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You Wanna Climb Down My What and Do What-What?!

I was visited by a chimney cleaner today.

He didn't actually do any work, but he took a look around and gave me some estimates on shit that we should have done before winter sets in. It was pretty informative; my wife and I moved in here in April, and have never had a working fireplace of our own before. So it was good to pick up a few tidbits of information about the thing before giving it a test run.

(Like which end the wood goes into -- I was so not looking forward to climbing up on the roof and dropping logs down the chimney, too. So it's a relief to know that you stick 'em in the bottom end. I guess I should have known, really. Where else would you find logs but in a bottom?)

Anyway, it was good that I was expecting him. He seemed like a nice guy, but he was frickin' huge. And sooty, of course, as he'd already had a couple of appointments earlier in the day. So I think I might have been a little taken aback if I'd gotten off the couch to see who was at the door, and have this big hulking filthy dude say,

'Yo, I'm gonna clean your chimney, man.'

And by 'little taken aback', I really mean 'scared out of my fucking mind'. I've seen prison movies. I think I'd have just screamed like a girl, and tried to escape through my back door before he could... um, escape into my back door, if you get my connotataries. You won't catch me squealin' like a pig. Uh-uh.

But, luckily, I knew what he was really there for, and so I showed him around the place. And he was cool, and very specific about what we needed, so I didn't have anything to worry about, after all.

(Sure, he may bend us over and stick it to us when it gets down to prices, but that's different. This is Boston. Everybody gets the proverbial shaft on shit like this around here. It's kind of expected.)

So, we'll call him back in a week or so, once we've decided how much work we need to have done right now.

(Which means, how much work we can afford to have done, and still eat people food for our meals. The dog didn't appreciate it when we bought our car, and had to dig into her kibble because we were so poor for a while. On the other hand, it wasn't all that bad. That shit tastes like chicken. Who'da thunk it?)

Anyway, we'll soon have a fully-functional fireplace, and just in time for winter. The 'sweeps' will be back soon to scrub our chimney, and grease our flues, and all sorts of other suggestive-sounding shit like that. I'm strangely excited just thinking about it. Of course, if the dude shows up next time with flowers, or friggin' candy, I'm still running the other way. He may be a nice guy, but in my fireplace, the logs come out of the bottom, not the other way around. I ain't got that kind of 'chimney', understand?