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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Time for another beisbol update, amigos. Mosey on over to Bugs & Cranks for the latest in Braves’ analysis:
That Was Then, This Is… When? — Will the 2007 Braves look more like the ’05 division winners, or the stinkers of ’06?
When you’re done there, come on back for today’s somnabulatory nonsense, below. Gracias!
It’s been one of those weeks when the weekend can’t arrive soon enough. This one was a whirlwind, with an illness, a couple of late nights, and a plumbing emergency leading to a new toilet.
(For the record, I’m not suggesting my illness was a ‘plumbing emergency’. Though it may have led to a couple, at the fevered height of its run.
But under no circumstances did the illness lead to the new toilet. If I’m ever that sick, I think I’ll just hang it up and climb in the coffin. If only to avoid cleaning up the mess.)
“I haven’t taken two naps in the same week since I was sucking warm milk from a bottle and watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
Things got so hectic, in fact, that during the course of the week I took not one, but two naps. And I’m not a napper. I haven’t taken two naps in the same week since I was sucking warm milk from a bottle and watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
(And no, that’s not how I spent my Sunday mornings in college. The rumors are untrue.
If you must know, it was strained peas and Sesame Street. I tended to regress a bit with Monday morning classes looming. The semester I had calculus, I spent most of my weekends in the fetal position, tucked in a laundry bag in a dark closet.)
It’s not that I’m opposed to naps, in principle. I’ve always heard that the optimal sleep pattern is two-to-three hours, three or four times a day. Just like we’re supposed to eat seven small meals a day, floss our teeth every hour, and have ‘quickie’ sex fourteen times a day, or until we can’t walk any more.
(My wife didn’t go for that, either. You can’t blame a guy for trying.)
The catnapping scheme is great in theory. Do a little work, take a nap. Wake up refreshed, do some more work, take another nap. Have some dinner, take a nap. Watch TV, take a nap. Breakfast, nap. Lunch, nap. Brush your teeth, have a quickie, blow off calc class, take a nap. Sounds wonderful.
Sadly, it doesn’t work that way for me in practice. I have a debilitating condition that renders naps a non-option under all but the most desperate circumstances. Perhaps it’s a genetic defect, or the result of some forgotten childhood naptime trauma. Whatever the cause, the grim reality is this:
I’m a grumpy waker.
It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been asleep, or what time I wake up. When my eyes open, I’m tired, noncooperative, and generally poopy-mooded. I don’t want to talk to anyone, I don’t want to see anyone, and I certainly don’t want to hear from anyone. Mostly, I want to lie perfectly still and grumble under my breath to no one in particular. It doesn’t help, especially, but at least I feel like the gods of sleep are getting an earful about their abuse. Short of smacking around the Sandman, that’s the best I can do.
I’m not sure why I wake up woozy, but that’s the way it’s always worked. It’s bad enough to go through that once a morning, and gradually wake up enough to face the world. A nap just starts the cycle over. I don’t wake up rejuvenated; I wake up rejerkified, with a head full of fuzz and a mouth full of ‘meh‘. For an hour, I’m like a bitter addled old geezer with lots of irrational opinions and a healthy set of lungs.
(I eventually recover, of course. Then I go back to the lovable addled old irrational geezer you see now. Different, see?)
So I’ll be glad when this week is over, and I can go home tonight to a nice warm bed and sleep for as long as I want. And then I can wake up, grumble through a shower, and face the world anew. And most importantly, put this nasty napping business aside for a while. That should improve the outlook around here, at the very least. Because you don’t want to see me nap. You wouldn’t like me when I nap.
Permalink | 2 CommentsBesides writing regularly here — and here, and here — I also occasionally submit pieces to sites that actually can reject them.
And often, they do.
Such was (sort of) the case with the following snippet, which I flung over to Demockeracy, for their recent essay contest on ‘Real Estate’s Next Hot Spot’. You can’t ‘reject’ an entry for a contest, per se; the piece can only win, lose, or earn an ‘honorable mention’.
It didn’t win. It didn’t earn an ‘honorable mention’. You do the math; I’ve got a tub of ice cream to eat and a blanket to hide under for the next three days.
In the meantime, they didn’t seem to like the piece below, but maybe you will. Maybe they’re just located in California and don’t have a sense of humor about it. Who knows?
But if you’re looking for a fancy summer home where the tourists won’t bother you — for the next few to few thousand years, anyway — then read on.
Real Estate’s Next Hot Spot
Tired of those winter blahs, but can’t afford to buy an expensive house on the beach? Then we at the Cataclysmic Condominium Corporation have an exciting new real estate opportunity for you!
Located in sunny Searchlight, Nevada, our ‘soon-to-be-shoreline’ beachhouse condominiums are spacious, modern, and — best of all — affordable. That’s because Searchlight is currently a near-forgotten ghost town in the middle of the Mojave Desert. But when the ‘big one’ hits, sinking California thirty fathoms into the sea and bringing the Pacific Ocean right to the patios of these fabulous condos, will the prices stay this low? No way! That’s why you need to act now to get in on the ground floor.
Not literally the ‘ground floor’, of course; we’ve built our condominium complex on anchored stilts, anticipating the frothy ocean waves to come. Our brand new pier will one day jut majestically into two hundred yards of deep sea water. Jet ski rentals are already available — we’ve thought of everything!
“Earthquakes, tsunamis, global warming, meteor impacts, nuclear explosions, floods, erosion, and Justin Timberlake are just a few of the dire imminent threats to the very existence of the state of California.”
You’re a shrewd investor. We at Cataclysmic Condominiums appreciate that. You’re wondering how we can be so sure that three hundred miles of dry land west of Searchlight will soon be submerged into the Pacific. And the answer is — it’s inevitable! The list of natural and manmade disasters poised to doom California grows longer every day. Earthquakes, tsunamis, global warming, meteor impacts, nuclear explosions, floods, erosion, and Justin Timberlake are just a few of the dire imminent threats to the very existence of the state of California. And when it’s gone, who’ll be left to enjoy the sunny beaches? That’s right, you — in a Cataclysmic Condo in the tropical ocean paradise of Searchlight, Nevada.
So invest in one of our gorgeous units with all the comforts of home and an ocean view arriving soon. Disaster may not strike today, or tomorrow, or in the next hundred thousand years. But when it does, you can be one of the lucky few waiting with a beach towel and a margarita in hand to cash in. Come join us in Searchlight, where our motto is: “Someday, surf’s up!”
Permalink | 1 CommentFirst stop on the train today, pulling into Bugs & Cranks station:
These Irish Eyes Are Watching the Braves — A green-tinted St. Patty’s Day gaze at the latest news from Braves camp.
Now let’s keep the train rolling. All aboard!
Today, I’m playing that time-honored, oft-attempted, and entirely unwinnable game: I’m waiting for the plumber to show up.
Plumbers are members of a mysterious secret society — including cable guys, delivery people, and, depending on your neighborhood, the cops — that unfailingly knows how to catch you at the worst possible time. Either they employ a crack team of very talented psychics, or they have cameras in every room of every household in the world. I suspect they’re watching us from the wall outlets; the electricians must be in on it, too.
“I don’t even get a halftime pep talk, or cheerleaders to distract me. It’s like playing golf, without the funny pants and ball washers.”
My ‘appointment’ this morning was standard issue for a plumber — ‘between 8 AM and 10 AM’. As the words were uttered, the game began — a contest I cannot hope to win, or even draw. I don’t even get a halftime pep talk, or cheerleaders to distract me. It’s like playing golf, without the funny pants and ball washers.
When you play the ‘waiting for the plumber’ game, there are three possible outcomes:
1. If you forget the plumber is coming and sleep in, the plumber will arrive at a sane, reasonable time in the middle of the expected window. You’ll either wake in a panic when the doorbell rings, and greet your plumber wearing your footie pajamas and a bad case of bedhead — or you’ll cower silently under the covers, and reschedule with a now-angry plumber later on.
And let me tell you — you don’t want an angry plumber. That roto-rooting snake thingy they carry isn’t just for clogged toilets. Or so they’ll tell you.
2. If you diligently set your alarm, wake up, and make yourself presentable — well earlier than the appointment window, to be safe — then the plumber will assuredly arrive as late in the interval as possible. Including up to three hours after it.
Also, it’s no good waking up extra early, getting dressed, and then feigning sleep under the bedcovers to make the plumber come on time. They start watching the cameras hours before the appointment, to put the kibosh on that sort of trickery. Plus, at that hour you’re likely to fall back to sleep, and then you’re right back at #1 again.
3. If you’re very clever, you can manage to maximize the sleep you get, schedule your morning prep to end exactly at the start of the appointment window, and enjoy a nice relaxing cup of coffee or tea while you wait. Should you be the sort who can pull off this tricky bit of time management, you receive a special reward — the plumber won’t show up at all.
They hate you well-organized people, sitting there smugly sipping from your alphabetically-sorted mugs. They bail, just to teach you bastards a lesson. It’s the one subject on which plumbers and I agree.
This time around, I’ve taken door number two. I set the alarm for 7:30, woke up on my own fifteen minutes early, and was showered, dressed, and miserable by twenty til eight. My pants are on backwards, I showered with toothpaste, and I may have eaten my watch, but I’m available to meet the plumber when he arrives.
At ten.
Or twelve.
Or Thursday.
Get me the Gatorade and a spit cup. This game’s going into overtime, coach.
Permalink | No CommentsBaseball buffs, please to be checking out Bugs & Cranks, where a new post awaits your perusal:
The Replaceables: AL Edition — Like the NL version, one player per team not earning his keep.
That’ll do for now. Let’s get this ball rolling.
My wife, wonderful woman that she is, made tacos for lunch today. I’m a huge fan of tacos, not least because I can load them up with hot sauce and jalapeno peppers. In general, I like my food like I like my burlesque — as spicy as possible, and if somebody’s not sweating, then they’re not doing it right.
“The day there’s no hot sauce in my fridge is the day they pry the last nacho from my cold, dead fingers.”
So, I scampered off to the fridge to pick out some sauces. I keep a whole door shelf devoted to pepper sauces and mixes, with around thirty to choose from on any given day. You never know when a meal will come along that you want to kick up a few notches, so you have to stock up. The day there’s no hot sauce in my fridge is the day they pry the last nacho from my cold, dead fingers.
I like to mix and match a little with something like tacos, so I grabbed three bottles from my stash — the Walkerswood Scotch Bonnet™ (nice heat with some tang), Pickapeppa™ (almost no heat; sweet vinegar flavor), and Xtra Hot Ring of Fire™ (good habanero heat with smoke).
I assembled two tacos, and prepared to sprinkle on hte bottled goodness. Hot sauces in these slender little bottles have a tendency to settle, so it’s a good idea to mix them before using. I gave the Walkerswood a good shake, up-and-down, and drizzled it on.
Then I gave the Pickapeppa a good shake, up-and-down, and poured it on, too.
Finally, I gave the Ring of Fire a good SHAKE, up-and…
The next sound I heard was a wet, sloppy *ger-bloop*. I remembered then that I’d dropped that bottle a while back, and while the bottle was unharmed, the lid had broken in half. I left it resting on top of the bottle, more for looks than anything else. These rather important details came back to me as I watched the lid skitter across the counter, and sank home when I heard various sickening *splat*s on the floor, stove, counter, cabinets, and the plate I was using.
Of course, none of the sauce actually hit the tacos. That would be too easy.
I think I also felt a drop of the stuff land in my hair. I couldn’t worry about that, though — I had to get the obvious mess cleaned up first. My wife would be back for her lunch any minute. She’s not a big ‘heat’ fan — and wonders sometimes if all of those bottles are strictly necessary, the poor misguided girl — so I couldn’t very well let her see a mess like that. So I grabbed two fistfuls of paper towels and scrubbed what I could. By the time she walked in, the mess was no more, the kitchen was clean, and I was cool and nonchalant. She never suspected a thing.
But I never got a chance to check my hair.
So if she nuzzles up next to me on the couch tonight and gets all teary-eyed and sniffly, I’ll know she’s not feeling romanitc. It’s just that I’m hot.
Hot like Fire™!
Permalink | No CommentsUp top, I’d like to direct your attention to a new Braves post over at Bugs & Cranks:
All Quiet on the Grapefruit Front — It’s quiet in Braves’ camp. Too quiet.
And now, on with the show.
There are times when I still act like a kid. Like most waking moments, for instance. Just ask my wife. And usually, acting like a kid is fun.
But not today.
“Work, school — it’s all the same thing, really. You get up early, schlep your way there, spend all day having people tell you things you don’t understand, have lunch, get yelled at for sleeping at your desk, and go home.”
Last night, I heard there was a snowstorm headed our way. We might get six inches of the white stuff, maybe even eight. The flakes were due to start drifting overnight, which meant Friday morning would dawn on a glistening white sheet of beautiful fallen snow.
For ‘real‘ adults, that’s a downer. A snowstorm means digging out your car, and shoveling your steps, and salting the sidewalks, and trudging around in clunky wet boots. I’ve got the same issues now, too, of course. But snow still means to me what it meant when I was a twelve-year-old boy:
NO SCHOOL TOMORROW!
Or in this case, work. Work, school — it’s all the same thing, really. You get up early, schlep your way there, spend all day having people tell you things you don’t understand, have lunch, get yelled at for sleeping at your desk, and go home. That’s just about every weekday I’ve spent between the ages of six and thirty-six. The wheel just keeps on spinning.
But one thing that can stop that wheel, besides weekends and delicious vacation days — is snow. And I’ll gladly trade an hour or two of shovelling for a full morning in my jammies and an afternoon nap on my couch. So I was positively giddy last night, with the prospect of a late-winter blizzard coming to brighten my March. I even sang ‘The Snow Song’:
‘Snow, snow, snow, snow —
If it comes, I won’t go.
I tell you, it better show —
Snooooooooow!!‘
(No, it’s not fricking Gershwin. I wrote it when I was nine. Cut me some damned slack.)
So I went to sleep — when I calmed down enough to go to sleep — looking forward to a wintry start to a spectacular three-day weekend. I woke up early, pounced out of bed, and sprang to the window to find….
Nothing. Not one damned snowflake. The whitest thing in front of me was my reflection in the window. The kid in me curled into a fetal ball and threw a temper tantrum. Either that, or I had heartburn from last night’s hot wings. Whichever it was, I was pissed. But I had to go to work. Just like any other stupid day.
So I grumbled through a shower. I groused while I got dressed, bitched through breakfast, and carped all the way to the car. I slumped into the driver’s seat, turned the key, and as I pulled out of th edriveway, I watched a single, lonely flake drift out of the sky and flutter onto the windshield. Then another. And another.
It snowed all the way to work. When I went to lunch, it was snowing sideways. When I left for the evening it was falling thick and heavy, like white globs of goose guano hurtling towards earth. The ride back home was long, icy, and treacherous. And when I arrived at my house, I found the six-to-eight inches I was expecting on my sidewalks and street — not conveniently keeping me from getting out to the office, but now preventing me from getting back in.
I dug my way to the house. The child inside me kicked me in the nuts. And now, I hate snow just as much as any grown-up, shovel-toting, dead-inside adult. Damn those meteorologists for getting a guy’s hopes up.
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