It Rains and Then . . .

The yard's been fairly dry lately so we were kind of glad to get a thunderstorm through this afternoon. It rained a bunch, then it hailed some - smaller than golf ball, bigger than peas. The rain soaked immediately in to the ground and for the first time I started looking at hail as a time release capsule. Except for the shredded plants and the dents in the car they worked really well. I think Nature just needs to work a little on the delivery system.

When It's Time To Shine On

I’m getting ready for a wedding. Kate’s getting married and the ceremony is in about three hours. We’ve all been assigned tasks. Mine is the shoes. I was in the Navy years ago and Pat thinks all ex-sailors know everything about shining shoes. I also know how to tie a few knots, steer a ship, fold a flag and run a combat solution on radar but Pat has this fixation on shoes. And she wants them shiney

I heard years ago that most girls start planning their wedding when they’re about eight years old. I think that’s true. For most guys, planning a wedding means trying to schedule it so it doesn’t interfere with the fishing opener, any one of the hunting season starts, or a really good ball game. I learned over time the best way for a guy to survive a wedding (and everything that leads up to it) is to keep your head down, say “Yes Dear” a lot, find out where we’re supposed to be, when we’re supposed to be there and what we’re supposed to wear. When the women ask a question they don’t want an answer. They want affirmation. “Yes, Dear.” And I learned to never, ever get caught in the cross fire between the bride, the mother, the mother-in-law or any other woman involved to the planning or execution of The Wedding.

I’ve been keeping my head down a lot the last few months and have managed to stay out of the firing line. When it came to the shoes I gave the appropriate response (Yes, Dear”) and now I’m looking at several scuffed pairs and a fresh can of Kiwi wax polish.

There is actually a method for getting a mirror shine on shoes. If you look closely at the shoe leather you’ll see pores in the cow hide. The trick is to rub in enough wax polish on the shoe to fill the pores, then put another coat on top and buff very lightly with a cotton pad. Do it right and you can actually see reflections. It takes hours to get there and I’m not doing it.

I did know a guy on the ship who used another method. He found an old pair of paint spattered boondockers in a trash can one day as we were finishing work. He tried them on and they fit so he took them to the paint gear locker and used sandpaper to get down to bare leather. He painted them black and after the paint dried he put on a couple of coats of varnish. This wasn’t a recommended way to do things but for an inspection a week later the rest of us were filling pores with paste wax while he just pulled the boondockers out, dusted them off and was good to go. He got a compliment from the Captain on the quality of his shoe shine while the rest of us stood in formation watching the tropical sun melt our shoe wax into a cloudy glob.

When the varnish cracked on the guy’s shoes he’d just sand them down and paint and varnish them again. The boondockers were good for three sandings before they wore through. Then he found another pair and started over.

I thought about him as I was polishing the wedding shoes. I didn’t give them a mirror finish but they had a fairly good shine. They should be okay. If not, for next time there’s some black paint in the basement. And I know where we keep the varnish.

Traffic Signs

I get along with most traffic signs. I stop at the stop ones, yield at the yield ones and move over when a sign tells me my lane’s going to end. It took a while to get used to the international ones like the red circle one with the white bar that essentially tells me I’m not welcome on whatever road or driveway its posted in or the red circle one with the diagonal line that tells me not to do something or if I am doing it to quit before I get in the line of sight of the next cop or state patrol trooper.

The signs I have a little trouble with are the warning signs – the yellow square one tipped on end to look like a diamond shape. The ones that tell you to slow down for the next curve can usually be ignored. At least I do. Most of the time, I find I can go 15mph over what the sign suggests without much effect. At 20mph centrifugal force reminds me why I wear a seat belt. 25mph over gives a little screech to the back tire and adds a little pizzazz to the driving experience. Once in a while the sign is actually serious. I find most of the ones that recommend 15mph for a right angle turn mean that at 16mph you’re going to jump the ditch and plow into the tree that was planted to discourage both the centrifugal force and pizzazz experience.

The one warning sign I do not understand, though, is the one that says Bump. I’m not talking about the temporary ones road crew put up at construction sites where they’ve torn out half the road so you get the idea they’re doing something. I’m talking about the ones that are permanently planted along road ways and highways that give you the thought that if you hit it at normal traffic speed your vehicle will be airborne. Mine never has. In fact, I find the actual bump anticlimactic. I gear up for it, brace the steering wheel and, maybe, tap the gas pedal a little. The actual bump doesn’t even give the suspension a good workout. Maybe I expect too much. Sometimes I forget I’m driving a vehicle and not flying an F4 Phantom. There are days, though, when I would like to.

Spam. It Isn't Just For Breakfast Anymore

I messed up. It wasn’t a deliberate thing. I didn’t spend time planning this move but it happened anyway. I was on a web site, wanted a little information and made the mistake of putting my email address in the appropriate box. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time but my address got passed on and now the world knows where I am. At least the part of the world that wants to sell me something.

I know how to work the delete button and it’s been busy. I got back one afternoon and found fifty-seven things to delete. Three more popped up almost immediately. I deleted those, too.

This morning there were only eight, coming out of the weekend and all, but two more have popped up since I started writing this. As of right now I can get a degree online from a university I’ve never heard of, there are three offers for a free laptop computer (two of them are from Dell, which makes me think their computers stutter), I can get a free year’s supply of diapers even though I haven’t needed the regular ones for years and haven’t had enough body parts go wrong to where I need Depends.

There’s an offer to sell my gold and jewelry, two job opportunities to become a Mystery Shopper, someone who wants to sell me auto insurance and Blockbuster wants me to rent some movies.

The only one that looks interesting is from a company that has a formula to rejuvenate my mind, body and soul. If part of their formula has a technique for blocking the irritating effects of spam I might take them up on it.

Here’s an offer for now: If you’re looking for something different or unique or just quirky let me know. I might have a place where you can get a deal. Hurry, though. The offer ends as soon as I can fire up the delete button.

Recycling

I’m looking for a guy. Maybe you can help. It’s the guy who throws the local shopper newspaper onto my porch, up the sidewalk, into Pat’s flower beds, or just leaves it flopped in the front yard. Winter, summer, rain, snow, sleet, hail and in the dark of night this guy pitches newspapers I don’t want and have to pick up whether they’re dry and neatly bound with a rubber band or, more usually, in a soppy, sodden soaky mess. I want this guy. I want to know where he lives because I’ve been saving the papers – nearly a dozen trash bags now – and I want to give them back. I figure he’s been doing this for so long and with such enthusiasm it must give him real joy. I want to feel his joy. I want to giggle as I whip wet crusty newspapers toward the front of his house, onto his walkway and at his wife’s flower beds.

Actually this is just a bargaining chip. The guy I really want is the one who leaves the forty pounds of phone books on my porch every year. I don’t need them, don’t want but maybe one every couple of years. I figure the shopper guy has crossed paths with him at least a few times, had a conversation or two, can give me the make and model of his vehicle or even knows where he lives. If I can find that guy then he’ll get the newspapers and the phone books. I’ve been saving them, too. And I’ll probably be giggling with joy at each one I whip into his yard..

Having That Run Down Feeling

My minivan leaks transmission fluid. Not a lot, there are no puddles, it’s more of an intermittent drip. It’s enough to let me see where I’ve parked but not enough for someone to follow a trail. I think it’s some sort of design flaw. Other minivans I’ve had have done the same thing. I’ve just gotten used to bringing along a couple of quarts of transmission fluid to periodically top off the tranny.

There are times, though, when I forget to check for a while and the van follows this pattern: It backs out of the drive just fine but when I put it in to Drive, it just sits there. Sometimes it takes a little while to hit the gear and start moving forward. Other times it doesn’t. It stays at an angle blocking the alley and waits for me to feed it. It did that last week and I jumped out, dug around in the back for the tranny fluid, popped the hood, pulled the dip stick and started to pour.

I think when the van first nudged me is when I realized the gear shift wasn’t in Park. A further nudge confirmed I’d put in enough ATF to get the vehicle moving, though standing in front of it while I had this realization was more than a little problematic.. I don’t recall ever having a vehicle chase me down an alley (or anywhere else for that matter), having it be a vehicle I owned made it a little more unnerving. I had never been mean to it, I oiled and fueled it regularly, cleaned it out and washed it once in a while, and yet here it was trying to run me over.

I don’t run as well as I used to but having a ton and a half vehicle bearing down on me gave a little extra motivation to move. I managed to get far enough ahead to side step it, jump into the driver’s seat smash on the brake. I put the gear shift to Park and put on the emergency brake before I got back out.

The hood was still open and the dip stick was where I left it by the radiator. The engine was making a noise like I should pour some more ATF down the spout but I figured it had enough for now. I rammed the dip stick hard down its tube several times muttering, “You thought you could run me over, huh, take that!” Jab. Jab. Jab

The minivan ran more smoothly than normal for the rest of the day. I think it was trying to apologize. I haven’t decided whether to accept or not. The experience is still a little nervy. I think I’m just going to watch for a while to make sure this was a lapse and not part of a new pattern. If it continues to be good I’ll give it some high octane for a treat but I think I’ll be pouring the ATF from the side.

Don't Try This At Home

I don’t know how you feel about leaky faucets but I don’t like them. I don’t like the drips. They do a mini-rumble out of the faucet nozzle, free fall toward the drain and land with an annoying, room echoing ping. Thought stops, breathing is interrupted, anticipation builds. Life becomes centered on the next falling drop of water.

We had a kitchen faucet that finally decided to give up. We are ‘Kitchen People.’ We spend a lot of time there and the drip cycle was interrupting cooking and meals, making visiting and conversation nearly unbearable. Every pause was filled with the steady sound of a drip, The faucet came with the house and was probably only a few years younger than me. It was one of those with one handle and no washers; I needed to replace the whole thing. I bought a new faucet and waited for a day when everyone was gone. I noticed there was no shut off for the cold water when I was looking at the faucet so I had one of those, too. I figured the whole replacement thing would take about an hour.

It probably would have gone better if I’d realized the main shut-off for the house didn’t work. By the time I found that out I had the cold water connector unscrewed and water was shooting everywhere. I quickly grabbed the new shut-off and tried to force it on the pipe. No go. Too much water. To lessen the pressure I ran around the house and turned on every faucet there was. Still too much. The only thing left was to run upstairs and flush the toilet. That did it. I got the shut on and turned it to close just as the toilet tank filled. I laid in the water under the sink and finished up with the hot water side and mounted the faucet. It worked. And it only took a lot longer than an hour. Sopping up gallons of water off the kitchen floor and from under the sink stretched the job out a whole lot more.

I got dried off and changed just before Pat got home. She noticed the new faucet. She noticed the sparkly clean kitchen floor more. I told her I had extra time that day so I thought I’d do a little around the house. Pat thinks I’m handy, as in Handy Man. It’s an illusion. Some day she’ll probably figure out I’m a guy with a basic knowledge of how a screw driver works. Until then she’s got a new faucet and, for a while, a really clean floor.

I Don't Stop At IHOP

I think everyone has a food they don’t like, can’t eat, don’t want to be near. It’s the smell, the taste, the texture, the aroma wafting through the air that dulls the appetite, turns stomachs and make us want to be somewhere else. It’s a real back-ended diet technique I’ve tried to avoid. You know what your food is. Mine is pancakes. And I blame my mother.

Feeding seven kids can put a strain on any food budget and my mother was always trying to find ways to stretch our food dollars. She found one solution on a table at the supermarket. The table held packets, hundreds of them, of pancake mix. Add some water, the directions claimed, and each packet could produce enough to feed a village. The packets cost ten cents each. The brand name, as I recall, was Generic. My mother bought five dollars worth and that started our pancake era.

We had pancakes for breakfast, pancakes for lunch, pancakes for dinner. On week days she’d give us the left-over breakfast pancakes to snack on while we waited for the school bus. At school, we’d open our lunch bags to find a peanut butter and jelly on pancake sandwiches. Yum.

It took months to work our way through the packets but we finally made it. It took years before I could look at a pancake dead on. Years more before I could actually eat one and then it was just to be polite. I still only eat them to be polite but it takes less effort. Either my palate is settling or I’m getting better at the polite thing. I think it’s the palate.