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I’m not going to lie. I can be a little sneaky, especially at night. Sometimes I have a little snack attack, after dark, ya know? Well, sometimes I sleep walk eat. A few cookies at midnight are not bad for you, are they? It’s not like finding out that the Nation’s water supply has prozac in it. But still, I don’t want the wife catching me in the cookie jar, so I found The Mocha Dunk Mug. I know, it’s a little childish to hide my food– but I don’t want to hear the cholesterol lecture at 2 in the morning, okay? This mug is not the ordinary mug– it’s like 007’s mug, if he drank hot cocoa.

On one side, it looks like your average coffee cup. On the other side is a hidden compartment/cubbie, where you can stuff your cookies. Okay, it’s not exactly hidden. Just make sure that the cookie shelf side is facing AWAY FROM the kitchen door when your wife walks in and finds you with cookie mess on your face. Again, I’m not going to lie– the mug worked exactly ONCE on my wife. But dang, those cookies were good.

Okay, I’m not the only adult man who has read the Harry Potter books. I also listen to Potter Cast once a week, you know a podcast about everything Potter, and I have the latest CD by the indie band, Draco and the Malfoys. According an online, Hogwarts Sorting Hat, I would be in the Ravenclaw House. . .

Shut-up. ANYWAY, if you’ve never read the books or seen the movies, there’s this cool thing, where every photo and painting is like a moving picture. The closest thing to that is the Philips 10.2-Inch Digital Photo Frame. It’s a great way to display your photos, in crisp, sharp detail. You can rotate, crop, zoom and even change the color of your pictures, without the use of a computer. It comes with two interchangeable frames, wood finish, or silver. This digital frame can even run on cordless power. Mount it on the wall, or put it on your desk and watch the memories unfold. Tell you what I did– I put my Digital Photo Frame on slideshow, and made a simple stop-motion animation of my family. It’s almost like a Hogwarts painting, and so very cool!

This is totally ridiculous but, the other day when I went to wash my face I discovered . . . a ZIT. Man, haven’t I been through enough? Not an ingrown hair, but an actual geeky, oily, embarrassing BUMP on my face! Where did this thing come from? I mean, I’m old. I’m a grown man!

But I have to confess; sometimes I get a little careless with the subtler side of manscaping. Sometimes I just use rinse my face off. What? I’m not going to do the full-on mask thing, okay? I don’t have time for indulgent spa treatments, and I’m not going to bed wearing some kind of Hannibal Lecter-looking moisturizing face gear. But I do wish I had taken better care of my skin, considering that I had a big meeting the next day. I basically looked like me, only 20 years ago, in my high school band picture, a constellation of pimples colliding on my face.

Time for a beauty intervention. So I got the Malin+Goetz Acne Treatment– you don’t have to wait for weeks to get rid of pimples– just dab some on the pimple at night, and a little in the morning, and the thing dries up like a raisin in the sun in a matter of days. Word to the wise– you can’t just scrub your face with Irish Spring and call it a day, people.

You’re probably wondering what I did for Saint Patrick’s Day. Oh, I got crazy, I’ll tell you. I sat around with my kids, painting shamrocks, drinking root beer in frosted mugs. It was kinda fun. The only drunken fool at our house was the cat with his catnip toy. I can do without the old college days, going from bar-to-bar, having my best friend hold my hair while I ralph in a parking lot. Yeah, my hair wasn’t that long. . .

I actually do regret not getting toasted in a foreign country, when I was young. So, I thought I’d bring the world of beers to me. The Around the World Gift Basket comes with six of the world’s best-loved beers: Red Stripe from Jamaica, New Castle Brown from England, Stella from Belgium, Sapporo from Japan, Molson XXX from Canada, and of course, Guinness from Ireland. These tasty brews come with a variety of deliciously savory gourmet snacks, all packed in a galvanized tub, with handles for easy carrying.

It’s a small world, after all. BELCH.

You would think, in this day and age, that the business card would be so mid-century. I mean, we’re doing surgery with lasers, if you’re willing to pay, you can fly from New York to Paris in a few hours. So why are we still collecting these perfectly geometrical dust mites? I get about 30 of these things a week– triple that if you count the last conference I attended. I find them on my chair when I return to my office from a meeting, I find them balled up in my coat pockets, I found one in lunch– wedged between the turkey and tomato in my sandwich! Okay, that’s a mild exaggeration.

But seriously, I have enough business cards to wall paper my office. I shuffle them so often, looking for this card or that; I could be a dealer in Las Vegas. So, in an effort to wrangle the dang things, I bought the Mini Business Card File Cabinet. It looks like a shrink ray got a hold of a regular filing cabinet, but honestly it’s got to be one of the best inventions since sliced bread and guess what– it holds a whopping eight hundred cards! It’s got letter tabs so you can really get your act together. Yeah, this might seem a little Type A, but unless you’re in training for a life in a casino, or as a magician, the Mini Business Card File Cabinet will keep those pesky cards from turning your desk into a poker table.

I got so ticked off this week. The IT “specialist” at work was freaked out that the office clocks were off by one minute, so he took it upon himself to change the phone clocks. He ended up knocking out the phones and the clocks to the office for FIVE HOURS. He didn’t just knock out the clocks, he stopped time. Literally. No one could figure out what time it was. People with watches were still alarmed by the fact that their desk clocks were off. I thought I heard crying in the break room. I felt like I was driving the wrong way down a one way street, all day, and I missed an important client meeting by approximately 17 minutes. Add springing forward on top of that and you’ve got a big ‘ol mess. So I bought Jonas Damon’s LED Alarm Clock– four little cubes with digital displays– you can put the numbers in any order you want to– because obviously, time is relative. So now, when Mr. Super IT Guy strolls by my desk, he can have a panic attack making out the time, too!

So, I am forced to attend those Brown Bag Lunches at work, where we talk about how fantastic our jobs are, and ridiculous conversations like oh my god, are the clocks one minute off? That’s crazy. I thought it was me! I thought I was going insane! Yeah, it’s a regular snooze fest. Here’s the thing: office people have to create office drama– our lives can be that boring, unless you’re taking martial arts after work or something . . . unless you’re a part time actor, or a crafter, you have to find SOMETHING to freak out about. Offices are like adult versions of 9th Grade. Offices should be outlawed.

Oh yeah, the meeting. . .
Sometimes I claim I can’t leave my desk and have to do the lunch meeting over the phone. Often, that’s the truth– I’m running like a man with his pants on fire from the moment I arrive at work until the second I sprint to grab the early evening train home. My lunch time is the only time I have all day to stare into space, make funny faces in the tinted windows of my office, or play air guitar– I don’t want to spend my lunch hour patting myself on the back, or finding new things to worry about.

So, when I’m stuck in that phoned-in lunch meeting and I have to at least sound like I’m having the time of my life, I play with my magical Morph Pad. This thing is totally exciting– create sculptors that bend, fold, curve, twist and swirl to your whim. Its 1,000 sheets of paper, in multicolors that hypnotize. Okay, stacked paper what’s the big deal– seems pretty simple, but once you start creating, you can’t stop! But you’d better buy a few extra– office visitors are going to want to play with your artwork.

I am so ready for summer. I’m so ready to thaw out and get my drink on. A nice 12 oz. adult beverage is what’s I’m sayin’. Just the sound of the paper shredder at work makes my mouth water– it reminds me of my Frozen Margarita Maker, full of margarita mix and ice and booze. Sorry to be so frank but DANG I can’t stand it!

Come on– a man can still be a man and have a fruity drink. It’s refreshing. Look, I make them for my wife. What?! I am so looking forward to those warm nights on our patio, the kids are fast asleep, stars ablaze, and my margarita machine working away, chopping frozen tundra into fine granules of ice for my drink. Oh my Lord. So, it makes smoothies too, okay? Ya happy? And yes, I’ll make those cute little fruit cubes with the toothpicks sticking out and all, for the kiddies and their little friends, okay? What I’m talking about right now is the kids are down for the night, and I’m putting the ahhh in Margarita– the right blend of ice and fruit and LIQUOR.

With a machine like this, you’re not going to get the watery seconds– it literally channels the water away from the ice flow, to ensure the perfect margarita, every time. This is a professional machine, yall. I think some MIT geek designed this thing– it’s the real deal.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. This guy wants to get down disco style in the toilet? GROSS. Whatever, man. I spend more time in my bathroom than Margot does in the Royal Tannenbaums. I have two kids– one who is potty training, and the other who likes to try to flush IMPOSSIBLE things in my toilet. So, basically, I gotta hang out in there to make sure it’s just poop that’s going to the great beyond. I even knocked out a closet (okay, I hired a contractor) to add more space to our main outhouse, so I could put a lounge chair in there. It’s not as icky as you think. . .

Anyway, my throne is not my own, so I might as well make it a party– so I got the iPod Dock Toilet Paper Holder. Now, bath time is fun time! We learn our ABCs, play rhyming games, and when I have a moment to myself, I listen to The Ramones. You can take the guy out of the can, but you can’t take the can out of the man. What am I saying?

It’s nearly officially spring. It gets warm, and the sky doesn’t know what to do, so it rains, and you never know when that’s going to happen. Fine. Go ahead, rain then. I just got used to unrelenting snow storms, and now it’s going to rain on me. I know, it’s not personal. It’s just that, I’m like an Alaskan sled-pulling dog when it comes to snow. I know how much we’ll get, when it’s going to start falling and from which direction– I’ve made up MY OWN words for snow. I know which snow you can eat and which snow to steer clear of. But rain? I’m like, rain deaf or something. Rain blind. I’m always shocked when I get caught in a storm– showers just comes out of know where. NO ONE REALLY KNOWS when it’s going to rain! Doppler my butt.
What’s worse are the days when I bring a friggin’ umbrella and it doesn’t rain– I’m stuck carrying a stick in a vinyl dress all day. What about the days when it’s raining enough to launch Noah’s Arc? Once, I had to borrow the receptionist’s umbrella to get to a meeting. It was pink, and covered with dancing unicorns. Talk about embarrassing.

And another thing– I can’t stand my office mates who, at the slightest threat of rain, come to work with an umbrella built for TEN. You know the ones. Those umbrellas that have the circumference of Switzerland. A wing span of a teenage pterodactyl. Walking to and from my car on rainy days when THE GIANTS have their umbrellas taking up air space I’m always afraid that I’m going to lose an eye or something. And once people get to work, they pop their umbrellas open to dry. You put eight gi-normous umbrellas in the break room– it’s like an obstacle course! A poor man’s bumper cars.

So, like any good boy scout, I have decided to be prepared, in an understated way– I bought a flat briefcase umbrella. The thing folds up like the evening paper– FLAT, and can just live in your brief case, or coat pocket– it only weighs 8 ounces. No, it’s not the size of a toy– it has a 43″ arc– it will keep the water from spilling down the back of your shirt. Pops open with a touch of a button. There, there– turn that frown upside down.