32

1. My favorite number. Karl Malone's jersey number.

The number of weeks that my wife is pregnant.

I keep disappearing. Yeah, I know. Last weekend, I went camping with some buddies of mine. I could tell immediately that this venture wouldn't be the most organized event, but that was A-OK with me, as I'm not much for planning. But we did manage to procure the main necessities for the campout, such as food, water, warm clothes and sleeping bags.

We also obtained some firewood, as we were going to barbeque our steaks once we got there. We were set, and we took off. When we were about two thirds of the way there, my wife called to check on our status. Seems we also forgot the wood. Doh!

Not a problem, my buddy says. There's a gas station nearby the campsite where we can purchase some more wood. After another 10 minutes, we park our car and go into this gas station.

As this station is in a very affluent area of Rio Verde, the place is spotless and the clientele is such that you would not suspect that much firewood is required. The young girl behind the counter, who appears more apt to be found at a Saturday night rave party, mumbles that they have no firewood to speak of. Harrumph.

So, off to Walgreens. One more try. Does Walgreens sell firewood? I think we both know the answer to that question. But they do sell duraflame logs! Wonderful, waxy, crackly duraflame logs!

We bought them without so much as a second thought, and pursued our course onward to the campsite. I had the terrible feeling afterward in my head that cooking over saw dust might be bad, but I was with my boys, and no sense acting like the crazy worried married guy. Besides, I had already ruined my tough guy reputation with my ramblings about shopping at DSW and how much fun I had there.

Wait for the flame to go down. We were a bit hungry. Moreover, we were very impatient. Shortly after the duraflames were lit, we plopped our steaks on the grill. The fire rose steadily to the sky, charring every bit of meat that we had. Lesson learned, and good thing too, because we still had five pounds of meat left. Side note: We also learned that A-1 sauce is the savior of burnt meat. End of story.

Baby. Like I said, 32 weeks along means eight weeks left. Eight small weeks that pass like days. Eight weeks means less than two months. I won't calculate that in days, hours or minutes, as I would probably lose a great deal of apex hair in the process. Time's doing its job well enough in that instance, I'm afraid.

Good night. Time to fold up this parachute.