Phone Phollies

Somewhere along the line on Thursday I lost the stylus for my smartphone.
This was irritating, as it was my replacement stylus; I’d lost the original a couple of months ago at work.
While it’s not impossible to navigate the phone’s touch-screen interface without a stylus, it is kind of a hassle, so on Friday morning at work I went online and found a place that sells replacements in three-packs.
Though I’d ordered replacements, I decided that I didn’t want to have to wait for them to arrive, so when I got home from work, after sitting around for a bit, I decided to head to Best Buy to see if they sold any. They did, so I bought a three-pack from there.
This means, of course, that after the three-pack I ordered arrives, I’ll have six.
But given that I lost two in rapid succession, it seems like having a few extras is a good idea.
Plus Scott is in the same stylus-less boat that I was, and the ones I bought should fit in his phone’s stylus holder, so I’ll probably give him a couple.
After I got home from Best Buy, I got a call from an area code that I didn’t recognize.
When I answered, the woman on the other end said, “Is this Jon?”
I said that it was, and then she said that she was [whatever she said her name was] and that she was calling from Bank of America.
One of my credit cards is from Bank of America, so I said, “Okay…”
She then went on to say that she was calling to follow-up on the e-mail I’d sent to [whatever name she said] about [whatever the e-mail was about].
Confused, I asked her to repeat herself. When she did, I said, “Uhh..nope.”
She responded, “Yesssss,” and then proceeded to talk about the e-mail.
“I didn’t send any e-mail.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Nope.”
“Yessss.”
(She kept stretching out the “Yes” every time.)
Finally, after she talked about how she’d left me a voicemail (“Nope.” “Yesss.”), and how we’d evidently been playing phone tag (“Nope.” “Yesss.”), I interrupted her and said, “Who are you calling for?”
She said, “Jon (or probably “John”) [some last name that started with a G].”
“Well, you haven’t reached him.”
She then stated that she had called [a phone number that’s one number off from mine], and I told her what number she had actually reached.
“Oh, I got the wrong number then.”
“Yessss.”
(I couldn’t resist.)
Last week when I was buying lawn equipment, I later decided, I should have picked up a leaf blower, as Scott had suggested.
So today I went to Home Depot to remedy that mistake. Because I’d bought all Black & Decker equipment, which has interchangeable batteries, I decided that I should pick up the Black & Decker leaf blower that uses the same battery system.
(I also decided that I did need to get a cover for my grill. I had decided not to buy one when Scott suggested it, as I was planning to keep the grill under the roof on my patio, thus keeping it safe from the elements, but I had only been considering rain, not dust. So I ended up buying one today.)
They didn’t have it, so I checked at Target, which, from what I could tell, didn’t sell any sort of lawn equipment beyond the manual type.
So, later, after grilling up some hamburgers, I decided that I needed to go to Wal-Mart, and that while I was at it I might as well stop at Lowe’s. They did sell the leaf blower that I was looking for, but were, of course, sold out.
So I returned home leaf blower-less.
We didn’t get hit with the predicted rain until fairly late in the day, but I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to get in any more hedge trimming. Just didn’t feel up to it.
I did give the house a pretty thorough cleaning, though, so I wasn’t totally lazy and non-productive.

Oh, THAT'S Why I Drank So Much Back Then

As mentioned in the previous post, yesterday was Kathleen’s birthday.
To celebrate, she invited her friends join her at a bar/restaurant, starting at Happy Hour.
I stopped by on the way home from work and stayed for quite some time. Long enough for the temperature to drop sufficiently for those of us still there to move inside from the patio.
While I was there I came to understand why it was that I drank so much when I used to hang out in bars: I needed to be drunk in order to be able to stand being in a bar.
(Well, being a total lush probably had something to do with it as well.)
The place was packed. I shudder to think of what it would be like in there on a weekend.
Eventually my crowd phobia – which bothered me much more than just being in a bar did – drove my discomfort level up, and so I bid my farewells and left.
Among the people really crowding us in were a huge, obnoxious, middle-aged eternal frat boy and a couple of chicks who, along with their boyfriends/guys who were humoring them because they wanted to fuck said chicks, were playing some game that they referred to as “Snaps.”
(I know this because every time they started a new round one of them would say, “The game is Snaps.”)
From what I could glean, the game seemed vaguely akin to Charades, but in execution had more in common with an old Saturday Night Live fake ad for a game called “Mmmm!”
The way the game of “Mmmm!” was played involved teams of two, one of whom had a card with the answer which the other had to guess. The guesser would just shout out random guesses to which the one with the answer would respond “Mmmm!” indicating the “hotness” or “coldness” of the guess via inflection.
So, yeah, bars. Without booze, not so much in the way of entertaining.
Not much in the way of entertainment value at work today either. A very long, excruciatingly slow day.
(To be fair, I did have a pretty good time for the most part, the food was good, and I was glad that Kathleen had a good birthday.)
But at least I made it to the weekend, and all the fun and excitement that promises.
What’s that? Oh, it didn’t promise any fun and excitement? Oh well.

Further Lessons And Birthday Greetings

One other thing I learned from yesterday's adventures in hedge trimming is that swinging the hedge trimmer around and trying to keep it level can be quite a strain on the forearms that takes a toll on pre-existing issues like tendonitis (acquired during my time working as a janitor in college).
Afterwards, a task as simple as holding a glass of milk up to take a drink required the use of two hands: one to hold the glass up, and another to hold it steady. Whenever I'd pick the glass up, my arm would start shaking like Rush Limbaugh making fun of Michael J. Fox.
In any case, the main point of this entry was to send out birthday greetings to Kathleen, who turns mumble mumble today.
Happy Birthday!
(It is, of course, impolite to ask a lady her age, and presumably a gentleman in the know would never reveal it, which is why I'm carefully avoiding any mention of the fact that she is now 36*.)

*Whoops!

What I Learned

With the batteries all charged up when I got home today, I decided to break out the weed whacker and the hedge trimmer and do some more yard work.
The weed whacking was simple enough, but the hedge trimming was something of a learning experience.
Here are the things I learned:

1. There's a fine line between "trimming" and "butchering."
2. I don't know where that line is.
3. When you trim hedges, stuff flies everywhere, sometimes even ending up inside your pants pockets.
4. Bees don't like it when you chop up their hangouts.
5. Trimming my hedges will be an all-day (or most of the day) project.
6. I need a ladder.

Mow, Mow, Mow, How Do You Like Me, How Do You Like Me?

So it stopped raining today and the sun came out long enough to dry things up sufficiently that I was able to mow my lawn when I got home from work.
The mower works pretty well, and I was surprised that the 100' extension cord was long enough to allow me mow my entire front yard while plugged into the outside outlet on the back of the house.
Of course, I can't help but think that Jon + device with spinning blades attached to an extension cord = flirting with disaster, but I did manage to avoid any incidents.
Well, except for causing a circuit breaker to trip a couple of times, as it seems there is an inordinate number of outlets (living room, part of the kitchen, all the upstairs rooms) on the same circuit that the outside outlets are on.
I wasn't sure if it would clear up today or not, so I didn't put the batteries for the weed whacker and hedge trimmer charging yesterday, so that'll have to wait until tomorrow.
After finishing the yard I was feeling pretty manly and decided that I should grill something, so I went to the store, all nasty and dripping with sweat, to pick up some Polish sausage.
I definitely need some practice with the grilling skills.
And that was my big excitement for the day.
Tomorrow's excitement will be the stiffness and pain that will result from today's excitement.

One More For The Checklist

In yesterday's post I neglected to mention one other box on the "Zany Romantic Comedy Checklist."
So, to correct that oversight:

Male lead subjected to an assault on his cotch by some sort of animal? Check.

Le Grill? What The Hell Is THAT?

Lately I’ve found myself adding movies to my Netflix queue that, upon their arrival, make me say, “Why the hell did I pick this piece of crap?”The latest example, which I watched on Friday night, was Good Luck Chuck.
Of course, I do know why I picked that piece of crap:

1. Jessica Alba is hot.
2. The central premise was built around the concept of someone having a “super power” that is very similar to one I possess.
3. Jessica Alba is hot.

I’ll get into point 2 in just a bit, but before that I’ll say that the movie was absolute formulaic dreck that ticked off all the boxes on the “Zany Romantic Comedy Checklist.”
Fat, sassy black lady? Check.
Fat, obnoxious, crude, sex-obsessed best friend? Check.
Amazingly hot female love interest who is almost inhumanly kind, sweet, and nurturing, and who has some kind of endearing quirkiness? Check.
Romantic misunderstanding in which the male lead does exactly the opposite of what he should do, thereby driving the female love interest away? Check.
Big dramatic last-ditch effort to win female love interest back, preferably at an airport? Check.
And of course, somewhere in there the male lead learns some valuable lesson about himself, life, and love, and the fat-ass “comically” douchebaggy best friend manages to find true love of his own.
So yeah, it was crap.
Anyway, the central premise of the movie, for those who don’t know, is that the lead, Charlie/Chuck, was hexed in his youth by a spurned goth girl, making it impossible to find love himself, even as love “falls like rain” all around him.
More specifically, if he sleeps with a woman, she will then almost immediately meet someone else who turns out to be the love of her life. Thus women line up to have their turn with him and then head off to buy a wedding dress in anticipation of meeting their darling dearests.
Years before the movie came out, I wrote a Threshold entry in which I explained that I have a similar ability, though in my case, naturally, it doesn’t require that I actually sleep with a woman in order for her to reap the benefits.
All I have to do is simply become romantically interested, even in the slightest degree, in a woman, and within a year she’ll at the very least be engaged, or, as has happened more often, be married and have a baby.
In every case in which I’m privy to the details of what happened in the lives of the women in whom I’ve been interested, this has proven to be the way things turn out.
(In one instance, the power of my interest was sufficient to get someone who had steadfastly maintained for most of her life that she would never get married to change her thinking on the subject.)
Anyway, the fact that there was a movie built around someone who has a better version of my power (i.e. his power allows him to get laid), was sufficient, when coupled with Alba’s hotness, to make me want to check it out, and it’s not like I didn’t know it was going to be awful going into it.
On Friday Scott came over, by my invitation, so that I could make use of his van to go out and buy some things that wouldn’t fit in my car.
Namely a gas grill and a lawnmower.
Once he arrived we headed off to Home Depot, where I found the aforementioned items, in addition to a weed whacker and a hedge trimmer, and the two of us headed to a register where I prepared to drop a substantial chunk of change.
Before I could do so, however, the cashier asked if I had a Home Depot card. I confessed that I didn’t, and she asked, “Do you want one?”
She then proceeded to talk about the advantages of having one, most notably the fact that I would have no interest and no payments for a year on the day’s purchase if I were to sign up for a card.
So I did.
From there, we went to a grocery store to pick up some brats to cook on the grill after putting it together, and then to Super Target, where I picked up season 3 of Battlestar Galactica for us to watch after the day’s work was done.
Of course, by the time we got the grill assembled and the food cooked, we only had time to watch two episodes before he had to leave.
In any case, I greatly appreciate all of Scott’s help, as even if I’d been able to get the grill home by myself, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to put it together alone. If I had attempted to do so, there’s no doubt it would have turned out almost exactly like Homer’s attempt at putting together a grill on The Simpsons.
(Which provides the title of this entry; after dropping all of the parts in wet cement, Homer grabs the instructions and finds that the English side is unreadable and attempts to follow the French instructions.)
And of course the plan for today was to put my newly-acquired lawn equipment to use, but naturally it’s raining today and is supposed to continue to do so through Wednesday.
After Scott left, I continued watching BSG, and was about to go to bed at around 1 AM after watching one last episode, but at the end of the episode it said, “To be Continued,” which led me to say, as they do on BSG, “Frack!” as it meant staying up for yet another episode.
Today I went out to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things, came home, had lunch, watched an episode of BSG, then decided to try to take a nap, changed my mind, and sat down to write this.
Sometime last week I developed a cold.
It’s always irritating to be sick, but there are a couple of things that serve to enhance my misery. For one thing, the fact that I’ve managed to catch a cold – and a pretty nasty one at that – means that my immune system is no longer as seemingly bulletproof as it’s been for the past 8 years or so. For another, it means I can’t wear my gentle molding lenses, so my vision has been fading more and more each day.
In any case, we’re now up to date, so I think I’m going to go sit on the couch and watch some more BSG and feel miserable. It’s a perfect day for it.
(Pictures of the grill and etc. will be posted someday when it’s a little less gloomy out.)