It's a death trap held together with packing tape.

It really is. I'm talking about my car, which Anne has dubbed "Busty". I myself call it "Gimpy". It's a 1989 Honda Civic. It lacks a stereo - there's not even a tape deck. It's manual transmission, one of the side mirrors is broken, the front windshield has these two cracks, the front left signal light is smashed, and there's a huge dent in the same corner as the light. I haven't been motivated to get things fixed, my logic (mistaken, I now must concede) being that if it looks like shit, no one will fuck with it. I keep nothing of value in it - there's some newspapers, some paper bags and a blanket. So why the hell do these punkass kids keep fucking with it?

I live in a fairly safe neighborhood. My house is directly across from a park. There's a high school just around the corner, and when school's not in session, some of the high school kids like to hang in the park, and (rather conspicuously) smoke weed. About a year and a half ago, someone smashed a window and tried to steal my car. They tried to stick a coat hanger in the ignition, and broke off the signal lever. They also rifled through the glove compartment, somehow missing the valet key. There's nothing like incompetent car thieves. Last week, (December 24) I went to move my car to avoid getting a street sweeping ticket since we were going out of town for a few days. I discovered that someone had pried open the driver's side window, and rifled through things, again. I left no valet key in the glove compartment this time, but I did get a nice Christmas present from the Santa punks - a Razor scooter left in my trunk. "Oh we're keeping it. That's a Christmas present!" declared Zack. I've already ridden it around my block several times. It gives me great pleasure to scoot around in front of those kids. Ta-ta, punks!

Okay , so I think I have the layout down for my site. I'm sure I'll move things around in the future, but I spent enough time tinkering with it yesterday. Hmmmm, where shall I begin? I suppose I'll start with our trip down south.

We decided to drive down to SoCal on the 24th, and come back on the 27th. Both sets of families protested at the short amount of time spent down there, but we were like, "too bad, suck up and deal!" Okay, well not in so many words, but that was the gist. Turns out, though, that it was a good thing we did things that way. No, there weren't the typical family tensions and stress - I'll write more about the family stuff later, but Zack forgot his inhaler. Doesn't sound like a big deal, does it? Well, as we disovered, that's the kind of thinking that will land you (nearly) in the hospital. As you probably know, the air in Southern California is a lot worse than the air in the Bay Area. Zack's mom also lives inland, where the air is worse than it is on the coast, and her house is run by 2 cats, Cleo and Squig. Cleo likes to climb all over you at any given opportunity (she's also a pill popper, but that's another story), and Squig pretty much keeps to himself. Zack is highly allergic to both of them. They have a dog, Twinkie (very sweet, but very dumb), as well, but she mainly stays outside. So as you can see, the conditions at Zack's house are not conducive to an asthmatic. But no fear! Zack's mom is a nurse, and she has some equipment for dealing with asthmatics - the nebulizer! Sounds very sci-fi, doesn't it? Basically, it's a machine with tubing hooked up to this breathalizer looking thing that distributes albuterol (same medication as an inhaler) mist over an extended period of time. Its effects last longer than that of a typical ventolin inhaler, but they do wear off, as we learned. Sometime, Christmas night, while at my parents house, the effects wore off, and Zack had an asthma attack. In order to counteract it, he tried a cocktail of various over the counter medications - Benadryl, Sudafed, Robitussin, and coffee. NOTE: this does not work. Don't try it at home. As a result, he got violently ill the next day, threw up about seven times, and could barely sit up. We managed to get him an inhaler, but it was too late. The drug cocktail eventually left his system, but he still had major chest inflammation. My parents, of course, tried to convince us to stay an extra day, or week, or month, but we got him back up to the Bay Area to the doctor, whose initial prognosis was "ya sound like crap!" There was also some talk of hospitalization, but the nebulizer saved the day. With the help of Prednisone, a steroid anti-inflammatory, and Codeine, Zack is recovering.

Geez, working on this shit is like crack cocaine. You just can't get away, even though it's killing you.

Okay, I just finished my website for the first time. It's very tiring, and time-comsuming, especially for such a basic site. Hmmm, I'll chalk it up as a learning experience.

Alrighty, this is my first post. Not sure sure what to write yet... stay tuned.