I Learned a New Word Today

I hadn't intended to. I was just reading along at Reason Magazine's "Hit and Run" blog, and there it was. A new word. Out of the blue.

I finally got the power miter saw out of the box tonight. It's big and heavy. That's a good sign in a tool, I am told. I poked around a bit with it on the kitchen counter, but it appeared very complicated. So I sat down and read the manual.

I must be getting very old.

After reading the manual, I learned that the process to change the blade is more ocmplicated than I'll probably ever remember, so I'll have to store the manual somewhere where I can always find it. Probably in my manual pile in the garage. I have yet to actually plug the saw in, as the kids were upstairs asleep already. (This all happened about a half-hour ago.) Tomorrow, I'm planning to go buy the wood to make the garden boxes, since it may have at long last stopped raining. Then I imagine I'll have to saw it. That may be a good time to try out the saw.

The butterfly bush appears to have inched yet closer to death during the last couple days. If I were a religious man, I'd say the only thing that could save it now would be an act of God.

Next week, maybe you'll get to see some action shots of the wood chipper. Damn shame, really. That plant cost $80 when it was new, and it had two years of growth before The Mrs. decided it should be relocated to its death.

So, yesterday was Fat Camp. As noted Wednesday, we were unable to kick off the mountain biking season because of serious lameness within the ranks. So we ended up at The Duke as per usual. Just Spanky and I ended up there, as the rest of the drinking crowd was either out of town (TommyO and AndyP) or going out of town first thing in the morning (Dr. Adlerberg).

Spanky, however, had one of his idiot friends meeting us there. Some guy I had never met was driving in from Folsom for bidness, and he was crashing at The Spankster's. They had been interns together like 3-4 years ago. I figured he'd be a fun guy, given that his name was The Savage.

I figured wrong.

I mean, he was OK and all. And maybe I caught him on an off night. But he ordered a glass of water because the two hour drive from Folsom made him too tired to drink.

Now, I've driven quite a bit over the years. There was that wonderful time long before we were married when The Mrs. lived in Philidelphia and I lived in Buffalo, and I'd drive 7.5 hours to see her. Or when my buddy DaveyH was going to Hamilton College, and I'd drive 4 hours to visit. Or now when I take the whole fambly in the winivan for 10 hours down to San Diego once a year. Never has the driving made me "too tired to drink". If anything, it's the opposite.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder if I even understand the concept of "too tired to drink". To me, that is synonymous with "already asleep".

Anyways, The Savage's limit was apparently one glass of water, as he waved off all further queries from the waitress. He and Spanky did manage to make Grand Plans of swilling down some cheap beer at The Brass Rail (a local bikini bar not far from Spanky's place), and then heading to The Kit Kat Club (a fully-nude place not far from Spanky's place) after work today. I wonder how that turned out.

I think I can guess, as at 5:45 Spankster was IMing me to see if I wanted to go have beers at SC-13 since The Savage had gotten tied up at work until at least 7. But The Mrs. had trapped me into going home early (if you consider 5:50 early) by giving me a quiz over the phone about whether I was going to actually be working past 5:00 or hanging at SC-13. And I had been planning to hang at SC-13, and I just can't bring myself to lie to the little woman. It's like she has some kind of bizarre mind-control power over me.

OK, it's because the sanctity of marriage depends upon honesty, and once you start the lying, even the small lies, it quickly snowballs into big lies where you say that you're going out of town on bidness, but you're actually just going bowling and drinking. Or maybe shooting pool. Or maybe it's elk season, and you tell her that work gave you some semiconductor test equipment to take to Colorado that is long and thin and needs to be in an SKB flight case that just happens to be the same size as a Remington 700BDL, and you'll be gone for about a week. And you're taking a lot of orange clothing because the testing is done in low-light situations where you need to stay visible for safety. And the next thing you know, you're happy. And as we all know, nothing wrecks a marriage faster than happiness.

So I don't lie to The Mrs.

Oh, the new word? Teledildonics.