The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details 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 427): A Full Rainbow

#1GF! and I had a fight about the house right after we got up, which was unusual for us, but not unexpected given the way things have been going with the contractor. Somehow, we ended up watching Romy & Michelle II, and I still don’t know why.

We brought in a painter who tried not to laugh at the amount of work our contractor had left behind. We all talked for a while about the house, and I convinced the painter that it was a waste of time to ask why the contractor had done things the way he had. After the painter left, one of the neighbors came over to ask us for any old radiators that we might get rid of, and measured a couple of them.

We were running late for a cookout with #1GF!’s family, so we sort of had to rush him out the door. On the way over, we bought a cake that was decorated to look like a watermelon. Unfortunately, it tasted like watermelon, which I find to be out of place in anything that isn’t either a real watermelon or bubble gum.

We played with the kids all day, and ended up seeing a full rainbow that touched ground at both ends thanks to a late day storm. I was convinced to eat a raw radish out of the garden, which tasted like hot vomit. I wondered about the first person to ever eat one, because if I had run across this plant in the wild and was hungry enough to eat one, I would’ve spit it out after the first bite for fear that I was going to poison myself. We headed home at 9.

Monday (Day 428): Writing

I left another unanswered message for the contractor. I was supposed to do the food shopping and go to a radiator place to price out scraping old and buying new radiators, but never made it because it took me until 3:30 to put the Life of Riley together.

We ended the day by watching We Own the Night, which sucked.

Tuesday (Day 429): Radiators Are Nuts

I went to a radiator place looking to see how much it would cost to have our radiators stripped and painted. The place was a maze of radiators, and one guy just sort of stared at me. Honestly, the lack of both blinking and emotion made him seem a little nuts. The other thing that made him seem nuts was that he wanted $45-50 per section to strip and paint the radiators. And there was a charge for pickup and delivery. Radiators are about $25 per section to buy new. Either way, it was working out to be hundreds of dollars per radiator, which seemed beyond nuts.

I called #1GF! and met her for lunch. She was pretty happy to be plucked out of work for an hour, and I was happy to have company and food.

After I dropped her off, I picked up two lights from Lowe’s when I really needed four, and they only had three. The guy said that there would be more arriving in a couple of days. I went food shopping while listening to the Hood Internet Mixtape Volume I, which made me move through the aisles like I was on fire. The total grocery bill was $140, and the checker almost asked me to sign the pin pad and didn’t seem to know what to do with cash. The girl bagging had an excellent command of what codes belonged to what items and was helping the kid along. I rarely talk to people, but after she rambled off three codes for random items, I told her that she was impressive.

By the time I got home, it was 3:30, and all I could muster for a post was a stupid picture deer getting it on. I was supposed to call the contractor, but blew it off because he hasn’t returned any of my calls recently. I figured that I’d call him on Wednesday anyway. I’m at the point where I don’t even have anything to say to him anyway except “did you quit?”

The only other thing that happened was that I heard “Walk The Dinosaur” on the radio and realized it had cowbell in it. Of course it got added to my cowbell playlist.

Wednesday (Day 430): How Much Is A Do-Over?

I left another message for the contractor, who hasn’t returned any of my calls. After seeing the high price of buying a new radiator, re-plumbing, and scraping radiators, I looked into having our heating swapped from steam to forced hot water. We got a confusing e-mail from a friend explaining what we needed for heating parts, but neither one of us are plumbers so we didn’t understand it.

I got an e-mail about beards, and spent most of the day writing a response post. I ate pizza for dinner because #1GF! got home a little too late and no one felt like cooking.

Thursday (Day 431): Good, But Not Good

I left yet another message for the contractor, and then called a new contractor to look at our job. I then spent the morning torn between writing and hacking out some of the more useless parts of my WordPress theme.

I called the kitchen people to tell them that there’s a lot of stuff on their new website that could be improved to help their rank in Google. I didn’t want to upset them over their new site, but they’ve been good to us, and I felt like they should know about it. They told me how much they paid for the site, and I nearly blew my top because I do that sort of stuff for free. I’m not built like a business man. I’m built to help people out.

We met with the new contractor to see what it would take to correct the issues that our current contractor has created. He picked out all the normal issues, and then found more that we hadn’t noticed, like the mortar on the outside of the house being floor leveling cement. That’s good, but not good at the same time.

Friday (Day 432): History Of Metal

I called a new plumber, but couldn’t get through. I spent the entire day piecing together a history of heavy metal. If you’ve never undertaken a history of metal, it all starts with Black Sabbath and then gets really complicated. It’s a massive undertaking that I’ve had to put away in the past due to it’s large scope.

Saturday (Day 433): Old Dorks Need Shoes

#1GF! and I went to the Emerald Square Mall because I needed new sneakers, and it’s the closest place in the state that has a Vans store. When we got to the store, the saleswoman was covered in tattoos and had a piercing between her teeth (I haven’t seen that before). She asked if I needed help, but I said that I was a pain in the ass and wouldn’t know the Vans I wanted until I saw them. When she asked what I was looking for, #1GF! rightfully chimed in with, “The ones he’s wearing.”

“We don’t make those anymore.”

“I know. I bought two pair of them so I could put off sneaker shopping for a couple of years.”

“He did,” #1GF! confirmed.

When I didn’t see any that I liked, the saleswoman started suggesting pairs, which I kept shooting down. She nicely suggested that I might want to get a job working for Vans so that I could design exactly the sneaker that I wanted, and then gave up by pointing me towards the Vans Classics. Vans Classics are a sort of “You can be 18 again” sneakers that have checkerboards on them like they fell out of a Ska party in 1987. I wanted no part of that nonsense in 1987, and I was having no part of it now.

I wasn’t leaving without a sneaker, so I picked out a couple of pairs that I hated the least, and the saleswoman got them from the back. As if there was some sort of God of Cool looking over my shoulder, my phone rang. My phone plays the intro to Slayer’s “South of Heaven” when it rings, which is only cool to a select group of people. I tend to answer it quickly because even though I love that ringtone, I don’t like attracting attention to myself or disrupting my surroundings with pure metal power \m/.

I talked to the new contractor for a minute, and came back to the saleswoman. I think that was the point that she became interested in helping me find sneakers rather than selling the old guy some Vans classics.

“That was awesome” she said as if I had suddenly done a back flip. I guess she was one of those select people who appreciates Slayer. I think I nodded and mumbled something like “Slayer” before throwing my phone in my pocket and trying on some sneakers.

After I had the first pair on, she said, “I hate to say this, but those are dad shoes.”

“What? No. Ok, maybe I get what you’re saying, but Dad shoes?”

“You might want to try the black ones.”

“Or, I might want to buy the Dad shoes just to spite you.”

“Oh, so you’re going to bring the Dad look back in?”

“I might.”

Knowing that there was little chance of me bringing anything anywhere, I tried on the black shoes.

[reading my t-shirt] “What’s Amoeba?”

“It’s only the best record store ever. It’s like a warehouse of CD’s for dirt cheap.”

“Do they have anything I’d know.”

“Sure. They have everything. It’s huge.”

“I’m really into the Smiths.” I thought this was sort of funny because I was probably into the Smiths before this girl was born, and figured out how gay they were soon after. I just smiled. She continued, “There’s some albums that I don’t have, but I don’t want to go into Newbury Comics and have the people behind the counter think I’m just getting into them now.”

I smiled about when I used to put back CD’s because I didn’t want to be judged on my record store purchases, and about how I don’t even think twice these days about throwing a Christina Aguilera CD in with the death metal. These days, I’m way past the point of trying to be cool, and I’ve known enough record store clerks in my day to know they generally aren’t people that you need to worry about impressing.

I offered a tiny bit of advice, “Most of the people that I’ve met who work at record stores are dorks, so…”

“I’m a dork, too. I mean like World of Warcraft and Magic: The Gathering for god’s sake.”

I started thinking about trying to learn to play Magic and having my ex wife hide all the cards on me because the game was too dorky, even for me.

“Have you ever heard of Armageddon in Providence?”

“Nope. Are they big?”

“Not really.”

“What do they focus on?”

“Punk and indie stuff.”

“Are they cheap?”

“I guess. Maybe.”

“Interesting.”

“Well, did you buy anything at Amoeba that I’d know?”

I spent $200 bucks and two days in that place on all types of music from death metal to jazz, and all that kept popping into my head was a Sheryl Crow. Rather than waste the fifteen minutes of cool that I’m issued every five years, I kept my mouth shut.

[looks at licence] “You didn’t come all the way here just for Vans did you?”

I told her that I did, bought my shoes, and headed out of the store. #1GF! was grinning at me when we left.

“What?”

“Oh, she liked you.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Yes, she did. She liked my man.”

“Naw.”

“Oh yes she did. It was pretty cool.”

“I don’t think so. [Quoting Blizzard Man] Check my style out.”

“Huh?”

“Blizzard Man. 1995. Yo. Where’s my money at?”

[ignoring The Bliz] “I can’t believe you caved though.”

“I did cave, didn’t I? I got hustled by a young girl into a purchase. I’m so old.”

#1GF! thought the girl was into me, but here’s the deal: Kids don’t know that young misfits grow up and become old misfits. Young misfits wear their freakiness on the outside with piercings and black clothes. Older misfits generally learn to cloak their freakiness as they age because it makes life a hell of a lot easier.

What happened here was that I was cruising along unnoticed and someone on my ship thought it would be funny to hit the decloak button. That Slayer ringtone was sort of like a tattered Romulan Bird of Prey appearing out of the darkness and unexpectedly sending a hailing signal in a language that the saleswoman understood. Whether you’re a dork, nerd, or geek, you’re constantly throwing little subculture hailing signals out to people you meet. 99% of them go uncaught. When one does get caught, you can’t help but send more. It doesn’t mean that you want to be boarded, but you can’t help opening the communication channels and listening for responses.

Once we got home, we went out to dinner with my parents and then went to Fascination where the average age is 712. We have all become degenerate gamblers except for #1GF!, who is a winning degenerate. She won twice that night and still won’t tell me her system.

What I Learned

• #1GF! has a system at Fascination.
• I can’t stop quoting Blizzard Man
• I’m not the only one who thinks our house is ridiculous.
• Radiators are ridiculously expensive.
• I learned a lot about the various classes of metal.

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Posted in Leisure