This is the first post of the rest of my miserable life......

The wife and I slept thru the entrance of the New Year. Well, she did at least, she was bushed from having had to work yesterday. The insane cacophony of fireworks, sounding like downtown Bagdad, made me get back up again till the din died down. Boy, it's rough when you haven't slept since last year........
Today we are doing fifteen things at once. I'm trying my hand at burning a nice wiccan pattern into the spell book I made the wife. If I slip, I hope there aren't dire magikal consequences. While listening to "This American Life" and "A Prairie Home Companion", we vacuum, clean, dust, and try and recover from the mess the dog, the wife and her crafts, and visiting family left in their wake. I had to drag the recovered hospital mattress back into the other bedroom, the mattress upon whom countless people drew their last breath, but I've neglected to mention that fact to whoever gets to sleep on it. Hey, it's a damn sight more comfortable than the floor, so get over it! hehe

Ok, lessee, a number of crickets have been dumped into Sandy's tank, where they will be stalked in cat fashion and provide the leopard Gecko his sustenance, so that's taken care of. Started to water the shade garden, so of course now the clouds are moving in, hopefully prepared to dump a better grade of H2O on Pendragon Hold. The wife has packed away all the yule decorations, and of course has to replace it with other stuff. I gotta go burn some more....be back later.....

Time to change burner tips, which includes a cool down period. The washer on spin cycle is shaking the whole house. Who says our friends on the West Coast have to have all the fun? There is a smelly swamp building in the back yard due to the septic tank overflow problem. Good Bob, I hope I can glean that couple of hundred out of next paycheck to get that damn thing pumped. For some reason I am picturing Tim-Elvis's wife telling him, "But honey, pink is the new guy color these days!" Let's see if he ends up wearing that jumpsuit she's making him since she snuck a glance at my predictions post.

I've been to Walmart at least three times now with my new Ipod shuffle hanging around my neck, listening to tunes as I pick up the things you can only find at Walmart now unless you want to drive all the way to Target and pay a couple of cents more for everything. It strikes me that I'm the only one wearing any kind of portable music player period. Hmmmm. I wish I was closer to Target. I love my Ipod. I love my daughter who gave it to me. I love the logitech speakers I got with the other twin's gift card. Damn speakers are LOUD for their size. I love her too.

That tool should be cool enough to switch out the tips now....be back.......

Don't you guys buy this propaganda that it's the male that makes the mess. I just vacuumed this floor and there's little stuff appearing everywhere! And I didn't put them there! Grrrrrrrr!

My son-in-law, Steven, was reading this cool book entitled "Wiccan for Males". The thrust of the book is to remind women and men practitioners alike that Wicca is not an empowered lesbian girl's club with men appearing only as cameos. Nature is a balance of Masculine and Feminine, Ying and Yang, LIght and Dark, and one is not much good without the other. Yes, it appears that Wicca does attract females in greater numbers, but I can easily understand why, since most other religions tend to place women in a subservient, second class position.And men, well, being the tough, macho bastards that we tend to be, probably shy away from getting involved in something perceived to be weird, tree-hugging, and touchy feely. Hey, be the bad asses all you want, guys, but Wicca pays homage to the power and strength that our masculine energies contribute to the world, so you need not be afraid of it. Anyway, what really interested me was a brief history of Wicca and Paganism that the author explored in the beginning of the book. Did you know that the term "hics", which we intermingle with "rednecks" and other derogatory terms for people lacking any sophistication whatsoever, was derived from an early term, "icans", which was used to refer to simple country folk with less than open minds? Well, way way back in the day, when just about everybody was a pagan, celebrating the change of the seasons, planting, harvest, all those things which bonded them with nature, and all their associated Gods and Goddesses, most of these folk were working to hard and living to hard to be all that concerned with strange, idiotic ideas like monotheism, which the jews had embraced, but weren't out in force burning people who didn't buy into it. Then came Christianity, and all bets were off. The Christians initially concentrated their conversion efforts in the cities and larger towns, where they had a more concentrated audience and a higher level of education, and we all know that people who think they are smarter tend to embrace things that truly smart people would laugh at. Country folk weren't all that smart in THOSE ways, and weren't the least bit bothered by it, so they were not as susceptible to prostelizing by the Christians. Matter of fact, they were SO resistant to it that when the Christians had finally established their power base in the cities, the turned their attentions on these "icans" who needed to be saved despite themselves, and did it with such savagery it could have made a savior cry. Those are remembered as "the burning times". So remember, my friends, when you hear the word "pagan", try not to have that knee-jerk thought that it sounds like someone who is barbarous, bloodthirsty, or some other negative connotation. It wasn't the pagans who behaved like barbarians. And being a "hic" means that maybe one is smart in ways that matter.







This woodburning isn't as easy as it looks. I'm just burning over a pattern laid down with carbon paper, and it's painstaking and quite apparent that I am in serious need of practice. I'm not a natural talent, it seems.


All my subby friends were sort of taken aback that I did not make predictions personally tailored to them. Well, girls, think about it. Did you really WANT me to? Wink, wink.

The house is starting to look a whole lot better. The chicken breast is marinating in sweet hickory smoke barbecue sauce for the grill......the INDOOR grill, that is, but it's still pretty damn good. Yes, my wife cooks, but somehow she always manages to do it with my able assistance. Perhaps she gets wet watching me impale the breast with the fork for the marinade to soak into, such a manly, animal act. One way or another, she gets me away from this post every five minutes or so to do this or that. I love it when my wife is off the same day as me, I really, really do.

So, there you have it, my hodgepodge New Years Day post, circa 2006. I still don't have my personal helicopter parked in the driveway, or a jet pack, or a Dick Tracy Wristwatch, or a household robotic butler, The future never got here. Mars is still out there thumbing it's nose at us, and I don't think we're really going to get a man there, and besides, we'd simply find a way to ruin it if we did. Just imagine beer cans on the red planet.







I hope all you guys, subbies included, had a really great New Years. To me, it was just another day in the life of THE Michael, and that's alright by me.