of course, made me think of Evil Bert.

Southern California Christmas Songs

Baby, it’s 80 Degrees Outside

We Three Kings SKG

Joy to the Guy with the Ten-Minute Commute

Silent Night Except for the Occasional Gunshot

The Little Drummer Boy who Waited Tables for Rent Money While His Band Was Auditioning Hot Lead Singer Chicks

Angels We Have Seen on High-Speed Police Pursuits on Channel Nine

God Rest Ye Merry Two More Days Then We’ll Take a Look at Your New Nose

O Come, O Come Manuel

Hark, the Herald Angels Pitch the Next Hit Reality TV Show

I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In, and They’d Better Not Take That Parking Space

Up On The Unaffordable Housetop

O Little Town of Bethlehem Adjacent

What Child is This, and Does He Have Representation? Here’s My Card

Benefits of Volunteerism

Q: What's better than working the candy necklace craft booth at a holiday carnival for blind and/or multiply disabled kids?

A: Working said candy necklace craft booth at said holiday carnival while unannounced special guest Stevie Wonder sings an uptempo arrangement of "The Christmas Song" at a piano thirty feet away.

Now that's what I call a Christmas bonus!

%#*@!!!

So close, my friends. Painfully, frustratingly, achingly, heartbreakingly close. We could'na been a contender, but the role of spoiler would have been just as sweet.

Where Am I?

It's fifty-four degrees here. FIFTY-FOUR! Nothing is ever fifty-four here -- not a Fahrenheit measurement, not a person's age, nothing! Is Los Angeles finally being subjected to divine wrath?

I'm huddled by the semi-comforting natural gas flame of my faux fireplace, wearing two pairs of socks and contemplating the ungodly ways of our culture.