Of Flats and Men…

Yeah, it’s been a rough week today.

Some days in which you run constantly are actually a good thing.  They make the day interesting and move quickly.   Other days are like running through quicksand, prolonging the agony.  Today, as you might have guessed, ran toward the latter category.

Work is more of a nightmare than normal, which is really saying a lot.  Between my boss’ special projects (didn’t I tell you Payroll got new software?  Well, here it is.  Make it work.) and virus/malware scanning, it’s a bit loopy.  Then there’s the constant interruptions.  For someone like me, interruptions are not so good: I keep getting derailed.  My coworkers got tired of hearing “Now where was I?” all day.

Just as the noise from the murdering and pillaging had slowed to a mere scream and I was set to eat lunch, I permitted myself a brief sigh of relief.

Bad move.

I looked up, just in time to see the approaching bobbing gait that announced the owner’s wife.  If you’re anywhere near my age, you might remember the phrase “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.”  This describes Petunia exactly.   Petunia is a little woman with a little mind.  After you spend fifteen minutes explaining the ENTER key, she will go home and promptly forget everything you said.  This will either result in a call at home (when I’m on the toilet) or another visit from Petunia, asking the same question like she had never asked it before.

Petunia mentioned getting a new laptop.  I asked if she liked the ASUS netbooks we had, as they were only three pounds and very easy to use.  She mentioned that her old laptop was two pounds.  Ok, let’s make this the sole criterion for selecting a new laptop…. If I yank the battery, it will weigh under two pounds.  I win – game over – get away from my desk.

Meanwhile, the simplest things were turning into three-volume sagas.  Virtual machine seems confused on one machine so I’ll run it on another.  Oops, I need to install VMplayer first.   Oops, I have to download it.  Oops, it won’t install.  Oops, I forgot to download the 64bit version for this machine.

When I finally get it installed, I bring the virtual machine over in its original, compressed format.  Oops, I need to download unrar to decompress it.  Oops, it keeps giving me a bizarre error message.  Back on the original machine I try decompressing the virtual machine and get yet another error, but this time it’s telling me that the archive is no good.

Phew.

Still at the original machine, I try running something different.  This won’t run either.  Yes, the machine could probably stand a reboot as everything is performing more strangely than normal.

On the 64bit machine, I downloaded a virtual appliance (it’s like a toaster that fits in your pocket) and started it up.  No, the virtual appliance did not have the one function for which I downloaded it.  Even though it was supposed to.

At this point the cursing and screaming is starting to ramp up.  It is at precisely this moment that people start requiring my input.  Many of them.  And it can only be addressed at this precise moment, obviously.  Oh yeah, I think that computer over there has a virus.

Can I get some help?   No, the only guy in the room at the moment is busy on the boss’ incredibly important videoconferencing project.  When she dies, she will videoconference from Beyond (assuming she gets somebody to set it up for her).

Another coworker, in an honest attempt to be helpful, tells me it’s not just me.

Oh, gee, thanks.  I feel so much better now. Perhaps you should find a funeral so you can tell the family of the deceased that he’s in a better place now.

I suppose I should be more understanding, especially as the poor fellow’s pain meds wore off hours earlier.  You see, the guy’s doctors discovered all sorts of problem with his discs, which is causing a lot of pain for him.  He has no spine or spinal parts or something like that… I don’t understand: I’m not a doctor.

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I finally managed to leave the office.  I figured I deserved to leave early due to the extra insanity of the day.  By the time I hit the car, it was ten minutes earlier than I normally leave.  Believe me, ten minutes is great progress for me… Usually when I plan to leave an hour early, I only leave fifteen minutes late.

I couldn’t wait to get home.   No, wait, that’s not right.  I couldn’t wait to get to the guitar store, but I wasn’t going there, so I drove home.  I felt no urgency to get home quickly, as I knew what was waiting for me: a flat tire.  My wife made me feel much better when I got home by mentioning that the flyer for the Big Guitar Show<tm> had come today.

Usually flat tires are the purview of my beloved, who seems to somehow collect them.  There are many thing I cannot explain in life and this is one that I don’t even want to try to understand.  Oddly enough, most of her flats come directly after parking at the Genuardi’s down the road.  If they sold tires it would make sense that they pour screws and nails all over their parking lot, but they don’t.

Without having visited Genuardi’s, I merely parked my car.  When I came out the next morning, the tire was flat.  Yesterday I came home and tried to remove the tire.  The car was parked so close to the house that there was no room to use the lug wrench or jack up the car.  So I backed it up to where my wife told me was a good spot.   When I got out, I realized it still was no better than when I started (thank you, Dear).

So I got out all the gear and started the cursing.   For some strange reason I had the right tools, so I got the car jacked halfway up and BOOM, the sudden thunderstorm hit.  Not funny.

Today there was no sudden storm.  It merely looked like it was going to at any moment.  It’s yet another of our famous Philly Weather Days.  Two thirds of them are cloudy and rainy.  All of them are humid, even in the winter.  Philly’s state bird is the cloud.  People from Arizona would rather endure 115 degrees there than 90 degrees with 90% humidity here.

I continued raising the jack, nervous about the position.   I confirmed my suspicion when I heard a terrible BANG and the whole enterprise shifted a bit.  I looked up at my wife, who was expecting a horrible verbal blast, and just smiled the smile of the criminally insane.

When I finally got the jack in the right spot (GM’s bean counters should be shot for many reasons), I had to remove the lug nuts.  Whenever I have to do this, they’re difficult to move at first, then they spin off.  Not today.  Every single quarter turn with that retarded lug wrench was a struggle.  I bent myself into positions that I will not get into even if it involves Gina Gershon (well, maybe….).

I put the tire in the trunk to get fixed and returned to the house, with hands black enough to have rebuilt an entire engine.  Onto my second job…..

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I thought it would be a cool idea to get one of those multi-speaker surround setups for our tv.  Since I got a great deal, there was no reason not to.   Well, that was until the first commercial.  Have you noticed the way the tv gets LOUD WHEN THE COMMERCIALS COME ON?  It’s much worse with more speakers, as you would imagine.  My wife has a habit of leaving the room right before the commercials, so I get treated to THE FULL EFFECT.

Hmmmmm…. my wife also goes out on the front step to smoke seconds before the tea kettle STARTS WHISTLING.

Double hmmmmm.…..  my wife also leaves those timed scent-blasting sprayers on after I get home.  There’s nothing like a face full of fake lilac scent.

I’m beginning to sense a pattern here.  The only way it could be more passive-aggressive is if she did target practice with a .45 (Mrs. Dirty Harry is her nickname).   But don’t worry about me.  If I ever stop posting to this blog for more than a week, they’ll never find my body.  She reads so many true crime novels and watches so much crime tv that she knows exactly how to make it look like an accident or ensure that my body will never be found.  Fortunately I’m worth more alive than dead currently, so I feel reasonably safe.

In any case, the audio effect of THUNDERING COMMERCIALS is not limited to the living room.  My special place is called The Womb, where I keep the radios and computers (the radios have tubes, the computers don’t).  Mrs. leftystrat likes her tv shows and movies LOUD.  This makes the commercials LOUDER.  Even in The Womb, I get the full effect of THUNDRING COMMERCIALS.  I may do bodily harm to Billy Mays and Vince.

So I’m doing my second job, which involves remote access to computers and having my radio scanners running to keep me company.  I had to listen to an MP3 because my band is doing the song.  Right at this moment, the wife comes barreling through the door, which she knows she’s not supposed to do when I’m working.  I don’t know if you know anyone like this but she speaks not in sentences, but in paragraphs.  Concurrent with this aural deluge is the MP3 and four scanners going off at the same time.  I looked at her blankly and started pounding my own head, like John Cleese as Basil Fawlty.  She finished her last few paragraphs and left me to my work.

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You know the Great Enemy of dogs worldwide, right?  It’s the vacuum.  Marshall seems to have something serious against vacuums and it’s not limited to any specific one.  As soon as one starts up, he gets right into Barking Position and Attack Mode<tm>.  As soon as it moves, he attacks, at the same time retreating from it.  It’s hilarious to watch but horrible to hear.

As a result we only vacuum when the dog’s outside.  We have to be quick about it because if we don’t let His Highness in when he notifies us, he starts barking and squeaking like he’s being abused (poor thing).

So now my wife’s running the vacuum right outside the only partially-closed door, completely drowning out my (radio) scanners because apparently the COMMERCIALS weren’t enough today.

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I sure picked a bad week to stop smoking crack.