One of my favorite TV programs, Dead Like Me, featured a young girl who was killed by hitting with a toilet seat from the Mir spacecraft as it returned to earth. Except, instead of dying, she was drafted into the ranks of the undead and became a (grim) reaper, someone whose job it is to pull the souls from the bodies of those about to die.

Worse, this reaping job didn't pay, so she was forced to survive just like the rest of us and had to get a job and home. The job she took was the one she'd had for one day, working at a temp agency (though now, of course, with a new name to go along with her disguised appearance -- the undead appear different to the living so they don't freak out). The point of all this is that her boss had cameras all over her home that fed her website, Getting Things Done with Dolores.

People would watch Dolores do things, get things done, everything from jigsaw puzzles to laundry, and Dolores was always on the move and took suggestions from her viewers.

Today, incredibly, I got something done. Before the calendar turned to February, I took down the outdoor Christmas lights, a much easier task than I anticipated. It's always that way, and I should make a note to remember that next year.

What had been preventing me from doing it earlier is that I'm blessed with myopia and was able to forget about it except for a brief time each evening when I turned on the lights. Then I'd remember, but it was always too dark to go hauling ladders around, much less climbing them and stretching to reach all the anchors I used to hold the lights up.

Even better, late as I am, I'm not the last person on my block to take down my lights.

The reason I thought of it this morning is because I'm getting ready to make what's possibly a VERY BIG MISTAKE.

You see, this new computer game is coming out and my current system, naturally, can't handle it. While I made a great effort a few years to clean up my computer room (yes, a woman was involved), I still have a great number of computer parts and skeletons piled up, and I'm getting ready to see if I can upgrade.

A couple years back I panicked and bought a brand new computer from CompUSA, something I hadn't done in about fifteen years. I don't recall inspired that, but I think it was the inability of my W98 machine to generate any sound. I now have two running boxes, the old W98 machine for writing and porn, and another box that can run either WXP or linux (SuSE). I use the SuSE part of my setup the most, since that's the only one I trust on the Internet, and the WXP portion is mostly for gaming.

Anyway, I've found a motherboard that's much better than the one I got with this cheap system, and I intend to install it. I've done that dozens of times over the years (nothing like games to require upgrades), but I've never done it with a linux machine. I fully expect both the WXP and linux halfs to freak out when they discover all the new hardware.

What concerns me is that I don't know if I can get the linux part to run again, even if I can get the CPU successfully moved to the new board. That concerns me because I remember it being a trouble before, mostly because of the cooling. My greater fear is that not only will the new system fail to work, but that I won't be able to undo the changes.

I can see it now: install new board and try to locate all the necessary software and drivers to get it to work. I fully expect WXP to work, but not SuSE, which results in my putting the old board back in. Then, even after SuSE rediscovers all the old hardware, parts of the old and parts of the new are both installed, and it still won't work.

I'm not sure what all's involved with a linux upgrade, so if I'm offline for a while, you'll know why.

PS - It's now just after noon, too late (?) to work on it today. Maybe tomorrow...

I found a website that has the uncanny ability to peer into my soul and divulge those secrets I thought I could keep hidden.

According to the experts, this particular blog of mine is "40% evil, 60% good," while my writing blog is "30% evil, 70% good."

I should take some lesson from that, maybe see it as a validation of my literary efforts.

But enough of that, tonight I meant to talk about birds. I'm more of an expert on them than many recognize and have even held a pelican once when I was rescuing him. He was in the middle of the street, unable to get airborne because of the traffic, so I went out and picked him up, covered him in a beach towel, and carried him to the beach and let him go.

He was surprisingly light, but pelicans are only one of the birds I've come to recognize. Some experts are too finicky and particular for my tastes, because in all honesty there's only some half-dozen bird types. There are flamingos, owls, pelicans, parrots, hummingbirds, and birds, which come in large, medium, or smaller.

These attempts to cite specific breeds can only lead to sorrow, and is done mostly by people showing off. I think the mostly make up the names as they go along, and who could ever argue with them?

Birds, mostly, are brown or black, and they all look very much the same, just as lizards and bugs do. To call one a crested swallow and another a tern helps no one, and just confuses the issue. It's a bird.

Today there were four or five birds sitting on the telephone wire right above me while I was raking. They knew they were safe, that I like looking at them, and paid me not the slightest interest. Unlike some geese I've run across (another bird name, but sufficiently known as "large white birds"), they didn't threaten me, and I appreciated that.

I'd add "woodpeckers" to my list, but we don't have those here.

There's been much in the news, lately, about miners, which leaves me completely unqualified to have even as much as an opinion. I've never wanted to be a coal miner, have never known anyone who's been one (or even considered it), but that may be because of my lack of curiosity or record keeping.

But I'm pretty sure of one thing: those miners make a damn good living at it, at least until they die. They have a strong union, which helps, but more than that they're doing work that's dangerous and that no one in their right mind would do unless you shoveled money on them like it was going out of style.

It's not the most dangerous profession (I think that goes to farmers and fishermen), but I'm guessing most who end up doing it do so more as a last resort than from any love. There are all kinds of political groups and politicians, now, who are demanding mine safety, and while I don't like to see anyone hurt or killed, this could be a huge mistake. If mining gets to be a safe job, like Homer Simpson's at his nuclear plant where he eats donuts and pushes buttons, I have a bad feeling it wouldn't pay as well.

So what we'd be doing is saving lives, but cutting miner's salaries in half.

Because, let's face it, the only reason cops get paid as well as they do is because they infrequently get shot. If police were never killed performing their jobs, that wouldn't be a very exciting job, either. I mean, I've never talked to anyone who wanted to be a cop so they could direct traffic or do paperwork.

It's horrible that people die deep underground or at the end of a crook's gun, but without that happening, the jobs wouldn't be as financially rewarding and wouldn't attract so many applicants. When I consider the hundred people or so who kill themselves every day, I wonder why we get more worked up over much lesser numbers.

Here we are, not yet even at the dead of winter, and today I saw a bird on the phone line that resembled a sparrow or something and that had a red head and breast. I guess it was a blue jay, maybe one with a bad sense of color.

That bird, and his or her kin, should be vacationing in the Bahamas or down in Mexico or some place, not up here where it's still likely to get all frosty at night. I've learned to conquer it by unpacking my down comforter, but even that raises issues.

Mostly chore and maintenance issues, since I don't want Minardi playing with it. I have a deep-seated fear of waking up inside a mound of feathers, or of finding my room nicely covered with a wintry white, fluffy covering. Since he's decided the sharp, pointy ends of pillows are a hazard and considers it his duty to be considerate enough to remove them, I have no illusions that he'd treat my comforter any less kindly.

My winter regimine now includes stripping the bed bare first thing in the morning, down to the mattress pad. Then I toss on a covering that he can tear up as much as he likes, but before claiming my bed at night I have to make the whole damn thing.

It's a small price to pay for being able to luxuriate in cool, crisp sheets and to feel the temp under the comforter raise as it traps and holds my body heat. Nothing like being in a warm coccoon inside a cool room. I love crawling into cold sheets, just not spending the nights in them. I get a fine sense of accomplishment when I feel them warm up, and so far at least, I've yet to wake up with feathers in my nose.

That's a fairly dramatic title, one I heard on a tape recording today, but has nothing to do with this entry which concerns itself with more dental details.

The other day, after Shervin successfully made his presentation, I learned a bit more about the difference now that I'm a patient (case?) at a dental school. To recap, I bit an apple sometime in July and loosened a tooth. Figuring that it would only get worse and that my mistakes might make good training, I decided to go to a dental school to get my teeth fixed. The fact that it's cheaper hardly entered into it at all, maybe.

I must have passed some test since they accepted me, but maybe they take everyone.

Since then I've been examined more thoroughly than any medical practioneer has ever involved him or herself with me. I've had full, revolving x-rays (like those class pictures or scenery cameras take), and Shervin's created a model of my head from the nose down with moving jaws that's more frightening than any jack-o-lantern. I'm not the best of patients since I don't keep very good track of what happens to my body, but Shervin knows more about me than anyone, at least in some sense.

If you're curious, this is a picture of the Class of 2007, of which he's a member. It blows up nicely (for a PDF), and Shervin is in the fifth row down, third from the left. I found out, while doing my stalking, that he's also like the social chairman for the dental school, which explains his excitement when we first met about the upcoming picnic.

But that's neither here nor there.

This dental school dental treatment is, to my naive surprise, more about education and health than it is about simply getting worked on. The other day, in addition to three prescriptions for toothpaste, mouthwash, and something I won't know about until tomorrow, I received three pages of stretching exercises I need to perform six times a day from the UCLA Pain Management Center. I'll file that along with the multi-page document detailing the pros and cons of every available dental filling, veneer, and procedure, and will also include the four page Patient Instruction for Control of Dental Decay/Peridontial Disease. The one I got is for adults and children over six.

Previously, from other dentists, I got at most envelopes containing gauze and a slip about post-extraction care, so I consider this progress.

Until today I'd never spent twenty dollars on toothpaste, so my life is changing.

Today was a big day for my dental student, Shervin, and he was a success.

Ever since my case was accepted for treatment he's been studying, examining, testing, and doing dentist type things while producing his plans for treatment. Today he introduced me -- or, more correctly, the case I present -- to a team of doctors and gave them his educated opinion. I pretty much sat there with my mouth open, wishing I were dead.

I'd known about this presentation for quite some time since Shervin had been talking about it quite a bit. I'd expected, for some reason, it to be in an auditorium setting with a panel, but it was far worse than that for me. I was in a normal dental chair in a typical cubicle in the dental college, surrounded by the yellow-gowned doctors who instruct the students.

I consider my teeth to be my biggest flaw, and the worst part of any dental visit is sitting there exposed. I can't describe it any better than that, to have my most shameful property under examination. I just keep repeating Lord Byron's line: "All my faults perchance thou knowest" -- I feel that exposed and ashamed.

Anyway, the dentists all listened, looked, poked around, and talked about me as if I wasn't there and agreed with what Shervin's assessment. Another visit next Tuesday.

In other news I think it's a mistake to think we can discover either justice or the truth based on who argues better.

Today, after some rewiring to get my phone and Internet services restored, I took a well-deserved nap. Surprisingly I had a pleasant dream, too, one involving chasing down an Asian girl at work.

As dismayed as I was to return to wakefulness before things could get really interesting, I was even more distressed when I felt a trickle from my nostril. Actually, I have two, but only one was "leaking."

After wiping it up with a napkin, it happened again, then several more times over the next few hours. This could only mean one thing, and I rushed to the bathroom to bring out my super-secret and special cold remedy: zinc.

Back when it was the rage a girl I knew took pity on me when I was suffering a cold and got me some zinc, which she delivered with a lecture. I had to admit then, as now, that the metallic elements only rarely found their way onto my dinner plate. Whatever the amounts needed, and I have no desire whatsoever to look these things up, I know I'm lacking.

So, I took my zinc lozenges as she insisted, and I still have the bottle but it's no longer full. I can't be bothered, either, with checking to see how many to take or how often, but whenever I feel a cold coming on I take one or two tables whenever I think of it and remember to do so.

The lozenges work as well as most placebos and, since there isn't another of me that doesn't take them, I have no idea if they have any beneficial effects at all. They don't taste bad, though, and I'm sure my stomach and digestive tract are always startled at receiving something other than coffee, so everyone wins.

It's my first cold of the year. So far, it's not even worth mentioning, but when you have a blog everything's a subject.

It's here: 2006!

I have a confession to make. I never planned anything for this year and, truth be told, never even considered it. When I was growing up I was moderately interested in the year 2000 and the turn of the century (which occurred at the end of that year), and was aware of 2001 because I'd seen the movie when it came out, but never really thought that there'd be years after those.

Except for sometime in the 2010s, when I should be able to retire and only knew about because of those annual pension notices and occasional reminders from Social Security, as far as I was concerned there'd be 2000 and then ... nothing. Just an unopened book. Now I see how wrong I was.

A similar thing happened when I turned thirty. I was jazzed about that, but before I knew it I was thirty-one, an age that has none of the romance about it. When you're thirty, it's a big deal. When you're thirty-one, or thirty-three, or any other age, it's boring. Nothing to it. No excitement.

And now it's 2006. I still remember when it turned 2000 and all the idiocy surrounding elevators, planes, and spacecraft plunging toward the center of the earth, and hourly reports from the asshole VP overseeing our Y2K preparations ("No problems reported in Kamchatka..." As if...), and that seems both just yesterday and a long time ago. I still need to figure out this temporal stuff.

The only thing I've really noticed is something that makes me feel both mortal and old. Until the last few years all references to dates and events were things in my future, things I'd see later on. Now, with disturbing frequency, dates are being bandied about that will come and go without the benefit of my presence and that I'll never see.

Peak oil in 2050? Okay, fine. I hope it's fun. I hope you'll excuse me. I somehow doubt I'll live to see Mickey Mouse ever become part of the public domain, either, but I do expect to be around when the current Republican nonsense wanes. I'm not sure I'll see whichever country next rules the globe, but I might.

These things, none of these things, ever last, but we humans place an undo importance and impatience on current events. I guess that will stay the same, no matter what number is assigned the year.

Now I need to go check out all those "ten best" lists...