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 511): Closet Shelving and House Cleaning

We picked up shelving from a local home store and brought it back to install it in the master closet. #1GF! cleaned the house while I tried not to screw things up too badly. We got home a lot later than expected, but I still managed to edit and publish six full posts for Halloween week. I posted ahead of schedule so that I could get some house stuff done during the week without worrying about having to write.

Monday (Day 512): You’d Want To Bone Me, Too

I went to the house first thing in the morning because the plumber was going to install all the faucets, the toilet, and the rest of the finish plumbing items. I finished up with the closet shelving from the day before, and then went outside to re-grout some cracks in the house before the winter filled them with ice. I proved within a reasonable doubt that I’m not a mason.

By noon, the plumber still hadn’t shown up. I called him and he said he’d gotten sidetracked by a big job, but he’d be by later in the day. I didn’t care when he showed up, but because the plumbing is a priority, I needed to know when he was going to be there so I could schedule my day around him. Unfortunately, I couldn’t schedule what I didn’t know.

I went home, showered, and found that #1GF! had put my ping pong eyeballs all over the house. Had I known that this would be the highlight of my day, I would’ve stayed to look at them longer. At about 1:30, I let the plumber into the house, and went to do the food shopping.

I ran through the store at a decent pace, and went into the self check aisle because the only regular checkout that was open had a long line and no bagger. This is where I learned that you don’t do the self checkout when you do large amounts of shopping. For those that don’t know, the machine stops you every so often to tell you that the bagging area is full and makes you bag them before you can continue scanning items. I had to stop three times to bag groceries.

I was so aggravated at the machine constantly slowing me down that when the capicola wouldn’t scan, I left it right there with the gum. I felt bad that a human would have to find it and put it back, but I was so annoyed with the machine that I wanted to annoy it back. Because it had no arms, I somehow felt like the machine would suffer more knowing that there were some Italian cold cuts stinking up the gum right under it’s half awake scanning eye. Sure, it was irrational, but as far as I’m concerned, our new robot overlords can just suck it. Suck. It.

I drove home, put away the groceries, and cleaned out the vegetable drawer because it was full of rotted veggie juice. What a blast! I mean how do you let a vegetable get so rotted in your vegetable drawer that it leaks brown juice all over the place? Sure, a younger version of me may have been known to throw every pan and plate in the sink in the trash and declare a do-over rather than try to battle whatever organisms had taken root, but that was a long, long time ago. How does this type of thing happen now? I’m not 22 anymore. I’m friggin’ mature now. I have no idea how it happened, but I had to pull that drawer and clean it before I could put the rest of the groceries away.

To make things more fun, I decided to take it up a notch and clean the bathroom. Seriously. While you were working at your mundane job, tacking away at your stupid, boring spreadsheet for jerks, I was fully on track to have my most fun day in the world. While I was busy enjoying the mixture of bleach and envy (I could smell your envy all the way at my house) in the air, the plumber called. I was expecting to hear that he was done, but he told me that I had, and I quote, “big problems”. Because I was already having the best day in the world, I thought he was kidding and laughed it off. He wasn’t laughing.

He said that once he had completed all the finish plumbing and tested the system, things went very wrong. No water was leaving the house, and all the water was draining down the plumbing stack and onto the basement floor like a giant waterfall whenever the water was turned on. He mentioned that he might have to open a wall to fix it. I jumped into my car and after yelling, “FUCK” through gritted teeth in a rapid fire manner that is reserved only for the insane.

When I got to the house, I expected to see the bathroom wall soaked and destroyed. It wasn’t. I went down to the basement and the other plumber turned on the water. More water than I could’ve imagined poured down the plumbing stack like a waterfall. The plumber suspected that there might be an unglued pipe in the wall, and thought that he would have to open the wall up to find it. He also suspected foul play because one thing wrong is plausible, but two (a dislocated pipe and a blocked drain) were pretty unlikely on a single section of pipe. The plumber said that he’d get a drain company out to check the drain the next day, and then he’d work on getting the pipe fixed.

I went home and called the contractor, who had already talked to the plumber and wanted to meet me at the house to see what was going on. I drove back and met him at the house, and he created the waterfall again. He then reached up the side of the plumbing stack and found that it had been cut with a saw. It had been cut below the basement level, so a wall wouldn’t have to be taken down, but so close to the floor, that it would require cutting through the floor joists to repair. Ignoring the fact that I had more plumbing bills coming, not having to open a wall almost seemed like a plus. A cut in a pipe meant it could’ve been an accident, and the clog might just be a clog.

I ran over to the building department to see if the rough plumbing inspection was ever completed. I didn’t know how that information would’ve helped, but I wanted to do something. Unfortunately, (or fortunately given the warlike look in my eyes), it was 4:30, and the office was already closed. I went home, cleaned the bathroom, and made dinner. I know. I built a closet, re-grouted some walls, did the food shopping, handled a major plumbing issue, cleaned the bathroom, and cooked dinner. Admit it: If I did this all for you on a Monday, you’d seriously consider boning me and making me your house bitch. Even though I’d rather they didn’t, I think even straight dudes are thinking about it.

I sat on the couch and finished Syrup by Maxx Barry. The book was a fast read and seemed to have potential, but it turned into a romance novel and fizzled out. It was the literary version of listening to a story told by that guy in your office who doesn’t know how to tell a story and always forgets the ending. It was not a great reward for the day. I decided to tear into the Halloween candy, and by the time I was ready for bed, I had a massive, sugar induced headache, which seemed to be a more fitting end to the day.

Tuesday (Day 513): No Change

I tried to watch Squirm (a 1976 horror movie about killer worms) while eating my Cheerios, but #1GF! got freaked out and asked that I change it. The movie was so bad that I couldn’t understand how it could freak anyone out, but I complied. I ate my Cheerios with no laughter.

Once #1GF! was off to work, I checked stats until 11:30 because I had a number of days to go through. I read a post where someone said that I was more awesome than Bruce Campbell (I’m exaggerating, but here it is), and I threw my arms up into the air like I was the champion of something. Of course, I cou’dn’t agree, but it was really cool to read something like that from someone who doesn’t know how truly uncool I actually am. I worked on poster and a t-shirt ideas, but didn’t come up with much. I checked my e-mail and found out that I was going to be in The Sun next week, and publications from Russia and Shangai were looking for interviews.

I drove some folks to the seaport in the afternoon, and even though I’ve been to South Boston a million times, I had never been to the seaport before. The buildings down there are huge and nondescript, and the actual terminal is like a tall valley of buildings that looked a perfect location for a 40′s style gangster shootout.

I drove back to the house, and the plumbing still hadn’t been fixed. The toilet was still as full as it was the day before, meaning not a single drop of water had drained out the pipe in the last 24 hours. I called the plumber to ask for a status, and he said the drain guy would be there the next morning. I thought he was supposed to be there that day, but what can you do? You can’t piss off the people working on your house, and you stay as flexible as you can with scheduling. Otherwise, in my experience, wait times get longer and things get worse for people.

I went home and read some feeds to take my mind off of things before making dinner. When #1GF! got home, we watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which was from the same guys who did Superbad. There were a lot of great one-liners for the guys, and a lot of dong shots for the ladies. A lot of them. It really had something for both sexes, despite having a romantic comedy base.

Wednesday (Day 514): I Can’t Stand It, I Know You Planned It

The day started with me going over to the house to let the drain guy in to fix the clog in the pipe. Because the guy was a sub of a sub, I thought that I should hang around until he was done. I worked on scraping down the windows of the French doors that had been painted over as if the painters thought glass was just a less opaque type of wood.

The first thing the drain guy did was open the cover to the four inch exit pipe to the house. The second thing he did was call me down to the cellar so that I could see what was causing the drainage problems.

The whole drain was packed solid with expanding spray foam insulation. Someone had intentionally opened the cover, sprayed in a full can of expanding foam, put a cut in the vent stack, and then screwed the drain cover back on. I was a little more than pissed. I had officially been sabotaged. I wanted someone’s head.

I calmed down enough to called the main plumber, the contractor, and #1GF!. They all were just dumbfounded. This was obviously intentional, and we didn’t do it. The new contractor was still working with us and getting paid, so it wouldn’t make sense for him to do it. That left the old contractor and his subs. The only party I had a contract with, and the only person who had a key to the house was the old contractor, so if anyone is going to take it in the ass for this one, it’s him. I’m not talking about anything rash, violent, or vindictive. I’m just taking pictures and adding this to the pile of evidence. We’ve had to undo plenty of things that the old contractor did before we could move forward on this job, but we always thought it was because he was lazy or incompetent. If he or one of his subs did this, he just crossed over into the destructive and malicious category.

When the drain guy was finished, he said that the lower portion of the stack would have to be replaced because enough spray insulation had been blown into the pipe that it expanded upward and out of reach. The stuff is so sticky that the pipes would had to be replaced, or we’d always have problems with stuff catching on it and forming clogs. He hit me with a $200 bill, which was like flushing the money down the toilet because the pipes that he cleaned out now had to be replaced anyway. He also said that he had been instructed that this job was to be C.O.D., so I had to figure out how to pay him right there in my driveway. Fuckin’ A.

Once the drain guy was gone, I headed over to the building department to see if the rough plumbing inspection was ever completed on the job. It had been completed back in April. APRIL. That didn’t tell me anything about who sabotaged me, but it fueled the fire. I had the rough plumbing inspection completed in April and we’re still working on this job six months later.

From there, I headed over to the police department on the off chance that I could file some sort of police report. I knew that all my evidence was circumstantial, but if this could be considered vandalism or destruction of property, I wanted it on record. I apologized for wasting the officer’s time with what was more of a civil matter, but she was nice about it. She explained that she would write up the report and add extra patrols by the house to make sure that the old contractor wasn’t seen in the area. I didn’t think it was necessary, but she felt that if he was angry enough that he did destroy my plumbing stack, there was a chance that he might do something else. I thanked her for the help and headed out of there.

I went back to the apartment because I had to try to fix some virus issues on my aunt’s PC. I was gearing up to save a trip by e-mailing her an application that would allow me to control her PC from mine. Unfortunately, my host had shut down my site once again for using too many server resources. If my site is shut down, so is my e-mail. I tried to calm down and send the app through gmail, but gmail doesn’t allow people to send executables. It also won’t allow you to send zipped executables. Fucking great.

I wasted a half hour trying to get the app to her, and when my site was finally back up, I finally mailed it to her. Unfortunately, she had trouble opening the file because the virus she had kept shutting down her PC. Ever have one of those days? I hopped in the car and drove to her house because I knew the drive would take less time than blind troubleshooting over the phone.

It was a good decision. The drive calmed me down, and I cleaned a whole bunch of crap off of their PC, including a piece of spyware acting like an antivirus app. In a half hour, they were back up and running. While I was cleaning out the PC, my uncle actually drove out to the store to buy some raviolis for me to take home because they were the best raviolis that he’d ever eaten. I tried to refuse because I was happy to help them out with something I know about, but I was overruled. I left with raviolis and two huge cans of tomatoes.

I drove home, and as soon as I got onto my street, the plumber called to tell me that he was at the house but couldn’t get in. I went over and let him in so that he could start work on fixing the plumbing stack. We talked about how stupid putting foam insulation in the drain was, and neither of us could understand why it happened. The old contractor stopped calling me back and abandoned the job, so why would he sabotage it? The only thing that I could think of is that one of the subs did it because they wouldn’t be getting paid by a contractor who abandoned my job. Why take it out on me? What the hell did I do besides pay a lot of money for work that wasn’t done?

Even though there’s a little maniac inside my head that wants blood, I’m simply adding this to the file. Having a bulldog of a lawyer chasing you down can create more havoc and stress than any bad thing that you might want done to the contractor after hearing this story. I don’t want any bad things to happen to him. In fact, I want the old contractor healthy as a horse so that he can work three jobs to pay me the money for the damages he caused on this job. And hopefully that job will be sucking shit through a straw at the shit sucking factory. That’s what I’m after. The money and the license.

Thursday (Day 515): Moment in The Sun (UK)

I went to the house in the morning to finish scraping down those windows that the painters painted over. I finished up in a couple of hours and went home to check my stats quickly before heading back out. I found out that my interview in The Sun came out. Sure they’re a tabloid, but they’re the largest English speaking daily newspaper in the world (they sell about 3 million papers a day) and it’s not like I have a very serious story to tell.

I didn’t have a lot of time, so I forwarded the article to #1GF! and a couple of ex-coworkers before running back to the house to scrape more windows down. I called the appliance place because we were missing a bottom mounted vent attachment for the dryer, and he told me that there was no such thing. We were counting on that bottom mount and had talked about it a number of times, so I was pretty surprised. The only thing he could do was give me a vent attachment that might be of some help. If I really needed a bottom vent, I’d have to swap out the dryer.

I ran over to the appliance place, and the salesman gave me the dryer vent for free. I then went back to the house to scrape more windows. I thought that the contractor was supposed to show up, but I left at 3:15 and he wasn’t there yet. I called the kitchen place to try to schedule them in to get our knobs and drawer pulls installed, but the pulls weren’t in yet. They did have some pictures ready for me to resize for their website, so I told them I’d drop by to pick them up on Friday.

I went home and called #1GF! who was having a great time with the Sun article. From what I heard, my ex-coworkers were amused. I thought about putting together a press clippings page on my site, but I thought that might be a little pretentious. Maybe I’ll set it up anyway to give myself something to remember when my fifteen minutes are up.

I e-mailed the article around and ended up talking to an old friend who I haven’t talked to in years. He now has a kid, as everyone seems to these days. In the days when everyone was fucking around smoking pot, working shitty jobs, and having a good time, I was working as an accountant and trying to stay sober. Now that they’re all up to their ears in responsibility, I’m unemployed and have very few things (besides the house) to worry about. It’s sort of like I’m living life backwards, but without all the drugs.

I spent the night looking for a new web host because my contract runs out in 14 days and my host keeps suspending my account whenever I get a 8,000+ visitors in a day. I didn’t think that my site was all that big, but the only way that they say that they can keep up is if I upgrade to a more expensive plan. I have no job, I make no money, and unfortunately, I can’t justify quadrupling my hosting costs. Even though I tried, I wasn’t very successful at finding another host that offers the same features for the money, so I’m a little stuck with the devil I know right now.

I gave up the search and started answering e-mails. One reader needed help getting his blog template under control, so I spent some time trying to help him out. Another asked me who owned the copyright to my beard chart. When I told him that I made it, he asked if I was an illustrator. I thought that was sort of funny. Yes. I’m a crappy illustrator, web designer, graphic designer, music maker, and beard grower. The only things that I’m really good at are Perl, fixing things, and making people chuckle. I’m a jack of all trades, and a master of none.

Friday (Day 516): Whoreloween

I spent the morning checking stats and answering more e-mails. I put on a Monster Magnet T-shirt with a skeleton hand giving the devil horns on the back. The shirt only fits when I neglect my lifting and get too thin. It fit perfectly, and was the most that I was going to dress up for Halloween.

I went to the kitchen place to pick up some pictures that they wanted retouched, but I showed up unannounced and had to wait for about an hour. I sat for a bit and wrote in my notebook. Then, I read through my book to see if there were any ideas that I had thought of in the past and forgot to write about. Then, I watched the electrician hanging some lights in one of their showrooms. Then, I went over the room with my eyes to see if there was any detail in it that I had missed.

I didn’t mind waiting. After the crazy week, it was sort of nice to be sitting quietly in the presence of other people without feeling like I had to talk or do anything. The kitchen people said they had been recommending me for web development to other people that they worked with, which was cool, but I told them that they should see how I do fixing their pictures before they recommended me to anyone.

I went home and wrote a post for the start of November Beard Month. I created a “Choose your own beardventure” book for the post from scratch, but I don’t think anyone noticed. I thought it was a such a good replica of the originals, (spacing size, font, hell, I even created a fake publisher in the upper right hand corner), that I couldn’t wait for #1GF! to see it.

When #1GF! got home, I showed her the book, and she had no idea what it was. None. She had never read one of those books. Gah. Hey, it happens. She’s not really a nerd or a geek, so explaining references is part of life around here.

We ordered pizza for dinner, and I ran into our usual joint to pick it up. The girl asked me where my costume was, and maybe the smell of pizza had taken over my brain, but I was unable to come up with anything better than, “No costume for me”. As I turned and walked out the door, I tried not to pay attention to the scantily costumed girl sitting by the door who was probably half my age.

I jumped into the car and repeated the conversation to #1GF!, who suggested that I should’ve said (because of my crappy stubble) that I was half of Wham. I told #1GF! that I had completely forgotten that it was whoreloween, and women everywhere would be out in their slutty finest. She didn’t respond. She may have been overwhelmed by having both pizza and George Michael sitting in the car with her.

We had four episodes of Heroes waiting at home, and the pizza was absolutely perfect. I mean absolutely. It was a dream pie. Unfortunately, Heroes sucked so badly that we gave up on the entire series after two and a half episodes. We enjoyed the first two seasons, but this one was pure crap. We decided to stop taping it rather than waste our time. Robert Forster is on the show? Really? And he’s not a detective? I guess it had to end sometime.

Saturday (Day 517): Shelves and Face Poking

We went to the house in the morning to measure the bathroom closet for shelving, and then went to a local home improvement store to pick it up. We also picked up a couple of mounting rings for a closet pole that was never installed. When we got back, I installed the shelves while #1GF! worked on getting the thirty pounds of plaster to let go of the tub.

When I was almost finished, we ran over to the local hardware store because I wanted something a little beefier than the screws that came with the shelf mounting brackets. I went in, and #1GF! sat in the car. The clerks were talking with other customers, so I tried to figure out where the screws were on my own.

I’m used to the way that large home store lays things out, so this was a lot different than I was used to. Instead of a screw aisle with mega-packs of screws, the little hardware store had a screw wall with a lot of drawers and you bought each screw individually. It wasn’t hard to figure out, but I was trying to match the exact type of screws that I had been using, so it took longer than expected. I liked buying only what I needed, but I could’ve driven all the way to the home improvement megastore in the time it took me to find what I was looking for.

I put all 15 screws in my pocket and headed out to the car to find a bored girlfriend who was wondering what happened. All in all, It cost me $3 for 15 screws. I have no idea if that’s good or not, and I don’t think I really want to know, either. We went back and finished installing the shelves, put a closet pole in the front hall, and cleaned up the basement before heading home. Rather than going out to dinner, we cooked up sausages and onions because they were dated to go bad that day. If they had another day left, we would’ve had someone else cooking for us.

After dinner, #1GF! went into the other room to change or something, and I was standing there trying to think of something funny to do when she walked around the corner. I do that sort of thing all the time, and have my whole life. I don’t know if you live with someone like this, but I imagine that it’s like living in a loony bin. Anyway, #1GF! took too long, and I drifted off into space because I’m a man, and if you leave a man along too long, they inevitably drift off into space and think about boobies, fixing something, or nothing at all.

Dragging me back to reality was the sound of #1GF! returning to the room. I freaked out because I had nothing remotely amusing prepared, and suddenly, I found myself frantically disco dancing. I don’t know what the hell happened.

Because I’ve been known to do things for long periods in the off chance that #1GF! will look over and laugh, she just cocked her head and asked, “How long have you been doing that?” I stopped and stood there slumped and a little ashamed. “I just started. You took too long that I drifted off into space, and when I heard you coming into the room, I sort of panicked and this was the result.”

She turned and walked into the kitchen still shaking her head, leaving me to wonder what portion of my brain thinks that disco dancing is a valid comedy routine. It’s only a matter of time before I’ll be talking in puns, forgetting the endings to long, drawn out jokes, and ending my sentences with “Waka waka waka!” Save yourselves.

At some time in the middle of the night, I awoke to realize that I had stuck my arm straight up in the air, and without bending my elbow, brought it down and poked #1GF! lightly on the face. I think it was my index finger touching her face that woke me up. I retracted my hand and felt like I did something wrong and was about to be caught. I listened quietly to see if I had accidentally woken #1GF! up. I heard nothing. Little did I know that she was listening quietly, probably half paranoid trying to figure out what the hell just happened. I’m no scientist, but I have the feeling that portion of my unconscious that was looking for a laugh with frantic disco dancing may have been getting some light retribution. I think I went back to sleep before she did.

What I Learned

• Every time I think I’m done with the house, there’s something else.
• I don’t forget the wrongs, but as I’ve gotten older, it’s gotten easier to put the retribution on my terms.
• The Boston seaport looks like a 40′s gangster movie set.
• My sleeping self pokes #1GF! in the most roundabout and dramatic way possible.
• There is a portion of my brain that thinks frantic disco dancing is valid comedy. That portion needs to be singled out and expunged.
• Getting an interview in a newspaper is pretty cool even if the reason for your interview is pretty ridiculous.
• Selling T-shirts and posters seems like a pain and Cafepress’s t-shirts are substandard.
• Choose your own adventure books aren’t as common as I had thought.
• Heroes sucks badly enough that I no longer tape it.
• I still say “tape” when I mean “record”.
• Don’t use the self-check checkout when you have a full grocery order.

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Posted in Life of Riley