"Where have you been, Steve? No phone calls, surprise visits, calls from jail, or even a post on your website. I was beginning to think you joined the army."

"Well, therein lies a tale. I was arrested for buying a middleaged hooker in Cicero. It was really cold out. Her nipples were stretching pleather. I couldn't resist. The cops caught us in the backseat, all coked up and naked. I think the window fog gave us away. I tried to play it off, you know, like we're a couple, but they knew her pretty well. She'd been nailed before. Wait, I mean arrested. Nailed was a bad choice of words. Certainly true, but not what I meant to say. So I was locked up and too ashamed to call someone for bail."

"No way did you pick up a hooker. I don't believe it."

"You're right. I lied. I didn't ."

"Okay, so where were you?"

"Here and there, you know. Thanksgiving with my family. Work. Umm... Car died again. Took all weekend to get that fixed."

"So you have nothing of interest or value to share? C'mon, man, I rely on you for entertainment."

"Okay, picture this. It's Tuesday morning. I'm so sick I'm melting. I have dark brown snot ejecting from my lungs every time I cough. Each wad sticks like a malformed suction cup to the monitor screen, or the wall, or wherever it splashes. Fucking gross. My nose wasn't your typical runny nose. It was crapping out green jelly turds instead of the usual oh so gentle and precious sniffle trickle. I'm talking illness here- glowing with infection.

"I showed up at work anyways. We had a training class for a new system. About an hour into the tedious, painful education about this newfangled register system, one of the other trainees asks me to go buy a bottle. He's from Indiana, and doesn't know the area too well. So I went a bought a bottle of Bushmills. 10:30am. So there we are, ten of us, drinking shots instead of learning. The class leader tried to make us eat the donuts he brought in the try to absorb the whiskey. Sugar just made us more unruly. It was a circus.

"Okay, I know, that's boring. But what if you put an extremely sick semi-buzzed guy in a swivel chair? A chair with support problems? That was me. A steel post shot through a seal at the bottom of the swivel, the swivel shot up the post, and that left me sitting on a spinning top, desperately cluthing at my desk as I toppled about. A chair on a stick. I was talking on the phone setting up an important sales call, too, trying to maintain my composure as I crashed to the floor with all the shit I knocked off my desk raining on me. I did not let go of that phone."

"Sounds like a blast."

"Yeah, it was. I had an audience. They were amused. So was I. I looked up from the floor to see nine faces staring down, wide-eyed and giggly. Hooray for shitty office furniture.

"But overall? Nothing much is happening. Nothing to write home about. I'm still sick. Gonna leave early today, in fact. I just don't have the pep-zesto to be entertaining right now. Sorry. I need more sleep." 12:28 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm