Sunday, November 29, 2009

TO DREAM THE AMERICAN DREAM

Just got done a long, long trip on the Interstate with the wife (Mrs. Optimist), three large children and two dogs. We left before the sun came up and got home here in Hotville after the sun set. In between we were treated to a long meditation on home ownership, the great American dream.

Home + Pile 'O Debt = American Dream.

My new name for the place where I have lived these many years is BCT, which stands for Big Coldtown. Last Monday, back in BCT for a week, as I got off the train and walked the two blocks to my office there, I was armed with my super heavy, super warm leather jacket. The kind that can save your epidermis when you skid out on a motorcycle.

Maybe I should have worn the goofy hat, too.

Never mind: it was 50 degrees, the sky was the bleak, mustard-gas grey that covers BCT from November to May, and the wind was ripping in from the river at about 20 knots. As I walked the miserable two blocks to work, I was focused almost entirely on how stinking cold it was. There was just a small voice in my brain whispering "what a wimp! It's only 50 degrees!" It didn't matter - I was freezing.

Russian Front or BCT? Hard to tell the difference.

My shivering may have had to do with the cough, sneeze and runny nose I contracted 14 minutes after arriving in BCT. It may be from the mustard gas, I don't know, but this is one of the little treasures of living in BCT.

My sneezes were not so cute.


Shared misery always feels better.

That and the leaves from the massive old oak trees that surround our house. There are four of them. Each of these trees is at least 70 feet high, and each sheds its own weight in leaves each year. The leaves poured down on our house and yard in the months we've been in Hotville. I spent a day in October trying to fight back, but it only postponed the inevitable.

Pretty, but someone had to rake the leaves.

The entire time we were home in BCT over the Thanksgiving week, it rained. This is not uncommon in BCT; in fact, during the mustard-gas time of year, November through April, it is the norm. Except when it is snowing and sleeting. The gutters were filled with oak leaves (again, for the googleplex infinitieth time). And the solid week of rain plus the filled up gutters equals one thing: you guessed it, home-and-self-improvement projects.

It's self-improvement time, pardner.

The first project was the physical and spiritual battle I go through when cleaning leaves out of the gutters on the second floor roof. I used to do roof-repair for friends when I was young. Now that I have had family members fall and almost kill themselves (one from a roof, one from a scaffold), I hate roofs. In order to clean the second floor gutters, I crawl the last few yards down the roof on my belly, saying Hail Marys continually as I crab-crawl from one side of the roof to the other, removing the gargantuan clots of decaying leaves and acorns from my gutters. After a half hour of this the gutters were clean again, I had some spiritual growth, and I really wanted a whiskey.

After cleaning my gutters and my soul.

Of more consequence is that when the gutters are fouled with leaves, and the rains come down in buckets for a week, water wicks up from the helpless gutters into the asphalt shingles, soaking the roof like a wet mop. At some point the roof begins dripping down into the second floor plaster ceiling, like that same wet mop as you walk across the kitchen floor. Thing is, your kitchen floor is made for that, but our 80-year-old plaster ceiling is not. And VOILA! Home-and-self-improvement project number two for our vacation week: stripping the bubbled wallpaper off the ceiling in our bedroom.

Approximately our ceiling, after adding water.

This involved hooking up a garden hose and bringing it up to our bedroom, placing plastic drop cloths on the floor, and spraying the ceiling. Once it is nice and wet the wallpaper comes off grudgingly - a process begun by nature, through the saturated roof, but finished by Mrs. Optimist in one of those outbursts of home improvement happiness that is uniquely hers. I fill the role of the unenthused but persevering partner in most of these home improvement stories. This was no exception.
Mrs. Optimist is the slender one. Me, not so much.

Late in the evening the night before we were to drive home we finished stripping the paper and determined that the ceiling probably has to be dry-walled, not skim coated. Of course, this means we did not need to strip the ceiling, but how would we know that until we had stripped it?

Of course. That is what home-ownership is all about. Rain, oak trees, gutters, Hail Marys, wicking, dripping, and wall-paper stripping. And the desire for a whiskey.


To every man his Dew.

Which is why I love renting. Which brings us back, happily, to Hotville, where we arrived late in the evening after a very, very long ride begun at zero freezing dark thirty a.m. in BCT. Yes, sweet Hotville, where we rent a lovely apartment. Check that - we actually live in a lovely apartment for free, as part of the Department of Ginormousness sending me to this foreign and exotic climate to teach Ginormous employees how to think and act appropriately Ginormously.

We try to make new Lincolns. It doesn't always work out.

Our trip was uneventful, which for us, is eventful. After packing our little SUV in the early morning cold and darkness (I was reminded forcefully what it means to have your fingers get so cold you cannot tie a knot) and driving a few hours, the sun began to shine. It shone so brightly, after a while, that I took my jacket off. And then I began to perspire a little. Then I realized that we were traveling south, and it was indeed getting warmer and warmer. Much warmer and much warmer.

And I thought to myself, What a Wonderful World. Yeah.


Satchmo.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

NERDY GUYS AND PRETTY GIRLS

I took the fam to a cutsy breakfast place today in Hotville. The place consisted of a nice cafe attached to a gourmet cooking store. It is very cool and very busy.

This is not the cutesy gourmet store. Just a cool picture.

I noticed something and thought I would pass it on to younger men who are nerds. There is no better place for a nerdy young man to meet beautiful women who are interested in him than in a vegetarian cafe.

First, there are not many guys there. Second, the girls are all fit with great looking skin, since they don't eat Kentucky Fried Chicken or Milky Way bars. Third, they don't like jocks at all. They like sensitive, skinny guys with sketchy facial hair who look like "projects."


That would be you, my friend.

Fourth, the girls talk fast and happy, because they drink chai all day and eat only vegetables. Therefore, nerdy guys don't actually have to carry any conversational load, other than periodic nervous laughter at a slightly deeper pitch than the girls' conversation.

Basically guys, all you have to do is brush your teeth and show up. And pretend you like vegetables. The great thing about that is if you only pick at your lima beans the girls will like you even more. They will think you are a soulmate, since they have been picking at their food all their lives.

Lima Beans: why vegetarians pick at their food.

They won't understand that you are dying for a cheeseburger and a chocolate milk-shake. They won't even think that, because they have never ever wanted a cheeseburger in their lives. They will think you are sad and that you've lost your appetite, and this will make you irresistible.

Why carnivores do not pick at their food.


I know, you don't like vegetables. And you want to be true to yourself. But right now you have no female companionship at all and none on the horizon. And being true to yourself, you have to admit you would like to at least talk to a pretty girl before you die. So you may want to consider vegetables.

Here's something to try for starters, to ease your way in: grilled ratatouille pannini with mozzarella and tomato, topped with pesto. Everyone can eat this, even carnivores.


So there you have it. If you learn to like vegetables, or even figure out a few go-to sandwiches you can swallow, you will have delightful female company for the rest of your life.

Trust me, Mrs. Optimist was a vegetarian and I had a sketchy beard. She's beautiful. And I am very happy.