Category: The Good Man

It is assault, I tell you!

I have this neighbor. Well, ok, I have a lot of neighbors, but there is one in particular…

Who, let’s be frank, has no taste.

How do I know this?

Well, the neighbor *loves* to crank up their stereo. Yup. They crank up their tinny sounding piece of eeeelectronic equipment loud enough so the whole neighborhood can take part in their musical selections.

A sociologist postulated that when male humans crank their stereos super loud, they are essentially marking their territory. They are forcing people to look at them and forcing all around to succumb to their musical selection.

If so, then my neighbor is a marking fool. He may as well pee on a mile radius.

This fellow (I assume it’s a guy, I’m not sure, actually) likes to boot up his sound gear at about 8:00am on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Just in time to wake me up from a nice weekend doze.

So, what sort of music does this fellow play? Do you have guesses?

Gangsta rap? Screetching metal? Blazing punk?

Nope.

Sixties oldies? Big Band? Yanni?

No, but getting closer.

The music this fellow cranks out across my air space is smooth jazz. Not the good jazz, say Theonius Monk, Charlie Parker or Miles Davis.

Nope. The smooth kind. Plinky plunky. Music that reminds you of sitting in the waiting room at the dentist’s office.

Cranked up loud. Bouncing off the hills and homes in our fair town.

This has been going on for a while now. And the gent has recently taken to cranking his crazy beats around 5:30 in the evening, so that all coming home from work can enjoy his pee-tinged music.

Today, I cracked. Today, I lost it.

Today, he was playing the theme from “Moonlighting” by Al Jarreau at full volume.

Now look, I like Al. He has some fine songs. I don’t resent anyone enjoying the mellow ways of Mr. Jarreau. However…I don’t need this blared out into my world, uninvited.

The acoustics in my neighborhood are funny, but The Good Man and I are pretty sure it’s the landlord of the triplex one lot over, but we can’t be sure.

When I DO find the offender, I am going to deliver a collection of BB King recordings with a note that says, “GET SOME SOUL, mother eff word!”

An Open Letter to my Head Cold

Dear Insidious Little Pinche Bug that has chosen to infest my body:

So, I see you’ve decided to set up camp in my head.

My, how kind of you.

Oh, and you came with your usual matching set of baggage. Stuffed up nose. Sore throat. Plugged ears. And that hacking cough.

How fun it is when you give me a housewarming present as I hack up a yellow globule from my lungs. Such a lovely color!

And the body aches! Oh the body aches, I think those are my favorite! Knees, hips, shoulders, neck. Ow. Makes it almost impossible to sleep!

But you like that, eh? I mean, sleep only strengthens my immune system and THAT’s not what you are about, are you little evil cold germs?

Nope. You like to keep me up late at night, not sleeping, heck, not even breathing!

You know those two funny tubes they call nostrils? Yeah? Those are so I can breathe! When you plug BOTH of them, well, sure, I can result to mouth breathing.

But I sort of resemble a punch-drunk boxer when I do.

Makes my husband that much more enamored of me!

Not that I’m a shining star anyway, with my puffy face and red-rimmed nose.

What I most want to know, Dear Cold Bug, is how in the hell do you get my hair to look like that? I mean, ostensibly, your reach only extends to my upper respiratory system, and yet my hair responds to your brand of illness by standing up at odd angles?

I never knew you were a hairstylist too!

And now, my ears are throbbing. How fun! Since childhood I’ve been prone to ear infections.

But you probably knew that already, didn’t you?

I’ve tried to be nice to you, but nice doesn’t register in your little cell dividing nucleus, does it?

You know what I did this morning? I drank a biiiig glass of orange juice. Oh yes, a blast of vitamin C. As I drank, I imagined thousands of tiny “noooooo’s!” in chorus as many of your offspring were attacked by my newly strengthened white blood cells.

Then you know what I did when I was done with that glass?

I poured another.

I’m done with you.

No, seriously.

You can go now.

And by go, I don’t mean hop from me to The Good Man. He doesn’t need any of your shenanigans either!

What it takes to rock my world

Last night during rush hour commute, a cable assembly on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge snapped, sending a 5,000 lb chunk of metal careening to the upper deck of the bridge.

A couple vehicles sustained some damage, and luckily, only one person was hurt. No fatalities.

This bit that broke off was part of a “fix” done over the Labor Day weekend. This is the famed S-curve I spoke of here.

As of today, Cal Trans is saying the bridge is closed “indefinitely”. Due to high winds, it may take several days for the welders to get the new piece in place.

Ugh. Since approximately 280,000 cars traverse that bridge every day, this is not a small matter.

This is, in fact, a very huge matter.

Thankfully, neither The Good Man nor I have to cross that bridge to get to work and back, so for us, you’d think, this is no big deal.

But you’d be wrong.

A major traffic hindrance like this changes the whole traffic pattern of the area. Since we live near the next bridge to the south, the San Mateo Bridge, that means much traffic will now be diverted our way so that folks can get back and forth across the Bay.

It will also affect the rest of the bridges and highways in the area. You’d be amazed the distance the ripple effect will have.

Which got me pondering how much we tend to rely on infrastructure, now, as a human race.

I mean hell, just go one day without electricity, and you remember all the little things you take for granted.

The Good Man recently had some major car troubles and was without his ride for about a week. Whoa, that really threw a kink into our lives.

Sometimes, you know…I think to myself, maybe a shotgun shack in the middle of the woods somewhere with a hole in the ground for sewer and a roaring fire, and my manual Underwood typewriter for jotting down my manifesto might not be such a bad idea.

Then I surf over to Zappos.com to look at adorable shoes and use my credit card to pay and have the UPS man put that box right in my hands and I think…

nah.

Source

I’m a giver!

Yep, sorry things were so quiet around here yesterday, but The Good Man had a day off from work, so we had a nice Monday together.

And what did we do with that Monday off?

Well. We went to the San Jose Tech Museum of Innovation.

Cool, right?

They chronicle the history of the rise of technology. Especially fitting here in the Bay Area where so much technology got its start.

Oh, and they have an awesome hands on display that shows you how earthquakes work and how the ground liquefies. That display has done a lot to help me understand the phenomenon so well.

But that’s not why we went…

Noooo.

We went to see Star Trek – The Exhibition.

Complete with a replica of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

I sat in the captain’s chair.

Because *I* am a good partner to my sci-fi lovin’ husband.

I even leaped through the gateway to the City at the Edge of Forever (the, uh, Guardian of Forever). Oh yes I did.

Because I knew it would make him happy.

Look, I’m not a Star Trek fan. Nor am I a hater.

Ok, fine, I’d watch a few episodes in the early days when I was hanging out with my big brother. I’ve seen a few of the movies and none of the more recent series (which were heavily represented at the exhibit).

But this day was not about me. It was about The Good Man. And heck, to spend time with him, I’d endure much geekier than a bunch of costumes and gadgets!

Did I ever tell you that in the early days of dating, he took me to a Bela Lugosi film festival?

And I had a great time, too. Because when The Good Man is happy, I’m happy too.

I made him go see The Crafty Chica when she was in town, so really, fair’s fair.

Like a good little housewife would

Last weekend, The Good Man and I were putting a clean to our home. We’d let it go for a couple weeks since I’d been traveling and he’s working a lot of extra hours.

We’d let it go too long and it was time to be grown ups and get to work. I started on the bathroom while he worked on the living room.

We generally attempt to be fairly conscious residents of the planet. We recycle, we keep our cars running right, and we try to use environment friendly housecleaners.

I say “try” because, well, dammit, we don’t always succeed.

There I was in the bathroom, cleaning the mirror over the sink. There were a few weeks of soap splashes and toothpaste flecks on the glass that needed tending to. I had an ammonia-free cleaner that promised “no streaks!” in one hand, and a wad of paper towels in the other.

Well, that label on that bottle lied. There were plenty of streaks. PLENTY.

I got fresh paper towels and rubbed at the glass harder. Just smeared everything around. I really put some elbow grease into it. It only slightly improved.

So, without much remorse, I dug around in the cabinet where we keep cleaners and extracted the good old ammonia based glass cleaner.

*spray spray, wipe, rub*

Done.

DONE!

No sore arms, no troubles, no streaks.

Clean mirror gleaming, I turned to the bathtub and the soap scummy mess waiting there.

Do you think I picked up the “safe and gentle” cleanser?

Nope! I grabbed the scrub with bleach and squired with reckless abandon!

Ok, yes, I do have at least a little remorse.

There has got to be a solvent/cleanser/scrub out there in the world that actually WORKS and is also earth friendly.

Doesn’t there?

And then I ask myself why I’m getting all bundled up over household cleansers.

It’s so…1950’s of me.