Besides warm weather, long days and ungodly traffic jams, spring means the melting of the winter blubber. In fact, that might be the German root for spring. Or maybe the Croatian. Anyway, the point is, let the melting begin.

Now off to work . . .

Hard to get work done when being dive-bombed by lady bugs.

Photo courtesy Baybeh 9700

Recently I noticed an odd cut on the Poet. Somewhere between leaving for work and returning home the toilet seat cracked into two pieces. Tragically, she discovered this the hard way.

So after we finished laughing ( to her credit she found the injury almost as sad/funny/enraging as I did ) about the predicament, it was off to a home supply store. A plethora of new shiny seats awaited. Pretty much any style seat one could imagine. As long as you like your seat white.

But I noticed something askew in the world of toilets. Most bowls can accommodate a much wider seat than what the toilet manufacturers ship with them. And as most statistics allege, in matters of bathroom survival, every inch counts. So all these years, I had been denied a proper fitting toilet seat. Nothing worse than discovering a unexpected deprivation.

So I bought the super-wide American ass seat. In white.

And somehow, everything about the number two seems better.

For the first time since 1995, I own a television. Hard to be believe, but for the last 15 years, my residences, regardless of living situations, have been TV free. There’s a long and convoluted story behind how that started, which stemmed from childhood issues. Not my own, mind you, but childhood issues.

Keep in mind, lacking a set does not equal watching zero minutes of television programming; I grabbed the occasional episode of South Park or Family guy at a neighbor’s place. Between hulu.com and the news sites, I had a basic sense of what was happening in entertainment and politics, which apparently are one and the same these days.

Thinking about this “absence” now, I can’t say I really missed having one, even though a common exchange when others uncovering my secret went something like this:

Unbeliever: “You really don’t have a TV? What do you do at night?”

Sam: “Read. Write. And chores and whatnot so my weekends are free for relaxation.”

Unbeliever: “But like, what do you do?”

Sam: “It really depends.”

Unbeliever: “You’re Amish, aren’t you?”

Sam: “Episcopalian. But very close.”

Amazon.com ran a one day sale, free shipping and no taxes, so I took the plunge.

In a way, I am part Amish.

After, still no cable. But the DVDs look pretty damn good on a much larger screen.