Last night, Fondy enlisted my help in getting a little fix-it work done around her office. Unbeknownst to her (she has only known me some fifteen years after all), my handyman skills rate just a tad better than my overall proficiency as a blacksmith, but far, far worse than my mastery of the oboe. Nevertheless, I was up on the ladder, gamely trying to unscrew things with a screwdriver that had seen so much use its once-squared head had long-since been polished down a well-rounded nub. I worked away at it, all the while nursing a bum right shoulder that necessitated I do everything with my left hand (incidentally, did you know that clock-wise is the same direction regardless of which hand you use?). I had plaster rain down on my head, choking white dust settle over me in an omnipresent cloud, and some deceptively cushy-looking pink insulation trigger a rash on my neck and wrists. See, this is why I hate doing stuff around the house. If spending ten minutes up on a ladder taking stuff off a wall is enough to send me stumbling home, dizzy, my right eye swollen, and battling a splitting headache, I can’t imagine what thirty minutes vacuuming would do. Hell, cleaning out the garage would probably kill me.

Back on the work front, we are slowly making progress on those season five stories. Veeeery sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly. Every time we sit down to discuss, something comes up. Scheduling. Deals. Another mix! Actually three great mixes of late: Spoils of War (So what is the difference between the silent masked wraiths and the chatty ones? Ohhhhhhh, I see.), Be All My Sins Remember’d (Awesome. This one boasts the greatest visual effects sequences the show has ever done. Mark is going to be hard-pressed to top this one.), Miller’s Crossing (With that incredibly angsty McKay-Sheppard scene.) Yep, distractions galore. Like Lawren’s story concerning the travel arrangements he had to make for an actor last year. Given the amount of travel the actors do, it’s often in their best interests to get a Nexus pass that allows them to breeze through customs. Of course, the pass requires a fairly comprehensive background check and, as Lawren explained in the message he left on the actor‘s cell phone, “a retinal scan”. How James Bond. Cool, no? Well, turns out the actor didn‘t think so. There was clearly some sort of miscommunication because, the following day, Lawren received an anxious message on his answering machine wondering: “Why do they need a rectal scan?!” Hey, buddy, do you want the convenience of shorter airport waiting times or not?

Well, it’s time to dress up the dogs and prepare the veggie platter for the little trick-or-treaters. I’m going to really push the cauliflower this year as past experience has proven it to be the slowest-moving cruciferae on Halloween.

Today’s pics: You know how every so often you’ll read a report about some sorry individual whose partially-consumed remains are discovered in their home or apartment surrounded by the family pets? Well, I’m guessing that those incidents are payback for humiliations like this.