Our cupboards and refrigerator explode at every meal, shooting their contents all over our counter tops. Somehow, Diane manages to carefully repack the food shrapnel back into it’s respective locations and clean things up. (Only to have everything explode again a few hours later.)

Maybe it was time I spent working out of town a couple months ago, staying at a hotel chain that specialized in business travelers. I got a good, free continental breakfast each morning and was able to snag an apple, banana and peanut butter sandwich to take with me for lunch.

Maybe my brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders after a night of kid horseplay and wiggling (and not sleep), with Agalia and DJ excited about how we were going to spend the next day.

Whatever the reason, when I saw that big 1 liter bottle of water sitting next to two glasses in our room at the Hilton, it said to me “You look thirsty, Jack. Have a nice glass of water. On us.” Before I could question the bottle’s candor, I’d twisted the top and broken the seal. That’s when I noticed the tag attached to the neck of the bottle THAT WAS ALMOST AS BIG AS THE BOTTLE. That tag didn’t say anything like “Complimentary” or “This water is Hilton’s way of saying thanks for your patronage.” It’s message was much more succinct: $6.

I spent the next three minutes trying to carefully replace the cap and align the little broken tabs on the bottom plastic ring with the little broken tabs on the cap, then positioning the bottle on the table at just the right angle, so when the cleaning staff entered to room, it appeared unopened.

This is my first “Filch It Friday” post as part of Nutmeg’s blogging carnival.

There’s a blog I keep up with (when time permits) that recently had a post I couldn’t get out of my head for several days. She called it “100 Things Before I go.” I think I’d call it instructions for grabbing life by the short & curlies. Here are some of mine, in no particular order or quantity:

1. Run a mile in under 5:48. That’s my personal best, accomplished 25 years ago.
2. Be a pseudo astronaut. Price tag? About $20K in 5-10 years or $200K in a year or two.
3. Run with the bulls in Pamplona.
4. Teach my daughter Spanish (to the extent of my knowledge, which isn’t much).
5. Learn Chinese with my daughter.
6. Learn to be a smart investor.
7. Teach my kids to be smart investors.
8. Hire a really good interior decorator.
9. Jump out of a perfectly good airplane. But maybe when I’m 70. Y’know, so if something goes south, I still had a pretty good run.
10. Teach my son how to build things well.
11. Teach my kids how to be better entrepreneurs than their dad.
12. Write a novel.
13. Own a sports car.
14. Learn to play “Dueling Banjos” (for real).
15. Bench press 250 pounds.
16. Run a dog boarding kennel. (retirement job)
17. Visit some authentic Zen gardens in Japan for a week.
18. Compete in the Olympics. So long as curling is a medal sport, I figure I have a shot until about age 60.
19. Go fishing with my dad.
20. Visit some acquaintances in Australia I met online.
21. Spend a week in the Louvre.
22. Drive the autobahn. In a Porsche.
23. Seduce Diane in France. Or Italy. Or Spain. (Or all three.)
24. Teach my kids to play a musical instrument.
25. Walk China’s Great Wall
26. See the Terracotta Warriors.
27. Make a return visit to the Mayan pyramids in Mexico.
28. Walk the Parthenon.
29. Keep an apartment in the downtown part of a big city, just to visit once in awhile.
30. Find someone in need of help and turn around their financial life (in the spirit of “teach a man to fish”).
31. Drink a pint in Ireland.
32. Spend a week in Moscow.
33. Get a pilot’s license.
34. Get an hour or two of telescope time at Keck.

(Note - Some on my list are pipe dreams - but those are really the best ones, aren’t they?)

It’s only been 17 days since I said I was being stretched too thin.  And truth be told, I’m probably still stretched a little on the thin side.  Snow is melting, which means that the construction industry and all the satellite industries that orbit and are sustained by that gas giant are gearing up for the ‘08 season.  That means go time for me; building those things I’ve designed and sold during the day, rifling dinners into my pie hole in the evening, kissing the kids goodnight, then rushing out the door to meet with more prospective clients.

But there’s still stuff I want to say here.  Stuff about my kids, telling them and my reader how brilliant and talented they are.  Other stuff too, the dumb things I do, that by airing it out here feels almost confessional.  Which will help my kids understand in the years to come why they feel so eager to put dad in a home (but then at the last moment decide to let me live with them - right Agalia?  DJ?).

Not to mention I paid for two years of hosting.   I’m not throwin’ that away.

So slowly, I’m going to strip to my skivvies and dip my white belly back into the blogging waters.  Nutmeg has this cool thing going where you steal other people’s ideas and make them your own.  I like having things come easy and taking credit for anything I’m given credit for, so it seems like as good a reason as any to post again.