It's been that kind of day.
     But then what other kind of day could it have possibly been when it started off with my cereal giving me trouble? 
     OK, so it was mainly my fault and not the cereal's.  That's cold comfort when the results could have been equally disastrous.
     I'd gotten out my bowl as usual.  I'd poured in some Crispix.  (No, Kellogg's is not paying me to say this.)  That should have been the end of it, but I couldn't leave well enough alone.  I had to live on the edge.  I had to give in to my wild side and actually pour a few Golden Grahams on top.  (No, General Mills is not paying me to say this, either.) 
     And then toss on a few slices of banana.
     And then go all the way and add some milk.  Sure, it was 2% reduced fat milk, but that's still milk, ok?  Cow juice, pure and simple.  Let's not sugar coat things here other than the Golden Grahams.
     The fact to remain focused on - to stare at unblinkingly - is that I actually carried my bowl with this mixture in it over to the table - the kitchen table - and then proceeded to eat the contents.
     Oh, one more thing.  It suddenly occurred to me while I was eating: What if I'm the only one in world history to ever have combined these items in these proportions in such a bowl at such a time and place?  What if the result is adhesive?  What if it's poisonous??  Explosive???  What if it's thermonuclearly explosive?!?!  Or matter/anti-matter explosive?!?!?!
    What if taking another bite were to end the universe and everything in it????
     "If that happened," my Conscience said to me in its most serious Hollywood Bible epic tone of voice, "you'd simply never be able to live with yourself!"
     And so I had to put my spoon down and skip the rest of my breakfast.
     For the good of all mankind.
     Out of respect for all the other species everywhere and all those to come.
     Simply because it was the right thing to do.
     It still left me very grumpy.
     Skipping breakfast always does, however noble my reasons for doing so may be.
     I think it's a blood sugar level thing.
     And so I wasted another entire morning, shaking a clenched fist at the sky and demanding to know, "WHY DOES GLORY ALWAYS HAVE TO COME AT SUCH A HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE PRICE?!"

     At this point I could point out that I never mixed cereals before I met my wife.  Sure, I'd come up with the idea to mix 7-Up and Hawaiian Punch all by myself, but I never thought about taking food intermingling to the next level until she showed me how it was done in her more degenerate area of Ohio.  Pointing that out now, though, would seem like a lowly case of blame shifting, and I'm just above that sort of thing - even when I'm grumpy.
    That's why instead of pointing it out, I'm merely noting the fact briefly, then moving on.
     If you want to dwell on all the implications, well, that's your business.

     Of course I'd probably have been grumpy even if I'd had all my breakfast. 
     First, because I only had about two Crispix and one Golden Graham thingees to go when I had my epiphany and stopped eating. 
     And second because of the problems with Angelfire yesterday.
     As you may have noticed, Angelfire was down for most of Thursday.  OK, fine - I can sort of accept that after I've had a few beers, downed a few Valium, and talked to the nice people on my county's crisis hotline for a few hours. 
     The scary thing is that  the Dow Jones average soared 38.31 points while it was down! 
     And the tech-heavy Nasdaq soared 21.24 points!
    Who would ever have suspected that making this journal utterly inaccessible would have such a profoundly positive effect on the U.S. economy!!
     I spent much of the afternoon steeling my nerves in preparation for euthanizing it for the good of us all.  For car makers in Detroit.  For male strippers in Philadelphia. For the writers of fortune cookies in North Dakota.  Everyone.  I even had a place in the back yard all picked out for its, ummmm, "new permanent residence."
     Then the radio I'd tuned to a Big Band station and jacked way up to cover the sounds of the shovel blows to the back of the index page reported the news that the Nasdaq had soared even higher today - a day when this journal was once again on-line!
     Gee, I was so embarrassed.
     Especially as I looked into all of this journal's big black i's.
     Needless to say, I simply turned away and pretended as if I'd been planning to bury that radio all along....

     Not that that ended all my problems. 
     There was still the little matter of the local Sotheby's franchise calling to tell me that they estimated the value of my love letters to J.D. Salinger as being 59 cents. 
     And there was that other little matter of my reading in the paper that my local street corner supplier of St. John's Wort had actually been selling me oregano.
     As the last ray's of the sun bounced off the newly erected headstone in my yard, I realized things can always be worse - much worse.
     This outlet for my excess words might never have come back up, after all.
     And when that realization provided hardly any solace at all, I simply remembered that it could have been my radio that I'd buried instead of the one I'd borrowed from my neighbor.
     Ahhh, but I think I'll be sleeping better tonight than I have all day!  :)