Get A First Life

OMG! This is so funny. You have got to click on the link and visit this parody of Second Life!
http://www.getafirstlife.com/

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Sandbox

This isn't exactly PG, but I've cleaned it up as best as I could.

One night in Morris I was explaining to a newbie about how pose balls were used to be... ah, intimate with another avatar. Myself and another resident were also telling him how, although girl avatars didn't need any attachments, for the sake of realism he needed an anatomical 'attachment' which he did not presently own.

There was a female newbie standing nearby who was taking an interest in all this and made it plain that she was willing to try out the poses with him in another, more mature, sim. Here's the funny part. When she heard that he needed the 'attachment' she began running around shouting "Can anyone help me? My boyfriend needs a c**k so he can f**k me!" "Please help me... my boyfriend needs a c**k!"

All the residents in chat range burst out laughing. I was laughing so hard, I couldn't even type LOL, LMAO, or ROFLMAO so others knew I was laughing. The bottom line is someone else gave him a freebie to use and I lead them to a sim where they could be alone and left them there to experiment.

Don't Be A Nasty Newbie!

I pretty much live in the Morris Welcome area. I don't own land so I park my butt on the wall and talk to my friends and go from there to a store, or dance club, some other event, or wander down to the sandbox to try my hand at building.

Being a welcome area, there are always tons of people here, oldsters and newbies. My friends and I like to help newbies. We talk to them and help out with their questions. We give out landmarks to clubs and beaches and freebie stores. We'll help you change your appearance and give you clothes, hair and skins.

We will help anyone usually, except for the nasty newbies. What is a nasty newbie? A Nasty Newbie...

• Bumps people repeatedly. Either he doesn't know where he is going or doesn't care.
  
• Asks the same question over and over again. Yo Dude! Listen. I told you twice already.
  
• Sends friendship requests before talking to someone. The purpose of friendship is SL is to be able to easily communicate with your friends and IM them even if you can't see them. The Contacts tab lets you see when your friends are online.

I have made friends with newbies, but it is usually temporary. I help them for a few days and then usually drop them as they have moved on to make real friends. Most of my current friends I have known inworld for 3-6 months before friendship was offered and accepted. I have lots of aquaintances who I am friendly with, but we haven't added each other to our lists yet.

• Asks or begs for money. Dude I'm not your daddy. Ask him for money. Either buy some Linden$, or get a job.
  
• SHOUTS EVERYTHING WITH THE CAPS LOCK ON. You only need to shout if someone is outside your normal chat range and ALL CAPS is not necessary, just rude. Besides if you know whoever you are trying to talk to then IM them.
  
• Asking personal questions to someone you just met. It's ok to ask where you are from, but don't expect to be told more than the country. What age am I? I don't get asked very often (it's in my profile) but the ladies do get asked a lot. They may not tell you or they may just lie. Why bother?
  
• Ask for sexual favors in open chat or IM. I have seen a newbie walk up to three very lovely friends of mine and ask each one in turn for cybersex. One, these are ladies. Two, you are a newbie and, face it, not that attractive, and three, Dude, you don't ask for sex in a welcome area. Go to a sex sim where you will fit in.

Good manners work no matter what country you come from. Be polite and others will be willing to answer your questions and enjoy a conversation with you. Be rude and people will mute and ignore you. Keep bumping and harassing others and you risk being reported and banned. Don't be a Nasty Newbie.

How Do I Play This Game? - Part 2

My first post on this topic was really about manners and the rules of behavior. Today I want to talk about what to do in Second Life.

"Why am I here?" "What do I want to do?" The answers to those two questions should be your guide. Are you into fantasy, orcs and elves, dragons, and monsters? Do your search for the keywords that will lead you to those sims. Space and science fiction? You can become a Star Fleet Academy cadet. If you know what kind of character you want your avatar to be, search for the sims inworld that fit your character. The stores and malls in those sims will also be a good place to find the apparel and equipment that you will want for your avatar to fit in.

What about if I want to become a builder or designer? Then you need to take classes. Learn how to use the tools. Find a mentor. The basics of building is fairly simple. The devil, as they say, is in the details. Once you learn the craft, you can design and build for yourself, or if you can come up with something truly unique, you can start your own business with your own products.

Do I need to be a builder or designer to make money inworld? No you can operate a business and sell other people's products. Just like the real world you will need a good location in a high traffic area, and attractive products that people will want. Easy isn't it?

What about a job? Ok if you are a real newbie who has never played before, face the facts, you don't have much to offer at first. You are learning the rules and getting your feet wet. There are jobs available. Here are a few:

• Clubs are always looking for host and hostesses to greet their guests and make them feel welcome. Anyone with a sparkling personality can fit into a job like that.
  
• Clubs need DJs. If you have a large music collection and talent in choosing music that your audience will dance to, that might be the job for you.
  
• Designers need models for their clothes. The key to that job is to have a good looking avatar which means you need to invest in high quality shapes, skins, hair and clothes. The nice thing is that you usually keep the clothes you are modeling. But like all good models you will need a portfolio to show potential clients.
  
• The are other jobs too - event planners, wedding planners, artists, musicians, and land managers. The world's oldest profession is alive and well in Second Life, but this is a PG blog so we won't discuss it here.

So how do I play this game? Look, Listen, and Learn. Spend time in the welcome areas, orientation Islands, malls, and shops. Visit the freebie stores, explore. And ask questions. Some people will make fun of a newbie. Ignore them and walk away. Look around and you will spot someone who is answering questions. Speak to them. There are lots of mentors out there, even more volunteer newbie helpers, and just friendly folks who will take time to answer your questions, offer you landmarks, advice and even free clothes and skins.

We all have wondered how to play the game at one time. We all have been newbies. It wears off quickly. In the meantime, enjoy the confusion!

Another Weekend Over

Just a short blurb today. Memorial Day weekend passed uneventfully. RL family and friends are doing fine. Cooked steaks on the grill Sunday night. SL is doing well too. No major drama there either. I'm considering renting some land and building a house. I may become a clothes model for my new girlfriend, who is a designer. Life is fun again.

How Do You Play This Game?

If you have read my previous posting, this is a typical newbie question that Second Life residents hear nearly everyday. I may put this on a notecard and hand it out to newbies. I might need to give it to some of the older Second Lifers too.

A game? No, this is not a game. You can play games here, but this is a virtual world. I live here (at least part of my time) and my friends live here. We are all have different reasons to be in SL. Some of us run businesses. Others are gamers. Still more are builders, and thank God for them. They design our clothes, our homes, all the HUDs and attachments we use. The main thing is that Second Life is a community. This is my community. I live here.

Any time you put people together the need develops for social order. Some people think Linden Labs just arbitrarily made up the TOS, but the Terms Of Service come from the need for people to interact in a fashion that is acceptable to the group as a whole.

So in a PG area you are not allowed to run around naked. Vulgar and obscene language is not tolerated. What you say in IM is one thing, but in Local Chat and Voice Chat anyone and everyone can hear you and frankly dude, I don't want to know how big your pixel dick is nor do I want to see it.

Mature areas of SL have different rules and they are much looser. So if your vocabulary is so limited that you have to used profanity as an adjective and verb in every sentence, then go to a sim where that is acceptable and cuss to your little, slimy heart's content. If you want to try out those new sex poses your found in the freebie shops, try them in a mature sim not in the middle of Morris Welcome Area.

Funny thing though. If you go to a mature sim, one of the first things that often happens in the landing zone is you get a notecard of specific rules. I don't think there is anywhere in SL that is completely lawless. I may be wrong, but if there is, I don't want to go there.

But back to the SL community in general. Like I said, we residents live here. We have invested part of our real lives here. Most of us just want to live in peace. We are tolerant of others and put up with newbie questions. We all come here with different religious and political beliefs. I might state mine from time to time, but I don't expect you to agree with me. I hope I can learn something about your background and culture while you are learning about mine. The fact that, on a daily basis, I can talk to Americans. Canadians, Brits, Scots, Aussies, Kiwis, as well as people from Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Poland, Russia, the Ukraine, and Japan is fantastic. We come from different places, but we all have the same human needs and we frequently discover that we have some of the same interests and share the same fears and hopes for our planet. Second Life is not a game. It is so much more. We live, and love, laugh and cry. I am here to enjoy life. I hope you are here to do that too.

How to Recognize a Newbie

new• bie ['n(y)oobe]
noun (pl - bies) an inexperienced newcomer especially in computers.
also NOOB

We all have seen them. We all have joked about them. And face it folks, we all have been them. Everyday hundreds of newbies log into Second Life for the first time. Some have other in-world gaming experience so it is a matter of getting their feet wet and learning the particularities of SL. For others, the great IT gods help them, haven't a single clue about why or even how they got to this particular place and time. It amazes the rest of us that they even know how to boot their computers!

So how do you recognize a newbie. If you are a newbie, here is how the rest of us know even before looking at your birthday in your profile.

• How do I play this game?
  
• How did I get here?
  
• How do I get to back to where I was?
  
• How do I get a job?
  
• Where do I go to have sex?
  
• How do I get money?
  
• How do I get clothes?
  
• What is a landmark?
  
• How do I teleport?
  
• Where are you from? (and without waiting) How old are you?
  
• How do I take off my skin?
  
• I can't find my clothes.
  
• How do I open this box?
  
• Walking around with a box attached.
  
• A friendship invitation out of the blue without speaking first.
  
• Bumping into everyone.
  
• Standing in a welcome area editing appearance for 20 minutes.
  
• The inadvertent newbie leap in the middle of a conversation.
  
• Still wearing the pink prim skirt after changing clothes the first time.
  
• Males - blue and grey shirt
  
• Females - that awful pink dress!
  
• Newbie skin.
  
• Non-prim newbie hair.

I know that some of you SL regulars have your own favorites, so please comment and let me hear them.

If you are a newbie, the good news is that it wears off in time, quickly for most of us. Watch and listen. Help is out there. Look for SL Mentors in the welcome areas, ask questions in local chat. Lots of us are willing to help when asked nicely. Also, even though you can't get back to Help Island where you started, you can go to Pubic Help Island where there are always helpers on duty and lots of tutorials available.

If you are a newbie there is no shame to asking for help, but remember we regulars may look like we are standing around doing nothing at all, but we might be trying to reorganize our inventories, talking in IM or voice, reading email, checking a website, monitoring a business, or maybe have just ran to the bathroom, so we may not be paying attention to you.

If you are a regular be nice. Cut the noobs some slack and don't just laugh at their inexperience. Remember the first person to help you? Aren't you glad they did?

Me... Revealed

I am not sure why I am doing this, but I have a lot of friends on online who I have never met in RL, but I have seen their RL photos. Nothing special, just simple portrait shots of their smiling selves. Although I know and recognize them by their avatars, I enjoy knowing who the real person is behind the mask as it were.

I am thinking of finally putting my picture in my SL profile or at least put the link to my blog there. In one respect I feel like I am opening up too much, but on the other hand this is a way to show my trust in my friends.

So anyhow, without further adieu, here is a photo of the big guy himself, the real Harry.

Coming soon. How to recognize a Newbie! Duh!

One Week Ends... A New One Begins

Last week was a rough one for me in SL. Two friends that I care for a lot had a falling out. I wanted to help them make up, but it was not meant to be. They are both wonderful people, but sometimes things get said, little things build to a head, and there is no going back. It was something I had to accept. My attempt to help only strained one friendship to near the breaking point. None of us walked away unscarred by it all.

What else happened? I tried to get too close to one of my friends. She wasn't encouraging it, but I wasn't reading the signs very well. That has always been a problem with me. The closer I get to a girl, the more I imagine being with her. Most of my affairs in life, RL or SL, have been just my imagination running wild. I got lucky this time. I kept the friend, but I broke my own heart.

Another friend, Crystal, told me to stop looking so hard for the right girl. "The right girl will appear when you are not looking" she said. Maybe that happened last night. I won't give any details about her, except that she tried to talk to me while I was sitting in Morris Welcome Area. I was surrounded by my other friends, male and female, and I was all alone. She started talking to me. I was distracted and depressed and I was slow to answer. I said I was sorry and made an excuse about rl interfering with our conversation. She persisted. I read her profile. Young. Maybe too young for an old man like me. Maybe she was just being nice since we were on the same piece of wall.

I crashed (SL was somewhat unstable last night) and she was gone when I came back. I don't have a lot of clothes for this avatar and too many of the clothes for my previous ones are non-transferable. Most of what I have are freebies that don't look that good. So I went shopping.

Like I said, I read her profile. She is a clothes designer. I went to her store and found a couple of shirts I really liked. I wasn't looking for her, but she was upstairs and came down and said hello. She gave me a third shirt, one of her most expensive. I thanked her and asked if there was somewhere nearby I could unpack the box*.

She took me to her house and gave me permission there to open it. I put on the gift shirt. She said I looked very good in it. Then she showed me her home. We sat on a couple of meditation pillows by a large window overlooking the sea. We talked. We talked so long... It was getting late, but I didn't want to leave her. I looked for signs that maybe we could get closer. I asked for a kiss and she said yes. We kissed and talked. Time would not slow down though and finally I had to leave.

I want to see her again.. soon. I want to be loved, but I don't want to make a fool of myself again. Oh God, I feel like a teenager again. Young, stupid and clumsy. I don't know what to do or say. I don't want to mess this relationship up like I have so many others. I have a chance here for a new beginning. When one door closes another one opens. One week ends and a new week begins.

*If you are not familiar with Second Life, when you purchase items in a store they come either in a box or a folder. Folders can be opened immediately, but a box must be rezzed first and then the contents moved to your inventory. That has to be done on your own land or in a public sandbox. Some stores have a small area for customers to use.

Solitary Man

Don't know that I will,
but until I can find me,
a girl who will stay,
won't play games behind me.
I'll be what I am,
a solitary man, solitary man.

That's a Neil Diamond song that sort of became my personal anthem in the 60s. I had no girl and no prospect of getting one. I went to my Junior Prom with a friend from Newport News, 70 miles away. I went to my Senior Prom with a classmate who couldn't get a date either. Some girls in our class arranged it so we wouldn't be left out. We were a pity date for each other. Susan was a sweet girl and I was a young gentleman. Forty years later we laughed about it during our last class reunion.

But there has been another song that has been on my mind today. It's my own damn fault. When you live part of you life in an world of imagination, sometimes you imagination gets the best of you. I did that this past week. I found myself wanting more from a friend, who I already have a special relationship with, than was possible. I made a fool of myself and risked loosing a friend. But that song still haunts my thoughts...

Close to Cathy
by Mike Clifford

I'm so close to Cathy
I know just what she's dreaming of
She always calls me up to tell me
Every time she falls in love

Oh, I'm so close to Cathy
I know her every tender sigh
She loves to cry upon my shoulder
Always for some other guy

Oh, why can't she see
The one true, lasting love
In her life should be me

I'm so close to Cathy
As close as anyone can be
And I'll stay close to Cathy
Hoping some day
She'll feel close to me

I'm so close to Cathy
As close as anyone can be
And I'll stay close to Cathy
Hoping some day
She'll feel close to me

Before and After

Here are two photos of me. The first is a photo I came across a few days ago. It is my very first avatar on my very first day of Second Life on April 18, 2008. I give you the newbie Harry, complete with the medieval shirt. The only thing missing is that stupid torch.

Now compare that to 13 months later. The new improved Harry has realistic skin, better body shape and clothes that don't scream noob at everyone in sight. Today I am wearing a western outfit, but that is not my only look. I have a tux if I am taking a pretty girl to a nice ballroom for dancing. I have trunks and a Hawiian shirt for the beach or pool. You need a lot of clothes in Second Life just like Real Life to fit the occasion. Which reminds me, I also have a doctor's outfit and the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz, but I'll leave that for another posting.

“Never try and teach a pig to sing..."

"It wastes your time and annoys the pig.”

That's one of Lazarus Long's* rules of life. I started thinking of what are my rules of life were after a conversation In SL recently. Many of us go through our lives without any conscious thought of how we want to be treated and how we treat people. Others have spent a good deal of time examining their world view and philosophy of life.

Our beliefs and value systems come from a variety of sources, our parents and siblings, our religious institutions, our culture, and our peers, just to name a few. For some of us our rules of life are set in stone early in life and we don't change. Myself, I have tried to grow and change and improve myself as I have gotten older.

I grew up in a small southern town in the 1950s and 60s. I grew up in an environment that was racially stratified. I grew up Southern Baptist, white, and privileged. But I was lucky. My parents were not overtly prejudiced. My father particularly taught me to respect a man for what he says and does, and not judge him by the color of his skin. My mom, who was Catholic before marrying my dad and moving to the South, taught me to be skeptical of religious dogma. My parents, both Army veterans during WWII, also taught me to share what I had with others. I guess that is why I became a teacher, to share my knowledge and experience with my students.

I still am a Baptist and I believe these things. Jesus Christ died for our sins and was resurrected. I believe the the priesthood of all believers. I don't need someone to interpret the Bible for me. There are other points in my religious beliefs, but let's get back to rules. In Matthew 7:12 Jesus says "Do to others what you would have them do to you". That is my basic rule for behavior in real life and Second Life.

There are other ways of saying it. John Wayne in "The Shootist" said, "I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I require the same from them."

I don't have a whole long list of rules for my life. I just want to be nice to people and have them be nice to me. I know that doesn't always happen. Some people are not nice. Some people are rude, dishonest and untrustworthy.

Lastly sometimes people make mistakes. They say or do the wrong thing. People get hurt intentionally or otherwise. I didn't speak to my brother for ten years because he ruined the paint job on my car "decorating" it on my wedding day. It took a long time to forgive him, but I did. You can have have all the rules to your life that you want, but if you can't forgive people, you will end up with a very short list of friends.

*Lazarus Long was one of Robert A. Heinlein's most popular characters in his science fiction books.

OMG! Did you hear..."

Two of my friends are fighting. They are not speaking. I like them both and I feel stuck in the middle.

Sounds like I am in high school again, doesn't it? I feel that a lot when I am in Second Life. Maybe it is because we are all playing make believe. Maybe it's because we sometimes say and do things without thinking about the consequences, i.e. acting like immature children.

I don't want to act like a child. I want to treat others with the same respect I try to show others in real life. I try not to say things that are hurtful to my friends. Occasionally I still screw up. I have seen people in SL show great compassion and understanding of other points of view and lifestyles. Furries are nice people. So are dragons. In the welcome areas you see mech warriors chatting with elves. Nekos talking to vampires.

I have also seen the same bigotry and prejudice that haunts my country and other countries around the world. In Second Life sexual orientation, race, religion, age, and lifestyle choices are all targets for intolerance. At one time I thought that the people who are intelligent enough to navigate around a virtual world on a computer would also be smart enough to avoid the prejudices that have held the human race down so long. But I was wrong. Digital literacy does not equate to tolerance of other people's lifestyles and belief.

I started this particular post with the idea of talking about reliving my own melancholy of youth. In my attempt to make friends here in Second Life I have experienced those fears of being accepted, wanting to sit at the cool kid's table, but being stuck at the geek table instead. For most of my 60 years I've wanted to be popular and not feel like I am different. But I am. Now I realize we are all different. We all have our insecurities. Some of us are better at hiding them. Still we all need friends. I have a few good friends in Real Life. I have a few more in Second Life. I wish I could keep them from hurting themselves and each other. I love them both.

"Something's Happening Here..."

"What it is ain't exactly clear."

This has been a rough week for us all. Where do you go to begin to explain the deaths of 32 innocent souls?

Monday, the first RSS feed said one dead at Virginia Tech, and I am ashamed to say that I hardly blinked at the report. We have become so numb to the fact that people are dying everyday. One more death somewhere else hardly registers anymore. But the juniors in my block 2 class have friends at Tech. they kept scanning the internet for more news. Unfortunately it kept coming. 1, 2, 17, 21, 22. Finally the count stopped at 32.

At lunch I talked to the football coach. He had called several Goochland students at Tech. they were okay. Even better news - they had been in contact with all the other students from Goochland. Everyone was fine and accounted for. Two freshmen overslept and were not in the Engineering building when the shooting started. The Goochland students had networked together using their laptops and cell phones to check on each other. The good news traveled fast.

By the end of the school day we knew that the killer was dead and we tried to understand how all of this could happen. What drives someone so far away from sanity to become so destructive? Why have events like this become so common in the past ten years?

Tuesday through Thursday I tried to keep on doing my job, keeping students on task, grading assignments, and watching my students behavior, but the whole time I had this pain in my stomach as I thought about all those lives that had been destroyed.

Friday we all became Hokies. We wore VT jerseys, tee shirts, and hats. We wore anything that was maroon and orange. We wore little ribbons to honor the dead. We took a moment to think about and remember those who had fallen, but we will take forever to wonder why it all happened.

ORIGINALLY POSTED ELSEWHERE ON APRIL 21, 2007.

The Human Touch

I got on a school bus at 8:30 this morning and hit the road with thirteen very bright students. The students sat in the back of the bus. They were talking, eating brownies, using their cell phones, and listening to the MP3 players (CD players are so last century).

As I sat up front near the driver, I opened my laptop and graded a few research reports my Technology & Multimedia students had written and submitted to me online through our Moodle course management server. I paste a rubric onto their last page and read the papers, highlighting mistakes, and adding comments in text boxes. When I get back to school I will print these out and return the papers to the students when I see them again next week.

After grading a few papers, I am tired of trying to balance my laptop on my knee and pull out my iPod and watch John Hendron's video podcast from the recent VSTE conference. The bus pulls off the interstate and arrives at Piedmont Virginia Community College where, in the auditorium, I tap into the school's wi-fi and start checking my mail, and writing.

As I am writing this I am on a field trip with the Blue Ridge Virtual Governor's School. I was assigned to be the facilitator of the 11th grade Computer Math class. These students meet with their instructors online using Blackboard (yea!) and spend most of their time writing programs in Visual Basic. Today they are meeting face-to face with their "schoolmates" from Nelson, Louisa, and Greene counties to prepare for presenting their group projects in May.

Computers, cell phones, digital cameras, webcams, printers, LCD projectors, PDAs, smart boards, graphing calculators, iPods, e-mail, instant messaging, Skype, websites, wikis, blogs, and does the list ever end? With all the technology available to teachers, I thought back to how some pundits said that computers would replace teachers in education. It hasn't happened and it never will.

Yesterday I was berating one class about the poor quality of their papers. They are eighth graders. Berating is putting it mildly. With today's technology I could do this with a post to my blog or a forum, or one day soon, e-mail each student, but I was standing in front of the room and I had a stack of papers clenched in my hand as I looked my students in the eye and tried my hardest to make them understand the importance of, not just doing a good job on a paper they will forget about in a month, but of doing your best on anything you do in life; that you get out of life what you put into it.

Teachers, good teachers, provide the human touch in education. We are not just content providers. We are not here to teach to the test. We are here because we want to teach the whole student. It's not just our subjects that are important. It is the love of life, this world, learning for the fun of it. I don't want my students to just know how to use technology. I want them to know how to use technology responsibly. Yesterday I could look directly in my students eyes and know whether I was reaching them with my tirade. It sunk in with some of them. The others, well I'll keep chipping away at them. The point is technology doesn't teach, teachers do. We do it by facing our students every day and dealing with the myriad of variables that our students bring into the room with them. We provide the human touch.

ORIGINALLY POSTED ELSEWHERE ON MARCH 22, 2007.

O Brave New World

I am getting braver in my use of Web 2.0 technologies. I have a blog at school [REDACTED] which I have used for the past two years to post information about my classes, but the school system IT people have comments turned off. Students and parents can e-mail us so the thinking is that comments are not necessary and would tend to slow down the server. (The server gods must be kept happy!)

Back in the old days before the World Wide Web, there were (and still are I think) listservs that had a similar function to blogs. If you were interested in hiking the Appalachian Trail then you would search for a listserv on that topic and you joined.

I joined a few way back then, but I was a ghost who looked on and never had the nerve to actually say anything. I watched flame wars and dumb questions that could easily be answered by the FAQ. I also watched some brilliant debate of the topics of the day. That impressed me. I didn't know anything about the writers other than what they said and what I could figure out from the e-mail address. Someone from .uk arguing with someone from .fr (go figure!) This was fascinating.

That is when I first learned to appreciate the power of the internet to transmit ideas. When the Soviet Union collapsed, I was reading postings from behind the crumbling iron curtain while the news services were struggling to get information from their reporters on the ground. I became a convert to the belief that ideas and knowledge can and do bridge the gap created by ignorance and fear.

Anyhow back to blogs.
I never posted to someone else's blog until today. Today I was reading Pogue'sPost at the New York Times and I posted a reply. Not much, but a first step.
FIRST POSTED ELSEWHERE ON MARCH 6 2007.

The Maid Comes on Monday: An Introduction

It was a peaceful Sunday night. I was relaxing in the den when suddenly the quiet was broken by the trill ringing of the phone. "Hello, Mr. H. May I speak to your wife?" the soft-spoken voice on the other end of the line asked.

Sounds like a pretty good beginning to a murder mystery, doesn't it? Well in all truth it is all so much more mundane. My wife has for the past several years gotten a maid to come in and do some light cleaning for us every couple of weeks, but she usually comes on a Thursday or Friday. She called last night - hence the title.

The funny thing about the maid coming is that, you guessed it, we spent an hour quickly running around the house making it presentable for the maid!

I told my wife that I thought the title was a good one to use for a book (or in this case, a blog) and she said I was crazy. As she pointed out - "The maid has to go to work somewhere every Monday."

Well, I hope you are enjoying your Monday. Mine is off to a good start. -Harry

[This was originally posted in another blog I had on another site. March 5, 2007.]