At last, I have arrived!

Finally, after a year of admittedly sporadic and nonthematic blogging, I have been blessed with . . . an anonymous commenter! Surely, this is every bloggers dream come true! (Actually, every bloggers dream come true would be someone of power and influence reading your blog, deciding you must get paid for it, and then eventually offering you a book deal . . . but baby steps, people.) Actually, in truth, I have received a couple of anonymous comments in the past, but nothing like this one. While I feel that such effort must be rewarded, I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to respond. Howdy seems a bit . . . unbalanced, but he did pay me a compliment, and I'm a sucker for compliments. (Aren't we all?) But, is the compliment merely a ploy to deflect from the fact that he blatantly plugged four of his own sites in his comment? You just can't decipher people's motives these days, and the job is particularly difficult when you are dealing with:

• A long quote from George Carlin (appropos as it may be), followed by
• The aforementioned compliment, followed by
• An appeal to me to acknowledge a God-like figure in my blog (but sorry, Howdy, I'm an atheist. Or an agnostic. I can never decide. I guess I'm agnostic about whether I'm an atheist or an agnostic.), followed by
• A mystifying, undecipherable statement about how I should treat others, followed by
• A long Bible passage/Byrds lyrics, followed by
• A sign-off with right-wing rant postscript, followed by
• The aforementioned blatant plugs.

This guy's kind of all over the place! But thanks, Howdy, for taking the time. I hope you keep tuning in.

POKER UPDATE: Actually, I didn't play any poker yesterday at all! I didn't feel very well, and when there's money on the line, a headache and flu-like symptoms can be an impediment. Also drunkenness, that can be an impediment too. So, to recap, the best time to play poker is when you are healthy and relatively sober. Like now!

Unfortunately, I have to do some housework. The reason I have to housework is because Jackspatula is outside working hard to remove the "noxious weeds" growing in the alley behind our house. (More on this later.) As everyone knows, when your spouse is working hard at something (as opposed to sleeping on the couch), you are not permitted to sit on your ass playing some game--you must work hard at something, too. That's one of the great things about marriage--you can guilt each other into actually getting stuff done.

About the "noxious weeds": a couple of weeks ago, we got a notice from the city informing us that we must get rid of said weeds, which are supposedly impeding the path of the garbage trucks, or "action will be taken." We are not the only ones who got this notice--our entire block got one. So basically, our entire block has been threatened, on paper, by the city--the same city that refuses to do anything about the abandoned house across the street, where "noxious weeds" are growing all over the lawn, and where allegedly there is a rabid badger living in the garage. The city has some very strange priorities.