This is week 100 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. You’d think that week 100 would be celebratory and awesome, but it somehow ended up just like all the other weeks.

Sunday (Day 693): The Marathon Mulcher & The Water Girl

For the first time in a long time, it felt like a lazy summer Sunday morning. I ate my breakfast and sat on the couch reading a book while #1GF! cleaned out her closet and put away her winter clothes. There is nothing that a man can do when a woman decides to clean out her closet, so I continued reading and tried to stay out of the way.

Before noon, #1GF!’s friend brought by some baby equipment for us. Although I’m grateful for the free stuff, I have no idea where all of these contraptions are going to fit in our house. As #1GF!’s friend drove away, #1GF! and I sat on the stoop enjoying the warm summer air that showed up a couple of months early.

I hopped off the steps and picked up more glass from the lawn while #1GF! sat enjoying the sun. I cannot fathom how so much glass got left on the lawn when there was a full dumpster in the yard. Were the workers breaking windows on the ground around the house and throwing away the frames? I shook my head and crouched in the bushes to pick up another handful that had worked its way up through the soil.

I piled the glass on the stoop, and #1GF! threw it away. I looked out at our lumpy, patchy, and generally misshapen lawn, and wondered if our kid would be able to have bare feet in the yard before she lost the urge to. I thought about doing landscaping, but the temperature was slowly pushing upward toward 85 degrees. It seemed too nice of a day to waste on yard work, but the more I looked, the more I thought that something needed to be done.

I decided that I would continue our planning from the day before, and add a couple of mulch beds to our lawn. #1GF! was not opposed, so we went out to get some mulch and a wheelbarrow at the local home megastore.

Wheelbarrows are not cheap. I had no idea. I thought you plunk down thirty bucks and they give you a metal thing to wheel dirt around the yard. I was dead wrong. And at the megastore, you have to put them together yourself. It’s not a complex project to put a couple of screws in to assemble a wheelbarrow, but it was already afternoon, and we decided that it would be faster to borrow one if we really needed it. And the way we figured it, we probably didn’t.

I loaded ten or so bags of mulch into the trunk and we headed home. It was hot, and I hate to say it, but I’m out of shape. It took me three hours to dig out and mulch a couple of beds. #1GF!’s role was to help lay them out with the hose and jump off the porch to give me water whenever I was thirsty. I didn’t make up or require that second role, but #1GF! performed it like a champ.

She kept the water flowing like I was a marathon runner, with her arm outstretched holding a mason jar every time I came within a couple of feet of her. If I was more than a couple of feet, she would get up and walk it over to me. Half the time, I didn’t need it, but I think she felt a little guilty because I wouldn’t let her help. That’s right, I wouldn’t let her help. We’re on our first baby here, and the doctor said that although it was a nice thought, I wasn’t allowed to wrap #1GF! in bubble wrap. No bubble wrap means that #1GF! stays out of harms way when I’m around, no matter how small.

As I dug up the grass and hauled it in a bucket to a less visible area of the lawn, the beach town continued functioning on a summer schedule. People were coming from the beach with their chairs, looking like they were having a fairly good time, despite looking slightly drained. They were probably having a better time than I was. On the other hand, I felt better about getting the beds done than I would’ve sitting on the beach thinking about getting the beds done.

#1GF! made dinner while I scrubbed off the dirt. She felt like she should cook dinner to compensate for watching me dig out the beds, but I thought it was unnecessary. She spent the morning cleaning out her closet while I read a book. That’s easily equal to mulching. And she still worked on making the baby while she cleaned. I was only doing one thing at a time, and the lady of the house was multitasking. If anyone should’ve been cooking, it should’ve been me.

After dinner, we watched CJ7 because I haven’t been paying attention to my Netflix queue at all. I may have enjoyed it if I were a child in China, but as an American adult, the film was a complete waste of time.

Monday (Day 694): Lost 100th Week Extravaganza Messages

I wrote LOR all day. When I was finished, I looked into what needed to be finished on the kitchen site. It’s possible that Mr. T, Slayer, the Sham Wow guy, Chewbacca, Captain Kirk, Captain Caveman, ROCKET CAR!, and my robot all called to ask if they could be involved in the 100th week extravaganza, but none of them left messages, so I can’t be sure. That’s a pretty good guess at what probably happened, anyway. Ok, so maybe I’ve once again been busted with no notes for the day.

Tuesday (Day 695): Wiggling The Ol’ Sillcock

I went to a local home megastore and bought a spigot, figuring that I could take it apart to fix an outdoor spigot handle that someone cracked off during the building process. I don’t know who did it because their moral code forced them to slink away without bothering to mention it to me. I threw the spigot in the car and did a fast round of food shopping before heading home.

I put away the groceries and looked online to see if spigot handles can be replaced. For once, the internet didn’t seem to have a solid consensus. Some thought that you had to remove the whole assembly, some said that the whole spigot would have to be cut off inside the house and replaced, and others said that the handle can be wiggled off and replaced with a simple twist of a screw. I could’ve called a plumber and asked, but the last plumber has sort of soured my view of hiring anyone to do anything around here.

I grabbed a screwdriver, a large wrench, and some vice grips and headed outside. I unscrewed the handle screw and stuck a screwdriver in the remaining bit of handle to pry it off. The handle cracked off in my hand, leaving a nub on the post where a new handle should be installed. The pieces of the handle tinged as they hit the concrete, and I no longer had a way to turn on the water without a wrench.

I stared at it my handle-free faucet and wondered how to proceed. I could see my robot through the basement window dozing on the opposite side of the house. I had the feeling that he was probably paying attention to what I was doing whenever I looked away. I looked back at the nub that was once half a handle. I grabbed it between my fingers and pulled. Nothing happened. No blood from me, no movement from the handle. The nub seemed to be fused on. I stared at it again as if it would suddenly sprout a tiny mouth and tell me what to do.

I wasn’t sure if the handle and stem were one piece, so I took a larger wrench and loosened the bib around the handle. Nothing moved any more than it had. I screwed the bib back on and went inside to take a look at the new spigot. If I was going to take something apart, I would take the new spigot apart as a practice run instead of practicing on something that was cemented into the side of my house.

I unscrewed the handle on the new spigot, grasped it firmly between my hands and gave it a yank. Nothing happened. I decided to wiggle it back, and forth and after working it a little, *pop* it came right off. I stared at it in my hand with a grin. At least I knew that the handles weren’t fused to the post. I wouldn’t have to replace the guts of the faucet and would only have to replace the handle. The solution was simpler than I had hoped. I went back outside with the new handle in hand.

(For those of you with a little home plumbing knowledge, the “spigot” that I refer to is technically called a “sillcock”. I opted to use the term “spigot”, because inserting “sillcock” into the previous paragraph gives the first half an unintentional tone that I wasn’t going for.)

I attached the vice grips to the nub topping the old post and gave it a wiggle. In seconds, it was off the stem. The day was looking up. I put the handle from the new spigot on the old post… and it wouldn’t fit. The hole was too small. Well, at least I knew the solution. I put the handle back on the new spigot, and put it on the counter with the receipt to return later.

I put the nub in my pocket and went to a small, local hardware store to see if they had replacement spigot handles. They did. And they were less than $2. I grabbed one and headed home.

When I got home, I popped the handle on, screwed it in place, and stared at it for a minute. I turned the spigot closed, and went inside to turn the water on. I opened the window next to the spigot to listen for running water. A daddy long legs scrambled off the window to get out of my way. I turned the handle of the shutoff and heard an brief rush of water as it made it to the spigot. I listened by the window for any sounds that I may have created a new water feature in the yard. I heard nothing.

I closed the window and the daddy long legs ambled back to his position on his web in the corner of the window. I bounded up the stairs and outside. Nothing was leaking. I turned the water on, and off. And then on again. And then off again. “Ha,” I said to no one in particular.

I put my tools away, and then sat on the stoop in what had become 90 degree heat. Summer had dropped an anomalous heat bomb into Spring, and it seemed much too nice to stay inside. It would’ve been great to sit out there all day with a book, but I thought of #1GF! working in her air conditioned, sterile office. She wasn’t enjoying the weather. She was inside working because Tuesday is a work day.

I hung my head and trudged back inside to work on the site for the kitchen people. Within a few hours, I customized a pre-built gallery plugin that would give them the gallery solution that I thought that they were looking for. The gallery was one of the last major structural pieces to be fit in, so I was happy to have it done.

I sat there staring at the screen and wondering what I should tackle next. The bees bounced their large, fuzzy frames off the window screens, sounding as if a kid was learning to play bass drum for a marching band a block away. I turned to the window and thought for a moment.

Because it was week 100 and a beautiful day, I stopped working on the PC and left the dark confines of my office. To celebrate, I went out and mowed the lawn. That’s what I’m saying, folks. I am a non-stop, party train of fun. Woop woop.

I pushed my human powered, old school rotary mower around the yard, and felt good about getting something done while getting some sun. As I approached the front yard, I noticed that one awesome new, green, lush patch of grass was really outgrowing its neighbors. It was greener, thicker, and a couple of inches taller than any grass around it. I hoped it would take over my entire lawn.

I ran the mower back and forth over the patch because that’s what you have to do with a rotary mower. They don’t cut very well when things get long. As I went back and forth, I started smelling something sharp. When I stopped pushing and bent down, the smell only got stronger. I ripped up a couple of pieces of grass and held them under my nose. That’s when I realized that the best, and greenest three foot patch of lawn that I owned wasn’t grass at all. It was a large, and expanding patch of chives. I couldn’t help but shake my head and laugh. If I didn’t think the onion stink would overpower the neighborhood, I would chive the whole lawn.

I finished up the lawn, and didn’t weed wack. I should’ve, but I didn’t. You can stay relatively clean when mowing with a rotary mower, but weed whacking, like power mowing, will throw bits of dirt and grass everywhere. I had to get back in to make dinner for #1GF! who was coming back from one of her mom’s extended appointments. I don’t know exactly what I made her, but it was probably incredibly complicated and delicious, involving both thawing and heating.

Wednesday (Day 696): Working On The Kitchen Site

I finished Christopher Moore’s A Dirty Job, and really enjoyed it. I would’ve recommended it to #1GF! if it didn’t involve the death of a mom during the birth of a child who turns out to have the power to kill people with the word, “kitty”. I didn’t think a pregnant women would want to read something like that. Maybe someday she might like it, but not now.

Once #1GF! was off to work, I cleaned the kitchen counter and the bathroom vanity. It’s week 100. You think you can stop this? You can’t. Woop woop.

The kitchen guy came over to replace two handles, and take care of a couple of minor things. One of our cabinets had a crack in it, but he wanted to wait to replace it. I don’t know why. He also touched up a couple of scratches, but found that he didn’t have the right paint. He said he’d have to order a kit and do it another time. He was on his way soon after.

I received a replacement fire alarm for the ones that had gone bad, so I programmed and put it up. I left a message for the mediator about the plumber, and then called to see what was going on with the informational job meeting I had a couple of weeks back.

While I was talking to the potential employer, I made the slip of asking how the guy’s weekend was. It was Wednesday. Weekend questions are relegated to Monday or maybe Tuesday. At an attempt to recover, I followed it up with “when you work for yourself, any sunny day can be a weekend.” I think in the moments that followed those statements, I wondered if the guy thought that I was thumbing my nose at people who had bosses, or whether I simply had no idea what day it was. Yea. Nice.

It was 30 degrees cooler than on Tuesday. Welcome to New England. I knew that I should’ve taken advantage of the weather while I had it. I always think that there will be more sunny days ahead.

I started in working on the kitchen site again. It was mostly back end work. I did keyword research, tagged the pages, rewrote some of the copy, and then found that there was a problem with the way the site looked in IE. There’s nothing like doing a quick check on something that you think will be fine and having a twelve pixel margin issue that you can’t track down. I combed through everything and couldn’t find the problem. I eventually had to fix the issue by adding *{margin:0px;} at the top of my stylesheet to set any unset margins (source). I didn’t particularly like using a hack, but it worked like a charm.

I quit at 7PM, feeling like I didn’t finish enough. There is a huge difference in the site with respect to titles, tags, and keywords, but the layout is only slightly different, so #1GF! didn’t react like I expected her to. She didn’t see a huge difference, because there wasn’t one on the front end. I don’t know why I expected her to have x-ray code vision all of a sudden and say something like, “Whoa. Nice tags.”

Instead, she said, “Are you sure that they are going to like this?”

“Well, no,” I admitted.

“You should probably run it by them before you do any more, shouldn’t you?

“Probably. But, they really need a better back end anyway. I can explain why it’s set up the way it is, and if they want to change colors or other things, it won’t be a big deal if the structure is set up properly.”

“You still should run it by them.”

“Right now, they have to change each page by hand. No one does that anymore.”

“You still need to run it by them. It’s their site.”

Gah. She was right. I promised to get a demo in front of them before going further.

Thursday (Day 697): Big Boobs Is The Hint

I woke up every hour during the night because I was worried about getting up on time to take #1GF!’s mom to her appointment. I get up at 6AM every day. Every goddamned day. Getting up at that time would give me plenty of time to get her mom to her appointment, so I don’t know what the hell my brain was freaking out about all night long. I got up at normal time and got out the door before #1GF!.

On the way to pick up her mom, I almost ran over an old dog who decided to take a leisurely stroll out in front of my fast moving car at the last possible minute. He didn’t bother to rush when he saw me applying the brakes and coming right at him. He looked at me over the hood and seemed to say, “Young punks with their rocket cars trying not to run me over. In my day, I could walk across this street at whatever speed I wanted. Are you eyeballing me, punk?”

I looked at the dog and wanted to pull over and explain that by the time he was born, the world had already used up the water and canned food that they had stored up for the Y2K bug disaster that never materialized. What’s that, dog? You don’t remember Y2K? Of course you don’t. You were born post millenium, and post Willenium, so don’t act like you have a right to be strutting out in front of ROCKET CAR!. Get a leash or look both ways before you end up in a doggy walker with tiny tennis balls on the front. I then realized that dogs are terrible listeners, and stepped on the long skinny pedal that makes ROCKET CAR! whistle and go.

I took #1GF!’s mom to her appointment and then dropped her back at home. I thought I might get a couple of things done, so I stopped into a home megastore on the way to look at blinds that #1GF! wanted. They were ten dollars more (each) than I expected and would all have to be cut to fit the windows. I stood for a minute staring at them, as if they would suddenly concede an inch of their width and ten dollars of their price to my stony gaze. They didn’t. I shrugged and left the store.

I drove into the library parking lot to to drop off the Christopher Moore book that I finished. I was going to go in and get something else, but I saw the big, aluminum, drive-up book dropoff bin in the parking lot. I decided to skip going inside to get another book because it felt like a waste of time and I had things to do.

I drove to another home megastore to return the spigot that I didn’t end up needing. I returned the spigot, bought five more bags of mulch, and headed home. I was back in the house at 11:30.

I grabbed a quick sandwich, slathered in dijon mustard, and added a side of spicy Thai potato chips. I ate them over the sink with speed, but not passion. It wasn’t quite lunch time, but I figured that I should get eating out of the way so that I wouldn’t be interrupted with hunger while I was working.

I changed into my outside work clothes and went into the basement to grab a shovel, a rake, an edger, and a bucket. I opened the bulkhead door and the sunlight brightened the cellar. The ching of the lock and the way the large metal doors creak open, you’d think that I was exiting a medieval fortress. The spiders scrambled into their corners, and the robot awoke from his slumber. He sort of looked at me as if he had been busy with something other than sleeping in the same spot for the last few months. If my robot had eyebrows, they would’ve been up as if to ask the question, “You need me?”

“You’re all set. Back to sleep mode. I’m going out to…” The robot shut down. “mulch.”

“Worst robot ever,” I thought while shaking my head and trying to keep the lawn equipment from clanging on the stairs. I didn’t want anyone outside to think that there was an actual knight coming out, but that’s really the way the situation could’ve been interpreted if you closed your eyes.

I hauled the stuff to the front and threw it on the ground with a clatter that would’ve annoyed the neighbors if they weren’t all out working. I picked up an edger and made what I thought were sweeping, curved lines that would be the the edge of the mulch bed. When I was finished, I stood back and looked upon my work. My sweeping lines were pretty much straight lines with no right angles in them. They would have to do. Sweeping probably just isn’t my thing.

I removed what little grass there was in the bed and leveled it out slightly. I grabbed a few bags of mulch out of the trunk of ROCKET CAR! and added them to the beds, being careful not to destroy the flowers that were already growing there, thanks to the previous owner’s skill at gardening.

I tried to spread all the mulch out with a rake, but the area was so small that I ended up sticking my hands into the dark, damp mulch and spreading it by hand. It was messier, but faster than trying to work around everything with a rake. In the end, the front of the house looked a lot better than it had. A lot better. I lugged remaining bags of mulch out of the car, and did the second bed. Again, I made a sweepingly straight line. I picked up some more glass, and was dusting myself off by 2PM.

I went in the house and cleaned up, and then added the demo of the kitchen people’s website to my thumb drive. I used XAMPP (a portable apache web server), which is incredibly convenient if you want to demo a website for someone at another location without putting the site on the net. I was running a full on WordPress site (Apache, MySQL, and PHP) on a thumb drive. With two clicks and it could be up and running on a client laptop.

I had spent a few full days putting the site together, and I was about 75% done. I called the kitchen people to see if I could pick up some pictures from them and demo what I had so far. They said that they would love to look at it whenever I could get there.

I got in the car and headed over to their shop, and ended up driving right by it. I was listening to a little Boston on the radio, and I didn’t realize that I missed their shop until I was miles past it. I made a quick left into a Friendly’s and mildly startled, and possibly aggravated a couple of seniors. Their stodgy look implied that there wasn’t anything that I could’ve done not to aggravate them short of sawing the wing off the back of my car. I imagined that they would feel a lot better after a nice grilled cheese, a sundae, and a nap under their favorite shawl.

When I finally made it to the shop, the pictures hadn’t been transferred to a thumb drive, yet, so I had to wait for about a half hour before they were. I didn’t mind. They are nice people, and I had some new stuff to look at because they change their showroom every so often.

“Ok, feel free to hate this,” I told them. “It’s not going to hurt my feelings or offend me. I just want you to get what you want.”

They agreed. I showed them the site, and other than a couple of minor wording changes, they seemed to really take to the design. I was happy that they liked the front end, but I was more concerned with giving them a better back end that would make updating easier and help search engine placement. Yes, WordPress can be used as a CMS, and with all the plugins available, it’s a pretty flexible one, too.

I was out of the shop with approval and a thumb drive full of pictures by 5PM. I was passing by the library again, and made a last minute decision to stop in. I had a little bit of time before #1GF! got home, but not enough time to start a new project, so suddenly, going to the library wasn’t the waste of time that was earlier in the day.

I stayed for an hour and picked up a Neil Gaiman book and 13 CDs. #1GF! called a couple of times, but I was in a big open room, so I didn’t pick up. I simply silenced the Knight Rider theme emanating loudly from my pants.

I brought my stuff to the counter, and the librarian checked out my items. One of the CDs was by Boz Skaggs, who I knew I had heard before, but had no idea what he sounded like. I picked it up as almost an addendum.

The librarian flipped the CD over in her hands. “Boz Skaggs,” she said almost reminiscently. “Good Stuff. I think I have this one somewhere.”

She looked at me, and I almost said, “Yea, and you can only hear it on the oldies channel now. What’s up with that?” and thought better of it. Instead of revealing my sometimes abysmal social skills with strangers, I smiled and nodded. I was so agreeable that I must’ve looked like I was on the verge of giving a double thumbs up. The librarian’s only other words to me were, “You’re all set.”

I called #1GF! when I hit that parking lot, and she was already a lot closer to home than I was. I talked to her the whole way home, only hanging up when I was a block away. She liked the way the mulch came out and said that it changed the look of the front of the house for the better.

We ate leftovers for dinner and listened to Rockabye Baby!: Lullaby Renditions of AC/DC. It wasn’t as easy to pick out what the songs were as I expected, but some of the songs were funny. After that, I put on Boz Skaggs to figure out what the song was that I knew. #1GF recognized every song almost instantly, but I couldn’t place any of them. Thanks to the lack of care that previous borrowers (or possibly owners) took with the CD, it got shut off after a couple of songs rather than tolerating the stop motion rendition of 70′s soft rock.

I replaced the CD with Me First And the Gimme Gimme’s Love Their Country. The disc is sped up, pop-punk covers of classic country songs. #1GF! and I tried to place the songs, just as we had done with the AC/DC disc. #1GF! wasn’t doing as well in the country category as I would’ve expected. She couldn’t even get the artist who sang “Jolene”.

“Come on… You know “Jolene”.

“Nope,” said #1GF! with a shake of her head.

I started singing it at normal tempo over the sped up version that was playing.

“Arggh. How can you do that?” #1GF! said with wide eyes. She always seems to be amazed at my ability to ignore whatever is playing and sing something completely different over it. I chuckled at at her misplaced amazement and sang through the chorus.

“jolene. Jolene. JOLEEEN. JOLEEEEEEN!” I wailed.

“No idea.”

“You want a hint?”

“Ok.”

I pulled out my shirt from the nipples.

“What?

This time, I pulled out my shirt as far as I could, widened my eyes, looked back and forth between my shirt, and #1GF!.

“What? Big boobs?”

I nodded with wide eyes, thinking that #1GF! had been replaced by a pod person and not the woman who was recently discovered to be a closet classic country fan.

“Big boobs is the hint?”

I let out an exasperated rush of air and raised my eyebrows. “Yes. Big boobs in country is the hint.”

#1GF! said nothing.

“Big boobs. Country.”

#1GF! stared at me and shook her head.

“Dolly Parton! Dolly Parton! Jolene? Dolly Parton?”

#1GF! shrugged. I shook my head. I can only assume that she was concentrating on making the baby’s toes, which tend to take a fair amount of concentration to get right.

I shut off the music, and the two of us consciously went in to watch Jeopardy!. It’s a habit that we somehow have fallen into this week. Like when we used to do crosswords together, it’s another pattern that we’ve fallen into that has ended up being more fun than it sounds. I don’t know why. Later, we tuned in for The Office and 30 Rock because the DVR was busy recording something else.

Friday (Day 698): An Unconditionally Aggravating Path

I finished Asimov’s Foundation and Empire before I showered, and despite being regarded as classic and required science fiction, I’m not that exited about the prospect of plodding through the third book. I think the book is great for being written in 1952, but it’s no Dune.

I started roughing out LOR Week 100 in the morning, and took a break to call the mediator about the plumber. It seems that the plumber and his lawyer have decided to stop responding to mediation and haven’t bothered to respond in a month. I was advised that my options are now to call a lawyer and take the plumber to court, or revise my request for a refund. It’s just fun.

I answered e-mails while I ate my lunch. Then, I added some site analytics to the current kitchen site to get a benchmark of what it’s doing before it’s upgraded. If you don’t know where you’re starting from, it’s harder to figure out when you’re heading in the right direction.

The day refused to rain like it was supposed to. It remained overcast and dreary, the threat of rain being real enough to keep me from starting any yard work. After each hour that the yard remained dry, I started to get annoyed with the weather. It was like I wanted to tell the weather to rain or don’t, but cut with the threats. It was a stupid thing to think about something so uncontrollable.

I don’t know exactly what it was, but the rest of the day strode along an unconditionally aggravating path, leaving me in places where I didn’t want to do anything. If you work for someone and have days like this, your deadlines keep you going. And as long as you can get through the day, you can at least take a little comfort that you’ll get paid at the end of it.

As a self employed person, I should take those days as personal days. Just walk away from the computer and do something else. When I think about getting away, I feel like I’m not working hard enough. I feel like a bum, and so I keep going.

Eventually, the distance between what I want to do and what I’m doing gets wider and wider until there’s enough space between them for frustration to slink in and fill the gap. It’s not often that I feel that I deserve a break, so I just keep plowing ahead. I work harder, not smarter, and the day stays on an unnecessarily low level. That’s the way this day went.

Once #1GF! got home, we watched Chalk, an independent mocumentary about high school teachers. It ended up being pretty good for a low budget film. It made me wonder: if I had to sum up a couple of life lessons for teenagers, what would they be? The only thing that came to mind was “This too shall pass.” I imagined imparting that brief bit of wisdom to teenagers who didn’t care. Not moments after, I wanted to shout “You! Shall! Not! Pass!” I realized that people who immediately think of Lord of the Rings shouldn’t imagine themselves giving advice to anyone without being asked first.

When I slept that night, I dreamed that I was swimming in race after race. They were all sprints, and sprints among equals are won and lost in the turns. I was screwing up every turn possible and pulling like hell to catch up. When I would think that the race was over, everyone would do a turn just ahead of me. And I’d screw up that turn. It was a sports version of the “showing up unprepared for the test” dream. I haven’t had one of those dreams in a long time.

Saturday (Day 699): Cleaning, Trash Talking, & Strawberry Mountains

I ate my breakfast and listened to a Bar Kay’s greatest hits album that I picked up from the library. I read the liner notes, which made mention of a number of songs that aren’t included on the album. Hey, liner note writers: if you’re going to mention a song, include it. If you can’t get the rights to include it, don’t mention it. Otherwise, I’m wondering if what I’m reading belongs with what I’m listening to.

#1GF! and I cleaned the house all morning because company was coming over. I listened to various library CDs as I worked, and realized that I like 38 Special a lot less than I remember. After hearing them twenty years later, I almost feel like they’re a poor man’s Skynyrd.

One album that I ended up really enjoying was The Best of Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes Featuring Teddy Pendegrass. Yea, you know. They’re the guys who did the original “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” that Simply Red ruined in the late 80′s. I have a thing for 70′s soul, possibly as a result of a subconscious directive implanted by all the R&B records that were played around the house when I was only capable of processing food and filling diapers. The album has an upbeat 70′s feel that sometimes borders on disco, but it was a good surprise to find at the library.

The weather continued in its multi-day refusal to commit to either rain or sun. It was cloudy in the morning, drizzly from time to time, and fully sunny by afternoon.

#1GF! had to check in with work, so I sat opposite her and played a little Quake. There were more useful things that I could’ve done, but I just spent a Saturday morning cleaning, so I cut myself a little break. It’s a little sad to admit, but it ended up being an unusually fun series of games. Teams were very evenly matched, and #1GF! sat across from me, listening to random outbursts of “Oh, you like that?” or “That’s what you get for fragging me, biotch.” I was having such a good time that #1GF! had to warn me when she was making work calls.

We showered and dressed in the afternoon, and a couple of friends from Rhode Island came over. We sat for a bit eating cheese and crackers, and then walked down to a local restaurant. I tried to be a local tour guide and pointed out whatever little facts I knew about the area to pass the time as we walked along the water.

I had a meal that was absolutely smothered in bleu cheese. I’m only adding this so I never order that meal again. It was prepared fine, but I didn’t expect the sheer volume of bleu cheese taste. I smilingly choked it down because there was nothing wrong with the food outside of my personal preferences.

We walked home, and the breeze was slight and the air was comfortable. The couple brought an unbelievably smooth cheesecake from Gregg’s Restaurant that was covered with a red mountain range of huge, whole strawberries. We had coffee and dessert around the table and the conversation, which had been going fine all night, stopped for a minute while everyone ate. I’m not a huge fan of cheesecake, but this was good enough to make me want a second piece.

We went to bed soon after they left, and felt bad that they would still be on the road by the time we were asleep. Not bad enough to stay up, mind you, but bad, nonetheless.

What I Learned

• If the gap between what I want to do and what I’m doing get too great, I need to change what I’m doing.
• I know a lot more about the way a spigot works.
• Wheelbarrows are not cheap.
• A spigot is technically a sillcock. You said sillcock.
• I found out that some IE / Firefox differences can be solved with by adding * {margin:0px;} to the top of a stylesheet.
• My greenest patch of grass, and greatest source of lawn pride in a wasteland of a lawn, is actually a patch of chives.
• Christopher Moore is becoming one of those authors that I like for his writing style.
• Some librarians are into Boz Skaggs.
• They have lullaby renditions of AC/DC.
• I find indecisive weather to be annoying.
• Bleu cheese should not be the basis of a cream sauce.
• Gregg’s Restaurant makes a heck of a smooth strawberry cheesecake.
• 100 Weeks off ain’t no thing but a chicken wing.

Posted in Life of Riley