Laws and Such

I'm a big fan of Battlestar Galactica. This makes me an expert on a lot of things. Among them: sexy ladies who are actually evil double-agent robots, archaic future technology as a means of defense against a superior enemy, lazy writing, the concept of deus ex fucking machina and, of course, Science.

Which is why I'm utterly baffled by my house's ability to violate the laws of thermo-dynamics and maybe physics and stuff. You see, my house is three stories stacked right on top of each other. Here is a rendering done in MsPaint:

One would think that the top floor of said house would be the warmest room in the house since heat rises and all that.

False!

After a few ridiculous PGW bills, I started rationing my heat. (Side note, don't bother calling those geniuses to rage about your bill. you will not get a satisfying answer.) It was after turning the old thermostat down that I started to notice a disturbing trend: the room that should have been the warmest was actually the coldest. Clearly my house sits in some weird vortex where up is down and down is up and white is black and conservatism is a rational and reasoned approach to life.

I needed help. I was gonna call this lady:



But she just died. My next thought was to ring up Penn and try to get a thermo dynamic physicist on the horn. But, that would have required picking up the phone and making a call and trying to explain the scientific anomaly of my house. That was way too much work, so I just got a space heater.

Rising Tide

Saturday was a perfect Philly day. It was one of those days that causes you to smile smugly and nod softly when some asshole from the suburbs starts prattling on about how dirty the city is and all the crime and whatever other misguided notions they've gleaned from watching Action News between trips to the Wal Mart and the big box, feedbag crap restaurant where they stuff their face. You smile because you know days and nights like this exist in Philly.

I spent the afternoon dicking around with Short and Curly. We trucked down to the market, played with our cameras and talked about poop. We have a very childish friendship. I got myself a Lime Jarritos and a pretty awesome churro at this weird little Mexican bodega/bakery near Washington - it's the one with the melty cakes in the windows. After the market, we decided to walk over the to Ritz and pop in on whatever movie was starting when we got there.

I got a call from Dr. Awesome as we walked down South Street. She wanted to meet up after the movie and I was obviously stoked. It was shaping up to be a nice little Saturday. We saw "An Education". It was meh, mostly because I couldn't get past Peter Saarsgard's shit English accent.

Dr. Awesome was waiting outside after the movie and I bid adieu to Short and Curly. The good Dr. and I walked from 5th and Market up to the Barnes in Rittenhouse and did some book shopping. After that, we went to the Snack Bar for booze and cheese and all was right with the world. We got our tab and walked over to McGlincheys. We played paper football there for a while and drank whiskey. Though, I should point out that I dished out an ass whupping at paper football the likes of which hasn't been seen in years.

We needed food. Good Dog was too crowded, so we decided to pack it up and head to my neighborhood. We hopped into a cab and were a block or two on our way when I remembered the bottle of wine in my hand, the spanish byob nearby on South and my torrid romance with sangria. "Dood, let's go to the spanish place on South. They can turn this shit into sangria." I was feeling articulate. The cab turned around and we rolled into Apamate just as a party of two was getting up.

After dinner we walked over to Bob and Barbara's. I don't know what has happened to that place, but it looks like a Drexel dorm threw up on it. It's chock full of kids these days. And my god, the sartorial decisions some of these children make are enough to make you fear for the future of this fine country. We ordered more drinks and Dr. Awesome made me slow dance with her to the jazz band. I protested, but I was kinda loving it. After a bit, I was over feeling like the oldest person at the bar and convinced her it was time to leave.

We headed outside and it looked like we were in for one of those softly boozey nights where you're full of food and you wanna hug kittens in front of a fire while you listen to recordings of Shel Silverstein poems.

But then the universe launched a cascade of shit specifically to remind me that I am one of its favorite playthings.

We were standing on the corner of South and 15th when I realized I didn't have my murse anymore. Normally this wouldn't have a been a big deal, but my camera and ipod were in it. I started to freak out, so we hightailed it to Mcglinchey's. I was pretty sure I didn't have the bag at the restaurant and they were closed anyway. I powerwalked the three blocks up 15th st while Dr. Awesome tried to allay my fears about losing my stuff. I'm pretty sure she was laughing at my ridiculous speed walk form too, god knows I would have been.

My bag was at the bar. I breathed a sigh of relief, profusely thanked the barkeep and was happy that any hiccups for the night were over. Yep, any and all hiccups done and done. Right.

The cab ride home was uneventful. It wasn't till I went back out in search of Gatorade and some other crap that I got smacked right in the face with a bit of Philadelphia's incongruous provincialism. My first stop was the 24/7 mart on my corner. I may have to have a chat with the owners of that joint, as with a name like that, one may have the crazy thought that they'd be open past fucking midnight on a Saturday. Being that midnight on a fucking Saturday clearly falls within a few of the 24 hours that occur seven days a week. But, they were not open. Fine, I would cruise over to fourth street. The convenience store over there had to be open. It was not. By now I was starting to get a little annoyed, but I knew the Wawa on second would be open, and it was only a few more blocks out of the way. Whatever, it was fine. I walked up there, got the gatorade and some other stuff and walked home.

I knew the fire would be lit, I would be able to hug a kitty and maybe I could download some recordings of Shel Silverstein poems. Life was wonderful again.

I dropped off the gatorade in the living room, breezed by the Dr. and headed upstairs. As I walked into the bathroom I heard something from downstairs, "I think something may be wrong with your toilet".

Meh, water level looked ok to me, but there was a floating kitty turd I'd dumped in there before I headed out. I flushed.

Then I panicked. The water level was going the wrong way, coming up instead of going down. Swirling. I pulled off the resevoir cover and jerked the little lever up and down. I'm not sure what I was hoping to accomplish with that, but it did nothing. The water crested the bowl and spilled out onto floor. I threw towels down and started talking to the toilet: "c'mon man, stop. There's a girl downstairs I like, you can't do this to me now. C'mon. Fuck toilet. Stop. Please."

The toilet didn't listen.

Soon enough there was a thin film of water on the bathroom floor. This sucked but the towels were doing a pretty good job of soaking up the water. Disaster averted, or so I thought.

While all of this was going on, Dr. Awesome was trying to make sure I knew that she didn't clog the toilet. I knew she didn't but I was a little preoccupied with trying to stem the tide to respond. It was only when she called up the stairs again: "Greg, there's water coming through the ceiling".

Fuck me.

I walked downstairs to see water bleeding into my closet. And with that water I watched Shel Silverstein, my warm belly full of booze and happiness and the warmth of the fire melt away. My kitty even ran upstairs.

I'm being melodramatic here, of course. It was only water. I cleaned that shit up and got on with my life. The fire was awesome, the booze was awesome and Chester snuggled up like a champ.

The next morning I got up, picked up some coffee and walked to the hardware store. There's just no way to casually walk through town with a hangover holding a plunger in one hand and a coffee in the other. Any which way you slice it, you look like a guy who's getting ready to do some serious damage.

A toilet overflowing is just never fun, but in the end it did little to put a damper on a most excellent Saturday and Sunday ruled pretty hard too. I just have to make sure I have my plunger at the ready next time I drop some kitty turds into the toilet.

Sexy Times

I woke up in the middle of the night last night. It could have been 2 a.m., could have been 5 a.m., I have no clue. This happens a lot, so I wasn't too worked up about it. I laid there for a while, thinking about stuff. Then I started to hear the subtlest high pitch noise. I tried to strain my hearing, which consisted mostly of me extending my neck a bit and turning my head to the side. My hearing is pretty shit, but I swear I could make out sexy noises. This is odd because the trinities in my courtyard and the attached apartment building seem to be inhabited largely by asexual neckbeards and their female counterparts.

The noise dropped off for a second and I started to do some quick math in my head. The equation looked something like this:

[Shame of Pleasuring Oneself to Neighbor's Sexy Time²]XValue of Entertaining Story Later X Normal Personal Mastubatory Shame = Fuck It, What Else Have I Got to do Right Now

The noise came back. I slowed my breathing and tried really hard to hear. I'd almost convinced myself that these were definitely sexy noises. The noises were so soft, but they could definitely be a woman in the throes of passion. Maybe. I listened harder, trying to separate a moan or howl from the ambient noise and traffic outside. The noise hitched a bit, got a little louder, some sort of crescendo? I was waiting for some dirty talk, some definitive proof that my neighbors were definitely getting it on. Then the noise sneezed, shifted its fat body and cooed out a soft purr. In short, I was about 45 seconds away from pleasuring myself to my overweight cat's wheezing.

Fireplaces

The cozy little house I share with my two cats, and a dog sometimes, often smells like bar b q. Sometimes it just smells like fire. That's because I am barely a man. Well, barely a man in the old John Wayne, dirty hands, can rebuild a carburetor sense. What I'm trying to get at is: I suck at fire. As such, living in a house with a fireplace has been a comedy of slight errors and self clownings the likes of which are, frankly, par for for the course for my life.

My first "fire" took a good 73 minutes and a third of a Philadelphia phone book to get lit. For my efforts, I was rewarded with a billow* of acrid dark smoke wending its way up my ceiling before caroming back into the living room and coating my possessions with a lovely odor of whatever shit wood it is they sell at the Ack-ame. But, I learned an important lesson from this first disaster: open the flue before lighting a fire. My next few fires were uneventful, and I even got somewhat adept at lighting them. With every fire, though, I struggled with some rogue smoke that would work its way back into the living room. I'd check and recheck the flue. It was definitely open every time.

Thus we come to today, the 19th of January in the year of our lord 2010.

I piled some wood and some kindling into the fireplace and got a nice little fire going in record time. But, as always there was a faint trickle of smoke bleeding into the living room. The flue was definitely open. I tried opening a window, just a bit, as I'd had some success creating some sort of air current before.

No dice.

I grabbed one of the fireplace tools, the pointy one with the hook. I don't know what this tool is called, so it shall be henceforth referred to as: the thinger. My plan was to grab the flue handle with the hook and give it a good tug, just to make sure it was open. I quickly realized the chances of actually achieving this without lighting my arm on fire were pretty close to nil. I made a half-assed effort to make myself feel better, though. I jabbed the, umm, thinger, up the chimney one last time. As I did so, a black mass tumbled out of the chimney, and I, for the first time ever**, shrieked like a woman and jumped up one foot, ran in place for a second, did that "ewwww" gesture that looks like a slight seizure and dry heaved. It was the charred body of a pigeon.

Then its head fell off.

And I dry heaved again.

Not being sure what the accepted protocol is for rodent disposal, I spent some time staring at the burnt little shit. I thought about feeding him to the cats, but he was a bit overdone. For the briefest of seconds I considered a proper burial. But, that would have been retarded considering how many animals I've had genuine affection for that I've sent to meet their maker through the porcelain gates of the old commode. In the end it seemed most practical to use the shovel fireplace tool thinger to scoop him into a bag.

I laid the little fellow to rest in some grocery store bags that I daintily tossed into the shady alley outside my courtyard that houses our trash. A fitting funeral, if you ask me.











*this is a noun. trust me, I had to look it up too.
**this week