Sometimes good, sometimes evil

Moved the son and wife into their new apartment in Ballard. Just enough room for their belongings, no room for their bodies, but they’re used to that.

Then ended up at Zesto’s (a classic joint, msdrfooms says, it’s not a fast food place, and I said, burgers, fries, shakes, of course it is) and they close at 9 but the woman said, come on in I love to make people happy.

Was accosted by their last customers, an embarrassed man and his drunk wife, who immediately asked, “Do you live in Ballard? I’m not sure you eat here if you don’t live in Ballard.” She was drunk but not totally obnoxious or belligerent.

“No, but our nieces go to Ballard High and we are over here a lot for plays and music. And I grew up eating lutefisk.” Her eyes widen in appreciation. “Raw.” This caused her pickled brain to implode and we ran off to a booth. The food was pretty good.

As we were leaving it started to, ummm, what is the word, what do you call that, oh yeah, RAIN. In the last two decades we get hardly any rain for months at a time now. It actually rained rain.

My cherry tomatoes are exploding! Gosh darn. The cat is peppered with tomato seeds and goop. Homeland security stopped by thinking it was a terrorist explosion. Nope, just tomatoes. Fortunately, back up to 80 tomorrow. Hang on little guys.

The wifey and the d-i-lawy ate all the gyros and split town.

So yesterday I watch Scary Movie 4 (some funny stuff, but some slow parts, it’s ok if you like those kind of movies), Silent Hill (some ok special effects but infinitely too long and out of control, can’t recommend it, waste of time), made $40 playing felony poker, remembered to turn off the garden hose!!!!

Today, leave work early, go to music store, go to movie The Descent, return home to emaciated cat, watch more bad movies, commit more felonies, eat tomatoes.

Saturday, go to the Evergreen State Fair. Watch the kids with their hardly trained dogs, most amusing. Pig whacking isn’t until next weekend. Farms are disappearing and there are fewer and fewer pig whacking kids each year. It’s sad. I was getting to recognize kids from year to year, as they got better (usually), but I guess once you get a cell phone, you lose interest in pig whacking, shovelling pig poop, being peed on, all the good things in life.

So Monday there was this screaming from the kitchen, and I told the daugher-outlaw, Chris, “Oh, just ignore her. She’s always hot under the collar when she’s cooking.” But the continued shouting and the sound of niagra caused me to uplift myself from my chair to check out the cacophony.

Lo and hold, the kitchen faucet had sort of exploded with water whooshing everywhere. This was a job for Soup-or-Handyman. Leap under the sink and turn it off. Faucet, after twenty years, appeared beyond repair.

Tuesday morning, I’m at work, signing up for quotes on the web. I get a call. Mike with Mechanical Animals Construction can get to us Wednesday morning. Cool. Then the wife calls, “I’ve got Rescue Rooter coming out this afternoon. They’re not cheap.” So I cancel Mike.

4pm, not rescued yet. Finally he calls. Gets here. “Oh, these old Moens can be a problem.”

“Fear not, Rescue Rooter Rob, the wife already purchased a new faucet.”

“Ah, then let me go check my rate book and see what this’ll cost you.” He returns, “Well, there’s the ‘come to the site and see how much we can potentially get from you’ charge, then the labor, and you’ve supplied the part, so $314.95.”

Hell, I could rebuild our entire house for that except for that faucet. So we let him go at it, he does a fine job, has some other types about my other plumbing fixes in the same area. I told him to work slower, since I was in the middle of making a batch of ice cream for my peons at work, but I guess he wanted to go home to the family after a long day.

The new faucet is very shiney.

I broke off part of a filling on my right back molar. No pain, but more sounds of dollars being sucked from my wallet. My felony poker playing is not making up the difference. Due to gas prices, my fall vacation may take me to exciting places like Washtucna, Wilbur, Dusty. I shall avoid Winthrop and Conconully because the fire there has burned 150,000 acres and seems to just be getting started.

The cat has survived on his new 3/4s of what we used to feed him diet. He’s much more loving and winks at me. But, dude, that will not get you treats. Don’t worry, the fall horde of rats will be arriving soon.

About two years ago two lovely girls started attending our small Quaker church. T, tallish dark haired, and E, short blonde, and they both played classcial bass. E sort of looked up to T. T’s mom is a bit of manic depressive, but ok now, but T worries she’s got mom’s tendencies (you know, she’s neurotic, but what classical musician isn’t?)

T went to the Ukraine to study under a master bassist, but came back, too strange and just before the political poisoning debacle. Decided to go to George Fox College and dabble in the sciences.

E went to Northwestern. She’s plain looking until she smiles and then the whole world lights up. She’s brilliant, has scientist parents. And we don’t see her too often anymore. Sigh.

T had some traumas but finished her first year at GFC. And her big announcement in early summer, “I have boyfriend.” Really, has gotten her out of her self pity mode. That’s good.

BUT

today, she shared in church, “Well, it’s a wild ride I’ve been on and it just seems to get wilder. I’m pregnant. Due on April 3. My boyfriend is moving up her and we’ll both be attending Seattle Community College.”

She’s only 20ish, this is obviously not planned, and she obviously feels totally stupid. On the other hand, the guy at least seems to be staying in the picture (and marriage, I think, is a stupid idea at this point because they’re both nut cases). Do the right thing, bring up the kid, have your own lives if you must.

So there was a big group hug of pregger Oliva and weeping T and the pastor and the women and a few guys and lots of praying,

“Hey, we love kids. May not be the direction you planned but trust in God and don’t worry sweethearts, we’s hear to help you. We’s loves babies.”

Or dialect to that effect.

T is a strange and wonderful person, but somewhat delicate emotionally. I think she realized today how much we love her and want her to just go ahead and do what needs to be done and be happy about it. Yes, you won’t be rocket scientist in 4 years, but several people shared this:

Sharon finished law school while pregnant

Patty finished art school preggers and then toddler.

Cheri finished college pregnant and toddler

A year ago I would have worried about T’s ability to handle this, but I think she’s matured just enough to realize she has everybody’s support, and this will modify her plans, but doesn’t destroy them, and she’ll definitely a new adventure/challenge.

Today at just over one years old, Sophia, the daughter of Tim and Rose, arrived in church in a very summery sporty outfit and, Glory be, the little tykess is walking!!!

And talking. Dwayne got down to her level and was trying to entice her to walk to him and let go of the pole she was holding on to.

Head shake no, then looks around him, and points to Dad, “DA!”

Even old curmudgeons can appreciate cuteness.

Inspector Closeau’s pronounciation.

We have a lovely young couple, she’s a redheaded curly average sized maybe a wee bit on the small size with great boobs banker (hey, I call them as I see them, umm, I mean, there’s the physical and mental and they are intertwined!), and he is an average height slightly thin very very dark black dude who is possibly one of the funniest people on earth, no wait, every conversation with him is funny, even though we aren’t necessarily telling jokes, and he’s employed, I forget.

Ok, so I’ve posted my sexist and racist observations, which they are not, they are objective descriptions. Anyway, they’re in the family way, and our church if very excited (we just love babies). I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about his origins but I’m guessing Ethiopia or general vicinity, he has very caucasian features. So I’m predicting a curly haired, light toned, medium build girl. This means, they’ll have a straight haired redhead chunky dark football player.

John and Olivia. If they have the girl, I think it will be ok. If they have the boy, I worry about John. He’s physically wirey, but he’s thin, but he’ll want to encourage his football player son. John will be flatten. He’ll love every minute of his pain, but still.

That’s my prediction for that one.

AND THEN THERE’S THE OTHER ONE!

Three weeks in DSL Hell. Three techs come out, put in new lines, check a bunch of stuff, call up offices, nothing fixes the problem.

Today I came home, wasting another 4 hours of vacation waiting for the next tech.

Arrived at 1pm. Looked at the logs, complained they hadn’t left enough notes on what they tried. Check some connections, checked my margins.

Ok, let’s try this.

And it worked.

Well, you know what they say:

If you want it done right, call in a woman.

She was funny too.

DSL has been on off for the last 3 weeks. All lines checked, all hardware checked. We must be living on top of an old Indian burial ground and the ghosts are in the line.

I’m wasting my vacation time coming home so yet another ‘techie’ can play with the line. We’re becoming buds but none of them will drink beer while on the job.

How the hell are they gonna troubleshoot this crap without beer?

Believe me, I’m a programmer. Beer makes good code.

And alta versa.

Izvinitye, apologies, mi scuzi, for the poor formatting but  i think ripping this raw and bleeding from my other posting forum is much more organic.
yesterday, knock at the door, large sweaty black dude, very nice,
canvassing the neighborhood for West Coast Vinyl.
“Man, like i need this job so’s I can eat. anyway, no obligation,
but I can see you got some old windows here. And Lord knows I might need to lose some weight, but I still gotta eat.”

so we talked a bit, ’cause he was pretty funny too.
So yeah, fine, have them give me call.

One ringy dingy–
me: Hello
tom: hi, this is tom from West Coast Vinyl. So you can we set up a time
for tomorrow?
me: no, dude, i told the dude, Thursday.
tom: oh, ok. well, we’ll be in the neighborhood tomorrow, how about
late in the day.
me: yeah, that’s cool, 5 pm.
tom: great. so let me check your address, size of your penis ( i made this part up), you’re a single family home, yup, you’re the owner, yup. And your wife’s name is?

pause

me: is this relevant?
tom: oh yes, we want to have both of you together then ten years from now
when you’re still enjoying your money saving windows, blah blah blah.
me: well she’s not available tomorrow.
tom: how about later in the evening?
me: no, not thursday either.
tom: well, we’ve got to have you both.
me: well that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
tom: oh that’s how we’ve always done business. We deal with home owners, no rentals, and all parties involved.
me: so if I have called you out of the blue for an estimate, you
would have insisted my wife would have to be there too?
tom: oh sure. that’s how we do our business. We’ve been in business 30 years. I mean, if you went to a
casino and there were three poker tables, and you had to pick a winning
table, your odds are 1 in 3.
me: (speechless)

Yes, I, like most people, find my witty responses 30 seconds after they hang up.

what i wanted to tell him was, deal with me and you’ve got probably
a 75% chance of “yes” if the price is reasonable.

add msdrfooms to the equation, your odds go down to about 5%
because she’s infinitely more picky than i am, fool

but his casino logic escaped me, so i guess they won’t stop by

I guess for “normal” couples, deal with the man, no deal, but deal with the man and the whiney woman, deal. Or what? I don’t understand.
and the black dude, probably got fired because he was supposed
to tell us when he was presenting that both spices had to be present.

wtf?

it’s like the free trip to condoretirementland in the woods, a short
presentation about the joys of living here, both spices must
be present, and then enjoy yourself, assuming you survive
the high pressure sales pitch.

I may call them up pretending to be a person just looking for estimates on window replacements and see what happens.

What if my gay boyfriend just can’t arrange to be at the meeting also?

Can I sue for discrimination? But I need new windows and just because my significant other can’t be there, they won’t  let me give them money? It’s so unfair!

Single people, gay people have to live with ugly inefficient windows! It seems so wrong.

Big tooth and car expenses have seriously delayed our grilling upgrade.

But soon very soon we shall get a real grill. If the msdrfooms is not looking,

I might get the egg smoker too. muhahahahahahahaha.

We do not have dog crap encrusted carpets or maggot laden hot tubs, but we still think we can do a pretty good job without those accoutrements. We have two expert books on grilling and bbqs. And I do mean excellent. Oh, the rubs, oh the sauces.

Currently I’m attempting to cook a piece of salmon on a hand me down grill made of who knows. But it has whetted our appetite for the real thing.

Watch for us on the Food Channel! We’ll start entering contests around the country.