T-Minus...

Well, it's the night before. Leon was over tonight, and he provided me my first real Dr. Pepper in a couple of months. I've really missed it. I had three in an hour or two. Now I'll be pissing all night.

Like an idiot, I forgot to invite Stan to the LAN party. I got an email to him tonight, and he may or may not show. We'll just have to wait and see.

So here's my day. At two this morning, my wife and I paused our latest spat long enough to go to bed. Grrrrr... Of course, I didn't sleep until more like 3:30, so when the alarm went off at six, I was delighted.

I took a nap in the shower, and then had my daily meds with a cup of grapefruit juice. The meds were especially important today, because I had finals today for all but one of my classes.

Oh, and let me just say this before I go on: Stupid, stupid, bureaucratic stupid moronic stupid testing center people! Bad! Bad testing center people! Could you try being a little less competent? Do you even know what it means to try? It's my policy not to use the name of deity in frustration, so OH MY KOFFI ANNAN, you STUPID people!

There's no way that incompetence that consummate, that pervasive, could be real. I think I'm a victim of some sort of retarded, cruel performance art. They're in a basement right now somewhere practicing for act two.

Whew. That felt good. So buffoonery abounded in the testing center today, where I had to take four of today's five finals. Today, right at the end of the semester, when they should be on top of things and anticipating, you know, people arriving to take tests.

Tonight has been fun, too. My little boy, who is not yet subject to reason, was supposed to be in bed and managed to hurt himself instead. Pretty badly. He hit his face on something. There's a dresser next to his bed, and the theory is that he was standing or jumping on the bed, slipped off, looked down, and hammered the top of the dresser with the front of his poor little face.

I've only been a daddy for a little under three years now, and tonight is the first time I've seen my child bleed from an accident. It stopped my heart at first, but I think I handled it well overall.

I used a flashlight to check him for a concussion and his pupils dilated fine. His nose bled quite a bit, and there was a lot of cleaning up to do. The bleeding stopped easily, and then it was down to business. His eyebrows, nose, upper lip and upper gums were all swollen, so I got Children's Advil into him as quickly as I could.

Thank goodness he didn't hit a corner and split himself open.

Hold on, he's bled before. He cut his finger on a screw he found a few months ago. That was only a tiny bit of blood though, very unlike the abundance of it tonight.

But the Advil worked wonders, and how he's clean, with a new diaper, asleep. The swelling seems to be almost gone, too. I'm sure there will be bruising, but the worst seems to be over.

Leon was over at the time and...what do you say about such friends? Whenever I think about the friendship I've had from Leon and Eric over the years I get a little choked up and feel like a total cheese ball.

Leon was great, of course. He grabbed a towel and a flashlight and went into the kids' room and started cleaning. My daughter was in there, also supposed to be sleeping, so we didn't want to turn the light on.

And now the house is quiet. It's just another calm period before another storm.

Tomorrow is the LAN party, and the house will be a flurry of goings-on all day and into the night. Then, right about when night and morning meet, I'll drive to the airport and pick up my parents, home from Bermuda.

And on the cusp of tomorrow, an episode of the Simpsons today had a line in it that I think is appropriate. It was the episode where Moe remodels the bar and kicks out the regular guys. Homer makes a bar/hunting club in his garage, and the climax of the show is Moe getting shot in the leg by Homer, who thinks he's shooting at a cougar. Or some other big cat.

Anyway, Moe's great line is this: "Like my father always said, 'Eventually, everyone gets shot.'" And tomorrow, some more than others. There’s nothing you can’t kill with a gluon gun and a crossbow. Well, nothing I can’t kill. You guys suck.