First off, I'm growing a mullet. I didn't want to grow a mullet. I hate mullets. But that's what happens when you spend the bulk of your time working on self-designed software and the remainder of it defending your sanity from your children. I don't go to the office every day, in fact, I rarely go out in public these days to somewhere that isn't centered around children. At those places, all the parents look haggard, and the ones who don't are polite enough to not poke fun of those of us who do. It isn't until my wife starts commenting that I actually turn to look in the mirror and wonder what in the world is happening to my head. I occasionally comment that my mad scientist hairdo is a mark that I'm very intelligent, but the truth of the matter is that I'm so not hung up on appearances that I rarely spend much time in front of the mirror myself. It's time to change that. I wanted to go get a haircut today, but the time disappeared on me. Time disappeared on me because...
On Saturday night / Sunday Morning at around 1:30 AM I was intent on pushing forward this abstraction idea I had, staring at code, and munching on sunflower seeds while the rest of my house was sound asleep. I never eat sunflower seeds, but for some reason I did that night. My freaking front tooth popped out! This is not a first for me. That particular tooth has fallen apart on my 4 times in my life. I ran into a closed door. I was hit with a baseball bat. I was hit myself in the face with my own skateboard. And now, I actually did it by eating sunflower seeds. Of course, Sunday was Easter, so no chance at going to see a dentist on Sunday. Monday comes around and the only time slot they will give me is during a teleconference that I refuse to miss. Tuesday comes, and I got an appointment. I sat around for about an hour and a half beyond my appointment time to find out that replacing my TWO front teeth will take at the very least through May and my insurance which I pay an unholy amount for every month is going to cover about $500 of the $3500 that it's going to cost. You see, all of my previous accidents involved two front teeth so since they are both fake, they both need to be replaced. You'd think they'd just grab some superglue and stick the piece back in there.
So for at least Monday, I was toothless mullet guy very appropriate for the area I live in. Now I'm sporting acrylics temporarily. Yeah, I have fake fingernails fro front teeth right now. And they hurt like crazy so don't give me any crap.
So now lets get to my house. I live in a 3,000-ish square foot house (maybe 3500 I can never remember) in a golf course community. If I showed you pictures, you'd be impressed - my wife is one heck of a decorator and the back yard sports the worlds largest in ground jacuzzi, a huge trampoline, a very nice wooden play set, a built in barbecue - the works. The front no longer houses my porsche - I went from the fastest and most beautiful 993 to a honda mini-van in three short years, but I still have two other beemers sitting around because I'm the world's worst best negotiater at the dealership.
Sounds awesome, right? Let me break it down for you. My house has two rooms that don't get used ever, but somehow I don't have any space. My three car garage fits exactly one car. That's because I have more useless junk than anybody you've ever known. The wife does a great job of decorating, but underneath every well placed piece of decor is either a useless gadget I had to have, a toy, or a mound of paperwork that will never get dealt with. Oh yeah, and then there's the rats and mice in the walls. Have you ever had to pull a rodent out of a wall? It's not fun. I'm sure I lost a great deal of respect from my wife when I screamed like a little girl and did the heeby jeeby dance.
I also have a phone that does not work every day sometime between 9:00 and 10:30 AM. The phone company doesn't believe me. They won't actually check it for me because they only check things like that between 2:00 and 4:00 PM. People used to think I was rude.
I automated my house before I had children. The system was crazy - a web page with the floor plan that told you which lights were on, which rooms were occupied, what phones were where, who called and when. I have this little gadget called Audrey that would sense my wife coming and give her compliments even. Oh, and then there was the voice automated poopy diaper tracker thing. Doctors always want a count of poopy diapers. All until my server crashed one day. Now I have these randomly placed motion detectors all over the place that I can't actually find. They turn lights off and on with no rhyme or reason. My automation project created an actual haunted house.
My back yard. Between 2 and 3 burners on my gas grill actually work at any given point and time. My super-jacuzzi has only one really powerful jet, and it's placed such that it shoots bubbles only where the sun doesn't shine. We've been hunting for the adjustment valve for over a year now. The back lawn has been replaced 4 times now because of poor irrigation. It would have been more, but apparently there are so many people in this area with messed up yards that you can't get a contractor to come out. And I have a friend who owns a stinking landscaping business! So my beautiful back yard is full of muck and mud most of the time. It's fine right now - we just had new guy add the drain that my wife and I explicitly asked the last two guys for.
My pool guy would be fired if we could actually catch him. He's very evasive. He's like a ninja. Last week I actually did catch him and I got sidetracked before I remembered I wanted to fire him. When I remembered - poof! I'm not a stoner. It was all in a span of like 7 seconds.
I have a PO box now because I've had my mail stolen at least 3 times in the first quarter of 2007. I caught a guy red-handed at 5:00am in my mailbox even. I also caught a thief in my neighbors car. My other neighbor caught a thief in his car. My other neighbor murdered his wife. My other neighbor burned his house down. Golf course affluent community.
Oh, by the way, this golf course community thing. It's a "really nice" area - if you forget about all the things I wrote about above or below, but it's a new development built in an area where an angry trucker hat, wife beater, and 12 year old jeans was the standard uniform before all the orange county transplants decided they could build bigger houses out here. They don't know what to do with us, and we don't know what to do with them. So we just kind of observe each other.
I have a pet owl. He lives in my chimney. The whole house sings when he sings. I also have birds that think my windows are portals to the holy land during the summer. It's not unusual for 30 or 40 birds to try to fly into my office and bounce off the window during a 60 minute conference call. I would have a raccoon, but my dogs wouldn't let him move in. Instead, I have a 80 pound possum that I have to whack off of my fence with my son's bubble mower when my dogs spot him.
I had a wild domestic turtle that moved into my house without asking. He moved into the back yard actually. He would just cruise all over the place 5 days a week, and we'd just sit there and wonder how he managed to climb up and down things. He wouldn't eat the food we gave him, just our flowers and we were fine with that. On the weekends he would disappear, presumably out on benders. But then we got the big jacuzzi (actually it's a Spool) and he kept wanting to go swimming so we gave him to our neighbor. In one week he was returned to my house 3 times because he was out roaming around. I think he's missing now. As he sat in my office one day after being returned, he actually stood up on his two hind feet. I totally looked like the guy with the dancing frog after that.
So that's a taste of my own personal magic carpet ride.
Talk About Things That Only Happen To Me
