So the J-Man is leaving in TWO DAYS and ye gods, I am viewing this trip with such trepidation that it is keeping me up nights.

Is this child going to climb on the Lincoln Memorial? Rip pictures off of the hotel walls? Joke about bombs at the airport? Get lost in the mean streets of DC? Use bad table manners??

I’m a wreck.

I can only hope that I have raised him right – at least partially – and send him off on a jet plane with the carefully packed luggage he will undoubtedly misplace; and pray to God that he doesn’t get beat up or lost, or worse, break his expensive new glasses.

Tonight is the school’s Halloween dance, and the child is dressing up as a corporate zombie, resplendent in a suit, zombie makeup, fake blood, and money coming out of his pockets.

I think that this is absolutely brilliant and I can’t wait to post pictures.

In other news, I was without internet service for a couple of days, and God knows I’ve been miserable without constantly sucking at the Dell teat.

Yesterday Comcast called me to confirm my service call and actually spit this recording into my shocked ear:

“We are calling to confirm that a technician will arrive between 7:30 and 10:30 on Tuesday, October 25. Please hold for a service representative. There are currently seven calls ahead of you.”

SEVEN CALLS. I was supposed to wait for seven calls after they called me.

What crap!

I hung up, wishing fervently that I could hang up seven times.

Comcast came out this morning and promptly deduced that there was a problem with my router. My router isn’t that old, but he unplugged it and plugged it back in several times, and then told me I’d have to get a new one.

“What if it’s just the power supply?” I said.

“Hm.” He took out a new power cord and plugged it in.

Eureka.

“You know, we’re hiring right now.”

I just always look for the simplest solution.

In other news, I was perusing the Target sale paper this Sunday and checking out the Halloween costumes, noticing as always the two choices for women: Slut and Dork; when I came across a Halloween costume for a grown man that disturbed me to my very core.

It was Ernie from Sesame Street, complete with rubber duckie.

I’m sorry, but if you are a grown-assed man dressing up as Ernie from Sesame Street, you have such issues that no woman is going to have sex with you, ever, world without end, Amen.

Ernie from Sesame Street?? Really?? I would like to know whether anyone purchases this particular costume, and then I would like to know whether or not he is a eunuch. I would like to know whether his mother tucks him in at night with a blankie, and whether or not he still reads Goodnight Moon.

I would like to know many things about this man, but I don’t have to wonder what his sexual predilections are, because I’m sure he has none. None whatsoever.

Ernie. Come ON.

In still other news, I am looking into continuing my education online. I am a few credits short of a degree, which is stupid, and I’ve decided to pull a Rodney Dangerfield and go back to school.

Purdue offers online classes, so back to Purdue I go. I am hoping for some sweet financial aid, given the fact that I’m Po’, and also because once upon a time I had some scholarships and Pell grants and all of that happy horseshit.

It would be really fucking nice to be able to defer my student loans as well. They’re not astonishing, but they’re another bill I could do without.

It’s sort of exciting, thinking of returning to school. It gives me something to look forward to.

In still other news, this morning I was talking to the Comcast guy about trick-or-treating and how unspeakably lame it is now, with only a couple weak hours of daylight meanderings; and how when we were kids one used to be able to go out until ten o’clock at night and bag a whole shitload of treats, canvassing multiple neighborhoods.

This then led to a conversation about how no one really gave a shit about safety when we were coming up in the world – how we used to be able to ride bumpily in the back of pickups sans seatbelts, or in cars on laps, how no one wore bike helmets or kneepads while rollerskating, and how kids got all banged up and never saw the inside of an ER (“Put some alcohol on it!”), and how playgrounds had harsh metal slides and metal swing chains and certainly no wood chips to cushion one’s fall. There were no table pads and toilet locks and cabinet locks – you just didn’t touch.

We survived with flying colors, though.

I’m all for safety, but sometimes I wonder whether kids today are too soft.

Does that make me sound like an old curmudgeon?

Good, because I am.

Heh.

Happy Tuesday.

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