I sat in the passenger seat of the rented SUV with the windows down, snapping pictures as we came to the red light at the intersection of 45th and Broadway... Times Square. As we pulled to a stop, this dude came right to the door of the car, stuck his head well into my personal space and asked, "Hey! You guys like hip-hop?"

I was dressed for the theater in the only dress shirt I own. I am, it should be pointed out, the whitest person you've ever met.

"Yes. I love hip-hop. It's all I listen to."

Throughout history, leaders of religious sects have found themselves in legal hot water. Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, Jim Jones, David Koresh, Tony Alamo and, most recently, Warren Jeffs.

After hearing the news of Jeffs' conviction of being the world-record holder as the creepiest living person, my instant thought was to wonder what his followers were doing to discount the conviction. How would they frame and retell their version of events such that even the very nature of the crimes he had been charged with would be lost in their official histories.

If one looks at the criminal cases against Jesus or Joseph Smith, for example, the official recounting by their followers, their true-believers, you notice that those accounts are suspiciously light on the details of the specific cases made against them. How many devout Christians know what charges Jesus was brought up on before Pontius Pilate? How many would go the extra-step in calling those charges erroneous, without even knowing exactly what they were?

Since tomorrow is the fifteenth anniversary of our first date, and of my nineteenth birthday (don't spend too much time doing the math) I thought it was time I formally introduce myself.

My name is Donna and I am married to Pete. We have been married most of those fifteen years and have 4 beautiful girls. And I'm not just saying that because they are mine, everyone says so. Even the ones that don't look like me.

My kids demand a lot of time of me and my poor, worn-out van, Goldilocks III. There's dance practice, piano lessons, three different schools and a herd of friends strewn across the valley. Basically, I live in carpool HELL! I swear these girls were born with legs that were painted on. When I was a kid, my mother never drove me anywhere. I had to ride my purple Schwinn with the banana seat anywhere I wanted to go. And with six siblings, one of us was always being left at a grocery store or zoo.

Last week, after I got back from New York, I was flooded with a rush of emotions. Some of which had everything to do with my trip and my personal regret about not having followed my dream to be the cliche struggling actor, scraping by in the city. Others had been festering for a while and just came along for the ride once the gates were opened. Still others were nothing new and are the same old things that always get thrown into the mix.

It's no secret that Donna and have more than our share of painful history together. It's also not news to any regular reader of this site that, while each of us has done a lot of work and come a long, long way, it's very likely that there will never be a time when we are free from the burden and hurt of those common experiences. There are some issues that no amount of therapy will help us overcome.

The long and the short of it is that while Donna is a terrific person for whom I have a great deal of love I most often feel like we each spend a lot of time disappointing each other. And while that's certainly not unique to our marriage, the combination of those incompatibilities and our rocky history might make it hard for either of us to get close enough to each other for either of us to ever be as happy as we might be apart. Does that make sense?

Hey folks... today's regular post is replaced by a feature announcement.

Check out the new iBlog portion of the site. These are Twitter-like snapshot entries from my iPhone.

Enjoy :)

I've spent the last 24 hours, or so, scheming a way for me to live and work in New York City. If you had asked me when I was half the age I am now what I would be doing when I am the age I am now, I would have said, "living, working, starving, whatever in New York City".

I've hearted NY since I first visited the summer I was fifteen years-old. That city is alive and dirty. Sexy. It scares me and intoxicates me all at once. Now, every time I stand in Times Square and watch the throngs of people press into the theaters at 7:45 while cardboard-scented steam seems from the manholes, I am transported back to that summer. I am filled with my dream to starve my way from audition to audition.

Coming home, I leave a part of myself there. Maybe someday I'll get a chance to go back and find it.

Food on airplanes is exactly like security at airports. You don't get the actual thing... just the appearance of the thing. To make you think you are being taken care of rather than actually taking care of you.

Instead of a nutritious, delicious and filling meal you get a barrage of raisins, crackers, plastic foil-sealed cuplettes of processed cheese and half-cans of diet soda. Instead of a menu you are given a dispassionate cold-reading of a laminated plastic card by a bitter and tired flight attendant. Wait a tick, wasn't there even a meal for sale on your flight, Pete?

"Only on flights from JFK to LAX or SFO to JFK", the weathered steward uninformatively droned.

Because we've decided that five is simply one too many weddings to finance before we're forty-five, Donna has had an intrauterine device entrenched in defense of her fertile-as-the-Tenessee-River-valley uterus for a couple of years. Crammed in her cervix just like God intended. Or wherever it is they jam those things.

Sorry, I haven't had a close look for myself lately to know the specifics. Also, I don't think cram and jam are the exact terms that reproductive medical professionals use for this sort of installation. It does send and receive SMS messages though, so that's cool. At least, I presume that it does based on what our insurance company paid for it. I mean, for nine-hundred bucks, it had better have an IP address and run some flavor of UNIX.

Being the high-tech, bionic fishing lure that it is, the IUD requires some kind of regular maintenance. Lube and oil change, probably. So Friday Donna took it in for its fifty-thousand mile maintenance and to have her airbags safety inspected.

These million show weekends might just kill me. This is me blogslacking again.

There is almost not enough beer in the backstage fridge to make this worth it.

Almost.

I seriously need to look into some kind of anxiety medication. Seriously.

Ironically, or tragically, depending on whether you are less or more empathetic, I would need to go to a doctor to get that worked out. Going to a doctor is just the sort of thing for which I actually need the medication. On the upside, I'm guaranteed to be accurately diagnosed. It would be hard to misdiagnose a patient lying in the corner sweating and shivering like cold Jello at a summer picnic.

The other problem is that I haven't even found time for the haircut which I need almost as desperately. How in the world will I not use that as an excuse?

After an unbearably difficult day at work I was looking forward to a cold one and some barbecue bratwurst. I've been thinking of trying the new offering from the Miller Brewing Company, Miller Chill. A lime and salt alternative to Corona, I presume.

The night began badly when I found that the gas grill had been so badly damaged by last week's wind that it is now totally unusable. In fact, it looks not entirely unlike a crushed U-boat at the bottom of the Atlantic.

The moment I realized my brats were relegated to the George Foreman grill was the moment I opened the first beer. I figured I would need a head start.

Write a process document describing how projects are supposed to be done at work. Without this, I can't kill people for not doing it right.

Put my personal budget on a spreadsheet. Without this, I will run out of money sometime in the next... err... right now.

Find out what is causing my allergies and kill it. All of it.

Sorry about the brief bout of blogslack, folks.

Between getting the new office set up, performing and watching stock car racing at three o'clock in the morning, I've only found time for a handful of Twitter updates. Speaking of which, has everyone noticed that Donna is now an active Twitterer?

Twittering works out well for her because, unlike blogging or balancing the checkbook, she can do it without using the computer. This is handy because her computer has been dead for several weeks. I tried to fix it, I swear. But once the initial round of repair failed I just didn't muster the energy to follow through. Probably because it's a Dell. I just can't get passionate about a Dell.

"If forced to give up my extra-roomy bubble baths and exchange rubber duckies for ladles, I feel confident that I could provide enough gin to bring the flapper days back."

The world needs more clients like these.

This is just the sort of thing that happens when people don't plan the way I asked them to.

There had better be a damsel in a tower at the other end of this.

Since I was a kid, I've suffered from canker sores. I remember sitting on the carpeted kitchen floor of our Sandy slum, err.. rental house, in front of the avocado-green refrigerator yelping with pain every time I had to swallow. Always the caring mother, mom would be extra careful when pushing me away from the fridge with her foot when opening the door to get at the pitcher of re-hydrated Deseret Brand powdered milk.

It's been a couple years since I had a serious outbreak but it looks like I'm about overdue. The first tickle came on Friday along with a little redness in the throat. You know these sorts of things are bad when I find myself wishing for strep throat instead of cankers. By Sunday morning, a full-fledged ulcer had formed right on my uvula.

There is no know cause for cankers though some say a combination of factors are likely to blame. Including stress, lack of sleep, sodium laurel sulphate (a nearly-unavoidable main ingredient in toothpaste) and, depending who you ask, apostasy. Great, all I have to do is lie perfectly still, stop swallowing, quit my job and stop brushing my teeth. The apostasy thing is non-negotiable.