February is the meanest month

It's almost February in Michigan which means it's time to get out of town. No airplanes for me anymore, I'm ready to jump in the beemer. By the time I return from this new excursion, I'll have 70,000 miles on it after 27 months. The trade in value will be 12 cents but no matter I'm getting a 535i in June. Manual transmission of course. When I left off in October I had just returned from a three week, 15 state cruise and figured that I would be driving to Arizona in January/February. Then on an impulse I remembered that I had really enjoyed my first cruise (on a ship, of course) and that I might do that instead. So last Friday I called to book it and this Friday I leave from Miami for Nassau. And making a road trip out of it as well. Did I mention is a singles cruise? I don't want to jinx myself but the first one was an over-40 singles cruise and:(1) most of them were way over 40; and (2) there were at least three times as many women as men -- any most of the men weren't Sean Connery lookalikes.

By the way, it's a bit past midnight which is the perfect time to write a blog. (I never could have imagined using the phrase "writing a blog" a year ago. ) Blog is such an unpleasant sounding word. In my mergers and acquisitions days -- you know, before the earring -- I first heard the word accretive. Isn't that ugly and doesn't it sound like it isn't a real word? Actually the spell checker doesn't even recognize it. How about cacophony? You are no doubt asking yourself what about pleasant sounding words. Melody? What do you think?

After thousands of hours of playing super solitaire games on the computer -- spider, forty thieves, blondes and brunettes, curds and whey, etc. -- and spending a grand total of about three minutes surfing, I have discovered the "social utilities" myspace.com and facebook.com, along with the age-appropriate babyboomerspeoplemeet.com. These are so much better than the online dating services -- especially the dreaded and dreadful eharmony. Speaking of which, how the hell to they get away with discriminating based on values and religion. Don't they use federal lines of communication? Would someone please nail their asses? Sorry. . . Myspace.com is the creepiest yet most fascinating place. I have been telling people that there is so much misrepresentation and counter-misrepresentation to combat the deliberate misrepresentation, that it seems like I'm the only dumbshit who actually has a factual profile. Actually that's a complete dramatization as the gecko would say. And of course to me it's only a self serve dating service --I have no idea how to get songs and other stuff. On the other hand, facebook.com is the in service with people who are young enough to be my children (and are) and it's locked down tighter than a drum. So after working with computers every day since 1979 -- no shit -- I have finally become a peruser of the Internet. Finally, may I say that my eighteen year old son hates that I use these services -- he refuses to accept me as a friend on facebook -- and wants me to behave like a normal retired person. Which I assume means buy some white shiny loafers, pull my pants up to my nipples and move to Boca.

I leave Wednesday (Jan. 30) for the south, so I'll be writing each day. I hope it's mildy entertaining. I leave you with the words of Lewis Black: "MTV is to music what KFC is to chicken."