Another shot of the lighthouse at the end of Golden Gate Park.

It's showing up postage stamp-sized. Isn't that adorable?

It's no secret that i'm OBSESSED with Peter Michaelfi.

Here's the latest of his misadventures:

I had a sleep study last night and it sucked.  An Indian man knocks on the hotel door at 10pm and takes 40 min to wire me up to a million wires. glue and clay were used. It was uncomfortable. I had dreams that he was coming in and taking my covers off. It wasn't true, but it seemed real.  I also dreamt about fatty. ick.  George St. George was his new whore and was painting his house. He was painting over crushed velvet!  why???

Can anyone help him out with that?
My theory: It dreamed that 'cause it wants to be molested. I'm not sure about the George St. George/crushed velvet part, though...

Who excused himself from the table at Harmony Cafe to pleasure himself in the bathroom...only to return about one minute later?

"I can do it in 30 seconds," he was heard to say. "I've got it down to a science."

I've found that the best thing to do for Valentine's Day is something that most assuredly does NOT involve going to a crowded restaurant. With the ex, we decided we should do the opposite of what most people would do (i.e., romantical restaurant). So our tradition became going to Devon Avenue, Chicago's Indian neighborhood, and having yummy vegetarian eats at Udupi Palace.

Duke and i, though, came up with an even better plan: Every VD, we treat ourselves to massages at Sir Spa. It's nice 'cause that way we don't have to worry about gifts, either -- though we always exchange cards, and i snuck in an iTunes gift card 'cause that's just the kind of guy i am. There's just nothing like having the knots worked out of your back and shoulder and legs, and having your carpal tunnel-ridden wrists soothed. For days afterward, we feel absolutely incredible. In the past, both of us have had masseurs who do deep-tissue massages and i've had to breathe through the pain. So, believe me -- arousal is the last thing on my mind.

This dude, though, had a gentler touch. He worked out the knots, so that part hurt -- but otherwise, it was pretty relaxing. And toward the end, when i was on my back, he was tucking the sheet over my crotch and rubbing down my upper leg...and, well...you can guess where this is going.......it moved. Like George Costanza. It moved; i'm almost sure of it.

Now, before you go thinking i got a happy ending, i can assure you that this is a reputable operation. (It's funny, though: One of Duke's coworkers asked if he got a happy ending and Duke was all, Of course not! and the dude was all, I've never had a massage when i DIDN'T have a happy ending!)

I think there's more of an endorphin rush when you have a deep-tissue (i.e., PAINFUL) massage, so we didn't feel the intense high we usually do. Still, man, oh man, did it feel good.

We planned on going to Frida's up the street -- it's a newish Mexican joint, with portraits of Frida Kahlo all over the brightly painted walls, and even though Duke had tried to make a reservation earlier in the week and they insisted it'd be no problem getting a table for two, but the small space is crowded with people waiting to get a table, so Duke suggests that new Tapas Las Ramblas place, and we head there and get a spot right away, and our waitress is absolutely adorable and i make Duke get a liter of sangria even though he thinks it's too sweet, and we have tons of delicious nibblies -- calamari, garlic shrimp, artichoke hearts stuffed with crabmeat, warm goat cheese, caramel bananas -- and we've got a nice buzz going and my stomach is delightfully stuffed, and i'm glad it worked out like this.

Surfer on Ocean Beach.

"Is it your birthday?" i ask Holiday.

"No," she says.

"Good!" i exclaim. "You can't celebrate your unbirthday if it's your actual birthday!"

And i hand her a loaf a bread. It's a bit lopsided, the poor thing, but it was Duke's first attempt. He got some special flour to make it, and i can't remember exactly what kind it was, but i call it Salmonella Bread. It's kind of English muffiny. He made two loaves, and i figured one would get stale if it was left at our house, so we gave it to Holiday, where she and her roomies could eat it all day like poor people.

That evening we treat Holiday to dinner at Dib, and she regales us with stories of crazy Pause customers. Then we head up to Ollie's for drinks, and we sit in the booth in the window and it's such a step back in time -- there are dusty placemats of Cubs players from before Holiday was even born pinned to the wood paneling -- and the sign by the door reads, "NEW DRESS CODE. NO PANTS BELOW THE WAIST OR YOU WILL NOT BE ALLOWED IN" and some dude comes over to us and keeps asking if we're with the theater group by the el stop, and he just can't seem to get it through his head that no, we're not actors -- i guess it just doesn't compute why three Whities would be hanging at Ollie's -- and at one point i go outside and smoke my one-hitter in the playground next door, and it's a nice night out and luckily no one passes by, and i call Catty and he's with the beau and Nigel and Michael at the (Un)Lucky (W)Horeshoe, and even though i had been trying to convince them to come to Ollie's, now i'm regretting it -- the last thing we need is a group of loud drunken honky fags at a predominantly Black dive bar -- and when i go back in to take a leak, there's a sign in the bathroom that just cracks my shit up, and there's no lock on the door, so i grab the paper quickly and shove it in my back pocket before someone walks in and catches me.

Now that's quite a prize!

Duke's turn.

Might as well jump!

(i'll tell you a secret: it took a few tries to get just the right shot. that's some pretty good air for a fellow who was feeling rundown with a chest infection, eh?)

I am so totally on the rag.

Duke calls it my “meriod.” Maybe the full moon has something to do with it, too.

My day at work started out with me saying, “Really? You really don’t remember us having a conversation about this………YESTERDAY?”

And for some reason, I assumed our condo’s court hearing would be somewhere in the Loop, within walking distance of my office. So it’s a rude surprise when I look it up online half an hour before I’m supposed to be there and see that it’s way north and way west of me. It’s just past the gallery district, right by where Catty and I had to get fingerprinted for our background checks to prove we weren't sex offenders so we could volunteer on the Nocturnal Emissions bus.

I dash down the eight flights of stairs and out onto Dearborn. I call Duke to bitch about my stupidity, but luckily, once I hang up with him, a 22 bus comes right along. I get on and take it up to Chicago Ave. Then I run. It’s about ten blocks west and one block south, and I get there ten minutes before the hearing, passing through security just as one of my neighbors does.

One of the guys on the first floor is already here, and he tells us the Third-Floor Lawyer’s lawyer is in a closed-door session with the representative from the city. The lawyer comes out right before the hearing and he’s quite a famine for the eyes. He’s about four feet tall, bug-eyed, balding, dwarfish, with a bulbous growth above his eye. The munchkin tells us that we’re lucky – the city is only going to fine us $700, plus $75 for court costs. Somehow we don’t feel so lucky. I am so totally going to get a voodoo doll of Toop, who narced us out to the city.

In fact, it pisses me off – we weren’t expecting any fine, and we have no idea what went on behind that closed door. We can’t help but wonder if we would have been better off explaining our case, showing that we’ve repaired one of the infractions already and have estimates on the others. Munchkin doesn’t even have a clue about our situation.

But we’ll never know if we would have been better off representing ourselves. Third-Floor Lawyer hired this guy and said he’d cover the costs – maybe lawyers have this qui-pro-quo Silence of the Lambs-type agreement – and it’s not like we could say, No, you can’t have a lawyer present.

So the judge talks to the lawyer and it’s over in five seconds and we only have until June 2 to have everything fixed, including a new porch – Chicago porches are notoriously crappy, and after a bunch of New Trier High School graduates died in a porch collapse a few years ago, the city has finally cracked down.

After the hearing, 1-South grumbles, “I showered for THIS?”

The three of us in the condo association stand on the corner and rehash the trial and determine what we have to do now and we bash Toop, our nemesissy, who got us into this mess. 1-South, who lives right below him, tells us, “I’ve heard things that I don’t want to hear,” and we all groan and cover our ears.

I’m standing in front in a RedEye box, the Chicago Tribune’s bratty little sister, and some random Black dude comes over and says, “Excuse me, I know there’s something in here for me.” I move out of the way, so I can’t see what he reaches in and pulls out.

“Well that wasn’t shady at all,” 1-South says.

“What did he take out?” I ask.

“A knife,” both he and 1-North say at the time.

“Whoa!”

We watch the man cross the street, where he, to our surprise, gets into a burgundy PT Cruiser and drives away.

“What else is in here?” I wonder, opening the bright red newspaper box. There’s some black plastic device on the bottom. It occurs to me that maybe I shouldn’t be touching this, but I grab it and pull it out.

“It looks like a car alarm,” 1-South says.

“I was hoping for drugs,” I say.

Then: “What if it goes BOOM!” and I make an explosion with my hands.

Our eyes all go wide and we say, “Maybe we should head back now…”

I walk with 1-North for awhile. He’s a great guy and his two young daughters are a hoot. At our last condo meeting, Aria headed off to voice lessons at the Old Town School of Folk Music. She’s about 9. As she walked down the hallway, she called out, “Enjoy your manhood!”

We all erupted in laughter.

“Thanks!” I shout back. “We have so little of it.”

“Wait a minute!” her dad called out. “Am I the only straight guy here?” (We’ve always wondered what the story was about the Invisible Man across the hall from us – but I think the terrible dance music we hear booming in the hall now and then pretty much seals the deal.)

And last night, their mom came down to ask if she could print out some photos of the building for the hearing. (No dice – our HP printer sucks and hasn’t worked for months.)

“Wait! You have to hear this. Coco’s latest thing is having boyfriends,” she says about her adorable 4-year-old who’s always messing up expressions – much like the door chick at Miss Ollie’s bar, who has said, “It’s all French to me!” and “Well…Look what the cat blew in!”

J. continues. “She’ll come home and say they ‘dumped on her’ and she has a new boyfriend. Well, last night I asked her who her boyfriend was and she said, ‘I don’t have a boyfriend. They all dumped on me. Eleanor’s my GIRLfriend now!’” Age four and already AC/DC. Kids grow up so fast these days.

"MOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!" Coco whined. "Ben's my boyfriend again!" Not surprisingly, her lesbianism was just a phase.

1-North and I cross over the river, and I pass Carmine getting into a cab. 1-North is all, “I thought you were waving to the cabbie,” and I drop him off at his office and I walk the rest of the way back to the South Loop, stopping to get a gyro and cheese fries cuz they’re greasy and taste so good.

Guy doing crazy tai chi-type stretching and pole-twirling on Ocean Beach.