The Holidays are Here

You know how I can tell? I'm freezing.

When I got home from work today my apartment was 58 degrees. Now, almost 3 hours later, it's 61.

"Turn on the heat!" You say. Well, one of the many illegal aspects of my apartment is that I don't have heat. I do own a space heater, but its job is to blow warm air on me when I'm in the bathroom, possibly while I'm talking on the phone.

I don't want it to multi-task so I'm headed to Costco this weekend to buy one for my living room. I just need to remember not to run it on at the same time as my bathroom heater as half my apartment runs on the same fuse. Last year I had my microwave on a timer delay while I was cooking dinner. I stepped into the bathroom, and so I didn't get toilet-seat frost bite, I turned on my heater. A few minutes into my bathroom visit my microwave kicked on and everything went very dark. (Luckily I usually carry a lighter and happened to have a votive candle in there that day.) I had to ask my landlord where the fuse box was, and she had to ask her uncle Joe, the same genius who installed my shower doors with a hammer. In this instance uncle Joe came through and told us where to click my power back on.

This weekend, if I'm careful, I'll have both light and warmth in my apartment.

Electricity Poems Apply to Alien Technology as Well

Later today I'm taking my electric skillet to Las Vegas with me to add an extra cooking surface for our late Thanksgiving dinner. I'm still debating whether or not to check the bag it's in as the little plug thing had kind of a spike on the end. And when I woke up just now it occurred to me just how retarded that is.

When dealing with electricity, things that stick out are not live, and recessed connections are. That way people aren't always brushing against live wires and dieing. While I was contemplating this, my brain offered up the following poem:

Electricity lives in gullies and wells.
You can't reach it, so everything's swell.
The tines and the spikes and things that are pokey,
don't carry a charge so they're okey dokey.

In other technology news, I had to deliver a mattress and bed frame to Los Gatos last night. This lady's neighbor (a tiny old lady who sounded a LOT like Kermit the Frog) had to let me in to set everything up. She was also the only one available to sign the paperwork and receive the explanation of how everything works. I spent 10 minutes explaining the controls of her air mattress, the frame controls, how to adjust the rails, and how to move the lifting pole. Just as I finished the telephone rang. The neighbor picked it up, held it like a walkie talky, said hello into the ear piece, waited a second, then hung it back up.

I think I managed the equivalent of landing a UFO in this lady's living room and explaining how to use it in my alien language.

No Sleep! Bum Bum. 'Til Bedtime!

I've had a terrible time going to sleep for about the past week and a half. Last week was because I was up to my eyeballs in snot and sore throat. But on Sunday my congestion cleared up and my energy level has been running backwards, or if not backwards, at least not in the order it's supposed to.

I get up at 6am and am exhausted. Now, when I should be in bed getting mode, I'm ready to start a project, or write some email, or as I've done tonight, browse through personal ads for an hour.

I'm used to being exhausted at 6am, tired again shortly after lunch, and then semi sleepy again at 9ish. The only thing I can think to blame is my newly increased intake of diet Safeway select caffeine free sodas. Damn you diet cherry!

The Joys of Craig's List

As I may have mentioned, I've been trying to trade my extra DVD player for a VCR. I have some home videos I'd like to put on DVD and I currently don't own a VCR. Consider my logic: A new DVD player runs in the neighborhood of $35. So I could probably only get $10-15 for my good quality, but used, one. A new VCR would also cost me $35 or so which is more than I want to spend for something I'll hardly ever use. A trade seems like the most logical choice.

So I put up my ad, and going by the unspoken rules of Craig's List, I went with the first guy who responded to my message. I met him at the taqueria, kitty corner to the Balboa Park BART station, and we traded our respective consumer electronics.

When I got home I discovered that he'd given me the world's cheapest VCR. It had a bright orange face, the play, stop, fast forward, and rewind buttons were all bright pink, it was mono (as opposed to stereo), and it had NO CLOCK. The hallmark of any VCR is the blinking clock that nobody knows how to set. I've never not been able to set my VCR clock, so I can't see why having a VCR without one would be a positive. In addition to the VCR's aesthetic drawbacks, I had to turn up the TV to hear the sound over the noise generated by playing a tape.

For two weeks I've been trying to get my DVD player back. At first I thought it was going to be easy. He suggested we meet at 7pm at an IHOP in Redwood City on Tuesday, a day when he goes to visit his mother. How nice. 7pm rolls around at the International House of Pancakes and I walk over to a guy sitting in his car obviously waiting for somebody. "Hi," I say, "weren't you driving a van last time?"

"No," the man replies.

"Well, here's your VCR. Can I have my DVD player?"

"I don't think I'm the person you are meeting," the man says, explaining his lack of DVD player and choice of vehicle.

It was dark at the taqueria, so I was on the apparently overly generic lookout for a portly, bald, bedandruffed man with skimpy mustache.

7:15. Nobody. I leave a message asking where he is.
7:30. Nobody. I leave a message asking where he is and informing him he's got 15 minutes before I go home.
7:45. Nobody. I leave my final message, tell him I'm going home, and letting him know that he can drive himself to San Francisco to give me back my DVD player.

A couple days go by and I send him a couple of emails. He finally writes back saying that he hadn't checked his email after he suggested the IHOP rendezvous, and that his car had broken down on the way to Redwood City, and that he'd forgotten his phone in the car at the shop where the car had ended up. Super.

Relenting somewhat from my demand that he bring the phone to me, I wrote him an email asking when might be a good time to come get my DVD player. A full week goes by before he finally writes back and suggests, again, the Whipple Rd International House of Pancakes tonight at 8pm. He also cheerily suggests that he'll bring a possible substitute VCR for trade, as the DVD player was destined for a single mother that attends his church. I love it when irritating, unreliable, sleezeballs play the guilt card.

I got to IHOP early and passed the time by reading Make Magazine (which is awesome) and listening to the man two tables down ask the waiter how to say various things in Spanish, ignore him, and make up his own Spanish.

"I'll ceiro el shrimpay con excellanto."

His wife ordered a glass of wine. White wine at an IHOP.

Anyhow, when 8pm rolled around Captain Nose Grease showed up and offered me the worlds dirtiest VCR. Non-plussed, I pointed out that I'd like to test things before I trade from now on, not adding that I didn't trust him as far as I could smell him.

At long last my DVD player has made it back home. Next week I'll try again, this time making sure that all trades will be made in the company of an available TV and outlet.

The Wayward Youth of Nicer Neighborhoods

I was riding the M-Line home from the San Francisco car show with a bunch of skateboard youth, all in the 13-15 year old range. They were trying to look all cool and skatery, but has braces and zits, a both losers in cool points that are hard to overcome.

As they rode the MUNI toward a potential skate location they were comparing various school mates' house sizes to their own, mostly unfavorably. And one girl, who it happens has a helipad on her roof, has a nice house but is always busy with all her after school activities. Said the shortest and most portly wayward youth to his friend, "that's what I love about my life: I'm free. I don't do any after school activities. I don't do any sports related stuff. I don't do homework. I have a ton of free time."

The children are the future.

Inspiration Strikes

While I move to and fro in my rolly chair, my legs covered in a blanket, I keep getting the wheels stuck in the blanket. And thus is occurred to me: Were I ever to become wheelchair bound, I'd need to cover my legs with a much smaller blanket.

All Hail the Sheila

After my thrilling evening of waking up with a sheet of plastic on my head and surrounded by plants and dirt, I've decided to go with drapes to keep the neighbors from watching me wander around in my underpants while still letting sunlight into my little room. (How's that for a HUGE sentence slash synopsis of "Last time on Annoying yourself without improving your living space, with Mike?")

I started my Tuesday with one drape which was more than wide enough and about a foot too long for my tiny window. I ended my Tuesday with two nicely sized drapes, half a box of fried rice (also how I started my Wednesday), three carrot cake cookies, and the promise of dirt free sheets.

The drapes were a collaboration with the following contributions:

Me:
- Brought the drape.
- Cut the fabric.
- Ripped stitches.
- Folded up 2 seams.
- Ironed 2 seams.
- Sewed 2 seams.
- Fidgeted while trying to help but actually hindering progress.

Sheila:
- Ironed most of the drape.
- Ironed in the cut lines.
- Showed me where to cut the fabric.
- Showed me which stitches to rip.
- Showed me how to make seams.
- Folded up 1.5 seams.
- Sewed 1 seam.
- Fabricated two small loops from one large loop.
- Fastened the loops on all straight and nice.
- Started and finished sewing all my seams.
- Donated thread, the use of her sewing machine, expertise, 2.5 hours, and 3 cookies.

Without further ado, here is my newly covered window:

*

Sheila rocks!



* It looks like the right drape is longer than the left one but I can assure you that it's not. Something must have been caught on something when I took the picture, because it's as even as a bowl of oatmeal now.

It's Time for Drape

Saturday night at 3am I was rudely awakened by my translucent window cover leaping off the window and landing on my head. It brought with it my lamp and two potted plants. Having only fallen asleep 45 minutes earlier I was less than enchanted to wake up covered in plastic with two medium sized piles of dirt on my flannel sheets.

Quickly deciding between the fastest way to return to sleep and not making a mess, I chose sleep and put the plastic next to my bed and brushed the dirt between my mattress and the wall. I tried to vacuum back there tonight, but I fear it will remain dirty until I move out.

To let light but not sight through my window I've changed my tactics to using drapes, or in my case, drape. I went to Target last night and bought two of the smallest drapes I could find. But since my window is so small I'm going to have to take the single drape I found and cut it in half, then take off the bottom 10 inches. And of course take the other drape back to the store.

I should have my own HGTV show. It could be called "Annoying yourself without improving your living space, with Mike."

It's Back!

For months now not a soul has looked at my Onion Personal profile. At first I thought maybe the collective preference of the eligible ladies of San Francisco had swung to the opposite of me*. But soon after my people stopped visiting my profile some of my pictures disappeared, my blurbs went missing, and I stopped coming up on a search of 28 year old males in San Francisco.

Last week I finally figured out that they had turned my profile off. It's odd that it got turned off, and especially odd that I couldn't tell that my profile was turned off until I searched for myself by name. So I turned my profile back on only to discover that I still wasn't getting any traffic. I finally emailed customer service and they told me that people are much less likely to look at my profile if I don't pick a gender.

Seriously? You can't sign up for on an online dating sight without a gender. It won't let you. And on the Onion once you pick a gender you have to email customer service if you want to change it. And still it doesn't occur to them that this might be THEIR fault that I'm a genderless, dateless, person. Jerks. On the bright side I fixed it last night at I've already had two ladies look at my profile.

In other productive news I've just successfully installed a phone in my medicine cabinet. I tried a portable phone, but each room of my apartment is a Faraday cage and the phone would buzz when out of sight of its base. Not to be defeated by this minor setback, I ran a wire behind my couch, behind my fridge, over my kitchen cabinets, down a space between two of them, through the kitchen wall and into the back of my medicine cabinet. It's perfect.

Why would anyone need a phone in the bathroom? I need one there to counter-act everybody's uncanny ability to call me as soon as I sit down on the toilet. Although, now that I have a phone within easy reach of the porcelain department I haven't received a single phone call at home. Coincidence? I think not.**


*A taller than average female with light hair, dark skin, large feet, and an extra testicle.

**I've tested the phones and they still work, so it's not that.

Dark Haha

I went to New York last weekend to visit a friend, and as we were riding the subway to go see Spamalot (which was excellent) a homeless man wandered down the middle of the subway car. "Does anyone have any sodas or snacks? Chips? Burgers? Anyone have anything to drink?"

"He's a like a flight attendant in reverse," I pointed out.
"You are going straight to hell," my friend assured.

I do worry about my sense of humor. As I was driving down from Napa this week I saw a rabbit which had been run over in the middle of the road. It's body was flat, it's face was flat, it's tail was flat. It was as if somebody had neatly drawn a lifelike rabbit on the pavement. It was entirely two dimensional except for its perfectly intact, upright, rabbit ears, as if it were part of Nature's pop-up book. When I saw it I simultaneously laughed out loud and said "gross." The laughing out loud is the bit that worries me. I hardly ever laugh out loud.

Colusa, CA - Land of the Large

Today I visited beautiful, historic, downtown Colusa to clear up a small traffic matter. While I was driving down from Portland last month the CHP decided I was going a little too fast and gave me a $405 ticket. I went up to request traffic-school which, bless the judge's heart, I was granted.

Before court I went to the bank to withdrawal my rent. The guy in front of me line was probably 5'5", and must have weighed 220 pounds. He was not the biggest guy I'd ever seen, but he was certainly showing off his curves via his outfit selection. He had on some very tight work pants which stuck close to his stick legs and followed his contours up to an abdomen that made sure the sun never hit his bright red and white basketball shoes. The rest of him was covered in a yellow, white, red, and neon blue, spandex sport shirt. It sort of said NASCAR to me, but I think that's because the busyness of the shirt reminded me of all those stickers they put on the cars. The man looked, and was shaped like a heavily sponsored candied apple.

In the court room one of the other traffic defendants came dressed for the judge in stretch pants and a stretch shirt which was 3 inches shy of covering her disturbingly hairy belly. My theory was that she planned to frighten the judge into dismissing her case.

In pot calling kettle news I've been keeping track of my weight for 2 months now, and at last check I'm exactly the same weight as when I started. On Friday morning I decided to get serious and really eat right and on Friday evening a package was waiting for me from the KQED membership department. It contained 4 gigantic Ghirardelli dark chocolate bars. Then last night I went to Napa for a nice family birthday dinner. On my way out the door I was loaded up* with an extra serving of mashed potatoes, steak, sautéed mushrooms, and 3/4 of a Boston cream pie.**

It looks like I'll be restricted to my fat jeans for a while.


* I made my own plate of leftovers, so I can't very well blame anyone on that point.

** I currently have 1/2 a Boston cream pie. We'll see if the pie can hold steady through breakfast.

The Incurable Fixit

Today I was driving back from Union City where I had been to fix* a bed frame. Before I set off into 3:30pm traffic on 880, I went in search of a bathroom at Petco. In the bathroom, on the counter next to the empty paper towel dispenser, was a nearly full roll of paper towels.

I can see three explanations for this:
1) They lost the key to the dispenser.
2) The key is available, but they can't figure out how to install the roll.
3) The guy who is in charge of cleaning the brown ring out of the urinal is also in charge of the paper towel supply. I.E. Laziness.

Being the person I am, I flipped out my Leatherman Micra and popped the lock on the towel dispenser, perused the handy instructions printed on the inside, and loaded the paper towels.

I was a little unhappy that I'd taken the time to upgrade Petco's bathroom facilities because in the process of closing the dispenser lid I got whatever goo was on top all over my hands. And apparently the squirt of soap I had used before spotting the paper towel tragedy was the last squirt available, so I had to make do with rinsing my hands and wiping them with a freshly loaded paper towel. Thank goodness for my endless supply of hand sanitizer.


* I didn't actually fix the frame. It frame was not broken. Our homecare bed frames get crooked after a while if you don't either bring them up to their full height or lower them to the ground. Many adjustments around the middle of their height range make one end of the bed significantly higher than the other. But it's easy to fix: Bring the bed all the way up or all the way down. I tried to establish whether or not this was the problem before I drove the 40 miles to Union City, and I was assured that a) the bed was put together backwards, and b) only half the bed would move. I think there was some sort of language/IQ barrier between the person on the phone and I because both a) and b) were totally false. Jerks.

Happy Birthday

To me. Woot!

And it Ended Well

Today I was having a fairly boring day. My many boring activities included:
-Eating cold pizza.
-Watching TV.
-Getting a haircut.
-Buying a UPS from the liquidating CompUSA.
-Eating warm pizza.

Then, while I was driving around, a very attractive girl with two lip rings driving a VW Bug smiled at me. And just like that, I had a good Saturday.

It doesn't take much to make me happy.

Mid-60's Retro Gothic Dirt and the Brown Phlegm Kazoo

Today I delivered a bed frame to one of those houses that is probably worth a million or two, but would be worth quite a bit more if it wasn't decorated in mid-60's retro gothic dirt and didn't smell like pee.

And why is it that people who need hospital beds, usually because of a lack of mobility, never live on the ground floor? I had to lug 325 pounds of stuff down a long flight of stairs to the front door, then up a long flight of stairs to get to the bedroom. There really should have been a catwalk from the street to the bedroom window.

As I constructed the bed I had to deal with 3 things:
1) The pee smell. It's hard to put something together while I'm wishing I had a urinal cake to help clear the air.
2) A barrage of questions from the creepy brothers, sons of the patient.
3) Some serious B.O. coming off creepy brother #1. Every time he moved his arm I felt like switching careers to become a urinal cake.

After I had the bed put together, I explained to the creepy brothers how everything worked. They seemed so eager to know all the ins and outs of the bed frame while I was building it, but after I was done explaining it to them they chided me for not explaining it to the patient, who was sitting outside on the deck, and was apparently not planning on coming back in for the lesson.

So I moved my explanation out to the deck, which was difficult in that I was explaining the operation of the hospital bed which I generally do while standing next to the bed. I basically had to explain everything in theory with no visual aids or demonstrations. And to make matters worse I was trying to understand the questions the patient was asking while the creepy brothers were having an argument on the other side of the open glass door. This might not have been a big deal if the guy didn't talk using a throat kazoo. Throat kazoos are not made for loud speech.

When I had everything set up and all the pertinent questions answered, and some odd non-pertinent questions from creepy brother #1 answered, the patient started coughing up big gobs of brown phlegm through his kazoo and wiping them up with an ever more saturated piece of toilet paper. The phlegm is neither here nor there. I see gross stuff all the time. But as I was leaving the guy started to put out his hand for a farewell handshake. I didn't want to be rude, but I was not about to get brown kazoo phlegm on my ungloved hand.

As I made my out of the house creepy brother #1 decided he would walk me to my van. He asked several more questions which were only vaguely related to the delivery, explained how to get back to the main road (go down the hill and take the left fork, not hard) and then offered to ride with me until we got back to town. I gave my most hearty no thanks and drove away hoping against hope that I never have to go back on a service call.

My Day in Reverse

My last delivery of the day was fairly straight forward, but was overarchingly irritating. I'd been trying to deliver this guy's mattress since Friday, but he wouldn't let me because he "has no where to put it and he can't get the patient out of bed." I checked again on Monday and he angrily told me he'd call me back when he figured out how to use the Hoyer lift. So today he called and said he was ready, so I scheduled a 4:30pm appointment and he told me that I "shouldn't come early. Be here at 4:30pm exactly." I rang the doorbell at 4:30 and 15 seconds and he invited me into his GIGANTIC house and asked me to "just set the mattress down in the hall here. I'll put it on later." It seems like an awful lot of hassle for something I could have done on Friday.

My second to last delivery was to a facility which caters almost exclusively to the aged Chinese. There's a common area where all the residents sit in their wheelchairs, eat, nap, stare off into space, and/or watch TV. Today most everybody was staring off into space or napping. I guess they weren't interested in the sexually lurid anime that was blasting out of the TV.

I had lunch at a surprisingly festive Taco Bell today. There were two-flower vases on every table sitting on black and white thin plastic table"cloths". The ceiling behind the counter was covered with mylar balloons and every once in a while an employee would come by and offer everybody some free birthday cake. People kept inquiring about the occasion, but the employees either didn't know or didn't have the English acumen to get the message across.

Us: What's the occasion?
Them: It's a party.

Us: What's the cake for?
Them: For the customer.

Us: What's with all the decorations?
Them: It's a birthday party.
Us: Whose birthday?
Them: Taco Bell.

So I guess Taco Bell had a birthday today? Did anyone else see anything like this? Or maybe just this location?

But 3 taco supremes, 1 slice of Taco Bell birthday cake, and a guy who decided the far left FasTrak lane was not for him and that he should park perpendicularly across my FasTrak lane did not do my heart any good. Tomorrow I'm back on a diet of better food and driving.

Boo!

Does anyone here listen to This American Life? I really like that show and they are having people call in with scary stories that they'll play on the air for their Halloween show. I just called in and told the story of on of my coworkers talking to a dead guy and apologizing for having to disturb him. It's not very scary, but I have this ill-conceived hope that Ira Glass will want to talk to somebody who has a job as weird as mine is.

As unlikely as it may be on the face of it, it's even more unlikely I'll be on the radio due to my extreme nervousness. I had to record my story twice on the voicemail thingy, and who knows how many details I screwed up. My brain tends to shut down in situations like these. I may have related an age old family recipe for banana bread for all I know.

Misc.

I've discovered that the optimal way of motating around a large warehouse is in a rolly computer chair. It's exciting to propel myself backwards at great speeds, and I can take corners by grabbing onto the shelving. It's great fun now, but I'm worried that someday I'll hit a floor-crack just right and end up under a bariatric commode.

My through-the-wall neighbors are cooking something that actually smells delicious. They must have broken out their new Orifices Are Not Ingredients cookbook by Rachael Ray.

Over the last week and a half I've had 3 over night visitors. (Not romantically, they all slept on an inflatable bed in my livitchen.) And I've noticed that I get a little antsy when I can't come home and strip down to my boxer shorts. I may not be able to ever have a roommate again. And soon I may not be able to stand having friends over. Perhaps I'd better befriend a group of semi-nudists. Then again, I'm not sure I'd want to sit around with other people and have underwear leisure time.

I Weird Myself Out

I was trying to figure out how to spell blogosphere (I originally had it as bloggosphier), so I typed it into my Google bar. Lo and behold, as I typed it in my fingers came up with the correct spelling. I should learn sign language so I can better listen to my hands.

And last night I had a frustrating dream where I was trying to kiss my girlfriend. (It was a dream, I don't really have a girlfriend.) The kissing was hindered by the fact that her orthodontia* included a metal model of the solar system with all the planets orbiting around her head. Jupiter kept defending its sun against the onslaught of my lips. What an irritating gas-ball.

*She was of appropriate age. 23 to be exact, as she seems to be somebody from Yahoo Personals whom I've never met.

Medium Rare

I think I may have sun burnt my face. I'm not sure when I managed to do it, as I've hardly spent any time outside. I did drive to and from Portland over the weekend, so maybe I was beset by the suns rays while I was cruising down I-5.

On the bright, but somewhat premature side, the holiday season is coming up and I'm hoping it'll bleed over and improve my dating possibilities. My red face in combination with my green eyes is kind of festive. I'm hoping there's a lovely lady out there who's in the market for her own, personal, affectionate Christmas ornament.