Can I Phone a Friend?

Greetings, WYMOP fans!

So, for those of you who do not yet know, I am the (not so) proud owner of a dumb phone.

Yup. That’s right. No apps, no social media, no browsing the internet; nothing but telephone and texting—and not even that, if the phone doesn’t want to. It’s an old phone, and somewhat temperamental, and has apparently gotten the concept of calling in sick on occasion. Some of my friends . . . okay, all of my friends, make fun of me for it. One in particular likes to hold his smartphone out toward me as if warding off a vampire with the cross of technology, saying “Look, Rob: it’s the whole internet, in the palm of my hand!” The smile on his face makes it all worthwhile. I’m just so glad I give him such joy. I just grin, and bear it, and tell him I don’t want to have a phone that’s smarter than I am.

Since I have begun writing, however, there is a new issue associated with my phone that I can simply ignore no longer. In the past, it had nothing to do with me, and I didn’t care that I couldn’t do it. Now, though . . . now that I go to book events and shows, trying to sell my books to the public, it’s becoming a problem. I . . . I . . . I just have to come right out and say it.

I can’t turn my clunky old phone into a neat, portable POS.

It's called a square because, well, it's square!

For those of you who, like me, assumed that POS still stood for Piece Of Shit, a phrase I thought eminently applicable to my dumb phone, I’m here to tell you the acronym now stands for Point Of Service—what some of us old fogies still refer to as the cash register. So no, I can’t attach a square to my dumb phone and turn it into a wireless credit card machine. I’m limited in these events to cash-only transactions, which has led to quite a few sadly shaken heads and lost sales.

Needs I must upgrade, it seems.

Now, here’s the thing about working on a phone upgrade when you have a thirteen-year-old boy (or girl, I suppose, but I’m working with what I’ve got, here): there is no way—no way—that I could get a smartphone without upgrading him as well. And he, when he found out about it, made a case for his mom to get an upgrade too. I was okay with it—he was right, she could use one, and we’re all still on the same plan—but before I could even tell him that, the little bastard whipped out the Big Blue Eyes on me. Big. Blue. Puppy. Eyes.

“Smart phones for everyone!”

So this afternoon I stopped by the Verizon store to discuss my plan: I wanted to make sure they weren’t going to try to gouge me for more data for upgrading to a smartphone. I’ve already been paying for a mandatory 250 monthly megabytes of data for three phones that can’t use it, because I’m independently wealthy, and—oh, wait, that’s not me. I’m the one who’s just an idiot.

So this idiot stopped by to talk to them and make sure they weren’t going to use the upgrade to siphon more money out of me; it would have been embarrassing when their contract started making that “bottom of the empty cup” sucking noise. I was met at the door by a guy with a name badge reading Tom, a customer service tablet, and a big, wide smile.

“Welcome to Verizon. How can I help you today?”

So I told the bright and cheerful Tom about my dumb phone dilemma, and that I was just there to check and see that my data plan wouldn’t have to be upgraded simply because I was suddenly going to use

“Oh, no, we won’t be upgrading your data plan just because you’ll be using a smartphone.”

I was starting to like this Tom. If I sent out Christmas cards, he would have just made the list.

“We’ll be upgrading your data plan because the plan you’re currently on isn’t even offered from Verizon any more.”

Burn in Hell, Tom. I never liked you anyway.

“So what we’re going to do is quadruple your data, but save you fifteen dollars a month.”

I went a bit blank.

“Uh . . . excuse me?”

“We’re going to quadruple your data,” he said again, “but save you fifteen dollars a month.”

I blinked a couple of times. “Excuse me,” I said. “But just how is that going to work?”

Tom was ready for this—hell, from his smile, he might have been looking forward to it. He whipped out a printed worksheet and a pen, filled in a few numbers in the spaces provided, then threw some other figures in above them. “Here’s your old plan,” he said, tapping some of the numbers with the nib of his pen. “And this is the new one,” he said, tapping all the other numbers.

Then he took a hard right turn, and left the English language behind. I heard terms like on plan, and off plan, then Tom slid right into words like sampsonium, and razzafraz.  Symphodatus strolled by, and then—I can’t prove this, now, but I swear to God—Tom said “Bippity, boppety, boo.” I looked at the worksheet, and saw it was now covered with more numbers, and arrows, and all kinds of symbols. The arrows, I think, were showing what could be applied where, and how things would change with the different plans, stuff like that. The numbers could have been prices for different plans, or options—Christ, they could have been The Lord’s Prayer in some sort of number-substitution code for all I could tell. And the symbols? All I was looking for were dollar signs, but I didn’t see a whole lot of them in that mess. Was this a good sign?

“So,” he said, tapping the worksheet with his pen again. “Do you see how it all works?”

I gave him a blank stare, concentrating to keep from actively drooling.

“The savings?” he said. “Because of the on-plan phone option?”

I still stared. I think I may have made a low grunt.

“Do you want me to explain it again?” he asked, with a hopeful smile.

“No!” I said. I pointed to the ink-covered paper in his hand. “I . . . uh . . .”

“Basically,” he said, a little deflated, “you get more, for less.”

“That!” I said, finally enthusiastic about the proposal. “I want that!”

Ten minutes later I was driving away from Verizon. Tom had given me the worksheet, and I’d folded it in thirds and stuck it above my sun visor. I pulled out my trusty (unless it’s decided to call in sick that day) dumb phone, and called Handsome’s mom.

“Hello?”

“Hi. It’s me. I just left Verizon.”

“And?”

“And I just wanted to explain the new plan before I forget it all. I have a worksheet I can show you later, but at the moment it’s fresh in my mind.”

“Okay,” she said. “Shoot.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but my mind was suddenly awhirl with arrows and figures. The words sampsonium and razzafraz flowed through my head, and I looked at the folded paper sticking out from the sun visor above my head: something looking vaguely like the alchemical formula for turning lead into gold stared back.

For just a moment I thought about saying Bippity, boppety, boo.

“We get more for less,” I shouted into the headset, then hung up before she could ask any questions.

I tell people I don’t want to have a phone that’s smarter than me. Sometimes, I think it’s too late.

Talk to you later!

The Shih Tzu Shih Tshoe - The Conclusion

Greetings, WYMOP fans!

This is the conclusion of a two-part story. If you haven't yet read the beginning, I suggest you back up a day and read The Shih Tzu Shih Tshoe—the rest of this will make more sense.

**************************************

Leaving the woman to try to collect the curious canines, I ran across the street to alert the pet owners that they seemed to have lost control of the situation. I let myself into their gated yard, then found myself confronted with an interior kind of “kid corral,” fenced-in area, with a tiny swing set (complete with little slide) surrounded by a knee-high fence. I stepped over the toddler/ankle-biting dog barrier and went up the stairs to the front porch . . . where I found the house unlocked and open, the front door propped wide by a couple of logs of firewood. The huge plasma TV was still on, as was the fantastic stereo, pumping quiet music into the air of the empty house. I rang the bell.

No answer.

I knocked on the open door.

No answer.

I called out “Hello!”

You can guess, right? Yup: no answer.

I began patting myself down, looking for a pen and paper with which to leave a note. I came up with three choices of message: “I have your dogs, they’re safe, come get them;” “I have your dogs, if you ever want to see them again you’ll bring cash;” and the short, but sweet, “Thanks for the TV and stereo, dudes!” Realizing the woman across the street would see me ferrying entertainment electronics down the street to my house, I gave up on the whole note idea.

I also didn’t have a pen.

I got back to the gate out to the street just as across-the-street lady was coaxing the runaways back to the proper side of the street, shaking my box of Milk Bones and judiciously

applying the word “treat” at strategic moments. The yorkie was trotting along just as happy as all get out, but the shih tzu apparently saw through the ruse. She lay down out by the street and refused to move again, no matter how hard across-the-street lady rattled that box. Eventually the woman  simply picked up the recalcitrant canine and carried her into the yard.

The whole time, the shih tzu stared at me with an expression communicating just how undignified she found the whole “picking her up” thing, and that somehow it all my fault.

*Sigh*

So we put them in the yard, and I started to follow them in toward the house, intending to let them into the kid/pet corral . . . but when I got there I saw there was no gate. I’d just stepped over the thing when I went up to ring the bell, and hadn’t even noticed. I looked at the dogs, quick-stepping about the yard like small dogs do, and shrugged. They were home, I’d done my good deed. I was done. I started to head for home.

As I went out through the gate, across-the-street lady was talking to one of the neighbors who happened to be driving by, leaning on the car roof to lean in the driver’s window.

“Well, they’re home,” I said.

“Did you put them in the little yard?”

“Uh . . .”

“Because they usually keep them in that little yard, with the swings.”

Crap. My good deed was not done. I turned around to head back into the yard . . . and the shih tzu passed me going the other way, trotting along the top of the wall with the same “I don’t care” attitude she’d shown crossing the busy street.

“Where the hell are you going?” I said.

She just turned her head away as she kept walking, the doggy equivalent of flipping me the bird.

“Right!” I said. “The little yard it is.”

Across-the-street lady had done such a good job with her highness, mistress Shih Tzu the first time, I conscripted her again. She started herding the little dog back into the yard while

This is the most savage
yorkie pic I could find!

I went back in to look for the littler dog. I found the yorkie in the corner of the yard: apparently a leaf had made a suspicious move, and the tiny terror was busy barking the detritus into submission. Though the little beast couldn’t be heard from more than five feet away, I gave her an A for effort. Then I started dismantling the little fence.

It sounds worse than it was. All I really did was pull one of the connecting rods out of a panel join and made a gate; I mean really, who the hell fences off a part of their yard without putting in a gate? This was not my fault.

Across-the-street lady arrived with the shih tzu in tow, and we hustled the two of them into the safety of their little yard. Then across-the-street stood guard as I put the fence back together—though, as always, taking it apart had been a lot easier. I had just about gotten it back together when I looked past across-the-street lady to see the savage yorkie trotting along the top of yet another wall, apparently intending to reestablish her conflict with the leaf.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”

I followed the wall back, and found its end abutted the front stairs, nicely level with one of the steps about halfway up, providing a kind of doggy highway out of the inner yard and right over to where they could pick up the wall that led straight out to the street. I looked about the yard, taking in the useless inner and outer fences, and the gates that were impediments only to people, and didn’t slow the pets at all.

“What are these people,” I said to across-the-street lady, “idiots?”

“Yes,” she replied, nodding sadly. “Yes they are.”

I scooped up the yorkie, braving her threatening squeaks and almost-barks, and plopped her in the inner yard. I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, the dogs following along as if it were all a game. “Treats,” I lied, pointing into the house. “They’re in there!” The dogs galloped through the door, on the hunt for the elusive goodies. I waved sadly at the stereo, its lights still winking at me enticingly, booted the firewood out of the way, and slammed the door behind them.

I hot-footed it back to the street, not looking back for fear of seeing a knotted bedsheet hanging from a window with a small canine form already halfway down; at that point, I wouldn’t have put it past them. I exchanged quick pleasantries with across-the-street lady, just trying to get the hell out of there before something else went wrong. My stomach had started making noise, reminding me that I’d last seen that pot-o-pasta sitting on the stove more than an hour earlier, and I was still damn hungry. I jogged back down the hill, around to the front of my house and right in through the open garage, closing the big door behind me. I went straight into the house through the laundry room—and promptly slipped in the pile of “fertilizer” still sitting in the middle of the floor.

“Son of a bitch!”

The spaghetti was quite cold by the time I got to it.

And that's the story of The Shih Tzu Shih Tshoe. 

Talk to you later!

Ding-Dong!

            Greetings, WYMOP fans!

Ding-Dong!

Your mailman is at the door. It’s me, Rob, that poor bermuda-shorts-wearing bastard

who needs to collect a signature from you again. Or maybe I have a package I want to get in out of the rain. Or maybe the Jehovah's Witnesses are out in the neighborhood again, and they’re closing in, and I just want to get inside and lie on the floor like the rest of the household, pretending nobody’s home until the danger has passed. Whatever. You need to answer the door, and there are certain things that should just not happen when you do so. There’s actually a ton of things you shouldn’t do, so this is just a partial list.

Don’t answer the door while restraining your dog.

Look, I know you love your dog. You love dogs, period. I love them too. But if you’re holding Sparky’s collar and he’s actually dragging you forward, your feet sliding across the

carpet like some slow-motion water skiing scene, barking and snarling and slavering—and he’s just a 9 lb Pekingese or a Boston Terrier—take the hint. Sparky wants to kill and eat me, possibly (though not probably) by humping my knee to death, and there’s really no way you’re going to work the pen, the paper, and the savage beast, all at the same time. And if Sparky is something a little

bigger than a Corgi, like, say, a Doberman, or a Mastiff, then you won’t have to worry about letting me in to avoid those Witnesses: I’ll pee myself to death right there on your doorstep.

Don’t answer the door while stoned.

Yes, whatever I’m trying to get you to sign is probably important. Yes, the agents of the Watchtower are closing in, and my fight-or-flight reflex is revving my engine like I’m a

dirt track hero. But no, it’s not going to help me at all if you’re going to open the door, ask me who I am, introduce yourself, ask me where to sign, flip the card over, ask me where to sign again, flip the card over, ask me where to sign again, blast a Dorito burp in my face, giggle an apology, then ask me who I am and introduce yourself again. Then flip the card over.

1. I’ll cry.
2. If I’m looking for a signature, I may have to just bail on you right in the middle of your story about the time your brother’s best friend’s cousin’s uncle’s half step-sister and you went to the store for milk, possibly killing your buzz.
3. If I’m running from sober-suited folks wielding Awake! like a weapon, there is the slightest chance I may wind up charging toward them, sky-clad and bearing your head on a stick, asking if they’ve met my Dark Lord. Panic does funny things to people, and I might try fighting fire with brimstone.

Please don’t answer the door naked.

Okay, this one’s got a qualifier: unless you’re a 21-26 year old swimsuit model.

So as you approach the door, I don’t care if you’re male or female, ask yourself: Am I a 21-26 year old swimsuit model? If the answer is yes, then smile and throw that door wide. The human body is a beautiful thing, and at the very least I’ll get a blog post out of it.

However, if the answer is, No, I’m a 68-year-old retired fisherman, with a strange and disturbing skin rash beneath random patches of wiry and none-too-clean body hair, who may not smell bad, necessarily, but does smell a lot, and has decided that those spaces where I’m missing teeth are the perfect places to store food for later . . . then no. Please. Please no, for the love of God, just leave me out on the stoop to face my fate.

Yes, Mr. Russell, I’m sorry, but I’m talking to you.

That’s all I can come up with for now. I can’t get the images of Mr. Russell out of my head. The last time he opened the door he was naked . . . and stoned. And apparently had some sort of  . . .of . . . man-part infection . . .

I have to go lie down.

I’ll talk to you later.

With a Stick

Last week it was 80 degrees and sunny here in Massachusetts. Too hot for me personally, but out on my route I had everybody and their brother meeting me at the door to take in the mail. They all had the same thing to say:

“Wow, must be great to have your job today!.”

No, wait, some of them had this to say:

“Oh, I wish I had your job!”

Or this one:

“Must be terrific to work outside!”

Then there’s the ever-popular “Warm enough for you?” Yeah…that one’s a pip.

I even had one gentleman, he’s probably a terrific guy, who let loose with a “Can’t beat your job with a stick!”

Well, that was last week. When it was 80 degrees and sunny.

Yesterday was only in the high 30’s, maybe 40 degrees. That, of course, was before you factored in the wind, which was gusting up to almost 40 mph. That kind of a gust, as anyone who works outside during a New England winter can tell you, gives you a wind chill factor of “Holy @#$%-ing $#!%!!”

Now what I want to know is, where were all my fair-weather friends yesterday? I didn’t see hide nor hair of any of them, and believe you me, I was looking!

I especially didn’t see that gentleman who’s probably a terrific guy hiding behind the blinds in his living room as I rang his bell repeatedly while screaming “With a stick, huh pal? I got your stick right here! Right here!”

I left before the police arrived.

Barely.

I think I may try medication.

That’s what the voices are telling me to do, anyway. Well, some of them. It’s a bit of a debate.

Talk to you later!

Going South to Go North

This afternoon I related a story to the Postal Inspector who was walking with me all day, something that had happened to me on the route years ago. I thought it was a little funny, so here it is.


The man pulled to the big car to the curb. He was calling out to me before his window had even begun to motor down.

"Excuse me! Excuse me! Could you tell us how to get to Route 128 from here?"

I leaned down to peer in through the passenger's side window. His wife, small and dark-haired, sat straight in the seat, firmly belted in and staring straight ahead, as if oblivious to the conversation being shouted across her face.

"Well sir, I can get you started. What you want to do is go back this way," I pointed back the way he had come, keeping my arm low so as to be visible to him through the windows.
"You follow this street here until it reaches a five-way intersection. Straight across from you will be a Do Not Enter sign. Don't go that way." I smiled. "Take the street to the right of that one and go all the way to the end, then take a left. You'll be on Pleasant street. Take that until it forks, and take the right fork. That's Lafayette street, and you'll follow that all the way down the hill and into the next town. Once you're in the next town, keep an eye out for an intersection that has a Fire Station on the far corner from you. There should be a sign there saying Rt. 107. If you follow Rt. 107 you'll start seeing signs directing you to Rt. 128"

He didn't write any of this down, or even look at me as I spoke, merely looked straight ahead, much as his wife did. He, though, made hand gestures as I spoke as if he were mentally reviewing my directions in his head, curving and moving his hand in the air in front of him to simulate lefts and rights. When I had finished he looked away from me, out his window for a moment, then finally turned toward me.
"I want to go north, but I can see by the sun you are sending me south. Why are you doing this? Is it just to mess with me? Why would you mess with me like that?"
I was surprised, but his tone was belligerent, and he really was demanding an answer.
I thought about it for a moment, then sighed.
"Well, sir, the fact that you're on a peninsula kind of limits your options. I was sending you south to get you to the mainland, where you could go north to find 128. If you'd rather just go straight north from here, go ahead, you're pointed in the right direction. You're going to get a little wet, though. Might want to roll 'em up."
I gave a small wave to the silent woman who sat not two feet from my face and still had never even glanced my way, straightened up and continued on my way.

I wonder which way he chose to go?
Oh, well. I'll never know for sure.

... what a dink.

Talk to you later!

Yes. I Have Pants.

It's December 16^th. 

9 days 'til Christmas. 

I work outside all day, every day …

...and I'm still wearing shorts.

I'm not even uncomfortable most of the time. I have my shorts, and I have my hooded sweatshirt, and I'm good.

People keep asking me if we have a bet in the Post Office, trying to see which letter carrier in my town can last the longest without putting on long pants. But it's nothing like that. There is no bet, and I personally don't care who wears shorts longer into the winter. 

I'm just still not sweating. That means I can overheat very easily, so I'm looking to manipulate my clothes to help me thermoregulate, and it's much easier to just take down my hood, or even shuck my sweatshirt altogether, than to try to change my pants out here on the road. (If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, please click this link to go to my blog post titled "No Sweat, No Problem...Not Really!" It will explain everything.)

There are still days out here, like today for example, where it is warm enough (50 degrees today!) that I have to take down my hood because I'm starting to overheat. People don't understand that as long as I'm moving, as long as I'm generating internal heat, I'm fine out here!

Until, of course, the sun goes down. It gets a little hard on my shirts when the sun goes down. I keep having to buy new ones. 

You see, when the sun goes down, the temperature drops quite rapidly. Once that happens, and a brisk evening wind whips across my bare legs, my nipples go hard enough to cut glass.

They keep poking holes in my shirts.

I hate it when that happens.

Talk to you later!

Blah-Blah!

The Set Up:
 Yesterday I woke with laryngitis. If I really try I can get out this strange monotone that sounds a lot like Twiki from the old TV show Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Dad was on his way to his Social Club, the local Moose Lodge, to put on a Sunday morning breakfast. He invited us, Handsome wanted to go, so we went.

The Story:
We walked in and I made sure to stop by the kitchen to say hello to my Dad and Sister, who were both working the breakfaast, and let them know we were there. Handsome saw some other kids, and though he had been moaning theatrically in hunger on the drive there he was off like a shot to play. Dad emerged from the kitchen and decided to introduce me to some people.
Huzzah.
Now, I have no memory for names, and will frequently forget the names of my extended family members unless I have prompting. I was being introduced to folks who I knew I was going to forget in an insultingly short length of time, and I couldn't even say 'hello, nice to meet you' in a very audible fashion.
Spiffy.
I was trying to say hello to people, and I realized that it wasn't my Dad's fault I couldn't speak. He honestly might not have noticed, figuring that he couldn't hear me because he has trouble hearing anything. He was being the good host and showing me around, when he introduced me to one elderly woman who was sitting at a table having breakfast with some friends.
"Rob, this is Blah-Blah. Blah-Blah, this is my son, Rob."
I warned you I was horrible with names.
Well, Blah-Blah looked at me, and then at Dad, and said to Dad "I would have known he was your son without the introduction."
"Why's that?" Dad said with a grin. I braced myself for what I knew was coming next.
"Because he looks just like -"

We interrupt my remembered moment of painful anticipation to explain why. Why I was dreading Blah-Blah's next words. I am 42. My Dad is 63.  My Grandfather if Eighty Ahemumblemumble. I have frequently been told that I look just like them. Not a young them. Them. Being told I look just like someone half again my age, or even double my age can sometimes be depressing. I love them both, but that doesn't mean I want to be them. This has gone so far as to have at one time, someone who met my grandfather in his later years, upon seeing my name on my credit card, assume I was my Grandfather's son.
Not grandson.
Son.
Huzzah.
Okay, the explanation is now over, and we return you to my moment of terrible trepidation.

Old Mrs. Blah-Blah looked at me, and then my Dad, and said, and I quote:
"I would have known he was your son without the introduction, because he looks just like his sister."

There was a moment where the three of us were silent, and all you could hear was the hubbub from all the surrounding tables. Suddenly I half-whispered/half croaked "Oh my God, I love you!"
To which she replied "It's nice to meet you too!"
She smiled and waved as my feet got me the hell out of there before my mouth could scrape together the wherewithal to ask her to drop the old stick she was sitting next to and run away with me...

I wish that for just this once I could remember someone's name after meeting them just one time, but I can't.
All I can do is hope that God knows who I'm talking about when I'm wishing all manner of good things be bestowed upon Mrs. Blah- Blah!
I'm sure He'll figure it out!

Talk to you later!

The Hippy-Hippy Shake

Over the past couple of days I have been writing a lot. Some professional writers might not think so, but it's been a lot for me. NaNoWriMo has begun (The NaNoWriMo button to the right will get you to my page at the National Novel Writer's website) but I was in the middle of writing a Sci-Fi story for Handsome, and I wanted to finish that before I started my NaNo novel in earnest. So I was working on both of them at the same time.
Well, that wasn't working out too well. I wasn't seeing the kind of progress I was hoping for in either project, even though I was writing my rear cheeks off. I've been drinking more Hydrive over the past couple of days in order to stay a little alert while writing, especially since Tuesday night I got about 3 hours of sleep and last night it was closer to 2 and a half.
2 and a half hours of sleep, and then I went to work.
Now, usually I do not drink Hydrive in the mornings. All that caffeine in me that early in the day is a recipe for everyone around me to be annoyed. I mean really annoyed. Like, carrying pitchforks and torches and chasing me over the moors annoyed. But there I was, driving to work with a Hydrive in my hand, one to replace the one I had been drinking while I was writing before work (I did manage to finish and print up Handsome's new story, by the way!). My breakfast was ... minimal. So by the time I got to work I was what they like to call 'wired'.
I sang. I danced. I sang some more. I tried to keep it quiet, and I did manage to listen to my audiobook for a while as I was sorting mail, but it didn't last. Eventually I was pushing my sorted route out of the building in a big hamper, getting it out there into the parking lot so I could load it into my truck. That was where I saw PW.
PW is a coworker who loves to hate me. He has fun hating me.  The part that he hates is that he's a somewhat angry man and I tend to make him laugh. That kind of spoils the mad. He's a little short too. Pretty much if you were to take Grumpy Dwarf, shave the little bastard, and slap him in a Postal Uniform, you'd have PW.  And I did have PW, right there in the parking lot with me.
Now, since he has fun hating  me, I have swung the complete opposite way and have fun loving him. I do things like sing love songs to him across the workroom floor, and I make sure to wave when he leaves the building, or sometimes salute as he walks by. And there he was, backing his truck out of its spot int he lot.
I stood where he could see me, and I started waving. He backed out, saw me there, and started to drive by without acknowledging me at all. Well, in my Hydrive-enhanced state I just couldn't let that stand, so as he pulled by me I started to jog alongside of his truck, still waving. And yelling goodbye. Loudly.
I could see that he was trying not to laugh, and as he came to the stop sign where he would take a right and travel up the driveway along the side of the building to the street I decided to stick with him. He was only smiling, I hadn't yet broken him, you see. So he made the turn and I paced him, running alongside and bidding him a fond farewell at the top of my voice from about three feet away.
Suddenly he floored it. I knew he could only run to the end of the driveway and then he'd have to stop again, so, with a youthful exuberance borne of massive caffeine overload, I sprinted after him. I didn't do too badly, managing to stay alongside the speeding vehicle and looking in his big wing-mirror to watch him watching me. His watching was happening through slits,  his eyes squinted nearly closed with laughter.
At the end of the driveway, mission accomplished, I stopped, put my hands on my knees and tried to breathe. As he drove away, I jogged back to the rear parking lot and loaded my truck . As I was loading up another co-worker, JS, asked me "So, did you catch him?"
"Catch him?" I replied, "I never lost him."
"Really? He must have been laughing his ass off."
"Yup, he was. But the real funny part is still to come."
JS looked at me quizzically. "What's that?"
"I am going to be so sore tomorrow!"

The sore did not wait. My hip, which does trouble me from time to time, decided that today it was time. I limped all day, and sometimes it hurt quite a bit. But all I had to do to feel a little better was remember PW's squinched up little laughing eyes, watching me flailing along beside his truck like a total fool.

Tomorrow morning I'm getting on a 7am flight direct to Denver. I'm going to be stiff and sore as hell when I get off that plane in DIA. Am I going to have a Hydrive as soon as I get up, and be all twitchy and restless for the duration of the flight? Oh, hell no.

I'm packing one in my checked bag and drinking it as soon as I get through baggage claim!
Watch out, Denver!

Talk to you later!

Mrs. Manners

So I delivered a section of someone else's route today. It rained, in case you were unaware of it, one Hell of a lot in Massachusetts this morning. Something like 5 inches of rain fell in about in about 2 hours. The mail on the big trucks was delayed due to washed out roads and flooding, and some of our people couldn't make it in to work this morning, so pretty much everyone that showed up was helping out. I took a section on my friend J.D.'s route.

It was raining on and off all day, so nothing out there was dry. Nothing. So I was pretty much standing in a puddle when I was on the narrow back porch attached to an apartment building, puzzling out the names on the boxes and figuring out who was where. I was still standing in that puddle when the door to my left opened and a woman came out.

Big bleach blonde hair. Makeup applied with something like a trowel, but there was the possibility that what was on her face actually was Spackle. Definitely older than me but dressed like a High-Schooler, she stepped through the door in knee-high rubber boots, a short skirt with spandex pants under it (a look I will never understand) and a short, useless little rain jacket. As the door closed behind her she took one last long drag on her cigarette, one massively mascaraed eye squinting shut as some last squibs of smoke wreathed her face. She gave it a Danny Zuko flick, sending it flying out into the yard. It was a move well worthy of the movie “Grease”, and I have to admit I had chills. They were multiplying, but it didn't have the same feel as the song.

The aging Pink Lady wannabe looked at me, since I was blocking her path along the narrow porch, and I, being a gentleman, stepped back and motioned her through. Without hesitation, or even acknowledging my manners, she started forward. Three things happened in rapid succession.

First, my backside came in contact with the wet wrought iron railing behind me, the ice-cold water there instantly soaking through my summer weight shorts and giving me a double-cheek-chill, causing me to gasp and almost start forward.

Almost simultaneously, Greased Lightning's rubber-shod foot landed squarely in the puddle I had just backed out of, splashing the aforementioned icy water up my legs to the thighs. This caused my gasp to deepen, becoming the kind of inhale your doctor is always asking for when they pick up the stethoscope (also ice cold, but that's another story): a good, deep breath.

Right on the heels of all this, just as my inhale was starting in earnest, Splashy the Fashion Don't said “Thanks,” in a rough, rumbling smoker's voice, expelling that long last drag directly into my face. Honestly, except for the fact that she never actually made contact with me it was like CPR in Hell.

The used smoke slammed into my lungs like a sledgehammer on fire, causing me to choke and cough as I bounced my wet and freezing tail off the railing, stumbling and almost falling in the puddle I was already wearing. By the time I had gotten my diaphragm under control and the coughing was down to a minimum, I looked in the direction she had gone, but she was nowhere to be seen.

“You're welcome,” I croaked, in the voice of a junior high kid who just tried his first cigarette and has been reduced to being happy he didn't throw up in front of the cool kids.

What a woman!

Talk to you later!