…You can’t have it. Right?
It’s not even 7:30 in the morning, and this has already been One of Those Days.
Plumber is supposed to show up at 8:00…Dawg and I roll out at 6:30 or so. Feed dog. Get dressed.
Have you ever tried to deny a dog a doggy-walk?
No? Don’t even think it!
Out the door at 6:45, knowing that n-o-o-o-o-o, we will not be trekking around the park. But at least we can get …
Ahhh, the morning serenade! Reverberating merrily from Conduit of Blight Blvd: HOOOOOOONK! HONK HOOOOOOONK! HONK HONK! Some idiot must have cut off another semi-truck. Or maybe the train.
What a place!
…yesh…we can get back here before the Plumber’s appointed hour.
Dawg is highly annoyed to have her usual morning safari cut short. We approach the house. Coming from the other direction is some woman with a dog that, before our very eyes, has launched into a fight with another woman’s dog.
Fortunately, our front porch is surrounded by a walled courtyard.
Dodge in and slam the gate shut, escaping the wandering knight.
Hungry. Cranky. Not in the mood for a plumber or for anyone else.
Can’t find the coffee.
Ah! Here’s the reason! We’re almost out. Now I’ll have to traipse to AJ’s (Fancy-Dan Grocery Store) to pick up another package of overpriced coffee beans.
Reflect, as I’m boiling water and grinding coffee, that I really got ripped off the other evening, at the restaurant where VC and I went. It’s a sushi place up on North Central, in the AJ’s sh0pping center. Yes, I ordered a plate of sushi. Got some six pieces. And a beer.
They charged me thirty bucks!
Holeee shee-ut!
The ridiculousness of that hadn’t registered with me until this morning. No wonder SDXB, an accomplished tightwad, doesn’t like to go out to eat!
Well, we had a nice time. But come ON! We could’ve had a nice time at a Burger King.
Marge, my favorite neighbor, has a son who decided to start a restaurant. Apparently that’s a particularly difficult line of business in which to succeed. She abandoned her retirement to go help him run the place, so basically the whole family was hard at it. Located in a Safeway shopping center that itself was in an upscale part of town, it occupied a space where it should have seen a lot of traffic. Despite those advantages and plenty of hard work, the place still went belly-up. No wonder restaurants have to charge so much!
That’s even though most Americans are very much into eating out. Just about any restaurant you pass is crowded during mealtime hours. But I’m more & more with SDXB: why go out to eat when you can cook as well or better yourself? Yeah: the cost is having to wash the dishes…but that’s better than thirty dollah.
one ringy-dingy…
two ringy-dingies…
Grab phone: Plumber.
Won’t be here till noon.
Translation: sometime this afternoon…
LOL! And…is there a reason I shouldn’t have expected that?
To the caller’s surprise (you can tell she’s braced for outrage), I remark that the world will not end if Our Hero doesn’t show up at the appointed minute: tell him to take his time. Astonished relief echoes down through the telephone wires.
{Yes: we still have wires here in the ‘Hood: they’re underground, but they’re wires.)
***
Overcast, hot, and humid. And aren’t you glad you don’t live in Florida?
Gaaaah! We’re better than Florida!
No doubt of it!
Eeek!
Haven’t been there but have done that.
When I was a kid, we lived in Saudi Arabia, on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Our houses — the settlement was an oil camp built by ARAMCO — were sturdy enough little cement-block numbers, very comparable to the one I’m living in right now.
One summer, a storm like Florida’s came through. My mother was in a panic. My father (who, thank the Gawds of the Sea, was not at his job down at the docks just then) was manfully calm. I was fascinated.
“Get away from those windows!!!”
“Uhm…and…why?”
Unclear whether an actual tornado came through. You couldn’t see anything through the commotion, and of course out in the middle of nowhere we had nothing that resembled a weather service.
Our house — we were about a block and a quarter from the beach — stood up just fine. We didn’t even get a leak.
Others? Not so much….
My pal Ennis’s house lost its roof. Literally, the storm lifted the roof off the house and threw it on the ground.
He didn’t seem especially fazed, in the aftermath. But then, like me he may just have been too young to understand the potential.
Plus his parents didn’t have to wrestle with repairs: all our homes were company houses, so the company came in and fixed everything.
What a place!
Ras Tanura’s “hot and humid” would make Florida’s look balmy. It was so humid there that I have actually seen — more than once! — rain start to fall out of a clear blue sky.
Right now Wunderground is predicting 145-mph winds in parts of Florida. A hundred and forty-five miles per hour!
How can we count the ways we’re glad we don’t live there? Makes 115 in the shade look good…
I’m also very grateful that I don’t live in Florida. I’ve visited Miami Beach South. It was just as beautiful in real life as it is in pictures/videos/etc. But I wouldn’t want to live there. Especially when they have a governor who’s almost as delusional/power hungry/incompetent as The Big Orange.
Yes. The demented political leaders we’re enjoying these days leave one discouraged about the future of this country. Some of them are just crass opportunists…but others actually seem to believe the drivel they emit. Sad state of affairs.