Man changes name to ``In God We Trust.''
Still required to pay cash.

Does this make me look fat stupid?
The more I think about Bishop Trautman and the ineffable, I find that I am having a difficult time separating defense of the language and the overall ability of my fellow American Catholics to handle words with more than two syllables from the personal offense I take as "Ellyn Mary Smith von Huben I was raised Lutheran but now I'm Catholic. This plays to make weak point. I've long grown (figuratively and literally) beyond standing in front of the mirror and worrying about what makes me look fat. But I think I'm still as sensitive as an adolescent when it comes to looking stupid.

I'm not talking about acting stupid. Middle-age has had the nice effect of loosening me up as far as how I behave. Once painfully shy, I have finally shed the uptight coccoon of self-consciousness. Except... My weakness is I don't mind being thought of as an ass. Just not a stupid one.

Example: There was an incident at work when I was taking down information for an upcoming baptism. The mother spelled out the name of the guest priest who would be baptizing and added that he was a Jesuit. Then she said, "Put S period J period after his name. That stands for Society of Jesus." There was a great spiritual exercise in disciplining myself to simply say, "hmm mmm." When my brain was rapidly vacillating between, "No s**t Sherlock," "How stupid do I look" or a scaldingly sarcastic "You don't say?"

Now I'm thinking way back to when I was first married. I was making a little extra money doing typesetting for my father. I was working on an application form for a juried art fair when I came across the term SASE. My fresh BA in art history along with a fairly strong course of study studio art was of no use here. What was this SASE and why hadn't I ever had/used/bought one? What if I should need one? Is it like a GRE? Or was it part of one's portfolio? My new husband had studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago - did he have an SASE? Why was I feeling so stupid??? My dad, who had studied at Milwaukee's Layton School of Art, explained it to me. Without making me feel stupid.

Without the proper tending, from parents, teachers, spiritual leaders, the grim future predicted in Idiocracy (there's a reason it's so funny...) is not that far off: "But the English language had deteriorated into a hybrid of hillbilly, valleygirl, inner-city slang and various grunts."

Come on Feel the Illinoyance...
There's lots of gen-u-ine suffering going on in Illinois and surrounding areas, what with the tornadoes, flooding etc. So I do know how truly blessed we at the end of Smith Ave. are.

But... (and most of us do have a big but) I am maintaining a manageable level of annoyance.

I double checked my checking account before calling Dominick's deli for a pizza. Just to verify that I had about $100 left. But... noooo, I'm $17.83 in the hole. Huh? Fifteen minutes and a nice little talk with the nice lady at the bank later, I knew what the problem was. I didn't feel much better, but at least I knew. Now to make it until payday or when Rick gets paid, whichever comes first. The girls were really nice about my mini-apoplexy, showering me with flowers, some twenty dollar bills and the always appropriate M&Ms.

I should be happy that things shook out in the order that they did, for if a few automatic deductions had gone thru a day earlier, our debit card wouldn't have made it out of the SuperWalMart with $230 in groceries. Like I said, we're blessed.

It would have done me quite a bit of good to go to Mass this morning but I'm stuck at home. My car is at church but I'm at home. Yeah, there are worse places to have a belt snap than a block away from work/church. If the windows worked, I might have considered living out of the van. Stranger people have tried to find sanctuary on the grounds of our parish.

So...we're here, high and dry, the internet is working, we've gone 7 days since a gardener has sliced the TV cable, we have a week's worth of provisions. Maintaining a suitable level of annoyance. Nowhere near ineffably annoyed. Though the week-end is young.

A Cure for the Killer Tomato
Buy locally. Grow your own.
If this is too much trouble, may I suggest a way that you, too, can have the wonderful and safe tomatoes that my family is enjoying?
1) Time travel back to 1981 and have a baby girl.
2) Bear with her (and pray a lot!) during a trying adolescence.
3) Rejoice as she becomes a gem of an adult; appreciate her contributions to the family while she's still living at home
4) Encourage her when she takes up gardening as a hobby.
5) Kick back and enjoy the tomatoes. (Hint that you're anticipating more pico de gallo...)

And did I mention the extremely fresh broccoli?

Catholics coming out of a lunchtime Mass at Erie's St. Peter Cathedral weren't familiar with "ineffable."
What? Nobody (no ‘girls’ of a certain age, at least) read Love Story? Love Story, the 1970’s cheese phenom? I never thought I’d find a need to quote Love Story, but if my recall is accurate that book expanded my vocabulary beyond my ability to read obscenities out loud in Public Speaking. (that is a whole ‘nother story) So, anyway, Oliver comes home from work and finds Jennifer “ineffably” sad. The right word. Precisely right. And if it works with Love Story-struck ninth graders I think the comprehension bar has been set with appropriate restraint.

Via Whispers in the Loggia I read of Erie Bishop Donald Trautman’s
devaluation of the popular intellect in regards to the translation of the Roman Missal. He said the draft includes words such as "ineffable" that would not be in the ordinary vocabulary of people.

”We should certainly have elevated tone, but words like that are just beyond the common comprehension." So, Your Excellency, you’re saying ineffable is incomprehensible. They’re sort of vocab cousins, aren’t they?

Vanitas...
My meticulously manicured fingers and I are in a dual to the death. One of us has to go.

Because I wished to project a spiffy image for our week-end in the city, I let my nails grow to what I consider to be a grotesque length. Yes, my nails are just approaching the length that many women consider to be the absolute minimum length, but I can take no more. Especially considering the egregious typos. Work typos like "the Catholic Church as a living vulture." That kind of thing. And those are the typos that were caught.

"Emily-orate" My Guilt

Now I no longer must feel like a failure because I never took my girls to the American Girls Store. They found it on their own. If Bridget had known in advance she would have brought in Kirsten for a head transplant. Guess we'll have to make another trip to the big city. And maybe Emily will be able to purchase that doppelganger in a box.

Where is the line for the head transplants?

Knock...
and it may be opened.
Pay AT&T and your internet may work again. (After three or four phone calls. What never fails to amuse is that if one calls AT&T in the grips of a financial fiasco, the first thing the rep tries to do is sell more services)

Sooo...we're back in business. We'll drink to that!

Big Week-End...
Too hot and humid to hang around for B.B. King, Buddy Guy et. al.
Too late to get over to the Washington Library to see Augusten Burroughs. (Only two of us wanted to see him anyway...neither of us a librarian...ahem, Em)
But lots of BIG, BIG stuff.
Starting with a visit to a big door:

It was a Wild and Stormy Week-End
A tornado passed over Smith Ave. Most of the girls and I were on the train headed to Chicago and had no idea what we missed. Rick and the boys took cover in the basement. It wasn't all that surprising since Eddie and I had gone to church at 5:00pm and by the time Mass was over so little light was coming through he windows that I would have thought it was midnight. Even waiting at the train station an hour later, I felt that the air had an ominous feeling.

Fran was perplexed when I asked her how she managed to get a picture of the tornado.
Yeah...right. Well, without my glasses on and looking over pics while still on the camera it looked like a real good tornado picture. So good that it could be used professionally. Like by the Field Museum. And in the tiny format I also didn't notice those stalwart folks who appear to be walking through the twister.

"If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes."
And so begins our girls' week-end in the city...

The word is glycoalkaloids
More tomorrow as we celebrate the International Year of the Potato.

Michael's Has A Craft Sale, Five DREs Hospitalized
More fun via The Ironic Catholic.
Too bad it’s satir. I have $5 left on a Michael’s gift card and it’s burning a proverbial hole in my wallet.

Take heart in the deepening gloom…
The world continues to deteriorate.
The township decides to remedy to sink hole in the cul de sac with an orange cone. This is, indeed, a real sink hole – as in the ground under the street has washed away. So, when two shovels of asphalt applied two weeks ago were sucked into the hole, the township sent a cone. This may be the cone we requested last summer, right before the pirate party. Just so our guests wouldn’t break an ankle. We parked the Jeep over the hole instead. Now, in light of the township and our mutual dwindling financial resources, the best thing I can hope for is that they don’t dig up the street and our van (sans famille? peut etre?) falls in. They can replace our van and the old one would create substructure, just like those junked cars that are put out to sea to create reefs.

Still no internet at home. Eddie voices concern over the children who aren’t getting the Free Rice. I’ll try to earn a few thousand grains on my lunch break. Now about WarCraft…

…and reflect that whatever misfortune may be my lot, it could only be worse if I worked at St. Sabina.

Bow ties are politically, theologically and morally neutral. I think.
So why am I put off by St. Sabina’s bow-tie clad parish council president “Minister Gerald Stewart” on the WGN morning news. Bow-tie wearing Minister? Hmmm.

The Only Annual Collection for Retired Priests of the Archdiocese of Chicago
Talk about timing.
The envelopes, which also bear way too much of a resemblance to the Annual Cardinal’s Appeal envelopes and thereby will be overlooked by 95% of the people leaving Mass, do not have a line on which one can specify a specific priest whose retirement one would like to sponsor. Or expedite. Like, um, a ‘local’ media spectacle whose name could take the place of Marvin K. Mooney.

And maybe we could all chip in a little to buy him some green vestments, too.

With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal, the world continues to deteriorate…
It’s hard to follow up a week-end of so many minor disasters. But we’re trying. The van’s AC works, which is good because the windows don’t. But yesterday the fan quit.

Then I felt something funny during dinner. Like, what is that sharp thing floating around my mouth? funny. So it’s off to the dentist on Thursday morning to have a molar spackled or whatever is the cheapest and easiest thing to do. (If I only had a dentist in the family? Wait…I do. Wonder if he could work with a variety of cements and some fifty year-old dental instruments salvaged from my uncle’s garage…)

This Camera Stuff is Fun!
My dad had cautioned me against viewing everything through a lens. But I do enjoy it sometimes - things look different through the camera.
I had forgotten how gorgeous my children are. (Bridget, here, for example.)
And how dreadful the carpet is.
That's OK - it sure beats gorgeous carpeting and dreadful children.

If Innocence had a Fragrance…
I think this would be it. I received these soaps at work for my birthday. The whole happy-birthday-the-toilet-has ceased-to-function scenario kept me from placing them in our French themed downstairs cloaca powder room. Instead, having been deemed “too nice to use,” they sit on my bedside table, the chipped Wedgwood saucer making an absolutely perfect home. White lilac when I drift off to sleep. White lilac first thing in the morning. Every day a split second when I once again feel the innocence of a five-year-old carrying a bouquet of lilacs for teacher onto the bus. Innocence.

Billy Joel, history teacher…
via Joanne Jacobs.
Most of the 11th grade U.S. history grade for the semester will be determined by the final project: A group presentation on the significance of the lyrics of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire, which lists events and people from 1949-89. It starts with Harry Truman and Doris Day, goes on to “birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again” and ends on “rock and roller cola wars.”

Maybe I have things bassakwards here, but I thought the purpose of education was to prepare you to understand things. Deep things . Like We Didn’t Start the Fire. And Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me). Deep.

At Home with the Pouting Putto
It’s great to be back at work. Home is where the heart is and luckily work is something of a second home in which I can decompress from the other home (the inverse is true, too.) For a lovely early summer week-end in which no one was injured, seriously ill, no teeth chipped or lost it stunk.

Friday: Looked kind of blustery from my window at work. But my limited view of the shrubs next to the big brick church gives me a skewed meteorological perspective. It was really windy. Some said micro-burst in our neighborhood. I don’t know if that has been verified or if my family just likes to say micro-burst. There were a lot of branches down. And when I saw nothing on the digital sign at the corner Citgo, I had to figure either the prices went up so high that the sign exploded or power was out.

The good news was that Exiles arrived and I had other readable treats, so I was good to go. The girls showered by candlelight. (Humidity build-up and mildew is not the only downside of a bathroom with no windows.) After a dinner of pizza, cooked at Dominick’s deli which did have power, Rick and the boys went up to the St. Is store. To “check things out.”

Saturday Atypical for a Saturday at the end of May, Eddie woke up complaining of a stomach ache. The power was back on. But that little matter of the late bill with AT&T led to a new phase of internet withdrawal. This too shall pass. Right? Right!?! I’m dealing with it OK. The boys went back to the shop, including Eddie who decided he could recuperate better with internet access.

Someone took a shower and the faucet handle fell off. The good news was that it could be repaired. (Fran left a pliers in the bathroom just in case…) The other good news was that the inner works of the faucet were became turned 180degrees (in some fashion – don’t expect me to explain), undoing the hot is right/cold is left protocol in effect from the last time the shower was repaired.

Sunday Afraid to tinker with the shower at an early hour, I bathed with baby wipes and tried not to sit too close to anyone at 7:30am Mass. The rest of the day was given over to reading, tidying, catching myself when I was compulsively drawn to the computer and waiting for the next big thing to go wrong. Oh, and sneezing and weeping. The cottonwoods, of course.

And a little fun with Fran’s camera.

Waiting for the Benadryl to kick in...

Fuchsia Power!

Half Explanation of my Lost Week-End
(Yes, despair.com always has what I need.)
Working at home off the clock undoing a major mistake. A mistake easily remedied, except for the fact that it had been stapled between two non-mistakes. 95 times. A good example of how our parents' teachings ingrain themselves in our inner dialogue, though in this case maybe not enough. With each staple I could hear my late father..."Think twice; print, cut, glue or whatever once.

Kinda makes me sorry I threw away that stapler pincher thing that had blowing around the house for twenty years. A small Exacto knife took a great deal of the wear and tear off of my Sally Hansen Fuschia Power X-Treme Wear (it's got Bioactive Glass that bonds to nail proteins. Scientific, right? And cheap.) finger nails. I hadn't painted my own fingernails since sometime in March 1979, while BabyBot was napping. It was soon apparent that I had hit the end of an era. I think the new era is still going strong - this finger nail stuff is not too practical. And fingers need more maintenance than toes.

First, what is it about that particular pulpit that brings out the inner Chris Rock in assorted Men of God?
Unfortunately…Fr. Michael Pfleger has moved to the top of my favorite funny YouTube video list. Displacing Spiders on Drugs. Which is a shame, because the “crack spider” is neither divisive, scandalous nor just plain embarrassing to his comrades. If I were a THC spider, I’d just spin a hammock and watch Fr. Pfleger go.

The introduction of “prophetic, powerful pulpiteer” does have a certain alliterative zing. Perhaps I shall try to use it when accessing our parish’s new Suggestion Box. As in:
Dear Fr. – You are a prophetic, powerful pulpiteer. BTW, have you considered giving that woman in the back office a raise? Just a suggestion…

Welcome to the League of Extraordinary Unemployed People*…
Bridget and Fran have left the exciting world of doggie day care. ( Like the man who spent his days sweeping behind the circus elephants, all I could say was, “What? And get out of show business?”) Doggie day care – in context of the total scheme of the cosmos is a discomfiting concept. So now is their crisis of danger and opportunity. Real opportunity because we have talents greater than poo plucking. Bridget is already expanding her Jagermeister ‘appearances’ and Fran is spending so much time sewing purses and accessories that I feel like I live above a sweatshop.

Tomorrow is Em’s last day at the Westchester library. And Big Ed hasn’t decided where he is going to practice yet. Just so Em leaves on good terms, I’ve gathered in all the inter-library loan books that she found for me. [Including Leon Podles’ Sacrilege, a ponderous book that I would recommend to anyone even remotely interested. He portrays a “perfect storm”-type scenario in which very few sectors of society don’t have some sort of complicity.]

As long as Martha is still at the toy store, I won’t be the only traditionally employed member of the family.

*a dentist, a librarian, a musician, a male model…

Slouching towards Lake Bluff…
Any day now. The mailman is bringing something besides bills. Any day.

In my college years I worked in tech services of the school library. That was my first introduction to Momence, Illinois. The little acquisition forms that we sent to Baker and Taylor in Momence, Illinois. Since the requisite fourth grade “your home state” indoctrination I had received was in Wisconsin, I had no idea of where Momence was. Probably somewhere near Cairo or Paris.

About thirty years later, Momence flew out of the recesses of my long-term memory when I jumped at the chance to read Ron Hansen’s (no relation to Uncle Scary “Leprosy called and asked for its old name back” J. Hansen)
Exiles along with some friends of Godsbody. Amazon package tracking said my book was leaving Momence, IL on the morning of 5/21. What? Is Baker and Taylor a division of amazon.com now? Or does southern Illinois have, besides coal, big strip mines of books? I called the family librarian, who, in unlibrarianlike fashion, was unable to answer my question. But who cares. The book was starting out in Illinois. So how long could it take, right?

By yesterday I was ready for some investigatory geography. Momence is only 50 miles south of Chicago! (A reasonable person would ask me why I didn’t pay shipping instead of adding on educational material to qualify for Free Super Saver shipping. I’m cheap…and these are times that try cheap thrifty women’s souls.) Our mini-van with 269,185 miles on it could have made it to Momence in over a week. Or at least to the bookstore.

This morning the package is in Forest Park. Ten miles west of Chicago. And I’ll continue with my exhortations to keep people from parking so as to enrage the mailman.

While I’m on a literary tear, let’s talk about the Catholic Summer Reading Program.

Here are the selections I voted for.
Fr. Rutler’s Coincidentally, Brideshead, and Diary of a Country Priest. I know I’m not stretching here, but I like those books. I own those books. Thereby keeping the budget under control and limiting the mail to junk interspersed with ominous missives from ComEd, North Shore Gas (now d/b/a/ North Shore Gas Delivery, just to remind us that they aren’t making any money on the gas, they’re just the folks who bring it to us) and the North Shore Sanitary District – home of the effluent of the affluent.

No Hobbit, thank you very much. I just have that willful suspension of disbelief problem. And if I were all that interested in creatures with hairy toes, I’d put on my glasses and give myself a pedicure.

Is she…educated?
Being somewhat compulsive/impulsive and possessed of the conviction that I’m providing a service to those who need to know what I am thinking at any given moment, I tend to blog things right away. Or not at all. (Old news, right?) But what I have here is an incident that left me so apoplectic that I had to give myself a good eight days to cool down before I could come close to composing my thoughts.

A former co-worker was dropping something off at the rectory and stuck her head in my office to say “hi.” Things stayed cordial. Just barely. A few other women wandered in and the conversation turned to grandchildren, families, etc. And family size Then somebody had to mention the Duggar family and I cheerfully (and really with all honest enthusiasm and admiration) mentioned that they were expecting their 18th baby. I find 18 to be a mind boggling number. (I mean, really, if six is the new twelve…?) But this woman, whose response, based on past experience, I should have predicted, looked at me and said, “Is she [big pause] educated?”

That’s right, baby. Anyone who has more than two children must be a card carrying UnMensa member. I don’t think I screamed. Or if I did, everyone is really, really scared of me and doesn’t want to mention it.

In the “latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world”…
it behooves us to remember that today is more than just Ian Fleming’s birthday. I’m fine with the Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang-007-GoldFinger stuff, but I appreciate the heads up from korrektiv about one of my favs. Perhaps I shall bake a cake. And check into the local Howard Johnson’s.*

*As if. Are there any HoJo’s around anymore?

Students vote on whether 5-year-old can stay in class
Early childhood education/Lord of the Flies.
Disturbing bedtime reading. Especially disturbing to any mother who has had a child with some school issues.

When I was in Kindergarten, there was a boy who always had a rather disturbing accretion of neon greenish ooze around his nostrils. If I had been asked, he would have been my first choice to be voted out. That is just one personal example why five-year-olds are under adult supervision. Supervision. By adults. Who act like adults.

Let's watch Spiders on Drugs one more time. Maybe it will help me forget...

Oh the humanity vegetation!
We weren't expecting the lawn guys on Monday. Especially a holiday Monday. The edging around the out of control pampas grass surrounding the mailbox was most appreciated. In fact, I even toyed with the idea of running the phrase "dig it all up - go ahead and kill it" through an online translator and yelling the results out the window.

"!Alto!" would have been better. While we were relishing the control of the pampas grass, the lawn guy was 'cultivating' the front garden that Fran has been working on for many weeks. The big plants are sort of unscathed but the seedlings...well, we can hope that there is enough life left that something will come of them. Oy, I'm having flashbacks to the afternoon when I found two landscapers crouched down, deftly plucking my little ornamental khales. The ones that had managed to survive the attack of the bunnies. Now compassion for laborers forced to work on a national holiday has changed to resentment and speculation about their passive-aggressive work style. They lawn guys are contracted thru the homeowners association, so we have no say on who, when, why or how. Unless maybe we went to the association meetings. Highly unlikely.

"So, is your mom, like, crazy religious?"
"Crazy? Sure. Religious? Yes.
But not crazy religious."

Fran's friend sees the May Altar pics on her camera. Fran answers ensuing questions with patient aplomb. Her patience being well-exercised by teaching mom how to take pictures and upload them to her lap-top. Oh, and running into Office Max after failing to find the proper cord during the bi-weekly WalMart grocery ordeal. (Just because we have more cords than some planes have snakes...well, no plane, no matter how accursed, is carrying every snake.)

For Your Grilling Enjoyment!

Ed checks out 21st century streamlined (Cocktail)Wienermobile!

May Altar

Eureka

The Provincial Emails - keeping an eye on the Milwaukee area, so I don’t have to. (Though there was no mention of the planned razing of the Grafton Hotel or Cedarburg’s St. Francis Borgia Catholic Church and its Cub Scout’s holding a Memorial Day ceremony for Thomas Barrett, a Civil War veteran who enlisted in the Union army at age 16 and was killed in battle. I never knew.)

But we do get this...a little late for my personal St. Dymphna day special (2 disturbed callers for the “price” of one ) but just in time for the full moon:
"Cecelia has been stalking the parish for at least 10 years," he wrote in the petition. "She parks in front of the rectory where she claims she has visions. She has been ordered to move many times by the police. She always returns. The school children are afraid of her presence. Older parishioners are annoyed by her presence and she appears to be dead in the car. She has made bizarre and false statements to the police concerning her presence at the church.

So much for Protecting God’s Children. She sits in a running car while the children are going to and from school. The police and EMTs are continually called because she appears to be unresponsive. Our current Virtus On-Line bulletin has this current poll question: Have you ever confronted another adult because you felt that they were potentially placing children at risk? The responses were yes or no. No place for the pastor to respond “failed to get an injunction.”


"She said I should stop looking at her because I was the Antichrist. I've been called worse," (Ald.) Dudzik said.
Yeah, that’s a heady and humbling feeling. I had a co-worker who could no longer look at me. And it wasn’t because of my devastating good looks.

For the tresmillesimus…
Magnificat anima mea Dominum
Et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari!!!

There, but for family obligations, job commitments and other life choices, go I...
Armed with Sharpies, erasers and righteous indignation, two apostles of the apostrophe make it their crusade to rid the world of bad signs.
I would hope to do it with charity. But I would love to do it!

...the WASP equivalent of Montezuma's Revenge
TS confirms my apprehensions about amazon's Kindle.

Federal Appeals Court Rules that Paper Money is Unfair to Blind
May it also be noted that...
...blindness is unfair.
...paper money and coins are unfair to the arthritic.
...money is unfair to people who don't have any.
...changing the size of paper money might help the blind, but would be unfair to makers of cash drawers, wallets, offering envelopes etc.
...life is unfair.

Today...
May 19 - Charles is the last of the kids to celebrate a golden birthday. This is a custom that I have learned through my children. Poor deprived souls such as my husband and myself - both having birthdays on the first of the month - grew up oblivious to the honor. It has taken me all this time - six children; twenty nine years - to come up with the perfect way to commemorate the golden day. Wilton Elegant Shimmer Dust! It’s edible, FDA-approved and certified kosher.

I ordered the chocolate cake that Chuck requested. I picked it up after work and rushed it home to dust the white flowers and scallops. It was not quite as golden as I had hoped - I could have gotten away with yellow sanding sugars - but I didn’t dust it as thickly as I could have, for fear that it might have a bitter taste. (Why bitter? I don’t know. Gold looks like it would be bitter. You know, rather than salty, sweet or sour.)

Chuck lavished praise on the golden flowers, his birthday gift to me. Humor Mom. After making sure the gold is edible.

The rest of the gold - along with silver and pearl - is hidden in my bedroom, instead of with the rest of the cake decorating supplies. We don’t want any gonzo cookie decorator to turn a single Christmas cookie into a mini mother lode.

The rest of the birthday festivities have been fun. Chuck, Martha, Eddie, Rick and I went to see Iron Man. Iron Man would not have been my choice for a good time, but it isn’t my birthday. And, I am amazed to admit, it was a good movie. Robert Downey, Jr. is wonderful. There is plenty of technology and action but it is accompanied by an engaging story. And now, with a bit of a head-ache precipitated by sitting in the fourth row at Showplace 8 compounded by popcorn and gilded frosting, I am off to bed. Chuck and Eddie have their second wind and are downstairs playing with a new XBox game. More power to them!