BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

My apologies to the B-52’s. I’ll buy y’all a round of drinks next time you’re in town, okay? (Watch ’em all order B-52’s…)

So, anyway, Facebook and Twitter folk know that last weekend we were finally able to get around to re-roofing our shed. Many of you have asked about it… Okay, okay, so none of you have asked about it. Be that way… Sheesh… Tough crowd everywhere I go.

Be that as it may… or as it were… or was… or is… Oh, what the hell. Thing is, it’s too damn hot for me to sit in the office and be funny. I’m much funnier when chilled. Therefore, by way of blog entry I am going to provide you with a few pictures and captions from the Great Shed Re-Roofing of 2010…

To the left we have “Le Shed.” The E K and I built it something on the order of 15 or 17 or maybe even 112 years ago. I can’t really remember. At any rate, it has served us well. However, it lives beneath a black walnut tree that is infested with Tree Rats (aka Skwirlz… not Squirrels, mind you. We have Skwirlz. Trust me… I’m pretty sure McSquizzy is their leader.) Anywho, after umpty-jillion years the asphalt shingled roof gave up the ghost. Once that happened, McSquizzy and his crew began their own demolition work.

Between the Skwirlz and weather, tolls were taken, but no receipts given. Problem is, with our schedules, getting out there and re-roofing the thing was proving a challenge. It wasn’t that we didn’t know how. We just didn’t have time.

Finally, this past winter we were able to do a quick tear-off, but the weather turned on us, and with time being a factor once again, a tarp became the interim roof.

Me, being the early riser that I am, got out there and pulled the tarp, then set about the process of replacing the damaged trusses.

Eventually, Loota-Chack and the Mikester showed up, followed by Johnathan “Mentos Rib Fest” Minton. Oh, and E K was there too. Once we managed to get the trusses replaced, E K and the Mikester went up top and set about the process of installing the purlins. These were necessary because we elected to go with a corrugated roofing material this go around.

During the initial installation, we were entertaining ourselves with some tunes. Much to our  dismay followed by delight, we discovered that the Mikester was unfamiliar with Aphrodite’s Child. We made it a point to change that.

This educational interlude, however, seemed to annoy the disembodied voice behind all of the pictured foliage, and he yelled sarcastic silliness at us. He should really leave the sarcasm to the professionals, because he wasn’t any good at it at all.

Here we have the offending radio. It even has its own chair. We allowed it to continue playing in the back yard while we were working so that we could keep an eye on it. However, since it was bad and offended the neighbor so much that he had to yell over the top of his weeds, when we were finished we sent it to its room and took away its power cord. Bad radio. No batteries for you!

It never ceases to amaze me…

No matter how hard I work, no matter what power tools, hand tools, or lumber I happen to be using, cutting, hammering, or otherwise busting my ass with, the only picture of me is where I am in supervisor mode.

I think E K does that to me on purpose, just to make me look bad…

Of course, at least I was supervising.

Loota-chack, on the other hand, was working just as hard as she could holding the ground down so it didn’t float away. I mean, after all, if the back yard had floated away we wouldn’t have any place to put the shed, right?

But, seriously folks, this is just the A-Bomb taking a break. We were all bustin’ arses on this project. Even “Little Miss 57 Languages” here…

Speaking of Luets-es-es… Here we have The Mikester. He’s kind of a trip. Has do-rag, will travel. He even comes with his own tools.

One of the amazing things about The Mikester is that he shows up, tools in hand, then does ANYTHING and EVERYTHING the redhead tells him to do. Seriously. She points and barks orders. Mikester jumps and carries out her commands. Somehow or another she has him even better trained than she has me. Not sure what that’s all about.

And, what’s a shed re-roofing without a gratuitous “Kilroy Was Here” photo.

And, wouldn’t you know it, Johnathan “Mentos Rib Fest” Minton is the culprit.

Unfortunately, this is the best pic we have of the Mentos during the project, which is too bad.  The T-Shirt he wore that day is actually an On The Edge Graphics original from the online store. Any guesses which one? Yeah… “Wearer Property of Evil Kat“… Hmmm… wonder why he selected that particular shirt on that particular day?

And finally, The Evil One herself… She hates having her picture taken so this is pretty much the best I could manage… Not that it isn’t perfectly lovely in its own right…

She actually had to take frequent breaks, because she’s so hot that she was warping the Ondura Roofing Panels. Go figure…

Still, here the roof is almost halfway installed… By the time we were done we were all too tired to take a picture of the finished product – besides which, E K and I had to get cleaned up and rush downtown to MAC for my 30th HS reunion.

Yes. Seriously. We busted our asses on the shed ALL DAY, then went to the reunion dinner… So, if you were there and wondered why we looked a little cooked, there you have it.

Okay… I’ll see if I can come up with something funny for  this coming Wednesday.

Hey! It could happen…

More to come…

Murv

It took everything I had to keep from spitting spaghetti across the table and all over The Evil Redhead.  Judging from the bemused shock in her eyes and her hand over her own mouth, I am fairly certain the same was true for her. We both glanced quickly at our daughter as she continued to stuff her face, then I pushed away from the table and made a beeline for the telephone…

Of course, as with most of my stories, for this to truly make sense we have to step into the “wayback machine” for a moment to get a bit of background. So, have a seat next to Mister Peabody while Sherman fiddles with the dials and takes us back to a point in time just a scant couple of weeks prior to the “almost spaghetti spewage.”

Kerchunk… bleep… ring… ring… bloop… blorp… kerchunk… kerchunk…

Okay, here we are… Not only have we traveled back in time, but we have also shifted westward better than two-hundred miles to a suburb of Kansas City Missouri. The townhome (at the time) of my friend – and E Kay’s occasional doormat – Duane.

You see, the near spaghetti spewage is all Duane’s fault. And, the fact that it is his fault in this particular instance is 100% true. Just ask him. He will even admit to it without objection. He won’t even scream “Unicorn.” Well, not right away like he normally does.

Allow me to explain…

Her Supreme Evilness, the O-spring, Johnathan, The Chunk Man, and I took ourselves an extended weekend trip out to see Duane. This wasn’t unusual by any stretch. He comes to Saint Louis to see us, we go to KC to see him. However, during this particular visit, Duane – or as he was called by E K for a brief period, “Dammit Duane” – set certain events into motion that culminated in the almost spray of whole wheat fettuccine noodles, along with a lovely Bolognese, all over our dining room.

“How?” you ask.

Simple. Like all of us, Duane receives his share of bizarre email forwards from folks out there. On the particular weekend in question he had received an attachment in the form of a video file. Now, I have to admit that there is no truly delicate way to put this – the file in question involved “adult activities” between a Latex clad Dominatrix and her submissive.  However, the “porn” factor wasn’t the real reason the clip had been forwarded to him. As it turns out, not only was there a high level of “OMG bizarreness” to the  depicted activity itself – which I shall leave up to your individual imaginations – but the German language dialogue also punctuated it with an LOL factor somewhere around a 7 on the “LOL 1 to 10 Scale”. Anyway, to make a long story short, Duane found it so amusing that he insisted on showing it to Johnathan, The Chunk Man, and me. Due to the fact that I was in the middle of cooking, I was unable to watch the whole clip, however, I got the gist of it, as did Johnathan, The Chunk Man, and Duane. And, they got it in spades, for you see, the rest of the weekend the catch phrase between the three of them became this innocuous snippet of dialogue –

“Yah… Das is gud!”

Fast forward back to the summer evening around the dinner table. We had only been eating for a few minutes when the O-Spring, who was all of 5 years old at the time, stopped shoveling the spaghetti into her mouth and announced, “Das is gud!”

(Now, before you go calling Child Protective Services, the kid did NOT see the clip. She merely heard her Uncle Duane, Uncle Johnathan, and Uncle Chunkee running around the whole weekend chuckling and saying, “Das is gud!” about everything…)

Once I managed to swallow my mouthful of pasta without choking, I called Duane. After all, someone had to warn him that E K was already plotting his demise.

Of course, I certainly wasn’t opposed to it being him in trouble instead of me.  In my way of thinking, das is gud…

More to come…

Murv