The first interesting thing of 1998 was in early February--I had a pointed disagreement with a pot of boiling water. The score: I came in second. I'm not even entirely sure how it happened, but I somehow managed to flip the pot up toward me like the Ocean Spray logo. I was wearing the same purple sweatshirt I'm wearing now--yes, I have managed to remove it in the interim--and I got completely drenched along the entire right side of my chest. The next thing that happened was much like the climax of Won't Get Fooled Again--combining the very best of Daltrey (howl) and Townshend (cover the entire stage in one leap; but landing, to absolutely no applause, in front of the sink.)

Had to stand leaning over the sink for the next two hours, and then covered with ice for the balance of the evening. I got badly boiled. To kill the burn, I put so much ice on me that, unbeknownst to me, it started to burn the unburned parts. And, in a word, YOWCH.

I have had worse (meaning DEEPER) burns than this one, but over a much smaller area. This pain was a whole new arena that I have never before had a ticket for. Not even in the bleachers. Know how pain comes in waves? No matter how trifling or serious a pain it is, you can feel it crest, then ebb--or, if it's a throbbing pain, it crests and ebbs and crests again? This wasn't like that. While I had the ice on it, it was just a constant yowl of misery. But when I took the ice off to re-wrap it, or change it--Holy Jesus Carnauba Wax. It was like uncontrolled microphone feedback. It just went up up UP UP UPUPUPUP and there was no apparent zenith in sight. In the space of, like, three seconds, it actually felt like the lights were gonna go out.

And like that's not punishment ENOUGH--you know what kind of mind I have. I'm standing there at the sink, thinking "You snivelling little piss punk--this is just a big BLISTER for f***'s sake--and you're gonna FAINT????" Interesting point though. How do people who are REALLY burned manage to even SURVIVE? What I had, turned out to be mainly first-degree with small patches of second-degree. And fifteen years ago, in California, Richard Pryor RAN DOWN THE STREET. ON FIRE.

Well, I'll say this much. If you ever really really REALLY need to get to sleep, I can recommend without reservation the combination of Aleve, Aspirin, Percocet, NyQuil, and of course one beer. ONLY ONE. You don't want to be FOOLHARDY.

Like the flaming retard I am (flaming or not) I actually went to work the next day--wearing what amounted to a Gauze Brassiere that Wendy frumped up for me. But I couldn't stand it. I took the next entire week off.

F***. My TV says Lloyd Bridges just died.

Anyway. I stayed in bed that whole week, slathered in NeoSporin. Yeucchh. But apparently that was the right thing to do. It kept it from getting all crinkly and itchy. For a while anyway. I finally went back to work a week later, but I still hadn't totally re-skinned and I wanted to keep it all NeoSporinized, and that meant either the Gauze Brassiere or a really nasty exhibit of Greasy Semi-Nudity. I just couldn't keep the bandage in place. Two days of that and I just said the hell with it and went without. Which meant going without the grease too, of course. So now, just in time for the pain to finally subside, the ITCHING starts in earnest. A good week and a half of that.

So now, it just looks like a bad sunburn, over a much smaller area than originally, with what will eventually become a small scar at the bottom. And--this is, I'm sure, more than you really need to know--what appears to be a permanently erect nipple. Yeah. ONE.

While all this was going on, Wendy's grandmother (age: 91) had a heart attack. She's okay now, but she was in and out of the hospital twice, and I couldn't go see her because I was Greasy And Semi-Nude. She's alright now. She was complaining about the food by midway through the second day.

Next--also, while this was going on--MICE. It started the night after my "incident." Wendy leaps straight up from a supine position, leaves a Wendy-Shaped hole in the ceiling, and mentions calmly that a mouse just ran across her side of the floor. We give chase. It's really more of a Mouselet--the size of one knuckle. We fail to catch it.

The next night it appears again, and we give chase in earnest. I corner it in the bathroom somewhere, while Wendy's still in the bedroom, by the door. And suddenly a mouselet runs past her into the closet. Okay, NOW panic. TWO mouselets--maybe more. We give up and try to go to bed. A couple of hours later, a mouselet runs ACROSS MY HEAD and lands, stupidly, in my wastebasket. I'm really calm thanks to the Percocet and Nyquil. Yeah. A mouse just stepped in my f***ing EYE. Hey! I'm awake!

Leaving nothing to chance, I SEAL OFF THE AREA, that is to say the wastebasket, by covering it with the nearest available object--the cover of the Harry Smith folk music anthology. No s**t. This baby mouse's last moments in my home are going to be CULTURED moments.

So NOW WHAT? It's 2:30 AM, the whole world is dark, I'm totally naked and badly wounded, and I'm holding a three-gallon Tureen Of Mouse. So, again I say, NOW WHAT?

Well, of course. What else? I walk, naked, out the FRONT DOOR OF MY HOUSE and hurl the entire contents of the wastebasket into the front yard.

It's about twenty degrees out here. I have no clothes on, and I'm holding an empty wastebasket and the cover of the Harry Smith box.

Among other potential difficulties this might cause me, I have now frozen my little Size 8's on the slate porch. (Hey! That's 8's! PLURAL. How could you even THINK such a thing????)

The next afternoon, Wendy's at work, I'm in bed watching TV--and here, ON THE BED, coming toward me, is the other (?) mouselet--looking at me as if to say, "Are you my mommy?"

I happen to HATE killing things. Especially small mammals. And these ones, if they're not stepping in your eye at 2AM, are actually kind of cute. So I bundle the little f***er up in the comforter like a tamale and head for the front door again. It's the middle of the afternoon, mind, but I am wearing sweatpants at least. Still, it must have looked kind of interesting when I bounded out the front door whipping the bedclothes like a jai-alai stick--hurling the enclosed mouselet in a graceful arc onto the lawn. So he shakes it off, stares back at me and says, "So......then, you're NOT my mommy?"

That night, Wendy brings home some traps--the traditional sadistic kind. We bait 'em with peanut butter but catch nothing. The next night, she brings home some of those gray plastic re-usable ones. The kind that you can just hose down and bait 'em up again. This time we set them with sunflower seeds, and wow. Snap snap snap-o-matic all over the house. Added benefit: when a little baby mouselet goes head-first for the bait, the trap completely encases him without killing him. If you free him before he suffocates, he's just as good as new. Unfortunately, a couple of 'em went in sideways and got mashed. And, when we caught the mommy mouse, she didn't have a chance. Final count: seven. And the coast has been clear for three weeks now. So there.

So on March 1st, we get on a plane and head off for the annual Awards Trip, this year to Orlando. They have really bonered up the arrivals this year, and instead of flying us out on Sunday morning, we don't leave till mid-afternoon. This gets us to the hotel virtually JUST IN TIME for the banquet. I had to fly in my little pin-striped suit. Other than that, no big problems. Meetings all day Monday, and then we had Tuesday thru Thursday. We were going to rent a car and wander around on Tuesday--so we went down to the Alamo Rent-A-Car window in the hotel, and she was very sorry but she had no cars.

Consider this. You people do ONE THING here--ONE--you RENT CARS. If you HAVE NO CARS, you have NO REASON TO LIVE. Well, anyway. So we wandered around "Downtown Disney" and "Pleasure Island" all day and evening. We were surrounded on all sides by Giant Rat Iconography, it being Disney and all. We bought a few Giant Rat Souvenirs and gifts in the Giant Rat Xmas Shop and the Giant Rat Gourmet Shop, where we were waited on by a very chatty little college girl who lustily applauded our every selection and, finally, slapped a Giant Rat Sticker on each of our chests. Anyway.

Wednesday, we were given all-day Park Passes (for one park only) so we elected to go to Epcot Center--since we deduced, correctly, that of the three parks it was the one that was likely to contain the smallest ration of Giant Rat Iconography. Also: it has that big section of international pavilions, and Wendy had never been to a World's Fair. It appeared to me, from what she read out of the brochure, that Epcot would be somewhat World's-Fair-Like. And it is. But just a little too clean. It didn't have that little dab of Elmhurst Funk that made the '64-'65 New York World's Fair so special. But it was fun to wander through for a day, especially as someone else was paying for it. Canada and China, also, have 360-degree film presentations that are pretty cool.

There's a very long wait for only one thing: the boat ride in the Norwegian pavilion. And, frankly, it sucked. It was the only boring thing in the whole place, and the one with the longest wait. They stack you up in this velvet-roped maze like cattle in an abbattoir, for about 20 minutes. So avoid that. You can always get your "Ja Mr. Morley" elsewhere for less effort. If you must deal with Scandinavians, stick with the Swedes. They have better cars, better women, less letters in their alphabet and a higher suicide rate. Which means they haven't lost their sense of humor. Hiu hiu hiu.

The American exhibit, of course, was truly embarrassing. Bigger Better Faster More. It was a multimedia exhibition narrated by animated historical wax figures, capped by the TRULY excruciating concept of a Mark Twain Automaton waxing poetic (sorry) about America's scientific and cultural accomplishments--yay, go team USA--which if you've read even six words of Actual Twain you'll know he would rather pull his eyes out with a fork than say such a thing.

Okay, class, diagram that sentence!

But, as you're going through the park, see--you get first to Canada, then France, then England, then the United States of Xenophobia. And after you've marvelled at the other three countries' presentations--which are all similarly themed: "Look at the marvelous things God hath dumped within our borders!"--you come to the U.S. of X. exhibit. wherein we belligerently bellow for half an hour about how clever we are to have invented Democracy and the Frozen Beef Pie. Only three thousand years post-Parthenon. Really embarrassing. Although none of the camera-happy multitude of foreign visitors seemed at all disturbed by the high concept, so maybe I'm just too sensitive. To quote Eddie Murphy, "Michael is SOOO sensitive!!"

Germany (very nice stacks of beer steins and cuckoo clocks) and Italy--then China, Norway (beuuu!) and Mexico, then you're back out to the science section. We took a little scientific boat ride through a hydroponic greenhouse--it's March, after all, and I am SERIOUSLY jonesing for plant life in March--and then back to hotel land.

Thursday morning we finally got a car and went--what else--RECORD SHOPPING! A quick shot through the yellow pages had yielded three likely places. We went to one. STILL no Even Dozen Jug Band, but I did manage to score one long-elusive prize: the Bunky And Jake album. In Florida--how about that? Has Jake retired to Boca?

Then, Thursday afternoon and evening they took us all to Sea World--which I expected to be a crashing bore but actually wasn't. After the park closed at eight, they herded us into a private buffet while they cattle-prodded the regular paying customers out of the park--then they gave us a private Radio-Shack-Only Shamu the whale show.

You know, it really is kind of impressive in person. Here you are, sitting halfway up a stadium shell, about sixty feet up above the water. Then this girl dives into the pool, the whale hooks her underwater, swims in a circle at about a hundred miles an hour, then jumps out of the water--straight up in the air--HIGHER THAN YOU ARE SITTING--with the girl sitting on his f***ing NOSE. WAVING AND SMILING. Must be like being shot out of a Howitzer. I couldn't even climb a LADDER that high. HALF that high. And there she is, just a-wavin'. Like she was still sitting in that convertible in the Homecomin' Parade.

Now the sour note sounds: in the bus, on the way back, there are two or three people several rows behind us--coughing their lungs up, the whole way back. I'm trying not to breathe--for half an hour. Wendy suggests I quit my bellyaching. I suggest that, considering we're on a BUS with these people, we might as well be roller-skating in the festering folds of their used underwear--for all the chance we have of avoiding the ingestion of whatever it is they're hacking out into the sealed ecosphere in which we are trapped.

Sure enough--we fly home the next afternoon (Friday) and we've barely hit the ground in NJ before Wendy becomes hopelessly ill. And remains that way to this day. I manage to avoid picking it up for several days--but last night it hit me like a brick and today I feel like the Pus-Burger From Hell.

"Radio Shack--We're Communicable!"