Oh where is my kitchen?

Let's see...this is my oven with the spot to the right being where my refrigerator should be.


Here is the other side of the kitchen. See the fancy cooktop?


And the dinette that The Mrs. spent so much time boxing up so I could put everything in the PODS. Is the refrigerator supposed to be in the dinette?


The painters are now projecting that they will finish the kitchen on Tuesday, which will be one week after they started. Our painters don't work Saturdays. Looks like they have sprayed on one coat of primer and one coat of paint, and then brushed on a second coat of paint already. Still needs at least one more coat, possibly two given the Tuesday completion date.

The Mrs. just came in from the garage, where she is boxing up more stuff, and said, "Well, it looks like MaxieC will have at least one friend to invite to his birthday party." I said, "Who?" and she replied, "Little RyanC."

HannieC's birthday party is on Sunday. It's two weeks until her birthday, but we pulled in the party so that it would not conflict with house selling. House selling is going sloooowly. Lot of hoops I need to jump through to get The Company to pay for everything, and The Company seems in no rush. It's almost maddening how many "fill out this form and wait 3-4 business days for someone to contact you" loops I have been through.

I'm starting to get very disappointed in The JohnnyB. He's managed to get his advertisements installed, but he's only getting public service ads. Why is this? Well, cuz he hasn't written anything in a week. Why is this? See, JohnnyB's life isn't all that interesting. Now, I try to take him out drinking every now and then to give him some material, but he doesn't have a natural sense for the humorous. For instance, I was out drinking with him just this past Tuesday, and he found nothing in that to discuss.

He did, to be fair, buy me a Ketel One Martini. Then he made me switch chairs with him so he could chat up the lady sitting next to me, who was apparently an old friend of his from The Company. We were all from The Company, and pretty much everyone knew everyone else with a few exceptions.

See, when I got to the conference thingee on Tuesday morning, I bumped into this guy from my project, well call him Shunster. and he said, "Man, I went out drinking with Those Fort Collins guys yesterday. We went to this martini bar up the street that they found. Those Fort Collins guys really like to drink. Where were you, man?"

I'm thinking to myself, "Self, the phrase, 'Those Fort Collins guys really like to drink,' is quite encouraging. Self, you will fit in nicely, if I do say so myself." It also reminded me of the last paragraph of this.

So, at the end of the day, I tracked down Those Fort Collins guys and rounded up a couple of the Santa Clara guys, and we hoofed it over to the bar. We passed three pawnshops along the way, and Shunster had to show us a tripod-mount machine gun in the window of the one next to the bar. Then we looked at all the guitars hanging in there. I spotted an interesting one and I said, "That looks like a BC Rich Bich" just as three women walked by. One of them gave me a nasty look. They went into the same bar we did.

In there, we met a bunch of other peoples from The Company. One guy was up at the bar buying drinks, and he asked me what I wanted. Now, I'm not making this up. You can check with JohnnyB. The conversation went like this:

He: "What do you want to drink?"

Me, CherkyB: "A Ketel One Martini."

He: "A Guinness?"

Me, CherkyB: "No. A Ketel One Martini."

He: "A martini or a cosmopolitan?"

Me, CherkyB: "Martini. With Ketel One."

He: "Vodka or gin?"

Me, CherkyB: "Vodka. Ketel One Vodka."

He: "Vodka what?"

Me, CherkyB: "Ketel One. It's a kind of vodka."

He: "Oh. OK."

Meanwhile, the bartender had been standing right next to us this whole time and had begun mixing it up when I had first said what I wanted. The guy leans over to him and says, "A vodka martini with Ketel One, please," and the bartender sets it down right in front of him. He was surprised at the fast service.

Then, he starts down the line of people stacked up behind me waiting to order drinks. They have all learned. They all order Guinness.