January 2006


	Weblogs In alphabetical order Adventures Of A Domestic Engineer American Street Appalachian Gun Trash Bearwaller Hollar Bleeding Isaac Blue Cats and Red Sox Dave Peyton Donut Age Don Surber Everything Is Under Control Fifth Column Flapjam 4Haks Fried Rice Thoughts Health Care Law Blog The Holywriter Irregular Times Oh!pinion Oncee On Location With Rick Lee Raging Red Sanity--The Last Frontier Spinster Girl’s Guide To Love Tinfoil Hats and Rock-N- Roll Unsoft’s List Wabi-Sabi WV Mountain Home West Virginia Political Sweatbox and, of course, West Virginia Sock Monkey

January 31, 2006: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

My wife and I ended a six-year relationship today. No, not ours. With our bank.

Although we’re not certain, based on our reconstruction of the events, and our assignment of the following values where A designates our checkbook, B represents our car, and C is “somewhere between the Elkview exit and the Bob Evans at the Crossings Mall,” this is what we think happened:

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Please note the first two figures omit symbols for my wife (who is driving) and our two children. But if you look closely, you can probably see my frazzled wife driving while our two kids pitch a ginormous fit in their car seats.

After we contacted the bank, we anticipated it would stop payment on our outstanding checks. Unfortunately, our bank didn’t do that. But it did freeze our entire account. Although we’re not certain, based on our reconstruction of the events, and our assignment of the following values where A represents the teller who was supposed to call us back, B represents the teller’s telephone, and C represents the thoughts of our assigned teller, this is what we think happened:

Figure 1

Comma comma down dooby do down down. . . . Not.

January 29, 2006: Four Things

Via Kottke, I found the following meme. Here are my responses:

Four jobs I've had:
1. Newspaper delivery boy
2. Snack bar cook
3. Saturday morning obituary writer for the Charleston Daily Mail
4. Corporate attorney

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. The Natural
2. Pulp Fiction
3. The Godfather (either Part I or II, but not III)
4. Animal House

Four places I've lived:
1. Chesapeake, Virginia
2. New York City
3. New Orleans
4. Charleston, West Virginia

Four TV shows I love:
1. Lost
2. X-Files
3. The Simpsons
4. The Twilight Zone (original)

Ten highly regarded and recommended TV shows that I've never watched a single minute of:[Kottke added this one--I think it’s a cool question]
1. The Sopranos
2. Desperate Housewives
3. Nip/Tuck
4. 24
5. Arrested Development
6. Alias
7. Friends (technically, I’ve seen more than a “minute” of this show, but I’ve never watched a full episode. Heresy, I know)
8. Extreme Home Makeover (I’m not sure if this is “highly regarded,” but it sure receives a lot of praise in the TV Guide)
9. Gilmore Girls
10. Smallville

Four places I've vacationed:
1. Sedona, Arizona
2. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (I ask you: what self-respecting West Virginian hasn’t?)
3. San Francisco
4. Chicago

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. My wife’s baked steak and potatoes (via her mom’s recipe)
2. Crab cakes
3. That spaghetti with Arrabiati sauce from a A Taste of Italy, a restaurant that closed (it’s where the Banana Joe’s in downtown Charleston, West Virginia is now)
4. Ben & Jerry’s Karamel Sutra ice cream

Four sites I visit daily:
1. Yahoo!
2. Google
3. Cnn
4. Drudge

Four places I would rather be right now:
There’s no place l’d rather be right now because, well, there’s no place like home. But our home could use some improvement, so I’m listing four places in and around our house that I’d like to fix:

1. Our front room curtains. (we’re working on this; the color and style we chose, though, are exactly like the ones we have. Go figure.)
2. Our front room carpet. (U-G-L-Y, this carpet has no alibi.)
3. The backyard fence. (my wife has posted about this)
4. The downstairs carpet (It’s also ugly. Which is why I don’t mind when the cats rip it to shreds.)

Four bloggers I am tagging:
I’m not limiting my tagging. If you’re on the sidebar, however, consider yourself tagged.

And now . . . from Donut Babe . . .

Four jobs I've had:
1. Office Supply Store Clerk
2. Provider of Assisted Living for the Disabled
3. Teacher of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
4. Teacher of American Sign Language

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. Princess Bride
2. Meet the Parents
3. Children of a Lesser God
4. Young Frankenstein

Four places I've lived:
1.Bowling Green, Ohio
2. Hampton, Virginia
3. Washington, D.C. (briefly -- three consecutive summers)
4. Charleston, West Virginia

Four TV shows I love:
1. Lost
2. X-Files
3. All in the Family
4. ER (the old ones)

Ten highly regarded and recommended TV shows that I've never watched a single minute of:
1. Desperate Housewives
2. 24
3. Alias
4. The Sopranos
5. Gilmore Girls
6. Arrested Development
7. Sex and the City
8. Six Feet Under
9. Invasion
10. King of Queens

Four places I've vacationed:
1. Sedona, Arizona
2. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (I ask you: what self-respecting West Virginian hasn’t?)
3. Chicago
4. Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. my mother’s lasagna
2. black bean soup
3. chicken broccoli casserole
4. grilled fish (when someone else makes it)

Four sites I visit daily:
1. Yahoo!
2. this one
3. Drudge
4. amazon.com

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. asleep in bed
2. on the back porch
3. going for a walk
4. in the spotlessly clean version of my home that must exist in another dimension

Four bloggers I am tagging:
See the hubby’s response above.

January 26, 2006: Q*Bert

Hey, you can play Q*Bert on Yahoo! games for free!

Excellent.

January 24, 2006: Guess That Toy

Being a parent heightens your awareness such as when your fourteen-month-old daughter disappears from your side while you’re watching a point-by-point replay of Kobe scoring 81 points against the Raptors and then your wife asks where the baby went and you answer, “I thought she was with you,” and she responds, “Uh. . . No,” and then as you start to look for your fourteen-month-old daughter, of course, the entire power grid of your city goes out, and then you and your wife get frantic because you can’t find your daughter, it’s dark, and she’s not responding to you when you call her name and now your son’s crying (he’s two and he’s very sensitive to these things) and then the lights go on and everything’s fine except for your pulse. But most of the time, being a parent increases your ability to identify any variety of toy by only the sound it makes.

When I’m on the telephone with a client, I will often hear various noises in the background. The sounds vary, but the most common ones I’ve heard on the other end are, in order of frequency (no pun intended):

1.An unidentified person yelling advice or other encouragement to my client;

2. A baby or small child wailing;

3. An unidentified bird chirping;

4. A dog or dogs barking; and, of course

5. Fire engine sirens.

I don’t know if it’s a function of how much time I spend on the phone or a function of how many calls the local firehouse receives, but at least a few times a month I’ll hear a fire engine roaring in the vicinity of the person I’m talking to on the phone. And when the sirens wail, it always seems to happen at the moment I’m delivering a critical piece of advice to my client.

“So, Mr. Chinchilla,” I’ll be saying, “You realize that you need to”

WOOOOOOO---BRRRRRUPPPPPP----WOOOOOOOOOOOO

“What did you say?”

“Hold on. Can’t hear you.”

And in anticipation of your question, yes, it happens at depositions too, and always at the time of the crucial question. I dig the irony of that, but only when I’m asking the question of the deponent, of course.

In the last several weeks, I’ve noticed that I’ve developed an ability to identify toys--by make and model--by hearing only their sound on the phone. The first time this happened, I remember listening to someone when I heard the familiar strain of music that sounded like C & C Music Factory’s Gonna Make You Sweat. But it wasn’t that song, it was from a toy. And I had a hunch I knew which one:

“Hey,” I asked, “Is that a rockin’ Sit ‘N Spin I hear?”

Why, yes, it was.

I didn’t think much of the exchange until last week. That’s when I heard the sounds of a tractor trailer going BEEP-BEEP-BEEP and making the growling RRRRRRHHHH, RRRRRHHHHH engine sounds.

It was unmistakable:

“That’s the Fisher Price Little People Fun Sounds Semi Tractor Trailer, right?” I said.

“Yes,” said the somewhat surprised person on the other end of the call.

I couldn’t resist the urge:

“It includes the man holding a coffee cup.”

He doesn’t make any sounds, which is for the best.

January 22, 2006: Remedies

While watching West Virginia defeat UCLA in basketball yesterday, I heard Governor Manchin deliver his pledge to improve mine rescue and safety here. “This has got to stop, and it’s going to stop,--if I’ve got anything to do with it — with every breath in my body,” Manchin remarked at the news conference.

I agree. And I’ll tell you what else has to stop: Reducing benefits to spouses of injured workers who perish in mining tragedies.

If previous news reports hold true, then the surviving spouses of the men who perished at the Sago mine will receive benefits until the year the worker would have turned 70. Why must we limit a surviving spouse’s benefits at age 70? Why not allow these widows to receive their benefits until their deaths or remarriages? Isn’t that what West Virginia law allowed for many years? And, if so, why has that changed under Governor Manchin’s administration?

While we focus on creating safer mining conditions, we must still consider the remedies we afford for those times when tragedy cannot be averted. Someone who loses a husband in a mine explosion should not have to worry about losing her house when her dependent’s benefits end--another tragic prospect that may well result if West Virginia has a cap on dependent’s benefits.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have tragedies like those in Upshur and Logan Counties. But tragedies happen. And try as we might today, we cannot prevent every tragedy of tomorrow. When safety measures fail us, our laws must afford our citizens an adequate and fair remedy for their harms. Let’s hope that Governor Manchin remembers this.

January 18, 2006: Yeah, I’d Say He’s In Charge

Did you see this report stating that couples who have a television in their bedroom have sex half as often as those couples who don’t have a television? And with the release of Charles In Charge on Valentine’s Day, I’d bet that things in the bedroom aren’t going to get any better for the folks with dvd players, either.

January 16, 2006: My Theory On Lost

If you’re not familiar with the greatest show on network television, then here are the essential and obligatory Wikipedia links to get you hooked:

The show

Characters on Lost

My theory on Lost is everyone on the island is hooked up to some computer and they’re participating in a virtual reality. For most everyone, this experience was voluntary. Most folks applied for the program to resolve a problem they couldn’t conquer. Locke signed up because it was the only way he would get to do an Australian-themed “Walkabout.” Michael signed up because he wanted to bond with Walt. Shannon signed up because she needed to learn how to do things on her own. Boone signed up to get over Shannon. The government forced Kate to signup as part of her probation. And Eko? Well, he’s so frickin’ aweome, who cares.

Boone and Shannon have not “died.” They overcame their problems, and they don’t need no stinkin’ virtual reality game to deal with them. But Shannon’s death gives Sayid the challenge he needs to overcome his feelings for Nadia.

The plane never crashed. It was a simulation. Everyone’s memories of signing up for the program were erased by those in control of the program.

The program will continue on ABC for the next several years or until the writing starts stinking. Then I will not care and the writers will divulge the true theory of Lost, which I really suspect is something along the lines of “Let’s write an imaginative, interesting, intellectual television show that relies on strong character development and see how long it lasts.”

January 13, 2006: Happy Friday The Thirteenth

Today is my wife’s birthday. The superstition that this is an unlucky day does not apply if it’s your birthday.

January 10, 2006: Relevance

Let’s say you’re talking to somebody and this person tells you that while waiting at the post office to buy some two cent stamps that someone cut in front of the line. O-kaaa-yy. You might think there’s nothing earth-shattering about this. People cut in front of lines everywhere, everyday. Right?

You’ll notice I didn’t provide any specifics on the person who jumped the line at the post office or on the person telling the story. In relating a story, though, you might expect me to provide more details on the persons involved. What details those are depends on what each of us deems necessary to the story.

Now let’s suppose that the person telling you the story about someone cutting line at the post office decided to end the story there. If you wanted to hear more about what happened, what other specifics would you want someone to provide? And before you answer, ask yourself if you had actually imagined the person telling the story and the person who cut the line at the post office. Did you have an image of each? How specific was your image? Did you assign a gender to each person? A race? How about religion?

Chances are you at least imagined the gender of the story teller and the person in the story. But I would argue--and as a lawyer I guess I have the obligation--that the person’s gender has no real relevance to the story if the only point of the story is to provide a personal anecdote about “rude behavior.” That is, it matters not whether the person cutting line is a man or a woman or if the story teller is a woman or a man. People sometimes act rude. And associating an immutable characteristic--such as gender--with the act of rudeness (here someone cutting line) does nothing but promote a negative portrayal of those who share the immutable characteristic of gender.

Let me shift gears here. Years ago, when I had more blind dates than those on reality television, a friend of mine--or I should say a friend of my Dad--would sometimes arrange dates for me. In the course of introducing me to these dates, this friend reiterated a variation on the theme that I was “a nice Jewish guy.” I never gave this much thought at the time because (1) I was happy to have a date; and (2) Hey, I am “a nice Jewish guy.”

West Virginia, of course, does not have a large Jewish population. Yes, we have Jews in West Virginia. But, then again, we also have Hutton Gibson. Of all the places in the world for Hutton Gibson to live, he picks West Virginia. I shouldn’t complain. Bob Denver picked West Virginia, too.

As a child and young adult, I never experienced any anti-Semitism in West Virginia. Only later, when I attended college in New York City, did I begin to experience how my identity as a Jew might sometimes influence how others thought of me. In New York City, I was one Jew among hundreds of thousands. If someone referred to me as “a nice Jewish guy,” I could be any one of the thousands of “nice Jewish guys.” But that changed when I returned home for my winter and summer breaks. And when my friend arranged blind dates for me and described me as the “nice Jewish guy,” these words carried an entirely different import than they did in New York City.

As I said, though, I didn’t give it much thought back then. But as the years passed, I dated more, and I started to think about my friend’s reference to my being Jewish. Was it relevant to who I was? More important, was it necessary to influence someone’s opinion of me by reference to my religion? If my religion or ethnicity mattered to someone, then why bother to arrange the date?

Now let me shift gears again. In my previous example of the person cutting line at the post office, I believe it’s usual for people to associate one gender or another with the story teller and the person cutting line. But if someone out there reading this had imagined a Jewish guy or gal cutting the line at the post office, then, to paraphrase another Tom Hanks movie, “Hutton, we have a problem.” A big problem. Because unless you also imagined a post office in Israel with rabbis waiting to mail care packages to needy children in West Virginia, then you’re going to have a very, very, difficult task convincing me that you’re not at least a teensy-tiny bit prejudiced against me and my tribe.

And another thing. Stop leaving the bacon you don’t want beside the matzo ball mix in the kosher section of the grocery store.

January 7, 2006: The Snowsuit Series . . . with Commentary from Donut Babe

If I had known how fun it was to watch my daughter in her snowsuit, I would have tried it on her earlier. Now I keep having to take her outside because she gets hot when I make her wear it in the living room. I like to watch her bumble along in it. She’s almost spherical in this thing, I tell you. It’s like an anti-gravity suit. When she falls, she just rolls like a little hedgehog and then bounces right back up.

Hey, try this. If you scroll up and down really fast, she’s doing the YMCA.

Posing here in his Old Navy hat (a gift) and his Walmart coat (not a gift), our son is getting harder and harder to photograph these days. He doens’t stay still very much.

Negotiating the slide is a little tough in his winter boots, but after getting stuck a couple times and having to be rescued by Donut Mama, he got the swing of it. As I was helping him get unstuck, he said, “Mommy, are you taking care of me?” As if this were something new for him. Where has he BEEN the last two and a half years?

And here he is leaning precariously on our lovely, almost-as-good- as-chicken-wire, tetanus-waiting-to-happen fence. Our house’s previous owner apparently had a mighty feeble dog if this sagging mess of rust kept the little pooch in. Or maybe, to keep it occupied within the confines of the backyard, the dog had a slide, too. Or a baby bumbling around in a snowsuit.

January 5, 2006: Gimme Some Credit

My credit card company worries about me. I called it tonight to verify my new card. I thought my call would take only a minute. I guess I can be somewhat naive, huh?

My first attempt to punch in my account number resulted in an error message. I attribute my mistake to Seth’s screaming something about Sonya Lee™, his old Fisher-Price Little People™ girlfriend. Seth has quite the fascination for Sonya Lee. He has to watch his Sonya Lee videos, play with his Sonya Lee puzzles, and, of course, elaborate on Sonya Lee’s broken down car, which, of course, does not even exist in any toy or video form in our house. But I digress.

I punched in my account number again. This time, I received a message that a customer service representative would take my call.

Uh-Oh. I knew this spelled trouble.

I haven’t yet uploaded my archives from the past two years, but the short story is I don’t like talking to telemarketers or their closely related cousins--the customer service agents. But at that moment, I made an added New Year’s Resolution to be polite to him or her.

The first question the agent asked me was “How are things in West Virginia?”

“Oh, just groovy! Other than the mine disaster, unemployment, and rising gas prices. . . . hey, buddy, things are GREAT! We’re number 5! We’re number 5!” Resist the urge. Resist the urge, I tell myself.

“I’m doing good,” I say.

“Great!” She tells me.

She then follows with the obligatory questions that confirm I’m not a poser with five sweaty fingers at a phone booth near the Best Buy. Everything checks out swell.

“I notice,” she continues, “that you haven’t used your card since 2002. Is there a reason?”

Yeah. I collect credit cards. But I don’t use them for purchases. I prefer to arrange them by hologram and design. Then I place them in special credit card binders, and I arrange my binders alphabetically by bank. The hologram on the card that your bank issued me has a slight flaw, which, I must say, adds to its value in my collection.

Resisting the urge to elaborate on my collection of credit cards, though, I simply answer, “I keep the card handy for a rainy day.”

And here I have to digress again. Considering the number of bankruptcy filings in America, shouldn’t my credit card company applaud my judicious use of credit? After all, if I haven’t used my credit card in four years, that must mean I’m responsible, right? It’s not like I’ve incurred considerable household debt and bought the two HDTVs of my dreams, that really kewl DVD recorder, a new media center computer, and, of course, a kickin’ BMW (or Mercedes-Benz, if that’s your fantasy) for me to show off with my wife and kids as we cruise the streets of West Virginia. No, I held back, man. I held back.

But the customer service representative still pressed me.

“Do you have any home improvement projects? Have any major purchases you need to make?”

Um, no. I just want to register my credit card. You know, the one I don’t use. The one that you wish I would use to run up an enormous consumer debt on a home improvement project.

RESISTING URGE. “No thanks. I appreciate it.” Though not really, I think.

The call ends.

And I remember Dad and his battle with a credit card company. He wasn’t pleased with how this company treated him. As Mom tells it, he took the credit card and cut it into several pieces. Then he arranged these several pieces into the shape of a figure of the male anatomy. And he sent this figure to the credit card company.

I wonder if Dad’s credit card company worried about him.

January 3, 2006: Legal Ethics, A T-Shirt And Tennis Shoes

In law school, the Dean taught us legal ethics. Although it’s been fifteen years since I took his class, I still remember many of the lessons because he took a pragmatic, entertaining approach to teaching. As part of our final exam, he told us to watch an episode of L.A. Law. “Then,” he ordered us, “identify all of the ethical issues raised in the story and discuss them.”

Believe or not, I had never watched L.A. Law before I attended law school. I caught an episode with my best friend (a labor lawyer in Georgia now), and he had to clue me in on the characters’ names. We each had a notepad and a pen, and took copious notes. After the episode, we later wrote our essays, which we turned in as part of our final exam.

I don’t remember the specifics of the episode we watched. I do remember that one character was in jail, and that virtually every storyline involved an ethical dilemma for one of the lawyers. I also remember incorporating humor into my analysis. As a rule, I did not inject humor into my law school essays, but this professor had a great sense of humor, so I did not think it would be inappropriate. I must have guessed right because not only did I receive an “A” in that class, but I merited an award for the highest mark.

For receiving the highest grade, I received an “American Jurisprudence” certificate and a check for fifty dollars. Back in 1991, fifty dollars would buy you a nice pocket t-shirt from the Gap and a good pair of tennis shoes. I wore out that pocket t-shirt, which I later lost at the laundromat down the street from my shotgun apartment. I last wore the tennis shoes back in 1996 when I went whitewater rafting on the New River. I think the tennis shoes are still around somewhere at my mom’s house.

Now when I read the rules of professional conduct, I always think of my lost t-shirt and old tennis shoes.

January 2, 2006: Live Furniture Assembly/College Football Blogging

To make the WVU/Georgia game interesting, I’m going to try something different. My wife and I are gonna try and assemble this 9-piece storage unit while watching the game. My guess is that my interest in the game will be long gone well before we finish the assembly of this thing--and I’m starting this blog entry twenty minutes before kickoff!

Let’s go. . .:

8:08: My wife asks me to hand her the screwdriver, which is to the left of the monitor. I’m handing it off to her--AND IT’S GOOD!

8:09: Whoah. . . there are a lot of instructions. . . and parts. . . . and I hate particle board.

8:10: Time to post these entries with the comments. Wonder if my reader from Finland is here?

8:25: We’ve got most of the dowels in, and it’s lookin’ like the picture in the diagram. . . so far, so good. . .

8:29: The screensaver on our computer keeps obscuring the game.

8:41: The back panels take 12 (twelve!) nails each. WVU still isn’t on and we’re gonna be finished with the first cube organizer. I wonder what Don Nehlen’s doing now.

8:52: The game’s on. I think I’m just gonna enjoy it. This live blogging and furniture building requires too much work.

Go Mountaineers!

UPDATE: 8:57 p.m.: WVU scored the first touchdown. Sweet.

January 1, 2006: Holiday Wrap-up from (sigh) Donut Babe

We lit the last Hanukkah candle tonight and ate the last plate of latkes. Christmas is, of course, a week gone now. And although instead of watching the ball drop this year, we, to quote my husband, “dropped the ball” on New Year’s Eve and went to bed long before midnight, New Year’s Day has come anyway. A few thoughts about the holidays . . .

1. Now that I’m among the minority of folks who do not celebrate Christmas in their homes, I’m learning as an adult to negotiate the constant barrage of Christmas-related questions and comments that kindly strangers direct at our children. I had a pretty laid-back attitude about the whole thing until Bill O’Reilly started all this happy horse poo and left us each time someone said “Merry Christmas” wondering whether they were wishing us well or telling us to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. Thank goodness there are folks like those at some area furniture stores who make it pretty clear where they’d like us to stick it.

2. That reminds me. When we put up our Hanukkah garden flag in our front yard this year, I was a bit nervous. We’re in a new neighborhood, after all, and while everyone seems incredibly nice, I just didn’t know how they’d take our meager menorah flag waving pitifully among the otherwise uninterrupted displays of (very pretty, I might add) Christmas lights. That evening my husband started to take out the garbage in his boxer shorts. “Aren’t you going to put on some pants?” I asked. “Why? No one will see. I used to do this all the time at the other house,” he said. “Yeah,” I said, “but we just put out the Hanukkah flag today. Let’s not spring it all on ’em at once.” He put on some pants.

3. It is a good thing to buy your children matching gifts. Even semi-matching gifts will do. But it’s arrogant to assume you can pick two unrelated gifts that your two children will like equally well. We tried, and we failed. The Winnie the Pooh Mega Block House Boat which we searched and searched for does not, apparently, begin to compare with the My First John Deere Playset. After enduring twenty minutes of stereo screaming, we finally had to separate the children -- the toddler downstairs in the family room playing happily with his father, the baby in the bathtub playing gleefully with ALL the tub toys. Except the Winnie the Pooh Mega Block House Boat, that is.

4. I think my biggest holiday faux pas this year was over extending myself. I had intentions of having hordes of guests over to the house but ended up running out of time to see even half the people I’d wanted to see. If my friends are still speaking to me, I’ll have to have them over for a generic winter get-together instead. Or, knowing me, perhaps a spring one.

5. My second biggest holiday faux pas was to invoke the name of Lynndie England while frying my umpteenth batch of latkes. I think there’s probably some unwritten rule I’ve broken there. My two-year-old son was asking to help me cook, and he didn’t understand why I didn’t want him near the hot oil. I showed him some minor burns on my fingers and told him how I’d gotten those cooking latkes a few nights earlier. He was unimpressed, so I had to pull out the big guns. “You know, there’s a girl named Lynndie England who was burned very, very badly while cooking chicken. And cooking chicken isn’t nearly as dangerous as cooking latkes.” My son seemed satisfied. But then later during our dinner, my son asked what that girl’s name was who got burned on Hanukkah. You know, the latke girl. Lynnie Ennie. So I’ll be explaining that one to the rabbi.

All in all, Lynndie England and Winnie the Pooh Mega Block House Boat aside, we had a wonderful holiday season.

January 1, 2006: My New Year’s Resolution

Here’s my only New Year’s Resolution: To send everyone of my friends, readers and family a questionnaire to get to know them better.

1. A New Year’s Resolution OR A United Nations Resolution?

2. Valerie Bertinelli OR Valerie Plame?

3. Ken Lay OR Lay, Lady, Lay?

4. “Stay The Course” OR “A Horse Is A Horse, Of Course, Of Course”?

5. A Domestic Wire Interception OR A Brett Favre Interception?

6. A Deer Hunter OR A House Hunter?

7. Cokie Roberts OR John Roberts?

8. Hash Browns OR Latkes?

9. “I’m Sorry, But Something Suddenly Came Up. . . .” OR “I’m Not Able To Take Your Call, But Please Leave Me A Message And I’ll Get Back To You As Soon As I Can. BEEP.”?

10. Caramel Apple OR Fiona Apple?

11. Samuel Alito OR Samuel Adams?

12. Hilary Duff OR Hilary Swank?

13. David Letterman OR Jay Leno?

14. Lost In Space OR Lost?

15. Matt Damon OR Johnny Damon?

16. Read The Book OR Watch The Movie?

17. Charcoal OR Gas Grill?

18. Talk Politics OR Talk About The Weather?

19. South Park OR The Simpsons?

20. Amazon OR Ebay?

21. Yahoo! OR Google?