White Lightning Axiom: Redux

This article at the Belmont Club really hits the nail on the head. The front line has been officially moved to our shores. It is no longer a little line strung out on a map in two dimensions, it is everywhere. It is physical, political, emotional and it encompases all of time. The front line is established long before a single bullet is shot, a bomb dropped or a missle launched and continues long after the ink dries on the treaty. Makes all my turn-based war games seem pretty lame now.

Heh, because we don't have ENOUGH terrorists running around our home turf, we are IMPORTING them! Cripes, that's all we need. Since we cannot impose the death sentence on this pile of manure, he will sit in our Federal prison system for the next 100 years, churning out new converts to the Islamic Jihad. I hope he gets a shiv on his first day. The Aryan Brothers will lay this dude low pretty quickly.

Zoom! Nice. The Friday before a long weekend is nice, in so much that the traffic on the Turnpike can be guaranteed to be either light, rapid or both. So happy for this weekend ... honest.

Here is an interesting point. This is the tally from one month at Normandy while in Iraq, we have lost about 900 in the year+ we have been there. Somewhere else, Ive read that we lost over 1000 men in the PRACTICE EXERSIZE for the Normandy Invasion. Given this, Ike was expecting 70% losses, but due to weather conditions, the Germans re-deployed troops elsewhere and our losses ended up at about 20%. He EXPECTED to loose 70% and went through with it anyways! We may need to get some DNA from Ike and clone him, too bad it's illegal.

Take one look at this and tell my why we should not have socialized medical care.

Yikes!

Ohhhh, I like! I just scraped this up off the blogosphere and I think some of my peers and family need to pay attention to this in regards to voting:

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." - Plato

Time to start reading books again.

Ut-oh ... it looks like not only have we found WMD (not much, just enough Sarin to kill 80K people, a bunch of Mustard Gas and enough Orth. [insecticide?] stored in hardened concrete bunkers on military bases to kill all the bugs in Iraq for more than 100 years), documents about the Oil for Palaces/Bribes Program and REAL torture videos/documents, but now we find that Saddam was actively employing al Qaeda members. Go figure, I wonder what the press/LLL will have to dig up now to push the point that the war is unjust and without precedent. The oddest thing here is that the Wall Street Journal is reporting this. Ok, there is a point that "Ahmed Hikmat Shakir" in the employ of Fedayeen may not be the same man with the same name working to bring 9/11 to fruition. I cant seem to get their names straight either, I can see the possible confusion.
UPDATE:
It looks like ABC is getting in on the action too. Something about Zarqawi getting help from Iraqi Secret Service. It doesnt count though because there is no picture of Saddam shaking hands with him, holding a giant check made out to OBL for Services Rendered on 9/11. Oh, and the check must be witten with ink saturated with enriched uranium and weaponized anthrax.

For crying out loud, is this guy trying to hard to get Iran to be #1 in the 'Axis of Evil'. He must be pretty pissed that the Norks got to the Nuke first.

I just got this off of Instapundit and I nearly fell out of my chair. This guy Jon Schaffer pummeled the living daylights out of this kid interviewer. You have got to read this. It brings to mind the saying from Samuel Clemments, paraphrased: "Its better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and dispell all doubt."

Finally, we are getting some rain here. My lawn was starting to get crispy in the areas where I was trying to resuscitate the withering turf. The fact that we finally got SOME precipitation is a good thing, and a bad thing. As it goes, since I got going yesterday at nice early hour, I ended up getting out at a much later hour today, like about 7am. So I got to enjoy the Morning Turnpike Disco. Twist, turn, thrash, shout, point, repeat as necessary. Even better, a good percentage of Pennsyltucky drivers fall under a species I have termed 'Instant Asshole: just add water!'. Half of them figure that a wet road surface has much higher coefficient of friction because, hey, the water is acting as barrier so the wheels have more contact with a surface! So I can drive that much closer to the guy in front of me. So what if I can count the number of unshaven whiskers on the guy (sometimes, gal) behind me. And then there are those so terrified by the rain the seize up in the passing lane and are too terrified to go much more than EXACTLY the speed limit. There are 3 lanes here, the left most one is not the one you want to meet one of these jokers in. Granted, there are a number of these disparate species in the best of weather, but rain seems to have some kind of trigger mechanism that bring them out in droves. I have got to get up earlier. The up side is that the clouds hung around all day and the weather cooled off enough so that I didn't loose my entire volume in liquids while mowing the lawn tonight. BIG bonus. That reminds me, if you are ever listening to NPR and that LLL jackass Daniel Shore starts spouting his half baked diatribe, don't bother with the Tourette Syndrome enactment or gnawing on the steering wheel. I tried it and it doesn't work. Man I hate that guy.

Its been yet another one of thoes days. Didnt get in to work till 12ish because of prior obligations ... there goes another half day of vacation. Then I bust my rear testing other ppl's code. This Amazon file interchange system is so fragile, Im not sure how anyone makes any money off it. So Dilbertian. Got a call from my 'little' brother in the evening, it looks like he will be comming down this weekend as well. He'll be bringing down his faithful hound Roscoe. Alexis just LOVES Roscoe. She will be delighted to see him. He is pretty good around the kids and he tends to get a lot of snacks from them because of it. Dont get me wrong, our two labs are pretty well behaved around the twins of doom, but Thor can knock them for a loop by the gravity generated from his mass! A 125 lb yellow lab is not something that a 25 lb toddler can effectively compete with. Unless you are holding that pretzle right in front of his nose. Then the mass of canine hunger stands as still as statue, except for the gallons of drool cascading from his maw.

The wierdest thing happened today. Other than getting on the road a bit earlier and missing my Turnpike Disco Session. Oddly enough, the morning news had NO mention of THAT prision in THAT country which had THAT scandal. Are we finally over that? Or is the LLL press just catching its breath for the next bluster. Im crossing my fingers. In other mundane news. I spent the evening with the wife, putting polyurathane on pieces of wood and I gave her and ear-full of my GRWC dogma. I dont think we have spent that much time before discussing politics and views. Wierd.

Ouch. Trolling through the blogosphere today, I found that one of my favorites got something caught in his craw. Now I don't consider my self exactly a Conservative nor a moderate. Somewhere in between with a peppering of libertarianism. When it comes down to brass tacks though, I find my self in the camp of the war-mongers. Sure, I simper and cry every time I see a horrible waste of life or when a child gets hurt. When I think of the gassing of the Kurds or the Killing Fields of Cambodia or the ravages of the Huns, it makes my stomach twist. I try not to think of what men do to each other, they are self deterministic. Its when men do things to children that I fall into a moral funk. How could Saddam think that burying 30 thousand children in pits to save on the bullets is 'OK'. It takes a pretty hard heart to tolerate, let alone instigate and commit violence against the innocent or the defenseless. It brings me to the same place though. If I had to slap a man to save my children's life, could I do it? If I had to slap 2 men to save one of my children's life, could I do it? If I had to kill a dozen men to save my son ... a very destructive path. I'm sure there are moralists and intellectuals that would somehow pull a logical theorem out to show the fallacy of my argument, but this is not a institutional question. It is a matter of love and ethics. And we know which one usually loses when we need to pick between the two.

Yeah, right. More to the point, how my parents ever managed to make Sunday seem like less than the frantic ballet of preparation for the upcoming week is a lost art to me. Instead of kicking back after Sunday services in the swivel chair with foot rest and paging leisurely through the various sundry sections of the paper, I find myself going through a mental check-list of critical tasks. Joyce knows what is coming. She decides to cut bait. She shuttles the well coiffed duo out to the car and goes shopping. Not that she will be buying much, but it is much more preferential to be pushing a stroller around a park or mall instead of suffering head trauma from errant bottles or books. As soon as she pulls out of the driveway, I start getting the wall paper ready for the upstairs hallway. This has been an ongoing project for some time now. The hounds used to sleep on the landing at the top of the stair case; they were able to survey the whole domain from there. This resulted in quite a bit of residual grime and, well, dog snot ending up on the wall. After scrubbing and painting those walls one to many times, we decided that washable wall paper for the lower three feet of the walls would do well. That graduated into doing the whole upper floor in the same motif. And you cannot just do the walls, you have to rip up the carpeting and re-finish the wonderful natural wood floor that is there. Oh, and since the carpet is coming up, you might as well do the molding too. In any event, this project has been simmering for about 2 years now. Just as I finish cutting the first few books of paper, the phone rings. It’s my parents calling, as they do every Sunday. They, of course, are interested in how the kids are doing and so forth. I give them a run down of important details and not so important trivia. Our conversations usually go on for an hour or so, but since Joyce was out and about, the conversation took a bit less time. I bid my heroes a quick good bye till they come down next weekend. I fail to mention that Joyce’s father is flying in from out of country next weekend and will probably want to visit along with Austin and Joyce’s mother. It usually happens that way. We also have a children’s birthday party that weekend, so much of the work that needs to get done will lay dormant for a while. All the better reason for me to get cracking on that wall paper! As I work, I notice that I am falling behind. All of the corners and doorways required a bit of slicing or cutting. Needless to say, I get a call from Joyce. She’s coming home and I need to get lunch ready. I’m frantic. I have several books already prepped and six more to go. I kick into overdrive and start slapping the books onto the longest uninterrupted wall just to get them out of the way. I scurry on down to the kitchen and start getting the vittles together. Just as I set the last of the preparations out, Joyce walks in. The hounds do their ‘Happy-happy, mommy is home’ dance. Not quite the same as the ‘Thank God, daddy is home and I gotta pee so bad’ dance, but still a site to see.
We get the kids into their restraining chairs and Joyce tries to ply them with the cornucopia of delectable foods laid out before them as I head back into my home improvement purgatory. Soon enough, it is time to put the slightly cranky duo down for their naps. These are the blissful hours of slumber where we can take a rest ourselves. But no, we shall labor and toil on this day of rest. As Joyce goes out to seek the holy grail of engine air filters, I head outside to do a little lawn work. In the sun, and the humidity, at the hottest hours of the day. I am quickly covered in grime and sweat. The insects see my distress and close in. They feign and try to out flank me. I knock down massive formations of attackers with great strokes of my arms. A few survivors make it through my defenses and complete their mission. Damn. Under enemy fire, I still manage to get the dead azalea dug up and the four new gooseberry bushes into their new homes. For those of you who are not in the know, gooseberry bushes are these devilish contrivances with mile long thorns made mostly of titanium and some sort of toxin to inflict maximum pain. Why do I even have these noxious plants in the first place you ask? They were free. Again, why? Well, they produce these berries that are quite tart but make a wonderful jam. As I finish up tamping the dirt about the base of the four new bushes, I go through my mental checklist. I can get the garden watered and perhaps do a little weeding to boot. Then I hear the complaints over the monitor. My progeny calls, the garden will have to wait.

Okay, Im not the kind of guy to foist my opinions or beliefs on others, and I will do my best not to try to subvert the freedoms of other no matter what destructive course of action they pursue. Destructive. Or at least mildly damaging. Once the dynamic duo of coiffure were fed and shuttled off to bed, I decided to have the wild bramble perched atop my own skull knocked down a bit. There is a barber shop near the Naval Airforce Base that I like to go to. Three well aged gentlemen of Italian descent operate this establishment in the most proficient manner. Being that it is roughly 50 feet from the back entrance to the base, they specialize in the traditional 'flat top' haircut that I prefer. Sharp, efficient, no non-sense. It a bit of a drive from our place, but well worth it. They know what they are doing and I feel that my 15$ is well spent. I never have to worry that I'll end up with something that will require a hat or a second cut. And who in their right mind would want a second cut from any hack-shop when the first is so horrific that you have the audacity to complain? So I head off in the afternoon heat, windows down and wind whipping my mane about. I listen to the cooking program on NPR, something about crab cakes is being presented for my amusement. I seem to be hitting every red light on the way, but I'm in no hurry. In my rear view mirror, I see a little black car weaving in and out of traffic. This guy is in a hurry, I can hear his engine protest over the banter on the radio. He races towards me and swerves into the left lane to pass me. I take my eyes off the rear-view mirror and look up to see a beige Cutlass pull directly in front of me and stop cold, obviously spying the black car racing down the left lane. The driver does not see me. I recognize this and immediately apply the breaks. Its much too late. The woman looks up in surprise, the sound of skidding tires alerts her to my presence. I cannot swerve to the left, Mario is busily passing me there. The sidewalk is not an option either. I only have 25 feet to stop, and I see that my mild 40mph is most likely going to bring me about 3 feet beyond the exterior of her car. I close my eyes and wait for the impact. I am not kept long. I feel the seat belt dig into my chest, my head snapping forward and then violently slamming back into the seat. I still see the horror in her eyes as she contemplates the grill of my car. She looks older, quite a bit older than me. Then nothing. I look about and see that the minivan tailing me has stopped about a foot from my rear bumper and the cutlass has been pushed about a foot down the road. I indicate to her to back up into the parking lot from where she came ... she looks at me in stunned silence, hands fluttering over her mouth. Then she slowly sinks her head down and starts to look about. What is she doing? I need to get out of traffic, the minivan impatiently tries to maneuver around me. I try to finesse my car into the same parking lot, with sluggish and clumsy shifting. Reverse, forward, reverse, forward ... I manage to squeeze between the impetuous minivan and the damaged cutlass. Oddly enough, the damage looks pretty minor. The driver's door is pushed in, and the front quarter behind the wheel is dented. I cant imagine that my plastic saturn sl1 has fared very well. This is an older car, steel and iron. American made, when American made meant something. When the woman sees what I am doing, she comes to and starts to back up. The car behind her has already pulled back into a parking spot and the driver looks to be making a call on her cell phone. As I park my car, the older woman parks next to me and rolls down her window. "I'm so sorry, it's all my fault!" I'm thinking, "Ok, she seems ok, but that is an awfully quick admission of responsibility." I ask her if she is alright, she looks to be a bit shaken, like me, but nods quickly and starts to fumble for her insurance card. "Its my first accident, Its my fault, Im so sorry!" I start to feel guilty now. Must be my Minnesota upbringing to respect elders kicking in. People start to descend on the scene. "Is every thing ok?" "Anyone hurt?" No, no, we are all fine ... Im calling 911 now. I can barely make out the voice on the other side, I just blurt out that there has been an accident on County Line Road, near Hatboro ... we are in the parking lot of Dollarland. The static and rasp of a voice makes no sense to me. Am I hurt? Some kind of stroke or brain damage? No, no blood from anywhere ... gadzooks, no wonder Philly gets a bad rap for 911. I hear some sirens in the distance and quickly hang up the phone. I quickly recant my mis-trust in 911. Three police cruisers roll into the parking lot, one un-marked traffic patrol, 1 Warminister and 1 Hatboro local patrol cars. Wow. This may take less time than I thought. I hand over my papers and start to inspect my car ... I cant find any damage. But, I just caved her door in. I find a scratch on the rubber bumper. In the end, I lost about 30 minutes of time. In my conversation with the other driver, she tells me her late husband had bought the car for her back in '82. It looks like she bought it last year, spotless. She seems flustered, she repeats her apology over and over. I tell her that it is ok. No one was hurt and the car is just 'stuff'. I can always buy new stuff. Especially since we are a three car family with two drivers, this is no big deal to me. There is virtually no damage to my car and it looks like a minor delay. She tells me that her son just passed away and her husband died last year. I don't know how to respond to that, so I quickly tell her its all going to be ok. I think she is in emotional shock. The group of police are surveying her car, trying to determine if she could drive it home. In the end, we all go our ways and I get my perfect hair cut. I contemplate this and wonder if the situation could have gone to a place that I have been before. I decide that I don't want to consider that and deem this as yet another blessing in disguise. For all I know, she could have saved my life by stopping short. She could have kept going, and that little black car could have run me into a tree. I think I'll appreciate my haircuts a little more from now on.

Today, our daughter gets her first hair cut. A top shelf, world class production. She has always been fairly particular about who is allowed to hold or touch her. Ever since she was old enough to wail, she let it be known that daddy will hold her and he shall ever more hold her this way. So sayeth the queen of shriek. If all could go as planed, this would be fairly painless in the grand scheme of things. It was not so. At about 4:30 am, an hour that I know too well, she started simpering. Not quite a cry, but enough noise that I wake from my typical light slumber. I do my best to dismount from the bed without launching Joyce off the other side. The cons of owning a waterbed, but being too cheap to get anything but a giant balloon for a mattress. I bumble into the nursery after slamming into a few walls. The same walls I greet every time I get up much too early. She is just laying there, eyes open but not quite registering that anyone is in the room. I gently lift her out and notice that she is quite warm. Nothing new, she is much like her mother and seems to put off quite a bit of heat once she goes to sleep. Once we make it back to the master bed room (gracefully avoiding the familiar walls of my inbound trip), I lay her in the bed and she drops right off. Unusual. She usually tosses, turns and kicks the living daylights out of me for a few hours. Now, I know what you are thinking. What kind of parent would put a young child in a water-bed! Of all the callous behavior! In my own defense, we let our children sleep in the bed because we don't when they are in it. I have spent many hours listening to the binary wonder whelps snooze away while I dance about the fringes of lucidity. If I feel that I cannot stay awake any longer, I try to make sure to pass off to Joyce. For the most part, we have the luck of having children made of pretty sturdy stuff. Not so sturdy though that they DEMAND that no less than 2 pillow be made available for their comfort though. I dare not tempt fate by only providing 1 pillow. Madness! A few hours later when Alexis lands on Joyce's side of the bed, the wife makes an observation. "She seems a bit too warm." I, believing that anything about -20 F is warm, concur. I mention that maybe we should take her temperature and Joyce makes her way to the nursery to fetch the array of thermometers there. I was certain that the 'other' would wake, but my wisp of a wife somehow manages to float in and out without disturbing him. I prop up Alexis so she can watch Sesame Street on the television and we proceed to give her the most ingenious invention. A pacifier that is a thermometer. Genius. While contemplating the technical aspects of this, I watch as the readout steadily climbs ... 98 .. 99.1 ... 99.7 ... 100.2 ... and up. My heart sinks as it finally stops at 103.2. It looks like we will be paying a visit to the pediatrician this morning instead of the barber shop. I ask the wife to make the call. We have to schedule for the day and they may not have a spot open till much later than their 9am opening time. I can see my skillfully crafted schedule crumble. I should know better by now. I sit there in the living room with Alexis in my lap, behaving in the most peculiar way. There is no way I would expect her to sit still for more than 30 seconds. But here she is, sitting in my lap and clutching at my chest. I want to give her something to make her more comfortable, though I know damn well if I do, she will perk right up and the doctors will pronounce her cured on sight. Minutes tick away and she slowly nods off. Joyce manages to get an appointment for 9:30. Im stunned. I do my best imitation of a lounge chair and hold Alexis till a bit after 9. I gently wake her and let her take her time to get up and go look for mommy. A short while later, we are leaving the pediatrician's office with the expected diagnoses. "Probably some virus, give her tylenol." . Well, its off to the barber shop then. And daddy will hold her and he shall ever more hold her this way.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 9:32 PM  |

It’s odd, I never imagined that I would be begging for work to do. Something that might add meaning to the hours that I sit here, watching the clock tick away the time. Time that I will never get back. Time that I might regret loosing some day. For now, I fill the emptiness by wandering through the endless parade of blogs and self-adulate web sites. So, what do I do? Set one up myself. I was fairly astounded at how easy it has become. As a life-time technocrat, I'm pretty happy about how technology has been made so accessible to the populace. The work I do now for a fairly young '.com' company is really quite mundane. If you look at the big picture, the scope of my work comes down to tossing files of orders between hosts and databases. Nothing that is going to help establish a moon colony, mitigate world hunger or bring peace to the troubled nations. It’s difficult to really get myself excited to do it like I used to so many years ago. Is this maturity? Or have I become hopelessly jaded. Sure, I’m grateful for my job and all the blessing that I have been granted in my long 36 years. But this can be so tedious! I really should complain louder about the quality of challenges I have been presented. Ive learned not to squeak too loudly though. Sure, the squeaky wheel gets the oil, but it is just as likely to get a quick rap with a hammer as well. More likely than not, I will be moving on to another contract soon enough. The year long tour of duty here is not written in stone ... I hope! I remember doing manual labor to supplement my income when I was in college. Digging ditches, laying insulation, cleaning out cisterns and other glamorous activities. I would go home filthy, odorous and exhausted. A physical exhaustion that could be explained and justified. Not this bizarre mental fatigue that seems to so noticeable drain the life from me. Perhaps, I'll work on the garden tonight after the kids have gone to bed. Or perhaps, I'll chop some of that wood piled out back. Something that might give me some sense of accomplishment. Its going to be a fairly active weekend, I’m sure I gather some strength from it.

Every morning, I try to get to work some time between 7 and 8am. Closer to 7 is better. This morning I made it in by 7:45 which I can live with, since most of the people I work with dont get here until well after 9. In any event, I like to listen to a few chanels that play classical music. One station in particular, Temple Radio, has a program that schedules 'March' music by Susa at 7:15. I try to switch over to that just before I get to the Turnpike. Ah yes, the turnpike. I have a 30 mile commute, most of which is done on the part of the turnpike designated as I276. There is a stretch of this road between where I get on and 2 exits down that are always backed up. There is no particularly good reason for this. It could be the merge traffic from the RT309 interchange, it could be the huge electronic sign that flashes worthless messages that people slow down to read, it could be that I just need to get my shiftless ass out of bed a bit earlier to avoid this mess. As it is, the twins take turns waking up at 5:30 and invoking my attention. If I dont haul them out and start tending to them, the dogs start to whine and that is impossible to sleep through. In any event, I fetch the binary center of my universe and start them off with a couple of bottles of milk, spiked with vitamins and heated for exactly 1 minute in the microwave positioned next the california king waterbed I bought back in 1992 when I worked at DEC. They patiently wait while I change them and get them ready for the coming day. Fresh diapers and clothes go on while Pooh and friends entertain their forming minds. Then off to let the pups out to destroy my lawn with their caustic fluids. Fill the bowls with food that costs more than I ever expected and back upstairs to fetch the kids. By this time, Joyce has wandered into the bathroom to brush her teeth and tend to the empty sockets in her mouth where her wisdom teeth used to be. I grab a quick shower and prep for the comming day. And my time with the radio. Today didnt start on time because the kids slept in, but we managed. Since I got started later, I missed my Susa fix and caught the weather and news instead. The weatherperson indicated that it was going to be in the low 90s on Saturday with a chance of showers or thunder storms. Sunday was supposed to be in the low to mid 90's with increased chance of thunder storms. I start to feel better about mowing my lawn on Thursday but I am very apprehensive about the predictions of the Amazonian atmosphere predicted for the weekend. The time when I will be home all day, outside of this refrigerated environment that I work in. The anxiety of having to endure summer so soon makes my heart sink. The news comes on and immediatly starts bleating about the 'torture' pictures from Iraq. I turn off the radio and start to contemplate how to salvage the remainder of my day. Low 90's ... it might be time to turn on the AC.

UPDATE
I've just finished visiting Lileks Backfence and I think I would MOVE to Minnesota if his first condition were true. The wife, however, would most likely commit me.

So I'm just laying there on the bedroom floor. The family dogs laying on either side of me, snoring away. My eyes are heavy with sleep. I am profoundly exhausted, and all I managed to do is mow the lawn and put the clippings in the garden. That and go through the nightly routine of entertaining the twins. I could blame the weather, but it has actually cooled down a bit here in Philly. I could blame my MS, but it has not been giving me much trouble of late. Perhaps it's the general lack of sleep? Or maybe I am just getting older. The first 2 days of the week, the twins woke up in the middle of then night and that kind of set a bad trend in motion. We ended up putting the portable air-conditioner in their room to help them sleep better. Nothing like hoisting squirming toddlers, slick with sweat from their cribs and trying to sooth them back to a blissful slumber. Although the wife is immune to the muggy heat of summer, my Minnesota blood tends to prefer a much cooler environment. I miss my AC, but the kids come first. If they are sleeping, then I might get 40 winks. Someday, I'll be sitting in my over-stuffed lounge chair, telling my grand-kids about how easy their parents had it. Why when I was a kid ... up-hill, both ways, just to get to bed.

"Hmm ... where is my building pass. Where is my wallet? Aw cripes..."
Any number of thought go through my empty head every morning as I commit my zombie like being to its usual routine, these were not the norm. With my sack of edibles in one hand, I frantically grope through my pocket in search of my wallet. My whole existence is detailed in my wallet. SS card, voter registration, map of the neighborhood, Credit cards, drivers license ... its all there. I desperately call my wife who was dutifully dropping our children off at day care for their daily indoctrination. She gracefully takes charge of the situation and runs off to the house to search for my mis-placed life capsule. After no less than 5 desperate calls to her (hearing the howls of the hounds in the background) over a period of an hour, I decide that all is lost and I should go get my coffee fix before my head explodes from withdrawal. I lean forward and reflexively place my hand on my ever worsening lower back when I feel something amiss. Why, my left pants pocket seems all wrong ... wait, its my wallet! In the wrong pocket! Yes! ... Oh no. I immediately call My lovely wife, ready to eat any abuse she launches my way for sending her on a fools quest. She is understandably upset about it and lets me know that she is happy that I found my wallet, but she needs to get to work now. I think I owe her some flowers.