Well, it isn’t Emily Post, but it was effective and I do sympathise...

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- A Tampa woman is behind bars for chasing after a Thanksgiving dinner guest with a machete.

Forty-six-year-old Annette Jenkins is facing aggravated assault charges. She's being held on $2,000 bond.

Police were called to her home Thursday night when her brother arrived for dinner with a woman. The hostess reportedly waived the machete at the woman while yelling, "If you don't get out, I'll kill you."

No one was injured.

Jenkins is being held at the Hillsborough County Jail. Bond has been set at $2,000.

Spending the day with the gays

So my parents called me this morning to ask why my picture was on the front page of today's metro section seeing as how it was attached to a a story about a gay rights protest against the recent passage of Amendment 2 in Florida. Imagine their dismay when I told them that the whole damn family including the dog attended to lend our support and join the chorus of voices opposing this hate and intolerance-driven measure. We attended with our friends Kathy & Lisa who have been married for 13 years and my dear friend Scott and his new partner Tommy. How I wound up in the paper I cannot understand, though, seeing as how I write for the paper and we have a strict policy about running pictures or stories of reporters. All I can figure is that the photogapher is new (I have not met her) and whoever was on the copy desk yesterday failed to recognize me, maybe because I am in fuzz focus here. I was laughing at the time the photo was snapped because the speaker was a woman with a Leonid Breshnev unibrow and Scott could not stop commenting on it in his syrupy southern twang. "Oh, Lord Jesus, please let me help her with her grooming, bless her heart..."

what the eff are the odds? Another hotel fire!

Once upon a time in the life of ell, a fabulously romantic night (blissful screw-a-thon)in a fabulous historic hotel was interrupted by a grease fire that broke out in the kitchen. We were never in any danger, but we did have to check out way sooner than we wanted to, that's for sure. We figured later that at the very least, on the bright side, the fire alarm woke us up to the point that we were alert enough to do it one more time before we had to flee. Looks like Jaimie and Bill can relate. Their first night together as husband and wife was similarly interrupted by smoke, an alarm and firemen tromping around with flashlights. Here's an e-mail I received from Jaimie:

"Good Morning Everyone! We had a WONDERFUL time last night and are very happy you were there to join us!!

So, we leave the reception and go back to the hotel. We go to sleep and I wake up at 3 a.m. smelling smoke. I look outside and there are FIRE TRUCKS where the valet area is and smoke is passing by the window. I wake Bill and tell him something is on fire. Then the fire alarm goes off and we get up and get dressed. I call the front desk and they inform us that the fire is NOT in our building but we can come down if we want. We go downstairs and the smoke is very bad. Everyone is outside and watching the building 2 over from the hotel go up in flames. There were MANY fire trucks and several ladder trucks. One fireman said that it was a 2 alarm fire-at that point. We see the rest of our friends and family that were staying in hotel. We decided to take a cab back to our house, valet cars were blocked with the fire hoses, and sleep. Now we are headed back to the hotel to get our things and car and head to Miami. The good news-it appears Paloma has died down to a Tropical Storm and seems to be a little past our path. We are both very tired and look forward to getting on the ship and relaxing!"

I marry Bill and Jaimie

Not into threesomes but I did marry my friends Bill and Jaimie Saturday on the beach at sunset. It was a smooth ceremony and being a notary in Florida, I was able to be the officiant without the pesky requirement that I be an ordained minister of some such bullshit or other. But there was much joking around as we set up that it was in fact the "church of the holy grill" since the beach the happy couple chose is famous for picnics and bbqs. After the ceremony we all went back to the mainland for the reception and whooped it up all night in the ballroom of a historic hotel downtown. As the 30-something bridesmaids stood in a tight wad in a corner and preened and re-applied lip gloss, we 40-something bitches took over the dance floor and tore it up, starting with an awesome run of Love Shack, Paradise by the Dashboard Light and of course, the Electric Slide. We had gotten so liquored up that we plain ass did not give a shit that we seemed to be the only ones dancing and let it rip, each of us affecting a frowsy sort of monkey that had been shot with a tranquilizer dart at times which must have looked like fun because all the cute little 30-something groomsmen abandoned the plastic boobed stiffs in the corner and joined us on the dance floor and tore it up with us all night long. Too much fun.

What a wonderfully surreal feeling to wake up in a newly Blue State yesterday. I never thought it would happen, Florida being as dysfunctional as it is. For once we managed to not fuck it up for the rest of the country. However. As a reminder of how truly good we are at fucking it up for everyone else, the good rednecks, ignorant and ill-informed bigots, and frightened bible-thumpers passed the "Marriage Protection Act" which adds language to OUR STATE CONSTITUTION, PEOPLE! that states that marriage is a covenant between one person with an inie and one person with an outie, period, the end. I just don't get it. The whole motivation for this amendment was solely based in divisiveness and hatred and the inability of some soulless idiots to live and let live. Live your life, assholes, and leave everyone else the hell alone to live theirs--how hard is that? Apparently very. And it's not like gay marriage or recognition of domestic partners was even lawful in Florida to begin with, so WTF?

There is still much work to be done. Or maybe patience is the key. As one Gen Y co-worker put it: "We just have to wait for the old people to die off--the generation before the Boomers. They're the ones who can't seem to leave everyone else alone or tolerate anyone who is 'different'." Hm.

My ex-office-spouse went to the doctor yesterday and they took one look at his nuts and sent hin to a specialist, who cannot see him until Monday. So I suggested he begin his weekend early with round-the-clock-drinking.

My office husband got fired two weeks ago and work is so much more boring now. Plus I have no one to pick up Starbucks for me when he runs out for some for himself or trouble-shoot all my IT issues or fill me in on all the dirt in his dept. meetings and vice-versa. But more importantly, even though he walked away with three-months’ severance and a huge bonus check, he’s been having a tough time adjusting to being unemployed and things seems to be steadily caving in on him. Today I met him for lunch at the new Thai place around the corner from the office and as I greeted him with the usual “Yo!!! Wassuuuup?“ he unexpectedly burst into tears and not quiet tears – shudders of sobs that bent him into himself and seemed to be fighting to burst out of him while he tried to hold his breath and will them to stay in. This took me completely by surprise and I threw one arm over his shoulder and patted him like I do my kid when she’s having a tough time, which I know was completely futile and lacking in any real helpfulness. The first thought I had was that maybe his mom had died—he was crying that hard. When he was finally able to speak, he put his sunglasses on and looked away, out the window of my car and said very quietly that he had found a lump. “A lump? What do you mean, where?” Down there, he said. Yep, a nasty lump in the testicles.

This is scary because his dad died of testicular cancer and of course my friend has spent the last 24 hours feeling his lump and lurking on the Live Strong website, which has only made him more certain that he has ball cancer. I refused to get out of the car until he got on his cell phone and made an appt. to see his doctor tomorrow. So obviously the whole lump in the testes issue pretty much changed the tone of lunch. I didn’t know what to say and no matter what I chatted about I could see he was preoccupied with his lump. So was I. Here’s a guy I have spent 40+ hours a week with for the past eight years – more time than I have with my own family – and all I could think about as I stared at my steaming bowl of Pad Thai was what might be lurking in his pants, and not in a good way, and all of the sudden I had no idea what to say to him.

Have I mentioned that I hate the assholes who have commandeered our company? Yeah. I guess I have. We have lost a total of seven people from our office (roughly half) in the last year, all casualties of a totally mangled acquisition, bad management, piss-poor communication, ramped-up pressure to produce with fewer resources than we had two years ago, and, oh, yeah, a CEO who is a douche. And he hired all his college buddies to run the company and one of them decided he didn’t think he could work with my lumpy buddy and so he got the heave-ho. As I dropped my former colleague/office spouse/friend off on my way back to work, I leaned over to give him a hug and he kissed me. This made me very sad because I know it was an impulse – it was all about him needing to be close to another human being right now. And I know how utterly alone he must be feeling at the moment – because he really is. Now he’ll feel weird about calling me and letting me know how he’s doing and that totally sucks.