Easter. The American holiday that most retains its original religious significance. For the last seven years, I've celebrated it by receiving a care package of plastic grass and various formulations of cocoa and glucose. A waffling agnostic I may be, but candy is candy. This year proved different. I discovered a leftover stocking from Christmas, in addition to the springtime loot. The sheer quantity of sweets overfloweth the basket. Made it tough to keep up with the shorter kids as they scoured the yard for eggs. Got some colorful pictures, but I still feel woozy.

The Easter bunny also brought me a boomerang. Australia must've done me good - it comes back to my hand flawlessly each time I throw it. Never mind that short people act as couriers. Usually they just run the straight line between me and the resting place of the 'rang, but a tree ate it yesterday, a la Charlie Brown's kite. I bemoaned its loss, forgot about it, then Trace somehow acquired it and ran it up to me this afternoon. I assume the aborigines experienced the littlebrotherang phenomenon as well, and applied it to the swatting of wallabies.

Tax time's here, and you know what that means. Once I'm through the call queue for my broker and talking with them about reinvesting Roth IRA mutual fund dividends, two things happen nigh simultaneously. (1) Mom hollers downstairs for me to come up and join the other children for a snack, and (2) one of the other children picks up another cordless and immediately speed-dials a friend.

On a related topic, I broke down and purchased a cell phone. For years I've fought the good fight with an ever diminishing number of fellow phone-free friends, but the time came to break ranks. I humbly crawl to the wireless side of the fence. Hi everyone. Thanks for letting me borrow your phones while at bars over past years. I won't mooch off you any more. And hey, if you're within 33 feet and want to play a wireless bluetooth game of VRally 2, lemme know. This itsy phone slices, dices, and hums the cockatiel to sleep. Most of all, my Thundercats theme and Castlevania ringtones bring me happiness and joy. And I can even talk to other humans with it. That's why I'm proud to be an American. Yes, everyone in, let's say, New Zealand has a mobile phone. And getting a call's free. But if a kiwi were to call his mate's mobile, it costs him somewhere between two and twenty times the amount of money that it would take him to ring, say, Oregon. Consequently, you have a nation of people with mobile phones who use them exclusively to text-message friends at 10 cents a pop. Pardon the engineering economics, but on an inflation-adjusted dollar per character basis, that's the most expensive form of communication since the short-lived pony express.

L8r.