Beth got herself a new toy today, Apple’s new iPod Shuffle. She’s named it “Binky.” It’s pretty cool, but it does have one significant down-side. Beth is in her office across the hall from me now, wearing earphones, putting together a playlist to load onto it, and she’s singing along with all her favorite songs. Badly. I mean really badly. American Idol badly.

Sigh… Technology truly is a double-edged sword. As is marriage.

Argh, I hate this. You keep a blog/journal/online writing project thingie kind of thing like this and you start to feel a responsibility to post fresh content for all eleventeen of your readers but then time gets away from you and now it’s been a week since the last entry … and then two weeks … and then three … and etc. and now you’re digging a hole you’ll have to explain and write your way out of when you finally do start writing again and that makes the prospect of writing even more daunting and so another week goes by and it gets harder and another week and etc.

And then you finally figure “Fuck it” and just dive back in with a long, lame, limping run-on sentence that magically erases all the time you haven’t been writing and your readers never notice it.

Or at least you pretend that’s so. And you push on.

I’ve been working on a personal project for the past month: shrinking. I’m just trying to do my part to make the world a better place; there’s no need to thank me.

Back in my high school glory days I wrestled at 169 lbs. 23 years and 84 pounds later I grew up to be a giant fat fucking slob, 253 lbs of Tub o’ Chuck. So about a month ago I said “No more” and started working that disappearing magic. I changed my eating habits and joined a gym and started shrinking. I’m 30 days into it and I’m down 10 pounds now, to 243. It’s a start.

I’m fully committed to this, it is not a passing phase. I’ve done the dieting thing before with the inevitable falling off the wagon, but this time it’s different. I feel it. I know it. This is the same feeling of finality and resolution I felt when I quit drinking 19 years ago, when I quit smoking five years ago. Whatever I’m quitting stays quit when I feel this way.

So there’s going to be less me in the world. And this is the last mention I’ll make of it until I hit my initial goal of 220 in two months; I’m not going to bore you with Suzi Homemaker reports of how I lost half a pound this week and resisted the temptation to finish the Sarah Lee pound cake I used my Weight Watchers Flex points on! I hate those and so do you. So that’s it on this topic for now. You’re welcome.

Another development since I last wrote is that I’ve become a person you’d want to have a heart attack around.

(Ha. This is me resisting the temptation to just let that sentence stand with no further explanation.)

I got myself certified in doing CPR and using a AED defibillator. So if you drop and start looking dead for some reason, I can probably keep you going until the paramedics get there. After that you’re on your own.

The CPR class was actually part of a Christmas present Beth gave me: a Rescue Diver course. It was an excellent gift that will make me a person you want to drown around, too, and it’s further proof that my wife does indeed rock. Actually, this class is part of the reason I started my shrinking project — I want to be in decent shape when I take the class because it’ll be relatively strenuous, and I also don’t want any classmate paired with me to have to haul a fat-ass tub of lard out of the water. I’m a giver. (And, really, that’s the last I’ll say about the shrinking thing. Honest.) I’ll do the dive portion of the class in a few months when something I’m not talking about is further along.

In other news, I own the Most Expensive Cat In The World. Our cat Gable, given to me something like 10 years ago by ex-girlfriend Kelli (my favorite reader from Northern California — Hi, Kel!) has had a checkered medical past. First there was the Fever of Unknown Origin, where he spent something like a 10 days in the animal hospital over multiple visits to the tune of something like $2,000 and they had no idea what was wrong with him until he started shitting out of his left thigh. Seriously. It turns out he had an “anal abscess” that created a fistula from his rectum to his flank. They figure he got in a fight and got bitten in the ass and it abscessed and, well, you know the rest. So that was fun. And expensive.

And then a few years later there was another Fever of Unknown Origin that cost another couple hundred bucks because ol’ Gabie needed some serious tooth-pulling dental work.

And then he turned up a few weeks ago in really bad shape. He was breathing really strangely, like he was trying to hack up a furball (one of his favorite activities, usually performed on carpeting) but couldn’t get it out. And he was looking pretty shaky. So I rushed him off to the vet, where they rushed him into the back to get him some oxygen, and he died right there two minutes after I brought him in. Just stopped breathing, end of story. So they revived him. Cha-ching!

It turned out he’d been watching ER or something and decided that pneumothoraxes were so popular on TV that he wanted one for himself. And so somehow he ruptured one lung and it kept leaking into the chest cavity and compressing his lungs so they couldn’t expand and he’d stop breathing and cha-ching! So they put in a chest tube and he lived at the animal hospital for the next four days, in the $150/day oxygen cage, and I had to sign a DO resuscitate order for him that clearly spelled out that every time they brought him back it would cost me $150. And just for fun, it also pointed out that “the prognosis is grave for animals that require resuscitation.”

Fucking cat.

But we’re suckers for our pets. So we paid all the insane charges that came to something like $1500 and now he’s okay and back at home again and ornery as ever. As it should be.

But, damn, I wish he’d stop with the vet stuff and the using up his lives. He’s on something like Life #-8 and counting. He’s a tough old bastard and we love him, but we really can’t afford him. But we do anyway. Somehow.

And finally, in sartorial news, Beth is having a laugh at my expense, but I know she’s secretly thrilled with my news that I’m going to start wearing a kilt.

Yes, a kilt. No, I’m not Scottish.

It’s an idea that has seized my fevered brain and I am obsessed with it.

I stumbled across a new blog recently, The Moronosphere. The title was right up my alley, so I clicked over to read it. The tagline “Elvis lives” was right up my alley, so I started reading it. And now it’s on my list of “must read” blogs. Karl sounds like somebody I’d like to hang with if I lived up north. And he wears a kilt. (And I just noticed tonight that I’m on his blogroll, too. You have to admit, the man has taste.)

I followed his links to Utilikilts and I was hooked. Those things are too fucking cool and I must have one! I’m going to start with a black Original model and then maybe an olive Mocker. I’m hooked without even wearing one and the thing is, I know I’ll look damned good in a kilt.

I’ll provide pictures when I get it. Until then, please begin wondering what I’ll be wearing under it.

Okay, fine. That’s all I got tonight. Does it make up for a month of no entries?

Big Daddy says “yes.”

You keep a blog. Admit it, you do; most people who read blogs also write them. So explain to me, then, what’s up with your archives? If I click on your December link, for example, why am I staring at December 31 at the top of the page and have to scroll all the way down to get to December 1 at the bottom? You don’t really think I’m going to read it backwards, do you? You know I’m going to start at Dec 1 and work my way up, right? Which is just wrong.

My archives don’t work that way and yours shouldn’t either. Mine are configured such that when you click on December you end up with Dec 1 staring you in the face, and then you scroll down for Dec 2 and then down for Dec 3 and so on. As Evelyn Wood intended. The only page on my site that’s configured backwards is the entry page, and that’s so the most recent entry is the first one you see — because that’s the one you want to see. Everywhere else is configured so you can read it naturally.

Go fix yours. Now.

Regarding my last entry about reverse-ordered archives: If I’m gonna bitch about it, I guess I should tell you how to fix it, too.

If you’re using Movable Type, do this:

1. Go to your Editing Menu and select Templates.
2. From Templates, select Date-Based Archive from the Archive-Related Templates section at the bottom of the page.
3. In the code of the Date-Based Archive template, find the following text:

div class=”blog”>
MTEntries>
$MTEntryTrackbackData$>

4. Change the MTEntries> line to MTEntries sort_order=”ascend”>

• (Note: Each of those lines — everything I listed in italics — should begin with a “<" -- I had to take it out to write this entry because it wreaked havoc with my blog's formatting. I can't very well lecture you on how to format your blog when mine looks like crap, can I?)

5. Buy me something pretty as thanks for helping you get your blog right.

I’m still working on how to do this in TypePad, but I’ll post it when I get it, GraceDavis. For everyone else: if you’re not using some version of Movable Type, then you suck and you’re on your own.

Class dismissed!

Beth says it’s all about networking and I guess she’d know, seeing as how she’s turning into the queen of it. So okay, fine, I’ll network all eleventeen of you in:

I’m looking for a job.

Yes, it’s true, the life of leisure is getting old. Also, the severance check is running out and unemployment won’t cover my heroin habit and you have no idea how hard it is to get a lap dance when you’re paying with food stamps. It’s all about money, apparently. Who knew?

So if any of you superfantastic readers happen to know of a training gig out there that you could tip me to, well, don’t be shy about it. Or basically any kind of gig. I’m getting to the point where I can’t afford to be picky. Baby needs a new pair of shoes and daddy needs to be able to buy them for her.

Deadpan is on the move. I bitched two months ago about how “my host is toast” and asked for suggestions for a new one and now I’m moving. This will be the last post at the old host. The next one will be at deadpan’s new home. I hope.

Cross your fingers.

This is the first entry at deadpan’s new home. Will it publish correctly? Let’s find out. Cross your fingers…

Well, it looks like deadpan’s move went pretty smoothly. Everything looks like it’s working and nobody got hurt. I don’t think I cursed once during the process. I didn’t even throw anything. Amazing.

I ended up going with Total Choice Hosting, as suggested by my close personal virtual friend Susan Dennis. I ended up paying less for more there and now there’s a lot more space for deadpan to spread out in — 850 mb rather than the 150 mb we were squeezing into (and out of) before.

So to celebrate all the elbow room I now find myself with, I’m posting a video I wanted to post but couldn’t because I was running out of space. My dive-buddy Bill shot it during a dive we did back in December at Catalina Island’s Casino Point dive park. We’re near the glass bottom boat, if you followed the Casino Point link and looked at the dive park map. I’m the diver you’ll see in the video, and the school of fish was even thicker than it looks. Click on the pic below to check it out. (11 mb)

Ha. Check it out: Pie Gizoogled. Ha.

I had a sad thought about my dog Billy tonight. Ol’ Bill has lived his whole life ’til now without getting any, and since he’s been “fixed” for years he’ll never get any in the future, either. He will never ever ever have sex. Ever. At all.

No wonder he barks at everything.

Billy, displaying the plumbing he’ll never use.