It's Wednesday night; I am sitting in a hotel room in Kentucky; I am only two hours from home; I'm in hell.

I will give details later but the short version is that H3's insane parents have both managed to be in the hospital at the same time. I almost ended up having to stay in their run-down Appalachian trailer for the next two days but I finally told H3 that I just could not survive it.

So now we are staying in a run-down hotel.

The worst part (and there is a lot to pick from) is that my family and friends are only two hours north and I will not have time to go see them. It's a good thing that Christmas is only a few weeks away.

The rest of the sick story will follow in a few days. For now I need to medicate myself so I can sleep.

Have you ever listened to your better-half snore for hours on end and thought "if I just put the pillow over his face it would all stop." I wouldn't really do it, but sometimes that sound just makes me feel crazy.

Once I did reach over and squeeze his nostrils together. He gasped for breath, jumped out of bed and when he realized what I had done, he acted like I had just stabbed him or something. He went on and on about trust and how he would never do that to me. The more he talked about it the harder I laughed.

It takes a lot to make H3 mad, but he hates it when I laugh at him. The more I laugh, the angrier he gets and then the harder I laugh. It's an uncontrollable action.

The other day, he was stringing a bunch of cuss words together and I asked him to tone it down. Then I made the mistake of mentioning that a mother had given him a dirty look while we were at Denny's.

So he launched into this speech about this being America and his first amendment rights --- well I lost it. I started laughing (I think might have called him Earl) and I kept on laughing until he stomped off and would not speak to me the rest of the night. Of course, every time he walked past me I would crack up again.

The one time I probably crossed the line (okay I cross it all the time) was when I fell asleep with gum in my mouth. I remember waking up and thinking "I thought I had gum when I went to bed" but then I was on to the next random image.

A few hours later Megmonster and I were watching TV when H3 came into the room (no shirt) and asked me "what's on my back?" To say that H3 is hairy would be an understatement. Think Robin Williams.

To my horror I realized his thick mane of back hair (yuk) was plastered with pink bubble gum. And it was not just in one spot. As he had tossed and turned (snoring) he smeared it into every hair. I can't remember exactly what I said, but Megmonster and I started to laugh and laugh and laugh.

The more we laughed, the more pissed he got. That just made us laugh harder. And the entire time I was cutting it off his back, I was laughing. Every once in a while Megmonster or I will bring the story up and laugh like it just happened.

H3 still fails to find it amusing.

veertig, quarante, vierzig, σαράντα, quaranta, quarenta, 四十

Any way you say it, 40 sucks.

I am only going to be 30-something for 19 more days. It's starting to sink in. (sorry Twinkie) When I turned 30 I had this Oprah-esque vision of how wonderful 40 would be. Megmonster would be all grown up, I would be wildly successful (and fancily stable) and it would be time for me to enjoy life to the fullest with travel, romance and double digit weight loss .

That was then and this is now.

As I sit here in my rented living room, balancing my depleted bank account (okay I did go a little overboard shopping this weekend) looking at H3 sprawled across the sofa, loudly snoring(where he has been for the past three days) and thinking about what I am going to pack little Evan in his lunch box tomorrow, I realize that 40 is not as great as I thought it would be.

I know it's my fault. I chose to meet H3 at the redneck bar and take him home (who knew he would never leave) I decided to reproduce again at 34 (it was not a conscious choice but there are alternatives) and I decided to take a less stressful but lower paying non-profit job and move us half way across the country (it sounded like a good idea at the time.)

Honestly I would not change a thing (well maybe I would not have taken the low paying job and moved away from home) but dammit, why did 40 look so great on Oprah?

I need to quit watching so much TV.

Well as much as I hate to do this, I must bump Beakman off of my link list. Just because he's Twinkie's blood-kin does not make up for the fact that he has not kept up with his blogging responsibilities.

For now I will replace him with Jollie Green Julie, another recommended blog from the Twinkie.

Hey when Twinkie gets drunk does that make her a Toasted Twinkie?

I find myself trying to find meaning in the word verification letters I see. I'm sure there is some hidden message out there for me, if only I could decode it. Tonight I was posting a comment on Zeppgoddess and I got the following string of letters. I know it has something do with soft-porn and peanut butter and jelly but that is as far as I get.



Twinkie had a great gift suggestion with the retro beer cooler, but I found the perfect compliment to her gift-- Beer Hammer.


Google is off of my evil company list. I put a "no robots" tag in my blog code and now I am anonymous again. YEAH!!!!

MegMonster hosted her very first grown-up Thanksgiving this year. While I am glad it went well, it made me sad. It was our first Thanksgiving apart and one more milestone in her life that does not include me.

I am turning 40 in 18 days and so far I am in denial. More on this subject later.

As I mentioned before I am so average it's sad. I took one of Twinkie's online tests and as usual I am just Joe Normal. Well, at least I am smart enough to surround myself with inetresting friends like Twinkie.

You scored less than half in all three, earning you the title of: Joe Normal.

47 % Nerd, 26% Geek, 13% Dork

For The Record:
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

H3 loves to shop on Black Friday. Each year he gets up and goes out to shop for good deals and kick off the holiday season. He gets a thrill from all of the energy and crowds.

I hate crowds, and waiting in line, so I normally skip this ritual. H3 on the other hand, loves to talk to complete strangers and he will stand there and talk with everyone around him. Imagine how happy he was to find out that the local Outlet Mall opened at midnight on Thanksgiving night.

I'm also not a morning person so the midnight sale sounded like it might be fun. I went with him this year and I enjoyed it. There were some long lines, but overall the crowd was well behaved. I think it's due to the fact that the stores controlled how many people could go in at a time and there was enough merchandise for everyone. I wanted to go to the Gap because everything was 40% off, but I was not willing to stand in the long line to get in and another long line to check out.
We stuck to the stores that did not have a long wait. The only place we waited was at Eddie Bauer were we got a feather bed mattress for $30. But in most places like the Oneida store and Bombay Company, we were in line for about 10 minutes or less. The three most packed places were Gap, Polo Ralph Lauren and Timberland.

After we left the Outlet center, H3 took me back home. It was about 2:30 and I was ready to sleep. After he dropped me off, H3 headed to Wal-Mart. They had some great advertised specials that started at five.

I had heard that things get scary down at the local Wal-Mart on Black Friday so I warned H3. But he's a big man and he felt that he could survive the wait. He got there around 3:00 am and started asking where the Game Boys would be passed out at. The guy behind the electronics counter kept acting dumb like he didn't know anything. So H3 just stood by the electronics register and waited patiently. He also struck up a conversation with another man who was there next.

About an hour later the crowd was growing. No one knew were to line up since there were no official lines, the staff was not controlling the crowds and people were starting to act crazy. H3 had asked a lot of questions during his wait so he was trying to help people figure out where they should go for the item they wanted.

The most popular item was a laptop computer that was on sale for $378. There were only a few available, but hundreds of people were trying to find out were to line up for it and the staff would not help out. h3 had stood there for almost two hours (he was the first person there) when a manger walks up and announces that the Game Boys would be given out at the opposite end of where H3 had stood for two hours.

Chaos broke out and everyone started pushing and shoving. H3 was suddenly out of the running until the man he had been talking to during the two hour wait said that H3 deserved one and to get in line in front of him. The pushing and shoving was escalating and H3 said it was getting scary. People were starting to fist fight. So H3 made a deal with the line guy. They agreed that H3 would body block everyone that was shoving and hitting if the guy would ask for two and give one to H3. The line guy said you've got a deal and they both got a Game Boy. H3 then used his girth to move him and the line guy through the crowd to a register.

H3 said that he saw one woman who was bleeding from being attacked while getting a laptop and that there were too many fist fights to count. He said the staff was tossing the items into the crowd and people were having to fight for them.

I think Wal-Mart is pure evil. The purposely create a situation of panic and set the stage for pandemonium. They bait people with these super-low prices and then limit the amount available.

Wal-Mart should be ashamed of itself. For example H3 said there were still 12 Game Boys locked in the electronics case but employees could not sell them at the advertised discount because the special price was limited to the boxes with a special barcode. There was nothing different about the Game Boys other than a barcode. I guess it's just another way Wal-Mart limits how many are sold at the advertised sale price.

H3 has been to hundreds of Black Friday sales and he has seen huge crowds and long lines, but he has never seen a store and its staff act as irresponsible as Wal-Mart does. HHGregg is the most responsible. They guarantee that anything advertised will be in stock that day. Before we moved to Mayberry I would shop at HHGregg each black Friday. Unfortunately we do not have one within 2 hours of here. I like spending my money with companies that appreciate customers and treat them respectfully.

One day someone is going to get seriously hurt at Wal-Mart's Black Friday sale. Of course Wal-Mart will not care about the safety of its customers until someone sues them. Wal-Mart only cares about the money.

Wal-Mart Corporation is evil.

Is it strange that I love Harry Potter books and the Potter movies? Maybe it's just the kid in me, but I could not wait to see it. I guess I am lucky to have the 6-year-old so I can pretend that I am only there for him.

I saw the previews for King Kong and I think Peter Jackson is going to create another masterpiece.

Tomorrow is Oprah's Favorite Things episode. I need to find a way to watch it. I don't know why I torture myself by wanting things I will never have or be able to afford, but its become a tradition.

Grey's Anatomy is my new favorite show. I want Patrick Dempsey

H3 has a new favorite show -- My name is Earl.

For those who haven't seen it the premise is a trailer-trash redneck who is trying to change his Karma by creating a list of all the wrong deeds he has committed in life and fixing them. H3 is convinced that someone he knew in life wrote this show and based it on him.

I could almost believe that except for two things.
1. H3 never won the lottery, in fact he's broke
2. H3 knows his karma sucks but could care less

Anyway, all else stops in this house on Tuesday's at 9:00 as H3 relives what he believes is his past. I wish you could have heard him laugh last episode when Earl's brother Randy said that the county fair was Disneyland for poor people.

Now that I think about it, H3 never had siblings but his cousin that was like a brother was named Randy and H3's uncle is named Earl. Coincidence? Maybe not.

You would think that being genetically linked to Twinkie would be all the fame and fortune that one man could stand -- but not Beakman. It seems that Beakman's dream is to get some attention from Africa and Antarctica.

So being the helpful and totally selfless person that I am, I will try to help him make his wish come true. If you are from either place or happen to know someone who is, please ask them to take a minute from their busy day and click through to Beakman's blog.

Last week, I spent several hours reading through every post I've written over the past year. Why? I wanted to look over everything I've written. You see, I've been outed.

Unbelievably, when you type my real name into Google the first listing is this blog. How, why, when??? There are thousand of us with this name. It's not unusual; in fact it's very common. How can it be in the #1 position, much less listed at all.

It's not that I am hiding anything. For God's sake my own mother has read this blog. There's just something comforting about the anonymity of being able to say anything you want (and make fun of the neighbors) without anyone getting their feelings hurt. So if I have offended you please forgive me. It's not like I am known for being tactful anyway. I pretty much say what I think, normally at the most inappropriate moments.

My secret identity was discovered months ago and I never knew it. So who was the person who busted me? Unfortunately for me it was someone on the board of directors were I work. Something very bizarre happened the other day and I jokingly said that someday I would write about it in my autobiography. That's when she said "Why don't you put it on your web page?"

"What?" I said.

She responded, "Don't you have a web page were you write about yourself?"

I seriously stopped breathing. I know I was stammering. Somehow I squeezed out the word "how." Her response was GOOGLE. Seems that she Googled me during the interview process. I guess the good news is that I was hired despite my insane ramblings.

I was visibly embarrassed and quickly assured her that I had not made fun of her because she was one of the few people I had met here that I liked. Then she told me that she, and others on her staff, laughed when they read my 100 things about me list.

So much for moving across country to reinvent myself.

The husband (I have decided to call him H3 from now on) claims that it's impossible to please me. I think it's just an excuse for not trying. It's easier for H3 to say, "I would have bought you something for your birthday but you are so hard to please" than it is for him to really take the time to really understand me.

In August I put an obnoxiously big ring on layaway and then told him that I was going to make it easier to get me a birthday/anniversary/Christmas present this year. All he has to do is make the payments and remember to wrap it. Last year, we were shopping right before Christmas and I picked out a shirt and said "Here, you can get me this for Christmas." So he paid for it and I'll be dammed if he did not hand it to me in the same shopping bag on Christmas morning. When I mentioned that he could have at least wrapped it, H3 said "that would be stupid since you picked it out."

Maybe I am hard to please though. I'm not even sure I like the ring I put on layaway. How sad is it when you don't even like the present that you picked out for yourself. In my defense, it was an impulse buy. I don't even remember exactly what it looks like. All I remember is that it's really big, obnoxious big. I was feeling "girly" that day and wanted something "movie star" like. I don't know where the hell I will ever wear it, but I will have to act like I love it or else. I can hear H3 now -- you can't even please yourself, bla, bla, bla.

But there were two things that pleased me this weekend. Last night we went to this store by the Outlet Mall. It's this big place that caters to tourists and sells junky import stuff, cheap cigarettes and lots of other strange stuff. I was strolling past the biker section when I noticed these leather duffle style bags on sale. Most of them were the black motorcycle type but there was one bag that stood out. It was top quality leather with a deep rich brown color. It actually looks similar to leather Hartmann suitcase I have. When I opened it up to look inside I could not believe the brand.

The tag said J. Jill. I was silly excited because the price was dirt cheap. It does have a few minor scathes but nothing a good polish will not fix. I don't know how the heck it ended up there, but it's going to look great with my Hartmann set and it's the perfect size for an overnight trip.

Today we went to the "city" to do some more shopping. Actually we went to a town called Cary which has the highest income per capita in North Carolina. You really can't tell were Cary stops and Raleigh begins. Of course, this is the case with most of the towns around here. Anyway we went into Old Navy to get some t-shirts for the kid and H3 noticed that they now carry "Plus Size" clothes for women. I was so excited!

They had some great velour sweats and also some v-neck long-sleeve t-shirts for $10 each. While this may seem trivial, many of you probably don't understand how hard it is to get comfortable basic t-shirts in plus sizes without paying a fortune.

I ended up getting one in every color. I am really excited about my shopping finds. I guess I'm not that hard to please after all.