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NO, MR. HAMLIN; WE'RE NOT TAKING ALL YOUR TEETH There's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that my pockets are shallow, and my cavities are few. The bad news is that I'm genetically predisposed to gum disease, and the spaces between my teeth are abnormally wide, so flossing won't help.
Gum-Brushes to the rescue! Apparently all the aforementioned good news goes away slowly but surely unless I make a habit of carrying about these little doodads what look like little pine trees with handles and torture my gums with them on a regular basis.
Also, my teeth are all shiny again now, except for the brown patches.
YES, MR. HAMLIN; WE ARE TAKING ALL YOUR MONEY A number of months ago now, my sister and I were in the Mayan slowly getting drunk while watching 'Moon', when I began to realize that I could hear one *hell* of a storm outside.
When we got out of the theater, it was pretty clear that there'd been quite a blow, but if you've ever been to the Mayan, then you know that there's really not a whole lot in the district that wouldn't be improved by a little picking up and blowing about, so it was not immediately apparent just how bad the storm had been.
When we got back up towards my house, I figured I'd had more to drink that I'd originally though, because it sure looked like I was driving through about a foot of snow. In June.
And all the lights were out everywhere.
They say it wasn't quite a tornado, but it apparently came really close. In addition to scaring the crap out of my wife and kid, the storm seems to have damaged our roof.
So. We called USAA and said 'Wah', and they said they'd put an adjustor in touch with us. And so they did. The guy drove up from Houston, walked around on the roof, checked out our fence, looked at the water damage on the ceiling, fiddled with the peeling paint, etc... and finally told us that all our dreams were about to come true.
So we had roofing estimators come out and tell us what they'd take to replace the roof while we waited for the official paperwork to arrive from USAA.
Well, it arrived. And they're giving us about a third of what the adjustor told us they'd give us.
So now, our selected contractor is keeping me apprised of their battle with USAA to get a reasonable quote for roof replacement. It's apparently not going well, and I'm grumpy about it.
In latest news, I received a voice mail from the contractor this afternoon, which he was happy to expound upon when I called him back. Apparently the adjustor is now resorting to *profanity* when the contractor calls, and refuses to speak with the contractors as colleagues. Fun and excitement.
I suspect this will end with the contractor requesting that I get back in touch with USAA and have them send out a second adjustor. We'll see.
WE'RE A LONG WAY FROM SCOTLAND, LADDIE In news that makes me a great deal happier than having unfixed water damage in my roof, my wife has discovered a liquor store that carries my favorite Scottish import, the Belhaven.
I've discovered that drunk out of the bottle it tastes like I get it at the Scotch Corner, but poured into a glass, it tastes roughly like ass. Easily remedied, however - I just drink it out of the bottle. Problem solved.
HE'D NEVER LET SOMETHING LIKE PUTTING A FAMILY OUT OF HOUSE AND HOME GET IN THE WAY OF HIS FLAIR FOR DRAMA About a year ago, my wife was waking up fairly regularly with pounding headaches, and she'd been talking about smelling gas, so it occurred to her that our furnace might be emitting poisonous fumes into the air.
This isn't the sort of thing you sit on, so I called Xcel energy and had them send a couple of guys out to crawl about in my house with Martian technology that made lots of beeping sounds. Their diagnosis, made with the utmost earnestness and roundness of eye, was that not only the furnace, but the water heater and even our gas fireplace were emitting fatal levels of carbon monoxide, amongst other things. The placed hazard tags on each device, and we were warned strictly not to turn them on again, and to get them all replaced as soon as possible.
Disaster, of course, it was approximately 20 degrees Fahrenheit outdoors at the time, and too late in the day to get anything done about it even if we'd had the money, which we most emphatically didn't.
So, we packed up, and stayed with my sister that night.
When we awoke the following morning, cooler heads prevailed and we got a second opinion. The second opinion went something like this:
"Those Xcel guys are crack heads. Your stuff is old, but it's not putting out fatal levels of *anything*. Get it fixed when you get the money."
So we turned our stuff back on, and that was that. Recently, we got curious, so yesterday I went out and bought two carbon monoxide detectors, and put one up by the furnace, and the other up by the fireplace. It's been about 36 hours now, and neither of them has made a peep.
Frickin' Xcel bastards.
CARL AND JULIA For the first few years of our marriage, my wife and I struggled to figure out what bits of housekeeping we each liked, and/or were willing to do. We have a housekeeper, because neither of us likes to polish wood, vacuum, clean toilets, or scrub leather.
Until recently, my wife cooked dinner. However, within the last few months, she asked me to start handling dinner, seeing as I work from my home office, and can have it on the table when she gets home.
This has been working out really well, surprisingly enough. There have been some mishaps, but it turns out that for the most part, I can be a pretty decent cook when I get my head around it.
I SWEAR TO GOD, OFFICER, I *FOUND* HER WITH THE ICEPICK PROTRUDING FROM HER LEFT NOSTRIL My kid has recently been telling us that they're doing one crazy thing after another at school, and we've recently learned that they're doing no such thing, and that she's full of hooey. So the new rule was born: we don't buy a word of it unless we get email from her teacher.
So, last week, when she came to us telling us that next week she was to wear pajamas on Monday, a football jersey on Tuesday, and a *pirate* outfit on Wednesday, we told her we'd buy it just as soon as her teacher emailed us about it.
So, Monday (today) came, and no email. So, no pajamas. Except this morning when she was telling me she was ready to go, she added a little clause:
"And by the way, my bag is a little more full than usual this morning because I have my Yoga clothes in it. I figure I'll take them to school today."
If you're a parent, your ears just perked up. I replied:
"Your bag is a little more full than usual this morning because you're trying to smuggle pajamas. Let's see them."
Trapped like a rat!
Of course, she *was* trying to smuggle pajamas, and they were duly confiscated. In the resulting aftermath, it was discovered that not she has *also* been falsely reporting that she's *not* getting her name on the board for disrupting class on days when she in fact has been a holy *terror* to her teacher.
So. I suspect this arrangement won't last long, and when it ends, *I'm* her new teacher. Should be fun and exciting.
And on that happy note I'm off to drink more beer and see what I can do about resolving a problem with a computer program I've been working on for a client that seems to be behaving in a way only explicable by incorporating Shea's Third Law of Reciprocity.
Wish me luck.
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