thursday . august . thirty one . two thousand last night at work, a customer took my arm with the greatest care, carefully pulled it to him and kissed my hand in the most gentlemanly way. he did this because i was the one who located "smokey and the bandit" for him. -- tuesday . august . eight . two thousand paul and i were hanging around the house last night. it was quiet and we were chatting. suddenly, we began to hear angry muttering outside our window. at first, it was just murmurs from an unidentified male and we couldn't figure out what was going on. we looked at each other but before one of us could say anything, we got one clean sentence that floated up from the street: unidentified male: (angry) you know what i could really use is a good haircut!!!! wow. later that night when we had retired to the marital suite (read: mattress on the floor in the bedroom) and had not quite fallen asleep we heard something else. imagine that paul revere was taking his little ride around the village to warn of red coats. but he's not on a horse, he's on a bicycle. and he's not shouting warnings, but holding a rubber ducky in each hand. the kind of rubber duckies that squeak when you squeeze them. so what you hear is the tiny hum of the bike wheels and rubber duckies alternately squeaking with extreme urgency, passing by the window at breakneck speed. i know. i have no explanation, but it happened. i swear.