Welcome to the working week

July 22, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

It’s Monday. Know how I can tell? There’s a plumber in the driveway and my Visa card just spontaneously combusted.

One of the few downsides to living in an old neighborhood like ours is that the plumbing is even older than the residents. I think Hammurabi laid the original pipe, and the Romans handled most of the maintenance (But other than that, what have the Romans ever done for us?) until the Vandals came along and ensured that the pumps would no longer work by appropriating the handles.

Anyway, the lone bathtub at The House Back East™ has become something of a wading pond, and a plumber is over there panning for gold as we speak. I expect he’ll find some.

Stumble To Work Day

June 26, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Java stop — The point of getting out of bed in the morning.

It’s Bike To Work Day here in Colorado, but it seemed silly to go out to the garage to fetch a bike for the 27-step slog from bed to coffeemaker to iMac. So I walked instead. Sorry ’bout that.

I don’t see a word about BTWD on either of the websites attached to the newspapers that grace our fair community, surprise, surprise. In fairness, there are other stories to be covered, like the Supremes wiping their black-robed asses with the Voting Rights Act, Fort Cartoon losing a brigade and our summer-tourism piggy bank roasting on a very big spit.

Still, if more of us were encouraged to cycle to work instead of firing up the family battlewagon, maybe we would be less inclined to build our homes 30 miles from the cube farm, up in Yahweh’s kindling pile.

Sometimes a grate notion

September 28, 2012September 29, 2012 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

The bathroom grate — What a grate way to wake up on a September morning.

A scorched, musty smell and a low rumble at 5 a.m. told me that fall was indeed here, as the furnace kicked on for the first time in months.

It was something of a shock to the system, as always. It was only a few short days ago that I was motoring in a fog of my own sweat through 105-degree heat in Bullhead City, Ariz., for the dubious privilege of chasing bike parts and Scotch around Sin City, which was only a half-dozen degrees cooler.

I’m not sorry to bid adieu to a truly awful summer, but I’d sure like to hold onto sunny-and-70 for a stretch. Autumn is my favorite time to ride a bike, and I’m not ready to pull on my big-boy pants quite yet.

Fire on the mountain

June 24, 2012 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Waldo Canyon from Palmer Park — The Waldo Canyon fire as seen earlier today from Palmer Park — which is now closed to keep it from getting lit up, too.

The mercury is knocking on the century mark down here in Bibleburg, but it’s a whole lot hotter in them thar hills.

Manitou Springs got cleared out last night and early this morning, and the Air Force is weighing in with a couple of C-130s that can drop 3,000 gallons of fire retardant in less than five seconds, according to The Denver Post. Two more are inbound from Wyoming.

Down here in the flats it’s oddly quiet. Lots of folks are watching the fire the way a bird eyes a snake, taking cellphone pix and muttering to themselves.

We’ve gotten a few calls from friends and family who wonder if we’ve been forced out onto the open road with only a few simple possessions and the menagerie enjoying a Romney ride atop the Subaru.

Nope. Herself is still at large in Mouse Country, I’m stuck in an un-air-conditioned office wrangling word count and the critters are trying to find cool spots to stretch out. Good luck with that. It’s not exactly fur-coat weather, is what I’m saying.

Still, there are worse things. We know a few folks who’ve been chased out of their homes by this bloody fire, and a few of them are staying next door until things cool off a bit. They may be waiting a while — there’s nothing but sun, heat and wind in the forecast for the next 10 days. Y’all start doing your rain dances now, please. And thank you.

The stink also rises

May 31, 2012May 31, 2012 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Destruction zone — Yes, those smelly old elves are at it again in the basement.

Tell you what: When it rains, it pours, especially in our basement.

The water heater is on the fritz now, pissing all over the floor like a badly trained dog, and I would shoot the fucker two or three times if I weren’t afraid of inflicting collateral damage upon the humidifier, which in this climate is the only thing keeping me from bleeding to death through the nose.

Speaking of noses, when the temps creep up into the high 80s, low 90s, what a man wants is a basement free of raw sewage. They say that shit rolls downhill, and speaking as a longtime resident of the valley I will say that they do not lie.

But the stink from same, like the sun, also rises. And a man with a litter box in his office upstairs doesn’t need any more of that sort of annoyance than he can achieve through a diet rich in the foodstuffs of Northern New Mexico, which at least smells good going in.

So much for the bad news. The good news is that chats with the insurance company have not led to extended bouts of weeping; an expert is en route today to lay hands upon the water heater (rather than 158-grain, semi-jacketed, .357 Magnum hollow points); and Ted at Old Town Bike Shop resolved an issue with the front disc brake on the latest test bike, for which I owe him some beer and many thanks.