Hey all… it’s Tuesday, the day we snoop through Noah’s diary. Why? Because we can. And because cartoon characters can’t sue for invasion of privacy.
Tuesday, February 3, 2026, 9am: Rain, rain, rain… yeah, I like doing my best “Singin’ in the Rain” routine but not every day.
I think the sun is supposed to come out tomorrow but I dunno.
Less than 2 weeks til Valentine’s Day. I have 3 wedding gigs that weekend, which sucks except for the money part, which is pretty rad. But it does mean that Ruth and I are having Valentine’s brunch rather than Valentine’s dinner, and then on Monday I got Frank to agree to babysit the girls so me and Ruth can go to this new Italian place she wants to try.
Me, I figure I make damned good spaghetti at home, but whatever.
And fortunately Frank said Agnes has some foundation or club exec get-together that night, so at least the phone won’t be ringing every 30 seconds with complaints from Ursula about Agnes hogging the remote and not letting Ursula watch cartoons instead of whatever boring British drama Agnes wants to watch.
The phone will absolutely be ringing the second Agnes gets in the door because she thinks Ursula ought to be in bed by 7:30 and Ursula always wants to stay up til 9. Her actual bedtime is at 8 but she thinks that’s just a suggestion and usually puts up an argument.
Really, if Agnes wants Ursula to fall asleep, instead of arguing, she should just start recounting the ins and outs of her boring meetings rather than arguing.
Anyway, Howie has returned from his latest trip to Cabo with his tail between his legs and all sulky but he won’t tell anyone anything about it and he’s pretending he was in Vegas. We all know he wasn’t, ‘cause when he goes to Vegas he’s always chipper when he gets back, even when he loses at the casino.
Besides, we all know he’s going to Vegas Valentine’s weekend, because he was bragging about easy pickings that weekend. He’s seeing Def Leppard on the Thursday at Caesar’s Palace, Great White at the Showroom on the Friday, Joan Jett at the House of Blues on Sunday… and New Kids on the Block at the Dolby Live on Valentine’s Day itself.
Which Howie insists is just because the place is gonna be packed with “desperate single broads” and we’re all gonna pretend we believe him.
Actually, he’s gonna miss rehearsal next weekend because he’s travelling that day and some us have a sneaking suspicion it might be so he can get to Vegas in time to catch the Backstreet Boys at the Sphere before their last show on February 11th… “Desperate single broads,” I’m sure… and I’m also sure Howie will have a shopping bag full of Backstreet Boys merch for me to hand off to Ruth at the next rehearsal on the 17th.
Y’know, so that Ruth can introduce Ursula to the music of her own youth… but Ursula’s big brothers have taught her well and she won’t have anything to do with nonsense manufactured boy bands. And then I have to pretend like I’m not proud of her for that… unfortunately, Ursula also refuses to have anything to do with most good bands.
Like KISS. How can she not love KISS? Where did I go wrong as a father? I even took her to a KISS show a couple years ago with Frank and Adam and Duke and the only thing Ursula liked was the pyrotechnics and then she got all mad because we had to tell her she has to wait til she’s 18 to learn to play with fire.
She was also bored out of her tree when we took her to see U2 at the Sphere, which was kinda embarrassing because we managed to get into front row and there was Ursula with Denise’s kid Cindy, bored and making faces at Bono.
I mean, it was kinda funny but also really rude. And we’d met Bono the day before and taken selfies and Ursula asked him why he talks funny and Ruth got mad and explained he’s Irish and then Ursula demanded he do her geography homework which was about Ireland. Then she demanded he tell her how to catch a leprechaun because apparently she wants a pet leprechaun to keep in a terrarium and when she found out he couldn’t tell her anything about how to catch one she decided Bono was a complete waste of her time. So the whole concert she and Cindy were making faces at him.
I think they were trying to boo Bono as well, but they got drowned out by the 20,000 screaming U2 fans.
And ever since, anytime Ruth goes on about how Bono helps people, Ursula points out he didn’t help her catch any leprechauns and her teacher gave her a zero on the geography homework because she had someone else do it for her. She’s especially salty about the leprechaun thing as I think her whole plan was to make the leprechaun continually give her pots of gold so she wouldn’t ever have to get a job and therefore could spend her life watching and drawing cartoons.
I mean, I told her leprechauns are magic so even if she caught one, it would just escape the terrarium and run away, not stay there manufacturing gold for her, but she insists she had plans for a containment system to prevent that.
Usually she doesn’t talk about her leprechaun scheme much, but she remains convinced they’re easier to catch closer to St. Patrick’s Day, so she’s gotten an old aquarium from Adam and has suddenly been interested in my seed-starting in order to figure out which plants to pilfer for her leprechaun habitat.
We’ll see how long that lasts… I guess until March 18th.
Anyway, point is: I can’t see even Howie going to Vegas twice in one month, so we know he went to Cabo to try yet again to hang out with Sammy Hagar and get hired to be in his touring band. And I guess he’ll be all mopey at rehearsal tonight. Again.
