Happy Birthday

to my favorite.

Live-blogging the Oscars: a lude

8:31 - This may be a good time to mention that I'm not really a Jon Stewart fan.

8:31:30 - Mostly because he receives a disproportionately raucous reaction to every tepid joke he utters at full volume.

8:34 - A Hillary joke followed by a Jew joke in the first two minutes. WHO SAW THAT COMING?

8:35 - FOLLOWED BY A LAWYER JOKE. UNPRECEDENTED.

8:37 - Javier Bardem doesn't seem to enjoy veiled John McCain jabs.

8:42 - I've already switched from wine to beer.

8:43 - First Best Song performance. This is a good time to talk about the Friday night date night I had with my hubby this weekend. After failing to figure out the broken DVD player, we switched over to the On Demand free movie list, which seemed pretty lacking in promise.... to me. An excerpt of the evening's conversation:

Dan: "Hmmm, this doesn't look very go-- OH MY GOD HOWARD THE DUCK! I've been wanting to see that forever! Do you KNOW that you can't even get it on Netflix? And OH WAIT! OH MAN! LAST TANGO IN PARIS! Okay, we're fast-forwarding to the sex scenes, and then we're watching Howard the Duck. 'Bring me the butter...'"

Me: -----

A half-hour later

Dan: "I am in HOG heaven."

Me: ----

***

8:47 - "And now.... Oscar's most hateful moments."

8:38 - Does Spike Lee show up to this thing solely to be the requisite "Race joke! Quick! Cut to a recognizable black person! Where's Whoopi? Okay, where's the other one?" cut?

8:49 - My mother in law had a viscerally negative reaction to Ratatouille, owing entirely to the fact that it featured rats.

8:51 - NorBIT! NorBIT! NorBIT!

8:51:30 - Dammit.

8:52 - I absolutely adore Frenchmen who speak in fake French accents.

9:06 - Dan and I have been squabbling over who's rocking the Woolly Willy look better, The Rock or John Travolta.

9:10 - Not awarding a major award early on is such a mistake -- that's how you lose the husband vote.

9:10:30 - Dan has just suggested an antidote: have the Oscars co-hosted by Steve Carrell and Scarlett Johansson.

9:15 - Jennifer Hudson just had her Oscar revoked.

9:17 - First non-surprise of the evening (Best Supporting Actor Javier Bardem) just caused the dog to dramatically readjust his place on the couch.

9:23 - Second Best Song performance. This is a good time to try and explain why I hate Angelina Jolie so much. Okay, so first of all, she is not a friend of women. She doesn't seem to have any female friends, only male husbands and boyfriends she steals from women. One day I think Zahara will call her on this. Second of all, I think she's a wildly overrated actress and stunk in that dumb movie she won the Oscar for, and I say that not even caring that she tongued her brother. Mostly though, I hate her because I think she wildly overrates her own value as a humanitarian. When she travels to Iraq to raise awareness of the refugee situation over there, exactly who is she seeking to educate? The US Weekly readership? It just doesn't fly.

9:27 - I DARE Jon Stewart to make an Owen Wilson suicide joke.

9:33 - Jerry Seinfeld as an annoying animated bee totally works for me.

9:39 - One of the reasons I adore my husband is that he loves the oddly beautiful non-Americans: Rachel Griffths, Toni Collette and now, apparently, Tilda Swinton (who just gave an oddly beautifully awesome acceptance speech)

9:45 - Do you think the Technical Award nerds were pissed a hot PREGNANT actress hosted their awards this year?

9:49 - Dan likes the odd hotties, I like the Coen brothers.

9:51 - Peter "thirtysomething" Horton will play the lead in The Michael Bay Story.

9:53 - Third nominated song. Okay, I'll be honest, the superdelegate thing is making me nervous. I just don't trust the Clintons to seek any sort of truthful end result to this primary. Dignity just does not seem to be a coveted quality of their campaign (unless polled working-class Ohio voters suddenly put "dignity" atop their list of coveted qualities in their presidential candidate). And the whole bizarre Karl Rove-playbook accusation this weekend made my meta-blood boil.

10:01 - I have to pee.

10:02 - Peed.

10:10 - Okay, I'm just gonna say it: I don't like these foreigners comin' in and stealin' our Oscars. Where's Lou Dobbs when we need 'em?

10:15 - Forth nominated song. So inspired by Howard the Duck, Dan and I have been engaged in some pretty punny humor all weekend. For the one or two of you who never saw the greatest duck comedy of all time, here's a primer: a midget in a duck suit from another planet suddenly gets sucked into our universe, lands in Cleveland, meets Lea Thompson and spends the next two hours saying things like "that really ruffles my tail feathers!" and "That does it -- no more Mister Nice Duck." So Dan and I started reimagining the five nominated films as dog movies -- Atonemutt, There Will Be Bloodhounds etc. -- and OH WAIT! It's JACK! JACK'S BACK! Whoo hoo!

10:28 - Dan and I just counted, and shockingly I've seen more Best Picture movies than him -- those 50s musicals come in handy.

10:29 - Renee Zellweger, I know you're not supposed to insult someone by saying they have a lesbian haircut. However....

10:34 - Lifetime Achievement Award. Okay, so Nicole Kidman isn't quite as creepy-looking now that she is with bun, but there's still something so freakingly waxen about her. And it bums me out because I thought she was hyper-cute when she had normal hair and skin and lips, and she was still totally my fashion icon until maybe three years ago, when she married that country Australian guy who flat-irons his hair (which clearly inspired Tom Petty ahead of his Super Bowl performance, and do you KNOW that I can't even still talk about the Super Bowl and oh my god it's clearly cursed other New England sports teams because the Celtics have lost three in a row since the All-Star break and the Bruins, well, who cares, and but now I'm afraid that David Ortiz is going to break his groin during spring training?) and isn't it kind of weird how she became all Stepfordian only AFTER she divorced Tom Cruise given what Kat(i)e Holmes has become and...

10:39 - oh, commercial.

10:45 - Fifth Best Song performance. So anyway, Patrick Dempsey. So here's a dirty little secret. When I lived in Santa Barbara 15 years ago, there was this video store called "The #*&@* Video Store." You actually called it "The Fucking Video Store," but it was spelled the way I first spelled it. Anyway, it was about a block and a half away from my apartment, which meant that we never returned our videos because it was just too easy a process. So the two movies we had out forever were Dances with Wolves and Can't Buy Me Love. And, well, I loved Can't Buy Me Love. LOVED. But I HATED Patrick Dempsey, mostly because he was just a little too damn skinny and a lot too whiny. And so I still hate him today even though he's genuinely hot.

10:57 - Okay, forget what I said about Jon Stewart. I think it's genuinely awesome that he brought back the woman from Once to give her acceptance speech.

10:58 - And as if on cue, my dog just let rip with one of the smelliest farts that ever was.

11:00 - Okay, I'm lame, but the dead people montage always makes me teary. And it was a total dud of a dead lineup this year ('cepting for Heath, of course).

11:11 - So has anyone actually seen Enchanted? It's getting a lot of disproportionate play this evening, and BOY is that making my hubby angry.

11:15 - "I've served three tours in Iraq and all I got was this lousy Short Documentary subject?"

11-something - I've been totally distracted by reorganizing this blog.

11-something-plus-one - I so extra-love my husband for loving Helen Mirren as much as he does.

11:37 - So if anyone wants to really understand the emptiness of knee-jerk heretical film criticism, go read Stephanie Zackarek's criticism of Daniel-Day Lewis's performance in There Will Be Blood. It made me honestly a little embarrassed for her.

11:45 - Might I just mention that I love the Coen brothers?

11:46 - Okay, Denzel Washington has to be the least-offensive, least-drunk presenter of Best Picture in a long time.

11:47 - Good final win. Otherwise? BOR-ing.

Live-blogging the Oscars: a prelude

I'm cranky. I'm cranky because we spent two hours today shopping for local produce, dairy and bread in a sincere but semi-cynical effort to begin the 100-mile diet. I'm cranky because after the shop we headed straight to our favorite pizza place, but it was closed. I'm cranky because this afternoon I listed a pair of expensive leather boots on eBay that the dog threw up on a half-hour later. I'm cranky because the dog then ate the loaf of our new locally sourced, locally baked multigrain bread. And I'm cranky because I'm now being forced to watch Regis Philbin.

Let's play.

February is National Pet Dental Health Month

Plan accordingly.

Facebook

Okay, I think I'm done. I gathered 83 friends in about a week's time, using the following standard: people with whom I've had at least one memorable conversation (i.e. a conversation I can remember). So that seemed a decent standard and a decent number (although I'm sort of maxed out until I start having more meaningful conversations with near-strangers).

Then I started scrolling through all my other friends and got really annoyed. Journalists, publicists and LA denizens -- who make up a good chunk of my roster -- ruin the curve, since they know, or at least "know," about a bazillion* people at any one point. The more I clicked over to friends' profiles boasting three-digit friend tallies, the less popular I felt. And if there's one friend I'm not looking to reacquaint myself with anytime soon, it's good ol' Miss Unpopularity.

Then I got defriended. By who I couldn't even tell, but my number went down to 82 for a while, and I was crushed.

Also, because I hate having my photo taken, the only digital shot I had available is a four-year-old picture of me with my sister's dogs. And it's finally starting to dawn on me that pretty much all of my public-domain photos feature at least one dog. Which is just lame.

Meantime, I can't figure out how the hell NOT to send all these TV and movie quizzes to all of my other friends. Which is probably most annoying of all to my "friends," who were probably only looking to up their own tallies to begin with. So sorry, "friends" -- you shouldn't have accepted my "friendship" to begin with.


*the term "bazillion" got reintroduced into my lexicon this weekend by my adorable hubby. I like it. Somehow it seems greater and yet less-threatening an amount than "gazillion."

Steno notebooks

There are seven, half-used, on my desk right now.

2008's beauty resolution, unraveled

Eat better, take vitamins, do more yoga, blah blah blah.... my big beauty resolution this year was hair-related. I do get my hair cut and, uh, color-enhanced on a fairly regular basis, but it still looks like crapola half the time, because all the magazines tell you not to wash it every day, but if I don't my hair gets all gross and oily, but I believe the magazines, so I put my hair back in a ponytail, but I don't have any nice barrettes anymore (dog-chewing bait, those are), so I put it back with an elastic, but that makes me look like some sad-sack "Extreme Makeover" Before, but mostly I don't care. (Exhale.)

Except my resolution is to start caring. So. So this year I bought into a new trend: dry shampoo. My understanding is that this was a 1970s dud of a idea that has since made a successful comeback. At least, that's what the magazines say, and in case it's not already clear, I fearfully believe them. So a few weeks back I bought a bottle of spray-on dry powder shampoo and started playing with it. At first the can sprayed nothing but air on my head (the nozzle was clogged), and so I figured the powder was invisible and, suffering from the placebo effect, spent a few days admiring the volume and fluffiness that the "powder" had bestowed.

Eventually though, the can started dispensing a thin white mist all over my head, and suddenly I got it. My hair was huge, sexy and dry. I fluffed it out and I trotted off to work with Farrah Fawcett-like exuberance, convinced I'd finally solved the gross hair dilemma.

Except two hours later I looked in the mirror and saw that the white powder hadn't dissolved but instead was glaringly scattered throughout my hair and scalp. I looked like some eighth-grade thespian basking in the post-performance glow of her winning turn as the grandmother in "Into the Woods."

Except my actual secondary school acting roles were limited to parts like "Strawberry Vendor" and "Rabbit #8." But still.

My To Do list

... is cracking me up today:

Police
Hockey item
Yamada
1 pm bag
Gym
Platelets
Story ideas
Blog

Last night's indecipherable dream

Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination and Eli Manning died, possibly of a flesh-eating disease.

What does it all mean? I'm stumped.

A tale of two duties

The best part of my day: going to vote with the hubby and bumping into my sister at our polling place. I love that my sister and I vote in the same district -- even if we did split our vote.

The worst part of my day: spending seven-eighths of it ghostwriting a plea for money from a much-higher-up. Actually, it's not even a plea, it's a pre-plea: I'm supposed to get them all greased up for the money demand coming their way in the next month. All I know is that it's an arduous task asking for money when you know you'll never see a dime of it.

What can you say?

The Giants played better. And, I feel like it's unfair to be granted a World Series Red Sox win, a Patriots Super Bowl win, AND a Democratic presidential win in the same 13-month period. I'll take the first and third wins and humbly carry on into that great goodnight.

Overheard from a bride-to-be (or, Why I Eloped)

"and basically, the whole room will be a shrine ... to us!"

Facebook

I don't get it. But I've let too many social-networking opportunities pass me by, so as of today, I'm making a genuine effort to be Facebook-accessible. So far I feel very popular and very professionally unproductive. If any blog readers want to join in the festivities, leave a comment!

Green with annoyance

A few weeks back, a friend and I decided to start mailing one another some of our favorite recent books so as to save money and trees. Of course, we're shipping these books cross-country, so the effort is self-negating, but it sounded good on (unbleached, post-consumer recycled) paper, so off we went.

Last week I brought Claire Messud's The Emperer's Children and T.C. Boyle's The Inner Circle into work to ship off. Except, I couldn't bring myself to buy a new box to ship them in, since that would probably negate the zero-sum-ness of our efforts. So I started scrounging around the office for a used box, but none was to be had. So I gave up that day, and the next and the next, because the whole task seemed too arduous.

Today I put "mail books" back on my to-do list and made it my first priority of the day (well, second, after emailing off a writing assignment that was already a day late). First I asked around the office for a used box -- nothing. Then I went to the post office to ask same. Nada. Then I went to the local bookstore. Success! The perfectly sized box. So I brought it back, packed up the books with used newspaper, and took the package down to the post office.

Except only then did I realize there were old mailing stickers on the box that had to be removed if it was to be successfully reused. So I harrumphed back to my office and spent the next 10 minutes magic-markering the label ito oblivion. Except it didn't really take because I had also taped over them, plus I got dizzy from the marker's fumes, which assured my personal destruction if not that of the planet. So then I grabbed a pair of scissors and spent the next half-hour scraping off the tape and then the labels, getting magic marker all over myself in the process.

Total time elapsed on non-work-related morning project: 90 minutes.

Also, my bra has suddenly broken (but not in a titillating way) and I seem to have developed a low-grade allergy to pistachios, a fatal blow to my afternoon snacking habits. Not a good day.

9021-uh-oh

As I'm admitted on this blog before, one of my longest-term guilty pleasures is "Beverly Hills 90210" reruns. Except, I've finally owned up to the fact that this may not be the healthiest preoccupation. Case in point: last night I dreamt I made out with Dylan McKay in a movie theater.

So to cleanse my soul, I'm watching a PBS documentary on Auschwitz right now.

Cuh-rap

In a fit of procrastination last week, I got on eBay and bid impulsively on a used designer handbag that I had no real interest in owning.

Cut to now: I'm 33 minutes away from owning it for a price I don't remember authorizing. Praying for a last-minute outbid here....

Update: 33 seconds....

31 seconds...

10 seconds....

Cra -- wait! Someone outbid me with 3 seconds to spare!

Goddammit. I really wanted that bag.

What Michigan primary?

Just watched the last half-hour of Die Hard. Some thoughts:

-I cannot not watch this movie when it is on. Other movies that share that distinction: Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman II, Titanic.

-John McClane kills more people in that movie than the terrorists do

-I wish Hans Gruber had his own radio show

-Did the late great Paul Gleason ever play someone professionally competent?

-The more I watch this movie, the more I become enamored with the throwaway lines of those about to die. My current favorite is the terrorist who is trying to shoot John around that boardroom table, then gets to the end and says, "No more TEEEEHBLE." Runner up: "You ahre a poleeceman. There ahre rooooles."

-When Argyle the limo driver punches Theo the computer nerd terrorist? Least disturbing cinematic black-on-black violence ever

Weekend wrap-up

Just got back from four days in Key West for its annual literary seminar. It was inspiring, intimidating, and imminently worthwhile.

The single drawback to my trip was having to contend, yet again, with my least favorite airport in the U.S., Miami International. I've now been to this airport eight times in the last nine months, and each visit has made me earn for the caustic small-town airs of Logan Airport workers. A brief rundown of its flaws:

-The high quotient of retirees in the airport means a large number of transport cars populate the terminals. Except these cars only run in third gear and careen around the terminals seemingly without brakes, announcing their presence with a thin beeping sound that totally undersells the danger hurtling towards you.

-Check-in lines are not well marked. Baggage screening lines are not well-marked. Terminals are not well-marked. Departure gates are sometimes not marked at all, causing certain travelers to, say, take a transport train back and forth a few times because she is confused as to where, exactly, her plane is departing from.

-Beer is sold in the terminals. This is good. However, 90 percent of those who partake in said offering are those who should not be drinking in airport terminals: prenaturally beer-bellied middle-aged male adolescents who probably can't wait to get to their final tropical destination so they can rush to the nearest retail tourist trap and purchase a "Will Your Boobs Please Stop Staring at My Eyes" T-shirt.

-When your airline loses your bags, which it will, all Miami airport workers will profess ignorance, then feign interest, then display annoyance, then send you to wait in a line where the counterperson will eventually profess ignorance, then feign interest, then display annoyance, before finally placing a call back to the person who sent you to that line in the first place.

Mostly though, the airport pisses me off because all of the lunch counters completely overcharge you for cafe con leches. Also, there are way too many neon lights.

P.S. I know this is a little wah-wah coming from someone who, less than 48 hours ago, was sitting at an outdoor bar situated on the Gulf of Mexico, eating a dozen oysters and washing them down with a favorite local beer while catching the end of the Cowboys-Chargers game (i.e. the final nail in Jessica Simpson's celebrity coffin). But 24 hours ago I was sitting indoors on the shores of the Boston Harbor, eying the fresh foot of snow outside my window demanding shoveling attention, and today I'm catching up on three days of backlogged work, so permit me a wee bit of wah-wah-ing.

Wah wah wah

So, yup, one of my New Year's resolutions was to blog more -- 5x a week to be exact. And, yup, I immediately reneged on that promise all last week. In the middle of the week I began writing a post about why the dog was to blame for my procrastination, but I never finished it, and sadly, it wasn't even the dog's fault. And now it's a new week and I'm still tired and a little overworked and stressed out over a number of non-work items and all in all just in an icky frame of mind. And tomorrow I'm off to Key West for four days, which sounds lovely except for the fact that I'll be hauling my laptop down to do some backlogged work.

So I'm still going to try and blog every day that I can from now on, but beware that I'm going to be a collosal grump. So there. It's either that or shut this sucker down.

BREAKING: Jessica Alba is pregnant!

And that makes me really happy, because now Jessica Alba will get fat (typed the intrepid blogger as she munched on a proscuitto, mozzarella and basil sandwich).

A retroactive plea for sympathy

Over the course of my young life, I have lost my entire music collection not once, not twice, not three times, but FOUR times. First time, freshman dorm robbery. Second time, entire CD shipment failed to arrive. Third time, computer with all music digital files stolen. Fourth time, year-old hard drive of replacement computer crashed.

Okay, first time it was only like 25 CDs, since CDs were a relatively new-fangled thing and I had just started buying them (yup, I'm old). So it wasn't that traumatizing. And third and fourth times, it was/is more about doing to work of re-stealing and reuploading the files than anything else. And that's what husbands are for.

Second time though.... oh, that second time. I had just taken off a semester to run an environmental campaign office in Santa Barbara. I had no idea what I was doing; for a few different reasons, I just knew that I needed a severe change of pace. So off I went, with an impulsive friend in tow.

A few weeks into my time there, I was sure I'd made a collossal mistake. My weekly work hours hovered around the triple digits, it rained all the time, and there was a giant tree growing in the middle of my office. Also, everyone used the term "stoked" way too often for my liking.

So I desperately awaited the comforts of my music collection, which my dad had promised to send to me ASAP. And one day, UPS finally dropped off a big media package -- a big, ripped, empty media package that one of my idiot employees still signed for.

I can't even begin to explain the feelings of rage and loss that surged through me when I saw that box, mostly because I knew, I just KNEW my dad hadn't thought to insure the package. And so it was. UPS gave me a hundred bucks for my troubles, my dad guiltily promised to take me on a used-CD shopping spree when I returned home (six months later), and I was stuck listening to the Philadelphia soundtrack -- the only CD the previous director had left behind in the office -- on endless, Sisyphian loop. Sometimes, in my dreams at night, I can still hear the grating sounds of the Spin Doctors covering "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" Thank god for Neil Young's "Philadelphia."

Nostalgia makes me blue

Everyone always makes fun of me for hanging onto my Hotmail account. For most, it seems to be the email equivalent of toting around a Filofax organizer instead of a Blackberry. (Which I certainly don't do, nosireebob. I've lost my Filofax in the house somewhere.)

To which I always say, screw all y'all. First of all, I'm a notorious Luddite. I'm an iPod iDiot, I only recently started texting, and I routinely lie and pretend to understand things like Skype and Drupal. Second of all, I like having all of my ancient emails in one place. Many encyclopedic email exchanges with friends and family have been lost when I've changed jobs, cities and computers, and so I cling to this particular slice of personal written history like it's the day before the day after tomorrow.

And third of all, it took 10 years, but Hotmail recently redesigned its whole site, making my account comparable to a Yahoo email account circa 2002. Antiquated, yes, but hardly unusable.

Except today my account has developed a bizarre quirk: when I delete emails from page 3 of my inbox, I'm taken to the last page of my account. So of course I've taken the opportunity to reread old emails about such pressing topics as the perils of turning 30 and the Patriots' chances against the heavily favored Rams in the Super Bowl. (Me: "Ah, the Pats. Wasn't it a great game last week? I'm sure Kordell is seeking solace in the arms of many male prostitutes right now. I have this great feeling that we're going to win on Sunday.")

But it's all made me a little sad somehow. Sure, it's heartening that of the 13 friends listed on that last page, I'm still in close contact with 11 and have only purposefully lost touch with one. Still, life seemed simpler back then. We gossiped about boyfriends and girlfriends, not spouses and kids. Chelsea Clinton's greatest offense was her stuffy post-makeover bob. New England sports teams were beloved, not villified. R. Kelly had yet to pee on anyone. Good times, now long gone.

Although I'm not getting shit done at work today because I drank a little too much during MNF and am now exhausted. So I guess some things never change.

PFDD (Post-Florida Depressed Disorder)

Back from two weeks in Key West. Right now I'm thinking that a negative-60-degree shift in one's environmental temperature should automatically qualify one for disability payouts. Right now I'm also thinking about moving down to Key West.

More this weekend.

Friday's affairs

I am utterly incapable of doing work past 4 pm on Friday if I have nothing specific due. So instead, I've decided to make a list of all the stupid things I did this past week:

Shoved my credit card into the wrong slot in my wallet, then couldn't get it out all day. Had to charge everything on my debit card, then rush home, get online and transfer money from savings to checking to cover it.

Lost my car in a parking lot for 25 minutes.

Spent all morning intoning to Dan that it was going to rain, going to rain, going to rain, then failed to bring an umbrella to work and wore my wool sponge of a winter coat - on the one day I had to walk home from the T.

Carried one of my sister's beagles down the stairs because she was showing a limp, then realized when I got to the bottom that I'd forgotten the other beagle.

Walked a half-mile to my car to move it, then realized I'd forgotten my car keys once I got there.


Hmm, pretty low tally, actually. Good show!

Why can't Wii be friends, why can't Wii be friends...

Sunday was a glorious day. It's been more than two months since I've had a weekend day that wasn't bogged down by either wedding activities or freelance work, and as such, I've been a frenzied, stress-out, somewhat unpleasant blob lo these past eight weeks.

But Sunday I woke up and had exactly zero commitments on my schedule, my last assignment wrapped up the night before. So I luxuriated in bed for a while, then slothfully read the Sunday paper on the couch for an hour or two. I may or may not have squeezed in a SoapNet "Beverly Hills 90210" rerun before taking the dog to the new neighborhood dog park, where the lazybutt even trotted around a bit.

And then, in the penultimate event of my day, I beat the living crap out of my husband.

Transcript of a phone call between my sister and I Sunday morning:

Her: Okay, you guys HAVE to come over today. Guess what we bought?

Me (distracted while watching Val almost lose the Peach Pit after Dark to a bondsman because Colin fled jail): What?

Her: Wii!!! It's a-MAZ-ing. You have to come over tonight!!

And so we did. And as I expected, I sucked at almost everything: table tennis, Dance Dance Revolution, Zelda (though I only served as an unhelpful advisor with that one), Pop the Balloons, baseball etc.

But boxing? Goddamn. I kicked ass. Specifically my husband's ass, which had no chance against my endless left-handed jabs. Two months' worth of pent-up stress was released in one three-round bout, during which I knocked him out three times. I loved it! And no spousal abuse charges to boot. If they reconfigure Dance Dance Revolution as a contact sport, I may be in business....