Well, another Ides of March has come and gone (knock on wood) without
significant incident, no thanks to that rooftop sniper across the way, who waited all day for me to come outside before finally stepping out for a mocha at around 4:30 in the afternoon. This gentleman's stick-to-itiveness made for quite a nuisance, because I really wanted to go the gym — I thought he'd never leave. It also rendered the TV in the living room, which fronts on the street, all but inaccessible for most of the day, sticking me with a talk-radio NPR morning when I'd rather be watching Katie Couric's hard-hitting journalism.
The file cabinets that the Wife ordered last week were delivered today chock full of plastic explosives, resulting in a shipping weight discrepancy you'd think Fed Ex would have noticed when they loaded their trucks this morning. At any rate, the detonators had shaken loose and were hanging off the bombs by the time they found my doorstep. Certain people apparently can't be bothered to make those last, admittedly most difficult, quarter-turns of crucial screws. That's not my dumb luck: if my pursuers were at all competent, they'd be working for me and halfway up Easy Street by now. And all the plastique that doesn't blow is mine to keep, so
HA!
Showering at the Boston Sports Club is always an adventure, and all the more so when the shampoo bottle in your preferred stall has been surreptitiously spiked with cyanide dilution. Still, on March 15 you take extra precautions, and when the contents of the bottle seem a lighter shade of purple than usual, you do the Denorex tingle test — left side of the head lathered with the BSC shampoo, right side with your own Selsun Blue. Just to see if you can feel the difference.
I may not recover sensation in my right side for another couple months, but the left still works like a charm. By my arithmetic, that leaves me one fist I can still pound into a table and cry,
come and get me, you bastards. You've only got two hours left, and then it's "wait 'til next year" all over again.
