Sorry for the absence between updates here, but some significant things have occurred in the last few days, though not necessarily in this order:

1. I sunburned the hell out of my back.
I was weeding in the back yard on Saturday, and foolishly neglected to wear sunscreen, a hat or a shirt. Now I am paying the price with a back roughly the color of raspberry sherbet.

Having a badly sunburned back is, of course, great fun. You have to try not to wrinkle the skin on your back, because if you do, incredible itching and pain will result. I imagine I looked a little like some demented marionette at work this morning, involuntarily jerking my shoulders in response to the sharp twinges of pain.

I bought Aloe Vera gel at lunch and drove home with it, to soothe my back. Putting it on made it hurt one thousand times worse, and I ran around the house screaming profanities. I actually said "whoremaster!" for some unknown reason. I probably read it in a Stephen King book. My cat would not stop yelling and is lucky I did not behead him.

Also, there are ants everywhere in my house. I killed them with glee and shouted my nastiness at them. They allowed me to externalize my horrific pain.

It sounded kind of like this: "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD! OW! OW! OW! DIE! DIE ANT! OH YES! DIE! DIE! HAHAHAHAHA!" and so on. I believe leading Hellraiser theoreticians would have surmised that I had crossed the line where pain, murder, death and pleasure blend together into a symphony of evil.

Now I am getting twinges that feel like needles poking into my back.

2. Phil Hartman contacted me to tell me I may have been the victim of identity theft.
Obviously, not the Phil Hartman. No, this is a detective in the town where I used to live, who told me that some quality individuals had ransacked my mailbox, along with the mailboxes of other good folk of the C Building. Actually, I don't know if they're good folk or not. They could be chickenfondlers for all I know.

So I went down to the police station to reclaim my mail. I waited for Phil Hartman for a long while, and tried to keep thoughts of guilt out of my mind. As soon as I entered the police station, I felt like The Man was going to spring out from behind the institutional plastic rows of chairs and nab me. This led to subsequent grandiose fantasies involving the breaking of windows, the scaling of trees and the shouting of "You'll never take me alive!"

Anyway, it doesn't seem like the mail thieves actually managed to do anything with the info they gleaned from my cell-phone bill and bank statement, but it's a little disquieting to know that I may not be me. I mean, I thought I was the one eating asparagus salad last night, but maybe it was an identity thief!

Does that mean I have to eat the salad again?

3. There is mouse poo all over my desk.
Self-explanatory, though I should state that this is not the sort of treatment I expect after I make it clear that I would like to rehabilitate you from your life of carefree mouseness, Mr. Work Mouse. I understand that I didn't get the humane trap thing that I was talking about in order to save you from the evil glue-trap setters, but I really did think about it quite seriously.

Isn't that enough for you?