I looked at the over/under lines for NFL teams earlier this week, and they had the Saints at 7 or 7 1/2. In other words, half the people who put their money on the line don't think the Saints will have a winning season, and the other half do. I was expecting a line of around 9 1/2. Yes, the Saints have a tough schedule, given its championship-game non-division schedule. Furthermore, the rest of the NFC South should be much improved. But its hard for me to imagine a team with this much offensive power losing more than half of its games. It almost seems like an easy-money sucker bet.

As far as I know, there's only one channel running new TV shows right now. And HBO must know that they have a monopoly on those who are tired of reality shows, game shows, and American Idol ripoffs, because they aren't really putting much effort into providing a decent program.

I'm not interested in being the writer of a "daddy blog," describing the daily doeses of puke, projectile urine, and spinach-looking poop just to ruin your lunches. But I haven't read another father's post where poor old dad's dogs figured out about the poop diaper first.

Say that you go out for pizza. You want the sun-dried tomato and goat cheese pizza, but your wife wants hamburger meat and jalapeño peppers. You might be inclined -- as we were last week -- to order two 10-inch pizzas. But how much pizza are you really getting?

It's Saturday morning, and I've started listening to the Live Earth broadcasts. So far, Hamburg and London are on, and Hamburg is kicking their ass in music quality. I've heard some good New Orleans style funk, but sung in German. I know I'll never hear any of that stuff again, but I like it.

I'm just gonna say it again for this year: I'm not a big fan of 4th of July. It's too hot for a holiday where the main event is outside. And what's so great about fireworks anyway? The lights are okay, but they are accompanied by the most ungodly racket. Who needs that? (and happy 85th birthday to me. I'll go trim my nose hair now.)

My sister's kid and my kid are about the same age, but hers is a hoss, and mine is a pipsqueak. So earlier this week, I opened a box of no-longer-fitting clothes that she sent me. On top of the clothes, she had this stuffed rabbit. I immediately exclaimed, "Where the hell did Softy come from?"

Last week, I needed to get my pocket knife sharpened. It's serrated, so I didn't have anything that would get it sharp myself. It just happens that there are two and only two hardware stores in town that I know will bother with a serrated blade. One is close to my house, but it burned down last year and hasn't reopened. So I made the longer drive to Highland Ace Hardware.

Having spent close to a month in Russia, mostly without TV and almost entirely without newspapers, magazines, or internet, I got a lot of book reading done. Here are my thoughts.

"For God's sake, get rid of the plug!" That was pretty much the first thing that a friend of mine said when I picked up the ringing phone yesterday evening.

One time back in February or March, I pulled the vacuum cleaner out of the closet, and its plug looked like this:

Mrs. theskinnyonbenny often complains that we don't get invited anywhere. This isn't true, but it's a complaint that she likes to fall back on when we hit a Friday or Saturday night with nothing to do. The weekend before we left for Russia (two weekends ago, now) was especially busy. Not with getting ready to travel, but with stuff that we were invited to do.