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Our family dog, kind of a cross between a beagle and a pug is in service to Her Majesty, The Queen. Okay, maybe not. But our dog (who’s identity I must protect, let’s just call him Pierce) likes to tunnel, chew through his leash, and has made a draw bridge out of a section of my wooden fence. He doesn’t seem that interested in getting messages out to his comrades by escaping through the space in the fence (too cold for spy action, I guess) but I suspect that in the spring the espionage will continue, and I’ll find him sharing “secrets” with the girl poodle across the way. With this in mind, I will soon install the Pets Observation Porthole in the south west side of my fence, which faces the nearby puppy park. The porthole is an acrylic, concave dome that makes it easy for your canine pet to see what’s going on in the world, without being in the middle of the fray, like most spies, you know. I’ll probably put in about three of them, at different heights, so it’s not all random-looking. You know, make it a bit like architecture.

Look, dogs are curious creatures. When I say curious I mean nosy. The porthole provides the opportunity for my pet to monitor doggy business without tearing up my dang-gum fence. I mean, I thought having opposable thumbs gave me the advantage, but I am shocked at the number of things he has demolished without the use of human tools. That white picket fence is the only remnant of the America from my childhood, I’d like to pass it on to my kids, instead of barbed wire and bars, and I’ll be darned if I let my cuddly, snobby English beagle take that away from me!

Spring, spring is a marvelous thing, and summer, summer’s no bummer. . .
Sorry, my singing sucks. But what doesn’t suck is the fact that it’s about to get hot up in here. And that means. . . BAR-BA-Q. That’s right. Meat, meet my grill. . .

But you know, after years of grillin’ then chilln’ you lose some of your utensils. They get mixed up in the day-to-day kitchen ware, taunting you, teasing you. Flattening grilled cheese sandwiches with a burger press might seem like you’re working, but you know, those are empty calories. You need MEAT on the barbie, mate.

So, to keep me from whining about the misuse of my grilling tools, my wife bought me a new set. She got me the Sharper Image 17-Piece BBQ Tool Set. Seventeen tools in stainless steel with rubberized Sure Grip handles that cover the full-length of your hand, and stay cool when things heat up. And, with the rubberized handles, you can be sure these babies ain’t gonna slip into the grill when you’re covered in sweat, fighting a piece of beast meat. The set comes with corn cob holders and salt and pepper shakers, a grill cleaner . . .DANG, I’m in tenderloin heaven! The tools even come in a water-resistant case. Call me crazy, but shouldn’t the case be fire-proof? I’m not complaining . . .

Have you ever had a dropped call? You know how much that sucks. Have you ever had a dropped call to. . . BEJING? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

My company is working with the Olympics to do something or other, and I have chats with my Chinese counterpart at least once a week. Sometimes he can’t get me on the work phone, you know that time difference and all. So my firm gave me a cell (thanks– now I’m on-call 24/7). Anyway, Mr. Cheung shouldn’t have to deal with crappy dropped calls. The last time we talked, it sounded like one of us was calling from 20,000 Leagues under the sea, in a figgin’ submarine, so I got my job to get me a Cellphone Signal Extender. This thing can keep you connected to a call from Mars. Just put the sandwich-sized booster near a window and talk until you run out of juice. Now that Mr. Cheung can hear me crystal clearly, my Mandarin has improved. Do you know how embarrassing it is to say, “Hello, Mr. Cheung, your mother is a horse?” Well, it’s EMBARRASSING. Thank God this guy’s got a sense of humor

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.