Ah, to be back from vacation! Back to work!

Fuck work. Today's big achievement: deleting 1.5 GB of ancient, hoary emails, many of which bore subject lines such as "What's wrong, tiny penis?"

At least today at work was just about as productive as our entire vacation, in which we did basically nothing. Well, not entirely accurate; we did do one important thing: we wore pajamas. We wore the fuck out of our pajamas. Sometimes we wore our pajamas all damn day long; at least, that is, until our favorite bar opened. Then, of course, we put on our best muumuus.

(Now, listen, seriously, though. I don't wear pajamas to bed. I'm not a fucking freak. I sleep in a safe, secure bathysphere like any sensible person who is concerned about nocturnal gar attacks. I don't know how I'm gonna go out, but Skot Kurruk isn't about to get his junk eaten by ravenous Lepisosteidae is all I'm saying. You all are on your own, but I say: bathysphere.)

One fine day last week, I was enjoying hanging out in my damn pajamas right out on my deck, which for weird architectural reasons happens to directly overlook our building's front door. Normally, this isn't really a deal, but on this day, some dude was trying to gain entrance.

"HEY! HEY! CAN YOU HEAR ME!" He was screaming into our little crappy intercom at the front entrance below me. I scratched unconcernedly at my flannel-clad balls and serenely smoked.

"GUNT!" yelled the intercom at the guy, who was kind of beating on the little metal faceplate near our door. "DEAN!" continued the intercom.

"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!" screamed the guy. "I'M DOWN HERE!" This killed me. Where else would he be? Suspended in midair? Traversing the luminiferous aether? "CAN YOU HEAR ME?" he screamed again.

"NITS," said the intercom, which caused the angry guy to sink his neck down into his collar and moan. Then I must have laughed or farted or audibly scratched myself again, because the poor bastard looked up at me, standing above him. Which must, I suppose, have caused him to lose his final grasp upon sanity, because he yelled up at me, "CAN YOU HEAR ME? Can you let me IN?"

Now, really. Leaving aside the wonderful query "CAN YOU HEAR ME," is this a solid gambit? Here I was, a hobo in heart-embossed pajama pants (oh, shut the fuck up) with hair that looked like crib death had occurred on top of my skull, smoking, and I'm going to dash down to help out some angry crank who's screaming into tin? Please. People who are wearing pajamas at two in the afternoon are not ready to help anybody, even themselves. I smiled at him and hooked my thumbs into my pajama elastic and rocked placidly on my heels; I'm sure I looked more or less like a disheveled, gay Jed Clampett.

Right at that moment, the front door opened, and the ostensible host peeked out at the screamer. Hilariously, he said, "Hey, was that you?" No, you've had several strangers all clamoring for entrance to your apartment in the past ten minutes. They finally glumly trod inside, commiserating about the lousy intercom system, and throwing me a few choice glances as I continued to smoke and insouciantly pajama around.

Is this all we did on our damn vacation? Pretty much. We had some plans to go down to the Oregon coast--because where better to travel in December?--but those were kind of scotched when all of our roadways were suddenly lightly coated with several feet of water and most of the Oregon coastline was blown into the sea anyway.

We also got to know our newest friend, who occasionally hangs out on the deck with me! He's a rat. And you know what? He's adorable. I like to call him "Rat." The wife has noticed me peering out the windows lately and plaintively hooting, "Where's my rat?" Or, when I'm feeling affectionate, I might coo, "Where's my ratter?"

"You're spending too much time in your pajamas," said my wife. "And he tried to eat our brined turkey." (This is true.) More on my rat later, that gorgeous little fucker. I'm kind of in love with him.

It's probably best that I had to go back to work.