The PHB is back from his week of training.

He's in his office, even as I type, "customizing" the Cold Fusion templates that manage the look and feel of the new, improved site. The one I've been busting my ass over for two and a half months.

Can you say: Recipe for Disaster? Can you say: All my work, down the toilet, until it hits a clog in the U-bend?

Can you repeat my mantra? Not enough alcohol in the world.

Sigh. Back to banging my head on a wall, uselessly.

It appears that last month, while I was on vacation, the PHB changed something in the new site architecture, and forgot to mention it to me.

It appears that the graphic calendar is now a graphic event manager. Not just a matter of semantics, it is a different management module. It has different fields and different properties. Most importantly, it is a different link to a different page.

I discovered the change just now, after entering about 30 events in the calendar, only to have them show up, well, no-fucking-where on the new site.

Just a half a day's work, down the crapper, because the moron I work for changed a big old part of the new site architecture and forgot to tell me, his little worker bee, about it.

And do you know what he'll say when I mention it to him? He'll say "My bad." This from the mouth of a sixtyish white guy who has taken to dying his (remaining) hair.

Can I shoot him, or would that be my bad.

Time for me to start entering all that fucking data, all over again.

It's Friday, and there is alcohol on the horizon. Tomorrow, I'm going on a road trip with a girlfriend. The Quilter's Shop Hop.

Have I mentioned lately that I work for an idiot?

Yesterday morning, I had the old i-pod loaded with Bob Marley. I was totally plugged in, and left myself plugged in for an hour or so, before I decided that I didn't want to run down the battery to the point where I couldn't be cocooned against the unwashed masses on the ride home.
Just before I left work, I checked my e-mail and there was a message from someone who said they were writing a book about Mr. Marley's live shows from the mid-seventies to his death. They'd found me via my list of concerts I'd seen, and wanted to know if I had any memories I could share.

This was my response:

I saw him in Montego, Jamaica at the first Reggae Sunsplash. Maybe it was the second. In any event, it was one of his last concerts prior to his death, so the summer of '79 or '80. The venue was a soccer stadium. The field was packed; I can't imagine that the show was not sold out.

There were armed guards at the gates. I handed my ticket into an outstreched hand, only to have a rifle dropped between me and the hand. "No, Miss," said the soldier, "That's not a ticket taker."

Other hands came from out of the crowd and unclasped my watch from around my wrist. I pulled on one end of the band, and the unseen person tugged on the other. Then the crowd surged and my watch was gone.

I was with a group of friends who had all traveled to Montego Bay for Sunsplash. There were about 8 of us, and, as I recall, we all piled into a little Ford rental to get to the show. We were two deep on laps, someone was stretched sideways across all the other's laps, making a third layer.

There were a number of opening acts: I remember Burning Spear and Peter Tosh. I remember when Bob Marley sang "Chase the Crazy Baldheads" my friends and I all looked at each other, then at the crowd, and realized... we were the only white people we could see. We just kept dancing. He was amazing. The energy on the field was palpable. But it was a little scary, too. We made jokes about the MoBay Massage, which was the pitter patter of little fingers all over your body, as anything liftable was taken off of you.

I'm sorry that I can't remember more at the moment. Twenty years, my friend, is a lifetime. But one of the guys who was with me is reachable via the internet. He's a sound engineer, and may be able to give you more details.

Did any of you ever see Bob Marley? Want to send your memories to this guy? Drop me a line, and I'll send you his request and address.

Knowing my politics (pinko, liberal, yellow-dog democrat) many people have asked me if I've seen Fahrenheit 9-11. I have not. I don't know if I can. While I do have very stable, nay, even low, blood pressure, I'm afraid that seeing the list of Bush's sins laid out like an all-you-can-eat buffet will cause me to stroke out.
See, unlike most of the sheep that make up the American voting public, I never forgot the links in the chain of events that Michael Moore has strung together.

I remembered that Osama Bin Laden was a friend of America, back when it was the "Evil Empire" that was bogged down in Afghanistan, and Bin Laden was a freedom fighter.

I remembered that the Bush family business was oil, as was the Bin Laden family business, and that they did business with each other.

I remembered that Saddam Hussein was America's chosen one back when we were fighting the Iranians, and the Iraqis were our friends. But that was after we left the Shah of Iran twisting in the wind, after years of keeping him propped up.

I remembered that only one person on Capitol Hill had a son or daughter in the military.

I remembered that no one in the Bush administration actually served in Viet Nam. Or even in the military. Bush's own tenure in the National Guard was suspect, bought as it was with his father's connections, and cut short as it was by Dubya going AWOL.

I said from the very first day, that the Bushies knew and allowed the tragedy to happen in order to give them the "moral" imperative to go to war and conquer the oil fields.

Go see Fahrenheit 9-11? Yeah, probably... but bring the defibrillator with me.

Today is my anniversary. The RLA and I have been married for thirteen years.

Thirteen years ago, right about this time of day, we stood under a chuppah, held up by our friends, in the courtyard of the temple where the RLA had grown up, and pledged our troth. It was a magnificent summer Sunday morning in Rochester, New York. There were little birds chirping, and the grass was soft and green. The sky was blue. The RLA's hands were cold as ice, and I thought "Better you than me, being scared as shit."
The chuppah we used, I had made in graduate school, before I was kicked out. It was woven on an antique loom, with pearls and tea-dyed lace and all sorts of ivory and white threads. I was at the nadir of my life, and I imbued that piece with all the hopes for love and happiness that I could muster. The temple in Miami shipped it up to Rochester. The poles were lost in transit, so the RLA and I went off the local Home Depot equivalent and bought poles. The only things we could find that fit the holes in the corner grommets were tomato stakes. Metal, coated in green rubber, and with thorns, to help the tomatoes cling.

We had a reception at the Faculty Club on the University of Rochester campus, where the incomparable Father-In-Law had been a professor. The wedding cake was chocolate, with a dark chocolate ganache icing, and mocha buttercream swiss dots. I wanted the baker to put silver non-parielles, like chrome studs, on the dots, but there wasn't enough time (or money, one suspects) for her to do that. Our little cake topper was a pair of old gnarly gnomes, so dark and brown that people thought they were also chocolate.

Of all the people there, only one was a friend and not a relative, of mine. There were friends of ours, but only Andy was there for me, alone. He (Andy) immediately figured that out, and went around all day introducing himself thusly:

"Hello. I'm Andy. I'm L's ONLY friend." This is still how we refer to each other. Even the secretaries at his office know who I am when I say I'm Andy's only friend.

Tonight we'll go out to a French restaurant. It was all part of my plan, when I chose this date. Bastille Day. I always get a decent French meal, once a year. There's usually champagne flowing like water, and a few times during the evening I get to stand up and pretend to know the words to La Marseillaise. Depending on where you are, there may be fireworks. Sooner or later, I'll even get to spend an anniversary in France.

Magic happens. Happy anniversary.

I just got a call from the department secretary to rag on me about how the page containing the cafeteria menu isn't updated. Or, at least, it wasn't when she checked it yesterday.

I asked if she'd checked it today before she called me. No, she hadn't. Of course she hadn't, because if she had, she would have seen an updated menu. Which I posted yesterday, but after the only time she looked, apparently.

She also wanted to let me know that some volunteer had looked at the page and it wasn't right. Fine. So you both looked at it yesterday morning, and waited until lunch time today to bitch at me.

The PR department (of course) does this all the time. They call and ask me if I've posted crap, rather than looking at the web site.

Why? Why is it easier to call me than to click once? Do they love to hear the tone in my voice implying that they don't have sufficient brain cells to rub together? Are they laying odds that I'll crack and actually call them an idiot to their face? Or ear, as the case may be.

Or is it that they are just truly and monumentally stupid?