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The top of my head is buzzing from the carefully administered sole double-shot of tequila. I recently returned from a run to Albertson's and Blockbuster after first spending 3 ½ hours working on the yard. Usually, I feel better after I accomplish something, like mowing the massive yard, but today I did not. It's probably because I wasn't able to complete the work to the usual level of perfection I adhere to. Due to brief periods of faintness, I was forced cease my sweaty labors prior to their completion. Although it is a mere 104F degrees in the shade, the temperature in the direct sunlight was 25 to 30 degrees higher. And as much as I wouldn't mind dropping face first on the newly cut lawn, mowed down from a stroke, I know that today's medical industry is geared to drain every single penny out of each patient's checking account, savings account, piggy bank and mattress before letting them straight-line, so that a stroke would only compound my problems. I was emailing some friends telling them I was hoping to accidentally cut off my medulla oblongata while pruning the fig tree, but that would be a highly unlikely incident. My soul is tired. I just want to stop.  It's like I know I should be doing something, anything, to secure my future, while at the same time I'm weaving a web tightly around any hopes or dreams or wants. All I want is my wife back. I just want to sit and watch our 160 channel satellite tv with her. Just to have her next to me again. But, that doesn't seem likely to happen in the near future. She phoned today. At work again on her day off. And she'll probably be at work tomorrow on her other day off. It just struck me that she's traded the drudgery of being Dr. Malamud's wife for being married to her job. And the so very, very sad part is, she gets more attention from her job than she ever got from me. Shit. And before long, some millionaire, or billionaire, or fireman, impressed by her class, sophistication and intelligence will sweep her off her feet and I will only be occasionally mentioned as her "ex-husband". Shit. On the phone today she told me she wouldn't be able to make the signing for the sale of the house or help me pack up her stuff. That's all right. It'd probably be too much, way too much, to watch her place her stuff in her carton's to be sent to her new house. Her stuff that I thought would never be separated from my stuff.
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Back at Starbuck's tonight. But inside. Outside it's in the 80s but too humid to be comfortable. Went to Office Max to buy a pad to write these notes on. Drove by an empty gas station, Danny's Mega Pumper. Emptied by the empty gasoline pipeline from Tucson to Phoenix. I noticed all the restaurants were pretty much full though. It's odd so many people seem to have so much money. I checked my cellphone before I left for the office supply store. Mrs. Malamud's phone number looked back at me, flashing "Missed Call", "Missed Call". I missed it because I had been taking my well-earned depression-fighting afternoon nap. That and, out of courtesy forgotten by many, I had my cell phone's ringer set to "silent." I watch curiously as the two attractive 30ish lady's charge into my coffeetarium laughing and giggling - then I figure they must be behaving in that manner because of the expensive liquids they carefully sipped at the nearby pickup bar that is cleverly disguised as a high-end Mexican food eatery. They must be single ladies. Or hookers. But they aren't dressed like hookers. Married ladies rarely display such animation in public. Married ladies are rarely that happy. Is marriage only to make the male happy? I see that they've finally upped the closing time at my coffee cantina to 9:30PM. I don't know how many evenings I've sat at 9:01 PM - the former closing time - only to witness a steady street of frappuccino® addicts bang their heads against the locked glass portal.  Some of these really fat people, you've got to wonder if they have any mirrors around their homes. My gawd, why would they dress in a way that draws even more attention to their uncontrollable gluttony? Having dropped fifty five pounds this year I have earned the right to pick on the fatties. I did not return M.M.'s missed call. She's so busy at work it's better that she call me on her schedule. The other day, thinking she was on the job, I phoned her and woke her up. With her consciously hardened-heart tenderized by the sprinkling of dreams, she sounded as sweet as ever. And lonely. After I rang off, my own heart went out to her. I wished I could end her loneliness. Or did I forget? She was so very, very lonely when I was around her every single day. She was lonely as she lay next to me in the massive Malamud marriage mattress. Each of us afraid of the other. Each hoping that ignoring the problem would solve it. She was lonely on her many out of state or out of country business trips. Absolutely alone and waiting for a phone call from me, her husband. A phone call she rarely got. Before I took my nap this afternoon, tears streamed down my face as I read a concerned and lovingly conceived email from a female friend. She had written that I needed to financially protect myself. I needed to accept facts and leave the limbo I've been living in for way too long. I, in turn, emailed the Missus that within eighteen months, I may be leaving for Chicago, New York, Burbank or Kabul. Why Kabul? To hunt down Osama bin Laden and collect the $25 million reward, of course. (As I edit this two days after I penned it, my heart begins its familiar throb, throb, throb against my breastbone. Sometimes I miss her so much.)
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Too crowded here tonight. I am sitting so close to other Starbuckian's that I feel as if they can read what I'm printing. For all I know, I could be surrounded by a handful of the thousand or so readers who visit my pages each day. That's the awe-inspiring thing about the Internet. Your reader's could literally be anywhere on the planet. I think back to the E-mail I received that had originated from a friendly actor in a hostile country situated in the Middle East. And in these days of terrorism, I am also assured that of few of the individuals perusing my pages will be located in buildings with an alphabet soup of letters on the outside: FBI, CIA, NSA.  However, other than Dr.Malamud appearing to be of Arabic descent, my pages should be safe from serious scrutiny by my government's secret soldiers. Of course just listing their initials will get my web page into their search engines. An old, white, male French Bulldog, sporting huge bat-like ears with a belly so large, at first I thought he was pregnant, is outside and getting all the attention he can handle. He's such a sweetheart as he makes his languid stroll from the front door to table to table. I regret not bringing my camera. Both inside and outside high school students litter the TCBY and Starbucks arenas. Group studying. All girls. No boys. Not that I'm complaining. Some of these North Scottsdale Teenager's are just gorgeous with dynamite bodies composed of both a sexy muscle firmness and skin softness that will sadly, not survive into their later years. The couple with the French Bulldog both walk in with cellphones to their ears. Incredible. I watch as people stroll by . . . also with cellphones to their heads. I remember when I had one of the very first analog Motorola phones hard-wired into my gray-market European 745i BMW. It cost 3,500 1983 dollars, or over 7,000 of our 21st Century greenbacks. I look up and see the same track light bulb burnt out that was burnt out the last time I was here. I spot a man who reminds me of my company's former sales manager, Ernie. Ernie is, as they say, "Deader than Elvis." After he had sued us for 500,000 plus dollars, Missus Malamud never could figure out how I could forgive him. $500,000 that we had already given him once. I knew his lawsuit was one of desperation and without merit, even though it cost us $30,000 in lawyers fees. I figured that he had to live with himself. We did nothing wrong. For once, I was in the the position of holding the high moral ground. I'm fairly consistent about forgiveness and forgiving. I've even forgiven my former business partner, who by his neglect (fueled by my own naiveté) for running the corporation, that afforded me the means to be able to spend $3,500 on a phone, into the ground. All my Christian acquaintances say Missus Malamud should forgive me. More than once, she's already told me, "There is nothing to forgive, Doc." Oddly, it's a good sign that she can't address the issue of forgiveness. That indicates that the word has some significance in her life. And that maybe the word "forgiveness" also entails reconciliation? Of course, my challenge lies not in her ability to forgive, but in my own capacity for change after half a century of living.
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I pried open the Mar's shaped maroon tin that the Total Recall DVD lived in. Slipping it off its gray foam rubber resting place I carefully fed it to my DVD player. After marvelling at the beauty of the soon-to-be-single Sharon Stone and her accompanying lack of talent, and again being reminded how much Arnold's muscled torso resembled my own, and his even bigger . . . lack of talent, I'd had enough. Fueled by twin tall shots of tequila, in need of ocular agitation that could only be satisfied by yet unseen films, I set out for Blockbuster. On their perimeter shelves I found a recent and mindless 'action' flic.  Over in the drama aisle, usually crowded by walkers, electric carts, and slow moving seniors, I chose the movie consistently rated as the best ever. "Citizen Kane." At home again, I put down the blue and white Blockbuster DVD cases and decided to fry up four frozen chicken thighs. Kroger's/Fry's thighs complete with bones and feather-free skin, thank you. Two, I carefully coated with the tasty and all purpose Beau Monde Spice Islands® seasoning and two with McCormick's Mesquite chicken powder. As I negotiated my precisely timed, nine minute thirty second turns of the fowl meat, I chatted with my English Bulldog over the way living in Phoenix was before refrigeration. Unlike most Arizona-born canines, he is bilingual, speaking both the ancient Barkian dialect and American-English. In the 1950s, prior to average homes being cooled by, the contrary sounding, heat-pumps, the only locales that featured refrigerated air conditioning were the always-crowded movie theaters (remember, this was before the invention of VHS, DVDs or cable-tv) the new Phoenix Public Library and the latest models of the City buses. Buses that middle class Phoenician's of all races unflinchingly and unashamedly rode into downtown Phoenix, which was then centered on the corner of Central and Washington Avenues. After George Foreman finished charring my chicken parts, I ate two legs and zip-locked a pair for work the next day. Then I stumbled off to bed still early in the evening - leaving the DVDs where I had lain them thirty minutes earlier.
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I lay down the folded, two week old employment-wanted section of the newspaper on the large, rectangular, oaken table that is designed to draw in students who wish to spread out and study. A limping lady, weighted down by her huge breasts, picks up the folded and yellowed paper and wanders outside to fill those same magnificent mammaries with malignant cigarette smoke. So sad. Today is my birthday and I wonder if anyone feels as alone as I do. Studying the faces passing by, I am certain other individuals are as sad as I am. Sadder. Even though both my son's currently live with me, minutes ago they both took off. The older one to stay with his latest girlfriend, the younger to talk his wealthy classmate out of the notion of going bowling and into something more productive. For my birthday dinner, my teen boy did insist on going out to IHOP, rather than Chili's. "I want real food", he explained. Of course, my debit card ate the bill. One day he will understand the immense joy the father of a young man feels, simply listening, anxiously listening, to his own son talk as he spills his dreams onto the Formica table top, between beverages of sweating iced tea and Coca-Cola. With the house sold, I have more than enough chores to do and I'm stymied. I worked at my place of employment until 7AM this morning. During the early evening I downloaded an e-mail from my daughter who lives with her mother and works the swing-shift. I slept until 1PM this Sunday. I listened, immovable while a faraway phone rang in my dreams. Moments later, my teen boy awakens me while simultaneously holding out the portable phone with an abrupt: "Mom!"  The distant M.M. had phoned to wish me a "Happy Birthday." And to let me know that she was venturing out on her day off to look at possible new homes. For her. Alone. She went on to tell me our (1977) wedding album was laying, still unpacked from our 1979 move, in the storage room and not to leave it behind in my move. An odd request I thought, for the party leaning towards a divorce. She then warned me that I needed to get packing. Heeding her warning, I'm sitting here at Starbucks once again. Wishing my life were different. Wishing I was on the couch with my lovely wife watching the Diamondback's getting skunked one more time. Just learned the other day that lack of motivation is a clear indication of depression. Me depressed? But depression cannot be legitimately used as an excuse for inaction. Can it? All the little teen-sweeties are sitting outside under the misters this afternoon. And with their midriffs purposely on display coupled with their low-rise jeans, one new word comes to Dr. Malamud's mind: "Cameltoe." I watch as couples wander by. I smile as I witness a young mother smother her one year old with kisses as she waits for her husband to click open the locked doors of their New York-white late model European automobile. I see an off duty doctor stride into Starbucks still wearing his blue-green hospital scrubs. I guess I'll go home to watch the DVDs I rented. Alone.
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I'm inside. I hear the mother explaining to the two other women at the her table. I'm thinking, "I can clearly hear every word she is saying. Doesn't she care?" And then I answer myself, "That's because she wants me to. She desires that I, a total stranger, listens as she vents her spleen." But, why should I find that at all unusual? I just finished mowing the massive Malamud yard during which time I sang Christmas carol's. I also ran through several choruses of West Side Story songs. In addition, I screamed and yelled about my anonymous attacker's. Those chickenshit neighbor's who first slipped an unpostmarked (a felony) "Dear neighbor" letter into my mailbox. Then complained about my front wall to the City of Phoenix. Next, about my car parked in the street. Lastly they reported my green pool to the city inspectors. How they found out about this, without going into my backyard, the one behind the six foot tall block wall, I can't imagine. I'm so tired from working on the yard for three hours. But I had to do it today with the high temperature only being 93F degrees. Almost Fall weather for Scottsdale. But when the temperature drops during our monsoon season, the humidity rises. It was a completely sweaty affair. With only my grass clippings, I over-filled the cracked and rickety eighty gallon city garbage can. Seven days early, I wheeled the faded olive green obese container out to the curb.  I'm sure I will be reported once again to the city. While I was advancing my gasoline powered White-trash brand lawnmower through the too high grass, I pondered how unfair it was that Missus Malamud lolled away enjoying carefree apartment life, while I mowed and cleaned and picked up the house. And then I thought of how many times she had mowed. How many times she had cleaned in the decades prior. By God, I even have a photograph of her mowing the yard when she was six months pregnant. Memories like that quickly extinguished the roaring candles on my pity-party cake. At Starbucks I listen as the too loud lady, obviously on a date, talks non-stop to her male companion who is smiling and paying rapt attention. I hear her mention, "When I went around the world . . . " and I decide I don't like her. And I think of dating if M.M. goes through with her thoughts of divorcing the morose Dr. Malamud. No thanks. Dating. Me? How horrible would that be? 50 plus years old, going on a date? No, I think I'll just get totally involved in my employment or acting or writing. As a matter of fact my girlfriend Renee suggested I begin that push today. I'm at the grocery store and I want something that will cook up within fifteen minutes. My keen eyesight quickly discovers three New York cut steaks, all on sale of course. Once home, I cook them up in thirteen minutes. One for me tonight. One for lunch at work tomorrow. And one for my teenage boy. He charges out of his cave just as I walk the perfectly grilled meat into the kitchen. I call it his "cave" because he's got the window blocked off so it's dark dark enough for a pet bat if he wished. He's also got the refrigeration so cold that even with our 110F degree days, uneaten morsals of food take weeks to rot and smell. Which allows him plenty of time to clean up. He takes the plate with the one pound steak on it, buries it in A-1 Sauce, and trots off to the computer room to work on his BLOG. I feel fulfilled.
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I'm turning into a lush. Again. As I type this on my home computer, I'm one and one-half tall shots of tequila down. I've got urgent tasks that must be completed before September 8th and I'm sitting around drinking iced tea and tequila. Iced tea and tequila from separate glasses of course. I'm not that far gone. Yet. I was this very afternoon, listening to Dr. Dean Edell on the radio, while the 107F degree summer was trying to defeat the air conditioning of my mighty Peugeot while I sadly drove home from my fourteenth workday without a day off. Soon to be 21 days. He was chatting about how cheap a drug alcohol is. Oh yes, alcohol pretty much does the same thing as Prozac, Paxil or lithium, only at one-twentieth the cost. All the drugs, whether from bottle or beaker only serve to numb the pain of life for a moment. A moments respite in which you are to learn how to cope with the tragedies of life. The problem is, the only way you learn how to cope is without any drugs, either legal, prescribed or illegal coursing through your veins. The legal problem is, that if you get pulled over with Paxil, Prozac, or lithium on your breath, you won't be hauled off to jail.  You will instead, "be understood." Although, in reality, since their function is to distance that same reality from the patient, to chemically erect a gossamer barrier between your feelings and the 'Real World', both prescription drugs and alcohol, without a doubt, serve the same function. You may be just as zonked on those drug company enriching pharmeceuticals as you would be on say . . . one and one-half tall shots of tequila. Har. In one area, at least, I have developed intense will power. Because there is nothing more than I want to do right now, right this minute, than ring the lovely, relocated Missus Malamud and linger with her on the phone line for a few minutes. But, I refrain. And, unlike what you may be thinking, it is not due to my own pride, of which I have about the same measure as Judas Iscariot did after accepting his thirty pieces of silver. It is because my counselor told me it would do no good if I phoned my missing Missus. Does it demonstrate to you that I read my Bible too much if I can spell 'Iscariot' correctly? Of course, if I really believed the Bible, maybe I wouldn't be eyeing the unbroken screw-top seal crowning the 1.75 liter bottle of golden tequila brushing up against the kitchen microwave oven, eh? But, then again, we all slip from time to time. At least, unlike King David and Saint Paul, I have never had and have no intention of killing another person during my too long life. Isn't that strange? When you think your life has turned to shit, like I believe mine deservedly has, it's "too long." However, when "life is good" it's "too short." We're never happy, are we? Such is the human condition.
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Just finished applying for an apartment. First time in more than thirty years I'll have lived in an apartment. Cell phones have come so far since the time I paid $3,500 for my first one back in the early 1980s. This afternoon, while filling out endless forms, I heard one programmed to say, "The phone is ringing - the phone is ringing" - each time with increasing urgency. I'm at Border's. Probably here for the greater pedestrian traffic. I see a fit looking, forty-ish man walk in from the outside patio, with a black gripped automatic pistol snug in the holster hanging from his belt. I see a silver badge nearby and a white ID card. I assume he's a public peace officer of some sort. A few hours earlier, chatting with the apartment counselor, even though I kept her laughing, I was feeling the first fear I had ever experienced about not having a place to live. I toured the exact apartment I'd be moving into. Other than the kitchen cabinets displaying quality not witnessed outside of a trailer park, it seemed fairly new. And clean. The floor is shod with fresh and furry beige carpeting. Even though my talking bathroom scale refuses to utter the magic "You have lost X pounds" I know I'm continuing to lose weight. My once fairly snug Wrangler's are now sagging off my waist - barely held up by a belt searching for new notches. A lady who sees me every six weeks or so, remarked to me that I looked much better, because I had gained weight. I told her that, "No", I had not gained any pounds, but I had managed to pull myself just a little bit out of the massive fly-trap sticky pit of depression and despair I had been struggling in for seemingly endless months. An hour and twenty minutes at Border's has flown by faster than a 90 second television commercial. Gawd, I love book stores. Maybe that's because when I was growing up in Phoenix, the only location featuring refrigeration was the main public library on Central Avenue and McDowell Road. My brother's and I spent hours and hours there. A respite from our unbearable home life. So many books to read. I wish I could read as fast as my startlingly intelligent daughter. She read the latest telephone-book-thick Harry Potter in one evening. I picked up "Zen in the Art of Writing" by Ray Bradbury. A carton of very colorful "Sea Breeze" note cards to be used as 'Thank You' notes. A spiral diary type thing titled, "Have a Hissy Fit", for my daughter. And a huge, also spiral bound, drawing pad stuffed with paper the color of paper grocery bags, for my teen artist son. The last three items were at an irresistible 50% discount. I thought about my nearly empty checking account and left behind the cards and the Ray Bradbury book.
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Packing up the home tonight. Throwing away stuff. Throwing away stuff. Throwing away. It is true if you keep busy the heartache also keeps away. I've always thought that was one reason the Missus doesn't demonstrate near the angst Dr. Malamud does. is because she is literally too busy while at work to even have the luxury of time enough to feel sad. While, in contrast, at my own place of employment, I spend hours and hours pondering my fading marriage. Hours packed with multiple memories of my own insensitivity and unbelievable selfishness and sloth. But I am 100% finished with any attempts of going back in time to try to change things. Perhaps, after seven months of anguish, I've come to accept that I may soon be divorced. Alone. Truly alone, on an adult to adult level, in almost a quarter of a century. Thank God I enjoy reading, because I sure as hell am not venturing out in a futile attempt to find a replacement for my soulmate. I trucked my huge bottle of tequila to work this morning. I had to make sure it wasn't waiting in the kitchen for me after yet one more stultifying day on the horrible job. Especially this day, after a verbal out-and-out with "The Smoking, Shaking, Alcoholic Wrinkle on Prozac" where she used the odd metaphor of her turning into a fanged poisonous pit viper and biting me on the neck. It's a good thing she has never demonstrated an interest in firearms for she is clearly psychotic. But, she does provide a great 'character study' for my nascent acting career. Speaking of possible alcoholics, while packing up the massive Malamud master bedroom closet, I found an old airline-bottle-sized Absolut® Vodka. So, rather than throw it away (like a fool) every 25 minutes or so, I'd take a good straight swing of the Swedish Elixir. Speaking of straight, I managed to work straight from 5:30PM until 8:30PM this evening wrappin' and packin'. Tomorrow, since I will be enjoying my first Saturday off since July of 2001 (stay in school my younger reader's or you too could end up in a suck-ass job like mine) I can pack and stack until I drop. Tonight I'm at Starbucks once again, facing an entire new crew of barista's. When I arrived here, there were two male customer's. Now there are seventeen customers, the majority of which are the heart-breaking fairer sex. I'm going to have to start parking the Mighty Peugeot out of sight, around back. Damn - there are so many women who are so fat. And many of them, as I study their faces, I can tell at one point they were (and still could be) quite pretty. For most, that point was thirty or forty or fifty pounds ago. There is a great movie starring Jack Lemmon and Julie Andrew's titled, "That's Life". It is a wonderful story for those of us married and now enjoying our adult children. I'm so disappointed that it hasn't been reformatted onto DVD. The way a woman's body curves out from her waist to her hips is so attractive. So captivating. It does that because a female's hip bone is proportionally larger than a man's because of the birth canal her body must make room for. But the result is so beautiful. So pleasing. And finally, I am mature enough so that I can enjoy the delightful female form without other parts of me standing at attention. Well, sometimes. My new apartment, less than one third the size or our former home, is ready and waiting to be stuffed full by myself and my teenaged son and my three man moving crew. I will be so glad at being able to get home from work, clean the entire place once a week in one and one-half hours and then just relax. Sit in a chair, read John Hersey's 1964 prophetic novel, "White Lotus", while sipping on a slender tube of golden nector and listening to KJAZ or the NPR Classical FM station. No more nine or ten rooms, three bathrooms and a front and rear porch to keep clean. (As if it ever did, but their near filthy condition troubled me every day. That counts for something, doesn't it?) No more 40,000 gallon pool to skim four pounds of pine needles out a week. And no more performing the Heimlic Maneuver on a choking Kreepy Krawly automatic pool cleaning device three times a week. No more checking and correcting the chemical imbalances by tossing in more chlorine or more acid. No more backwashing and then rebuilding a pool filter slightly less intricate than the first atomic bomb. No more lawn to mow with my Whitetrash brand mower or shrubs to trim with my super-sharp Corona brand hedge clippers. And, sadly, no more Missus Malamud either.
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Another day of picking and choosing. Just hell. Trying to stay ahead of my three professional packers: Herb, who resembles Burl Ives, Santana and Curious George (because he looks remarkably like the monkey Curious George).
Although, I don't think the star of the children's book series had a huge swastika tattoo on his burly forearm. They had threatened to show up at 6:00AM this humid Sunday morning - so I was awake 5:45AM emptying my shrunken bladder through my unused drain pipe. I couldn't sleep anyway. Got a lot done - damn there is so very much to a move. Even a move of just 2.8 miles. I can not imagine the trauma involved moving the contents of a five bedroom house thousands of miles. It's not the emotions involved, it's not the situation (although I remarkably found and then quickly paged through the 4X6 album containing photos of our 1977 Wickenburg wedding) it is just the shear volume and trying to keep Herb, Santana and C.G. busy. My hands got absolutely filthy. During one cigarette break I took with the boys (no, I don't smoke tobacco) I learned a little of their sad histories. It's odd, maybe because I've relied so heavily on our Creator in the last months and am becoming more compassionate like Him, but I can now sense how special most people are. It is the same kind of right-brain feeling I get when I lay one of my fine silk ties on a dress shirt. If it matches, a lightness, an easiness, an "ahhhh", shoots through my spirit. If the tie clashes with the blouse, I get a bad feeling, a heaviness, a "no, no, no" response. It turns out that Herb is Santana's step-father. Understand that Santana is the size of a college middle linebacker, prone to responding with a "Yes, sir. We can do that. Whatever you want." And he is covered, from the back of his shaved head to his calves with tattoos. And not friendly ones either. Included is the spider-web-on-the-elbow flesh drawing that is a favorite of violent felons. He has blackouts when he goes drinking, which probably explains why he is in the moving business. Curious George is also a big drinker, admitting to spending $40 the other evening at a Cave Creek Road biker-bar establishment. But Curious George is blessed with not suffering from hangovers. Curious George is also adorned with the felonious spider web tattoo. Herb, by far, the oldest of the three at maybe fifty, is also the quietest and I learned nothing from him. It's so sad the two younger ones are wasting away their lives. I can tell they have special abilities other than man-handling sixty pound boxes full of hard back books. Missus Malamud phoned in the middle of a particularly hectic segment of packing to speak to our teen son. I was in no mood to chat as I felt, with more than a little bit of anger, that she should be here helping me with this godawful task. The physical act of sorting, packing and moving rubs squarely across the grain of an extremely analytical person like Dr. Malamud. It could be compared to the frustration a very expressive individual might suffer after being placed in a 'Home for the Deaf'. However, when it came to unplugging and labeling the connections between our tuner, DVD player, five disc Yamaha CD player, DISH satellite system, VCR, Bang and Olufsen turntable, monitor, the five speakers, the sixty pound subwoofer, eight electrical power cables and the two dozen patch cords, I was right at home. You see - it's that kind of mindset - that can wrestle against a twenty-four-armed electronic octopus and win, that just cannot understand why my marriage can't likewise be unplugged, re-labeled and put back whole again. Good as new.
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