Chapter 27, In Which Feemus Has a Religious Experience

I stumbled downstairs to make coffee this morning, still dozy and and muddleheaded. Desperate for coffee.

I ground the coffee. I filled the water resevoir. Then I pulled out the carafe to heat it up (it's the insulated kind), and there, right behind the carafe, was the meanest looking spider I've ever seen.

Big, too.

I do not like spiders. As I've blogged before, my wife (who had already left for work) is the designated spider-killer in our house. I cheerfully take care of any other vermin, but I have a real horror of spiders. All those legs.

And this one was looking at me funny. Not "ha ha" funny, either. Travis Bickle funny.

So there I was, desperate for coffee and questioning my manhood. And suddenly the combination of fear and shame and powerful longing was overwhelming. It was sublime. It was complete, in a way: while it lasted, I couldn't imagine being fuller of feeling.

After a frozen moment of ecstasy, I came to my senses, grabbed the spider and put him outside, made coffee and got on with my day.

In Praise of Netflix

The last couple weeks, I've been working like a dog. Like a beaver. Like Tammy Faye's tear ducts. Like penicillin in Tommy Lee's wedding tackle.

You get the idea.

It's made me realize how much I love Netflix. I decided to take part of Sunday off, and I returned some discs and just today I got my weekend treat in the mailbox.

Clintfest 2006: For a Few Dollars More; High Plains Drifter; and The Beguiled.

It's nice to have something to look forward to. In all other respects, I am a brick-and-mortar kind of guy, but I have to say, Netflix is awesome.