"Aliens? We gotta deal with aliens too?" - John Leguizamo as Luigi, Super Mario Brothers

By my calculations, more people were in line to see John Leguizamo in Fairbanks than had seen Super Mario Brothers. And that's counting the three times I saw it.

It was time. I’d calculated out to the millisecond when we needed to leave our log cabin to see John Leguizamo and Governor Murkowski cut the ice ribbon to open the Children’s Park. So, what happened?

Well, it’s all my fault.

First, I made the mistake of feeding The New Boy a batch of ‘Nilla Wafers. ‘Nilla Wafers might look harmless, but when transformed by The New Boy’s incessant maw, they become a paste equal in consistency to the strongest of glues. Naturally, The New Boy was covered in that glue, and when it came time to scour him with steel wool and gasoline to rid him of his pasty cookie covering, well, it was my fault. I should have let him have some steak or something, but I had poor foresight. Well, live and learn. There goes five minutes.

Secondly, I misplaced the keys to The Mrs.’ car. I looked for them and then finally enlisted the help (at dire peril to myself) of The Mrs. in finding them. By admitting that the keys were lost, I would be admitting that I lost them. The Mrs. is very protective of her keys, given my proclivity for losing pretty much anything that isn’t tied down. Well, after looking for about ten minutes, we found them.

Finally, I had tried to be a good hubby, and in doing so I had gotten The Mrs.’ new Columbia™ gloves that I had gotten her for Christmas (gloves=always a good present in Alaska) out and put them on the back of the couch. I was going to wear her Thinsulate® mittens that have the mitten part that pulls up and reveals fingerless gloves like Motley Crue wore in 1982. I figured that would be good for running the camera. When it came time to go, though, only one of The Mrs.’ gloves was in evidence. The other appeared to have gone to some sort of alternate dimension where lone socks go. Immediately, I sold out The Boy. I had tried to do something right. It must be the scurrilous actions of The Boy at the bottom of this. That delayed us another fifteen minutes. We finally agreed she would wear her mittens, and I would wear my old crappy gloves that were bursting at the seams. The Mrs. was not amused.

As we drove in to Fairbanks, we noticed a contingent of Troopers flying down the road at Warp 6. The Mrs. remarked that this was unusual.

The Mrs.: “I wonder what’s up?”

Me: “Well, the Governor is going to the show, too. Maybe he’s running late.”

The Mrs.: “Maybe he lost his wife’s keys and gloves. You think?”

The Mrs. certainly does know how to nail down a point.

She was even less amused when we arrived late, looking for a parking space, and ultimately standing in a line of Fairbanksians the length of which was unknown except for hockey. We had bundled up for the evening, but The Mrs. and I both noticed that our hands weren’t as warm as we had dreamed they would be. It didn’t help that when we unloaded the stroller we found the missing Columbia™ glove. The Boy really had been the culprit! I hadn’t been just picking on a likely suspect. But, The Mrs.’ other glove was now home on the counter.

At least the other glove was warm . . .

Next: Land of the Leguizamo