«  Mon.01.01.2001  » 7:52 pm EST        20°F (-7°C) in Dearborn Calendar of Updates The first twenty hours of the new year have been, as is typical around this house, boring and full of my parents' unpleasantness. I woke up and showered, and prepared to take my sister on a shopping errand she wanted to run; however, I couldn't escape the bitching. Something wasn't "exactly right" with the way I vacated the bathroom after my shower — apparently, towel-drying of the bathroom walls is more important to my parents than towel-drying of Larry — so they bitched and moaned for a while. Sure my father just painted them in October, but it's a friggin' bathroom; get over it already, old man. (After receiving one smart-aleck comment ten minutes after I posted this, I'm adding this parenthetical several hours later; I don't have enough time in the shower to have to dry, uhm, something else, off the walls. ) As a result of the attitude my parents gave me, I did exactly what they had instructed me not to do — I took my sister about 20 miles out to Twelve Oaks Mall, rather than going two miles to Fairlane. (Well, there was another advantage to that — lots of cute boys — in addition to the fact that almost every time I go into Fairlane, I see some form of violence going on. All too often, unfortunately, it's of the ethnic variety. In Detroit, everybody hates everybody else, and we're damn proud of that fact. ) Obligatory shots at D-town aside, I must tell a story about the shopping trip. My sister dragged me into Express, which, as some of you probably know, is a women's clothing store aimed at the 12-to-34 age bracket. Consider the irony in the situation — I'm a gay guy in a women's clothing store, accompanied (read: dragged around) by a woman, looking like I'm straight just by virtue of the "I'm not enjoying this" look plastered on my face. After what seemed like an eternity, my sister and I approached the registers; a boyfriend/girlfriend pair had arrived there just before we did. This guy was SO attractive that I wanted to jump his bones right there in the store, but I controlled myself — I'm a good boy. Well, almost; part of me was a little bit out of control, but this website is a family show. At this point, my readers are probably wondering if I'm insane — if the story about my fleeting attraction to a boy in the store isn't making them consider the possibility, the excessive number of smiley faces is. I think I'd better quit while I'm ahead.