THE BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION CONTINUES. WELL ... NOT REALLY.

Soooo...how did our birthday go?

Fine. If you call not getting a single stinking present on your 40th birthday "fine".

Alas...today, we make up for it.

Today we get.....

ZE TV!!!

Actually ... we can't decide which of the two TVs linked there we want. The first one...the one casually linked as "Ze" is a much nicer looking one, while the second one is bigger.

And as we all know...bigger is better.

...Except when it comes to penises. Trust me, ladies...bigger is more painful. Stick with a guy like your ol' Uncle Bob ... or as he's known in the underground sex world ... Mr. Peanut.

...I wonder if I'm even known in the underground sex world?

...And if I am ... do they really call me Mr. Peanut??

Wouldn't that be an insult??

Anyway...I've been after the old ball and chain for a month now, trying to break her down to buy a new television for our quaint little den. Because we've been watching the same 20" television now for about seven years and as I pointed out to her ... I can't see the damned thing anymore. I see flickering and an occasional pixel...but I need something BIG!! HUGE!! GIGANTIC!!! Because I'm OLD!!! I don't SEE SO GOOD!!! I have painful CATARACTS!!! Cataracts that cause me to NOT SEE SO WELL!!! And make me want to type ends of sentences IN ALL CAPS WITH EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!

So anyway, Suze has to "research" something like televisions before she just runs out and buys one.

Which irritates me to no end. I can walk in a store, see what I want and buy it. No problem. No questions. Boom...it's in my back seat and I'm chugging home.

Suze likes to visit every single g-damned department store in town and compare prices and interest rates and salesmen's crotch bulges.

Not me. BOOM! It's in my back seat.

Did I mention that already? The "Boom!" part?

Anyway...we saw this TV at Circuit City, which I swore a while back I would never ever ever deal with again, but what's a guy gonna do? Go without a TV??

So I drove her to Rex Electronics, which is a store that deals with last year's models of everything at closeout prices. Or as I like to call it..."complete and utter crap".

Then Sears.

Then Sam's.

Then home to the Internet where I pulled up the televisions and the best buys we could get on them.

None of them beat the Circuit City prices which are the same as on the links above.

So she's convinced that I know what the hell I'm doing.

Although...at Sears, she walked past some stoves and said "That's what we REALLY need...a new stove".

I said "Ah, yes. That's what we REALLY need. Because I can't remember the last time we gathered as a family and pulled up chairs and sat and watched the f'n STOVE all night long and were entertained by THE STOVE all night long. Yeah...if we had a new stove, that would give us all the freakin' entertainment we needed!"

...I swear. Sometimes she just doesn't have her priorities in line.

TV...THEN stove. Stove works fine. TV too small. "Die Hard" looks like a Flintstones episode. Therefore...NEW TV FIRST.

Sheesh.

So yesterday we went on a shopping spree for our birthday which amounted to the following items...

* A new garbage can for the kitchen since neither the baby or the dog can stay out of the old one.

* Some diapers.

* Some V-8 Splash for the baby.

* Several Christmas books at 75% off, which is a bargain if you like Christmas books that everyone and their mother have smeared their fingerprints all over. You can now catch cholera from these books, they've been handled by so many different people. She's going to give those out at Christmas gifts this year. Which means there's going to be a shitload of disappointed people on our Christmas list this year.

* Lunch at the mall's food court. I had a delicious Bourbon Chicken Sandwich that tasted more like roasted cat. Still, it was pretty good if you like your cat roasted. I prefer mine deep fried, but beggars can't be choosers.

We stopped by our mall's ice skating rink to let Andrew watch the skaters go by.

He absolutely LOVED this.

I took him out of his stroller, he toddled up to the plexiglass wall and laughed his baby ass off at all the people.

Some gals skated by, stopped and tapped on the plexiglass, flirting with him.

They were probably in their early 20s.

Susie had run back to the bookstore to make sure she hadn't missed any more Christmas bargains, so it was just me and the boy. Or as I now refer to him...the chick magnet.

He grinned his dimpled grin and laughed at them as they tapped away.

I smiled and made sure they knew I was his Daddy and if they played their cards right, I could soil their loins with the same seed that spawned this handsome baby by rubbing my crotch hard on the plexiglass.

They looked at me in utter disgust and skated away, calling me a "Freak".

Yeah.

Well...you're a couple of teases. Don't come back here teasing my boy anymore!

We went out to dinner last night while Susie's mom (no brother...YAY!!) watched Andrew.

We went to this nice place we used to go to quite a bit before Andrew was born. There's no way we could take him there now, because they have a dark shade of carpet that his crackers and cookies and hot dogs would really show up on.

We talked about how long we had known each other and what all we had been through.

Here's a fact I threw out at her.

* If on the day we started dating (late August, 1986), a little boy or girl was starting first grade...that same kid would be getting ready to graduate from college this spring.

I think that put it in perspective for both of us. It was like someone had punched the shit out of our guts. Susie couldn't quit talking about that. How, if she had gotten pregnant when we first had sex, we'd be parents of a kid with a learner's permit.

Frightening stuff.

Makes you wanna go out and hump someone else.

Then again, watching "Meet The Press" makes me wanna go out and hump someone else. So go figure.

Ran into my old roommate last night while TV shopping.

I really felt sorry for the guy. He's 39 ... and hasn't had a date since 1986. The year Susie and I met.

His standards for women are just too high. He has a mental list of everything he's looking for in a woman and he won't budge on it.

Basically, he would only go out with Princess Diana.

You know...while she was alive anyway.

He was out looking for computer stuff by himself on a Saturday night. And he just seemed so lonely. He was in a good mood and all, but when we left the store I told Susie that I was so glad I had her.

She smiled and told me the same thing.

I corrected myself and said I was glad I had "someone" and not her. Just as long as I'm not going home alone, that's the important thing.

I have to tell her this kinda thing to keep her on her toes. If she starts sensing that I love her, she may start getting all bitchy and clingy and needy on me.

Heh.

I kill me.

Oh!

I DID get two books yesterday...by this David Sedaris guy that this diary has been compared to recently.

I plan on reading those on my Oregon trip next week.

So yeah.

Happy Birthday to me and all that jazz.

Time to go wake the family up and get them dressed for church and then TV SHOPPING afterwards!!!

We've got a stinkin' Fellowship Dinner at church tonight so I won't get to sit and make out with my new TV.

That sucks.

Everything sucks.

Suck. Suck. Suck.

THE END