ANOTHER DAY OF MECHANICAL SHENANIGANS

The hostage situation continues.

I arrive home today to find the brand new hot water heater still camped out complacently in the driveway.  With everyone who lives here gone at work all day, the contraption sits unguarded and within full view of both a busy street and a busy industrial park.  I honestly cannot believe that it's still here and has not yet been stolen.  I let myself into my house and begin the fine art of snacking on unhealthy food, like Extra-Toasty Cheez-Its and Milano cookies and beer (not together, though).

Suddenly there is a knock on my door.  I look out the window, but I don't see anyone, so I ignore it.  More knocks follow.  Now I am convinced that it must be the neighborhood kids.  They tried similar shit a few years ago, and I went all Gran Torino on them.  I throw the door open to see ...

A metal clamp-like claw attached to what looks like a dryer vent hose.  I follow it to a strange robot with futuristic rollers on its feet.  Apparently it cannot get up the stairs, so it stretches its snake-like appendages to knock.

"I've come a-courtin'," it says in a mechanical voice.  "I am a Class M-3 Model B-9 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot, also known as 'Robot.'  I'd like to date your hot water heater."

I look around.  Surely this has to be a joke.  "Dr. Smith?" I call out.  "Will, are you out there?  Did you guys put Robot up to this?"  I pause but get no response.  I shake my head and look directly at Robot's flashing chest light then up at its sparkling, gyrating, glass halo-like orb of a head.  "I'm sorry, Robot, but the hot water heater doesn't belong to me.  She's a transient from another universe, a universe without gas or heat or warm water."

Robot is undeterred.  Still, however, the hot water heater just sits there.  Finally, after what seems like an eternity, a strange foil-covered saucer arrives, and a homely gentleman sticks his head out of the flying machine.  Next to him, a red-headed boy with an old-fashioned bowl haircut skips from the saucer, grasps Robot's clamp-hand, and gently leads it back to the end of the driveway.  They board the saucer and seem to prepare for take-off.

I can hear them exclaim as they drive out of sight:  "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!  Danger!  Danger!  Merry hot water heater to all, and to all, a  good night."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG0ochx16Dg

PS: If that contraption is still here tomorrow, I swear I'm putting holiday decorations on it and and putting it up for grabs on E-bay.

HOSTAGE SITUATION CONTINUES

Day #45 of the hostage situation:

The interloper first appeared in our camp around o-nine-thirty on or about October 21st.  It entered our camp covertly, disguised as a large cardboard box.  We were fooled.  Yes!  We all were fooled.  Of course we were; its delivery was accompanied by seven, possibly more, men and women dressed in bright yellow plastic vests.  They certainly looked appropriate.

Well, they looked appropriate until the box came off.

Evident almost immediately, the contraption in the box was not native to the area.  Its cap didn't match our camp's energy supply, and we suspected the interloper was a plant, a decoy from the enemy to throw us off our game, and it did ... for a while.

Days of suspicion followed, leading to a confrontation in our camp.  The insurgents, now outed, they abandoned their tools, weaponry, and the original insurgent machine -- all within the bowels of our camp.  Deep in the stone and concrete darkness, down the stairs from the locked door, the interloper remained trapped, unable to maneuver the stairs by itself.

Days later, detente reigned, and the contrite insurgents returned.  They had a new machine, this one a peace offering, and its cap clearly fit into our camp.  Within days the new machine had been reassigned to our camp permanently and began working without complaint.

But the original interloper remained.

Weeks it sat there with an old, decrepit prisoner we had taken early on in the fighting, somewhere around September 13th.  Finally, someone in the higher enemy ranks realized that the interloper was still in our possession, and they wanted it back.  This is when we decided it would be our hostage.

"Come and get your soldier," we negotiated, "but you'll take the old, decrepit prisoner with you along with the mess your interloper has made for over forty days!"

The battalion showed up without warning to collect their comrade.  We were unprepared and held the fort just long enough to make them uncomfortable.  When they were finally allowed inside our camp, they brought dollies and brooms and plastic and apologies.  After about forty minutes, the two prisoners were released to their custody.  The old prisoner along with the scraps, stood at the end of the driveway to be collected by the first junk transport to come by.

The interloper sat in the driveway where it was safe from the junk collector, neither a part of our camp nor the enemy camp.  It sat there all night, all the following day, and into the next night.  Its troops returned and took new territory close to our camp, setting up orange cones over fresh tar to fill in more newly dug trenches in the street. 

Still they left the interloper. 

We didn't understand.  If they wanted their hostage back so badly, why leave it where it could be taken by another faction?  Were they afraid of poison gas? How depressing to be a rescued hostage that still, even after a successful extraction, was left behind like trash.  How depressing to see it sulking in the driveway, waiting for its brothers (and sisters) to come rescue it completely from our property.

Until then, the wrong-but-brand-new hot water heater will sit in the driveway, completely unhidden from other factions who may want it for themselves.  No matter how many times we wave goodbye, no matter how many times the gas company is here digging things up again, the hostage water heater keeps vigil on the bricks, hoping that someday someone will love it as much as we almost did.  Like a hostage that has developed Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps it will allow us to decorate it for Christmas.  We shall see.  It depends on how close it will allow us to come without reacting.

It's day #45 of the hostage situation.  We'll let you know how, when, and if it ever ends.

82

Eighty-two.

That's the number of days from that start of the gas crisis to the day the gas company finally comes and takes their crap out of my basement.

I know, I know -- I should be jumping up and down because I have heat and hot water.  I am amongst the lucky after being amongst the mistreated.  This whole thing, though -- no warnings when they're coming; no clear answers when things would be fixed; no follow through -- has been slightly maddening

I receive the phone call on my way home from work today: "Where are you?  Can you get home?  The gas company is here."  (My landlord.) Actually, I need to run to the bank, the gas station, and the grocery store.  I guess that won't be happening right now.  Besides, I have all the contact information for my landlord on the door to my house.  I don't own the place.  This is sooooo not my problem.

I rush home, just the same.

The landlord and the gas company are letting themselves inside my townhouse when I arrive home.  Apparently they are there for the extra brand-new hot water heater they forgot.  My landlord and I tell them all the same thing: "You'll get your hot water heater when you clean up the shit you left in the basement, including the old furnace."

This is a brilliant strategy.  Except... except that I had company last weekend and finally (after eighty days) moved basement crap out of my living level and put some of it back into the basement and the landing to the basement.  This means that I have to move that stuff back into my kitchen.  I also need to move furniture in the den so they can get through with the equipment.

Pain in my ass.

I've been living like a damn gypsy for eighty-two damn days.  Finally I might get my life back.  After watching seven of them (seven -- really, seven) haul the stuff out of my basement, I see one guy go into the cellar with a sheet of plastic.  My landlord and I hear clanging and a bit of sharp retorts.  Sounds like they've broken something.

Turns out the plastic is to ... surprise ... collect the crap they've left everywhere, and the noise is them picking it all up.  Seven people, four dollies, a sheet of plastic later, my basement is almost clear again.  It's like they were never there.  It's like the past eighty-two days never happened.

Well, except for the stove.  The gas company still has not approved the stove I've been cooking with for the last two weeks.  I suppose that means they'll be back.  I'll leave that contact information on my door just in case.

HERE COMES THE ... WHAT THE HELL IS THAT GIANT FIREBALL?

It's almost unbelievable.  Truly.  The sky is blue.  The. Sky. Is. BLUE.

This has been the most sun we have seen since late September.  Honestly, it has been so gloomy and so rainy and so overcast that we have all forgotten what the damn sun even looks like.  Is it round?  Is it bright?  Does it exist?  We doubt all of these things.

Then, all of a sudden and without warning on Saturday, out pops the sun.  Dagnabbit if it doesn't do it again three times (albeit briefly, for about ten seconds each time) on Monday. 

Now, now -- we know better than to count on these things.  After all, in between the sun's brief visit Saturday and it's game of Peek-a-Boo on Monday, we do have Sunday, which is so rainy and so colorless that by three o'clock in the afternoon, it is dark enough for outside lights.  But, really, seeing the sun for a total of maybe three minutes in the last six weeks has been disheartening at best, so to actually see it (and feel it ... it hits fifty degrees or better on Monday), is downright amazing.

Throw in BLUE SKY, and, well, folks: IT'S A FREAKING PARTY!

Fear not, New Englanders.  Mother Nature will shit all over us soon.  After all, I did hear the weather forecasters whispering the word "Nor'Easter," and we all know what that means: Once someone has uttered the word "snow," you know it's coming.  Yes, yes, that's right: SNOW.  Besides, isn't that why we live here in the semi-frozen Great Iced-Over Northeast?  For snow?

No, actually I think the answers is: We live here because there are tornadoes, earthquakes, giant bugs, and elderly-eating alligators everywhere else.  Oh, and every once in a while (possibly three times in a six-week cycle) we get to see the sun and blue skies, so there is that. 

ADVENT-URES

In addition to being Day #1 of Hanukkah, it is also Day #1 of Advent.  I really enjoy when the holidays all fall together.  It reminds me of when I was very young and lived next door to a boy my age who was Jewish.  His mother taught me my first Hanukkah song ("Burn Little Candle"), and I picked up a few more along the way through school chorus.

I clean off the kitchen table (also known as "My Desk") so I can put the Advent wreath out and get the candles into it.  While rooting around, I also find the infamous Christmas wine stopper.  Of course, this means that things are only going to get worse.

I don't have the Christ candle added to the center of the Advent wreath - not yet, anyway - but I do have a half-finished bottle of Chianti.  I replace the rubber stopper with the ornate Christmas one, and stick the bottle into the center of the wreath. 

Once this is done, I light the first Advent candle, which I always thought was Hope, but someone else told me it is for Peace.  This sparks a firestorm of Internet activity.  How could I be wrong all these years?  I mean, I even created my own mnemonic device so I wouldn't screw it up every year.  And why do they say to light the pink candle last?  I was always taught it was third in line? 

Holy crap, now I'm screwing up Advent, too.

Turns out many different Christian religions and sects mix up the four, but I'm sticking with my UCC knowledge (and my old church bulletins) and going with the same old: Hope, Peace, Joy (pink), Love, then the big white candle (I'll move the chianti bottle before then because it will most likely be empty soon, anyway).

That's my Holiday Story, and I'm sticking with it... for now, anyway.

CHRISTMAS AT A DYING MALL

This Christmas season I have decided to be on the lookout for accidental decorations -- decorations that pop up where and when I least expect them.  Today's installment is the Woburn Mall.

The Woburn Mall is located in a fabulous spot.  It is easily accessible from route 93 (main artery in and out of Boston) and 128/95, the main artery into and out of the technology hot spot.  It is also adjacent to multiple industrial complexes with offices and industry, and it has two strong anchor stores with a bustling Home Goods at one end and a well-shopped Market Basket grocery store at the other.

Yet somehow this little mall cannot seem to keep itself thriving.  I don't understand it at all.

I used to go there all the time to get my fabric fix at a great store called Fabric Place.  In later years, I played trivia at Uno's restaurant with a group of gal pals.  Both places have since closed their doors.  Now I'm at the mall to shop at Home Goods (it's one of the better ones) and the comic book store.  Unfortunately, the comic book store, victim of the impending mall-demise doom, is gone without a trace.  Not even a shelving unit has been left behind.

We read some signs and ask around.  The mall is closing its doors on December 26th, the day after Christmas.  I guess the date is in order to avoid seeming like Grinches by booting the employees out BEFORE Christmas.  Yeah.  Good call (dripping sarcasm).  What's

truly strange, though, is the hopeful enthusiasm of the Christmas display, set up in the center court of the mall itself.  It's an elaborate display for a mall with so little foot traffic, and its irony is not lost of me as it sits in front of abandoned store fronts and is largely ignored by the half-dozen shoppers milling about.

It's really too bad that the floundering mall, soon-to-be-jobless employees, and hollow shops can't suck some of the life-blood from the Christmas display, especially right now in this Season of Giving and especially since someone went to a lot of work to set Christmas up in a dying mall.

AND SO IT BEGINS

And so ... it begins.

Today is the first of December.  That means the infamous mouse calendar has made its reappearance and will begin its Advent countdown.  When my kiddos were younger, they sometimes argued over who would get to move the mouse.  This often led to the mouse being removed from its real date, moved to a previous date, then moved anew back to its original position.

In my house, it's not just the Holiday Season; it's Make It to the Mouse to Move It First Season.  It can be highly competitive and is always full contact.

Indeed, it begins.