Jack of All Trades

 

One thing I got from my dad was the Do-it-Yourself gene. For some reason my dad always thought that he was capable of doing on his own, what professionals are paid to do. Like the time he decided that removing a lilac bush on our property line would be easy. It wasn't. After hacking at the thing for what seemed like an hour, he talked a neighbor into tying a rope around the rear bumper of his car and then tying the other end around the bush. When all was ready the car jerked forward, and the rope became taut as it strained to pull out the bush. A loud metallic sound signaled the bumper ripping off the car while the shrub shook a little and then stood right back up. I don't remember how he finally got that thing out of the ground because we kids scattered as curses filled the air. I've faired a little better with my DIY efforts. Most have turned out okay, other than the one inch gap at the bottom of my tenant's back door. I never was very skilled with a circular saw. I mis-measured and cut the door too short. No way was I going to spend money on a new door, so I just told Dennis that it was for ventilation.

Six years ago Mark bought an antique medicine cabinet. It was perfect for our hundred year old bathroom. At some point, somebody had removed the original cabinet and put up a large mirror over the hole in the wall. I'm sure they thought it looked great, but we did not and wanted the vintage look. So a year later I installed the new vintage cabinet. It did not quite fit the hole left by the old original cabinet, but I promised Mark that I'd fix that with some tile to fill in around the new one. Now, five years later, I have finally got around to starting that job. On Saturday, after gathering all the tools I needed and the tiles, I began. So far I have managed to affix two tiles that immediately began to slide down the wall. I used tape to keep them up along with a couple of more dabs of tile glue and now have to wait until they dry and bond to the wall before I go any further.....

...At least that's what I'm telling myself.

I Use Bad Language

 

Let me ask those who know me personally and have heard me talk, do I slur my words? Do I have a heavy Chicago accent that is unintelligible to anybody who is not from Chicago? Because all the voice activated conveniences in my house seem to think that is the case. They do not hear what I think I am clearly saying. Alexa, the television remote, my phone's voice to text function, and the computer in my car all seem to think I am speaking some unknown language. It's very frustrating and it drives me crazy. I'll tell the computer in the car to call a phone number and I get an off key tone that then tells me to "Please use a command such as..." The car will then try to give me a tutorial on how to address it properly. Other drivers must think I'm crazy when they see me screaming at the top of my lungs, "CALL DENNIS AT HOME!!!, CALL DENNIS AT HOME GODDAMNIT!!" Of course that never works and I end up having to use the touch screen on the dashboard as I speed down the highway. Alexa, the Amazon smart thing that Mark bought, also does not understand me. I will ask her a question or request a radio station be played, and end up getting a long winded explanation of something she has "found on the internet" that is totally not what I was looking for. Once again, if I scream at her and call her filthy names, all I get is a 'bloop' sound and she goes silent. Texting on the phone is a challenge. Since the tiny keyboard is too small to easily type, I use voice to text. It never comes out correctly and often picks up words off the television to intersperse with my words. Finally, there is the television remote. It is voice activated which should be very convenient. It is not. Sometimes I tell it to change channels and all I get is a beep and a message telling me something is wrong. When I finally lose my temper and scream obscenities into the remote, it has no problem understanding that. I then get an answer on the screen that I have somehow insulted it. Like I said, do I slur my words. Am I that hard to understand?

These Boots Are Made For Walking

My dog, Chandler, is getting old. His legs aren't what they used to be and he has a hard time keeping upright when he walks on the hardwood floors or the ice outside. So I figured that rubber boots would help him. They would give him traction and the stability to go for short walks. I ordered four boots from Amazon. When they arrived I tried putting them on Chandler. It was difficult so I enlisted my friend, Dennis to help. Between the two of us, with Chandler snapping and biting at us, I got two of them on his rear feet. You would have thought I was trying to dip his feet into acid by the way he reacted. Anyway, I helped him up on his feet and he took a step. One step and he shook one boot off. Three steps later and the other boot had been kicked off. My boot idea was a failure. I would have to return the boots.

I like Amazon's return system. It is quick and efficient. You go online and  pick either a Kohl's store or a Whole Foods store to take the product back. I picked the Whole Foods since I needed a gallon of milk anyway. It was painless. You hand the employee at the front of the store the package, hold up your phone with the QR code on it, and you're done. Now, about that gallon of milk. I haven't been in a Whole Foods store in about ten years. For some reason I was not impressed with them. However, this store was huge and seemed to have everything, so I went over to the dairy department and looked at the milk. They had two brands. The first brand was priced at $5.99 a gallon. No way was I going to pay that much. The second brand was priced at $7.99 a gallon. WTF, were they milking the golden calf? Now I remembered why I didn't shop at the Whole Foods. I left the store and drove a few blocks to the Jewel store where they sell two gallons of milk for four dollars. Even if I don't finish off the second gallon before it expires, I come out ahead.

The Diet

 

Mark and I in a bar, 1997

When Mark and I met in a bar, in 1997, I weighed one hundred and sixty pounds. On our first 'date' Mark made me a steak dinner. It was delicious, I had never tasted a steak that good in my life. Over the  years Mark continued to make me amazing meals and snacks. He also kept cookies, cakes, candy, and pies in the house. After our first year together I noticed that I had packed on a few extra pounds and when I hit one hundred and eighty, I panicked. I accused Mark of purposely getting me fat so I would be unappealing to anybody else. Mark pointed out that he was not shoving the food down my throat and that I shouldn't blame him. But I did blame him. I never ate like that before in my life. Over the twenty three years we were together I continued to blow up until I hit two hundred and fifteen pounds. That was about a year ago, or six months after Mark passed away. So I could not now blame him for my fat. I was now in complete control of my diet and caloric intake. So I reverted to my pre-Mark eating habits. That meant small, bad meals, often eaten over the kitchen sink. I'm not a good cook and that's what kept me thin for most of my life. Anyway, as a result of cutting out excess sugar and snacks I have lost thirty pounds. I am now down to one hundred and eighty five pounds. I have only five more pounds to go before I hit the one hundred and eighty pounds that I had panicked about twenty years ago. It's all different now. I will celebrate hitting that one eighty mark with joy,  and a big Chicago thin crust pizza. (It has the word thin right in the name, so it can't be bad for you.)

80 Pounds of Limp Dog

 

My dog Chandler, will be fourteen years old in April. He's now a very senior dog and smells the part. Very stinky. He is also very smart and very handicapped. His hind quarters are wasting and he has a hard time standing up for very long. To get him to go outside I have to carry his ass end in a sling up and down the stairs. Chandler does not like that. He hates the stairs. So you can understand why sometimes when I tell him it's time to go out he just lies on the floor and gives me that 'fuck you' look. I then have to try and lift eighty pounds of limp dog into his sling and maneuver him out the door. When I do get him outside it's a challenge to keep him upright long enough to do his business, and he often will just lay down. It doesn't matter if there is snow on the ground or ice, Chandler will lay down in it.

Like I said, Chandler is very smart. It seems that he has figured out that Daddy poops in that little room next to the bedroom. And if it's good enough for Daddy, it's good enough for him. It has happened more than once that Chandler has left a gift for me right in front of the bathroom doorway. Like last night at two thirty in the morning. I got up out of bed to go pee, a little blurry and not really fully awake. Usually I take the flashlight so I don't step in anything. This time I didn't take the flashlight. Good news, I didn't step in poop in the hallway. Instead, in my sleep walking shuffle to the bathroom, I kicked a giant turd through the door and into the bathroom. That's where I stepped in it.

Alan Flips Out

 

This is not my phone

The weirdest thing happened yesterday. It started in the morning when a notice popped up on my phone. Something about the sim card. So of course I ignored it like I ignore most notices that pop up. Then later in the day, after not getting any phone calls all day, I tried to call my upstairs neighbor Dennis. Now my phone was telling me that I could only make emergency calls and that I was not connected to a network. Holy crap, not being able to make phone calls is an emergency and I seriously considered dialing 911. Instead I tried to call Consumer Cellular. Again the phone said 'no'. So I poked at the little button that said "Start Chat". The chat box came up and told me I was number seventy in line. I'm old and I have a lot of time on my hands, so I sat there for forty minutes watching the number slowly go down until I was next in line. That is some kind of excitement, being next in line on an over worked tech support chat line. After a bunch of formalities where I had to prove that I was who I said I was, the tech support lady started looking at my problem. After a bit she asked me, "Are you using the red flip phone to call out?"

Red flipping flip phone? I'm old, but not that old.

"No, I don't own a red flip phone. I've never owned a red flip phone."

"The system is telling me that you have a red flip phone...."

Panic swept through me. "Has my phone been hacked. Is some old geezer using a red flip phone clone of my phone to buy shit?"

"Please sir, give me a few moments to figure out what happened and I'll get back to you."

So I waited, about half an hour. Finally she came back and gave me the story. It seems that one of their employees was activating somebody's red flip phone earlier in the day and entered one digit wrong, which deactivated my phone.

"Okay sir, you'll either have to let us send you a new sim card or we can make an appointment at Target so a tech at the store can swap out the sim card. I have a five o'clock opening right now.

It was four, forty five. The Super Bowl was to kick off in just forty five minutes, but I took the appointment anyway. I really have to give Consumer Cellular and Target credit. I was able to get to the store, get the phone working, and get back in time to see the Super Bowl kickoff. One other thing. I got Consumer Cellular to give me one month of free service for all the inconvenience.

Sweet Little Puppy Dogs

 

It's not really about puppy dogs

If you want to know how Facebook came about, Google 'facemash'.

Over the weekend I was notified by Facebook that I was "Restricted". I couldn't post, I couldn't comment. I was a bad boy. What did I do? According to the artificial intelligence robot that Facebook probably uses to weed out bad boys, I used hate speech. I had commented on a story about a woman who had been virtually raped on a virtual game web site. She hadn't been actually raped. It was a fantasy site. So my comment was that it was not real and the woman needed to not go there anymore because it only pointed out that men are pigs. I assume the robot that patrols Facebook comments, felt that calling men pigs was hate speech. That's okay with me. My problem is, how the hell are we supposed to know what words trigger the damn robot? Was it the use of pig in a declarative sentence? Was it me saying people are too fragile and shouldn't let fantasy game sites rule them? I'm not sure. Anyway, as of now I am back on the Facebook. That is, just as long as they don't read this blog post. It would really be so much easier if they would actually publish a list of the bad words they don't want us to use and in what order to not use them. Because from what I can make out, Facebook was on the side of the virtual rapists.