I went food shopping the other day for the first time in over a month and acquired two mules worth of food. But with the oven broke, our options are limited. So, I decided to play it subtle. During unloading:
Dad: Stewwing potatoes, stew meat, chicken stock, chili mix, Crockpot Delights, and stuff for the toaster oven. I guess I should look into getting a new bake element for the oven if I ever want to use a fork again.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!
So, after my 17 hour marathon rest I was moving stuff into the attic when my brother came over. He asked me about splitting a Father’s Day gift with him, I asked the cost, he told me and I told him where my wallet was to get the cash. Later that day my dad came back and gave me a big hug thanking me for the Father’s Day gift. Trying not to make it obvious that I had no idea what he got and knowing my brother’s penchant for firearms-as-gift I asked “What caliber is it?” He replied “.357 and that he’d “keep it under his pillow”. Scanning over my knowledge of killings in the home and the strength of my father’s prescription glasses I realized Ryan had gotten my dad the greatest gift of all: Fratricide.
Editor’s Note: The technical term for killing one’s son would be filicide but it both sounds worse than fratricide and is a bit more remote from common parlance. I hope it sufficiently conveyed the sense of terror at my father being armed while in a hynogogic state.
I can’t vote for Supreme Court justices and my vote for almost every other election is washed out in a sea of blue as a resident of Pennsyltucky, but one place where my vote will always have numerical power is local elections. Most people shun this opportunity to vote for coroner, register of wills, and such but I relish the opportunity to try and take down our tax collector. The office is open less than 20 hours a week and when asked why my father was told “well, I do a lot of work at home, too”. WHY NOT JUST DO IT AT THE OFFICE. It’s great that you’re open from 11-1 on Tuesdays and 9 PM to 4 AM on the Ides of March but real hours would be swell due to the irony of the people that have to pay you being job holders who are otherwise unavailable during your “business” hours.
So, it was about 7:45 PM (polls close at 8):
Me: Did you vote today?
Dad: There were elections today? Is it vote that dumb bitch out of office day?
Me: It may be.
Dad: To the polls!
My dad voted first, and I was right behind him as the poll closed with me being voter 200. I was in the booth when he exited and we met up again at home:
Me: It was a primary.
Him: It was a primary.
Me: A Republican primary, everyone runs unopposed in a Republican primary.
Him: I did a write in.
Me: Me too.
Him: I wrote “anyone else”
Me: He got my vote too. Good to know he’s gaining popularity.
If “Anyone Else” makes it to the general election with three votes (my brother hates her to) I will know democracy works. And that the dumb bitch is an unpopular dumb bitch.
Me: So, how was your day of offroading?
Dad: Great, I got a text message that Jim couldn’t go so Rob and I went. Remember the rock trail at Big Dog I turned over on last year?
Me: Yeah, Ryan took pictures.
Dad: Well, I made it this time, I was also the only one to make it through the log course in one pass.
I’m so proud! My dad figured out how to check his text messages!
The carpet for the front bed room went in and in short order our 2nd tenant started moving his things in. This included his suede couch, recliner and somehow really nice curtains he didn’t want in his room which magically replaced the destroyed ones in our living room. I asked my dad what he did with the old stuff.
Dad: I threw it out.
Me: What happens when he moves out.
Dad: We’ll hold onto it for him.
Me: I don’t think it works that way.
Dad: Hm… In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy our new couch.
My father recently purchases a Truckers’ Atlas, which is like a normal atlas but with a lot more marked bridges and a lot fewer tourist locations. He’s literally been paging through it like an LLBean or Campmor catalog making little noises like he’s impressed or surprised and sometimes even chuckle to himself. Mind you, this is a collection of highway maps.  He’s been particularly enamored with the Standard Distance Tables which are used by firms to determine the wage to pay to get from one point to another at one point blurting out “wow, I never knew how far it was to Moab”. I wonder what he’d do if he figured out how to make GoogleMaps mashups.
Christmas went well. I woke at 1 AM, took a walk, read, shot people, and prepared for a new day. About 7:30 AM I prepared breakfast, then spend 2 hours waiting for someone to wake up. I opted not to roust the house with slamdancing and assumed the scent of delectable breakfast meats would do. Apparently sausage doesn’t waft as well as one would anticipate. At 10 AM gifts were exchanged and by 10:02 my father and I were done and watched the love-match between my brother and his girlfriend take turns out-gifting one another. Somewhere in the middle my brother got a really nice miter saw. He doesn’t really use or need one, but should he, he’ll have a really nice one at the ready. In other news I think my brother won Christmas, but I suspect him of cheating as Amanda pitched in on the tiebreaking decorative bench.
My single gift request for 2008 was a new speaker set for my computer and received the Logitech Z-5500 set. I thought they’d be much smaller and found of the 55 lb package that 54 lbs was the sub woofer. This fucker’s HUGE with a warning label cautioning not to use it within 2 feet of magnetically sensitive devices like pacemakers or credit cards (or simply ‘electronics’ as they put it). It has an air intake for it’s turbocharger (I assume that’s what it is) big as my fist and fat heat-sink. I’m confident I could sit on it while playing whale songs or something equally bassy and ride the thing like a hovercraft. Alternatively, sneak it into Bestbuy and play Foreplay by Boston and permanently magnetize every CRT and erase every hard drive there.  I can now hear entire instruments that I could make out before like the “bones” in Great Big Seas Rant and Roar album or the wicked Bonnie Rait-inspired slide guitar opening to Appalachian Spring; true story.
My brother asked why I had the speakers on when I wore headphones while playing Team Fortress 2. The answer: With the headphones, I can hear my enemies. With the speakers, I can feel them.
I guess this is my second article about hidden archaeology. The sink clogged, a lot. My brother had made pumpkin “things” after unleashing fatal fury upon it. I tried undoing the clog with two toilet plungers but as my surroundings acquired a petina of clogs past, toilet paper particles and the remains of my chicken chutney I realized the correction was beyond me.
My father and I unleashed the three horsemen of the sewage apocalypse of plunging, a drain snake and liquid plumber. The drain snake pulled up some pumpkin parts, a piece of a mop head and furhtest down some plaster of paris which reflected a clear record back to early September. The pumpkin seeds were from last week, the mop shards were from something I’ll simply call “The Accidental Floor Cleaning/Soap Disaster of October 2008 and the plaster of paris was from a failed demo piece for the early October Cub Day.
The drains are yet to be clogged and saying “Rotorooter” would be an order of magnitude worse in terms of lost manliness as asking for directions. So there are two options, using a drain-cleaning concoction I call “the widow maker” that generates both explosive hydrogen and corrosive chlorine gas or to simply wait and pray. I’m not much of praying man myself, so it looks like my dad’s going to have to smoke outside tomorrow. If I come into work with no eyebrows, a swollen face but a clean fork, know I have won.
I encountered car trouble on the way home eventually resulting in my car dying in my drive, blocking 1/2 of it as an onslaught of costumed 20-somethings were to raid my house. The rain thwarted our initial attempt at diagnosis so we simply opted to push the car out of the way. During break in the rain, my brother dressed as dracula in a too small cape, his friend dresseda post-suicide Lehman Brothers Executive, my dad dressed as the world’s gayest looking pirate at me in my staff uniform dressed as…. an Ockanickon Staff member began pushing. There were two impediments, the fact that the micro-meteorite impact zones of the moon look smooth compared to my driveway and that my dad was convinced that allowing the car to roll downhill would somehow help us push it more. With a mighty heave my car was parked and we were cheered on by Marilyn Monroe (surprisingly helpful) as dreams of driving home inebriated slutty witches died in my chest.
This weekend my house received a bit of an enema as, in concert, the three Robinson men removed nearly the last of my mother’s things. Gone were the cedar chests full of bigenarian clothing with tags and scores of cloth templates for clothing most appropriately sized for the cat. At around 11 PM the last piece was moved from my room by my dad and myself when I learned the first rule of home rearrangement: always clean out underneath any furniture before letting parents move it.
The best “discovery” was a collection of three different lubricants that’d somehow gravitated in the sartorial dustbowl. One was a surgical lubricant I used during my failed attempts at water cooling my PC whose tube was largely taken up by the words “High Performance”. The second vacuum grease which I suppose isn’t a lubricant but looks similar and finally my favorite, the silicone base to keep my treadmill working properly which comes in a non-descript tube simply marked “lube”, like I’d gotten the Safeway brand of KY or purchased it under the rationing of the Gulf War.
In addition, I discovered a backpacking pillow, 3 Scotch Brite sponges, the collected works of Robert W. Service and bag of 25 “Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful ’96” patches.