This whole bit of having to catch up on a month's worth of news has left me without much too say.

Now that we have the bald-faced lie (lying without a beard? And how is that worse than a Van-Dyked lie, or, to be more sinisterly hip, goateed lying?) out of the way, I really spent the day between Home Depot and re-organizing the garage.

Oops, that's another lie. One can't re-organize what was never once organized. Thanks to some new wiring, there's now a power strip over my workbench -- a workbench I can see for the first time. It's amazing what a difference it makes to get a bunch of hangy thingies and hang them off the pegboards, then hang the handtools on the hangy thingies for the out-of-the-way hanginess. (That last sentence should serve as a warning against watching an entire season of Buffy in just four nights. But what's a fan to do when he's never seen Season 4 and it just came out on DVD?) Anyway. Even the weedwhacker and the hedge trimmer are off the shelves and hanging on a wall, with a wall-mounted basket for the pair of 18-volt batteries that came with them. I've been a busy boy.

Especially since I've been to Home Depot – actually, The Home Depot, according to the signs and the TV ads, but no one ever calls it that – at least once every day for a week. I told you briefly Monday about the hell of re-hanging the bi-fold doors in the upstairs guest room. That was an easy job compared to what should have been the simple job of putting new knobs on the damn doors. The old knobs weren't just ugly, they committed the deadly sin of not matching the new décor (pictures if I ever think of it). So, pick out something new and tasteful, add a couple of washers to protect the new paint, add cordless screwdriver, and done. Right?

Wrong. First I discovered the new knobs don't quite hide the damaged wood from the old knobs. Fine. Back to THE Home Depot for some equally-tasteful matching backplates. Which THE Home Depot doesn't sell, I discovered somewhere in aisle nine. Neither does Lowe's, which, I might add, is damn near on the other side of town. Searched the internet for a while, and found some that just might work – but I won't know for sure until they arrive, which will be in approximately ever.

Meanwhile, let's just get the new knobs installed anyway, so that Melissa will be able to open and close her sort-of new closet doors when she gets ready for work each morning. (What, you thought our guest room closet had room for guests' clothes? You don't know me or my bride very well. Clotheshorses, the both of us; there's not a free inch of closet space in any of the five bedrooms) Get drill, get knobs, get bolts that came with knobs.

The bolts were too short. Once-inch bolts for a two-inch job, and insert your own penis joke here. And if you're thinking one- and two-inch comparisons are apt for penises, then maybe you won't find any of the jokes funny.

So back to THE Home Depot. I'd eye-balled the bolts that came with the knobs, and they seemed to be #8 size. No problem. Just a couple of round-head, 2-inch long, machine screws.

Which, of course, THE Home Depot doesn't sell. I didn't even bother driving all the way out to Lowe's again. I picked up a couple of likely-looking substitutes, none of which worked. I did, however, manage to buy bunches of the afore-mentioned hangy thingies, a ten-amp electric brad gun, and a perfectly worthless acoustic measuring device. It sounds cool, but I found (after opening the package) that it won't display fractions of inches. So much for throwing the tape measure away before putting up the new crown molding.

And let's not even get into what I've gone through the last three weeks (three months, really, but that's another story) trying to get SoundTrack to fix the Mitsubishi big-screen HDTV set they forced me at gunpoint to buy – complete with service contract – two years ago. "Service agreement" means, I've discovered, that they'll send "Bob" (his real name has been left unchanged to expose the incompetent) over every couple of weeks to spend five hours making the picture worse.

Back to Buffy for a moment, because I'd really like to end this rant on a happier note. I can tell you now like only a man who's been there can tell you: It's a damn waste to watch the episode featuring Riley, and Spike, and Angel on a night when your wife has to go to sleep extra early. Those three got her more worked up than I was after that dream involving Willow, Faith, Veruka, T'Pol, and an anti-modesty spell. Nevermind that T'Pol is from a completely different TV show set in a completely different era. My dreams, my crossover rules.

And now, back to the news.