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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
I’m no health nut.
That should be patently obvious from every word I’ve ever typed here, and every picture of me I’ve posted. I’m as likely to drink Marathon gasoline as to run a marathon. I get winded while channel surfing. One of the groups in my food pyramid is ‘nacho cheese’.
Still, I haven’t been married quite long enough yet that I can completely let myself go. When my wife is fifty, maybe, or sixty years old, then it should be safe to assume that she won’t go through the bother of finding someone else. Someone svelter, whose sweat doesn’t smell like bacon drippings. Delicious bacon drippings.
“I’m as likely to drink Marathon gasoline as to run a marathon. I get winded while channel surfing. One of the groups in my food pyramid is ‘nacho cheese’.”
And anyway, I want to live long enough to be ‘that cranky old bastard who lives down the street’ someday, so I make some nominal concessions toward a healthy lifestyle. I eat the occasional salad. I dabble in a couple of sports — fat old man sports like softball, to be sure, but in my current condition running out a weak grounder to third base counts as ‘aerobic exercise’, so it works. But most of all — and easiest of all, I take the stairs at work.
I work on the fourth floor in our building. So that’s three flights of stairs up, once a day, and back down three flights once more. Sometimes twice.
(How do I go ‘up’ only once, and ‘down’ sometimes twice? I walk down the steps for lunch, as an appetite builder. But am I going to risk dropping my tasty truck burrito on the stairs, huffing and puffing my way back up? No way, amigo. Gringo don’t play dat. Me and my burrito ride the elevator.)
Does this tiny nod in the direction of daily exercise make me Jim Fixx? No. It barely makes me Jim Belushi. But it helps keep me marginally healthy, relatively unsedentary, and wearing the same sized pants. What’s not to like?
Here’s the thing: the stairs that I take every day are in a glass-walled corridor. This corridor faces the hallway that houses the elevators. And many days — not every day, but many days — as I’m walking my three flights up to my cubicle coccoon, I see people getting on the elevator. Which is fine. It’s a seven-story building, and you can be damned sure that if I worked even one floor higher, this ‘climb the stairs for exercise’ bullshit would be out the window. EIther that, or they’d find me one day, collapsed and bleeding between the fourth and fifth floors, clutching a Post-It with ‘HELP — OXYGEN!!‘ scrawled on it.
But do these people enter the ‘vator on, say, floor two and then disappear from sight, their destinations lost in a haze of interdepartmental migration? No. More often than not, these people — the sluggish secretaries, lumpy laborers, and ass-dragging administrators — get on at one floor, and get off at the very next. I see their backs as they wait for the elevator, and then watch them shuffle out at the next floor, like corporate drones programmed only to use the shiny metal box to change floors.
In a way, the worst part is that taking the stairs for one flight is usually faster than waiting for the elevators, borne out by my double-sightings of these dilly-dallying doofuses. Yet they insist on making the trip, even when most of them appear to need a good brisk walk — or roll — down a flight of stairs or three. Those same legs get them to the vending machines and coffee pots — what gives?
In the end, of course, it’s no skin off my thighs if these folks want to ride the elevators ten feet at a time. If ever there’s a fire in the building, at least I know I can outrun them. I guess the fitness craze hasn’t swept the whole nation, after all. For every Jim Belushi type like me out there, there are still a couple of Johns around, too. Nice.
Permalink | No CommentsWe’re having the heater in our house replaced this week. I see the logic in doing furnace-related work in the middle of summer — it’s often cheaper if the contractors know you’re not desperately warming your private bits over the stove when you call. But I still appreciate the irony of a couple of guys putting in a new heater on one of the hottest days of the year. It’s supposed to approach one hundred degrees in New England later this week. If we turned the old furnace on, the house would actually get cooler.
The current heater utilizes a technology called ‘passive steam dispersion’. Where ‘technology’ is used in the very loosest sense. We’re talking ‘drunk sorority girl at a kegger’ loose here; maybe even ‘Jenny McCarthy on a casting couch’ loose. And that’s ‘loose’, people.
Because a ‘passive steam’ heating system doesn’t require anything approaching ‘technology’, as far as I can tell. ‘Passive steam’ heating involves heating up air, which then rises. Passively. Hence the name.
“Cro-Magnon man might have had contractors lumber into his cave, many thousands of years ago, and charge him an arm and an axe-blade to install ‘passive steam’ heat.”
So it just requires fire. Fire and long tubes. Cro-Magnon man might have had contractors lumber into his cave, many thousands of years ago, and charge him an arm and an axe-blade to install ‘passive steam’ heat. A bunch of burning sticks and some hollow tree trunks would pretty much cover it. Cro-Magnon man might’ve even taken it on as a DIY project, because Cro-Magnon man didn’t have to worry about fucking up his plaster walls and hardwood floors. Cro-Magnon man got off easy, yo.
I didn’t get the details on what’s going into the basement in a few days, but it’s been spun to me that it’s ‘better’. Which I’ve taken, perhaps overly optimistically, to mean ‘less passive’. Maybe something’s going to push the hot air up the tubes for once, so the upstairs finally gets some heat. Or maybe they’ll train the hamsters keeping the current furnace running to carry hot air up the tubes.
I don’t frankly care, so long as the bedroom’s warm enough to sleep in, and the new furnace looks expensive. I’m gonna have to sell this place someday, and if I’m replacing the damned furnace, I don’t want any fricking questions from prospective buyers about it. They’d better walk in, see the furnace, and gape in wonder at its obvious furnatory power. I want to see flashing lights and little humming dials on the thing. Maybe some steam coming out of the bottom — but not so much that you’d think there’s a leak. Just enough to be all impressive and mysterious and shit. And stick one of those Van De Graaff generators up on top, or something. For the money it’s costing, a couple of extras aren’t gonna kill you.
Actually, it’s not so bad. The company’s giving us a pretty reasonable price, so I don’t want to piss them off. Especially when we’re planning to ask them to schlep out here in the middle of a blizzard in January to install the air conditioner. And who said home improvement couldn’t be entertaining?
Permalink | No CommentsWe have a saying in our office:
‘It’s never the rocket science stuff.‘
Meaning that it’s not the complicated, convoluted, thinky sorts of things that we spend most of our time on, nor are those the sorts of things that cause us the most headaches. We’re a code-writing group for the most part, and we do occasionally run into some sort of mondo scary algorithm or brain-melting logic to code. But those are not our biggest problems.
It’s not like those things are simple, mind you. I, for one, am not the perkiest pair of nipples in the proverbial porno — so these sorts of intellect-requiring projects can cause their share of hair-pulling days and fitful, sleepless nights.
(Well, it’s either the projects, or those lunch-truck burritos I’ve been eating. I’m guessing it’s a little from column A, and a little from column B.)
“I’d be sitting there, doing half the hokey pokey in my driver’s seat, while cars piled up behind me waiting for their turn. Is that any way to start a day of being shackled to your cubicle? I think not.”
But for all of the ‘hard‘ work we struggle through, it pales in comparison to the time spent tracking down the ‘easy‘ stuff. Scanning thousands of lines of code for a rogue comma or semicolon. Troubleshooting a system top to bottom — only to find that someone accidentally kicked the plug on the server. Trying desperately to understand the problem a user is seeing, and later discovering their video card was on the fritz. These are the most common issues — the piddling little details that grind us to a halt every now and then. It’s never the rocket science stuff.
Why do I bring this up? Because for me — not the swingingest single at the orgy, remember — this rule of ‘easy stuff hard’ seems to extend to my commute to the office, as well.
To be fair, there is some ‘hard stuff’ involved with driving to work, as well. Unsynchronized stop lights, speed traps, elderly Sunday-driving obstacles — but I can usually find my way around or through these difficulties. My biggest problem lately has been the card reader at the office garage.
The reader panel is a flat plastic rectangle, about three inches wide by five inches tall. At the upper right corner is a little status light — the sort of thing that lights green and bleeps reassuringly when you’ve been scanned properly, or flashes red and bleats at you like an angry goose when there’s an error. For months — months, I say! — I believed that the ‘status light’ was also the card reader. Most of the card readers I’ve ever seen have a little optical dealie like that to recoqnize the card.
What I could never understand is why scanning the card was so damned difficult. I took great pains to shimmy the car close to the reader, and stretch my card up by the light. But often I’d have to wave it back and forth, turn it around, and waggle it up and down to get the stupid garage to let me in. I’d be sitting there, doing half the hokey pokey in my driver’s seat, while cars piled up behind me waiting for their turn. Is that any way to start a day of being shackled to your cubicle? I think not.
So, on Friday I made the discovery that you must have seen coming by now. The status light is just that — a light. A simple brainless LED, blind to the world and ignorant of any cards or raving idiots waving around in front of it. As it turns out, the whole rest of the panel is the card reader, and — assuming you actually wave your card in front of it — works quite nicely. All those times I sat, waving and swiping and cursing Henry Ford and Karl Benz for popularizing the production of the infernal machines that led to my garage fiasco, I was missing the card reader doohickey entirely. I might as well have waved my card at the garage wall, or in front of the attendant’s face.
(I tried the latter once, actually. The guy let me into the garage, but I’m convinced he snuck over and peed on my wheels while I was at work. When I peel out, it still smells like asparagus.)
Anyway, now I know. So I should be able to get into the garage without any further delay or humiliation. I suppose the moral of the story is this — when you’re not the sharpest shucker in the crab shack, everything is ‘rocket science’. Meh.
Permalink | 1 CommentAnd now, a poetic interlude. This bit o’ verse is entitled, ‘Grandma in a Shitbox Ford‘.
Don’t anyone say I never classed the place up with some culture and shit, yo.
Grandma in a Shitbox Ford
‘Twas a summer morning in my ‘hood,
When I set off for work, as well I should.
With no warning of what lay ahead,
I put pavement twixt my ass and bed.
“Two miles passed by without a hitch;
That’s when I first espied the bitch.”
I ventured forth in my trusty car;
Twelve miles to work — not so very far.
And no clues to what I’d’ve soon endured —
The grandma in the shitbox Ford.
I made my way from the garage,
Without vehicular entourage;
The streets, it seemed, were mine alone;
My deluxe private driving zone.
But soon I’d change my carefree tune,
When stuck behind a senile loon.
She’d sour my mood, rest assured —
That grandma in the shitbox Ford.
I zipped unscathed through traffic lights,
Toward the highway, and full speeding rights.
Past the onramp, and the toll booth tower,
Then through at ninety miles an hour.
Two miles passed by without a hitch;
That’s when I first espied the bitch.
Inching as though the car were moored —
That grandma and her shitbox Ford.
She occupied the far left lane,
Clogging traffic like a hairy drain.
From ninety, I slowed down to ten,
Checked my speed, and braked again.
My consternation wouldn’t soon abate;
She’d neither move her ass, nor accelerate;
She well earned my ‘Masshole’ award;
Wrinkly grandma, rusty Ford.
Eight miles in, my exit loomed.
In the ‘slow car’ lane, the traffic zoomed.
But as I saw the chance to make my swerve,
The old lady slowed for a gentle curve.
My blinker on, I eyed the ramp.
With back asweat, and forehead damp.
But my slot was filled by a rogue Accord,
Thanks to grandma and her shitbox Ford.
I righted my ship with a sudden twist,
Though now I found my exit missed;
And miles before a roundabout,
Where I might sort my destination out.
Still, our biddy blocked my path,
Pissing off and incurring wrath.
For fifteen painful minutes more
I followed grandma in her shitbox Ford.
Finally, I wriggled free,
Outracing a Beemer Series 3;
And made my way to work, irate —
Fuming, and an hour late.
I honked to show my great displeasure;
The crone’s response was a special treasure.
As I passed her by, I was gestured toward;
Flipped off by granny, from her shitbox Ford.
She crept away as I gaped, amazed,
With her dander up, and finger raised.
I don’t know where she found the verve,
But that old bitch sure had some nerve.
I smiled as I made my offramp ‘u-ie’;
Though I wished her car would go kabloo-ie.
I found a nemesis, out of her gourd,
That spritely old hag, and her shitbox Ford.
God bless ya, Granny! Now get off the goddamned road!!
Permalink | 2 CommentsThis weekend, I’m venturing into enemy territory. I’m going to see a game in Yankee Stadium.
I’ve never before been to The House That George Stuffed Full of Cash, so it should be an interesting experience. A few years ago, I decided to embark on a quest to see a game in each of the baseball stadia around the country. At that point, I’d been to exactly five.
“Three hours in the hot July sun, and you wouldn’t know where the ketchup ended and the sunburn began. Not pretty.”
Today, I’ve been to exactly six. Yankee Stadium will make seven. And two of the stadiums I’ve been to have been demolished, and replaced with parks I haven’t seen. As a ‘quest’, my MLB tour isn’t off to a great start. It’s more of a ‘long-term’ goal, at this point.
(I have problems in general with meeting long-term goals. The grand plans I had when I was much younger — ‘become a fireman’, ‘move to Mars’, ‘see Emma Samms naked’ — never worked out, either. Maybe I’ve got ADD.)
Still, it’ll be exciting to see another baseball park — even if it’s in the land of ARod and the Overpriced Middle Relief Pitchers. As a Red Sox fan, I feel obligated to do something to show my allegiance while I’m among the Bronx fans. Some possibilities I’m mulling:
Wear a Red Sox hat
This would clearly mark me as a Bostonian, sure. But hats are easily dropped, knocked off, lost, and generally misplaceable. Do I really want to give some trash-talking New Yahkah the satisfaction of smacking the Boston off my forehead? Not especially.
I suppose I could wear a pair of those sweatshorts with a big Boston ‘B’ on the butt. Except:
A) I’m not a woman,
2) we’ll be sitting in cramped seats, so if a wedgie develops, I’d be displaying a big red ‘E’ for all to see, and
iii) some jackass might still try to smack the Boston off my ass, and I’m not at all interested in being spanked by some bozo from the Bronx. Thanks just the same.
Paint a ‘B’ on my chest and go shirtless
‘Boston-smacking’ aside, this option has several other drawbacks. First, I don’t have any paint lying around handy. Maybe there’s enough ketchup in the fridge to make it work, but I’m not going there. How the hell would I explain that to the missus, next time she needs condiments for her hot dog?
Also, ‘me, topless’ is really never a good idea. Besides the truly unfortunate aesthetics of such a spectacle, it’s been a few weeks since our vacation to Meh-hi-co, so my torso’s reverted to its natural pasty white hue. Three hours in the hot July sun, and you wouldn’t know where the ketchup ended and the sunburn began. Not pretty.
Chant ‘Yankees Suck!’ at random times during the game
This is one of the more popular pastimes in Fenway Park, to be sure. We chant it when we play the Yankees. We chant it when we play the Royals. We chant it during summer concerts, when no baseball’s going on at all. I imagine the grounds crew chants it in the middle of February, as they’re laying new sod and painting the Green Monster. I hear they’re thinking of making it the state motto.
Of course, the advantage of proclaiming the suckage of the Yanks in Fenway is that there are approxitudely thirty thousand Sox fans in attendance, and only a few dozen or so Yankee apologists around. In the Bronx, the numbers are reversed, more or less — and the Bronx is a much rougher area. A lot of those guys carry brass knuckles and crowbars, I hear. Probably best not to piss off every one of them within earshot at once.
Graffiti ‘RED SOX R00LZ!!!!’ on the bathroom wall in the stadium
What do I look like, a fourteen-year-old? I just turned thirty-six; I’m not even allowed to use ‘l33t-speak’ any more. D00d, be serious.
Sit quietly, drink my beer, cross my fingers and whisper, ‘lose, lose, lose, lose, lose’ through the whole game
Now we’re talking. It’s not disruptive, it won’t get my ass kicked, my head slapped, or my nipples burnt, and it plays right into that pesky borderline OCD of mine. Not to mention there’s alcohol involved — what’s not to like? This is going to be a good game, after all. Just so long as I wash the Yankee cooties off, as soon as we leave the stadium. Can’t be bringing those back to Boston; they’d never let me back into Fenway again.
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