Saturday, July 7, 2012

The Gates of Babble-On


Well it’s been another week of house-sitting. Not sure what it is about being out of work, but everyone just thinks you’re happy to house-sit for them. I’m not sure where they get the balls to think I’m just going to drop everything going on in my life in order to house-sit in their beautiful, gigantic, stocked-with-food, air-conditioned houses, but…

Okay, I’m more than happy to do this.

I have nothing but the natural elements in my place in Bridgeport. What I mean by that is that my window stays open all day and all night. There’s nothing but brutal heat greeting me at all hours these days. Oh sure, sometimes a bit of a breeze blows on in and tries its best to comfort me, but it’s usually not all that successful. Sort of like this Great White song. Thanks for trying, but you’ll never be able to Rock Me. So the point is that it was some beautiful happenstance the Universe just laid at my feet getting me this house-sitting gig.

It’s hard to write a blog and watch Metal Mania on VH1 Classic at the same time. Not necessarily when a Great White song is playing, but when DIO’s Mystery starts playing…that’s another thing. I don’t even know if I’ve ever seen this video.  Dang. Way Cool Junior. As if I want to relive the death of Ratt one more time.

Okay back to house-sitting. First it was at Tessa’s place a couple weeks ago. I was needed because she was out of the country and also currently working on constructing her own personal biosphere. It may not technically be a biosphere bubble, but with 200+ planters on three decks, it sure seems like it. Watering those plants took approximately 45 minutes each day, and I gotta say, I kind of liked it. There’s a certain peacefulness being on top of an urban rooftop making sure that hundreds upon hundreds of plants receive their nourishment. It’s surprisingly calm when you lift yourself a couple stories above the city. I wouldn’t want to have to wake up at 5am to do it each day like she does, but it was a nice exercise in responsibility for a while.

This week I’m at the Moulton residence. All I have to do here is water the lawn every day. This takes a bit more time, especially when the temperature hits the century mark every day. I’m not one to wake up before the sun starts beating down, so I’ve had to carefully time the watering. And by carefully, I mean water the lawn when I’m drunk and it’s dark out. They’ll probably be disappointed to learn I didn’t bother with the sprinkler, but believe me, this lawn has been watered more this week than any other in it’s existence. And I guarantee they’ve never watered it at 4:30 in the morning…twice. If I’m lazy it takes at least an hour. If I’m not lazy, which I’m usually not, it’s at least three hours. Just kidding. Seriously though, if watering plants was relaxing, watering the lawn is….

Hold on, there’s a Trojan Vibrations commercial on right now. I thought it was a condom commercial, but apparently Trojan has some kind of vibrator they’re marketing now. They didn’t show it, so I have no idea what it looks like, but according to the commercial, you can twist it in different positions for different experiences. Apparently it’s also powerful, in the best possible way.  I’m not entirely sure what that means.

Okay so watering the lawn is probably nothing like using that Trojan “massager”. It is, however, a pretty enjoyable activity to do for one week. Any more than that, and I’d definitely be using the sprinkler.

I have 14% power left in this here MacBook Pro. Dang. I just added two more gigs of RAM today, so why isn’t the battery lasting longer? I’m sure at some point in computing history someone actually asked that question. He or she probably went on to dominate the computing industry in some shape or form. So what do I do? Stop typing this as it’s now down to 13%, or do I continue and wait for it to simply wind down and die?

Speaking of dying, my Great Aunt Gert passed away late last week. Her funeral was held this past Tuesday. She and her husband, Bill Joyner, were my Godparents. I’m not sure that’s supposed to be capitalized, but I did it anyway. They were good people. My Uncle Mike threw her a 90th birthday party last year and I’m glad I was there and decided to tell her that I was not completely at fault for losing the tiny calculator they bought me for my birthday many, many years ago. I think I was in 4th grade maybe and Uncle Bill had this calculator that was thin and slim just like an embryo penis, but I thought it was pretty damn cool nonetheless. I’d never seen anything like it, and to my surprise, a while later I was pretty ecstatic that it was my birthday present. Unfortunately, the next time I visited my Dad in Chicago, I brought it with. Actually bringing it with wasn’t the problem, him convincing me to let him borrow it was the problem, as that was the last time I ever saw the calculator. When I came back two weeks later it was gone. There was no explanation for what happened to it, and all I could do was walk up and down the alley time and time again, hoping I’d find it somewhere.

I didn’t.

At the time I never said anything about it and I have no idea what they thought I might have done with it. Hell, I didn’t even know what happened to it. Regardless, I felt the need to tell my Aunt that story so I could get some sort of guilt off my shoulders. I didn’t even do anything wrong, but I still felt bad about it 25 years later. I hope she understood.

Rest In Peace Aunt Gert. 

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