The ever eloquent Keith Obermann gives one of his best. And I give it to you, as my Independence Day gift.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Not Silvio Dante! Damn that David Chase. He could kill off Christafuh, no problem. Bobby Baccala? Who cares? Uncle Junior, AJ, Meadow, even Paulie Walnuts or Carm, and I would be upset, but mostly OK. Wll, upset if it were Paulie or Carm, frankly, AJ and Meadow are total dead weight. And I was happy to see Tony finally shove his shoe up AJ’s self-indulgent, whiney ass. But Sylivo? Little Steven? My pretend boyfriend? (Not to be confused with my imaginary long-time lover, The Bob, or my special boytoy, The Boss.) Silvio, ambushed in the parking lot of the Bing, hospitalized and never expected to regain consciousness? Noooooooooooooooo. This sucks. I wanted Sylvio to walk away.

I should know better of course, this has always been a morality play, and you can’t shoot a bitch in the forest, or strangle a co-worker for disloyalty and not expect to meet your just rewards. Which means last night’s Sopranos was mild compared to next week’s expected blood bath.

Still and all, I’ll miss Silvio and his hair.

And what kind of professional ethics does Peter Bogdonovich have? (not Peter, of course, his character) Telling an entire table full of shrinks that Melfi is treating Tony Soprano, a fact he only knows because he treats Melfi. So much for patient confidentiality. And then she reads that stupid article and dumps Tony, in a particularly snippy and bitchy way. Tony respects her though, and doesn’t kill her on the spot, which he would have done a few years ago, so so much for therapy isn’t working for him.

You and your baby on a Saturday night. And it was. Saturday we arrived at the summer place on the Gulf. Took our traditional first night walk down to the Sandbar for our traditional first night burger at the bar. And walking home I felt the first tickle in my throat.

Fell into bed and slept for 12 hours. Woke up to the cold from hell.

I have spent my entire vacation huddled in a double layer of sweat pants and t-shirts under extra blankets in bed. On one day only did I get in the Gulf to bullshit with the members of the Noodle Brigade. I have ventured out only under the cabana. No walks on the beach. No nights spent drinking martinis until I drool. No smoking. No dinners at restaurants.

No. This vacation has seen me sucking on lemon slices, sipping hot tea and eating very lemony/garlicky tabooli, trying to beat this into submission.

The RLA has gotten brown. Star has gotten brown. Last night another pair of friends arrived from Tennesee to check out the summer place and consider buying in, and I all but talked to them through a screen door, with a hazmat mask on.

Do I know how to party or what?

Still, I managed to drag my sorry ass over to the most fabulous yarn store I’ve ever set foot in, and picked up a pile of wonderful things. Star and I explored the snotty bead store, and found, like so much else in life, that observation alters outcome. In this instance, the owner was in the store that day and the usually thinly veiled hostility of the help was transformed into cheery greetings and warm offers of assistance.

And, the best thing of all? I has a bucket. I found it in the surf as the RLA and I walked home from the Sandbar along the beach. There it was, bobbing and rolling and looking like it would wash ashore, and then not. I waded out in my shorts and snagged it. It is purple. It is mah bucket. Mr. Walrus, eat your heart out.

I have a dirty little secret that I feel compelled to share with you all.

I have a soft spot for romantic comedies (films). I have an especially soft spot for Hugh Grant. I love Hugh Grant. I also adore Drew Barrymore, and will watch any romantic comedy she makes. The RLA and I just watched “Words and Music” and we both loved it.

Does that make us shallow?

Star, the number 1 and number 3 surrogate daughters and I went to see the revival of Camelot on Sunday. With us was one of Star’s nieces and the man who broke my heart when I was twenty-one.

The Number 1 and I waited outside the mini-van for him. I was smoking a pink cigarette, and had already put down a quick martini in anticipation of our meeting. Last year we saw each other for the first time in almost 20 years, but the RLA was with me to remind me of who I am and what year it is.

I started by saying to the N1SD “do you remember last year or so, we took you to dinner at the middle eastern place and as we were leaving, you mentioned in passing that you thought perhaps you had been in love?”

She didn’t. I reminded her that she had just broken up with someone and wasn’t sure if her heart was broken too. Oh. Yeah. She remembered now.

“Well,” I replied “it seems certain that you weren’t in love, or you would have known. This man we’re waiting for, he was my first love. Your father would have it that I left him for this guy, but that isn’t the whole truth. This is the man who broke my heart, the one who got away.”

I put out the pink cigarette, and looked up to where he was crossing the street, his grey hair longer and his bald spot larger than last year. He’s wearing a wheat-colored linen suit. I smile and say to her, “Hard to believe, huh?”

But oh, those salad days when we were together. We were the king and queen of cool…at least until he walked into my dorm room, took me by the hand, stared deep into my eyes and said “Hey. When nothing’s there anymore, nothing’s there. What are you going to do?” and walked out.

It was a week before finals. I managed a 4.0 that semester, but I’ll be damned if I can remember anything from that moment to when my parents picked me up to take me home for the summer.

My last semester at school was painful, because I saw him everywhere on campus, and with him the stringy blonde who had taken my place. I graduated. I moved to New York City. And then, a miracle happened. He called me out of the blue to say that he was passing through town and would I like to have dinner with him.

So I did. And he moved in with me and spent the summer before graduate school living in my first apartment with me. We walked to Chinatown. We saw avant garde films projected onto sheets in unmarked galleries in a nascent SoHo. We argued. We loved each other. And then summer ended, and he went on to film school and then we drifted apart.

But always and ever, I wanted him to return. I married the Antichrist praying for a “Graduate” moment, when he would show up and take me away. And I would have gone, gladly. I would have walked away from any and every relationship I was ever in, to go away with Bruce.

Until I married the RLA. And then, like looking into Schroedinger’s box, reality became fixed. There is no longer a shoulda woulda coulda. There is only the RLA, and our life together.

And this life I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Oh, yeah. Camelot. Michael York was wonderful, the woman who played Guinevere was wonderful, the giant who played Lancelot had a beautiful voice. As always, Jenny leaves Arthur for that tool, Lance. I cried, thankful that at last and at least, I know when I’m in the right place.

Ming the Merciless woke up at four a.m. and demanded to go out. Not having opposable thumbs, he required my assistance in this matter to turn off the alarm, unlock the pool door and open same.

I tried to go back to sleep, and was just getting into a dream when my alarm clock rang. I managed to hit the snooze button and then slept through the second ringing. Which isn’t really ringing, it’s some electronic version of surf. Sounds more like broken glass rattling in a thermos, but whatever.

The RLA has been on duty up at my parent’s home, packing and sorting and dumping for the last week. He took the dogs, but let me bring JoJo home on Sunday. This has added a dog walk to my morning routine. This morning, since I was already dragging and late, JoJo refused to poop. Around the block, up and down, singing the doggie has to poop song. Nada. Nothing. No use.

Running really late, I zoomed to the train station, where the only available parking spots were those formed by the space left when two over-sized vehicles park in compact spaces, each with one set of tires over the line, thereby rendering the third, central space unusable for anything wider than a bicycle.

To the top of the parking garage, and back down, narrowly avoiding head-ons with the folks rushing up the ramp later than I. To the flat lot, where the person in front of me took the last remaining space. Back out onto Dixie Highway, back to the original parking garage, and up to the roof, where, hidden behind a giant pickup truck, I found a place to park Zelda Bleu.

The escalator to the train platform was undergoing repair, and so I made it to the platform as the train was leaving the station. But not before some asshat punched the elevator button six or seven times, reaching over me to do so. Cause, yeah, (and I said it loudly) I wouldn’t have thought to do that.

Finally made it to the office, where, in anticipation of our new hire, one of my co-workers “cleaned” the new kid’s work space. That is, if by clean you mean dumped all the old files in the trash, piled everything that might be useful or kept on the desk, emptied the bookshelves into piles on the chair, opened every box and left the whole thing looking worse than it did before she started. And left it there for me, no doubt, to make ready for the new kid.

Thanks. I needed something to keep myself busy with today. Other than my regular workload, I mean.