DJ's Detritus

A Creative Writing Class Dropout's Last Refuge

Sunday, April 22, 2007

You Dirty Rat

We had quite an escapade at my house the other day. I found a bag of chewed through cookies in the hallway, so I suspected some sort of varmint, not unlike the ones that Mitt Romney hunts. Since we had been away for several days, I asked son #1 if he had seen anything. He said he had. I asked “Was it a mouse or a rat?” He was not very forthcoming. “So was it an inch long or a foot long”. He said “kinda in between”. I pressed further. “It was a rat, a rat” he sputtered. I found his candor refreshing.

Being the alpha male, I sprung into action. My local hardware store had quite a selection of traps. They even had something you plug in and it emits a pitch that repels rodents. It said that it would not bother pets but I figured my kids might be sensitive to it. So I just picked up a few traps and went home. I baited them with chunky peanut butter, the natural kind, just peanuts and salt. I wanted its last meal to be a good one.

The next morning I awoke early to check things out. One trap had been tripped but there was nothing in it. I looked around and then noticed some blood on the kitchen floor. Panic in Foster City! I followed the trail into the family room. Son #2 had gotten up by then and was sitting in his usual corner watching TV. As I continued my search, I saw the little bastard sitting about three feet from my kid, twitching away. I yanked son #2 out of there and went to get my shovel. Fortunately the rat was well positioned. I opened the sliding glass door and flung him out. He crawled away quite slowly and ended up on a bench in the patio. I consulted the internet as to what to do with a half dead rat on your patio. I then went out and whacked the thing with the shovel. Three times, just to be sure. In the interim, my crazy wife went to get the video camera. So there I am, in my undies, goofy slippers and bright red rubber gloves, swinging for the fences. The Upgrade King wants me to embed videos in my blog but this one ain’t making the cut.

In other news, I’m pissed at The Pope. The guy has bad timing. I’m going to have to start working on my annual review at work in a few weeks. Now that he’s announced that there’s no more limbo, I’m going to have to come up with a whole new career path.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

I Love Travel

My wife and I took off for Raleigh-Durham with our twin 14 year olds last week. We left son #1 at home with deep trepidation, based on memories of my week as a teenager at home without the parents. Our daughter had a basketball tournament in NC this past weekend. That’s right. We flew across country for an eighth grade basketball tournament. Things have changed since I rode the pine for my high school JV basketball team. We thought we were the cat’s pajamas when we took a bus across the county line for a game.

The trip there was an adventure. Our developmentally disabled son can present challenges. He doesn’t usually take no for an answer. It’s like traveling with a 5’4”, 125 pound 1 year old. But he only managed to slap three or four strangers. Our travel agent, my wife, routed us through Chicago. That was the first mistake. They only had two runways open due to the snow so our RDU flight, as well as all subsequent flights there, got canceled. My wife has saved our bacon in the past (see 8/10/06 post) so she got on the horn and started making calls. She does that a lot but this time she had a purpose, which was to get the hell out of Chicago. The airline customer service rep asked where she wanted to go. “Whaddaya got?” she replied. We tried Charlotte, Greensboro, Greenville, even Green Hornet. No luck. So we got a 10pm flight to DC. We were supposed to get out of there around 2:30 so that extended the day a tad. On the DC leg of the trip our son had a bit of an accident. Have you ever tried to change a diaper on somebody close to your size in an airplane bathroom? After we got through that, we doubled up on the $5 drinks. As I sipped my Canadian Club, a verse from one of my favorite Stones tunes, “Sweet Virginia”, ran through my head. “Got to scrape the shit right off your shoes”.

Events continued to conspire against us after we arrived in DC. When we hopped in the cab, we told him to take us to the Staybridge, which our kind sister-in-law had reserved for us on the fly. Our driver was very polite and said, “Sure, how do you get there?” It was apparent that he had not been in the country for very long. All my wife knew was that the place was within four miles. So he pulled over and called the Staybridge. He and the night clerk had a nice chat but it seems they were in disagreement on the last required turn. He was of the mind that it was a left. She said right. They discussed it at length. Fortunately we got there pretty quickly, without baggage of course. We picked up a toothbrush and toothpaste at the hotel inconvenience store and trekked to our room in the rain. We did have the foresight to bring along another pop from the airplane in case there wasn’t a mini-bar in our room, which there wasn’t. We got a few hours sleep and hopped on a plane to RDU the next morning.

Our luggage didn’t make it the same day we did, which led to several phone calls to United. After holding for about 15 minutes, I reached one of their representatives. I think it was our cab driver’s daughter. She said “We have good news for you Mr. DJ. Your bags are safe. They are right here, in our call center”. My daughter was staying at a hotel with the rest of the team and called us as many times as we called United re luggage status. I summoned my best accent, apologized profusely, and said we were doing everything possible to locate it. Since it did not arrive in time for her first game, she got a new pair of expensive sneakers, which will hopefully be courtesy of the airline.

As far as the games, her team went three out of four and placed fifth in her bracket. She had the opportunity to play on the court at the Dean Smith Center at UNC as well as the NC State gym. In addition, she got a tour of the Duke campus, featuring a picture with Dad on the Coach K court. My hope is that this will be a broadening experience for her, teaching her the value of perseverance and teamwork. More importantly, I expect a return on my investment via a college hoops scholarship. If she lets me down, she’ll have a choice of many of the fine junior colleges in our area.

While she was with the team, the rest of us were at the home of one of my best friends. As luck would have it, we were there during the filming of their reality show, “Dr. Joe’s Family”. We hung out with six of their seven kids, a couple dogs, two current and one erstwhile babysitter, and a boyfriend, who doubles as the resident herpetologist. Throw into the mix a visiting brother-in-law and his two daughters and you get an erratic, southern fried version of Full House. There’s always a whirl of activity and occasionally some lively discussion, wherein they agree to disagree.

The adults escaped for a meal out at one of Chapel Hill’s finest dining establishments Thursday evening. The rest of the time we ate in. NC is rightly known for its excellent BBQ, which we indulged in our last night there. Friday night we had some NC pizza. They’re rightfully not known for that. Dr. Joe and his bride kicked us to the curb Monday morning and, gratefully, we had a very uneventful trip home.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Stogie Nights

It was a good weekend, which made my case of The Mondays even worse than usual. We kicked things off at The Exec’s house Friday night with cigars, drinks and a little girl talk. #1, TCG, The Exec and I had the place to ourselves. His kids were out and he apparently had a tacit agreement with his wife that she would spend the evening in the garage.

I decided to abstain from the stogies because I wasn’t in the mood to barf, but I did enjoy a little second hand smoke. Usually this type of event calls for cognac, but The Exec was having an authentic O’Douls Ersatz Amber Ale and #1 was enjoying a diet Dr. Pepper. Can you imagine some late 19th century pols and fat cats sitting around sipping Dr. Pepper with their cigars? At least TCG was quaffing a martini.

The conversation ran the gamut from Kona coffee to world history. TCG had just come back from Kona, where he had visited many coffee farms and had sampled some of their finest. That got us onto the topic of #1’s morning routine, which starts with him making a single cup of coffee with special pods. He then uses the spent pods to exfoliate, showers, puts his hair in a Sanjaya Ponyhawk and drives his Oscar Mayer Weinermobile to work. I then gave the boys a lecture on the Josep Broz Tito regime in post war Yugoslavia, which I completely fabricated. They bought it. There were no squabbles to taint the evening and we all went home gruntled.

During our evening, #1 had asked why I had not blogged recently on Gonzo Gate and the other goings on in Washington. I guess every time that I think about the barrel of monkeys – apologies to primates everywhere - that is the George W. Bush administration, it puts me in a sour mood. I’m going to have to agree with the bumper sticker I saw in SF recently, which plainly stated that “Nixon is no longer the worst president ever”. Even one of W’s top campaign strategists, Matthew Dowd, has now jumped off the bandwagon and “expressed his disappointment in Bush’s leadership”. Disappointment? Leadership? So what made you finally wake up and smell the toast pal!

On Saturday we had outstanding meal at Azure in San Carlos. It’s been open for only three months but is already a top spot on my list of the mid-Peninsula’s best. Check it out.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/21/FDGK8ONHOK1.DTL&hw=azure&sn=001&sc=1000

We were joined by TCG and Mrs. TCG. We started off with cocktails. They did not carry TCG’s favorite vodka, Ciroc, not to be confused with Cirroc, SNL’s Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. TCG took it with aplomb, as opposed to getting his undies in a bunch, as I would have. However, I did alert the management to the “Designer Vodka Watchlist”, which sends out a weekly mailer to all subscribers.

Things were going quite well for most of the evening. Everyone had an excellent starter and entrée but then there was the faux pas. Mrs. TCG denigrated the choice of tequila, Sauza, used on the most recent episode of my reality show, “Tequila Navel Shots on My Kitchen Table”. I don’t want to say it cast a pall on the evening but I think a little more decorum was called for. She tried to make up for it by saying she’ll be bringing a top of the line tequila to my birthday party. I’ll believe it when I see it.

I also got an email from The Upgrade King this weekend. The UK is like a coach or mentor, always pushing you to excel, seeing potential even when you can’t. His latest idea is for me to embed videos into my blog. The only problem is he doesn’t realize that I’m already in over my head. I did, though, get the latest digital camera because of his inspiration. Here’s the first photo taken with it, which is TCG and me at dinner Saturday night.