Anger Management

This is now my third time recreating this post from scratch. My laptop is having serious network connectivity issues, and it keeps crashing. Blogger's automatic saving of posts while you write does not, as it turns out, allow you to restore a post if you've had to reboot. Piece of crap.

Hardly seems like it's been a week since the last Fat Camp. Maybe cuz it's only been 6 days. But people have already lined up with their excuses for not going biking. TommyO, normally a rock of reliability, is skipping for a genuine homeowners' association meeting. BrainkyP is going to a Serbian Mafia meeting. AndyP is still coaching little league. Spanky is, as far as I know, dead. He called in sick over a week ago, and aside from a couple little posts on his blog complaining about how he was sick, he hasn't been heard from since.

Rumor has it he's interviewing with other companies all week. Rumors aren't always that realiable, though.

Which reminds me of a funny story. As with all my stories, this is 100% true. My life is so interesting, I don't need to exaggerate it. Today I was forced to get my lunch in the company cafeteria. This is cuz my boss, StinkyJ, and his boxmate, BrainkyP, wanted to discuss something with me on the way to lunch, and they only had 20 minutes for lunch and so had to go to the cafeteria. Then, they proceeded wander off and discuss the matter without me, so it was a complete waste of my time and my stomach lining. However, whileI was filling up my drink, a guy who works peripherally with us happened by and said, "Hey, too bad about your boss breaking his leg. Playing soccer, huh?"

So, sensing an opportunity, I said, "Well, soccer is the official story. What really happened was that he fell down the stairs at his house cuz he was drunk. But he doesn't want anyone to know that, so he tells everyone it was playing soccer."

I'm going to see how long it takes for that rumor to get back to me.

But back to the story. I promised you in the last post that I'd tell you the story about Sunday. Sunday started out like any other Sunday, except we skipped church. This being Protestant thing is still quite something. Back in teh olden days when I was Catholic, skipping church wasnever an option. Now, it can be done completely guilt-free. I gotta say, though, that the Catholics have the whole not-skipping church thing down much better. They offer a wide variety of choices that do not crater you whole Sunday. For instance, you could go at 7am and be out by 7:20. Or go at 7pm the night before. Here at the congregational church, it's just the 10am service, and it goes on until 11:15. And then they expect you to congregate afterwards for coffee and donuts. And then childrens choir rehearsal starts. You don't get out of that place until noon.

Hell, by noon your Sunday is shot. By the time you get home, change, and eat lunch, it's near 1:30. The worst part of it is that Eastern timezone football is pretty much done by the time you get home, so the $250 spent on the NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV is totally wasted for the earstwhile Bills fan. The only practical solution is to skip church. Given the total lack of guilt for skipping, it's not obvious why you'd go more than once or twice a year.

But I digress. The real reason it started out like any other Sunday was that The Mrs. woke up angry. I mean really, really angry. Caged, rabid animal angry. I don't believe there was a kind word that eminated from her to any of us the entire day, but hey, who's counting? I took the kids outside to play to avoid all of us being yelled at. The Mrs. interpreted this as me leaving her to do all the housework by herself, so she proceeded to do her housework by herself, occasionally huffing and puffing about how put-upon she was whenever we were in earshot. She even decided to wash the dog, her dog, which she blamed on me with, "I suppose I'm expected to wash the dog."

I don't expect anyone to wash the dog. If he gets stinky, he can roll in the fresh garden dirt. He's a dog. But whatever. I kept my mouth shut, for once.

After watching The Childrens all morning while The Mrs. got her work done, when MaxieC took a nap right after lunch, I went to mow the lawn. The Mrs. made it well know that she was angry at having to watch HannieC while I mowed the lawn, completely overlooking that I watched both kids while she cleaned the house and washed the dog.

If you want you marriage to last, you have to learn to simply ignore your wife's mood much of the time. I'm not sure there's another survival technique. If there is, let me know. Though I've probably been married longer than any of my readers...

I went our fron to mow the lawn, which I did. Then, I noted that part of the lawn was looking dry and underwatered, so I decided to check out the sprinklers. I turned on the first set, and noticed they were kinda not spraying as far as they were supposed to. Sound familiar? Then I noticed that there was a river of water running across the sidewalk into the street. Oh man, not another broken pipe. I feel around down in there and note a leaking connection.

Now, I learned my lesson from the back yard, and on the front yard, I hired licensed non-mexicans to do the landscaping. So what I got here was a much more professional job. It's a double-swing arm installation, which uses a number of threaded elbows to give adjustability and play to the sprinkler head positioning. Meaning it's impossible to snap a sprinkler head off by tripping on it or something, since it can rotate a bit. But one of these swing joins was leaking.

I dug the whole thing out and tightened it up and put is back together. It seemed to be OK until the final pressure check, when it started leaking again. Darn. So I reached down in a fussed a bit, and it snapped off in my hand. And it didn't snap off anywhere convenient. It snapped off on the first threaded joint, which means the broken threads are stuck inside the part that is glued to the PVC. Argh. Means I have to cut the pipe and replace the glued elbow (of which I have two spares). But, I don't have any damned swing joints. So for the second day in a row, I'm off to Home Depot to buy a stupid little part to fix a broken sprinkler pipe.

Sheesh. Upon inspection, I did learn the the original installation had cross-threaded the broken part, which it why it had leaked and then failed.

I go to bed now.