Just as we were hoping, the oven we had been looking at was still on the floor and, true to the floor manager's word, had not been marked down. After a few minutes of final discussion, we started to look around for a salesperson. After a short search, we found the lone salesperson for Appliances. At first glance, she appeared to be busy helping two other customers, so my wife stood by to wait her turn while I continued to browse around. However, from what I could soon hear of the saleslady's conversation with the man and wife customers, she wasn't so much helping them with any sales or product-related business as having a long chat with them. Her tone and manner suggested she was familiar with the couple, possibly even friends with them. And from what I gathered over the course of the five minutes that followed, the gentleman customer had recently taken a job driving a school bus, for the saleslady was telling him horror stories of a time when she had done so as well.
"They told me `you just have to feel for the road,'" she said, regarding driving in thick snow, up treacherous, narrow, one-lane mountain roads.
Her anecdote continued as minutes crawled by and I knew that as annoyed as I was starting to get listening to it from afar, my wife was probably about to snatch someone bald-headed from her position within eyesight of the storyteller. I went over to help feel her pain and add to our collective waiting presence. Didn't help. While the saleslady did in fact glance in our direction and could see that we were waiting to be helped, she went right on with her story, perhaps as though we had heard a snip of what she was saying and were interested enough to come join the audience.
Now, I'm not saying her story wasn't interesting and I understand the need for a salesperson to be personable with customers in a department full of large ticket items she would presumably earn a commission in the sale thereof. However, to spend the amount of time she was spending on a non-sales related conversation while other potential customers were standing impatiently nearby was inappropriate to say the least.
Seeing no end in sight, we left the aisle and went to look for another salesperson who might like our business. At 7:30 in the morning, even on After Christmas Black Friday, though, they seemed thin on the ground. So we took our little price slip to the Lawn & Garden dept and tried to seek help there. Lawn & Garden, who had what appeared to be four employees on hand, literally sitting in chairs, said they were forbidden from checking out materials from the appliance side. They suggested we return to Appliances and wait for the saleslady. This we did, resuming our place in line at storytelling central.
The saleslady looked up at us momentarily, but again didn't pause her narrative concerning the kind of guard-railless roads she'd had to maneuver her child-loaded bus along. In what world does it make any sense for her to be spending this much time ignoring customers? I thought perhaps she was just passing the time waiting for some vital piece of information to be delivered regarding a pending sale with the couple at hand. Nope. Dude had a bag and a receipt already. Even if he hadn't, though, she could have at least told us what the situation was.
My ire grew hotter. Adding to this, I was still pissed off about the dog and knew things wouldn't be pretty if I got into it with the saleslady. But I also didn't want to raise hell with someone who could potentially derail our $600 savings. (Plus, if anyone was going to show their ass, I knew it should be the wife, who is always cool and scalpel sharp when in such confrontations.) Passive-aggressive soul that I am, I returned to the Lawn & Garden desk.
"Excuse me, but is there anyone else in Appliances that can help us?" I asked.
"No, I'm sorry," Lawn & Garden said. "Is there no one over there?"
"No, the saleslady's over there, but is telling some other customers a very long story that doesn't involve Sears."
"Well, what did she say to you?"
"Nothing. She's not paying us any attention and we've been standing right in front of her for ten minutes," I said.
Lawn & Garden phoned a manager. The Appliances lady was still telling her story when the manager arrived, more minutes later. We didn't mention the trouble to the manager, but directed her to the stove we wanted. We gave her our little price-drop slip and explained we were told to ask for Pam.
"Pam's not here yet," the manager said. Ah, good. At least Pam wasn't the storyteller.
The manager efficiently led us to a register and began ringing up our sale. A little way into the process, there arose a question about whether or not we needed a power cable for our new stove. We were pretty sure we did, but the manager said she needed to go over and ask "Erma Bombeck" to be sure. She walked across the aisle, interrupted the ongoing narrative and asked.
"Oh, yeah, they'll need a cable," we heard Erma say. "Tell them I'll be right over to help them in just a second."
I would like to note that this last sentence was uttered nearly a full eight minutes after the manager became involved, making this nearly half an hour into our quick in-out visit. At this point, we were determined that if anyone was going to get a commission on our sale, it would NOT be Erma. The manager seemed to feel the same, for she called back, "No, I've got it."
After our delivery day was arranged and our transaction completed, Pam arrived.
"Oh, I wish you'd gotten here earlier," the manager told her. She then explained to Pam that we'd been asking for her. Then, with a gleam in her eye, the manager told Pam to void out our completed sale and ring us up again, allowing Pam to get the commission. We told them, yes, please, as we didn't want Erma to get the sale and had been concerned that she might by default, being the only salesperson on duty. Turns out the manager had rung up our sale under her own name. While she was explaining this to us, Erma stepped over. Everyone got silent for a second, which I guess must have made Erma suspicious, because she began looking over Pam's shoulder as she went back through the process of ringing us up. The manager saw this and told Erma point blank that Pam was taking care of us. Erma continued to lurk, though, even after the manager left the area. While she was lurking, a male customer walked up to Erma and asked her if someone was supposed to be at the register in Sporting Goods, because he had something to check out and no one was there. I didn't hear what Erma told him, but I suspect it was something along the lines of "I'll be with you in a minute," because she didn't move an inch and he continued to stand there and wait while she lurked.
"I'm taking care of them," Pam told her firmly. Erma still didn't move, so Pam added, "They asked for me."
"Oh," Erma said in a put-off tone. At last she turned to help her customer.
By the time we had received our receipt and were on our way out, Erma was back to chatting with someone else. I had to suppress the urge to give her the bird, or at least a loud raspberry, as we passed.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
Obedience/Customer Service Lessons Needed NOW (PART I)
On our way out of town for Christmas with the in-laws, we stopped to buy a stove and nearly had to kill our dog.
Let me back up.
We've been in the market for a new stove since nearly the day we moved into the house. It's not that our existing stove is horrendous, but it is very ugly and about 20 years old and has burners that are a bit cockeyed. Oh, and the oven itself only about half works and pretty much ruined our wildly expensive cheesecake. This, and a very cheap deal we found on a new GE at Sears, while shopping for my chainsaw, prompted us to finally commit to a new stove as a family Christmas gift to ourselves.
The particular stove we found was a floor model that had been marked down $300 for closeout before we arrived, but which a floor manager told us was actually $300 cheaper than the listed cheap price because it was overdue to be marked down yet again. We wanted to measure our existing space to make sure we could use it, so the manager gave us a markdown guarantee slip, said he wouldn't make the markdown until Friday and told us they would open again at 7 a.m. on that day. The wife, who worked for years as a retail manager, asked if he would get a commission. He said he was salaried, but recommended we see one of his sales people called Pam, who he said would be there on Friday. Super.
On Friday morning at 7 a.m., we left the house with a car packed for our road trip to the in-laws, including Sadie and Avie. Our plan was to hit the mall, buy the stove, arrange for delivery the following week, hit Biscuit World and then hit the road. We parked in the lot outside of Sears. Before I had even unfastened my seatbelt, the wife opened her door and started to get out when I saw Sadie barrel between the front bucket seats from the back of the car and make a break for the semi-blocked door.
"Watchoutwatchoutwatchoutwatchout!" I screamed. The wife, not realizing which side of her Sadie was coming from, turned the wrong way and the dog slipped behind her. I lunged to grab at a dog leg, but my seatbelt caught me and she was out the door and free. This was one of my worst nightmares as far as the dog was concerned. If she gets loose at the house, it's no big deal. We're out in the woods, what's she really gonna hurt? In an open parking lot, with plenty of space to run away from us and other vehicles driving around, it's another matter.
We tried to stay calm, in the hope we could get her back in the car with little fuss. Sadie knew better, though, and was off to the races in her usual game of keepaway from us. Sadie dashed through the parking lot, gleefully smiling as we chased her to and fro. The wife had the idea of busting out the Pupperonis in an effort to lure her back, but this had mixed results. We tore off bits of Pupperoni and dropped them on the ground to lure her into grabbing range, but she was far faster than we were and snatched them up and vanished before we could even lunge. Making matters worse, the weather--which, back at the house, had been a little cool but nothing a hoody couldn't handle--suddenly turned misty, rainy and very cold.
After a close call when we nearly were able to grab her tail, I said, "Toss one in between us," hoping this would let at least one of us have a chance to get her. The coconut *KLONK* sound our heads made as they collided was no doubt comical. Even we had to laugh, through the pain.
All further attempts at Pupperoni luring were futile. She didn't care and, furthermore, decided to run very far away from us to head off temptation.
"Dammit, Sadie, you get back here!" I screamed.
"She'd not going to come to you screaming," the wife hissed at me.
Then some other early morning shoppers had arrived, some of whom saw us bonk heads. Sadie noticed them and rushed toward them, barking furiously.
"No, Sadie, NO! You stop that RIGHT NOW!" the wife screamed.
Mostly the arriving customers ignored her. One little old man, however, asked, "Is it going to bite me?" as Sadie followed him toward the mall, practically snarling.
"No, she's harmless. Just loud," we shouted.
Sadie continued this behavior, thwarting us at every turn until at last we were able to lure her closer to the mall itself. We almost had her cornered in some shrubbery, but she zipped between us and was gone again. The shrubs were near one of Sears' lesser entrances, however, and this gave the wife an idea. As with most mall store exterior entrances, Sears had double doors. So the wife opened the outer set and gestured for Sadie to go in. The dog started to, then refused.
"Come on," I said, stepping through the doors myself. The wife followed and, no doubt fearing we were about to leave her, Sadie followed and was trapped. I pulled the leash from my pocket, managed to keep from strangling the dog with it and we returned her to the car and went back in for our oven.
Our adventure of annoyance, however, was only just beginning.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Let me back up.
We've been in the market for a new stove since nearly the day we moved into the house. It's not that our existing stove is horrendous, but it is very ugly and about 20 years old and has burners that are a bit cockeyed. Oh, and the oven itself only about half works and pretty much ruined our wildly expensive cheesecake. This, and a very cheap deal we found on a new GE at Sears, while shopping for my chainsaw, prompted us to finally commit to a new stove as a family Christmas gift to ourselves.
The particular stove we found was a floor model that had been marked down $300 for closeout before we arrived, but which a floor manager told us was actually $300 cheaper than the listed cheap price because it was overdue to be marked down yet again. We wanted to measure our existing space to make sure we could use it, so the manager gave us a markdown guarantee slip, said he wouldn't make the markdown until Friday and told us they would open again at 7 a.m. on that day. The wife, who worked for years as a retail manager, asked if he would get a commission. He said he was salaried, but recommended we see one of his sales people called Pam, who he said would be there on Friday. Super.
On Friday morning at 7 a.m., we left the house with a car packed for our road trip to the in-laws, including Sadie and Avie. Our plan was to hit the mall, buy the stove, arrange for delivery the following week, hit Biscuit World and then hit the road. We parked in the lot outside of Sears. Before I had even unfastened my seatbelt, the wife opened her door and started to get out when I saw Sadie barrel between the front bucket seats from the back of the car and make a break for the semi-blocked door.
"Watchoutwatchoutwatchoutwatchout!" I screamed. The wife, not realizing which side of her Sadie was coming from, turned the wrong way and the dog slipped behind her. I lunged to grab at a dog leg, but my seatbelt caught me and she was out the door and free. This was one of my worst nightmares as far as the dog was concerned. If she gets loose at the house, it's no big deal. We're out in the woods, what's she really gonna hurt? In an open parking lot, with plenty of space to run away from us and other vehicles driving around, it's another matter.
We tried to stay calm, in the hope we could get her back in the car with little fuss. Sadie knew better, though, and was off to the races in her usual game of keepaway from us. Sadie dashed through the parking lot, gleefully smiling as we chased her to and fro. The wife had the idea of busting out the Pupperonis in an effort to lure her back, but this had mixed results. We tore off bits of Pupperoni and dropped them on the ground to lure her into grabbing range, but she was far faster than we were and snatched them up and vanished before we could even lunge. Making matters worse, the weather--which, back at the house, had been a little cool but nothing a hoody couldn't handle--suddenly turned misty, rainy and very cold.
After a close call when we nearly were able to grab her tail, I said, "Toss one in between us," hoping this would let at least one of us have a chance to get her. The coconut *KLONK* sound our heads made as they collided was no doubt comical. Even we had to laugh, through the pain.
All further attempts at Pupperoni luring were futile. She didn't care and, furthermore, decided to run very far away from us to head off temptation.
"Dammit, Sadie, you get back here!" I screamed.
"She'd not going to come to you screaming," the wife hissed at me.
Then some other early morning shoppers had arrived, some of whom saw us bonk heads. Sadie noticed them and rushed toward them, barking furiously.
"No, Sadie, NO! You stop that RIGHT NOW!" the wife screamed.
Mostly the arriving customers ignored her. One little old man, however, asked, "Is it going to bite me?" as Sadie followed him toward the mall, practically snarling.
"No, she's harmless. Just loud," we shouted.
Sadie continued this behavior, thwarting us at every turn until at last we were able to lure her closer to the mall itself. We almost had her cornered in some shrubbery, but she zipped between us and was gone again. The shrubs were near one of Sears' lesser entrances, however, and this gave the wife an idea. As with most mall store exterior entrances, Sears had double doors. So the wife opened the outer set and gestured for Sadie to go in. The dog started to, then refused.
"Come on," I said, stepping through the doors myself. The wife followed and, no doubt fearing we were about to leave her, Sadie followed and was trapped. I pulled the leash from my pocket, managed to keep from strangling the dog with it and we returned her to the car and went back in for our oven.
Our adventure of annoyance, however, was only just beginning.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Fa ra ra ra ra, Ra ra ra ra.
This is our first Christmas in our new house. As these things go, it hasn't been exactly exciting, but then we haven't put all that much effort into it.
After realizing just how much work it would be to bust out all our Christmas decorations and keep the dog and cat out of a tree, we forwent any decorating this year. We didn't even put up any of the wife's mangers, nor a wreath, nor taped Christmas cards to the back of the door, as per annual tradition. I had considered putting up stockings on the mantle around our wood stove for us and the circus animals, but then didn't. So the house wasn't very festive to look at. That's okay, because we usually rely upon my in-laws to decorate for the holidays, as that's where we tend to spend Christmas eve and day. Unfortunately, this year the wife is on call for the hospital on Christmas, so we can't leave for the in-laws until Friday and have to spend Christmas eve and day at home.
I am proud to say that I had already purchased the wife's Christmas presents a couple months back, having paid close attention to various things I knew she liked but which she didn't buy herself. The wife, has far less free time on her hands, though, and has been bugging me for weeks to tell her what I want, a request I've been mostly uncooperative with. Part of me still wants to be surprised and hates to even say what it is I'd really like for fear of ruining it. The trouble with shopping for me, though, is that I'm very tricky to shop for when it comes to the sort of medium ticket items you'd expect around Christmas. For instance, two years back when I got my first MP3 player, the wife knew I wanted one well in advance, but didn't know the exact specifications I was looking for. Rather than buying something I might not want, we waited until after Christmas to order it so I could get exactly the one I wanted. (It was a Creative Zen Vision M, a 30 gig model player which is unfortunately no longer made, but is a badass little powerhouse and one of the all time best Christmas gifts I've ever received. Creative has a new Zen model out called the Zen X-Fi that looks not only comparable, but probably a step up.)
This year the wife knew I was in the market for the much heralded chainsaw to finish sawing up the tree Pa and I cut down, as well as all the dead trees laying about in the woods behind us. Again, though, she didn't know what kind, so on Christmas Eve afternoon we bravely fought our way into the mall to have a look for one. You might expect me to be unhappy about not being surprised, but having a choice as to what I get for Christmas is kind of an old tradition in my family. My dad, being a single father for the formative years of my sister and me, didn't always have the patience to pick stuff out on his own. On more than one occasion he took us to a mall, told us to get what we wanted, signed off on our choices and then those gifts vanished until Christmas morning. Sure, there's not as much surprise, but it certainly ramps up the anticipation.
I chose a Craftsman 18" chainsaw. Beyond the massive Christmas discount we got, as it's allegedly a sturdy and well-constructed model that has the added benefit of a user-friendly chain-adjustment dial that seems tailored to a non-woodsman such as myself.
After this, we went to eat Indian food, during which the wife pestered me for hints about her presents. I got her a black pearl pendant which I'd seen her looking at in a store on more than one occasion. I also got her some Paula Deen country-kitchen porcelain cooking bins that are an exact match for a set of similarly-decorated tiny Paula Deen plates the wife bought for herself a month later. (How's that for precognitive gift-choosing?) I gave her her gifts back at home, after supper.
"Recognize the necklace?" I asked.
"No," she said.
I told her it was the one I always saw her looking at. That's when she revealed that she had not been interested in the black pearl necklace, but instead the pair of black pearl earrings beside it.
Oops.
She still liked her necklace very much, and now I have a nice gift in my sights for our upcoming anniversary.
On Christmas day we awoke to eat Christmas oatmeal and Christmas bacon and let the dog go out for her first Christmas poop. Midway through the morning, we realized that we had none of the ingredients for the tasty cheesecake we had planned to make to take to the in-laws. We also had very little to speak of as far as things for us to prepare for a Christmas lunch of our own. So we ventured out to find all the usual places closed for the day. We wound up having to buy cream cheese, sour cream and graham crackers at a CVS, which makes this the most expensive cheesecake we've ever made. And, naturally, we found lunch at a Chinese takeout place we'd not tried before and were very happy to find it is the most delicious chinese food we've had since we left Charlotte. And just to be politically incorrect about it, and in honor of A Christmas Story, we had no sooner left the place before we both broke into a rousing chorus of "Fa ra ra ra ra, Ra ra ra ra."
Merry Christmahaunnaquanzika to you all.
After realizing just how much work it would be to bust out all our Christmas decorations and keep the dog and cat out of a tree, we forwent any decorating this year. We didn't even put up any of the wife's mangers, nor a wreath, nor taped Christmas cards to the back of the door, as per annual tradition. I had considered putting up stockings on the mantle around our wood stove for us and the circus animals, but then didn't. So the house wasn't very festive to look at. That's okay, because we usually rely upon my in-laws to decorate for the holidays, as that's where we tend to spend Christmas eve and day. Unfortunately, this year the wife is on call for the hospital on Christmas, so we can't leave for the in-laws until Friday and have to spend Christmas eve and day at home.
I am proud to say that I had already purchased the wife's Christmas presents a couple months back, having paid close attention to various things I knew she liked but which she didn't buy herself. The wife, has far less free time on her hands, though, and has been bugging me for weeks to tell her what I want, a request I've been mostly uncooperative with. Part of me still wants to be surprised and hates to even say what it is I'd really like for fear of ruining it. The trouble with shopping for me, though, is that I'm very tricky to shop for when it comes to the sort of medium ticket items you'd expect around Christmas. For instance, two years back when I got my first MP3 player, the wife knew I wanted one well in advance, but didn't know the exact specifications I was looking for. Rather than buying something I might not want, we waited until after Christmas to order it so I could get exactly the one I wanted. (It was a Creative Zen Vision M, a 30 gig model player which is unfortunately no longer made, but is a badass little powerhouse and one of the all time best Christmas gifts I've ever received. Creative has a new Zen model out called the Zen X-Fi that looks not only comparable, but probably a step up.)
This year the wife knew I was in the market for the much heralded chainsaw to finish sawing up the tree Pa and I cut down, as well as all the dead trees laying about in the woods behind us. Again, though, she didn't know what kind, so on Christmas Eve afternoon we bravely fought our way into the mall to have a look for one. You might expect me to be unhappy about not being surprised, but having a choice as to what I get for Christmas is kind of an old tradition in my family. My dad, being a single father for the formative years of my sister and me, didn't always have the patience to pick stuff out on his own. On more than one occasion he took us to a mall, told us to get what we wanted, signed off on our choices and then those gifts vanished until Christmas morning. Sure, there's not as much surprise, but it certainly ramps up the anticipation.
I chose a Craftsman 18" chainsaw. Beyond the massive Christmas discount we got, as it's allegedly a sturdy and well-constructed model that has the added benefit of a user-friendly chain-adjustment dial that seems tailored to a non-woodsman such as myself.
After this, we went to eat Indian food, during which the wife pestered me for hints about her presents. I got her a black pearl pendant which I'd seen her looking at in a store on more than one occasion. I also got her some Paula Deen country-kitchen porcelain cooking bins that are an exact match for a set of similarly-decorated tiny Paula Deen plates the wife bought for herself a month later. (How's that for precognitive gift-choosing?) I gave her her gifts back at home, after supper.
"Recognize the necklace?" I asked.
"No," she said.
I told her it was the one I always saw her looking at. That's when she revealed that she had not been interested in the black pearl necklace, but instead the pair of black pearl earrings beside it.
Oops.
She still liked her necklace very much, and now I have a nice gift in my sights for our upcoming anniversary.
On Christmas day we awoke to eat Christmas oatmeal and Christmas bacon and let the dog go out for her first Christmas poop. Midway through the morning, we realized that we had none of the ingredients for the tasty cheesecake we had planned to make to take to the in-laws. We also had very little to speak of as far as things for us to prepare for a Christmas lunch of our own. So we ventured out to find all the usual places closed for the day. We wound up having to buy cream cheese, sour cream and graham crackers at a CVS, which makes this the most expensive cheesecake we've ever made. And, naturally, we found lunch at a Chinese takeout place we'd not tried before and were very happy to find it is the most delicious chinese food we've had since we left Charlotte. And just to be politically incorrect about it, and in honor of A Christmas Story, we had no sooner left the place before we both broke into a rousing chorus of "Fa ra ra ra ra, Ra ra ra ra."
Merry Christmahaunnaquanzika to you all.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Actual Semi-Paraphrased Telephone Conversations Heard at My House #2
*RING*
ME-- Hello?
FEMALE CALLER-- Hello, is this Mr. Aaron?
ME-- Yes.
CALLER-- Hello, Mr. Aaron. I'm Cheryl, calling on behalf of the State Trooper's Association. How are you this evening?
ME-- I'm okay.
CALLER-- I'm just calling to let you know that your Thank You Packet will be in the mail to you very soon, as our way of saying thanks for your financial support of the Trooper's Association.
(I pause to consider whether the wife might have agreed to some such thing. Seems highly unlikely.)
ME-- Um... I wasn't aware that I was supporting the Trooper's Association.
CALLER-- I'm sorry?
ME-- I said, `I wasn't aware that I was supporting the State Trooper's Association.' I don't recall agreeing to any financial donations.
CALLER-- (Cheerfully) Well, I'm hoping you will right now.
(Pause)
ME-- Ahhhhhhhhh. Now I see what you're saying. Now I get it. I haven't actually agreed to any sort of financial support previously, but you phrased it like that to make it seem like I had anyway.
CALLER-- Um...
ME-- Unfortunately, Cheryl, we have a strict policy at my house to never accept telephone solicitation of any kind.
(Long pause)
CALLER-- Very well, Mr. Aaron. You have a good evening.
ME-- You have a good evening as well, Cheryl.
ME-- Hello?
FEMALE CALLER-- Hello, is this Mr. Aaron?
ME-- Yes.
CALLER-- Hello, Mr. Aaron. I'm Cheryl, calling on behalf of the State Trooper's Association. How are you this evening?
ME-- I'm okay.
CALLER-- I'm just calling to let you know that your Thank You Packet will be in the mail to you very soon, as our way of saying thanks for your financial support of the Trooper's Association.
(I pause to consider whether the wife might have agreed to some such thing. Seems highly unlikely.)
ME-- Um... I wasn't aware that I was supporting the Trooper's Association.
CALLER-- I'm sorry?
ME-- I said, `I wasn't aware that I was supporting the State Trooper's Association.' I don't recall agreeing to any financial donations.
CALLER-- (Cheerfully) Well, I'm hoping you will right now.
(Pause)
ME-- Ahhhhhhhhh. Now I see what you're saying. Now I get it. I haven't actually agreed to any sort of financial support previously, but you phrased it like that to make it seem like I had anyway.
CALLER-- Um...
ME-- Unfortunately, Cheryl, we have a strict policy at my house to never accept telephone solicitation of any kind.
(Long pause)
CALLER-- Very well, Mr. Aaron. You have a good evening.
ME-- You have a good evening as well, Cheryl.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Memestruck Christmas Edition
1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Usually paper, affixed to the package using only 1/4 ass power.
2. Real tree or artificial? In our near nine years of marriage, the wife and I have only had a tree once or twice. When we did, it was real. We once had a Christmas Nordic Track, though.
3. When do you put up the tree? Well, the Nordic Track was already there in front of the window; we just covered it with lights and tinsel. The decorations didn’t really get in the way, either, as the NT hadn't been used for months.
4. When do you take down the tree? If we had a tree, which we don't, it would probably take several weeks for us to get around to taking it down and that process would likely take a week to ten days to accomplish. When I was a kid, we once left a tree up `til March.
5. Do you like eggnog? I resent eggnog greatly. At some point in my childhood, after being denied a glass of it, probably because it was spiked, I resolved never to drink the stuff. Oh, people would offer it to me later and said it was just the best stuff ever, and would gush about their deep and abiding love for it, and tell me I wasn’t truly living unless I was chugging some of it down throughout the holiday season, but I would hear none of it. Then, my moms-in-law offered me a glass a couple of years back and I relented. Worst decision of my life. I find eggnog INCREDIBLY over-rated and SO not the end-all-be-all of tasty beverages people have been proclaiming in loud voices for most of my life. It wasn’t awful, by any means, but it sure didn’t live up to its billing in any way. And, yes, mine WAS spiked and was still not worth it! I just can't fathom why people have such passion for the stuff, in exactly the same way I would be mystified about people writing love sonnets to Ovaltine. I am left to assume that the only reason people drink eggnogg at all is that it’s a convenient vehicle for Captain Hodah's Spiced White Liquor.
6. Favorite gift received as a child? Probably my first Western Flyer bicycle, which my dad assembled in the back room of our house, knowing full well I would never find it because that’s where the monsters lived.
7. Hardest person to buy for? My mother-in-law, who has repeatedly demonstrates herself to be insightful when it comes to giving gifts to me and whom I feel guilty for not coming up with anything better.
8. Easiest person to buy for? The dog. Give her something she can shred and she’s happy.
9. Do you have a nativity scene? The wife collects them. So, yes, though not one in the yard.
10. Mail or email Christmas cards? We like the idea of cards, and buy them nearly every year. Filling them out and mailing them, we’re not so great at. Email works better.
11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Probably underwear.
12. Favorite Christmas Movie? A Christmas Story. My wife and in-laws had never seen it until about four years ago, and I sat `em down and made them watch it during TBS’s marathon day of it.
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? We’ve had a bit of a moratorium on buying Christmas presents in both of our families for the past several years. I say that, but every single year, word comes down NO PRESENTS EXCEPT FOR THE LITTLE KIDS and every single year I wind up getting several presents anyway and feel awful I didn’t get anything for anyone. I've already bought a couple of gifts for the wife and have managed to keep her from finding out what they are.
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas gift? No. Unless by "recycled" you mean "buried beneath the compost heap.
15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmastime? Nuts & Bolts and Chicken Curry Dip.
6. Lights on the tree? Yes.
17. Favorite Christmas Song? "Little Drummer Boy," either the Jars of Clay version or Bob Segar’s. A really good rendition of that song can destroy me. A bad version makes me very angry. (Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, Destiny's Child).
18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Travel. I can probably count on three fingers the number of Christmases spent at home and might not even need all three fingers. Looks like this year will be a home for the holidays year, though.
19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer? Yes. Even Roberta.
20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Vorlon.
21. Open presents on Christmas Eve or morning? We were always morning people, growing up, but the wife’s clan likes a good Christmas Eve opening.
22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? Stressing over presents when it should really be about the food.
23. Favorite ornament theme or color? My mom used to make a lot of ornaments. She had a Santa Doll and made a sleigh for it as well as tiny wrapped presents, some of which had stuff inside them for curious kids to find. I miss all that stuff. Beyond that, I’m waiting to try out my Serenity ornament, from Firefly, this year.
24. Favorite for Christmas Dessert? My in-laws' sweet potato casserole is pretty much perfect, though a new favorite would be Pecan Pie Bars.
25. What do you want for Christmas this year? A Red Rider B-… oh, wait. I dunno. A Flight Control TARDIS toy?
26. Who is most likely to respond to this? Um... Marcus?
27. Favorite Holiday Tradition? Eating a stupid amount of food. Keeping it all down.
2. Real tree or artificial? In our near nine years of marriage, the wife and I have only had a tree once or twice. When we did, it was real. We once had a Christmas Nordic Track, though.
3. When do you put up the tree? Well, the Nordic Track was already there in front of the window; we just covered it with lights and tinsel. The decorations didn’t really get in the way, either, as the NT hadn't been used for months.
4. When do you take down the tree? If we had a tree, which we don't, it would probably take several weeks for us to get around to taking it down and that process would likely take a week to ten days to accomplish. When I was a kid, we once left a tree up `til March.
5. Do you like eggnog? I resent eggnog greatly. At some point in my childhood, after being denied a glass of it, probably because it was spiked, I resolved never to drink the stuff. Oh, people would offer it to me later and said it was just the best stuff ever, and would gush about their deep and abiding love for it, and tell me I wasn’t truly living unless I was chugging some of it down throughout the holiday season, but I would hear none of it. Then, my moms-in-law offered me a glass a couple of years back and I relented. Worst decision of my life. I find eggnog INCREDIBLY over-rated and SO not the end-all-be-all of tasty beverages people have been proclaiming in loud voices for most of my life. It wasn’t awful, by any means, but it sure didn’t live up to its billing in any way. And, yes, mine WAS spiked and was still not worth it! I just can't fathom why people have such passion for the stuff, in exactly the same way I would be mystified about people writing love sonnets to Ovaltine. I am left to assume that the only reason people drink eggnogg at all is that it’s a convenient vehicle for Captain Hodah's Spiced White Liquor.
6. Favorite gift received as a child? Probably my first Western Flyer bicycle, which my dad assembled in the back room of our house, knowing full well I would never find it because that’s where the monsters lived.
7. Hardest person to buy for? My mother-in-law, who has repeatedly demonstrates herself to be insightful when it comes to giving gifts to me and whom I feel guilty for not coming up with anything better.
8. Easiest person to buy for? The dog. Give her something she can shred and she’s happy.
9. Do you have a nativity scene? The wife collects them. So, yes, though not one in the yard.
10. Mail or email Christmas cards? We like the idea of cards, and buy them nearly every year. Filling them out and mailing them, we’re not so great at. Email works better.
11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Probably underwear.
12. Favorite Christmas Movie? A Christmas Story. My wife and in-laws had never seen it until about four years ago, and I sat `em down and made them watch it during TBS’s marathon day of it.
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? We’ve had a bit of a moratorium on buying Christmas presents in both of our families for the past several years. I say that, but every single year, word comes down NO PRESENTS EXCEPT FOR THE LITTLE KIDS and every single year I wind up getting several presents anyway and feel awful I didn’t get anything for anyone. I've already bought a couple of gifts for the wife and have managed to keep her from finding out what they are.
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas gift? No. Unless by "recycled" you mean "buried beneath the compost heap.
15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmastime? Nuts & Bolts and Chicken Curry Dip.
6. Lights on the tree? Yes.
17. Favorite Christmas Song? "Little Drummer Boy," either the Jars of Clay version or Bob Segar’s. A really good rendition of that song can destroy me. A bad version makes me very angry. (Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, Destiny's Child).
18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Travel. I can probably count on three fingers the number of Christmases spent at home and might not even need all three fingers. Looks like this year will be a home for the holidays year, though.
19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer? Yes. Even Roberta.
20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Vorlon.
21. Open presents on Christmas Eve or morning? We were always morning people, growing up, but the wife’s clan likes a good Christmas Eve opening.
22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? Stressing over presents when it should really be about the food.
23. Favorite ornament theme or color? My mom used to make a lot of ornaments. She had a Santa Doll and made a sleigh for it as well as tiny wrapped presents, some of which had stuff inside them for curious kids to find. I miss all that stuff. Beyond that, I’m waiting to try out my Serenity ornament, from Firefly, this year.
24. Favorite for Christmas Dessert? My in-laws' sweet potato casserole is pretty much perfect, though a new favorite would be Pecan Pie Bars.
25. What do you want for Christmas this year? A Red Rider B-… oh, wait. I dunno. A Flight Control TARDIS toy?
26. Who is most likely to respond to this? Um... Marcus?
27. Favorite Holiday Tradition? Eating a stupid amount of food. Keeping it all down.
Friday, December 12, 2008
The most expensive cap in all the land
Our new dryer stopped working. More accurately, the newish dryer in our new house stopped working. Every time we pressed the button to make it work, it would just buzz and not spin. This, we decided, was no good.
Since it's a Kenmore, we called Sears and they said they could send someone out in a week. They asked if our dryer was under warranty. I looked it up with the dryer documentation we received with the house and found that the original owner of the dryer had purchased an extended warranty when she bought it in 2005, but it expired in August. Ah well. Probably didn't transfer to new owners, anyway.
The Sears people recommended I buy another extended warranty for $205, that would cover the cost of the visit and all parts. They told me that if I just paid for the repairs and parts a la cart, they couldn't promise that the repairs wouldn't cost us several thousand dollars. They didn't say those exact words, but they implied them. Or I inferred them. Whatever. There have been a variety of other things that have gone wrong with the house since we moved in and each has cost approximately $200 to fix, so I reasoned $200 was probably Fate Standard Pricing and went with it.
You never realize just how much you use your dryer until it goes out on you. Suddenly, mountains of laundry grew up on us, overflowing the basket at the foot of our bed and piling in the laundry room. We had to make two trips to a laundromat, which dredged up memories of years gone by before we owned washers and dryers and frequented such places. In fact, being in one reminded me of the most amazing thing I ever saw in a laundromat, which occurred back in about 1998.
There I was, sitting in a laundromat in Tupelo, MS, located a stone's throwing from Elvis's actual birthplace, waiting for my clothes to dry when a girl in her mid-20s came into the place and began loading up several washers with her clothing. Then, in front of God, me and the laundry attendant, she stripped off her clothes down to what I initially thought were her bra and panties, but which, upon lengthy further inspection, turned out to be a bikini. She was quite the comely lass as far as her body was concerned. It was of a quality that would have done well in the small-town strip-club market (within which, for all I know, it might have been employed) and proved to be quite the distraction from my book. Questions might arise at this point regarding why I did not chat up this lovely creature. Leaving aside my crippling shyness and great fear of rejection, there was also the matter of a condition she was afflicted with, which--indelicately phrased, I admit--revolved around the words "face" and "butter," though not necessarily in that order.
No such luck for me during our two trips to the local laundromat last week. No, the most notable thing we saw was where someone had keyed the words "dryer is shit" into the paint of the very dryer we were using, (a commentary we take issue with, because from our limited experience it does not appear to be shit).
A week passed and the Sears guy came out to see the dryer. After ten minutes of trying the button and then fiddling within the guts of the beast, he uttered an "Ah hahhhhh," and emerged, fist clenched.
"I know what your problem is," he said with something of a smirk.
"Okay. What is it?" I said.
The man held out his hand, opened his palm and there upon it was an acorn cap. I stared at it for a long time before raising an eyebrow.
According to the repairman, the cap had somehow come in through the ventilation duct (possibly in the mouth of a damned mouse) because he found it inside the innards of the dryer, lodged in something important that prevented something else important from moving.
The repairman's time and effort came to around $165, a good $40 cheaper than what we'd paid for the warranty service. Adding insult to injury, the man offered to sell us an extension on our warranty. He said for another $75 we could have loads more coverage, including routine maintenance visits. We declined.
So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the most expensive acorn cap in all the land...
Since it's a Kenmore, we called Sears and they said they could send someone out in a week. They asked if our dryer was under warranty. I looked it up with the dryer documentation we received with the house and found that the original owner of the dryer had purchased an extended warranty when she bought it in 2005, but it expired in August. Ah well. Probably didn't transfer to new owners, anyway.
The Sears people recommended I buy another extended warranty for $205, that would cover the cost of the visit and all parts. They told me that if I just paid for the repairs and parts a la cart, they couldn't promise that the repairs wouldn't cost us several thousand dollars. They didn't say those exact words, but they implied them. Or I inferred them. Whatever. There have been a variety of other things that have gone wrong with the house since we moved in and each has cost approximately $200 to fix, so I reasoned $200 was probably Fate Standard Pricing and went with it.
You never realize just how much you use your dryer until it goes out on you. Suddenly, mountains of laundry grew up on us, overflowing the basket at the foot of our bed and piling in the laundry room. We had to make two trips to a laundromat, which dredged up memories of years gone by before we owned washers and dryers and frequented such places. In fact, being in one reminded me of the most amazing thing I ever saw in a laundromat, which occurred back in about 1998.
There I was, sitting in a laundromat in Tupelo, MS, located a stone's throwing from Elvis's actual birthplace, waiting for my clothes to dry when a girl in her mid-20s came into the place and began loading up several washers with her clothing. Then, in front of God, me and the laundry attendant, she stripped off her clothes down to what I initially thought were her bra and panties, but which, upon lengthy further inspection, turned out to be a bikini. She was quite the comely lass as far as her body was concerned. It was of a quality that would have done well in the small-town strip-club market (within which, for all I know, it might have been employed) and proved to be quite the distraction from my book. Questions might arise at this point regarding why I did not chat up this lovely creature. Leaving aside my crippling shyness and great fear of rejection, there was also the matter of a condition she was afflicted with, which--indelicately phrased, I admit--revolved around the words "face" and "butter," though not necessarily in that order.
No such luck for me during our two trips to the local laundromat last week. No, the most notable thing we saw was where someone had keyed the words "dryer is shit" into the paint of the very dryer we were using, (a commentary we take issue with, because from our limited experience it does not appear to be shit).
A week passed and the Sears guy came out to see the dryer. After ten minutes of trying the button and then fiddling within the guts of the beast, he uttered an "Ah hahhhhh," and emerged, fist clenched.
"I know what your problem is," he said with something of a smirk.
"Okay. What is it?" I said.
The man held out his hand, opened his palm and there upon it was an acorn cap. I stared at it for a long time before raising an eyebrow.
According to the repairman, the cap had somehow come in through the ventilation duct (possibly in the mouth of a damned mouse) because he found it inside the innards of the dryer, lodged in something important that prevented something else important from moving.
The repairman's time and effort came to around $165, a good $40 cheaper than what we'd paid for the warranty service. Adding insult to injury, the man offered to sell us an extension on our warranty. He said for another $75 we could have loads more coverage, including routine maintenance visits. We declined.
So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the most expensive acorn cap in all the land...
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Actual Telephone Conversations Heard at My House (a.k.a. "Glen Frey songs you REALLY don't want to hear")
*DIALING*
*RING*
*RING*
*RING*
VET-- Borderland Veterinary Center.
ME-- Yes. My wife and I have a cat that has gone into heat and we were hoping never to have to go through this ever again. Can you help?
VET-- (Laughs) I'd say we need to get her fixed.
ME-- Indeedy. When can the spaying commence?
VET-- Well, let's give her some time to completely come out of heat, so, say... three weeks?
*SLUSHING SOUND AS ALL HOPE DRAINS FROM MY PERSON AND OUT OF MY SHOES*
Needless to say, it's kind of noisy around chez Juice with Avie Kitty officially in her very first and hopefully last session of heat. I'd really hoped to have more time before this went down, but I drug ass getting her fixed so now we have to live with it `til it subsides. While it's Avie's first heat, it's not the first time I've gone through this with another cat. In fact, I went through this several times with my old kitty, Winston, circa 1992-93.
Winston, as a young kitty, was already known for being "bad," so much so that her full given name had become Winston Churchill: The Infinitely Bad Kitty. At the time, she lived with me in my first non-parentally owned home, which I shared with three to four roommates, known as Da Crib (a name chosen for its irony, as we were all very very white). While given to genuinely inappropriate kitty behavior already (such as unauthorized trips atop the kitchen counter and strewing stole-from-the-garbage corn cobs behind the hall toilet), part of her reputation was no doubt spawned by the machinations of nature during the three heat cycles she experienced while in the house.
The first of these occurred four or five months into my residency there, and sent her into the traditional spine-shattering, sleep-rending cat-howls and repeated attempts to escape the house common to being in heat. This behavior, in turn, caused tension and loud arguments between me and my roommates, none of whom appreciated having their precious sleep disturbed by the wails of a horny cat. At the same time, I didn't want any more kitties in my life and resented the lack of care exhibited by my roommates who repeatedly let the cat out during their comings and goings. I bore even more resentment, though, to the roommates who not only let the cat out, but then didn't even make a cursory attempt to go and get her and return her to the house, in my absence. These conflicts often developed into a third category of problem, which was the loss of sleep by some of my roommates caused by the screaming argument I was having with other roommates over the above issue of resentment.
After the first "heat exchange" I resolved to get the cat fixed for the sake of keeping the peace. However, for a poor college student such as I was at the time, such kitty-cooter operations were kind of pricey and I wound up dragging heels on getting it done for a few months. Then, before I knew it, the damned cat was in heat again and all the problems and conflicts resumed. More months pass and more good intentions fall away and we repeat.
Following the third such heat session, my roommates staged an intervention and basically told me it was my ass if I didn't get her fixed, and quick. My dad, fortunately, found a two for one deal on kitty fixings, and we got Winston and her sibling (who is my sibling's cat) Cleo done at the same time. The funny thing is that during her heat sessions, Winston had been very subservient to all the other cats in the house. If she was eating from the common cat-food bowl and another roommate's cat happened along, Winston would get out of the way and let them eat. Following her surgery, though, she was much less understanding and beat the hell out of the first cat who crossed her during mealtime. You've never seen a more surprised expression on the face of a cat.
As for Avie, the way I count it, we're now on day four of the heat. Every time I think she's coming down from it, she opens up with an even louder howl that we've heard before. My memory is that Winston's sessions only lasted about a week. The vet's notation of three weeks seems like a looooong time.
*RING*
*RING*
*RING*
VET-- Borderland Veterinary Center.
ME-- Yes. My wife and I have a cat that has gone into heat and we were hoping never to have to go through this ever again. Can you help?
VET-- (Laughs) I'd say we need to get her fixed.
ME-- Indeedy. When can the spaying commence?
VET-- Well, let's give her some time to completely come out of heat, so, say... three weeks?
*SLUSHING SOUND AS ALL HOPE DRAINS FROM MY PERSON AND OUT OF MY SHOES*
Needless to say, it's kind of noisy around chez Juice with Avie Kitty officially in her very first and hopefully last session of heat. I'd really hoped to have more time before this went down, but I drug ass getting her fixed so now we have to live with it `til it subsides. While it's Avie's first heat, it's not the first time I've gone through this with another cat. In fact, I went through this several times with my old kitty, Winston, circa 1992-93.
Winston, as a young kitty, was already known for being "bad," so much so that her full given name had become Winston Churchill: The Infinitely Bad Kitty. At the time, she lived with me in my first non-parentally owned home, which I shared with three to four roommates, known as Da Crib (a name chosen for its irony, as we were all very very white). While given to genuinely inappropriate kitty behavior already (such as unauthorized trips atop the kitchen counter and strewing stole-from-the-garbage corn cobs behind the hall toilet), part of her reputation was no doubt spawned by the machinations of nature during the three heat cycles she experienced while in the house.
The first of these occurred four or five months into my residency there, and sent her into the traditional spine-shattering, sleep-rending cat-howls and repeated attempts to escape the house common to being in heat. This behavior, in turn, caused tension and loud arguments between me and my roommates, none of whom appreciated having their precious sleep disturbed by the wails of a horny cat. At the same time, I didn't want any more kitties in my life and resented the lack of care exhibited by my roommates who repeatedly let the cat out during their comings and goings. I bore even more resentment, though, to the roommates who not only let the cat out, but then didn't even make a cursory attempt to go and get her and return her to the house, in my absence. These conflicts often developed into a third category of problem, which was the loss of sleep by some of my roommates caused by the screaming argument I was having with other roommates over the above issue of resentment.
After the first "heat exchange" I resolved to get the cat fixed for the sake of keeping the peace. However, for a poor college student such as I was at the time, such kitty-cooter operations were kind of pricey and I wound up dragging heels on getting it done for a few months. Then, before I knew it, the damned cat was in heat again and all the problems and conflicts resumed. More months pass and more good intentions fall away and we repeat.
Following the third such heat session, my roommates staged an intervention and basically told me it was my ass if I didn't get her fixed, and quick. My dad, fortunately, found a two for one deal on kitty fixings, and we got Winston and her sibling (who is my sibling's cat) Cleo done at the same time. The funny thing is that during her heat sessions, Winston had been very subservient to all the other cats in the house. If she was eating from the common cat-food bowl and another roommate's cat happened along, Winston would get out of the way and let them eat. Following her surgery, though, she was much less understanding and beat the hell out of the first cat who crossed her during mealtime. You've never seen a more surprised expression on the face of a cat.
As for Avie, the way I count it, we're now on day four of the heat. Every time I think she's coming down from it, she opens up with an even louder howl that we've heard before. My memory is that Winston's sessions only lasted about a week. The vet's notation of three weeks seems like a looooong time.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
We got no trees!
Thanksgiving at my house turned out to be a much smaller affair than we'd anticipated. We had my in-laws, Ma, Pa and Nan as our guests for the weekend instead of them plus ten or so other relatives from distant lands as far away as Georgia, who we initially expected.
So we stuffed ourselves senseless, drank the occasional Yuengling and alternated between watching the coverage of the attacks in Mumbai, good movies on AMC and bad movies on SciFi. In the early afternoon, I called Mississippi to talk to my folks and told them of our afternoon's activities. Dad seemed to fixate on the drinking of the beer part.
"Well, just don't go cutting down any trees, today," my dad said.
"Funny you should mention that," I said.
See, the last time Ma & Pa visited, Pa had noticed a dead tree in our yard. This is not exactly a strange thing, as there are quite a few dead trees on our property, not to mention a number of stumps of dead trees past. However, the one he had his eye on was actually a double-trunked tree split out of a single base, located within twenty feet of our house. Were one or more sides of it to fall, it would likely land ON our house. Last time Pa didn't have the necessary equipment to cut it down safely, but he'd brought that sort of thing this time.
So, on Friday morning, after we'd NOT been drinking, Pa and I went out to accomplish this, armed with rope, chain, a come-along, a tall ladder and Pa's chainsaw. And even though I've never cut down a tree before--at least not one much taller than me--I wasn't too nervous because Pa's been sawing down trees and building things out of them for decades.
The felling of the first half of the tree went fairly quickly. I shinnied up the ladder, trying not to think about the twenty or so feet I was off the ground, nor how rickety my perch felt, then tied the rope as high up as I could. Then we hooked the rope to the come-along (a kind of portable, crank-based winch), which was anchored to another tree. I tightened it up and Pa started sawing with the chainsaw. My job was to keep cranking the come-along as needed, to keep the tension on the rope and help persuade that half of the tree to come my way when at last it broke free. Once the tree began to fall, my job was to get the hell out of the way very quickly. This I did and the tree fell exactly where we wanted it.
The other half of the tree was leaning in the opposite direction, kind of toward my next door neighbor's house. Pa thought this would be a trickier job. It was.
We roped up the tree much as we had the first one and started the job as before. A little way into the chain-sawing, though, there was a sudden snap as the rope broke where it was hooked to the come-along. We both braced to see what the tree would do, but it held firm. Pa came over and retied the rope to the come-along and we started anew. Then there was another snap as the rope broke again. Pa decided that the rope was being cut by the come-along's hook. It was kind of old cotton rope to begin with and not nylon as you'd usually want for a job like this. Pa's solution was to tie the rope to the ball hitch on his truck and use the truck to pull the tree over. I suggested we also bend the rope around another tree that lay in the direction we wanted our falling tree to fall, using it as a pulley of sorts. This we tried, with Pa returning to saw while I drove the truck, stepping on the gas at his command.
Then the rope broke again. The tree held, but was swaying mightily for a moment.
Pa tied the rope together again, but this time leading directly from the soon-to-be-falling-tree to the truck with no middle-man tree in between. From the back window of the truck, I could see the rope leading essentially from me to the tree and I asked Pa if this was wise. My fear was that the tree would fall on the truck, crushing the cab with me inside. Pa said not to worry, that the direction the tree was leaning in (i.e. away from us) would compensate to put the tree down near enough to where we wanted it (i.e. beside the first half of the tree).
We started again, with me gradually pulling on the rope with the truck's weight until Pa could get it sawed through enough. Then I heard a great cracking sound and Pa waved at me to drive faster. I kept my head turned back to gauge the tree's progress in case I needed to gun it for the driveway and get out of its path (which I thought would be kind of tricky, being as how I was TIED TO THE TREE). Just as Pa predicted, though, when the tree started to fall, it was falling in the direction we wanted it and, in fact, fell so perfectly that it lined up right beside the first one. I was quite relieved.
After taking a coffee break, we returned to our fallen trees to begin the real work of sawing them up. Pa broke out his chainsaw and started cutting, while I hauled the chunks he cut into the back of the truck. The wife soon came out with our saws-all and began carving off limbs to help.
We very soon had quite a bit of loggage, but there was still part of the first tree and the rest of the second tree to go. That's when Pa passed me his chainsaw and told me I could take out the rest, if I wanted. He then went in the house, leaving me and the wife standing there.
I've never used a chainsaw before. The closest I've come is when Pa was trying to show me how to use his old one during his last visit and got as far as teaching me how to take the chain on and off, do the oil/gas mixture and then had given me the non-practical portion of showing me how to operate one when the chainsaw coughed up blood and died right in front of us, never to be cranked again. So while I "knew" how to run one, I'd never actually done so. However, the wife is not exactly a stranger to them, having been around them most of her life in various Pa-built log cabins in Alaska, and was able to give me a quick refresher and stood by to supervise my first few stabs at cutting.
I have to say, I took to it pretty well, though the process is not without its discomfort. For one thing, the vibration of the saw when you're sawing tickles unbearably at first, but by the time you feel it you're already committed to sawing through a section of tree. Eventually, you just man up and get over it.
The next day, after we'd moved all the wood, Pa and I went to saw up the stump. He cut a long horizontal slice into the base of the stump, then my job was to saw down vertically from the middle of the top. The first half broke away and looked like a nice solid piece of oak. I even contemplated doing something with it, like building a table, it was that pretty. The second half of the stump seemed a little tougher at first, so we decided to saw it in half, too. A little way into the downward cut the stump suddenly sliced like butter. When half of it came away, a whole mound of black dirt fell out of what had been a massive ant colony that took up most of its interior. The ants had fled in the night, leaving behind their dung (the black dirt). That was one rotten tree. Thanks to Pa, we now have a much safer house.
So we stuffed ourselves senseless, drank the occasional Yuengling and alternated between watching the coverage of the attacks in Mumbai, good movies on AMC and bad movies on SciFi. In the early afternoon, I called Mississippi to talk to my folks and told them of our afternoon's activities. Dad seemed to fixate on the drinking of the beer part.
"Well, just don't go cutting down any trees, today," my dad said.
"Funny you should mention that," I said.
See, the last time Ma & Pa visited, Pa had noticed a dead tree in our yard. This is not exactly a strange thing, as there are quite a few dead trees on our property, not to mention a number of stumps of dead trees past. However, the one he had his eye on was actually a double-trunked tree split out of a single base, located within twenty feet of our house. Were one or more sides of it to fall, it would likely land ON our house. Last time Pa didn't have the necessary equipment to cut it down safely, but he'd brought that sort of thing this time.
So, on Friday morning, after we'd NOT been drinking, Pa and I went out to accomplish this, armed with rope, chain, a come-along, a tall ladder and Pa's chainsaw. And even though I've never cut down a tree before--at least not one much taller than me--I wasn't too nervous because Pa's been sawing down trees and building things out of them for decades.
The felling of the first half of the tree went fairly quickly. I shinnied up the ladder, trying not to think about the twenty or so feet I was off the ground, nor how rickety my perch felt, then tied the rope as high up as I could. Then we hooked the rope to the come-along (a kind of portable, crank-based winch), which was anchored to another tree. I tightened it up and Pa started sawing with the chainsaw. My job was to keep cranking the come-along as needed, to keep the tension on the rope and help persuade that half of the tree to come my way when at last it broke free. Once the tree began to fall, my job was to get the hell out of the way very quickly. This I did and the tree fell exactly where we wanted it.
The other half of the tree was leaning in the opposite direction, kind of toward my next door neighbor's house. Pa thought this would be a trickier job. It was.
We roped up the tree much as we had the first one and started the job as before. A little way into the chain-sawing, though, there was a sudden snap as the rope broke where it was hooked to the come-along. We both braced to see what the tree would do, but it held firm. Pa came over and retied the rope to the come-along and we started anew. Then there was another snap as the rope broke again. Pa decided that the rope was being cut by the come-along's hook. It was kind of old cotton rope to begin with and not nylon as you'd usually want for a job like this. Pa's solution was to tie the rope to the ball hitch on his truck and use the truck to pull the tree over. I suggested we also bend the rope around another tree that lay in the direction we wanted our falling tree to fall, using it as a pulley of sorts. This we tried, with Pa returning to saw while I drove the truck, stepping on the gas at his command.
Then the rope broke again. The tree held, but was swaying mightily for a moment.
Pa tied the rope together again, but this time leading directly from the soon-to-be-falling-tree to the truck with no middle-man tree in between. From the back window of the truck, I could see the rope leading essentially from me to the tree and I asked Pa if this was wise. My fear was that the tree would fall on the truck, crushing the cab with me inside. Pa said not to worry, that the direction the tree was leaning in (i.e. away from us) would compensate to put the tree down near enough to where we wanted it (i.e. beside the first half of the tree).
We started again, with me gradually pulling on the rope with the truck's weight until Pa could get it sawed through enough. Then I heard a great cracking sound and Pa waved at me to drive faster. I kept my head turned back to gauge the tree's progress in case I needed to gun it for the driveway and get out of its path (which I thought would be kind of tricky, being as how I was TIED TO THE TREE). Just as Pa predicted, though, when the tree started to fall, it was falling in the direction we wanted it and, in fact, fell so perfectly that it lined up right beside the first one. I was quite relieved.
After taking a coffee break, we returned to our fallen trees to begin the real work of sawing them up. Pa broke out his chainsaw and started cutting, while I hauled the chunks he cut into the back of the truck. The wife soon came out with our saws-all and began carving off limbs to help.We very soon had quite a bit of loggage, but there was still part of the first tree and the rest of the second tree to go. That's when Pa passed me his chainsaw and told me I could take out the rest, if I wanted. He then went in the house, leaving me and the wife standing there.
I've never used a chainsaw before. The closest I've come is when Pa was trying to show me how to use his old one during his last visit and got as far as teaching me how to take the chain on and off, do the oil/gas mixture and then had given me the non-practical portion of showing me how to operate one when the chainsaw coughed up blood and died right in front of us, never to be cranked again. So while I "knew" how to run one, I'd never actually done so. However, the wife is not exactly a stranger to them, having been around them most of her life in various Pa-built log cabins in Alaska, and was able to give me a quick refresher and stood by to supervise my first few stabs at cutting.
I have to say, I took to it pretty well, though the process is not without its discomfort. For one thing, the vibration of the saw when you're sawing tickles unbearably at first, but by the time you feel it you're already committed to sawing through a section of tree. Eventually, you just man up and get over it.
The next day, after we'd moved all the wood, Pa and I went to saw up the stump. He cut a long horizontal slice into the base of the stump, then my job was to saw down vertically from the middle of the top. The first half broke away and looked like a nice solid piece of oak. I even contemplated doing something with it, like building a table, it was that pretty. The second half of the stump seemed a little tougher at first, so we decided to saw it in half, too. A little way into the downward cut the stump suddenly sliced like butter. When half of it came away, a whole mound of black dirt fell out of what had been a massive ant colony that took up most of its interior. The ants had fled in the night, leaving behind their dung (the black dirt). That was one rotten tree. Thanks to Pa, we now have a much safer house.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Petdumb
The dog and I headed down to North Carolina to visit the in-laws a couple weekends ago. (The wife was trapped in the hospital, here, and couldn't get away.) I was going to help Ma & Pa with a moving project of theirs and Sadie was going so she could attend a proper six dog Dog Party, with the dogs of various aunts, siblings and cousins. She had a blast, drank way too much and got royally filthy in the red NC mud.
On our way out of town, I thought it would be nice to stop and let Sadie have her first visit to Petsmart. I had this image in my head of her getting to walk around the aisles, see all the other dogs and get to pick out her own new dog toy from their selection. The reality of this did not quite work out that way.
From the moment she stepped through Petsmart's automatic doors, Sadie started barking and didn't really stop for about 10 minutes. She barked at the other dogs. She barked at their owners. She barked at people who didn't even have dogs. She barked at fish. She barked at little kids. She barked at old people. And she looked like she'd been in the back of a pickup freshly returned from a good, ol' fashioned session of mud-boggin'. At one point, she barked at the behavior-training lady, who had foolishly attempted to give my dog a treat. Not having any time to hang around, I decided to pull Sadie into an unoccupied aisle before I was hit up for behavior lessons.
That aisle didn't stay unoccupied for long; shortly, an upper middle-aged couple stepped into it, caught a look at Sadie and came over to say hi. Sadie barked and barked and barked and barked, to the point that the lady became offended and said, "Fine! I'm not even going to pet you, then!" and stormed off.
Oh yeah, lady, I thought. Well you don't GET to pet my dog!
Sadie had little interest in the toys and treats. Actually, she had a lot of interest in them, but every time I tried to show her the selection, someone else would come along and she'd have to stop and bark at them. After she scared a little kid, who'd stepped around a corner holding her tiny Schnauzer, I decided to take my bad child to the car so I could shop in peace.
Some hours later, after I'd returned to Borderland with my purchase of new treats, I noticed that the cashier had slipped a dog-behavior class-schedule into my bag.
Grrrrr.
On our way out of town, I thought it would be nice to stop and let Sadie have her first visit to Petsmart. I had this image in my head of her getting to walk around the aisles, see all the other dogs and get to pick out her own new dog toy from their selection. The reality of this did not quite work out that way.
From the moment she stepped through Petsmart's automatic doors, Sadie started barking and didn't really stop for about 10 minutes. She barked at the other dogs. She barked at their owners. She barked at people who didn't even have dogs. She barked at fish. She barked at little kids. She barked at old people. And she looked like she'd been in the back of a pickup freshly returned from a good, ol' fashioned session of mud-boggin'. At one point, she barked at the behavior-training lady, who had foolishly attempted to give my dog a treat. Not having any time to hang around, I decided to pull Sadie into an unoccupied aisle before I was hit up for behavior lessons.
That aisle didn't stay unoccupied for long; shortly, an upper middle-aged couple stepped into it, caught a look at Sadie and came over to say hi. Sadie barked and barked and barked and barked, to the point that the lady became offended and said, "Fine! I'm not even going to pet you, then!" and stormed off.
Oh yeah, lady, I thought. Well you don't GET to pet my dog!
Sadie had little interest in the toys and treats. Actually, she had a lot of interest in them, but every time I tried to show her the selection, someone else would come along and she'd have to stop and bark at them. After she scared a little kid, who'd stepped around a corner holding her tiny Schnauzer, I decided to take my bad child to the car so I could shop in peace.
Some hours later, after I'd returned to Borderland with my purchase of new treats, I noticed that the cashier had slipped a dog-behavior class-schedule into my bag.
Grrrrr.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
"Need another 100lb tensile strength dog leash on aisle four!"
Our house in Borderland sits atop a steep hill in a neighborhood of other houses atop steep hills. The area was planned in the late 1980s to be nice and woodsy, with houses constructed of natural materials and not all on top of one another, like a typical suburb. Being a nice and woodsy area, though, we also live side by side with other things that live in nice woodsy areas, such as the family of five deer who frequent our yard. We like having them around, too, cause they're cute and have not yet started to eat our perennials. They also give the dog something to do because Sadie considers them her arch-enemies and barks at them whenever they stray too close.
A couple of Saturdays ago, Sadie was doing precisely this as the deer milled around the back yard, snuffling beneath the snow and leaves and eating the acorns they find there. The wife and I also watched, amused at Sadie's rage. For their part, though, the deer didn't seem to care one whit that the dog was barking furiously at them from behind the glass of the back door. Some even seemed to stare back in contempt while chewing up mouthfuls of acorns. That is, until the wife decided to open the back door and let Sadie out. I almost stopped her from doing it, cause I knew we'd NEHEHEHEver get the dog back in the house if she was out sans leash--at least, not for a long time. However, the notion of how satisfying it would be for Sadie to get to chase them was way too delicious to kibosh. It would be like Christmas morning for her--just pure joy. So I stepped back.
The deer all looked pretty shocked as Sadie came flying out the door toward them in a blaze of snarls. Sure, she nearly broke her neck slipping on the icy deck before she could get into the grass, but they all five vanished in a flash of bobbing tails from our unfenced back yard and were quickly out of sight down the steep backside of the hill. I knew there was no way Sadie would ever catch them, but in the five seconds I could see her before she too vanished down the hill, she looked like she was having a blast
Half an hour later, Sadie was still outside. This wouldn't have been so bad, except she knew we wanted her back in and took to taunting us, playing keepaway with herself. The wife apologized to me profusely, but I wasn't mad since I knew this was precisely what would happen. Eventually, we coaxed Sadie back in through the combination of hunger and a Pupperoni.
Cut to this past Wednesday.
A few hours before Thanksgiving relatives were to arrive, I decided to run a few errands and was going to take the dog with me. I was on the way to the garage with her when through the back window we spied the deer family nosing around in the snowy grass again. Sadie lit up with barking, running back and forth from the back door to the kitchen windows just making as much noise as possible. Again, the deer gave her the ungulate-equivalent of the finger and continued to chew, staring unafraid in Sadie's direction. Sadie dialed up her barking a few more notches, but this seemed to have little effect. The deer slowly and casually began moving toward the steep back part of the hill. Only one of them hung back, turned to face us and then squatted down and started to take itself a deer dump. And it took its time taking its dump, seemingly as if to say: "Hey assholes, look at me! I'm shitting in your yard! Whatareyagonna do about it? Huh? NOTHIN', that's what!"
"Do you see that deer shitting in your yard?" I asked Sadie. She indicated she did by barking even louder.
What I did next seemed like a good idea at the time, though I don't know why. Maybe I was just pissed off at my perception of the deer's bad attitude. Whatever the case, I had an instant vision of Sadie and me chasing after this deer and it running from us in terror. This seemed like a nice vision which could, easily enough, be made a reality. Before I could think it through any further, I grabbed Sadie's retractable leash, clipped it to her collar and opened the door.
Sadie blazed across the still snowy deck, hung a quick left through the walkway between sections of deck railing and was in the yard before I could step out the back door. About that time, she reached the end of the retractable leash's range and I suddenly felt myself jerked onto the snowy deck. It then occurred to me that I would never be able to maneuver my way through the walkway and into the yard without slipping on the ice and busting my ass on the deck, so I made a command decision to let go of the leash and save myself some pain. It banged against the railing once and was whipped into the yard, trailing along behind the dog as she bounded for the backside of the hill, just a-barkin'.
"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," I said as Sadie vanished down the hill. It occurred to me at that point that I might have just killed the dog. It was very possible that the handle of the leash would become entangled around a tree and the dog would break her neck, or even slide down the hillside and hang herself. Even then I could hear the leash handle cracking against trees as the dog continued her chase. Then all went silent.
As quickly as I could, I dashed into the yard and then onto my trail leading down the hill. It was slow going, what with the snow and the slippery leaf cover beneath it. I saw no sign of the dog, nor could I hear any indication of where she was at. There were no barks, and no more cracks of the leash handle.
"Sadie?" I called.
Nothing.
"Saaaadie!" I called again.
In the distance, to my left, I heard the sound of crunching in the snow and within a few seconds could see Sadie on her way back, traveling along the deer trail that intertwines with my walking trail. Dragging along behind her was the black plastic leash handle. I called to her some more and she seemed to be trying to get to me, but then the handle wrapped around something and she came to a stop.
I moved along the deer trail, being careful to hold on to whatever little trees I could reach. This was the steeper side of the hill, where going is usually pretty tough without snow and leaves underfoot. A misstep here could potentially mean a slide down the hill toward the rocks and then a considerably steeper slide down to the lower road beyond that. After a minute or so I reached where Sadie was hung and unwrapped the leash handle. It seemed broken, as the leash wasn't retracting into the handle. Then I saw that the reason for this was because it had been pulled through the two halves of the plastic housing and was pinched between them. Once I'd freed it with my now icy numb hands, it retracted a little, but not as enthusiastically as usual.
At this point, we were closer to the bottom of the hill than the top. From where we were, I reasoned it would probably be easier to move along the side of the hill and then down to the road at the bottom, where we could walk back on the road, which would lead a bit more gradually back up the hill (where we recently were attacked by yellow-jackets) and to the street in front of our house. Before I could put this plan into action, though, Sadie tried to climb up the hillside, wrapped the leash around another small tree and then slipped in the snow and slid past me and back down the hill, coming to the end of her rope, so to speak. That's when I realized that even if we were to try and make it to the bottom of the hill, doing so with a leashed dog was unlikely to work out well because of all the little trees she could get tangled around. That said, I sat down in the snow and slid on my butt down to her level, at which point I unclipped the leash from her collar and set her free. She vanished back up the hillside, no doubt in search of deer.
Once I'd freed the leash from the tree again, I too began the long trek back up the hill. By then I'd retrieved my gloves from my coat pockets, which helped quite a bit with the numb fingers, but going was still very slow. After a few minutes, I made it to the lower section of my trail and followed it up to the back yard, where Sadie was nowhere to be found.
Eventually she did turn up, but refused to get near enough for me to grab her. I tried my usual tactic of offering her a ride in the car, which is often enticement enough to come in, but not this time. She just moved further into the neighborhood and then down the hill toward the lower road, me following along. After 20 minutes of coaxing, she came within ten feet of the open car door, where I stood offering her safe passage and no repercussions for her disobedience (being as how it was my fault for letting her out in the first place). You could see decisions being weighed in her little doggy mind. Finally, though, she looked at me plaintively, as if to say, "I know I'm in such huge trouble, Pa, but I gotta run free while I have the chance." And off she dashed.
I gave a defeated cry of "NOOOOO!" but knew there was no use in standing in the street screaming at her. The neighbors probably think I'm nutty as it is. Instead, I climbed into the car and drove on to my errands. And when I returned, an hour or so later, Sadie was waiting at the back door to come in.
A couple of Saturdays ago, Sadie was doing precisely this as the deer milled around the back yard, snuffling beneath the snow and leaves and eating the acorns they find there. The wife and I also watched, amused at Sadie's rage. For their part, though, the deer didn't seem to care one whit that the dog was barking furiously at them from behind the glass of the back door. Some even seemed to stare back in contempt while chewing up mouthfuls of acorns. That is, until the wife decided to open the back door and let Sadie out. I almost stopped her from doing it, cause I knew we'd NEHEHEHEver get the dog back in the house if she was out sans leash--at least, not for a long time. However, the notion of how satisfying it would be for Sadie to get to chase them was way too delicious to kibosh. It would be like Christmas morning for her--just pure joy. So I stepped back.
The deer all looked pretty shocked as Sadie came flying out the door toward them in a blaze of snarls. Sure, she nearly broke her neck slipping on the icy deck before she could get into the grass, but they all five vanished in a flash of bobbing tails from our unfenced back yard and were quickly out of sight down the steep backside of the hill. I knew there was no way Sadie would ever catch them, but in the five seconds I could see her before she too vanished down the hill, she looked like she was having a blast
Half an hour later, Sadie was still outside. This wouldn't have been so bad, except she knew we wanted her back in and took to taunting us, playing keepaway with herself. The wife apologized to me profusely, but I wasn't mad since I knew this was precisely what would happen. Eventually, we coaxed Sadie back in through the combination of hunger and a Pupperoni.
Cut to this past Wednesday.
A few hours before Thanksgiving relatives were to arrive, I decided to run a few errands and was going to take the dog with me. I was on the way to the garage with her when through the back window we spied the deer family nosing around in the snowy grass again. Sadie lit up with barking, running back and forth from the back door to the kitchen windows just making as much noise as possible. Again, the deer gave her the ungulate-equivalent of the finger and continued to chew, staring unafraid in Sadie's direction. Sadie dialed up her barking a few more notches, but this seemed to have little effect. The deer slowly and casually began moving toward the steep back part of the hill. Only one of them hung back, turned to face us and then squatted down and started to take itself a deer dump. And it took its time taking its dump, seemingly as if to say: "Hey assholes, look at me! I'm shitting in your yard! Whatareyagonna do about it? Huh? NOTHIN', that's what!"
"Do you see that deer shitting in your yard?" I asked Sadie. She indicated she did by barking even louder.
What I did next seemed like a good idea at the time, though I don't know why. Maybe I was just pissed off at my perception of the deer's bad attitude. Whatever the case, I had an instant vision of Sadie and me chasing after this deer and it running from us in terror. This seemed like a nice vision which could, easily enough, be made a reality. Before I could think it through any further, I grabbed Sadie's retractable leash, clipped it to her collar and opened the door.
Sadie blazed across the still snowy deck, hung a quick left through the walkway between sections of deck railing and was in the yard before I could step out the back door. About that time, she reached the end of the retractable leash's range and I suddenly felt myself jerked onto the snowy deck. It then occurred to me that I would never be able to maneuver my way through the walkway and into the yard without slipping on the ice and busting my ass on the deck, so I made a command decision to let go of the leash and save myself some pain. It banged against the railing once and was whipped into the yard, trailing along behind the dog as she bounded for the backside of the hill, just a-barkin'.
"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," I said as Sadie vanished down the hill. It occurred to me at that point that I might have just killed the dog. It was very possible that the handle of the leash would become entangled around a tree and the dog would break her neck, or even slide down the hillside and hang herself. Even then I could hear the leash handle cracking against trees as the dog continued her chase. Then all went silent.
As quickly as I could, I dashed into the yard and then onto my trail leading down the hill. It was slow going, what with the snow and the slippery leaf cover beneath it. I saw no sign of the dog, nor could I hear any indication of where she was at. There were no barks, and no more cracks of the leash handle.
"Sadie?" I called.
Nothing.
"Saaaadie!" I called again.
In the distance, to my left, I heard the sound of crunching in the snow and within a few seconds could see Sadie on her way back, traveling along the deer trail that intertwines with my walking trail. Dragging along behind her was the black plastic leash handle. I called to her some more and she seemed to be trying to get to me, but then the handle wrapped around something and she came to a stop.
I moved along the deer trail, being careful to hold on to whatever little trees I could reach. This was the steeper side of the hill, where going is usually pretty tough without snow and leaves underfoot. A misstep here could potentially mean a slide down the hill toward the rocks and then a considerably steeper slide down to the lower road beyond that. After a minute or so I reached where Sadie was hung and unwrapped the leash handle. It seemed broken, as the leash wasn't retracting into the handle. Then I saw that the reason for this was because it had been pulled through the two halves of the plastic housing and was pinched between them. Once I'd freed it with my now icy numb hands, it retracted a little, but not as enthusiastically as usual.
At this point, we were closer to the bottom of the hill than the top. From where we were, I reasoned it would probably be easier to move along the side of the hill and then down to the road at the bottom, where we could walk back on the road, which would lead a bit more gradually back up the hill (where we recently were attacked by yellow-jackets) and to the street in front of our house. Before I could put this plan into action, though, Sadie tried to climb up the hillside, wrapped the leash around another small tree and then slipped in the snow and slid past me and back down the hill, coming to the end of her rope, so to speak. That's when I realized that even if we were to try and make it to the bottom of the hill, doing so with a leashed dog was unlikely to work out well because of all the little trees she could get tangled around. That said, I sat down in the snow and slid on my butt down to her level, at which point I unclipped the leash from her collar and set her free. She vanished back up the hillside, no doubt in search of deer.
Once I'd freed the leash from the tree again, I too began the long trek back up the hill. By then I'd retrieved my gloves from my coat pockets, which helped quite a bit with the numb fingers, but going was still very slow. After a few minutes, I made it to the lower section of my trail and followed it up to the back yard, where Sadie was nowhere to be found.
Eventually she did turn up, but refused to get near enough for me to grab her. I tried my usual tactic of offering her a ride in the car, which is often enticement enough to come in, but not this time. She just moved further into the neighborhood and then down the hill toward the lower road, me following along. After 20 minutes of coaxing, she came within ten feet of the open car door, where I stood offering her safe passage and no repercussions for her disobedience (being as how it was my fault for letting her out in the first place). You could see decisions being weighed in her little doggy mind. Finally, though, she looked at me plaintively, as if to say, "I know I'm in such huge trouble, Pa, but I gotta run free while I have the chance." And off she dashed.
I gave a defeated cry of "NOOOOO!" but knew there was no use in standing in the street screaming at her. The neighbors probably think I'm nutty as it is. Instead, I climbed into the car and drove on to my errands. And when I returned, an hour or so later, Sadie was waiting at the back door to come in.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Thanksgiving
I don't believe I ever told this story on the old blog, for it's a tale that actually pre-dates the old blog by a year or so.
Back in 2002, the wife and I were headed south to North Carolina to spend Thanksgiving with my in-laws. Being a student at the time, she didn't get out of class until late Wednesday afternoon, so we got a late start leaving town. The traffic on I-77 wasn't bad most of our way to North Carolina, at least not the southbound side of the road. The northbound side was glutted, because most folks raised in WV flee the state in search of a place that has ready employment and only come back for Holidays.
At around 11:30 p.m. we had just pulled off of I-77 onto I-40, near Statesville and found ourselves in some truly thick holiday traffic. It would be around half an hour before we reached the inlaws' place near Hickory. Up ahead, the cars seemed to be moving along at a nice clip, even with most of them in the slow lane.
Ten minutes later some activity caught my eye in the road up ahead and I couldn't tell what I was seeing at first. Around a quarter of a mile away I could see a pair of red lights spinning in a circle, like reflectors going round a bicycle wheel. Then I realized that what I was looking at were the tail lights of a car literally tumbling down the interstate.
The traffic in the slow lane became suddenly slower as drivers began braking. I checked my mirror and saw no one coming in the fast lane, so I whipped into it to help avoid the crush. I braked as gradually as I could, because I knew that with a sudden accident like this people behind us might not be aware of the situation and might plow into us causing another accident if we were to halt too quickly. The potential for a multi-car pileup was very real.
By the time we came to a stop, we were near the front of the fast lane line, with only one car between us and the now stationary vehicle that had been tumbling moments before. It was a blue Chevy Blazer, lying on its roof in the middle of the interstate, blocking both lanes.
“I have to help," the wife said. She wasn’t just being altruistic. She was only a second year student, at that point, but as a medical professional in training she had an obligation to help when presented with a need—and after such a tumble, the driver of this vehicle would no doubt be in such need.
We got out of our car, stepping into the 28 degree North Carolina cold and headed for the Blazer. Its driver's side was facing toward us, its roof partially crushed and all the windows smashed. There were bits of broken glass everywhere. A woman, was trying to crawl out of the driver’s side window. Somewhere I could hear a cell phone ringing. My wife rushed over to the driver.
Other people had come from their cars by now and were standing around gawking, much like I was. I felt sort of useless, standing there in the cold with no idea what to do. I had no medical training. I didn’t even know CPR, but at the very least, I decided, I could run interference for those who did.
“Does anyone have a cell phone?” I shouted into the growing crowd of onlookers.
“I do,” a nearby man said. He held it up for a visual aid, but made no move to actually use it to call for help. I waited a few seconds for this to dawn on him, but it didn’t.
“Call 9-1-1!” I told him.
“Oh... Yeah,” he said and began dialing.
That done, I began looking for my next task.
It was really cold. I was standing there in a long sleeve shirt having left my coat in the car. I ran back our car and retrieved our coats. While I was at it, I grabbed the penlight I keep in the armrest compartment, just in case we'd need it. Then I dashed back to the scene.
As I handed the wife her coat, she said, "Go back and get the blanket out of the trunk." I hadn't realized we'd packed a blanket, but as it turns out it had been packed in case of an emergency. As the wife later told me, when she was growing up in Alaska her father always used to stress how important it was for her and her sister to always have supplies packed in their cars—like blankets, matches and candles—in case they ever became stranded out in below zero temperatures. In such conditions, having a blanket and a candle could mean the difference between life and death.
I brought the blanket back and my wife wrapped it around the driver, who was still only partially out of the Blazer's window. She seemed incoherent at first, but kept insisting, “Answer my phone… answer my phone.” That's when I realized that the cell phone I had heard ringing earlier—that I could still hear ringing then—belonged to the driver. Another man standing there followed the sound to the phone, lying in the grass by the side of the road. He picked it up and answered it. I only heard part of his conversation with the driver's husband, but it amounted to him breaking the news to the husband that his wife had just been in an accident and was now hanging out of her upside down blazer.
What the driver of the Blazer said next, however, completely chilled me beyond the cold of the weather.
“Where’s my baby?”
“Oh, shit,” I said. Two of the other men standing near turned and bolted for the other side of the vehicle. I followed. Another person was already on the other side of the vehicle and had opened up the back door, revealing a section of blackness. I took out my light and aimed it into the Blazer's back seat, afraid of what it might show. The light fell upon the face of an infant that was awake, quiet, and still seated in a child-safety seat. The seat itself was not strapped in upside down, as you'd expect, but was instead resting upright on the interior roof of the Blazer, having somehow come loose from its seatbelt harness and tumbled right side up. The child in the seat blinked up at us in surprise, but wasn’t crying and seemed completely unhurt. While I provided light, one of the other men retrieved the car seat and then we all walked around to show the mother her kid was fine. The baby was then taken to the nearest warm car to get it out of the cold.
More people were on the scene, standing in nearly every available space around us. Some were trying to be useful by using whatever bits of the car they could find to scrape broken glass onto the shoulder of the road. Meanwhile the wife and some other bystanders were crouched around the driver as she talked on her cell phone to her husband, who had been traveling in a separate car along the same stretch of road and who was then trying desperately to get back to the scene of the accident. From what we gathered, the driver had originally lost control of her vehicle while trying to reach for her cell phone to answer a call from him earlier.
Soon enough, the husband himself had made it to the scene. And within twenty minutes, an ambulance, a fire/rescue truck and a tow truck had reached the accident scene, having driven up the empty section of I-40 this accident had blocked. The driver was loaded up and taken off to the hospital. Her blazer was then pulled out of the middle of the road and soon enough everyone returned to their cars and resumed their collective journey, I'm sure a lot more thankful then when they stopped.
Back in 2002, the wife and I were headed south to North Carolina to spend Thanksgiving with my in-laws. Being a student at the time, she didn't get out of class until late Wednesday afternoon, so we got a late start leaving town. The traffic on I-77 wasn't bad most of our way to North Carolina, at least not the southbound side of the road. The northbound side was glutted, because most folks raised in WV flee the state in search of a place that has ready employment and only come back for Holidays.
At around 11:30 p.m. we had just pulled off of I-77 onto I-40, near Statesville and found ourselves in some truly thick holiday traffic. It would be around half an hour before we reached the inlaws' place near Hickory. Up ahead, the cars seemed to be moving along at a nice clip, even with most of them in the slow lane.
Ten minutes later some activity caught my eye in the road up ahead and I couldn't tell what I was seeing at first. Around a quarter of a mile away I could see a pair of red lights spinning in a circle, like reflectors going round a bicycle wheel. Then I realized that what I was looking at were the tail lights of a car literally tumbling down the interstate.
The traffic in the slow lane became suddenly slower as drivers began braking. I checked my mirror and saw no one coming in the fast lane, so I whipped into it to help avoid the crush. I braked as gradually as I could, because I knew that with a sudden accident like this people behind us might not be aware of the situation and might plow into us causing another accident if we were to halt too quickly. The potential for a multi-car pileup was very real.
By the time we came to a stop, we were near the front of the fast lane line, with only one car between us and the now stationary vehicle that had been tumbling moments before. It was a blue Chevy Blazer, lying on its roof in the middle of the interstate, blocking both lanes.
“I have to help," the wife said. She wasn’t just being altruistic. She was only a second year student, at that point, but as a medical professional in training she had an obligation to help when presented with a need—and after such a tumble, the driver of this vehicle would no doubt be in such need.
We got out of our car, stepping into the 28 degree North Carolina cold and headed for the Blazer. Its driver's side was facing toward us, its roof partially crushed and all the windows smashed. There were bits of broken glass everywhere. A woman, was trying to crawl out of the driver’s side window. Somewhere I could hear a cell phone ringing. My wife rushed over to the driver.
Other people had come from their cars by now and were standing around gawking, much like I was. I felt sort of useless, standing there in the cold with no idea what to do. I had no medical training. I didn’t even know CPR, but at the very least, I decided, I could run interference for those who did.
“Does anyone have a cell phone?” I shouted into the growing crowd of onlookers.
“I do,” a nearby man said. He held it up for a visual aid, but made no move to actually use it to call for help. I waited a few seconds for this to dawn on him, but it didn’t.
“Call 9-1-1!” I told him.
“Oh... Yeah,” he said and began dialing.
That done, I began looking for my next task.
It was really cold. I was standing there in a long sleeve shirt having left my coat in the car. I ran back our car and retrieved our coats. While I was at it, I grabbed the penlight I keep in the armrest compartment, just in case we'd need it. Then I dashed back to the scene.
As I handed the wife her coat, she said, "Go back and get the blanket out of the trunk." I hadn't realized we'd packed a blanket, but as it turns out it had been packed in case of an emergency. As the wife later told me, when she was growing up in Alaska her father always used to stress how important it was for her and her sister to always have supplies packed in their cars—like blankets, matches and candles—in case they ever became stranded out in below zero temperatures. In such conditions, having a blanket and a candle could mean the difference between life and death.
I brought the blanket back and my wife wrapped it around the driver, who was still only partially out of the Blazer's window. She seemed incoherent at first, but kept insisting, “Answer my phone… answer my phone.” That's when I realized that the cell phone I had heard ringing earlier—that I could still hear ringing then—belonged to the driver. Another man standing there followed the sound to the phone, lying in the grass by the side of the road. He picked it up and answered it. I only heard part of his conversation with the driver's husband, but it amounted to him breaking the news to the husband that his wife had just been in an accident and was now hanging out of her upside down blazer.
What the driver of the Blazer said next, however, completely chilled me beyond the cold of the weather.
“Where’s my baby?”
“Oh, shit,” I said. Two of the other men standing near turned and bolted for the other side of the vehicle. I followed. Another person was already on the other side of the vehicle and had opened up the back door, revealing a section of blackness. I took out my light and aimed it into the Blazer's back seat, afraid of what it might show. The light fell upon the face of an infant that was awake, quiet, and still seated in a child-safety seat. The seat itself was not strapped in upside down, as you'd expect, but was instead resting upright on the interior roof of the Blazer, having somehow come loose from its seatbelt harness and tumbled right side up. The child in the seat blinked up at us in surprise, but wasn’t crying and seemed completely unhurt. While I provided light, one of the other men retrieved the car seat and then we all walked around to show the mother her kid was fine. The baby was then taken to the nearest warm car to get it out of the cold.
More people were on the scene, standing in nearly every available space around us. Some were trying to be useful by using whatever bits of the car they could find to scrape broken glass onto the shoulder of the road. Meanwhile the wife and some other bystanders were crouched around the driver as she talked on her cell phone to her husband, who had been traveling in a separate car along the same stretch of road and who was then trying desperately to get back to the scene of the accident. From what we gathered, the driver had originally lost control of her vehicle while trying to reach for her cell phone to answer a call from him earlier.
Soon enough, the husband himself had made it to the scene. And within twenty minutes, an ambulance, a fire/rescue truck and a tow truck had reached the accident scene, having driven up the empty section of I-40 this accident had blocked. The driver was loaded up and taken off to the hospital. Her blazer was then pulled out of the middle of the road and soon enough everyone returned to their cars and resumed their collective journey, I'm sure a lot more thankful then when they stopped.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Peril of the Circus Animals
It was an eventful weekend around our house in Borderland. The snowy weather finally managed to look scenic without being bitterly cold and uncomfortable at the same time; we got a lot of work done around the place, in anticipation of T-Day; and we nearly managed to kill both of our pets.T-Day first...
Thanksgiving is occurring at our house, this year, and we have anywhere from three to fourteen people coming to stay with us. This being the case, we've been actively forcing ourselves off our our collective ass in order to finish a lot of the post-moving-in projects we've been meaning to get around to since we moved into this place back in May. You know, things like painting ugly walls, unpacking annoying full boxes, filing annoyingly piled paperwork, unpacking and storing 300 + plus collection of CDs away in annoyingly expensive binders (which also involved gutting and disposing of all the jewel cases), fixing the parquet in the foyer from where it buckled five seconds after we moved in, and figuring out which Tardis we're going to have everyone bed down in.
On Saturday morning, the wife had to go in to see patients at the hospital, so I began tacking down the buckled flooring with finishing nails. It worked brilliantly and I managed to do it in such a way that no one will ever notice there are nails there at all, provided they don't lift the area rug. Moments after finishing the job and feeling quite satisfied and handy about it, I heard the sound of crunching plastic coming from elsewhere in the house. Crunching plastic is never a good sound, particularly with our dog Sadie around. She has mostly stopped chewing up things she's not supposed to, but every now and then she has a relapse and we lose half of an $80 pair of shoes. I followed the sound to our bedroom where I found Sadie lounging atop our bed with the mangled and exposed wires of an electric blanket cord dangling from her mouth, the cord itself plugged directly into an electrical socket.To put this in horrifying image in extra perspective, since the cold and snow have descended on us here in Borderland we've been sleeping with the electric blanket on every night. And, each morning, the wife arises and leaves the blanket on so that I will continue to be warm and snuggly while I sleep through her shower. Usually I get up to go fix breakfast for her, but I almost never turn off the blanket myself. Sometimes I will notice it later in the day. Other times, the wife will notice it later in the evening. This particular Saturday morning, however, the wife had noticed the blanket was still on and had pointed this fact out to me, even going to far as to turn it off in my presence so that I could see an example of how this process is accomplished and, hopefully, apply it to my mornings in the future. Thusly and no thanks to me, because the circuit to that part of the cord was broken by the off-switch in the control box, mid-way up the cord's length, Sadie had not been electrocuted by her indiscriminate chewing. Of course, the reason the cord had been in sight for her to notice in the first place was because I'd taken the dog-hair-encrusted comforter off the bed to wash it, leaving the electric blanket exposed.
I was sickened and infuriated all at once. Leaving aside my own culpability in the matter, the damn dog shouldn't have been chewing cords to begin with. She's only done that sort of thing once before, but I decided to put the fear of God into her over it to head off future indiscretion. So I screamed at her while she was in mid-chew and chased her around the house screaming at her further about how she can't chew on cords and how she nearly killed herself and was never to do that again until I was pretty sure she was about to wet her doggy pants in terror. And before you write and say something like, "Foolish pet-owner, don't you know that dog's can't understand complex sentences screamed at them," she did bloody well too understand me. I know this because when the wife came home and I showed her the cord, the dog took one look at what I had and slunk out of the room with a guilty and fearful expression on her little doggy puss. Mission accomplished.
Cut to mid-afternoon.
Avie Kitty and Sadie Dog are good friends at this point. Whenever we take Sadie out on her leash to potty, Avie sits at the back door and mews to come too. It's very cute, so we often let her come outside, at which point she dashes off to explore the flower bed. The cold and snow don't seem to bother her much and she eventually comes to the door to be let in, or takes refuge somewhere beneath the deck. Only, when Avie came back to the door, seemingly to be let in, she dashed away as soon as I'd opened the door for her.Hours passed, the sky dimmed and it began to grow colder. I stepped out to the edge of the back deck and called the kitty, expecting her to come out from beneath the deck. She didn't, nor was there any rustling to indicate she was even down there. The last time I'd seen her, she'd actually been running away from the deck, so I was betting she was elsewhere entirely. And so went the pattern: I'd go out, call for the cat, she wouldn't come and I'd head back in to repeat the process twenty minutes later. Soon I began walking around the house calling for her, but still no kitty. The wife asked if I was worried about her.
Nah, I said, knowing that cat's are fine outdoors, even in cold, and are prone to wandering. She'd be back.
Of course, it was no coincidence that I decided to have a tuna melt for dinner, nor that I put the remainder of tuna I hadn't used on the back deck as bait. No kitty took it.
As night fell and the temperature began to edge toward the 20s, I couldn't help but feel a bit stressed. The wife, too, began to fret, fearing Avie would freeze to death or that something had devoured her.
"Oh, please," I said. "The dog can't even catch her, so what chance does anything else have?" I went on to espouse my belief that even if Avie was out in the woods somewhere, she would hole up under some leaves or otherwise be perfectly fine in her fur coat. This positivity didn't stop us, though, from bundling up, flashlights in hand and walking around the yard checking treetops for kitties. This search then extended into the trail I've cut into the woods behind our house, then to the street, then down the road, all the while calling, "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty," at nearly 10 o'clock at night. No cat. And none of the tuna had been touched when we returned.
Sadness and parental worry in our hearts, we realized there wasn't much else we could do but pray, so we headed to bed, where we worried further, not sleeping.
Just before turning off my light, I decided to fetch the scarf my mother-in-law had given me when we first brought Avie home from her house, which is Avie's favorite item to sleep on. I opened the back door and put it down next to the can of tuna. The tuna had not been touched. Then, just in case, I called, "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty."
From beneath the deck, I heard a stirring in the leaves, then Avie poked her head out and climbed up onto the deck. I picked her up and gave her a smooch on her kitty head. She wasn't the least bit cold. I snatched up the tuna can so she could have some before I realized it was frozen solid.
The wife didn't even look up as I set the cat on the bed and only noticed Avie after the kitty she touched the wife's arm with her nose.
"Where was she?"
"Under the deck," I said.
The wife's eyes narrowed.
"If she was under there the whole time, I'm going to kill her."
We decided it was best to think she was just stuck up a tree for a while.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Welcome
Hola and welcome to my new blog, Borderland Tales.
For those of you who are new to the program, this is a thematic sequel to my previous effort Tales from the "Liberry", a blog that chronicled five years of my exploits as a "liberry" ninja working in a library in the Tri-Metro area of small West Virginia towns. Being as how I moved away from Tri-Metro to the somewhat larger and semi-cosmopolitan area of Borderland, and am thus no longer employed as a "liberry" ninja, it was thought perhaps a new venue was in order to continue my tales of libraryless, coffee-swilling, boring-ass domesticity. This is it, until such a time as a better theme comes along.
Because I don't have a regular parade of lunatics wandering in front of me to provide blogging fodder, I cannot promise the daily update schedule made famous by TFTL. However, my own bad behavior and the observed bad behavior of other people and/or pets, should suffice for two or three updates per week. I'll also likely import a few of my previous "liberry-free" exploits to help add some backstory.
I was going to call this place Tales from the Borderland, but some other jerkweed writer already took that. So Borderland Tales it is.
For those of you who are new to the program, this is a thematic sequel to my previous effort Tales from the "Liberry", a blog that chronicled five years of my exploits as a "liberry" ninja working in a library in the Tri-Metro area of small West Virginia towns. Being as how I moved away from Tri-Metro to the somewhat larger and semi-cosmopolitan area of Borderland, and am thus no longer employed as a "liberry" ninja, it was thought perhaps a new venue was in order to continue my tales of libraryless, coffee-swilling, boring-ass domesticity. This is it, until such a time as a better theme comes along.
Because I don't have a regular parade of lunatics wandering in front of me to provide blogging fodder, I cannot promise the daily update schedule made famous by TFTL. However, my own bad behavior and the observed bad behavior of other people and/or pets, should suffice for two or three updates per week. I'll also likely import a few of my previous "liberry-free" exploits to help add some backstory.
I was going to call this place Tales from the Borderland, but some other jerkweed writer already took that. So Borderland Tales it is.
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