and not all of them have to do with religion or hyper-commercialism. Some of us have personal reasons not to like this holiday. The Grim Reaper is around every day of the year, and sometimes he just happens to strike near December 25. That's what happened when my Mother was 10. On the morning of Dec. 28, my Grandfather (who was only 38 at the time!) went over to a neighbor's house to visit. A few minutes later, he wasn't feeling so good. An hour later he was dead, and no one knows why, as an autopsy was never done.

My Mother was pretty good about keeping her memories of this horrible event under control when I was little. By the time I hit my preteen years, and Mom's alcoholism worsened, I had to listen to Mom piss and moan about this every friggin' December. Nowadays, I dread this time of year. Death (and memories of it) sucks at any time, and even more so at Christmas.

I don't live in Virginia, but I was rooting for Webb the whole time he was running against the Macaca man, and was thrilled when he won. I don't agree with every view Webb has, as he much more conservative than I am. But I've always believed that he is a good man, and this story proves that I was right all along!

but if Max was as great of a pet as Clooney claims he was, I'm sure that Max is now literally in "hog heaven".

I haven't paid much attention to personal ads since getting married nearly 15 years ago. But this article made me laugh, and I loved some of the funny ads quoted. Why wasn't this stuff around back in the 1980s, when I was single? Back then, most of the ads had a line like "Enjoy long walks on the beach." That was appropriate for where I lived (I was in Southern California), but not very original.

Despite the fact that I never had much luck finding love for myself in the personals, I'd do them again if my marriage came to an end. Yes, there is some bull@$%^ involved, like the other person mentioned, but you can't tell me that it doesn't exist elsewhere in the singles scene. Anytime there's a situation where people are trying to sell themselves, a certain amount of that is to be expected. Comes with the territory -

at the question "Will there be a TV in the bedroom?" Yes, I just e-mailed this, to a husband that I have been married to for nearly 15 years. Like I told him, if we were going to split over something in the bedroom, it sure as hell would not have been the TV. It would have been over a certain cat we recently lost (the cat passed away last Friday, at the age of 16). I miss the cat, but am the first to admit he was often annoying, especially in his later years. With this in mind, I'm surprised that this survey did not ask about pets.