Saturday the Wife and I leave for a cruise near the Caymans. Updates will be sporadic the rest of the week, and non existent between December 16-21. Although the ship offers wireless Internet access, I’m leaving the card at home. The laptop is coming along, though.

Oedipus and Electra have their own enclosure at their favorite cat inn waiting. So it’s a vacation for everyone, pet and owner alike.

By accident I discovered my benefits package includes 6 weeks of vacation. Not sure how the hell I overlooked that wondrous fine print. The catch: it must be exercised at specific times of the year. 1 week during winter break–next week, that is–1 week during spring break, which is March, and then 4 weeks during the summer. Not exactly an unreasonable restriction. Needless to say, last year while ignorant of this policy, I used a fraction of this available time.

That mistake will not occur again. Oh yes, I have learned.

White Castle serves breakfast, and I just couldn’t say no. My intestines feel like they lost a knife fight with a half-blind simian high on rum.
Here’s to a more pleasant tomorrow.

Due to poor Cingular coverage in St. Louis my Treo spent most of last weekend roaming, probing for a signal that twas never to be. The constant search ran the batteries down in twenty-four hours instead of the normal ninety-six. Natch, I forgot to pack a charger or shut off the phone. Nothing like a funeral to bring out the absent mindedness streak. With a standard phone running the batteries down to zero would not be an issue; data and system settings persists in memory. Tragically, the classic Palm operating system deals with power deprivations in an irksome manner. Older Palm phones reset themselves. And not to the most recent operating state, either. They revert to day one fresh from the box brand new.

Besides my call log—a handy feature when retrieving someone’s number or the last call attempt—and a ton of pictures, nothing was irreplaceable. Except my contacts. If you haven’t heard from me lately, that is why.

Now I realize how dependent I was on the type ahead phone listings. Dialing these days is like coming home to find the front door swinging into the foyer. Oh sure, the place is still there, but it’s different.

After my grandmother’s funeral something interesting happened at the cemetery. An older couple dressed in Cardinal’s gear cruised up in a bus sized SUV. The woman tied two massive helium filled balloons—officially Major League Baseball sanctioned inflatable novelties, of course—to a bush enveloping a three-foot high brown marble headstone. She sauntered back to her car, turned on the stereo, and cranked Queen’s We are the Champions across section forty-seven.

Later when I mentioned this scene to my stepfather, he quipped, “There’s your victory parade, right there.”

He may have been right, because I witnessed the festivities downtown the following afternoon. Cemetery fans did put on an impressive showing.

INT – DAY
6 AM. Fall morning. A phone rings. Half-awake man stumbles to answer it.

Sam (croaks): hello?
Boss: There’s smoke pouring out of the server room. I need the passwords to shut everything down. We’re going to yank the plugs soon.
Sam: Uh..is the gear hot? What about the UPS’s?

Boss checks.

Boss: All cool to the touch.
Fire chief: If you don’t shut those servers off now, we’re ripping the walls out!
Sam: Wait! If it’s the gear shorting out then why is everything operational? Are the walls hot?
Fire chief: Could be a problem outlet. Why are we listening to you anyway?

A buildings and grounds staffer rushes in.

B&G: A rubber belt in the air handler on the roof snapped. It’s burning. That air handler vents right into the server room. Let me shut off the HVAC system.

In reality this drama took thirty minutes to play out. Five hours later the server room still smells a bit…rubbery.