The Unavoidable Pun

So I woke up this morning feeling ambitious -
Okay, that's a lie. I didn't feel the least bit ambitious.
However, I'd made up my mind that I was going to get a lot of shit done, so, despite my lack of ambition, I set about getting said shit done pretty early on.
I started off by finishing up mowing the side yard. My lawn was so overgrown that I kept using up the charge in my mower's battery just trying to cut the grass in the front and side yesterday afternoon - under conditions of less unrestrained growth the battery usually lasts long enough to mow the entire yard, with electricity to spare - and eventually ran out of daylight before I could get it charged enough to finish the remaining patch of grass.
So, with the mower fully-charged this morning, I finished up the side yard, put the laundry going, and set about mowing the backyard, which was even more overgrown than the front and side, and quickly burned up a full night's charge.
Leaving the mower charging, I got to work on the primary task of the day: cleaning the house.
I started out in the master bathroom and made my way outward from there, dusting and vacuuming the entire upstairs, clearing out a lot of junk I don't need any more, and getting at least a start on organizing my comics (more on that in a bit).
This took forever, in part because I had to stop to finish mowing the lawn, fold and put away the laundry, and try to squeeze in some kind of lunch.
Eventually I made my way downstairs - after even vacuuming the stairs - and finally making my way to the kitchen. I finally got around to taking down the light fixture and cleaning it out, finally removing the corpse of the dead cricket that had probably been there since before I even moved into the house.
It had been my intention to break out the steam cleaner on the carpet downstairs, but by the time I was ready for that - and here I must pause to apologize, but the pun is truly unavoidable - I had run out of steam.
Still, I'd given the place a good, thorough cleaming. I didn't wash the windows, but I did open them all up to let in some fresh air to help with the overall feeling of cleanness.
Originally I'd planned to also do some additional yard work beyond the mowing, but I had realized last night that I'd probably be biting off more than I could chew, so that work, like the carpet cleaning, will be a project for another time.
Even though the house is mostly clean - with the exceptions of the windows and the un-steamed carpet - I've come to realize that, for me at least, it's impossible to get everything perfectly clean. And it's not like I did a half-assed job, or that I don't know what I'm doing - I used to clean for a living, after all - it's just that the being at least slightly dirty seems to be the natural state of things. No matter what you do, there will always be dust, for example. I have to admit that the thought that most of the dust in the house is skin kind of grosses me out, though not as much as the thought that not all of it is my skin.
And in the kitchen I swept the floor, vacuumed it, swept it again, and mopped it, and yet as I walk across it barefoot there are still random, unidentifiable hard bits of crud digging into my soles.
So why did I bother with this again? Oh, right, to impress Scott, just because when he was last here I commented on my shame about what a mess this place was and he told me that I didn't have to impress him. Well, you'd better be impressed now, dammit, whether you need to be or not.
Speaking of Scott, a while back, looking at the disorganized piles of comics threatening to fill up the room I call the library, he'd suggested that I get a bunch of bags and boards so that he and I could pass the time on Riff Trax nights bagging and boarding the comics rather than stuffing our faces with snacks.
(I submit that we're talented enough to do both)
So, taking the bags and boards I had on hand, we set to the task last Wednesday. Yesterday when I stopped at the comic shop I bought a few hundred more bags and boards - which is not nearly enough - and I did some bagging and boarding yesterday and today.
In any case, while were bagging and boarding on Wednesday I commented on how it was only one part of what needs to be done, as they still need to be organized, archived, and entered into my database.
While I appreciate Scott's efforts in helping me with the task, there's a question that naturally arises: Can't someone else do it?
I mean, seriously, I just want to read comics and then keep them afterwards, I don't want to organize, index, and archive them.
I'm sure I could probably hire someone to do it, but I don't want to spend money, either.
I suggested to Scott that maybe I should use OK Cupid to try to find someone who will organize my comics for me rather than trying to find a date.
I should change my self-summary to say "You don't have to be my girlfriend, I just want you to organize my comics for me."
I mean, it's win-win; I get someone to organize and archive my comics, and the woman gets a reason to get out of her house for a while. She wouldn't even have to feign interest in me in order to spare my feelings, or have to worry about being seen in public with me.
Honestly, I'd probably have better luck with finding someone to do that than finding someone to be my girlfriend with the way OK Cupid's been "working" for me.
For as much as I'm accused of being too picky, the fact of the matter is that age - and desperation - has broadened the range of what I consider physically attractive by a wide margin, and even when I was younger the range was already pretty broad.
And yet despite that the number of "matches" OK Cupid finds for me still manage to fall outside that range. It's kind of uncanny.
The weirdest thing is that the photos of most of the matches, who are women in their thirties now, look like they're of women who were in their forties twenty or twenty-five years ago.
I mean, the pictures themselves look like scans of grainy Polariods taken sometime around 1982, but the hairstyles and the clothes the women are sporting look like they're circa that era as well.
It's baffling.
A while back I got an e-mail from OK Cupid with a map showing me where my best matches are located. Not only was Virginia not one of the states listed, but none of the three other states I've lived in made the list.
(Bonus question: What other three states has Jon lived in?)
The states listed aren't even geographically contiguous, and are scattered all about the country.
The map also showed where my best matches are worldwide. Top of the list? Israel.
I mean, sure, Israel is fine - Natalie Portman was born there, so that's a point in its favor (Yes, that Natalie Portman was born there is much more important to me than the widely-held belief that the Messiah was also born in that area) - and it's hardly as though I'm even slightly anti-Semitc (cf: Portman, Natalie and Johansson, Scarlett), but even so, Israel???
Oy vey.
I didn't do a whole lot in the way of organizing my comics today. In fact, I didn't do much to organize them at all, apart from separating out the ones that need to be bagged and boarded from the ones that already are.
When we ran out of bags and boards the other night I looked at the piles left and thought, "Oh, that's not so bad." Later I remembered that not all of the comics that are in boxes are actually bagged and boarded. Today I discovered that in addition to the multiple stacks outside of the boxes there are two and a quarter longboxes' worth of comics still needing to be bagged and boarded (and organized, and entered into my database).
I thought that the company that makes the comic book database program I use sold a bar code reader to help automate the process of inputting comics into the database, but it turns out that while they sell readers for most of their other database programs (book databases, movie databases, game databases), they don't have one for the comics program.
*Sigh*
In any case, that's pretty much all that's been going on.

A Conversation

A conversation at work:

(Male) Co-worker: So I went to a baby shower yesterday and -
Me: You know you're a guy, right?

(Not much else going on; I got home from work and mowed the lawn, since it's supposed to start raining again and do so for pretty much the rest of the week. Still, I thought I'd share this.)

The Perils Of Vampire Flesh

Yesterday I headed to Ashburn for Earth Day @ Loudoun to show my support for NOVA Green Team, which was one of the sponsors of the event.
Everything was geared mostly towards kids, which meant that having fully functional legs and actually knowing how to work was almost a liability, what with all the strollers and toddlers and generally unsteady-on-their-feet little creatures.
The one positive thing about all of the kids there were the hot young mothers wearing strapless and low cut tops who had to periodically bend down to tend to the little monsters darlings.
Before heading over there I hadn’t eaten anything other than a cookie, as I figured I’d eat while I was there.
It took me a while to remember that I should eat something, and by the time I did the lines were too long and it wasn’t really too much longer before the event would be over, so I decided to just wait and stop someplace on the way home.
This meant that I didn’t end up eating anything until sometime around 3:30, and this was after having spent hours standing in the hot sun and getting pretty well singed, as is the peril that comes from having vampire skin.
After eating I decided to try out the new mower. I figured that despite the beating I’d taken from the sun I’d be okay, as the parts of the lawn I mowed were mostly in the shade by that time. Even so, the heat was pretty brutal and I was pretty shaky and weak for the rest of the evening.
Today I finished off the lawn by mowing the backyard, finding that without the cord it only takes about a third as long as it used to take.
And that’s pretty much all that is going on or has gone on since my last post.

The Virginia Chainsaw Massacre

Oh my god, Jon has a chainsaw! Everybody run!

Or, you know, not.
As much as it annoys me when people make “serial killer” comments about me, alluding to the fact that I’m kind of weird, angry, quiet, and keep to myself, there are times when it’s difficult to avoid making snide comments about it myself.
Like when I buy a chainsaw.
But yeah, the “serial killer comments really do annoy me. Not all angry, quiet, weirdo loners are vicious murdering sociopaths, after all. Hearing those comments makes me so angry that I find myself wanting to methodically hunt down the people who make them, kill them, eat their hearts, skin them, and hang their skulls on my wall.
Kidding!
(Okay, so maybe I do bear some responsibility for perpetuating the serial killer image.)
In any case, yesterday when I got home from work I decided that I should take advantage of the break from the rain and mow the lawn.
I didn’t have quite enough energy to do the whole lawn, so I just did the back yard, as it gets a lot more sunlight than the front and side do and thus tends to grow more rapidly.
Before mowing, though, I figured I should do some hedge trimming so that I could use the mower to mulch up the trimmings.
There are two tree/hedge things growing in front of my fence on either side of the gate, and their branches have grown through the openings in the fence, and that kind of annoys me, as it just looks stupid. Last year I trimmed them as much as I could, but some of the branches were too thick for the trimmer to cut through.
Hence the chainsaw.
I’d seen the chainsaw last year and thought about buying it, as it uses the same interchangeable battery as the rest of my lawn equipment, but had never gotten around to it. So this morning I headed to Lowe’s, as it was the only place I knew that sold the chainsaw, and finally picked one up.
About a week after I bought my corded electric mower last year I saw an ad for a cordless, battery-powered version, which elicited a predictable response from me (which is to say that I loudly proclaimed “Fuck!” at the TV).
Mostly out of curiosity I kind of looked around to see if any place sold the mower, but didn’t find it anywhere.
Lately I’ve been seeing ads for some other battery-powered mower that looked interesting (Free edging attachment!), but it was one of those annoying “Call now to receive our informational DVD” things.
Thinking, “I’m not ordering a damn DVD,” I decided to check out the Web site, assuming that in the 21st Century any sensible company would put the appropriate information on its site.
Nope. The site is nothing but an order form for the DVD.
Listen, Neuton; fuck you and your DVD, all right?
Anyway, the point is that while I was at Lowe’s I saw the battery-powered version of my mower and found myself sorely tempted.
After all, the awkward shape of my property makes dealing with the extension cord plugged into my mower a huge pain in the ass, and the cord is the primary reason I put off mowing as much as I do.
I didn’t buy it, simply because there’s no way it would have fit in my car. I suppose that if I do decide to buy it I’ll have to shanghai Scott and his minivan, though Home Depot does rent out trucks for $19 for the first 76 minutes, which would be plenty of time to pick up the mower, drop it off at home, and bring the truck back, and the irony of renting a truck from Home Depot in order to buy something from Lowe’s would be rather entertaining.
Of course, the other problem is the question of what to do with my old mower. I mean, I just dropped a couple of hundred bucks on it less than a year ago. I suppose I could try selling it on Craigslist or something, but that seems like too much effort.
(Yes, that’s right; posting an ad on Craigslist is too much effort.)
That laziness (and generosity of spirit, of course, because I’m such a swell guy) is why I usually prefer to just give things away when I don’t need them anymore.
So...anyone need an electric mower? One may become available soon.
Anyway, after I got home I assembled the chainsaw and made short work of those recalcitrant branches, and, as I sliced my way through them I thought, “This is freakin’ cool!”
So, finding that now that I was a man with a chainsaw every problem looked like a tree branch, I scanned the yard for other things I could cut.
I ended up cutting down this little tree/hedge in front of the house that seemed to be struggling to live. For some reason most of its branches seemed to be broken and dead. It’s actually kind of weird; the branches seem to just randomly break, as if they’re too weak to support themselves (or some punk kids are coming along and snapping them in an act of petty and retarded vandalism).
So I decided to put it out of its misery.
There was another small hedge kind of hidden behind the hedges next to my door that never seems to grow anything, as it gets very little sunlight, so that got axe chainsaw as well.
Not sure what I’m going to do with the empty space where it used to be, though, as it now looks kind of weird (though better than it did with the dead bundle of branches). There doesn’t seem to be much point in planting anything else there, as it will probably die as well.
There’s still a little pointless tree in the back yard that I want to get rid of, but I figured that I had to stop with the chainsaw and get to mowing the rest of the lawn, so I didn’t get to it.
And that was pretty much my day.

Ahoy, Me Hearties!

Arr! A happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day to all ye scalawags and scurvy dogs! Twas an occasion I meant to mention in yesterday’s post, but me memory has sunk down into the cold and briny depths of Davy Jones’s locker!
Today also proved to be Global Jon Finally Gets Around to Mowing His Lawn Day; me mower were oft tangled in the thick sargassum of me backyard, once leadin’ me circuit breaker to walk the plank. Arr!
Okay, enough of that.
We’ll see if tomorrow or Sunday proves to be Regional Jon Cleans His House Day.
Also of note today was that over at Slacktivist Fred finally finished his five-year long dissection of the first book in the Left Behind series, which is something of a bittersweet occasion. Up next, we all hope, is his dissection of Left Behind: The Movie, followed by book two. Unless he picks up the pace, or scientists figure out how to make us immortal, I don’t foresee any of us surviving to see the day in which he finishes dissecting the three movies and all fifteen remaining books.
Not much else of note happened today. Traffic was at normal levels in the morning, with no inexplicable snarls at the toll plaza. Work proceeded according to the usual method, with nothing particularly noteworthy happening along the way.
The biggest news was the mowing, which, as implied by the pirate-speak, was a bit of a hassle. In the back I had to raise the mower up to its highest level and make one pass, then lower it back down and make another. On the low height it frequently got bogged down by the thick clumps of mulched grass.
But it’s done now, and hopefully a combination of sunlight, frost, and low moisture will keep it from growing too much until the leaves all fall and choke the life out of it.
When I was killing time on Wednesday I saw a (relatively) cheap Blu Ray player, which I might pick up this weekend. Apart from buying the player, I didn’t invest too much into HD DVD, so it won’t be too difficult to make the change. I probably won’t replace my regular DVD collection, but I’ll probably start buying Blu Ray movies in the future. In particular, I want to be able to pick up High Def versions of Iron Man and The Dark Knight when they come out, so that means making the switch. It also means that I can start using my computer to burn Blu Ray discs to play on the TV.
In any case, that will pretty much do it for this entry.

Motivation To Spare

There are people who seem to have unlimited reserves of energy, motivation, and ambition.
I’m not one of them.
The fact is that I only have so much energy, motivation, and ambition available to me, so I have to ration it out, as whatever I have upon waking has to last me for the whole day.
One of the major problems I run into is that I use up a good 80 to 90 percent of it just forcing myself to get out bed in the morning.
Thus today I made sure that getting out of bed was a leisurely, low-energy operation, leaving me sufficient motivation to go out and mow the lawn almost immediately upon getting out of bed, allowing me to beat the worst of the sun and heat, and get it all done before the brief thunderstorm hit.
I had enough motivation left over that, after having a balanced and nutritious breakfast of an ice cream sandwich, I took a shower and headed out into the world to pick up the things that I forgot to pick up yesterday.
Naturally this meant that I was caught outside for the worst of the thunderstorm, which hit its peak just as I got home and was standing outside my car trying to yank out the recalcitrant bags that seemed to know that it was raining and were therefore making the task of removing them from the car much more difficult than it really ought to have been.
Still having some motivation, I looked around the house and decided that it needed a good cleaning, so I got to work.
I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.
That is to say, I’ve been doing a lot of looking around and deciding that the house needs a good cleaning, and then just leaving it at that. Actually acting on that decision has been another matter entirely.
Today, however, was different, and as a result I’ve just finished cleaning up and now the house is all sparkling and Febrezey.
I’m not sure why today was different; maybe I built up some reserves by doing so little – even by my standards – on Friday and Saturday.
Even so, I often say that today will be different, yet that so seldom turns out to be the case.
More accurately, I often say tomorrow will be different, particularly as I’m lying in bed at night and have forgotten just how much effort the simple act of waking up takes on my part, so when tomorrow becomes today I find myself saying, “What the hell were you talking about last night? Today isn’t any different.”

Well, Except For That One Department:
I think a lot of people assume that I don’t like children.
This isn’t true, or at least it’s not true that I have any particular dislike of children that goes beyond my general dislike for the greater mass of humanity.
Certainly I’m not uncomfortable around kids in the way that some people are. After all, I have nieces and nephews who are children (or have been) and whom I love dearly, and I’ve changed more than my share of diapers in my life – far more than my share, when you consider that I have no children of my own – and given that despite any appearances to the contrary, I’m not an inhuman monster, even when I’m out in the world and see some little girl singing a happy little song to herself, or hear some boy asking his dad a bunch of unanswerable questions, my heart will swell, Grinch-like, to three times its normal size and bring a smile – or what passes for one – to my face.
In fact, it usually irritates me when I see a kid do something cute and the kid’s parent(s) doesn’t even notice, or is annoyed by it. It makes me want to stop the parents and say, “Oh come on! Even I thought that was adorable. Why did you even bother having kids if you’re not going to pay attention to them?”
(Bear in mind that none of this makes me actually want to have any kids of my own.)
However, I don’t like noise, and noise and children seem to be inextricably linked, so sure, sometimes, when I’m out trying to get my shopping done or whatever, I will often cringe at the thought (or the reality) of all the kids that are going to be swarming around the store with no concept of “inside voices” or no means of communicating their needs other than through screaming, and I will avoid that kids’ play area at the Dulles Town Center like it’s been quarantined by the CDC, but no, in general, I don’t actively dislike kids.
Except that kid at Target today who was running down the aisles in a serpentine pattern, wildly windmilling his arms as he went.
I do actively dislike him.

"Exciting" New Regular Feature...Prepare To Yawn

So my meeting today wasn’t as long – or painful – as I’d anticipated, though the painlessness was mostly due to the fact that it didn’t last as long as anticipated.
It was originally scheduled to go from 10:30 to 5:00, but some of the participants had a delayed flight, so we didn’t start until 11:30, and it only lasted until about 3:30.
Now, if only we’d actually accomplished something…
When I got home from work I decided to mow the lawn. I didn’t bother saying anything about the bugs that were dive bombing my eyes to the Universe this time around.
I probably could have gotten away with putting off mowing for a few more days, as the grass in the front and side wasn’t really that long, but the grass in the back was all wild and unkempt, so I figured I might as well.
(I just realized; until I mowed it, my yard had a mullet.)
When Scott and Stacy stopped to get tickets for The Dark Knight in IMAX yesterday, they found that it was sold out, so they ended up buying tickets for a Friday night show at the regular theater.
In the meantime, Scott had signed up some free tickets to a Thursday screening at work, and had asked me if I wanted to go with him if he got the tickets, then rescinded the offer, as Stacy, who had no interest in going to the Friday show, decided that she wanted to go to that.
He said that he was sorry to dangle that offer in front of me and then snatch it away, then noted that he’d said “dangle.”
I pointed out that he also said “snatch,” then said, “Is it revelatory that I focused on snatch, while you focused on dangle? Yes. I think it is.”
In any case, Jamie also scored some tickets to the Thursday show, but was not able to find a babysitter so that Casey could go, so she told Scott that I was welcome to go as her guest.
Earlier today Scott e-mailed me to let me know that Neil Gaiman will be at this year’s National Book Festival and that we should go. I agreed, and forwarded his e-mail on to my friend Eric, suggesting that he might also like to go.
It turns out that the Festival is on his wife’s birthday and that she’s thrilled at the prospect of meeting Neil on her birthday, so his response was “97% Yup.”
So that’ll be cool.
I’d posted a MySpace bulletin about the Heroic Portraits update, and in his e-mail to me Eric mentioned that he liked the Gallery and wanted to know if, in regards to Heroic Portraits, I was “getting any love.”
In response, I said, “And no, just like everywhere else, I'm not getting any love on Heroic Portraits.”
Over the past couple of days I’ve gotten hit with the whole “You’re so quiet” thing a few times.
There’s really not much I can say to that (appropriately enough), but I have been thinking about some of the reasons why I am so quiet, and I thought I’d make the exploration of those reasons something of a regular feature here.
So here we have our first installment:

Why is Jon So Quiet?
Because I don’t get much practice talking.
There have been periods in my life in which I’ve gone days without saying a word. Generally, the length of such periods depended on whether or not I needed to stock up on beer and cigarettes, and even then all I’d end up saying is “A pack of Marlboro Lights,” and “Thanks.”
Even now, I don’t have much cause to talk once I get home from work, and the odds are that even before I left work I’d probably been sitting in my cube working on something and not talking to anyone.
So, yeah. Most of my time is spent without having anyone to talk to, so when the opportunity to talk presents itself, I’m not really inclined to take advantage of it, because the odds are that, unaccustomed as I am to speaking, my voice will be hoarse, I’ll stammer or misspeak, or I’ll go off on some rambling, incoherent tangent that has nothing to do with anything.
And I prefer to safe my rambling, incoherent tangents that have nothing to with anything for my Threshold entries.

Waiting For Darkness

I woke up this morning around 6 AM and found that my contact was irritating my right eye for some reason, so I got up and took them out, then went back to bed.
I woke up again around 8, said, “Nope,” and then went back to sleep until about 9.
After devoting much less time than usual to sitting around doing nothing in particular, I went outside and mowed the lawn. After that I broke out the hose and went around the house washing away some of the accumulated spider webs and various bits of grime.
I then showered, dressed, and headed over to Home Depot. It had been my intention to pick up this little Black and Decker chainsaw that uses the same battery as my other lawn equipment, but Home Depot doesn’t actually sell it.
I’d also planned on getting a shop vac, which I did, and while wandering around I saw these solar-powered LED landscape lights that I’d been thinking about buying, so I picked those up as well.
Once I got home I set up the lights in the backyard. Not really knowing how I was going to lay them out, and therefore not knowing how many I’d need, I picked up a 10 pack. After setting them up I decided that I probably need about 4 more. In addition to the 10 pack, they sell 2 packs (I guess the 1o pack qualifies as Biggie), so I’ll probably go back tomorrow and get some more.
In the meantime, I’m sort of waiting for darkness so that I can see how they look.
Before you applaud my amazingly high levels of ambition today, I should point out, in the interest of full disclosure, that I’d intended to do the mowing and the (low) power wash yesterday when I got home from work, but couldn’t bring myself to bother.
So really, I had two day’s worth of ambition to burn off today.
After I finished with the lights I called Dean to see how he was doing. He said he was sore, and that walking is a challenge, but otherwise he’s doing all right. His pain pills were kicking in, so he understandably cut the call short.
All of my ambition wore off at that point, and though I hadn’t taken any pain pills, I was ready for a nap myself, so I took one.
After about two hours I got up, made myself some dinner, and then sat down to write this.
Anyway, once it gets dark I’ll see if I can get a decent picture of the lights and post it.

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.