Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

The Verizon truck parked in front of our house the other day had a couple ladders in it: "Property of Bell Atlantic" and "Property of NYNEX".

Monopoly swallowed by larger monopoly swallowed by larger monopoly. OK, largest-by-far-in-an-oligopoly (for the moment).

And no I don't want to pay $70 a month so that Verizon will let bits of information that make up cable television and Internet access come to my house, at no marginal cost to the company.

I want Dad back.

Missing Amazing Things Arts Center volunteer appreciation or leader evening or whatever.

COA News is going to be the death of me.

Mother will be BCCd on all Agaric e-mails until she promises not ever again to ask about something she will make no effort to understand.

"How is work going?"

"Badly."

"Why?"

If I had a gun, I would shoot one of us.

Continuing a theme from the blog...

That poor thin telephone pole with the lines sagging way down on one side of it was I thought being rescued.

Nope, Asplundh has pulled closer and it's apparent they kill trees only, not prop up dead ones.

Wednesday evening, 2007 May 2.

I called as soon as I got her e-mail -- BCCd to I don't know how many people. But of course I couldn't say anything intelligent. Missed the visiting hours Sunday on the excuse of going to the Cape (which I didn't even do) and now I'm missing the funeral.

And still behind on work. God, I'm a horrible person.

So I posted a whole mess of thoughts on violence and nonviolence, naturally enough under the title Book review review.

I have to stop spending hours on stuff like that, and on reading Internet news, but to start I will foreswear my precious online comics until they come in one-page form.

• Candorville (this will be hard)
• Minimum Security (support the one radical comic on comics.com!)
• Pearls Before Swine

As Grandpa just called Mom and complained for about an hour about how no one visits him.

(First he told me what failures Jakob and I were for not using a screwdriver wedged behind the metal ledge to pull it off.)

So today I sent an e-mail blast to friends in this hemisphere inviting them to make vacation plans to Grandpa's house with me.

And I'll document here that we were out at the cape if not last Saturday, the one before that, and saw Grandpa at Judy's for the second-to-last night of Passover.

Last Saturday I attended the New England News Forum Conference

Visited Brian and Stacey, at Stacey's in Boxborough, afterward.

Stacey and I had quinoa. Brian had Matzah Pizza.

We played "Family Business" and a word game where you had to put down nouns that best matched an adjective, with another player judging the winner (without knowing who put down what).

Agd, what's wrong with me. Too much work to be done, and my reaction is to do in-depth research on my upcoming book "how to eat more than the nation of Eritrea consumes in a week before lunch"

I walked Mom as well as Zelda yesterday and today for a minimum 30 minutes at a go.

Wednesday I fasted, a good 36 hours.

But I'm still falling asleep at the computer ("I haven't finished what I need to do") without even brushing my teeth.

And eating way too much, snacking and wolfing my own leftovers, yesterday.

And today I'm suppposed to go running, to start a Sunday, Tuesday, Friday schedule of exercise.

Only two people showed up, out of a possible 8 (or maybe 80 if I hadn't set a guest limit), but Free Press' system was so bad that one person who had signed up had written at the time that they only wanted to be put in touch with others, because they couldn't make it. A woman bringing a guest (her husband) canceled because she had to go to a union meeting. And at the last minute another woman canceled.

Spoke to Grandpa on the phone today while I walked Zelda. We took care of Rusty for the past couple weeks while Grandpa and Barbara were on a cruise from Argentina around the southern end of Chile and north to Santiago.

They are perfectly happy with a woman president.

Chile has three industries: tourism, [something], and copper mining.

Last weekend Mom's Little Sister Stephanie and I walked the dogs straight down Fisher Street and, following my lead, through (or between) two yards and into the thin stripe of Cochituate state forest around the lake, which happens to be at a 50 to 60 degree angle.

We rapelled down using the dogs' retractable leashes.

So I did not move the boat. Dan took the bullet for me.

After Grandpa sided with Judy on hiring a captain, even after it was discovered at the last minute that -- quite the opposite of the original claim -- the insurance company would not cover damage caused by a licensed captain, I resolved not to be party to the fiasco.

It's fun to be right, as long as the disasters predicted are small-scale (a bad voyage as opposed to global warming).

Dan wants to join the Air National Guard. He claims he's done his research, on the internet.

An ex-recruiter, the local units web site, and the .gov sites.

"I'm tied to a geographical area with my unit."

"Air Force not army" (none of the Army Nat'l Guard horror stories will happen, is the claim)

I'd have to do my initial training somewhere else.