I’ve been reading the label on a case of Clorox® for the past week or so, since it’s sitting on a table in the garage (and by “table” I of course mean “cube freezer,” which like most things with a flat surface in our house has been transformed into a table – but I digress). Mostly I’ve been looking at the part that says, “Kills 99.9% of Common Household Germs.” Some might find this comforting, but all I can think about is the fact that there are apparently germs (defined on the Clorox® website as bacteria and viruses) that are in my house, common, and cannot be killed by a 6.0 percent aqueous solution of sodium hypochlorite. I really don’t wanna run into the virus that can’t be killed by bleach in a dark alley (or my bathroom) some night.

Fortunately, I came of age in an era when the failure to sanitize your house to cleanroom levels and/or rush to the doctor for a course of antibiotics at the hint of a sniffle wasn’t considered child abuse (also, driving drunk was frowned upon, as opposed to actually being illegal). So I think I’ve developed a resistance to those bleach-immune bugs running around out there. Or course, I also grew up a time when eating right and exercising weren’t particularly emphasized, either.

So, like my father, my father’s father, and his father before him (not to mention my mother’s father), I’ll most likely die at a relatively young age (though I’ll probably feel a lot older than I actually am, so I guess that evens things out. My last thoughts will either be “I really should’ve taken better care of myself,” or “I never shoulda quit drinking beer” – my money’s on the latter).

Anyhow, to all my male progenitors who passed on their genes and then promptly stepped aside for the next generation, I say “Happy Father’s Day.”

Speaking of sodium hypochlorite, I’m fairly certain I did permanent damage to my lungs yesterday. There’s a big old bucket of 3″ chlorine tablets that’s been sitting out on the pool deck since last year. When I opened it up this season, I noted that there was was quite a bit of water in the bucket – with, as you might expect, a very strong aroma of chlorine. But many of the tablets in there (individually wrapped, if not exactly hermetically sealed) were still viable, so I was able to avert my nose and fish a few out every now again to add to the chlorine floaty dispenser thing.

The weather around here has been pretty crappy – rainy and not consistently warm – so I’ve had the solar cover on and before Friday, nobody had actually gone swimming (I try to to think about the waste of money). A few sunny days warmed the water up a bit, though, and on Thursday, out of the blue, they came and filled up the propane tanks for the heater (at roughly triple the cost of Natural Gas – one of these days I’ve gotta convert that over).

So, anyhow, I went to grab some more tabs and the bucket was filled with this yellowish water and when I pulled the lid off, the chlorine vapor damn near knocked me over. After about three tries, I realized I wasn’t getting any more chlorine out of that sucker and I gave up. Since then, I’m wheezing, my chest hurts, and I can’t take a more than about half a breath without coughing. So if you don’t hear from me for a while, it probably means I’ve succumbed (or am just too lazy to write).

In the event that I don’t die in the next 2-4 hours, I’m stuck waiting for people at work to complete some project or other. I’m not actually involved in it, other than they wanted to make sure there was a DBA around in case they had problems with the database. Since I’m the “on-call” person (in quotes, because without the quotes, they’d have to pay me something for being on the hook 24/7 all week – and what a pain in the ass week it’s been), I have to sit and wait for them to finish and fuck everything up (which they will), then wash their hands of it and pass it along to me to un-fuck it (which would be a lot easier – and less stressful – if I actually knew what I was doing).

So, no Father’s Day party for me today (I’m guessing the dogs didn’t actually have anything planned anyway). No golf, no trip to the ball park, no picnic, no barbecue, and – worst of all – no beer.

Hey, but don’t let that stop all of you from having a good time.