And so, gentle reader, I find myself housesitting and catsitting for friends this week and what a pleasure it is. There is no better way to get to know your friends than rifling through their underwear drawer and calling all the numbers in their old address books. I have especially enjoyed drinking the two hundred year old scotch they had locked in a steel case hidden in the depths of the basement that I can only assume they had left for me. In fact, I'm drinking it right now and am having trouble finding the right keys to type, but that may be less from the quality of the scotch than the fact that I am wearing their contact lenses and glasses at the same time. I have decided also that they have entirely too many nice things, and while some of them I have broken, many others I am taking the liberty of selling on Craiglist to pay my first graduate school payment, due today. Beneficial for both them and me, since now there is less furniture for them to run into when they are drinking all that scotch and I learn the ins and outs of the free market and just how much I can get for their copy of the Guttenberg Bible. And you wouldn't believe how much you can get for an autographed copy of Eric Estrada's autobiography!

  But, gentle reader, I do think the most difficult thing for me with housesitting is learning to forge my friends' signatures when using their credit cards. I do take pride in being a good friend and once I sold some of the extra furniture around here I used the cards to thoughtfully purchase some fun accessories for the house, like blow up dolls and a light up dart set. Indeed, part of being a good friend is knowing what your friends enjoy,and when they finish the last few swigs of the scotch I will leave for them, they're going to want a blow up doll.