Raining On My Parade, Part I
We were told that my father would be able to return to work as soon as he was released from hospital. Over a week later, he still walks with a considerable limp, his leg is still swollen, and he is taking his second week off work. I hate it when my father is home. He makes a mess of the entire house as he simultaneously works on several different project. No wonder you never finish anything, you idiot, you work on it for five minutes and then move on to three other tasks! He took over the entire family room by spreading out his mail from the past month of so. That's all fine and good, he needed the space to make sense of it all and I can understand that. But he spread it out last Sunday night (not yesterday, the previous Sunday) and hadn't touched it again by the time I took matters into my own hands on Thursday. The downstairs bathroom is in shambles since my mother insisted we tear down the wallpaper and remove the mirrors... without providing a time table for when she would paint the walls and have the new sink available for Dad to install. Gah, idiots! The moral of the story is twofold: 1) living here is the penance I am paying for all my myriad sins and 2) I feel no sympathy for either of my parents, those people deserve each other.

Raining On My Parade, Part II
This is the wettest summer within memory. There are more rainy days than not. The biggest problem here is that the Mousemobile's primary means of ventilation is an open window; the air conditioner has never worked properly. So, when it is pouring rain, I cannot have a window open with becoming soaked. But, while the rain has depressed spirits, it has not depressed temperatures, leaving me in a steaming greenhouse of a car with little to no air. And even if the air conditioner worked, I could not use it, because all the heat trapped within the Mousemobile clashes with the cooler rain falling on the windshield, causing it to fog up. So, I have to leave the windows up to stay dry, and my sole source of moving air must be diverted to the windshield to let me avoid wrapping the car around a tree. It is my longstanding policy that I love snow, but I hate rain. Hate it! Bring on the drought, burn, baby, burn!

Fight Club
It's been over a week, and there are no new threats to my person from Kid Hugh. Remember, kids, violence never solved anything... actually, that's not true. To borrow the example from Robert Heinlein, ask the city fathers of Carthage* if violence ever solved anything. Violence has been the solution to many problems throughout the ages; it may be unpleasant, but the capacity for violence and the comprehension of violence as an often effective means to a desired end is inherent to all Mankind.

*And if you don't know what Carthage is, please, just die.