There are songs you like. Songs you hear on the radio, in commercials, in grocery stores, in you head. You don't know who sings it and its old but you like it. Sometimes, you find out who sings one of those songs and you say "Really? I had no idea that was them!" Sometimes you find out that 30 or 40 of those songs you hear are all by the same very famous band that you previously thought you didn't care for. Or maybe that's just me.

I have Sirius satellite radio (Insanely cool by the way and that's coming from someone who swore the idea of paying for satellite radio was indefensibly retarded) and they just started a new channel. Its The Who channel. To keep this short I won't approach how ridiculous it is that one band has written enough material to fill a radio station. However, it is worth noting that after giving this station a listen, it turns out that not only do I like The Who, but I have for years.

I kept listening to song after song going, "Yeah, I love that song!" and trying to realize how it is that I've gone this long without knowing the artist. So, now its off to iTunes to get some Who tunes.

Next time you start singing along with that song while you're shopping for pants, find out who sings it. You might be surprised.

Something about public toilets sets off a bunch of anxieties in me and always has. Just ask my mom. Her parents took me on a car trip to visit family for a week when I was little. Nothing but public toilets so guess who didn’t poop for week? I’ve gotten over that bowel paralyzing phobia, mostly. I’ll still leave a Red Sox playoff game in the fourth inning to go home and use Old Faithful rather than drop the kids off at the pool in Fenway. At work, at least, I’ve grown accustomed to not denying my system its needs.

 Anxieties die hard though and I still question whether or not the tail of my shirt went in the toilet when I sat down or not and I’m always paranoid about dropping things in the toilet. On more than one occasion my wallet has plopped out of my pants while they were making the return trip up my legs. Its only been the grace of God that’s made it land on the bacteria ridden, yet dry, floor of the stall instead of in the sick soup of the bowl. I hadn’t dropped anything in the bowl though until a few weeks ago and when I dropped my first item in for a swim, it was an expensive one.

 Like most dorks with little style and a big appetite for gadgets, I wear my cell phone on a clip on my belt. I’m usually very conscious of it when pulling up in the stall but somehow I spaced, the phone and the clip hopped off my belt and sank to the bottom of the, fortunately, flushed bowl. Without thinking I reached in immediately and pulled out the phone. After all, it was only two months old so I’m not eligible for another discounted phone until 2008 now. It was literally dripping with water. Sadness.

 Knowing a little bit about electronics, though admittedly not enough to know how to keep them out of toilets, I took the battery out right away to cut power. I rushed the patient back to my office where I took the whole phone apart and blew it out with pressurized air from the shop. I was satisfied that the water was gone but not convinced the phone would work.

 Surprisingly, it powered up right away! The screen was the one remaining side effect of the accident. It sputtered, broke up, and went blank like an old black and white tv. I lived with it for a few weeks before Jaime gave me the okay to seek a replacement. Verizon, however, would only sell me a new phone for full retail price ($249). I don’t think so.

 So, in a last desperate effort to fix the screen I disassembled the screen area once more. This time, even though things looked fine, I decided to swab every switch, circuit, and connection with alcohol. After a couple of minutes I powered it back up and it works fine! We’re back in business after being where business has actually been

 Let this be a lesson to you. First, $5 a month and a $50 deductible is NOT a bad deal when they offer you the insurance plan at your wireless provider. Compared to $200-600 to replace a broken phone, it’s a steal. Second, when you have to sit down and “log on” leave the phone in your cubicle.

Lawns were invented by the devil.

I'm hard pressed to think of anything else that forces you to work so hard to achieve results you aren't satisfied with. You can mow, water, bag your clippings, mulch you clippings, mow, fertilize, not fertilize, aerate, treat for 50,000 different insects, mow, spray, overseed, treat for crabgrass, and mow yet you still end up wishing your lawn looked like someone else's.

I'm currently embroiled in a battle with my own green demon. In fact, I have double the torture since I have a front and a back lawn. The front lawn was actually a source of pride for me when we first moved in. It was lush and green, until the grubs came. Now I have a lot of brown grass mixed in. The back lawn has always been evil.

Before we moved in they replaced the septic system. Its something my wallet and low tolerance for the sight and smell of human waste are happy about but the suburban lawn warrior in me is still pissed.When the covered up the new system they just covered the yard in rock strewn fill instead of topsoil. As a result, I've been in a full time fight to get the grass to fill in.

The real crime in lawn care is the over abundance of lawn "experts" Every a-hole with a Briggs & Stratton is convinced he knows exactly what your lawn needs. For every guy that says do this, there's another guy who says, with equal conviction, that its the last thing you should do. I just want pretty green grass. I'll live with some weeds or a little clover, I just want a lawn without big dirt patches.

The good news is that I can give up on the lawn rebirth soon. In another couple of weeks we'll be out of range for planting new seed (according to the experts). Then I can spend the summer mowing big dirt piles sending clouds of dust all over the neighborhood. In the fall we'll start another round of seeding, watering and crying.

We got our new bank cards in the mail yesterday. This is always a thrill. Not only is it a new design but its with a new bank and its Visa instead of Mastercard. We were like kids at Christmas. Sure, since we haven't switched everything over yet it only gives us access to $35 but its still a thrill!

Even better is that our new bank earned brownie points by including a little paper sleeve with the card. I'm deeply in love with these little paper sleeves which is the subject of much ridicule from my loving wife. She doesn't understand what we have together.

 
About ten years ago when I opened my account at our current bank I got one of these sleeves. For some unknown reason I kept my card in it even though my card resided in my wallet. It didn't take long before I notice my card wasn't wearing badly. It was still shiny and unscratched except for the long, uniform scratches from ATM slots.

I went through a few ATM cards that were broken, expired, or changed over to debit cards and although some split or cracked from the pressure of one of my ass cheeks for 14 hours a day, none were defaced. Oddly, with every new card I received, I was denied a new paper sleeve! I was forced to recycle the same sleeve over and over until, after nearly ten years, time had broken it down to a flimsy, thin, shell of its former self. It no longer offered its protection and its thin walls made it difficult to extract the card. At Jaime's urging, it was retired.

For the last year or so, my card has remained in my wallet, naked and alone until today. Now a new card sits proudly and safely in its paper sleeve protected from the horrors of my wallet. I expect we will spend many happy years together until it too has provided service beyond its capacity and must be replaced.