It's like living in a Frat House

"SAM! Get your jock strap off the coffee TABLE!!"

Pardon Our Dust

So at the start of the summer, our lovely city implemented a new "No Road Left Behind" street maintenance program.  At least I assume it was a dedicated plan and not a mere coincidence. I like to think that there were notices send out and a town hall meeting held in which some city manager showed a PowerPoint presentation detailing their plan to tear up every single fucking road in the city over the next 3 month period. I was simply too busy watching reruns of the Big Bang Theory to attend.

Summer arrived with the blooming of beautiful bright orange traffic cones all over town.  Everywhere I went there was a closed lane adorned with a border of orange. There were thousands of cones. Cones everywhere. I even had the privilege of driving down one street following a maintenance truck that was in the process of, ever so slowly, closing off the single open lane that I and my fellow drivers were currently occupying. "Huh.  Wonder what the plan here is?" I managed to steer around the truck so I never did find out. I spent months driving around wondering where all of the cones were stored in the off-season.  Somewhere there was a Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark-esque warehouse filled with orange traffic cones as far as the eye can see.  They should give tours.  They should build a maze and sell tickets.

One road in particular has held my attention for the last 6 months.  I travel this road regularly over the course of a week.  This single 6 block stretch of road houses a hospital, a fire station and a middle school (without busing).  Needless to say, this road carries a lot of traffic, some of which is in a bit of a hurry.  I'm sure the city manager optimistically considered the school a non-issue since construction began during the summer break and shook off any suggestions that perhaps the hospital and fire station were the bigger issue.  Silly, silly man.  I've decided that they will never finish this road.  It took 3 days to resurface the road that our house sits on.  I supposed I should feel flattered that it was deemed more important for me to gain access to my garage than an ambulance to reach the hospital but it doesn't flatter me.  It worries me deeply.

For the first couple of months, there were large (orange, naturally) signs diligently placed on the sidewalks or shoulders alerting drivers to which lane ahead may or may not be closed.  The placing of the signs ranking higher in importance than the accuracy of their message.  This made for interesting merging and prepared us to take on any synchronised lawnmower driving team in the country. Look for our upcoming national tour.

My favorite day was when they resurfaced the one main intersection leading to the hospital.  It was a vision of overly large construction vehicles doing impressive and smelly things, a scattering of men standing amongst them in reflective vests and, this is my favorite part, traffic making left turns through the middle of it. I'm the first to admit that I know nothing about road construction but based on my many years poring over the collected works of Richard Scarry, I thought this was a bad thing. I sat there for a long time with my mouth hanging open looking for the worm driving the apple car. I avoided this intersection for the rest of the week.

We are now in December and the road is almost finished. All that is left are these perfectly round depressions that surround the sewer heads (?), kind of like a reverse doughnut. You can slam your car off them quite nicely if you're not paying attention. It's been like that for a couple of weeks now and I'm thinking that the construction boss had adopted my philosophy which is to shrug a shoulder and mutter "Ach, close enough."

We can now focus on the new "City Center" they've been threatening to build since we moved here 5 years ago.   They've almost completed the new City Hall, build atop the only portion of the central park that was consistently used Every Single Day and adjacent to a vacant lot.  Let the games begin.

Best Ringtone Ever

We were up at Tahoe a few weeks ago and John set up an automated text message to alert him to the current snowfall.  You could select the time of the message delivery and he chose 7 a.m.  And he can't figure out how to stop it. So now our morning alarm is:

<DING>
"ffffuuuuuuccccckkkkkkkk"

New Theme Song

My theme song has always been Gloria Gaynor's "I will Survive" because...well...because it's awesome.  It's the song I sing during take-off whenever I fly and that is why the plane doesn't crash.  Oh sure, you can be all thrust and air pressure and airfoils and Bernoulli's law, but that's all crap.  Yes, you heard me Mr. Kerry I-am-a-pilot Green, it's all voodoo.  The plane is staying up there because of Gloria Gaynor and me. You're Welcome.

But last weekend John and I were at Starbucks doing the Wall Street Journal crossword puzzle.  We usually do the other puzzle but that week's was a cryptic and cryptics suck so we were stuck with the regular old crossword.  We were also a little later than usual so there wasn't much of a crowd. (Unlike the weekend before when unbeknown do us it was the day of the Jingle Bell Jog and when we parked  I looked over and said, "Aw fuck, the place is full of elves!" and John was all like, "whaaaa?") So there wasn't much of a crowd and I could actually hear the music that was playing rather then just the bass line and the guy was singing about gravity.  And I was like, "HOLY SHIT! THIS IS MY NEW THEME SONG!"  When I got home later I googled it and discovered that it was John Mayer. Huh, I thought he was just a weird twitter douche but turns out the boy can sing.

Gravity is working against me  <amen>
And gravity wants to bring me down <sing it, brother>
(some crap about love)

Gravity is working against me <oh yeat>
And gravity wants to bring me down <arms in the air waving back and forth>
(some weird math crap that doesn't make sense)

Whoa, gravity stay the hell away from me <on my feet with the bic lighter app>

Gravity sucks and no one understands it like John Mayer.  and my boobs.

I'm still singing Gloria Gaynor during take-off.  I'm not crazy.

Does This Mean I have Two More Wishes?

So Sam and I were at Target last weekend, shopping for toys for the school toy drive and I saw this:

I squealed and threw my arms around it!  Sam was slightly surprised.
Me, "Ooooohhhh, Aunt Cindy got this for her birthday when we were little! And she never let me play with it!!"
Sam, "Awww.  Did you get one for your birthday?"
Me, "No, but I gave one to Amy (my niece) for her birthday awhile back and told her that she could only have it if she never ever let her mom play with it."
Sam, "Huh.  That seems fair."
That could have been sarcasm.  You decide.
Me, "OH MY GOD!"
Sam, "Now what?!?!"

Look closely, people.  No, not at the creepy hands. At this:

They've included extensions that you can cut! They even include scissors so you don't have to sneak off with your mothers!  Not bad, Mr. Mattel.  Although, I'd have put a whole bunch of extra hair inside her head that you could pull out after you cut her actual hair but then you'd have to include that red strip that lets you know when you're getting to the end of the register tape which would look kinda odd, but they're getting there.  Not bad, Mr. Mattel, not bad at all...

Banner Day

So yesterday I picked up the kids from school and I made it all the way out of the school parking lot with out swearing, waving my hands, honking or calling anyone a moron.  It was a conscience effort but still, I did it.  I may be the next Buddha.