Do you realize how much water I'll now have to drink just to get the required levels of caffeine I used to get from Diet Dr. Pepper?

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Three blocks from my house, a cell phone ring broke the sanctity of my Gwen Stefani worship. It was my cell phone. What was I thinking. I really should throw that thing away.

"The Office", said the caller ID.

"Fuck."

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Sometimes, late at night, I listen to my heart beating. If I allow myself, I can forget that it I am listening to myself live. Then, as quickly as I forgot, I again become keenly aware that it is my own heart beating. It aches. It burns. It is weak under the weight of my sorrow.

In these depths I have, more times than I can count, tried to simply stop living. My life force seems such a conscious and banal effort that I could will it to stop. I could, and would if the choice were mine, simply give up the tedious undertaking of keeping my heart beating.

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I've had the question posed by more readers than I can count, "Does Donna read this site and what will happen when she finds out?" As one astute email put it, "... you are SO getting divorced." I guess I better sell more shirts and get the name of a good attorney, right?

Maybe not.

No, Donna does not read this site. She's not even aware of it, as far as I know. I go out of my way to make sure it stays that way. Not that I have to do all that much. She has basically no online savvy or presence at all. Hard to believe these days but it's true. Donna just isn't really the internet type.

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Listen up, Fiddleyonians. This is the best coffee in Salt Lake. No competition. We have a winner. Get your apostate asses over to Jack Mormon Coffee Company on the corner of E Street and 2nd Avenue the next time you're in town for General Conference.

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Last night was brewing night again at the Dunn house. All went well and Donna even held the strainer as I poured my cooled wort into the fermenter.

No, that's not a euphemism. Perverts.

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I really just want to say to everyone today, thanks for the support, comments, emails and good vibes sent my way over the past few days. It's good to know that people are behind me and willing to give such great advice and support.

I'm sharing my office with a contractor today and he is, at this very moment, probably reading as I type this. MIND YOUR P'S AND Q'S, MISTER. I'M WATCHING YOU. Therefore, I shall keep my post short today.

Again, thanks all.

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My beer, like much of my life, lacks fizz.

I was eager to get the my first bottle of homemade beer open last night. As the cap clanked to the counter, the bottle stood there silently. As I poured the cold beer into the glass there was no head. No suds. Oh, there were a few bubbles but the stuff was nowhere near fully carbonated.

I was let down a bit. The beer still in the bottles will likely be just fine in a week or so but still... I was really looking forward to the experience being perfect.

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Yesterday I predicted the possibility that sex may not be exactly, umm, coming soon.

Ah, the great prognosticator, I.

The evening went generally well. And, despite what you probably think, Donna loved the pneumatic stapler/nailer I gave her. Seriously. I wrapped it in a collage of photos I printed on the oversized printer at the office. A gift like that says, "I cherish the memories we've had together" and "Please build something from this load of lumber I have... in my pants." Control yourselves, ladies, I'm off the market.

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You know what makes Valiumtimes Day cool? That Donna would rather have a pneumatic nailer/stapler than chocolates.

I know. Hot.

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This post will in no way be original or clever. This is likely to be a rehash of content found on news sites and blogs across the net today but the topic simply cannot be avoided given the circumstances.

Most of my readers will know by now that a gunman shot and killed five bystanders before himself being killed by off-duty police officer, Ken Hammond, in a mall just a few minutes from my where I am in Salt Lake City, Utah. The shooter, 18 year-old Sulejmen Talovic, also wounded four others.

My heart and thoughts are consumed with emotion for the victims and their families today.

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Along with her cell phone, Megan (12, going on dangerous) also has her own domain name, friends-only blog and email address. In an effort to keep her safe, I set the site and email up with the explicit agreement that I would, on occasion, monitor her activity while respecting her privacy as much as possible. A girl's got to be able to bitch about her parents to her friends without fear of reprimand or arranged marriage to a General Authority, afterall.

Occasional monitoring means checking her blog for spammers, sex offenders, Republicans and other such deviants. It also means manually scanning her email from time to time for questionable messages, just to be sure she's not sneaking around selling herself into Bosnian slavery without giving me my commission and stuff like that. Unless there is a questionable title, unrecognized sender/recipient or some other red flag, I don't read the actual content of her correspondence.

I made an exception when I saw the following in her sent items folder.

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The wee yeasties are eating and farting and carbonating my beer now. Last night I bottled all the precious beer that had been busy fermenting away in my basement. Now, all that's left is waiting. The yeast has the hard part. They will give their life for fizz.

A moment of silent gratitude for the yeast. God bless them. They died in the service of men... and women.

The bottling went smoothly thanks to a root beer dress rehearsal. At rehearsal, a batch of root beer that the girls helped make stood in for the real beer. Plastic bottles in place of glass. It was all a clever rouse on my part to try out all the bottling procedures so I'd have them down for the real thing. The net result is that now the girls are excited and anxiously checking their bottles just like their old man.

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"Hey, I finally figured out how to make my penis 8 inches long!"

"Yeah? How?"

"Fold it in half."

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Back in junior high school I cared about my looks. I had the Girbaud jeans, eyeliner and bleached, curly bangs just like Martin Gore. After getting my ass kicked 32,768 times by jocks calling me a fag, I decided that caring about how I looked just wasn't that important.

Since those days, I have been happy simply to not smell like a homeless person. Something has changed recently. A few months ago, I had my hair cut by a man. A vain, beautiful, talented, straight man. Yes, a man in a salon styled my hair as European house dance music thumped loud enough to silence my homophobia.

As he gently massaged the finishing rinse into my scalp, I thought, "Would people think I was gay if I blogged about how much I'm enjoying this?"

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My aunt, BA has tickets to Jesus Christ Superstar because she subscribes to the Broadway Across America theater series. She's not using the seats for this show though because... you know... Jesus hates rock music and gay people.

As soon as she figured it was offensive enough to miss, she immediately figured I would want them... you know... so I could worship the devil at intermission with the other sinners, or whatever.

I took the tickets.

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"I think tonight might be spent bottling."

"Oh. So... how much of that stuff do you think you'll keep around here? I mean, you're planning on giving a lot of it away, right?"

"Yeah, I plan on giving a lot of beer away. But you know, once I create a demand I'm going to have to make a lot more. There will probably be a fair amount of it hanging around."

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It's possible, just possible, that I had more to drink at lunch than I should have.

When I started my job here, however long ago it was I started here (too tipsy to figure it out), I replace two employees. One of the guys came back and manages another department for us. The other one moved to Switzerland to be some kind of gigolo or something. Or maybe he was running from the law. Something like that. Am I rambling yet? I feel like I'm rambling. Also, I think I may be typing loudly.

Having worked as a contractor for the company for a while before my full-time gig, I had spent some time with these guys and had gotten to like them pretty well. Switzerland guy has been in town on a visit for a couple weeks and did some contract work for us while he's been here. Tomorrow he leaves for Europe again.

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No sooner had I suggested that we host a Super Bowl party this coming Sunday than Donna had activated the family phone tree and invited her entire family for a chilled punch and nacho cheese Dorito's soiree.

Soiree, I'm told, is from the French word soir meaning evening. In this case it is from the Mormon word, swear, as in, I swear, this might be the most boring Super Bowl party I've ever been to.

Having Donna's family at a get-together means I can't invite anyone who would actually be fun. Not because Donna would object, she wouldn't. Rather because it would be embarrassing. Those fun people would get the idea of thinking I actually choose to have get-togethers where, like a Chaim Potok story, everyone sits around and debates finer religious points like, I wonder if the Brethren have ever said anything about using PowerPoint for Relief Society lessons and I hear Glenn Beck is giving Bill O'Reilly the missionary discussions. He'd make a kick butt Mormon!

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