Mrs. theskinnyonbenny and I had made good, and we were living in a big ol' house on the water somewhere or other. By chance, Lisa Marie Presley was our next door neighbor. We had gotten to be friends with her, and she was kind of cool -- not at all like the freak that she is in real life.

Just try fitting current events, breasts, and some recognizable meaning into a paltry 17 syllables. Try, I dare you.

The first book that I've actually finished in almost six months was *The Unconsoled* by Kazuo Ishiguro. Like a couple of others that I had started and then abandoned, this one was tough to complete. I needed a finished book to keep from feeling stupid, so I persevered.

I'm trying to put together a playlist whose common thread is that all of the songs have to do with humans fighting a war against the robots, humans having been annihilated by robots, or robots plotting to take over the humans in some form. On top of this being a cool theme, based on the small collection that I've found, the music is really good too.

I was in a convenience store today, and a young guy came in wearing black pants with pinstripes and a Ruth's Chris t-shirt. I couldn't hear the clerk, but his side of the conversation went like this.

I just heard the story about how Maxim gave the new Black Crows album 2 1/2 stars out of 5, despite having never bothered listening to the album.

I started a contract with a company last week, and they set me up on their network and email systems. Their convention is first initial-last name, so mine should have been bschultz. Unfortunately, bschultz was already taken, so I got first initial-middle initial-last name. bmschultz.

I can't believe that we actually had a viable presidential candidate this year who denied evolution. Let's think through the rationale of a guy who wanted to lead the free world.

Yesterday, we went to a dumb little Valentines day party at Vanya's preschool. All the toddlers danced around while their teacher sang, and then we watched them eat their lunch. Then we watched them get grouchy as it came close to nap time.

It's been a half-year of firsts for us: First Halloween with a kid, first Thanksgiving, first Christmas and New Years, first day of preschool. Perhaps the most fun has been in the past week, which featured both the first Mardi Gras as well as Vanya's first birthday with us (and second overall).

I didn't get too much into Super Bowl pregame hype. For some reason, that one off weekend made it seem like a month since the conference championship games. To top that, I didn't have a strong rooting interest in the game, since neither team was local, and since I had no money on the line. There were bad reasons for me to cheer for either team.

What do you do if you're a big, giant corporation with bad financials?