January 16, 1997, Thursday

I drove back to Staunton today to bask in the radiant warmth of my parents. I slept in the Shaque for most of my time home, of course. When I awoke I did some piddly little word processing tasks for my Dad.

My mother is looking good considering she just turned sixty. She's soon to leave her job as a traveling teacher of blind students in the Rockingham County School System, and from what she tells me (granted no stock crashes or End-Times) she doesn't ever need to earn another dime the rest of her life and she can still spend $100 a day any way she likes. Her key to success though is her obsessive frugality.

My redneck friend Josh Furr gets lots of free clothes from his mom every now and then as a substitute for love. And as a demonstration of real brotherly love Josh has given the bulk of this year's clothes to my brother. It's too much for just Don, though. So I picked through the clothes for the best items. Things I scooped up include:

• A black baseball cap with a beautiful pewter emblem which reads "truckers move the world."
• A shirt striped with extremely thin horizontal green and black lines.
• zillions of socks
• A few sweat pants (why do people wear sweat pants? I guess I'll start to now, huh?).
• A tee shirt that read "Kiss me, I might be a prince."
• A sweat shirt with no annoying college logos.
• Two insulated vests, one in camoflage.
• Most bizzare of all: a leather western vest, complete with fringes!

The clothes all have the somewhat repulsive old/poor-folks/kerosene fragrance of Josh's house. But it's nothing a little soap and water cannot cure.

I put on the fringey vest and cavorted around the house, drinking white vino and chatting happily with my parents about just about everything I've been up to of late. They popped open a bottle of Champagne and in no time they were telling me how drunk they were. I'd had a lot more than they, and I really was drunk when I headed back to Charlottesville. But I made it home safely. The dinner, by the way, had been extremely tough Mad Cow Disease.

Elizabeth (A GURRRL!) had even played it.

At my house the infernal Nintendo still held the living room hostage. But it's going back to Blockbuster soon. Elizabeth (A GURRRL!) had even played it. The only people who hadn't played it were John and myself, detached Aquarians that we are.

After my pre-work nap, I stumbled through the bitter cold to Comet to begin this night as overseer of the MACHINES THAT DO THE REAL WORK. Jenfariello had e-mailed me a scan of a photograph she'd taken a couple weeks ago, when Charlottesville bathed in sunny 70 degree tropical air. Here it is, featuring me along side the Rising Sun Bakery on 14th Street, with my fresh new sign (and other signs) to the left.

The Gus on 14th Street by Jenfariello. Click for a bigger copy.

E-mail came from someone, I guess it was Jessika, but I cannot be too sure, saying that the e-mail I'd thought was by her mother (Teri Flint) yesterday was in fact by her (or him?). She's got some anger issues all of a sudden. I would urge her to get in touch with her rage and place it on a scrap of paper and burn it while slowly saying "Rajneesh puram heeri ku la fonbalulish" over and over. And then, dressed in saffron robes, totally mellow out to some relaxing enviro-ambient music, Agar 31 incense and non-dairy ice cream. You see, amid her completely capitalized paragraph of vitriol no constructive criticism could be found whatsoever.

and today, courteousy of the Excite Netsearch, I present yet another girlfriend!

Today's girlfriend: Jill. This woman likes a good patriotic man like her boyfriend Nick. Of course if a greater patriot such as Ollie North were to come along, she'd drop him in a hot minute. If you think you have the

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