Monday this and Monday that.

--Car adverts are certainly different than they used to be. Try reading the ad copy for the Pierce Arrow Motor Cars, from 1919. It just zings off the page, doesn't it?

--I bought a riding lawn mower yesterday for $160. It runs really well. This is my first riding lawn mower, since using the tired old Montgomery Ward model that my parents bought when I was about 9. This one is a Murray.

--It won't fit into the shed. I'm going to have to build a little shed for it, with a wide enough door. 

--I finally cleared my desk of the huge number of cases that I had on it. Maybe now I can get some good patrol done.

--My elder daughter is hassling me about going shooting. I think that I'll make that happen.

--My younger daughter got a ridiculous device for Christmas that allows her to make miniature pies on lolly pop sticks. She makes and rolls out the dough, and then cuts out little discs of it, and puts in pie filling (she sometimes makes it herself out of berries), and then cooks them, 6 at a time, with a waffle-iron-like apparatus. They're called "Pie Pops." They're silly. They're tasty.

--My father got a new truck, in which we brought home the riding mower. That's one of the nicest vehicles that I've ever been in.

--We detailed my old Saturn on Saturday. It looks pretty good. I need to get a new tire for it, so that it will pass inspection, so that I can more easily sell it. I couldn't believe how expensive even the cheapest tires are. $50 for the cheapest that I found, plus $28 in balancing, mounting, tax, tire disposal. $78 for a tire that's going on a car that I won't keep a week. I walked out. Maybe I'll actually buy a used tire. I haven't done than since I was a teenager, and even then, I knew that it was not a good idea. This old car has a salvage title, and I reckon it'll bring about $1000. It served us pretty well, actually. We bought it in 2003 for $5200 out the door. It was two years old then.

--I wish that all my guns had finishes as shiny and well-preserved as those in Django: Unchained.

--Remember that we still have troops in Afghanistan, for no reason that I can ascertain. This is over four years after our current President took office, and nearly four years after he won a Nobel Prize for peace. Why is he getting a pass on this?

--My elder daughter read the above over my shoulder, and said, "There's never a reason to go to war!" That stopped me down. I limited my response to 15 minutes. I hope she thinks about what I told her. She's a very smart kid, but I had no idea how sheltered she was.

--The news is full of stuff about a Notre Dame football player named Manti Te'o, who was this past fall a sensation because he played splendidly, despite his girlfriend passing away. Now we find out that she was not a real person, and he claims to have been pranked. There is rampant speculation as to how much he really knew.   Yet none of the newsies are openly addressing the issue of what motivation a single guy in an uber-masculine male-dominated sport would have had, to invent a mysterious long-distance relationship with a fake girlfriend.  It seems to me that the most likely answer is also a tragic story, too.

Memory: So. Hawt. (Almost)

Autumn, 1991.
U.N.T. Fencing Team Party.
Somewhere in the vicinity of U.N.T. campus.

On my way to the fencing club party, I dropped by the local beer-gettin' place, secure in the knowledge that my full beard would guarantee that I wasn't carded. I got 2 or 3 sixpacks of beer, and, thinking that the chicks dig sweet drinks, I got a pack of Bartles & Jaymes Golden Wine Coolers. Suh-weet. I was set. I was 19 years old. Off to the fencing team party.

Before I got to the checkout, though, I spied a hottie. But she was different than most hotties: she was actually a hottie who knew my name and would talk to me.

"Sam!" I gushed, wayyy un-cooly.

"Hi, Matt. What're you up to?" Sam inquired. She was tall. She was on my fencing team. She could spend hours in a crouch. She was fit. She was hawt. She had said (and thus had remembered) my name. And when you're 19, that means they Want You.

Play it cool, boy. "Oh, just headed over to the fencing club party. They've got food and such, but it's BYOB," I said, very cool. "They're screening The Duelists and Princess Bride during the party. You know-- 'cause of the fencing scenes and such." Damn. Of course she knows about the fencing scenes, you knob! "Wanna come with?"

She hesitated.

"It's only a couple of blocks away," I prodded.

"Wellllll..." she demurred. "I could drop by for a little while, for my team. After I drop off my friend here." She smiled. Her hair was chestnut. She liked swords, and she was named "Samantha." I was bewitched.

At the party, they had it in full swing. Almost every member of the geek squad U.N.T. Fencing Team was in the living room of a small apartment, watching Princess Bride.

Sam arrived. I had been drinking by this point in the evening. Did I mention that I was about 19 years old? Maybe 20.

After seeing that she had refreshments, I sat down in my comfy chair that I had commandeered in the living room. Sam, finding no place to sit, sat on the floor. I gestured to the front of my chair as a place to lean back against. Between my knees...

Athletes get to feeling comfortable with each other. We help each other stretch. We push each other. We sometimes hurt each other, a little. So when Sam leaned back against the chair between my knees, I knew that I was on solid ground when I began giving her a shoulder rub. Just yesterday, I'd seen her tear a guy up with her épée. I knew that her shoulders were tight, because that's part of the aftermath of time extending one's arm in a fencing crouch.

Back rub: Commence.

It was going well. Her shoulder muscles were melting under my fingers. She leaned back fully into the chair that I was sitting. Her head lolled back, causing secondary (primary) excitations.
The movie was on. The lights in the living room were turned down, to better see the TV. I had consumed 2 or 3 adult beverages. She was warm to the touch. I was giving her a back rub.

I drifted off.

I woke up.

Suddenly.

She was carefully moving away from me. To the other side of the room.

What?

What happened? What just happened here?

Sniff.

Matt, did you just...? Did you just fart? Because if you did, you just farted against the back of that girl's neck...

The smell wafted up.

Good. Gawd. I wasn't sure I could bear the stench. I must have expelled a LOT of gas.

She found her coat.

She left.

A "buddy" came up and said, "Dude! You just ripped a big one! Were you asleep?!?"

I think I saw Sam one other time.

From across the gym.

Oops.