This is week 58 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 399): The Gonorrhea Mall

I woke up with a headache that lasted all day and we went to what #1GF!’s brother refers to as the Gonorrhea Mall. I’m not sure what the mall is actually called, but it begins with G and isn’t close to enough to our house that I’ll ever need to know its real name. While waiting for #1GF! outside a store, I noticed that there were two guys near me on cell phones, and for some reason, I started getting paranoid and thinking that they were talking to each other and I was about to get mugged. Nothing happened, but it’s one of those “you can take the kid out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the kid” mindsets that I’ll probably always be stuck with.

We walked into a dollar store, and I encouraged #1GF! to buy a sudoku book because she loves those puzzles. When the book rang up at two dollars and change, I realized that even though the name of the store was “One Dollar Market”, it wasn’t really a dollar store. It was somehow a “dollar, unless noted otherwise store”, which seems like a cheat on the whole dollar store gimmick to me. If I have to ask the price, you’re not a dollar store.

As I expressed my views on the way out of the misnamed store, #1GF! asked me where the thick townie accent was coming from. I was surprised that she thought it sounded strange, because I often find myself slipping into the heavily accented way kids talked when I was growing up. “Fuck” ends up sounding like “Fahk”, and it’s nearly always drawn out and nasal sounding. We started talking about the word “half”, which she says like “calf”, and I say like “barn”. Or bahn. Oah whatevah, dood. At least we both say “Honder Accohd”, which seems to be the universal pronunciation of the common Japanese sedan in this state.

On the way home, I took a movie with my cell phone out of the sun roof. I took it straight up, which was a little weird, and then of the road, which was a little weirder. They held my interest for about ten minutes after we got home.

Monday (Day 400): Real Finish Carpenters

I met with the carpenters pretty early because the contractor is on vacation. Once I got home, I found out a friend’s house burned down, so I tried to call him, but I guess his battery charger was in the house. I tried to get some posts together for the week, but failed miserably. I went back to the house in the afternoon to check on the carpenters, and a good portion of what the painters said couldn’t be patched, was already fixed. I was so happy that when I got home, I tried to figure out how to make a photo look like a movie action hero. I had little success.

Tuesday (Day 401): The Surf Research Institute

I got to the house at 7:30 to let the carpenters in again, and then spent most of the day trying to put together the surf post. My mother dropped by for a little bit, and I went back to check on the contractors in the afternoon. I baked a whole chicken, decided to make some chicken stock, and threw it all down the drain because I was sick and tired of cooking. It was wasteful, and I somehow didn’t care. I watched a Ramones documentary when I should’ve gone to bed because you can’t stop this juggernaut of raw rebellion.

Wednesday (Day 402): Hold On To That Feelayeeayaan

I spent most of the day remixing Journey into a song for fun. I could not begin to tell you why.

Thursday (Day 403): Mr. House Fire

I went to the dentist for a cleaning, picked up a light from the light store, and then headed out to visit a friend whose house burned down. He apologized for ever having made fun of me when my house burned down. I told him that payback would be all the people that never had all their belongings melted into a giant, smelly, black pile, consoling him with the phrase “at least no one got hurt”. Consoling someone by reminding them that something worse didn’t happen isn’t really a consolation, folks. I’m just saying.

As I was driving over there, I noticed that Route 495 smelled like new tar and old pine needles, which I thought was a strange combination to be able to notice on a major highway. When I got to the house, the burned smell brought back memories. A burned house doesn’t smell like a camp fire or a match. It’s very distinct thanks to all the bits of wire, wood, rugs, and all the different material things that have made up your life. If you know that smell, it’s unlikely that you’ll forget it.

The top of the house was burned out completely, and when we went up to the second floor, it seemed really familiar. After a fire, the boards over the windows keep out the light, and everything is caked with soot and char. Even with a flashlight, things look unusually dark. I know I looked into a room at one point and said, “Yea, it’s pretty fucked,” because it looked like his whole second floor would have to be taken down. It probably wasn’t the right thing to say, but I’ve been there, and no matter what, if your house burns, it’s pretty fucked.

I was carrying more information than items when I left my house, but I did manage to remember to pack a bunch of old T-shirts and sweatshirts into a bag because I could remember not having much of anything in terms of clothes after my fire. People who have fires generally don’t have much, and they at least need something to wear when cleaning out the house so that they don’t ruin the few new clothes that they buy. A few people put together a bag of T-shirts for me, so I did the same for this guy.

It’s a very confusing and stressful time, so I tried to give them all the information that I could remember about how I did things with my fire. The aftermath of a house fire is like walking into a high stakes card game by yourself without a clue as to what the rules are. I couldn’t walk them through the whole process step by step and guarantee a win, but I could at least tell them the name of the game and give them some of the basic rules that I had learned the hard way.

I stayed for a few hours yapping, and played with the kids while my friend and his wife dealt with one of the demo people. When things settled slightly, one of the kids had to be ordered out of rocket car so I could get going. He emerged with a Six Feet Under CD, which I think indicates good taste on the kid’s part, even if he’s a little too young to have any idea who Six Feet Under are.

When I got home, I put together a few more things to take over to the guy because even though you have a job and don’t think you’re fucked, you’re still fucked after a fire. In the best case where the insurance company can quickly decide what your entire life of material items is worth, it can take a long time for them to pay. Even though you look OK on paper, it isn’t difficult to start sinking when you realize that promises of checks full of zeros from the insurance company don’t pay the bills in the short term. That’s coming from a guy who ended up broke and sleeping on an air mattress in his parents’ basement despite having two decent incomes coming in.

#1GF! and I found a coffee maker, a micro, a TV, and a single Hulk hand (that my sister had given me for smashing things) to bring over. The Hulk hand was a joke, but it’s good to have a joke available in a time of heavy stress. Hell, I still have the Mr. T head bank, which was the first thing that I took out of my fire once given the clearance to go in. I remember it was still warm in there, and everything was thrown everywhere. The whole place was pretty wet and charred, and I can remember grinning to myself when I decided to go for the joke and grab the Mr. T head. I walked out Mr. T and said, “Well I think that’s about it” to the crowd waiting outside. There was a lot of head shaking, but people lightened people up and chuckled a little, which is what you really need in those situations.

So, even though I felt like it wasn’t much to bring over, the less you have to spend money after a fire, the better, because there are a million things that you need to buy. It’s really overwhelming when you can’t find a simple pen to write down a number because you realize that you don’t have a pen to your name. And it’s frustrating to have to spend your money on stupid little things like pens. Come to think of it, I probably should’ve thrown some pens in the bags, but I didn’t think of it.

#1GF! and I put the stuff in a pile by the door and decided to get pizza for dinner. It’s a running joke with one of the girls at the shop that we order the same thing every week. This week, a different girl was at the counter, and she gave us the the wrong order, which we didn’t discover until we got home. When I took it back, I returned with a cold, rubbery pizza that had been sitting on the rack waiting for at least 40 minutes. Even though I wasn’t ecstatic about it, you couldn’t get the slices out of my hands because that little shop makes some pretty darned good pizza.

Friday (Day 404): Pump Ninja Vs. The Garbage Juice

I was supposed to go to lunch with a friend who was going to call when he got close to my house, but I ended up waiting for two hours for nothing because there was a cancellation e-mail in my inbox from the night before. This is why men are not allowed to make plans. #1GF! had gone to the beach, and I was supposed to be dropping some more stuff off to the guy who had the fire, so I was a little perturbed about standing around waiting for someone who wasn’t showing up.

By the time I called the friend with the crispy house to schedule the drop off, he was out shopping, so I told him to call me when he was all done. Sure, I was tired of waiting, but that wasn’t this guy’s fault, and there was no way that I was going to rush this guy to suit my schedule. He has enough stuff to worry about, and my life is relatively worry free.

I didn’t pressure #1GF! either, but she got bored at the beach without me. She came home and I made her listen to a song that I had remixed Journey into. Again, I don’t know why. I figured if I was being tortured by Journey, she should be too. That’s what love is all about: mutual torture. For some reason, remixing songs has become the latest thing that I’ve become interested in, even though I’m not very good at it.

Once afternoon crept in on us, we headed over to our storage space, where I realized that we don’t have a secret treasure trove of stuff like I thought we did. We have a bunch of stuff that we should’ve probably sold long ago to avoid years of storage fees. We picked up a few things and headed out to see if we could find some pink flamingos because our friend now lives in a trailer next to his burned out house. I thought it would’ve been funny to sneak them in, but we weren’t lucky enough to find any.

We drove around for a bit, and then headed over to their house. Another friend and his wife showed up and we all went out to dinner. We had to wait over an hour because it wasn’t the typical 5 PM dinner time that #1GF! and I normally go out. This was big people dinner time. Being in a small town and pretty tightly attached to a woman, I had forgotten what a bunch of whores women are on a Friday night. There was dangling here, jingling there, and the guys had their mullets combed to perfection for the next big score.

The bar had a cover band that played pretty well, but I couldn’t stand looking at them. The lead singer kept making lead singer faces and doing lead singer things like holding the microphone with two fingers and tapping on it with the others. She also kept pulling back the microphone on longer notes like she was going to blow out the PA with her unstoppable vocal power. She wasn’t half as bad as the guitar player who was literally wearing his sunglasses at night. Hey, Corey Hart, you’re in a cover band and you’re being upstaged by both the keyboard player’s epileptic facial expressions and the 13 year old saxophone player. The sunglasses couldn’t help you if this was 1983 and the lead singer was Irene Cara.

When we finally got our dinners, I found that mine was inedible. I won’t say things are good that often, but I almost always clean my plate. When I took a bite of my dinner, my eyebrows immediately pressed down and my eyes started blinking too much. Then, my head shot back like I was recoiling from something. I then thought that I must be wrong about what I was tasting because it tasted like the tangy juice at the bottom of a barrel smells. My head recoiled a few more times during chewing, yet I swallowed it anyway. I looked at my plate and thought that it must’ve been a bad bite or something. I tried a again, and the same thing happened.

We were having a good time, so I just put it aside and didn’t mention it, so no one would know that anything was wrong. I was there for the company more than anything, so the food didn’t really matter. I had the opportunity to act like an idiot and get a couple of people to laugh until they were wiping their eyes, which is one of the great joys of acting like an idiot. I really don’t know how to act like an adult. Or dress like one. Well, I mean, I do, but what the hell fun is that?

On the way out, one of the guys said that I could pass for someone in their 20’s, but that’s only because it was dark and I dress like an idiot. I don’t think I can pass for younger, because I have seen too many guys in their 20’s wear flip flops with jeans, and I wouldn’t put a flip flop on one of my feet if you paid me. And with jeans? Not a fucking chance. I’m all for people doing what they want, wearing what they want, humping who they want, but I’m completely intolerant of guys wearing flip flops with pants. I think that may be the generational divide. Will you wear flip flops with jeans? Check Yes or No. Gen X or Gen Flip Flop Jeans. Christ, I can’t stop writing because I hate that look so much. Breathe. There are no flip flops here. I’m fine. Woosah.

The only other thing worth noting is that I got the gas pump exactly on $50, which isn’t easy at four something a gallon. I felt like a pump ninja.

Saturday (Day 405): Lazy Day

We picked up a faucet, looked at furniture, and went home so #1GF! could take a nap while I worked on a remix. I can’t stop remixing. And I’m not really getting better at it.

What I Learned

• Fires look the same from the inside.
• House fires smell the same on the outside.
• To mix songs together like a K-Tel party mix, you need to match tempo and key, both of which Audacity can do with one click each.
• Getting rid of vocals is easier than isolating them.
• One way to isolate vocals is to get the difference between an instrumental version of a song and the regular version.
• Another way to isolate parts of a song is with an Audacity compatible VST plugin called kn0ck0ut.
• Keys of songs can be found with Google or estimated by tapping along on a Flash based piano.
• Tempo can be found for free with the MixMeister BPM Analyzer.
• Journey can be mixed into current pop songs.
• I don’t have anything cool in my storage space and I probably should’ve sold it all long ago.
• #1GF! and I differ in our pronunciation of the word “half”.
• Taking movies of driving while driving are pretty fun for a few minutes.

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