Weirdo
Asia says the house is cold. Whatever. She also puts ketchup and mayo on her hot dog, so it’s not like she knows ANYTHING.
Last week I built a wall of cabinets and installed them, along with our new (double!) oven. Yay! Almost in time for Thanksgiving. Ovenless for the holidays, we ate turkey at a chain-ish restaurant surrounded by fat lazy white people. Ah, nostalgia for an age yet to come.
one week late...
Yeah, you know you want to hear all about my trip to Cancun. This picture sums it up:
Yep, that’s me reading a wet book in the middle of a hurricane. If you’ve never tried it, at some point in your life you should brave 12 foot waves during a nighttime torrential downpour/lighting storm. It’s quite a rush. Just don’t lose your glasses in the process. I’m just sayin’.
When I first moved to downtownish Chicago, my life revolved around a sickfast sport car. Both my car and I hated Chicago. Potholes gnawed at its chassis. Parallel parkers ravaged its fenders. Cops fed it a steady diet of parking tickets. After three years of Chicago misery, my car breathed its last. While still in mourning, the following week I bought a bicycle. Soon enough, my bike took me to faraway lands never before seen from the highway: Mexico, Poland, Ukraine, Greece, Puerto Rico, and a third world African country. Within a month I had fallen in love with the beauty of urban life, its vibrance and its decay.
Four years ago I moved to a small town just outside of Pittsburgh. I have to drive (a minivan) everywhere. While I slowly strangle nature, I’ve learned to soak up its beauty. Every day I drive to Home Depot. And this is what I see:
I have to admit, I kind of like this place.
What is the blue giant doing? And why is he wearing socks with sandals? He’s cutting granite, and he was too lazy to put on shoes. What’s wrong with a little sock/sandal action within my own house? Nothing!
There are better ways of doing this.
At 3:20 pm it occurred to me that my kids were waiting to be picked up from school, leaving no time to change footwear or shower away my layer of granite dust. One reason I enjoy living in West View is that sock/sandal action is a step up from the community’s sartorial mean. After picking up the nerds, I rushed Zach off to his eye appointment at the mall (not in West View), once again allowing no time to change footwear. People at the mall were not impressed with my sandals.
You can judge my sock/sandal indiscretion all you want, but next week my freshly opened granite space will contain a Viking cooktop. Viking! What does a Viking cooktop mean? In suburban sprawl or downtown condo terms, it means I’m better than you. So there!
Mr. Viking's new home.
Progress?
Mrs. Neill quit cooking. “I’m uninspired”, she said. “I hate this kitchen. We need a new kitchen.” Never mind that people generally ooooo and ahhh when they see our kitchen, a man’s gotta eat.
So…for the last 2 weeks I’ve been (re)moving walls, flooring, pipes, gas, and electricity. Meanwhile I am living in filth and eating less than ever. That woman will have her kitchen if it kills me. Yesterday I worked like 8 hours! EIGHT! That’s the longest I’ve worked since 1994, and dang am I tired. How DO you people work those kind of hours?
I once lived in a townhome. Each month our “association” would circulate a folksy, informative synopsis of their board meeting. Once in a while I read the report, but it was mostly boring crap: ”The board approved $130 worth of varmit remediation for Mrs. Liu’s unit. The board signed a new snow removal contract. Blah blah blah. 2-3 pages worth of blah.
One day someone tricked me into getting elected onto the board. My election coincided with the hiring of a new manager. Having a legal background, our new manager was outraged at our informative board meeting reports. “What are you doing?”, he fumed, “This report is a paper trail. Anything in here could be used AGAINST YOU. From now on, these reports should say NEXT TO NOTHING.” Thus began a sad era in which legalistic butt covering trumped common sense.
Déjà vu. A year ago, a man named Mr. B came out of retirement to serve as principal of my kids’ school. He’s been a hit with teachers, parents, and students. Unfortunately, some agency, somewhere in the great state of Pennsylvania mildly frowns on retired administrators working as principals. Rather than asking his legal advisor “How can we do what’s best for our children, and figure out a way to keep this popular principal?”, our superintendent, Dr. Joe Goodnack asked, “How might we best cover our butts?” Alas, on the Friday before the start of a new school year, Mr. B was tossed in favor of THE ONLY GUY THEY INTERVIEWED. (Note – this will make 4 principals in 4 years) *Sigh* I know I’ve had years to prepare, but I’m still not ready to live in a world devoid of common sense.
I’m back in America. 31 days in Paris was enough. Here’s what I will miss/not miss:
Miss: Seeing people riding bikes. Bikes were a major mode of transportation. Helping things along was a fleet of 20,600 rental fixies spread throughout the city, a bargain at $1.43/hour.
Not miss: Looking at those stupid bikes for a whole month, knowing I couldn’t ride them. The automated system accepts European “smart” cards, not our dumb American credit cards. Fail!
Stupid bikes
Miss: 1 liter bottles of 6-7 varieties of fresh cider: Yellow delicious, Macintosh, Gala, etc.
Not miss: Paying $22/gallon for this juice.
Miss: The parks. Small neighborhood parks on a weekday afternoon hosted 100-200 kids and adults. Children from a rainbow of races harmoniously exploited 10-30 foot slides, zip lines, and a refreshingly dangerous giant pyramid. Ignoring all of this were gabbing parents and nannies, sitting in the cool breeze under shade trees while teens/tweens played soccer and ping pong. Too cool for this mundane action, old men played petanque (bocce) in the far corner of the park. A modern Leave it to Beaver scene. Who would have guessed?
Not miss: Staring at the built-in foosball tables. No one in Paris seems to know where to buy a foosball.
Extra fun in the rain.
Miss: The pastries. They lived up to their hype.
Not miss: The rest of the food. I’m serious! As a foodie of sorts, it is my opinion that ”classic” Parisian cooking is a hoax. Virtually every restaurant served the same eight nasty dishes. Beef tartare? That’s raw hamburger! Andouillette? That’s chitlins! Tartine? An open faced grilled cheese sandwich. Oh, and don’t forget the endless parade of leathery steaks. Over the course of the month, I had ONE satisfying meal! Seriously Paris, wtf?
Today I was forced out of the house. Sure we’re in Paris, but my laziness knows no borders. So where did we spend my wife’s hard earned money today? A carnival! Here are some pics for you to endure:
Ho hum...another day in Paris. Wait, what's that in the background?
Yep, and it's steps from the Louvre.
Here's where the kids were sitting on the grass, taken from atop the ferris wheel!
Asia climbs to the top...
Today the family hiked to a neighboring district. It’s too bad I’m not a black woman, because every store was either a nail salon, a wig/weave store, or a hair salon specializing in black hair. And let me tell you, there were some sweetazz hairdos being offered. Our real reason for being in the 10th, however, was to eat in an alley. Not any alley, a covered alley, full of Indian restaurants and shops:
So there’s that.
Oh, here’s something great. Yesterday Asia got really mad. So what did she do? She stomped into the kitchen and washed the dishes. Yeah, beat that.
The other night I told Asia, “Stick your head out the window. See all those lights? There are 50,000 people down there. Listen close. Can you hear them?” She listened intently for a minute, before shaking her head. “Exactly”, I said, “But they all hear you. Quit being so loud.”
Paris is like a giant library. Regardless of how crowded a bus, train, restaurant, bar, or park may be, it’s always shushy quiet. And no matter how hushed our tones, we’re the loudest! Luckily the Parisians are too quiet to tell us to hush. Instead they look mildly huffed, sort of like a cat twitching her ear out of annoyance. So there’s that.
Yesterday the kids and I jumped on a random bus to see where it would take us. The highlight? Zach had to pee crazybad, so he got to use one of these:
These public toilets are everywhere. They self clean after every use, scrubbing and drying the seat, walls and floor. Quite awesome. And free.
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Sorry I Missed Your Party