Olmos...But No Cigar

Ok--So Lib and I were bored, and we made a some of the cast of Battlestar Galactica on her Wii. I have posted our two favorites that just happen to be Admiral Adama (mustache version) and President Laura Roselyn (God rest her fictitious soul). Chief Tyrol and Lee turned out great, and even though I thought Doc Cottle would be no problem, he ended up looking horrible. Baltar, Caprica 6, Athena/Boomer and Col. Tigh were Ok, and Lib and I, even though we have attractive mii's have turned out to be complete geeks who make mii versions of the BSG cast for fun--that's right, I refer to it in abbreviation, so frak off, toaster!

It's Raining Gravel

At the quarry, there is a mountain of asphalt hundreds of feet high where you drive to the top and dump old torn-out asphalt. At the peak of this mountain, I heard a loud horn that sounded like a semi horn in two long blasts. Then, I drove down the mountain to pick up some new asphalt at the plant, and as I was pulling up, a pick up came flying around the corner honking repeatedly, so I stopped, and a guy, whose voice was even gravely, said, "You can't go back here, I'm getting ready to blast that wall." And sure enough, when I looked up, there was a row of saw horses, and a relatively small sign that read "Blast Area," so I drove back to the front only about a hundred yards, and five minutes later there was an earth-rumbling blast, which sounded more like it was under water, followed by the sound of gravel raining down upon the earth. It was awesome.

Mextrosexual

Jorge smelled like the beach, and our sweat dripped onto the flagstone with the sun beating down on us, cooled only by the smell of the chlorine of the waterfall cascading into the pool. Max said he wanted to be a woman for a day... If I were gay, this would be a much more interesting story, but the truth is, we were hot as hell, covered in sunscreen and baking in a flagstone oven because some rich woman wanted us to tear out all the grass between the stones on her patio and replace it with new sod, which is a total pain in the ass, especially when it is in the nineties and there is no shade. Even Max said, "Maybe I want to be a woman today. Just one day...today. Work inside. Do dishes. Clean. All inside. But just maybe today. When my husband comes home, no more woman. "

Barbaric Yawp

If you've never ripped a giant stump out of the ground with a backhoe, then you don't know what you are missing. I think one of the most impressive things about the human brain is its ability to transfer nerve input taken from the body to make a person one with a tool. You feel the ax and can swing it with great precision, you feel the rake and can feel if the grade of the dirt is level, and you can actually feel how tons of steel rip through the ground and you can create a mental map of roots and clay beneath the surface. I know it's strange, but...no its not...it is very satisfying to fill the bucket of the excavator completely, swing it, extend it, and dump it onto a giant pile of earth that you have ripped from mother earth. I'm sorry if this is not very poetic, but my barbaric yawp is much more gutteral than Walt Whitman's, and I am glad I get to leave teaching literature behind for two months every year to play in the dirt.

Hot and Bothered....for real this time (but not in a sexy way)

Today was so hot and humid that I was completely soaked after an hour of work, and by late afternoon, I was so disgusting that I was surrounded by a cloud of gnats that kept going in my mouth, ears and eyes. I kept imagining I was Pigpen from Charlie Brown and that in the next frame I would just start waving my arms and yelling, "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" with my head tilted back completely and my mouth just a big gaping black hole the shape of a lima bean. But you can't do that at work.

Growing Old

I will try to recreate as best I can the sad ramblings of an elderly man who sat on his porch and watched us tearing out a driveway yesterday:

"I did you a favor. When you were gone I told some ladies not to park here or they would be in for a heck of a surprise with all your equipment driving around. You guys eating lunch? You can come in my house and sit down."

That's Ok.

"No, you can come in if you want; I'm all alone. My wife is dead."

That's terrible. I'm sorry.

"I've lived here fifty-nine years, since nineteen fifty, now I'm all alone."

That's a long time.

"Thirty years ago, I would have thought I would have been dead by now. We had five kids--four boys and one girl, and ten grandchildren eight boys, two girls. All of them good kids. Why don't you guys just come on in and have your lunch, it's no problem and I'm all alone."

There was more, but I don't remember it, but it was all just as sad and creepy.

Slow Children at Play

A few weeks ago, as I was winding my way through a quaint little neighborhood in Westfield, I approached a bend when I saw one of those yellow plastic children who are posed in the "I am running in front of your car" position that people put on the edge of the street (of which there is only one image on the internet) to slow down traffic, and it pissed me off. When I was a kid, you just stayed out of the street, and if you didn't, you got flattened by a Mac truck or you got beat by your parents for playing in the street; nobody thought to put the onus on the driver, it was on the children where it should be. Maybe if your kids are too dumb to stay out of the street, they are a bit slow. So as I was about to plow the fake child over with the dump truck, I realized that the owner had attached a Miller Lite can to the fake child's fin-like hand--there were no fingers--and it made me happy to know that whoever lived in that neighborhood just wanted to keep all of the drunk little children safe, so I did slow down...in hopes of seeing one stumbling down the sidewalk or hitting on the ugly girl in the neighborhood.

Hot and Bothered...literally...or figuratively?

Not to toot my own horn, but I was a little flattered when a woman in her seventies was trying to make time with me last week. I was working on her driveway, and she was working on the free-love freeway. She had moxy, this one, and she knew how to make the hottest day of the summer even hotter. When she brings me some water early in the day, and says that she takes care of young men, I think it's a completely normal, nurturing thing to say, but later in the day when she pours a couple more glasses of water, she stops at the door on the way into the house she says, "If you want any more water, just whistle," and here's the kicker: she continues, "You know how to whistle don't you?" Now, I have never seen To Have and Have Not, but I know what that means...Hot Dog!