10/14/03’s illustrious band:

House Day

Brought to you by the residents of Sensational Acres.

Yesterday marked the personal holiday I call House Day: three years since I moved to Sensational Acres, my sprawling country estate. Three years! It doesn’t seem like that long at all . . . just a lifetime. Moving to this house -- it’s a home now -- marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life. It’s been, on the whole, a sweet one.

Three years. That’s 36 months, 156 weeks, or 1095 days. Here’s an approximation of some of the things I’ve gone through in that time:

• Garage doors: 2. The original -- the one that had been there since the garage was built in 1949 -- bit the dust this past spring and had to be replaced, so I’m on my second one. And in case you’re wondering, the breakdown was due to mechanical failure, not user error.

  
  

• Window screens: 3 or 4. One of the cats (the lighter one, ironically) has pulled several mesh squares loose from their frames by hooking his claws into them and trying to climb them. I’m getting tired of having them replaced. Apparently I need to find a better repair person, because I’ve known of many screens that survived climbing cats without ever giving way.

  
  

• Swingin’ parties: 2. I threw myself a housewarming party on Labor Day weekend of 2001, near the first anniversary of House Day, and another this past Fourth of July weekend. Why so few? Though I have a big yard (big enough, Lightbringer says, for an orienteering meet) and plenty of friends, it seldom occurs to me to combine them. I have, however, hosted numerous visitors in ones and twos.

  
  

• Backyard bonfires: about 6. I’ve built fires in the backyard pit for each of the swingin’ parties, and I’ve burned a few piles of yard rubbish on my own. I need to do one more this fall before snow flies to get rid of some fallen tree branches.

  
  

• Bottles of vodka: 0.5. I bought one for the last swingin’ party and haven’t finished it yet.

  
  

• Boyfriends: Mind your own business.

  
  

• Martial arts promotions: 2. I was named a lineage-holder of my T’ai Chi style during the Chinese New Year celebration of 2001, and I earned a blue belt in jujutsu last November. I’m still doing T’ai Chi, but I gave up jujutsu for Lent this spring and never went back.

  
  

• Parents: 1. One of the few bad things that has happened since I moved to Sensational Acres is the passing of my Dad on January 29, 2001. He only got to see my house once, the weekend I moved in. He brought me a small kit of tools as a housewarming gift and walked around the place looking for screws to tighten while Mom and I unpacked the kitchen. I wish he could see my home now, tidy and warm and full of family mementos. I can still picture him sitting in the chair by the window, smiling across the living room and telling me I chose well.

  
  

• Grandparents: 2. Both of my grandmothers have passed away in the past couple years, Grandma Clar just before 9/11 and Grandma Marie this past summer. Neither of those great ladies ever got to visit my house, although they heard plenty about it and saw the many pictures Mother Media provided. They probably wouldn’t understand the shrine to electronic equipment slowly taking shape in my home office, nor the deplorable state of my flowerbeds. Still, I think they would have approved.

  
  

• Rolls of TP: about 234. That’s assuming an average usage rate of 1.5 rolls per week. Consumption is higher when I have company, but lower when I’m out of town, so I figure it evens out.

  
  

• Garbage bags: about 200. I take out the main household trash every Sunday evening and empty the smaller trashes on an as-needed basis. I just bought a box of 55 tall kitchen garbage bags that I expect to last nearly a year.

  
  

• E-mail addresses: at least 6. There’s an address I retired, and the one that goes with the dial-up ISP I no longer use now that I’ve got DSL. I have two addresses at work, one that’s mine and one for a general mailbox I’m responsible for policing. And I have two private addresses, one for everyday use and one for BND. I also have three phone numbers (home, work and cell) and two mailing addresses (home and work). So don’t complain that you can’t get ahold of me.

  
  

• Houseplants: about 7 -- and they’re all still alive! Until moving to Sensational Acres, I considered myself possessed of a brown thumb. However, my little green friends seem to be doing just fine these days. It probably helps that I’ve developed a near-foolproof system for remembering to water them: I simply do it whenever I’m on the phone to Mother Media.

  
  

• Journal pages: around 1,500. I usually hand-write about one page per day, sometimes less, often more. There are no great writerly revelations to be found here; mostly I just jot down whom I talked to and what I need from the store. It’s either that or talk to the cats even more than I already do.

  
  

• Band Names of the Day: about 430. I started saving my BND essays a few months after I moved to Sensational Acres, and I was astounded to count that many as I archived them over the weekend. Please don’t ask me to remember what all of them are about! However, if you have favorites, let me know. Maybe I’ll compile a “best of” anthology for my 500th BND.
  

So, happy House Day, everyone. As you can see, I’ve been busy. What have you-all been up to?

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.