Life is Beautiful

[place marker for some profound statements - check back later]

I spent the entire day at the In-Laws, patching, sanding and painting. Thank God I wasn't hung over.

They've moved to North Carolina, but their house in Camp Springs isn't selling. I don't get it. I mean, its a lovely split level, straight from the 50's, and they only want half a million for it.

It is surprising though, how you can find beauty in the most inglorious places. While waiting between coats, I shot some photographs.

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And then, of course, I had to take a photo of the most glorious part of their home. Built to their specifications by moi. I do have my moments.

Tough Love

From the Bible, Proverbs 13-24 (King James Version):

"He that spareth his rod hateth his son."

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There is a debate raging in America over spanking. NO, not that kind of spanking! I'm talking corporal punishment. There are many who still believe in the old proverb "spare the rod, spoil the child". The belief is rooted in the religious ethic of the nation's Puritan founders. In fact, one study by the Kinsey Institute suggests that 76% of Americans use spanking regularly.

When I was a kid, I got spanked. I mean, the pants came down, and the bare behind took a good whacking. It was embarrassing. I mean, right in front of my friends? C'mon guys! Now that's a good way to throw a wet blanket over an 18th birthday party.

Here at the Academy, we do not believe in corporal punishment of any kind. We won't spank the students, because we think that corporal punishment is ethically wrong. Besides, there are many effective alternatives to spanking. Time outs, non-corporal punishments, denying things that are valued. They are all equally effective, if used properly.

Still, there are times when a little something more is necessary. I have found a very effective technique that I use in such cases. I simply take the student for a ride in the car and have a stern talk. They generally calm down and stop misbehaving after our time in the car together.

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No students were harmed in the making of this blog entry. Stunts performed by Joshua.

Stand for your rights

Ok, I'm taking a lot of flak about the whole urinal thing. I can't say it wasn't expected. Urinals get a bad rap, and people who promote urinals get a bad rap.

I realize that by elaborating on this topic, I run the risk of being labeled "obsessed". Look. I am not obsessed. Ok, so maybe my license plates went over the top, but its a subect I feel passionate about. Its time this piece of porcelain got the recognition it so richly deserves. And its time for residential bathrooms to recognize that men have special needs too.


The Headmistress is a big urinal fan, but it didn't start out that way. It took me a long time to win her over. She too had a negative image cultivated over years of abandoning long lines at the ladies room to duck into the mens room. Look, if you go into a mens room at a bar, or a football stadium, or a rock concert, you've gotta expect things to be kind of a mess. Men in those situations are expected to make a mess. To not make a mess could invite ridicule. So forget everything you've ever seen in the vicinity of public urinals. They are disgusting, because they are abused. Hey, I've been in one or two women's rooms, and the porcelain in there isn't exactly something to be proud of either, okay?

Once I'd convinced the Headmistress, and installed the thing, she grew to love it. I mean, you know, in that "male bathroom fixture" kind of way. Anyway, we never received a single negative comment on the urinal - in fact, quite the opposite. People were fascinated with it. Guys would come over just to use the bathroom. And they never once wrote anything on the walls. Well, anything bad that is.


Look, here is the bottom line about urinals. You gotta flush 'em. Those ones in the public mens rooms? Rarely flushed. Combine that with the fact that most men who use them are drunk and piss all over their shoes, and you can start to understand why this porcelain bowl is so misunderstood.

Why don't men flush them? Three reasons, really.

First you have your basic grunting, macho, male "GUY". Someone who has covered each of his two hundred and fifty pounds with some kind of cheap cologne. He seeks to establish himself as the "alpha" male, and is simply leaving his scent to mark his territory. He scares me.

Next you have your "talker". This guy wants to carry on a conversation while standing at the urinal. He is so gabby, in fact, that he forgets to flush, and usually forgets to wash. He is talking all the way out the door. When he leaves, suspicious glances are exchanged. The worst of these types is the one who strikes the conversation up with a total stranger. See, stoicism is the character trait most admired in men's rooms. By talking, you break one of the ten "Golden Rules of Urinal Etiquette":


1 - Select a stall that has a vacancy to the right and to the left.
2 - In the absence of that, try to get the one nearest to a wall.
3 - Keep the eyes straight ahead - don't look right, dont look left.
4 - Resist the urge to look down.
5 - Step right up - don't stand back. While you may be proud of yourself, the rest of us would rather not see the equipment.
6 - If you're having trouble getting things started, give us a courtesy flush - the noise helps to ease the tension that everyone feels about your situation. Its the polite thing to do.
7 - No whistling. It arouses suspicion.
8 - Positively NO smiling. Enough said.
9 - Zip up BEFORE you back away.
10 - NEVER, EVER, TALK TO ANYONE.


Finally, you have your obsessive-compulsive type. Ok, you know who you are. You're the one who walks into a bathroom by pushing the door open with your elbow, or your shoulder, or your rear-end, saving your hands from coming into contact with some sort of flesh-eating bacteria. You perform the necessaries and walk straight out, bypassing sink, soap and towel dispenser. You are very likely an otherwise civilized individual. You simply do not want your hands to come into contact with any bathroom surfaces, including the flush handle, the faucet handle, or the soap and paper towel dispenser handles. Some of you even place your hand into your coat pocket before grabbing the door handle to exit. You are the very same individual who reasons that since you didn’t actually touch anything, there is no need to wash your hands. Excuse me? To have truly not touched anything would have required a deft maneuver on your part to get your equipment out of the garage, followed by a hands-free operation, followed by yet another deft maneuver to get the thing safely back into the garage. Let’s face it, since no man has ever squandered an opportunity to touch himself, you are obviously lying. To you I say: I’d sooner lick the handles of a dozen flush valves than touch anything in your garage, so lest we find it necessary to shake hands, please flush the urinal. And wash your hands. With Soap.

So there you have it. Embrace the urinal. It is your friend. When treated properly, this piece of porcelain will change your life.

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A very astute blogger in Texas pointed out that today's Style section in the New York Times contains an interesting article about urinals in the home. Check out the slide show (under the photo, click "more photos"). Sure, Clark Sorensen’s got issues, but you get the idea.

Carry on my wayward son...

I can't carry a car.
I can't carry a cow.
But I can carry when adding,
I know exactly how!

The poem above was on the boys' math papers today. We've been working on long addition, carrying numbers to the next column. The exercise following the poem said to "Write the sums, don't forget to carry"

The photo above is a re-enactment, but its exactly what I saw when I went in to check on the boys' progress on that paper.

Teacher: "Joshua, why are you holding the box of colored pencils?"
Joshua (sincerely): "Because the paper says to carry something while I add up the sums."

I had to hold onto the table to keep from falling over!

The Big Sleep

I had only twenty minutes sleep before the phone rang. In that time I had muffed a job and lost eight thousand dollars. Well, why not? In twenty minutes you can sink a battleship, down three of four planes, hold a double execution. You can die, get married, get fired and find a new job, have a tooth pulled, have your tonsils out. In twenty minutes you can even get up in the morning. You can get a glass of water at a night club - maybe.

The dame on the other end spoke of a murder, cold-blooded. She spoke as coldly as a toad's belly; colder than a cafeteria dinner; colder than the ashes of love. It was a voice that could have been used to split firewood. I told her to wait, hung up the phone, and lit a cigarette. It tasted like a plumber's handkerchief.

I went downstairs, walked to the curb and hailed a cab. It was big, big like a truck. It appeared as though the car drove itself, and the cabbie held the wheel just for appearances. The driver looked as if he was half asleep but he passed the fast boys in the convertible sedans as though they were being towed. They turned on all the green lights for him. Some drivers are like that. He never missed one.

We pulled in and I paid the fare. She was waiting, just like she said, back behind the building. She had a nice smile. She looked as if she had slept well. It was a nice face, a face you get to like. From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away. But she had smooth ivory skin, and rather sever eyebrows and large dark eyes that looked like they might warm up at the right time and in the right place. She had a pair of legs - so far as I could determine - that were not painful to look at.

"Hello, Mr. Cranky" she said. She put away her hand mirror and fed herself a cigarette.

I filled a pipe and reached for the packet of paper matches. I lit the pipe carefully. She watched that with approval. Pipe smokers were solid men. She was going to be disappointed in me.

I knew the deceased. A cold fellow in his own right. Had the nickname of Frosty. Some called him Junior. He always wore a hat that was at least two sizes too small and had been perspired in freely by somebody it fitted better than it fitted him. He wore it about where a house wears a wind vane. His nose was sharp and bent a little to one side, as if somebody had given it the elbow one time when it was into something. He had watching and waiting eyes, patient and careful eyes, cool disdainful eyes - the kind of eyes you might pick out of an olive barrel.

Something about this murder smelled. It smelled so bad you could build a garage on it. I didn't care about the fee. I just wanted to nail the cold-blooded sonofabitch that dropped him here on the pavement, like a cold wet snowball.

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The above passages were taken, with liberties, from various novels written by Raymond Chandler, who published the following works all in the month of January: "Try The Girl"; "Red Wind"; "Lady in the Lake"; "Guns at Cyrano's"; and "Killer in the Rain".

Stand and Deliver

WARNING - This is a male-only post. So women should stop reading HERE.

If you are still reading, and are uncomfortable with discussion of bodily functions, stop reading HERE.

(Man, what was that dude's problem?) Okay, the rest of you are about to receive information that will change your lives. You will thank me for what I am about to disclose.

As a side-note, with all the women gone, WHAT are we going to do about Hillary? I guess that's a blog entry for another day.

You know, I have always been of the opinion that EVERY home should have at least one urinal in it. Can I get an AMEN? I cannot understand why every woman on the planet doesn't feel the same way on this subject. I mean, they REALLY should like them, but the REALLY don't like them. One would think, as I naively did, that women wouldn't have enough experience with urinals to have formed an opinion about them - good or bad. But that line of thought doesn't account for the phenomenon of women ducking into men's bathrooms. How come they never duck when I'm in there?

Here is the problem: women simply don't realize that the condition of those urinals, which are used by disgusting men, has nothing whatsoever to do with the condition of your urinal, which will be used by you.

It took some time, but I did eventually manage to convince the Headmistress to permit the installation of a urinal in our previous home. It was the best 3 years of my life. Seriously. So this is my story. Pay attention guys.

It may be a bit of "Weird Science", but there is some scientific logic behind my opinion on this. And its all rooted in something called the"Mascu-mephitic Maxim", which states, simply, that all men are disgusting. Except us, of course. And nothing exemplifies this maxim more than a man standing over a standard bowl-and-tank fixture. Whoever thought THAT design up, obviously didn't account for the marriage of gravity and liquid displacement. It is noisy, and it is messy. Which I wouldn't necessarily care about, except for two issues:

1 - I am, on occasion, forced to actually CLEAN the bathroom. C'mon, admit it - you are too.

2 - It might be tempting for a listener to associate the volume of the noise with the size of the noisemaker. Now I'm not saying this is true. But in my case, I'd rather not face the comparison.

Let's forget the noise issue for one minute, because that might just be >>MY<< little issue. But in terms of the other issue, the problem is that the very design of the receptacle, combined with the act itself, is engineered to make a mess. And the REAL problem here is the juxtaposition of: a)the mess; and b)the furniture-like fixture that people, including us, must actually sit on with their bare behinds. You see what I'm saying?

Like incompetence in the federal government, most folks generally don't think about it too much. Otherwise, there'd be a huge backlash. People would be protesting in the streets - "we're not going to TAKE it anymore!" So my intent here is to help you get the information you need to turn this problem around in your household. I hope that this discussion thread will change the world, one porcelain fixture at a time.

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In order to make a scientific comparison of porcelain, several very important constants must be established. In other words, we need to focus on a few measurements. No, not that one. These ones:

Travel - 600 millimeters
Pressure - 18 psi
Volume - 600 milliliters


Travel
The first figure represents the average distance of travel. Of course, this depends on the height of the man, the height and capacity of the bowl, and the length of.... well, it depends on a number of variables. Still, you're talking an average of approximately two feet of travel before payload reaches destination.

Pressure
The second figure represents the average pressure under which the payload, of you will, is delivered to the destination. In other words, it affects the velocity. Again, there are any number of variables involved. Generally, urinologists use something called the Baxter-Shockley scale, so-named for an unlucky gentleman who suffered a two-week blockage due to a kidney stone, and his very unlucky girlfriend who was, for some reason, directly in the line of fire when the thing passed. This scale represents an age curve that peaks at around 25 years, and trails off to a dribble at around 40 years. Still, a good median would be 18psi.

Volume
The last figure represents the average amount of payload at the time of delivery. If you're like me, and you refer to your visits as "tinkles", this amount will generally be lower. If, however, you sometimes precede such visits with exclamations like "Woah! I've got to piss like a race horse!", then this amount would tend to be much higher. Given the large variance, 600 milliliters represents a decent average.

Volume and pressure determine duration, but that figure is not relevent to this discussion. There have been times when a couple of seconds gets the job done, and there have been times when I have been able to read entire sports pages, in those facilities that have the courtesy to provide them.

So, we can derive a washroom equation something like S=tpv2. This equation is key to understanding the benefits of the urinal. When it comes to the "S", smaller is better. "S" equals Splashage. We'll be using the "S" factor to shock, disgust, gross-out, and otherwise frighten the begeezus out of the wives, so we get the porcelain we want.


Now I know what you're thinking. And you are exactly correct that this equation represents an ingenious method for demonstrating what happens when a liquid payload is introduced to a liquid destination from a distance of approximately two feet, under moderate pressure. Certainly you are all familiar with the automotive "leak-down test" - where mechanics use antifreeze and a black light to test for engine block leaks. Without question, this is the best way to conduct our experiment to maximum effect. It has the added benefit of making the whole procedure appear more scientific.


SETUP
Materials Needed:

Standard water bucket - 3 gallon, galvanized, glass or plastic
2 gallons, plus 1 quart of antifreeze
Clean white newsprint
Black Light
Painter's tape
Pressurized garden sprayer
Latex gloves (like the kind the doctor sticks up your butt)
Roll of "Caution" tape - optional (like the stuff cops use to cordon your yard each July 4 when you set the neighborhood on fire with your impressive fireworks display)
Two pair of safety glasses


PROCEDURE
To prepare for the experiment, line an area of six square feet (6' x 6') with the clean newsprint, using the painter's tape to secure it to the floor. If desired, use the "Caution" tape to cordon off the area (note - this automatically creates a sense that something BAD is happening, which is what you want)

We'll call this area "splash field".


Next, place the bucket in the middle of the splash field, and fill it with the 2 gallons of antifreeze. Next, fill the empty garden sprayer with the quart of antifreeze, and pressurize the tank to 18psi. Put one pair of the safety glasses on and call the wife in.

Now - this is very important - you MUST be dramatic. As dramatically as possible, pull the latex gloves on (a good snap is very impressive), and present your wife with the other pair of safety glasses. The effect of this step cannot be overstated. It must appear that you are handling a toxic substance.

Once again, in dramatic fashion, clear the area of children, pets, and curious onlookers. Stand over the bucket with the sprayer. Adjust the nozzle for steady stream, and hold it at a distance of least 24 inches over the surface of the water. Spray the contents into the bucket. Warning - dramatics in the spraying phase of the experiment, while generally humorous, are not recommended if the intention is to win the wife over.

If, while conducting the actual experiment, the pressure on your sprayer dips below say, 16 psi, stop and charge it back up before continuing. However, be forewarned that stopping to pump up the sprayer detracts from the overall drama, and, quite frankly, might leave your wife with a subconscious feeling that you are, somehow, inadequate.

When the tank is empty, turn off the lights, turn on the black light, and observe the splash pattern. If the experiment was conducted properly, you should see a random pattern in a 2-foot perimeter from the center of the bucket. Show the wife. You should have a urinal in your home within two weeks.

Note - this experiment has been known to fail in homes that have "his" and "her" toilets. Don't fall into this trap! Preparation is the key to avoiding this dilemma. Two weeks prior to the experiment, the "his" toilet must develop some sort of problem that requires ordering a part from the Ukraine. In the interim, you will be forced to use the "her" toilet.

When you see how the installation of a urinal changes your life, you will be overcome with an urge to compensate me in some way. I do take PayPal.

My Little Pleasure Hole

I've been reminded recently that I am "straightlaced". Oh reaaalllly? Its also been brought to my attention that blogs should be sexy, because we're all sexual beings, after all. Oh reaaalllly? I mean.... oh.. right.

Anyway, I've decided to open up and show my wild side.


Say hello to my pleasure hole. Yup. I've been workin' this thang 'til I'm sweatin' bullets. You know you've been dying to see it, and you KNOW you want it. Think you can handle it? This baby can take a full 54 inches of pure, unadulterated pleasure, in hundreds of different positions. I LOVE to turn this thing on. And you'll want to watch, won't you? I KNOW how you like to watch.

Hey, I'm talking about my plasma television - get your stinkin' mind out of the gutter already! This hole above the fireplace will hide all the component and optical cables as they snake their way behind the wall to the digital receiver. And when its all hooked up, I'm going to sit back in my La-Z-Boy in my stinkin' underwear, with a beer and some chips, and watch some football. Now THAT'S sexy.

A good day is better than a bad day

When I got the phone call this afternoon that ET's biopsy results were negative, I sat down and sobbed like a little girl. I don't think I could have gone through THAT again, not this soon.

Still not sure what the plan is, whether they'll remove the mass or not. But its a very good day. A very, very good day.

So, its onward, and upward....

Insulated Carrots

Last night I'd taken a couple guests into the garage to show off my new service panel. They were VERY impressed. I related how I'd used VISIO and Excel to map out every circuit in complete detail before I'd started all the wiring. Now THAT is one surefire way to entertain! I do my best.

But even before the last guests had left, I'd made up my mind that I needed to rewire a good portion of the living room lighting circuit. One dimmer switch can only handle 600 watts, and I'd already decided on 16 recessed canisters. With 50-watt bulbs, that's 200 more watts than the switch could handle PRIOR to nipping off several of the heat-sink tangs in order to fit it into the 3-gang switch box. In other words, I had to split the room in two and separate the canister wiring onto two dimmer switches. Since they're currently on a 4-way switch, the project proved more difficult than meets the eye.

The bottom line is, first thing this morning I started ripping the living room a new one. To gain access to the wiring, I had to carefully dismantle the tongue-and-groove mahogany paneling, labeling it so I could put it all back up when I'm done. Sure, its getting painted eventually, but I needed to take it down without damaging it.

Anyway, remember how I said the Headmistress supports everything I do around here? Well, apparently she draws the line on insulation falling into a hot pan of roasted carrots. Who knew?

Dysfunctional Winter

Growing up in New England, we'd get so much snow that we'd often have our driveway plowed by a front-end loader. The resulting mountains of snow became our playground for the rest of the winter. We'd dig out forts and spend hours in there amassing stockpiles of snowballs that we'd unleash on passing motorists. Our secret weapon? We'd pack each snowball around a chewy nougat center of horse manure. A pile of frozen tootsie poops, if you will.

Or, sometimes we'd just hide in the fort to make out with girls. Yeah, chicks really dug the manure trick.

These days though, large portions of New England might go through the entire month of January without any snowfall. I'm thinking Old Man Winter could use some of the "enhancement drugs" whose advertisements dominate my email inbox, under subject lines like "Separate Yourself From Other Men". (When what they really mean is "function like a normal man". Hey, thanks for the considerate email reminder.)

Anyway, the weather around here lately is like a dream come true - like Spring without the hassle of fertilizing, planting, mowing and cleaning. Sign me up for that! Still, a part of me feels empty when we begin downsizing the activities of Winter. Like tabletop snowmen. Hey, you take what you can get, and make the best of it.

Now THERE is a dude who could use some "enhancement". I feel your pain, Frosty.

Don't mess with the Ponz...

Charles Ponzi was a very creative businessman. His approach to business earned him millions, and allowed him to live like a king for years. Unfortunately, his creativity and success also earned him time in jail, and a penniless death in a charity hospital. His business model resembled a pyramid, where dividends are paid to early investors with the funds received from later investors. Hm. Sounds a LOT like our Social Security System.

I remember those pyramid investment schemes. By the 1970's, the collapse of Ponzi's pyramid was long forgotten, and people were once again investing in them like crazy. Although I knew many who were doing the investing, I never knew anyone who actually received any money. The schemes faded as quickly as they'd appeared, and someone walked off with a LOT of money. But even as recently as 2001 I was getting invitations to invest in one of these schemes - from my super-smart sister Barbara, of all people. She'd been talked into the scheme by her low-life, blood-sucking, good-for-nothing husband. And really, I'm being overly kind. This guy hadn't worked in years, and had his own little pyramid scheme going - luring financially independent women to marry him, care for his kids and pay his bills for a few years. Then pay him alimony.

But enough people are aware of the pitfalls of pyramid investing to avoid it like the plague. To fix this image problem, these schemes have gone upscale, and today its called "Network Marketing". Sounds like a term you might hear in a board room - like "Channel Sales" or "Integrated Vertical Marketing". Sounds like something you might associate with an Ivy-League MBA.

Nah... its just Tupperware.

Recently, my Doctor tried to turn me onto "Network Marketing". She actually wrote me a reminder, on her prescription pad, to go purchase a book called "Multiple Streams of Income". Its one of those "earn money at home part-time" deals. But from my doctor? Sensing my obvious lack of any marketable skills, she must have figured that this was her best shot at getting me into a position to pay my doctor's bills.

There are many "network Marketing" models out there. Avon, Amway, Mary Kay, Arbonne, PartyLite, Pampered Chef, to name a few. The whole thing is based on selling a product to friends and neighbors, then recruiting them into your "organization" to sell for you. You might be recruited as a salesperson (hound your friends to buy the product), or a party host (hound your friends to sell the product), or a marketer (just hound your friends). I really think that most people who do this actually believe they are providing a good product or service, and they have convinced themselves that their friends will all benefit from their efforts. Really. I think they rationalize that their friends actually need this product, and that they're going to buy it somewhere (candles, dish detergent, hand soap, perfume), so why not keep all that money circulating among friends? The problem is that most of these products are purchased using the "just in time" model. I don't know anyone who stockpiles perfume, or buys dish detergent from a catalog. So in order to sell it to your friends, you've gotta be at the right place, at the right time.

We used to have a neighbor who sold Avon. Sitting across the street and observing the way we spend money, she certainly knew that she'd found the right place. Finding the right time, however, was a little more difficult to figure out. So she decided the best way to get our money was to show up at our door EVERY DAY with a catalog. She was determined to be on the scene the next time we developed an urgent need for Derek Jeter's personal line of Eau de Toilette sprays. "Oh, thank goodness you're here! Quick, we have an urgent hygiene situation. Do you take third-party, out-of-state checks?"

Another network marketing model involves sex toys. Ok, now we're getting somewhere. Here is a product that could get interesting. It is, after all, tied to an activity typically associated with an urgent need. But being there at the right time? That might prove to be a bit awkward, especially with neighbors. "Oh, thank goodness you're here! As you can see, I certainly have an urgent need. Wait! WAIT! Come BACK!"

Recently, several of these networks have attempted to recruit my adult daughter to sell for them. She is unemployed - are you seeing a pattern here? Obviously, the only reliable way to avoid these recruiters is to have a real job. Lacking that, my daughter has been solicited to sell everything from perfume to cosmetics to candles. For just a small investment of time and/or money, she could be on a career path to financial independence. Visually, she is standing at a life intersection. Do I get my degree, or do I go sell cosmetics at little cocktail parties? Obviously, there's only one answer to that question, and I intend to make her go to college instead.

People should beware whenever they see promises of making $10,000 per month in your spare time. This breaks the golden rule of network marketing - to be successful, you must sell "part time", not "spare time". And what they mean by "part time" is that if you really, REALLY want to make $10,000 dollars per month, you will, in fact, have a little time to eat and go to the bathroom.

I don't know. To me, the whole thing seems designed to divest a person of all their friends. Unless, of course, you were indeed providing a product, or a service, that truly - and I mean TRULY - benefited your friends. For example, I'd consider a friend to be a real valuable pal if they'd show up at the right place, at the exactly the right time, with a cold amber ale and a hot dog with relish and whole-grain dijon style mustard on a perfectly toasted bun. mmm... SOLD!

Laurel? Hardly.

Ok, so I've been lying all along. And I really need to come clean and set the record straight.

The Headmistress is actually my straight man. She graciously allows me to subject her good name to my twisted sense of humor on these pages. So although I love to portray myself as an unwitting victim of her strong-handed rule of me and this house, the opposite couldn't be more true. I am so very fortunate to have such an understanding wife. One who comes home from a difficult week at work knowing that she has a party to put on the following evening, walks into a completely destroyed living room, and simply gives me a hug. One who leaves a perfectly sound house in the morning, then comes home in the evening to a house that has three or four fewer walls in it - and never, ever complains. One who allows me to do anything to this house that my little heart desires - destruction, construction, design, decorating. She funds it. She approves it. She loves it. She encourages it.

How lucky can a guy get?



postscript - I'd better get back to work before the Headmistress catches me goofing off. Don't tell her I said anything nice about her.