Red Light House

Congratulations to Kevin and Clea for pulling off the best wedding of all time. This was the first wedding I’ve ever been to that made me well up a little and Sammi caught me brushing some strange wetness away from my eyes. I blamed allergies.

Porkchop and Nostalgika played during the reception which was its own added stress to the night. Porkchop played a wedding a couple years ago and we had a really hard time getting set up and figuring out the sound issues so I was definitely nervous about a repeat of that experience. But I guess the extra years of gigging and practicing have paid off because set up and sound went smoothly and the two sets of music sounded really great. The cops even got called because of noise complaints around the country club we were playing. How many wedding receptions in Napa have the cops called on them? This should be a point of pride for Kevin and Clea as they go down that long road of life together.

One of the things Sammi and I learned during the whole home-buying process is that sometimes your real estate agents will give you stuff to make sure you buy the place.  We learned they sometimes help pay for some of the moving costs or do other nice things to smooth the process along; like keep a continuous I.V. drip of Gentleman Jack coursing through your veins at all times.  Which just makes good business sense for them.  Our agent got us a Home Warranty for a year, which would cover repairs to the appliances left there by the previous occupants.  Because, seriously, who knows what people do with their dish washers when no one is looking.

Well, whatever those sick, demented souls did it caused the front burner of our stove to go on the fritz.  The igniter for that burner didn’t work causing us to have to put a flame, an actual flame held by our actual hands, to the burner to light it.  Impossible.  This simply would not do so I called the Home Warranty place and gave them all the particulars.  The lady on the phone then told me they’d call a repair place in town, who would then call me to set up an appointment.

Two days later, just when I was thinking that I’d have been better off calling an appliance repair place myself, I got a call from a very gruff man with an incredibly thick Russian accent.  Realizing that I have no gambling debts outstanding I deduced that this was the repair guy and scheduled a time for him to come in.

A couple days after that the man and his son came over and took the stove completely apart, making banging noises and having loud conversations in Russian on their cell phones.  Two hours later they had the stove back together and told me that they’d need to order a new part for it.  They would call the warranty agency to approve the funds for the part and then get back in touch with me to schedule the repair.  He then asked me if I knew what model number the stove was.  I looked at him for a minute, much in the way my dog used to look at me when I asked her to finish my pre-calc homework in high school.  With my head cocked at that angle I noticed a screw on the ground.  I picked it up and handed it to him.

“Does this go somewhere?” I asked.

“Ah, yes we were looking for that.” he said and screwed it into the face plate of the stove.

Sweet.

A month and 3 or 4 phone calls later I finally got the guys scheduled to come back and fix the stove.  They got to the house around 4:30pm and told me that it was the computer in the stove that wasn’t working.  It wasn’t sending the signal to the igniter to spark.  I was amazed that the stove used a computer to light the burners, and I was grateful that it didn’t malfunction in a more profound way and explode in my face or suck all the oxygen out of the kitchen.  Anyway, 2 hours and a lot more banging (more so than I’d think you’d have working with electrical components) the stove was put back together and working perfectly.

I’d been hiding in the front room while they’d been fixing the stove and when they called out that they were done I walked into the kitchen and they were packing up their tools with sublimely unhappy expressions on their faces.

“Was that fun?” I asked.  I held out the check for the small portion of the repair we had to pay for (thanks Home Warranty!).

“No.” They said and took the check.  And I showed them to the door.

I just read this article about the “Forever Stamps” the US Postal Service started offering last month. The Forever Stamps are stamps bought at 41 cents but will be good for eternity…pretty nifty huh? Basically the article says that Stamp prices are rising slower than inflation, so it’s really not getting any more expensive to send a letter. Thus, the Forever Stamp is not a good investment. Damn.

Now, I have to admit that I bought some Forever Stamps. Actually I bought quite a few. I was at the post office the other week and saw the posters and when I got up to the desk I asked about the stamps, learned that they only come in books of 20 and with my very limited math skills I said, “Well I guess you better give me 10 books.” $82 bucks later I bring the stamps home and sheepishly admit to Sammi that I somehow bought enough stamps to last us for the next 18 years or so. She shook her head in the way she does when I do something stupid. $82 spent on stamps, that could have been better enjoyed on a fine assortment of goat cheeses or bourbon based cocktails…something we both enjoy.

However, while I’m no “economist” or really understand the implications surrounding “inflation” or “money” at all, I do know that it’s a total pain in the ass to buy stamps. It’s an even bigger pain in the ass to have a bunch of outdated stamps and have to buy MORE stamps to add value to the old stamps. So assuming we don’t lose the bag of stamps I stashed in our desk drawer — which is a very real possibility — I think we’re going to come out of this winners. Don’t expect to get any letters from me or anything, but we’re still all winners.

I had my birthday party in the back room of Annie’s Social Club where they do the Punk Rock ‘n Schlock Karaoke, or “Cool Kids Karaoke” as I told my folks. There was another 30th birthday going on at the same time and it was a costume party. Here I am with the other birthday boy singing “Feel Like Makin’ Love” by Bad Company. I was a better singer, but his legs are the real winners.

Thanks to Brunn for the picture.

I friggin’ love this picture.

I was paying for my latest super-awesome hair cut when the UPS guy came in to give Marco, my, ummm stylist? Barber? Hair cutter? What do call the straight man who cuts your hair? A rarity? Marco, the rarity who cuts my hair, accepted the package and when I looked at it questioningly he told me it was some scissors that he sent off to be sharpened.

“Where does one send scissors to be sharpened?” I asked.

“Montana,” he said after looking at the return address.

“It’s cheaper to send scissors to Montana to be sharpened than to buy a new par?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“How much, does a new pair of scissors cost?”

“Around $800,” he said, “on sale you can get them for $600. But they can go up to thousand.”

“Wow.” I said, suddenly feeling like my $20 pair kitchen shears were not so impressive at all.

It seems all my thoughts are turning towards my slow deterioration, but so be it.

Sammi and I spent an hour or so on Sunday morning scrubbing the grime off of our patio chairs. Clearly at one time they used to be white, but as they had been left by our house’s previous occupants we had to take that on faith. I was grateful they had left us their patio furniture, but I was not grateful that they left them the color of dish water. We’d been able to put off the cleaning of the chairs for several weeks by promising each other that we’d “Buy some sort of cleaner for it” as if there’s some magical product especially for cleaning patio furniture (and there may, indeed, be) that would melt off the dirt and grime instantly. Alas we finally just bit the bullet and walked out there with a bucket of warm water, a scrub brush and some Lysol Bathroom Cleaner (with Bleach!). And I have to say that it worked pretty well. It took some elbow grease but the dirt did come off of the mesh-like material that made up the seat and backs of the chairs, and the arms and legs of the chair just needed some scrubbing to get the crap off of it. There was also the added benefit of making our patio furniture smell like a bathroom. In a nice, clean way.

Now I’m feeling just how not-cut-out I am for manual labor as my shoulder is sore from all the scrubbing.  If the cleaning had involved some typing and mouse-clicks then let me tell you I’d be feeling chipper as a chipmunk, but no such luck.

I’m looking forward to doing some sweeping soon and dislocating a hip or some other such non-sense.

It’s no coincidence that I managed to pull a groin muscle playing ping-pong 12 days from my 30th birthday. The last time I felt this particular twinge in that particular location I was pitching for my co-ed slow pitch softball team. Which is only slightly less embarrassing if you think about it.