PMSimon.com

You have to be a well-qualified, well-known person to be invited to contribute to the Huffington Blog, right?

Or you just have to have a famous father.

The "author bio" suggests that she's just a third-grade teacher in New York. Hey, ANY ol' third grade teacher can get her stuff on the Huffington Blog. Or not.

Note the sparkling wit, the exciting prose, the ear for dialogue:

At the school I teach at in the Bronx, one student who had never been to school before shouted on the first day of kindergarten, "Stop reading so loud, Teacher! I am trying to sleep!"

And while we're at it, do they have a shortage of commas in the system?:

So please preschools, teach your students to behave at age four if only to make my life easier when they're eight.

I'm looking forward to more entries from Reg'lar Folk at the Huffington Post. Does Bill Moyers have any family members available?

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I was all ready to get work done relatively early, write something for here, then kick back and see how Jack Bauer saves the world this year when I heard some gurgling outside.

Uh oh.

Fran's bath water was re-emerging in the alley outside my office window. I ran outside and, sure enough, we have a blockage. And it's late enough so that getting the home warranty people to track down a plumber and have them come out tonight is a problem. Oh, and the blockage effectively makes all toilets and sinks in the house unusable, unless we want everything to back up into the alley.

This is when renting is a good idea- call the landlord or the super and it's taken care of, at someone else's expense. Our landlord, on the other hand, is me. And it's my job to fix things, at my expense. This blockage is at a point where I can't get to it- it'll take the pros with their motorized pro plumbing tools to do it. In the meantime, we're kinda stuck.

Sometimes, when I'm feeling morose and missing my parents, I think about how the family safety net's gone, how I'm the last resort now, not Dad. Something happens, I have to be the adult and handle it. That's life, but I don't have to LIKE it. And the sewer line backing up, well, I don't have to like THAT, either.

Sigh.

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"American Idol" was on while we ate dinner (New York feed, okay? Sheesh) and it was the first time I'd seen any of it since the early bad-audition weeks. I would hope that everyone is aware that the finalists suck. I mean, you HAVE to know that, right? It's obvious that Bo Bo Bo Bo Banana Nana Fo Fo Fee Fi Fo Fo Bo Bice is a cross between a Vegas hack lounge-rocker and Michael F'ing Bolton and Carrie Whatshername is a "Nashville Star" reject, isn't it? Hello?

That's the problem. Y'all can't HEAR.

Simon Cowell is too easy on these people. Hearing Bo massacre 70s horn-rock nightmare "Vehicle" (Ides of March, where are you now that we need you?) and Carrie strain to match Martina McBride on Sean Hannity's theme song, I'd have simply asked for new candidates, or I'd just tell everyone "show's over, no winner this year. Thanks for coming, drive home safely. See you in the Fall." And then I'd run like hell. Yes, I'd probably have to go into hiding, but at least it would possibly prevent the inevitable number one smash piece of crapola from being released. Does anyone really want to hear Bo Bice on the radio? Or Carrie Underwood? How many Ruben Studdard CDs have you purchased?

The consolation is that the national nightmare will soon be over. One will win tomorrow, there'll be one "hit" single, then we'll go back to the "Kelly Clarkson is the only 'Idol' with any semblance of a long-term career" days, which is fine with me. With faith, and several Newcastle Brown Ales, I can make it through.

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Carrie Underwood.

We went to dinner, came back, and turned the TV on in the middle of the craptacular final episode. Naturally, we had to watch, and it ws a parade of the losers paired with people like Rascal Flatts and Kenny G (!) and Billy Preston and Babyface and the Worst Rendition of an Aerosmith Song Ever by a bunch of Idol losers with Kenny Wayne Shepherd and then Bo sang "Sweet Home Alabama" lounge-style backed by What's Left of Lynyrd Skynyrd and then, finally, they'd burned up enough time to get to the end. And Carrie won, meaning there'll be one hit single and then we can go back to ignoring all of it. Anyone heard from Fantasia Barrino lately?

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Is it the holiday weekend yet?

I'm serious. Can I start now? Please?

I can see the finish line from here. I'm torn between sprinting towards it and crawling for lack of energy.

Right now, I'm crawling. Everything's in slow motion. Time to watch some of those "CSI:NY"s we have on the DVR. I can't handle much else at the moment.

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Lileks seems hell-bent, for now, at least, on moving to Arizona, maybe, in a few years, possibly, to which I say go for it. Minneapolis or Phoenix? Phoenix, at least between September and April. Summers? That's what air conditioning is for.

Well, okay, while I like Arizona a lot, I like the ocean a lot more, so we ended up in California. But we felt a decade ago what Lileks is feeling now- tired of the winter, tired of the cold and the humidity and six months of gray. When the opportunity arose to go someplace warm and sunny all year round, we jumped at it. It meant leaving family, friends, everything we knew to go someplace where we didn't really know too many people, but the offer was too good and we had to do it. Haven't regretted it since- every day, we look around at the ocean and the mountains and think, yeah, this will do just fine.

One thing you lose in the move is history- you're leaving a place you know, a place where you know the stuff only the locals know, the shortcuts and the bargains and the secrets. And you're going to a place where the history's gone on without you, where it'll be a while before you're truly a local, even if everyone around you is also from someplace else. That was the case here- I'd been to L.A. a few times before moving here, but it took some time to feel like this is home. Now, it does.

So, I think a move to a warmer clime is the way to go. Worked for us. But if he's gonna move to the Valley of the Sun, he'll have to do some history homework first.

I recommend going here first. True Phoenix history.

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Oliver Wendell Douglas is dead.

But he'll live forever.
Of course he will.

Thanks, Eddie. Send our love to Lisa, Mr. Haney, Hank Kimball, and Arnold.

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Overcast. Ran, ate, went down to Orange County, saw "Madagascar" (free tickets from Ralphs, it was OK, nothing I'd pay to see), bought a gift at Hilo Hattie, browsed at Borders, ate, browsed at Virgin, shopped some more, came home, worked a little.

The excitement is overwhelming.

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