Something always goes radically wrong on my birthday. Not every year, mind you--but if something REALLY BAD is going to happen to me roughly mid-year, it will be that day. On various birthdays I have been mugged, fired, cheated on by a wife (not this current one), had auto accidents, had girlfriends told by their parents never to see me again or they'd stop paying for college, name it. Last year, of course, my cat died. So today, in addition to having a day off, I thought I'd be cheating my private Nativity Poltergeist by taking off the WRONG DAY.

Well, I done smarted up about mid-day when we pulled into the parking lot of a garden center in Tenafly, NJ (home of Lesley Gore, whom I'm sure you'll remember as "The Cutie-Pie From Tenafly"--well, that's Mercury Records for ya.) My starter froze up and would not go again. It was quite hot in that parking lot as we waited for the Triple-A "dude" to arrive. He had a tattoo. Ewwwww!

So he got us started and we drove to my mechanic, whom I see way too often. Mind, this was NOT a problem on the order of my cat dying. But it just went to show that the Nativity Poltergeist is still crackin'.

Also, today Demetrios The House Painter was here sanding and washing our little red house in preparation for painting it. As I suspected, apres-sanding there was hardly anything left of the house. But we're just gonna paint over the whole problem and leave it like that.