The Word For World Is "Suck"

Yesterday, Wednesday, I awoke to find that the entire water content of the sky had been dropped on Long Island.

Islip, about 15 minutes drive from Chateau Stevie, recorded 13 inches over the course of Tuesday night. This is the normal amount of downward-happening wet for the months of June through August combined.

This heavenly largesse has served to point out two important facets of Life on Long Island: Uphill Drains and Downhill Drains That Never Get Cleaned.

The various Suffolk County¹ towns surrounding Chateau Stevie this morning are actually a bunch of houses and car-roofs poking out of a collection of freshwater (euphemistically speaking) inland seas.

Remember: this state once provided the manpower and brains that build the machine in which six men rode down to the Moon's surface and in which they flew back up to their spaceship afterwards. One might expect that in the intervening forty-five years The Great Drain Secret might have succumbed to the same mighty intellects. One would be wrong.

Wyandanch was now a wonderful new Great Lake thanks in part to Uphill Drains, carefully planned and installed a couple of years ago in the face of modern ideas on the Laws of Physics, and partly because the one drain that would have provided the semblance of urban civil engineering of the 21st century at work was blocked, I imagine by an amalgamation of garbage, leaves and road salt left over from winter. I don't have to work my imagination hard when I make that judgment, because I used to have a drain that got blocked every fall in the same manner.

I've written about that drain elsewhere, but for the lazy the problem was that sometime in the past a passing Brontosaurus had trodden on the cast-iron grid and cracked it, then the road crews had built up the road to about six inches above the drain so all the crap would accumulate there. Street sweepers, somewhat rarer these days than Brontosauruses in my neck of the woods, only made matters worse as they carefully collected as much superannuated crap as possible and swept it into the drain.

The drain was also a hazard to traffic in that a car wheel could easily buckle if the vehicle wandered too close to the curb and crossed it. I tried to get the town to do something about it, but my complaints fell on deaf ears until a cyclist drove down it and was injured. After I explained to the nice but clueless cop who was waiting to chew my ear when I got home that day that the drain was not my responsibility and that I was sick to the back teeth of complaining to the town about it, it was replaced.

The drain across the road gets blocked too, and until my drain was replaced we had our own Great Lake every year. I would unblock the drains with my trusty sidewalk scraper as idiots would drive into the foot-deep water to splash me while I worked, abruptly lose control of their vehicle and come close to hitting me³. Now the lake forms only on the other side of the road and the people who bought the house from the elderly lady who lived there for years have two kids who can bloody well stir their stumps and unblock their own drains.

Where was I?

Oh right. The Lake at Wyandanch made getting from the car⁴ to the platform a challenge, especially as wuckfits would deliberately try and splash passing pedestrians. It was quite fun listening to the funny noises the engines made after the unexpectedly deep water sluiced up into the works of those cars I can tell you.

Some of the fun might not have been deliberate sadism. There is a tree branch obscuring the view of the drivers who make the corner and when in leaf it completely blocks the sidewalk. In winter, when the leaves fall off, it presents hard, sharp twigs at eye-level to make the morning commute that more exciting.

This reflects back on the secondary problem of the drains (the primary problem being their often not being put in the same place the water will want to go), which can be stated as nothing gets done in New York until something bad happens. The concept of preventative maintenance is completely alien to the NY Psyche.

Trees overhang powerlines and the railroad, begging someone to cut them down before the high winds of the Fall blow them down, but every November we have power outages and LIRR delays and those in charge of the infrastructure have the nerve to act surprised, as though no-one could have predicted the inevitable chaos. Drains do not get cleaned until property is under water and insurance claims are coming in thick and fast.

The sheer amount this idiocy costs the taxpayer in settling lawsuits and service costs is breathtaking. When the Metrocard was introduced for real⁵ nothing was budgeted for cleaning the card swipes, with the result the turnstiles stopped working after about 6 months. In the late 80s we had an important and heavily-used bridge that was part of the New York State Thruway fall into the river because not one penny had been spent on maintenance in decades. That made the buggers sit up and take notice, all right. Of course, now there was the problem that we needed a new bridge and some way of getting the old one out of the way of the boats.

My train was delayed twenty minutes that day, but since that was a train to Atlantic Terminal I didn't care. When I have to change trains the problem of a ten minute or greater delay is really brought into sharp focus as the missed connection typically introduces a twenty-five minute wait for the next train, time in which the LIRR infrastructure can fail some more. I've had days that got so bad I've got on a train back to Wyandanch and written off the three plus hours wasted and tried to salvage the rest of the day doing something fun if not productive.

In any event, the rain didn't stop falling until about one minute before the train arrived, ensuring that everyone was soaked through. In my case I had an umbrella, but the rain sluiced off that onto my backpack which was so wet it was still damp when I got home that night. I was in a training course for most of the day (I managed to swing an in-house C# course I've been trying to get for months) so I kicked off my wringing wet sneakers so my feet could dry out while I became conversant in various topics of the New Paradigm.

When I got back to Wyandanch and opened my car door I was hit in the face by a miasma composed of superheated air, water vapor and stench of something dead. The air was obviously because after raining the day had become hellish hot, the water vapor was from what had run off me during the drive to the station that morning, but search the vehicle as I might I could not find a cause for The Stench. I drove home with the windows down, thinking maybe I'd forgotten to lock the doors and the car had been used as a lounge by some passing homeless person, but I know I did lock up.

Best I can come up with is that something had washed up under the car and rotted for a few hours, though I didn't see any evidence for that when I pulled away. Could have been something dead snagged on the various hooked doodads under the car now I come to think on it. Perhaps The Steviemobile was haunted by some long dead revenant, bent on exacting vengeance on the living for whatever reasons such things usually harbor. I dunno.

Either way, The Stench was gone this morning so either the dead animal caught up under the car fell off as I drove around last night or The Revenant caught sight of Mrs Stevie on her way out to work and decided the competition was too stiff.

1. Long Island is broken up into several administrative bits. From west to east: Queens and Brooklyn, which belong to NYC and don't count as Long Island, Nassau County, famous for its method of calculating property taxes and for it's periodic public wars over how and when to change its method of calculating property taxes², and Suffolk County which runs east to the Sea. And north and south to the sea if we are being absolutely accurate, but that is true for all the bits of Long Island except for Queens where you can hit Brooklyn by going south and Brooklyn where you end up in Queens by going North which is why we don't include them in the general geography of Long Island - it's too confusing when giving directions to the beach.↑
2. Essentially they work out what your property is worth using a formula written in 1933, fudge the figure for bits of property that are taxable but weren't invented or in common household deployage in 1933 like central air conditioning, swimming pools and hot tubs, then refigure for 2014 dollars using another formula↑
3. I finally got a clue and would park my old Excel in the middle of my side of the road with the hazard flashers on. Would-be splashers were forced to stop and pull around at slow speed and those coming from the other direction would always stop and rubberneck. Kamikaze idiot problem solved↑
4. Which I parked on a slope so the engine would survive any more inundation - others were not so fortunate and the scrapyards are full this day of waterlogged cars and manly pickup trucks↑
5. There was a false start a couple of years before↑

The Suck Goes Ever On And On

Unbelievable numbers of outrages were perpetrated at my expense in the last month and a bit, so many that I could not put fingers to keyboard for the angst.

To start with: Another birthday. The less said about that the better, except to note in passing that the high spot was a hibachi dinner avec les In-Laws.

They did not enjoy the experience. Not sure why.

Work then; source of many Outrages Served over the years. I was cornered by my boss, who demanded "Are you going to retire soon?"

After a rather confusing back and forth it turned out I wasn't being fired in an overly circuitous fashion, but seconded to the database department "for half my time" because I already knew a bit about database administration. Training in the finer points of the technology that have happened in the intervening decade since I last took DA seriously will be made available ... later.

Mentoring in the finer points of New Age DBA-ism was promised but has yet to appear in favor of an alternate plan implemented by the middle management of the department in question: I take over the script management duties of a now-retired staff member and don't bother anyone else with questions.

Questions to said staff member on the subject of what, where, how and who (when it isn't working like it should), were met with "dunno" and "I just type yes". He then left a week earlier than planned so I was flung into the deep end of what turned out to be largely manual drudge-work.

I found one task so monumentally pointless I simply rewrote the code¹ to make a best-guess stab at whether the task should run and proceed without the need for me to mindlessly wade through it all typing 'y' or occasionally 'n' - because I like to think that if nothing else I at least added informed decisions to the process based on solid knowledge of how the cogs turn.

As for the mentoring - to date it has manifested in a determined and utterly bewildering drive to make getting a proper toolset, defined as "what the bloke who left had", as difficult as possible. I am not joking when I say that the process has born a striking resemblance to that described by Douglas Adams as the SOP of Vogon bureaucrats. I'm eight weeks into this galling nonsense and to date no progress has been made.

So we can all see how this is going to play out. My guess is that I'm being used as a stick for each side of a hidden management struggle to hit the other with. Winner gets to decide whether or not we hire another consultant to replace the retiree.

So anyway, I stayed late off the books a few nights to get educated on my own dime² and in the fine tradition of no good deed doer being left without his hands being given a good going over with a coal-hammer, by doing so left myself open to further Outrage Perpetration at the hands of the Bloody Long Island Rail Road.

It went like this:

I left work extremely late, much later than I like to do on account of being parked in a known haunt of footpads and tow-trucks after 11pm. On the principle that I do not like to attempt boarding already full trains at Jamaica³ I rode to Penn Station via the Subway's fine A train service, disembarked to find a Ronkonkoma-bound train in-station with he driver nerving himself up to go.

Huzzah! I shouted. "No cooling my heels for half an hour wondering how much time this bloody job has wasted in such manner over the course of my life", and I leaped aboard.

The train pulled out of the station and entered the tunnel under the East River in a businesslike fashion. Passengers were in good spirits. Then the train abruptly ground to a halt and the Air Conditioning quit.

"This not look good" said Mr Brain, and he turned out to be understating the case quite severely.

The crew bustled about, and I overheard conversations that told an ugly tale of either the third rail power being out or the train having completely shorted out something vital for its use of said power. Such was the complete and utter collapse of the train infrastructure that they couldn't tell which situation was pertaining.

And so the air grew warmer and damper and the passengers rather less happy with their lot.

"Never fear!" cried a young voice over the PA. "A rescue train⁴ is being dispatched which will tow us back into Penn Station. We will keep you informed"

It was bad, then. No-one believed a word of this drivel of course, we were all too long in the commuting tooth for such subterfuges to be accepted at face value. But the chap who had been volunteered to speak to us had used The Phrase.

Any time the Bloody Long Island Rail Road says "we will keep you informed" they are a) lying and 2) sending the clear message that there is no possible way the situation can be remedied by the crew.

No sooner had The Phrase been uttered than a complete collapse of morale overtook the passengers. Widespread moaning of the most pitiful kind was augmented with the clutching of heads and cries of "Why me?"

We sat in the growing damp heat, only the periodic "updates" on "the situation" to raise our spirits, but those of us in the rear car who could clearly see the platform of the station no more than 300 feet behind us were not easily buoyed by tales of "rescue trains". Indeed, we formed an entirely reasonable and workable plan in which a second train be run up behind us and the end doors opened so we could use it as a drawbridge to the station. It took us about five minutes to iron out all objections to it on technical grounds, but the Bloody Long Island Railroad has a long history of "passengers last" and our plan was brutally rejected out of hand.

After about 20 minutes the hot, sweaty air was filled with choking diesel fumes as a "rescue train" was run up to a few feet from us (neatly blocking access so our eminently sensible and extremely workable - and fume-less electric - "bridge train" plan was rendered moot). It sat there for almost an hour.

Eventually something go the various crews moving. I can't say whether it was the end of the tea break, the signing of some vital overtime agreement or what, but they started moving through the train and pretending to do stuff. However, they could only do stuff in sequence. There was no multitasking despite a multitude of boots-on-train.

I finally moved onto the "bunch of incompetents" side of the passenger dialogue when the team stood in the rear car arguing that someone needed to walk 12 cars up to the front of the train and push a switch. Understand, there was no counter argument. Everyone agreed the switch needed pushing. But no-one actually began walking switchward. They just all talked about doing that.

Morale hit a low point when a nice lady walked through the train distributing Emergency Water in what looked like juice boxes. These were apparently issued by the Coastguard, which made about as much sense as anything else that night. Until then I never knew water had an expiration date. I refused to drink any on the grounds that I couldn't see what I was drinking and was by then paranoid anyway from all the diesel fumes I was breathing.

Eventually someone did walk up and push the switch, which was the signal for the driver of the "rescue diesel" to go from standing still while polluting the barely breathable as it was air to Ramming Attack Speed and we were all tossed around while the delicate business of coupling took place. This involved more ramming and a complicated drawbar assembly. One might wonder why a "Rescue Diesel" wasn't fitted with a compatible coupler to start with. One is doomed to wonder forever.

We pulled back into the station to see the next Ronkonkoma train leaving on-time, about half full of passengers. Realizing that there was about to be a riot of indignant passengers who had been promised a rise in ticket prices as a result of an agreement struck only three days before⁵ and realizing also that no judge in the world would contemplate punitive sentencing under the circumstances, the Bloody Long Island Rail Road fished a new train out of their yards and, an hour and twenty minutes late, we left for home.

I got home sometime around 11:30pm, where I got a good nagging from Mrs Stevie on the subject of not coming home in a timely manner.

1. That never in a million years originated anywhere but in a browser window in answer to a google query or my name isn't Tarquin J. Fimbletwonk↑
2. Literally in this case, as I invested in copies of the Software Vendor publications concerning the relevant parts of the product I've been told I'll be dealing with↑
3. Not the good one, the one where you can freeze to death in winter trying to catch a train to Wyandanch that has enough room for one more passenger in it when the doors open.↑
4. The unwary reader is probably conjuring visions of some real-world International Rescue-like operation, a model of quiet efficiency and a beacon of hope. That reader is about to be brutally disillusioned↑
5. Narrowly avoiding a threatened strike↑

Hand Jivers on the LIRR

Today I have been cursed with hand jivers during my commute.

I recently was asked to take up new duties involving Oracle Database administration, and so - my not having used Oracle since a small mountain fell into the water just off the Yucatan shore and having a boss who believes that training is something for other people than me to get - I have been hitting the books during my commute.

Many of these books are paper monsters, but the ones I was trying to use this morning are electronic and concern the most tediously uninteresting internal details of the software it is possible to imagine. I was staring at my laptop hard, trying to stay awake and alert while also trying to figure out what the author was blithering about and whether it was ever going to be important.

Working hard to prevent this was the woman sitting opposite me.

From Wyandanch to Mineola¹ she held a loud and animated conversation with the woman sitting in the seat behind me. I donned headphones and dialed up Steve Hackett's Voyage of the Acolyte at volume 11 but she was still coming through clearly. Not only that, she was augmenting her side of the discussion with sweeping hand gestures of the kind normally used to direct aeroplanes on and off runways. Sometimes she grabbed a large book or her immense "smart" phone and waved that.

Every sweep of her hands brought them into my field of vision. Never before has a fellow traveler come so close to getting a bunch of fives in the kisser as she did this morning.

The day passed in a blur of excuses and blame-passing, as usual and I raced to the station and boarded my train home, which is as I type horribly overcrowded².

I am trying to get to grips with the arcane science of resource locking in a high-concurrency database environment, something marginally less interesting than toothache.

And sitting opposite me is another idiot engaged in a lively conversation with the passengers across the aisle augmented by sweeping hand gestures.

1. Or: From when I got on the train to where she got off it↑
2. Probably due to the train having some large multiple of two cars missing from what would be required to carry its load of passengers. I'll know when we get to Wyandanch and get dropped off two miles up the platform³ ↑
3. The short trains and off-peak ones stop at the far east end of the platform, which is doubly f*cktarded as they demolished most of the car park so just about everyone has parked at the west end↑

The Miracle Of The Bird

So after I got the radiator cover back on the wall and screwed down tight again we walked around the building but could find no holes from the outside into the radiator.

The radiator cover had no bird-sized holes in it or gaps between it and the wall either.

While we were searching the place for avian access points the pastor wandered into theater and demanded to know why The Stevieling had her parents in tow and why we were carrying tools. She explained, to some understandable doubt on tghe part of the cleric until backed up by Mrs Stevie.

"But how did it get in there?" he said, in exasperated tones.

"We don't know " said The Stevieling. "Weird, eh?"

"You should call it The Miracle of The Bird" I opined. "It would be a monster draw. You'd be fending off the punters with a stick."

"I don't think .. " the pastor began, doubtfully

"Suit yourself, pastor" I said, "but if this were a Roman Catholic church there would already be a shrine erected to it."

Mrs Stevie took the opportunity of the pastor's speechless indignation to punch me in the head and hiss "shuttup!" at me.

I shrugged and wandered around to the pastor's office where I noted the pipes that went through the wall into the radiator.

" think the bird must've got in through there" I said.

"Idiot! How would the bird get in the office?" snarled Mrs Stevie.

I looked pointedly at the door, then at the double doors to the outside only a few feet beyond that.

"You're right" I said. "It's a miracle. Since I'm an atheist and have no useful input on how those work, I'm going home."

My Family And Other Animals

The Stevieling has always had a connection with animals.

All kids have an affinity for animals of some sort, which explains the proliferation of petting zoos, but The Stevieling's connection runs deeper than that. It is as though there is some sort of psychic connection or law of the universe at work.

When she was four we took her to an "adventure park and petting zoo" and she was invited to go up on stage for a presentation involving various animals. I think the idea was that she be gently scared and provide some harmless comic relief for the parents present.

The presenter brought out the first animal, I forget what, and she promptly hi-jacked the stage and the presentation by bombarding the poor sod in the Aussie-style bush hat with machine-gun questions about the life, diet and problems involved in housing the beast and suggestions on how the current methodologies could be improved. Mrs Stevie and I were in hysterics, as were most of the other adults present.

Bwana Hat then produced a guaranteed kid-scarer, a baby alligator which he lowered to the stage. It immediately began its party-piece: running like crazy with windmilling legs. He, of course, held onto the beast's tail and waited for the screams to start. The Stevieling jumped up and down, clapping her hands in glee and shouted "Oh! Let him go! Let him go!"

The next star of the show was to be a baby bear of some sort, but Crocodile Squeegee, no doubt with visions of liability clauses dancing in his head, announced "I think you'd better sit down now!"

Later that year we visited Sea World in Florida. The Stevieling had expressed a burning desire to touch a dolphin so we sought out the dolphin pool, which used to be a voluminous but I should think boring for the dolphins oval pool with waist-high walls from the people side.

I was pleased to see that this deplorable state of affairs had been addressed, and the beasts were now housed in a much bigger irregularly-shaped pool that featured a rocky littoral at one side.

My heart fell as I saw the crowd around that pool, which took up all the available space with deep water next to it. Obviously the dolphins had just been fed which meant my plan to lure them to the waiting Stevieling with fish was doomed to failure.

Understand, The Stevieling was an angel about stuff like this, and bore disappointments that would have most kids screaming a blue fit with a shrug and a happy smile. This, naturally, worked to make me even more determined to get her what she wanted, but I couldn't see anywhere we could stand by the pool to have a go. Every linear inch of wall space was occupied by adults and larger kids.

The dolphins were in the middle of the pool, teasing the humans as they do.

Eventually a hopeless spot opened up. It was an inside right-angled corner right against the shallow rocky part of the pool where the water turned into a sort of broken rock morraine. A dolphin would have to be mad to try and get close over the sharp rocks there, but I let The Stevieling stand by the wall so she could at least see them. She bellied up, barely able to see over the wall, and stretched out her tiny hand, palm outward.

Bugger me if one dolphin didn't immediately begin swimming directly toward her.

When it became obvious that a dolphin was going to come close in to shore, a new and unexpected problem arose. All the stupid adults standing around the pool surged toward the inside corner containing my kid. I braced my hands against both angles of the wall and fended them off, and watched something miraculous happen. The dolphin swan up into the shallows, over those sharp, sharp rocks - to this day I don't know how - and parked itself within easy patting reach of The Stevieling's little hand. She patted the animal a couple of times, the dolphin turned and swam away and she said "Okay, we can go now", oblivious to the consternation of the adults around her.

Much later in her life I tasked her with mowing the front lawn for me while I made an emergency trip to Home Despot. I explained how the mower worked, got it started and warmed up and left for the store.

Now I had mowed that same small area of grass for more than a dozen years and found nothing in it other than grass and an alarming number of dandelions, so I was nonplussed when I arrived home to find the lawn half-mowed, the mower standing in the middle of the lawn and no-one in sight. I found the family in the back garden with a box full of rabbits, each about the size of my thumb.

"Where did these come from?" I sighed, already half sure of the inevitable answer.

"The front lawn. They were in a hole" said the Stevieling anxiously. "Can we keep them?"

"Absolutely not. Put them back where you found them" I said in tones that brooked no nonsense.

"But the mother will eat them now" wailed The Stevieling. Mrs Stevie was no help whatsoever.

"Phone your Cannuck Cousin. She has worked with animals and knows about rabbits¹".

After being reassured by her cousin that no, the baby rabbits would be fine if they were replaced in their nest the animals were put back in the unfeasibly small hole they'd been found in and a return to lawn mowing was negotiated.

I think I've already spoken here of the time she found a squirrel in a garbage pail and reached in to pick it up, earning a bite and an afternoon in the Emergency Room of Good Samaritan Hospital for her trouble. Only my kid would not think it more appropriate to simply tip over the garbage can so the animal could escape.

And so to the latest Stevieling Animal Escapade.

The Stevieling has a job as assistant deacon at the local Lutheran church, and was away a couple of weeks ago doing her janitorial duties when we got a call from her. Mrs Stevie spoke to her for a while then passed over the phone with "a look" on her face.

"Hullo daughter. Wassamarrer now? " I asked.

"Can I borrow some screwdrivers please?"

"Why do you need tools?" I asked, my spirits beginning to droop in anticipation of the answer.

"I need to dismantle a radiator."

"What? WHY?"

"There's a bird trapped inside."

"How do you know there's a bird in the radiator?"

"I heard fluttering and I saw a beak."

"A beak? Are you sure?"

"Positive. Through the slits."

"Argh. All right, I'll get some tools and come over. Don't do anything until I get there."

A bird I could not believe, but a rat or mouse was possible and we did not need another bite and another lost afternoon in the land of the sick and screaming. Mrs Stevie decided she would also like in on this fiasco in the making, probably flashing as I was on the time I all but dismantled the sofa for an item the kid had in her pocket.

I grabbed my favorite Slotted and Phillips screwdrivers and we headed out to the church. We met The Stevieling who let us in and walked us to an aging baseboard heater about a foot tall, maybe four feet long and about four inches deep, one inch of which looked to be the brown paint it was covered in. I looked in it, and banged on it, but I saw no sign of beaks nor did I catch the merest suggestion of fluttering.

"You're sure about this?" I said, eying the painted-over screws with distaste.

"Very sure" she said, with feeling.

"Okay then" I said, and got to work.

The screws were of a variety of types, lengths, metals and probably thread pitches. Some of them might have been hand made. I could swear one looked old enough to have been salvaged from The Ark. The paint, when the screws broke the seal, proved to be several layers and colors thick. I came to the conclusion that the brown was actually the result of years of interaction between the various paint layers³ rather than a coat of brown paint. Eventually I got them all out while Mrs Stevie stood by with her arms folded in that helpful way she has and The Stevieling opened a nearby door to the outside world.

The radiator cover proved to be painted securely to the wall and would not release, so I just pulled the bottom up from the floor and bent low to see what I could see while visions of being face-bit by a rat danced in my head. I was turning to express my disgust at my wasted time to The Stevieling when with perfect timing a large bird, Starling-sized or so, burst from underneath the metal cover right by Mrs Stevie, causing her to shriek most rewardingly, and flew out of the door.

"I told you I saw a beak" The Stevieling said, smugly.

1. Mrs Stevie had almost been caught up in a scheme my niece had cooked up to gain a fleet of rabbits in spite of her mother's absolute rule of No More Pets² by having adults "own" them and foster them with her↑
2. They had the makings of a small petting zoo by then↑
3. Experiments The Stevieling had undertaken in her seminal Third Year Period had proved beyond doubt that if one uses enough different colors one inevitably converges on brown↑

AAaaAAaaAgony, Far More Painful Than Yours!

When you feel like your fingers ... have been slammed in car doors!

The old body has been giving me gyp for months now. My right index finger and thumb are tingling and get downright painful if I lean on my arm at any point. My upper arms (both sides) ditto. I've already referenced the Leg Mutinies I've suffered En Disney and I think I've spoken of my treacherous back once or twice. If I were a car it would be time for a new one.

Most recently I started getting twinges from Mr Back, the little finger on my left hand has started locking up and the bone where that finger joins the hand is quite tender so I decamped for Doc Rubberglove's House of Pain to see what could be done in terms of a quick paint job to hide the rust and some sponge cake to stop the differential knocking in corners¹.

Doc Rubberglove is in new digs these days, having made so much money ministering to the sick that he could afford to not have to share a roof with a pediatrician. He's been there about a year now and I've been to see him there three or four times so the first problem was I forgot how to get there, got lost and had to resort to the GPS. The GPS punished me for not using it in months by resolutely refusing to find a signal until I had spotted something vaguely familar enabling me to switch from dead-reckoning navigation² to piloting³ and get on the right road a good four seconds before the GPS began smugly telling me I was right. I later punished it by driving home so circuitously while ignoring its strident cries of alarm that by the time it had re-planned the route I was already off the re-planned plan so it had to start again. AHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Where was I?

Oh right. On a previous visit to get a shot to make my alergies go away Doc Rubberglove had given me the "quick fix" version and told me to pick up the "long term" version from a local pharmacy and come back. This I had done, so one of the items on the agenda was shoot me full of slow-release cortiosone, for that is what the "long term" version was.

It transpired I had in fact got about five doses in that vial, and Doc Rubberglove said I should be able to use it next year if I store it correctly, so bonus, I suppose.

Of course, cortisone shots are a medical joke. You get one in your leg to fix your knee and your elbow feels ten times better while the knee now hurts more on account of the needlestick. Also, get one in your arm and it feels okay until you get about five feet from your car, when it suddenly feels like you've been kicked in the shoulder by a bad-tempered horse. I've alluded to this very phenominominomimumum before many times, and to the proper way to bear up under the pain, which is to stumble around crashing into things while clutching the arm and wailing "why me?" in a manly fashion until either the pain subsides or you are run over.

Doc said he'd stick my left arm and perhaps that would help the problem with the little finger. Then he had a brainwave and said that he'd give me a second dose directly into the hand, a plan to which I foolishly agreed.

The arm jab went about as usual with me bravely suffering the pain with only one or two light whimpers. The hand jab was an entirely new level of Medico Perfidy altogether.

First came the freezing spray.

"It works by evaporation" Doc Rubberglove giggled, spritzing it liberally over my hand.

"So I gather" I giggled back. "Some sort of ether formulation by the smell."

"Hold still" he responded, waving a small hypodermic in the air. "I'm going in!"

"CRIKEY THAT"S PAINFUL" I shrieked, biting my other hand as the doctor had apparently neglected to offer me the customary squash ball before driving the needle into what felt like the main pain generation gubbins of my hand.

"Hold still!" he reassured me in playful, snarling tones. "I'll just change my grip so I can squeeze the plunger with increased ferocity! There we go!"

"ARGH! ARGH! bleeping bleep of a bleep!"

"I need more leverage! I might be hitting bone here! HOLD STILL!"

Eventually it was over. Not only was my finger still not working, my entire hand felt like it had been run over with a steamroller. Result.

"I want more freezing spray before you do that again" I snarled.

"Freezing the skin won't decrease the pain unfortunately" the good doctor sniffed dismissively. "This we just proved, advancing the cause of medical science."

"I mean to take the stuff nasally next time" I riposted. "Kindly have some decanted into a suitable insuflator before putting me to the question next time."

I drove home one-handed, and got about halfway home before the horse kicked me.

Well, played, Doc. Well played.

1. The old bodges are the best ones↑
2. I think I am here and I want to go there-ish so I need to drive a straight line thataway↑
3. I know where that is with respect to something else on the way to there so I'm good to go↑

Backdoor Man

Things fall apart.

Case in point: the frame of the back door to Chateau Stevie was looking a bit naff a couple of weeks ago, so I poked it and had the almost orgasmic experience of having part of the house disintegrate under my mouse-like touch. A good six inches of the wood frame at the top left was rotten, punked and completely in need of replacing.

This induced a minor panic in me. I'm no longer the young go-getter who wielded the mighty Tiger Saw and ripped apart the old back door frame and who installed the pre-hung Stanley door in its place. In fact, the prospect of trying to put in a new frame had me well scared.

My carpal tunnel issue is now a constant problem and just holding things like tools in my hand is a challenge. Also, the last few jobs I've done have gone pear-shaped alarmingly quickly, requiring days to drive in a screw or replace a faucet washer as ancillary jobs spontaneously bubble out of the quantum vacuum to complicate the task at hand.

But when the panic had subsided, I recalled that the door frame is in two parts; the actual frame that houses the door, and the so-called "brick-mold" that is fastened to the frame and is the part that gets snugged-up against the wall of the house. I might be in luck, I thought.

I removed the storm door (which is basically mounted in an aluminum frame screwed to the brick-mold) and got busy with Finesse, my claw hammer. In less than an hour I had the rotten wood removed and could see that although the frame was beginning to show signs of damp damage, it was salvageable with a lick o' paint.

Finding brick-mold was a saga though. Home Despot only had plastic brick-mold, which has the advantage that it cannot go rotten but requires the same sort of glue as one uses on PVC pipe to stick together and a different glue to hang it all on the door frame. I asked whether the glued-on brick-mold would support the weight of the storm-door and received no assurances from the in-house expert that this would be the case.

Paint me purple and call me Susan but I have more faith in screws and nails in these circumstances than space-age glues, and the wood had lasted about 20 years with only one paint job after all. I saw no reason to move into experimental materials, nor to add whatever they call the morbid fear that the expensive and heavy storm door¹ will come off in someone's hand, or worse drop off in the night during a storm to my list of worries and phobias². Luckily I finally tracked down good old-fashioned wood brick-mold at Blowes, Home Despot's chief competitor.

Then there was the problem of finding a decent way of edging the siding.

Chateau Stevie is clad in stylish³ aluminum siding of a particularly nauseating color that I'd change in an instant if I had the money, and siding like this requires channel section to make the edges look nice which had been mangled when I pulled off the brick-mold. When I installed the door it had been stuck to the brick-mold with 25-year silicone sealer⁴ and it had torn when I tried to part it from the wood.

The problem is that no-one makes the stuff in the brown to match the rest of the trim, and I don't possess a bending brake⁵ to form my own from coil stock, which they sell in ten inch widths painted brown on one side and white on the other. I had a go, using my extensive collection of Black & Decker model 225 Workmates, a rubber mallet and a long piece of Melamine as an improvised⁶ bending brake, but it didn't end well and Mrs Stevie yelled at me about not hammering at midnight.

Eventually I discovered some pre-made channel section that would work well, but it was white not brown. I sighed, and accepted that the universe was once again working solidly against me, and went with white in the hope it wouldn't be so noticeable against the white fame of the back door, and it wasn't, really.

Getting the new brick-mold to fit where the old one came off was a challenge as the usual anti-handyman demons had infested the job-site and the brick-mold "wanted" to fit to a 1/2 inch smaller door frame, which would induce problems in re-fitting the storm door. I suspect the siding had shifted. By force of will (and hands and at one point a foot too) and some carefully selected class three Words of Power I managed to get the blasted thing back on in the same position the old piece had occupied.

Once the wood was cut to size and nailed in place with an almost perfect miter (these never work right in real life) I was ready to paint.

Or nearly. Turns out the door-frame footing had extensive rot too and I wasn't in a position to replace it. I took a chisel and dug out the rotten wood, revealing two large triangular divots, one each end and about four inches long and about an inch deep, running to the edges of the footing. I needed a quick and easy fix for this, and luckily I had one to hand.

First I cleaned out the divots and made sure there was no bad wood in there. Then I built dams out of duct tape on the ends of the footing so that I had a large triangular hole rather than a slot. Then I dug out my Alumilite casting resin.

This stuff is a two part, 50-50 mix resin with a three-minute set-up time. The only issue would be that the resin has a lower surface tension than water and will find any gaps in whatever container it is poured into. There were certain to be small gaps between the tape and the wood as I couldn't burnish it along its entire length (some of which was under the house). I ran a bead of five minute epoxy resin along the wood-tape boundary. That is thicker than treacle and did the job nicely. Then it was a matter of mixing up small batches of resin, around 20 ml or so, and pouring it into the cavities.

One unforeseen issue with this is that the Alumilite is partly thermosetting (needs temperature to set hard) and the setting process is also exothermic (gives off heat). The relatively large masses of resin allowed heat to build up to very high levels. This was good in that the resin set up very, very quickly. But it also got so hot that it caused water to boil out of the wood, and that left the top surface looking like the inside of an Aero candy bar, all bubbly. But once it was sanded it looked good and worked just as I had intended. Once it was painted it looked as good as new.

The frame got two coats of outdoor primer, and two thick coats of outdoor eggshell white, and it looked great. There were some issues with the back door doormat being covered in resin drips and paint drips but as I said to Mrs Stevie: Pfft!

Last weekend I finally tracked down the screws I needed to re-hang the storm door and on Sunday I got that done, just in time for the storm on Monday.

1. When the glass is installed↑
2. Chief of these is Sinogastrophobia, a morbid fear of under-ordering in Chinese restaurants↑
3. In 1945↑
4. For once that wasn't marketing hyperbole↑
5. A machine that puts sharp folds in sheet metal↑
6. And completely naff↑

Mrs Stevie Chases A Sure Thing

More stuff keeps happening despite my earnest wishes that it wouldn't.

Take yesterday. Mrs Stevie called me at work:

"When are you going to be home?" she snarled.

"I don't know. Who is this?" I cunningly responded

"Shut up and listen! We've won a 50 inch flat screen TV. We have to go to the car dealership to collect it." I could hear the phone handset creak as she squeezed it in coffee-induced rage or possibly excitement. Over the years I've sort of lost the ability to tell the difference to be honest.

"The car dealership is going to give us a giant flat screen TV?" I marveled. "I don't think so. They argued for twenty minutes before topping off your windshield washer fluid on your last visit, and that was part of the service you paid for.

"I'm holding the paper right here in my hand", she countered. "Our names and address are written under 'WINNER' in big red letters right next to a picture of the TV that we have won. It also says in black and white, well white and a sort of sea-blue color, and I quote: "You are the winner of this magnificent prize!"

"It says 'and I quote'?"

"Of course not, idiot! I was quoting what was wrote".

"I don't think so", I said.

"I. READ. IT. FROM. THE. CARD." I could hear the block capitals crackling down the wires. Also a few too many full stops.

"No, not that. I don't think we've won a telly. What does the small print say?"

"There is no small print", she growled.

"There's always small print", I confidently riposted.

"Who's the paralegal? I think I'd see small print if there was any since I've been over the card with a fine tooth comb. No small print. We have won a flat screen television."

"Prediction: No, we haven't. Try going over the card with a magnifying glass. Hair care implements are rarely helpful in these cases."

"I'm going over to the dealership right now, where I shall take delivery of one (1) flat screen television nominally sized at 50 inches diagonal width."

"Wasted trip. Why would anyone give us a TV gratis?"

"Kindness!" she snapped.

"Kindness? In New York? In the 21st century? Aimed at us?" I was bewildered why the woman had been taken in by this obvious scam. Normally she sees this sort of nonsense coming a mile off. It's been years since I managed to pull the wool over her eyes myself.

"I'm not going to talk to you any more. I am going to get my television. You aren't allowed to watch it. Goodbye."

I pondered for a few moments on the problem of where we would put such a huge thing in our cereal box sized hovel, then got back to work.

I arrived home to find the Stevieling busy composing a Garage Band opus¹ and Mrs Stevie glaring at our superannuated Phillips Magnavox 27 inch CRT telly.

"So, where's our new television?" I said, rubbing my hands together at the thought of 1080p visuals dans Chateau Stevie.

"It was a scam", snarled Mrs Stevie. "There was no television, just a slimy car salesman who cheated me out of my television."

"Never mind", I said.

"Tell him about the coin", chipped in the Stevieling.

"Here", said Mrs Stevie, tossing me a silver dollar-sized coin in a plastic coin protector. "They said I won this instead of the TV."

I looked at the coin. The head on the obverse had none of the sharpness of a properly minted coin. It looked like a copy of one made from a poorly done rubbing. The coin itself was too small for the case, rattling around inside just like a real coin doesn't. To top it off the motto on the other side read In God We Trust Copy. Rarely have I had such a poorly made piece of junk in my hand. It had pretensions of being a "replica" of a gold $50 piece.

In the same way as a bar of Cadbury's Old Jamaica has pretensions of getting you squiffy at Christmas. Indeed, as I read the word "gold" on the coin I distinctly heard Long John Silverish say "Laced with Jamaica Rum flavor" in my mind's ear.

Today Mrs Stevie called me up to call me names. When she paused for breath I said "pity about the TV", whereupon she gleefully announced she had denounced the car dealership on Yelp. This appears to be a website on which to complain about things.

Words failed me at this trivial misuse of the internet.

1. New iPad for her 21st birthday↑

Doubleplus Good

Well this isn't creepy at all.

Celebratory meeting on the village common at 8pm to denounce neighbors by torchlight!

Bring a bottle and a list of suspected traitors.

The Miracle Of Indoor Rain

Watch and be amazed!

This nonsense brought to you by the Long Island Rail Road and the cold front moving in with extreme prejudice from the midwest.

A pity my phone couldn't do it justice.

Who Knows Where The Time Goes?

It seems like only yesterday she was lying on my arm for the first time, and she fit between my hand and the crook of my elbow.

Sure as hell doesn't feel like twenty one years.

No-one told me she'd be different people as she grew up, and that each of those people would work their way into my heart, then disappear forever without warning overnight, breaking my heart each time, and a stranger would be waiting to do it to me all over again in their place.

I love the 21 year old Stevieling, but I'd trade an awful lot to be able to spend time with the four year old who knew so much about everything and was scared of nothing, or the two year old who figured things out for herself so ingeniously and loved the sea, or the six month old who only needed me to pick her up for all to be put right in her universe.

And of course, the ten minute old who just lay there on my arm and started the whole process.

Winter Vacation Cont'd

Oh for crying out loud, didn't I finish the Vacation Story yet?

Tuesday

On Tuesday we just tooled around in the rain doing not much at all. I bought a charger to replace the Nikon one I needed to keep my SLR going but had lost (again). We did some light shopping and that was the day gone. Best forgotten really. Which is what I did. Can't remember any more details at all. Oh hang on. I've remembered a bit

We'd noted the presence of something called a "Roadhouse", basically a steak eatery, in a shopping plaza near the timeshare and attempted to visit it that night for dinner. Negotiating the road system carefully we missed the roadhouse on account of not finding an entrance to the car park and ended up on a toll highway. We pulled up to the toll booth and wound the window down, and the attendant said "you're looking for the roadhouse, aren't you?"

We admitted we were and he mapped out a circular route around the network of highways that would bring us back where we were originally in only ten to fifteen minutes, but would, unfortunately, mean we'd have to pay the toll as there was no turn-around or escape lane. We marveled at this revenue generation scheme and then proceeded to get lost.

We eventually found the restaurant and were treated to the most unremarkable steak dinner I've eaten since I left England - land of the see-through steak.

Wednesday.

We tooled over to Kennedy Space Center and had lunch with astronaut Bob Springer while Florida disappeared under biblical levels of rainwater. We assessed the various things we wanted to do there and ended up buying a year's pass because the economics of car parking, lunching with astronauts, visiting the Vehicle Assembly Building and possibly visiting one of the launch pads made a year's pass cheaper than two days of tickets.

Bob Springer was an engaging speaker and a very pleasant chap to boot and I enjoyed the whole experience of meeting and listening to him.

The only disappointment was lunch itself, which was of excellent quality but consisted of entirely mundane Earth dishes. No squeeze-tube food or squeeze-bulb beverages at all - though there was Tang if anyone wanted it. It quite ruined the experience. If you get to eat with an astronaut, it is supposed to look like you are eating the contents of a paint box, dammit.

The company was excellent too, all of the people at our table were raving space nutters, and we monopolized the question time I'm afraid.

Then there was a photo session with the astronaut and the assistant who took the shots marveled that of all the people on line, we were the only ones with "a real camera", and so was able to check the results without asking how.

I returned home that night well satisfied. Mrs Stevie seemed to enjoy it too, until she threw her back out and spent the night howling in agony.

Luckily there is a second bedroom in the villa, so I lost no sleep at all.

Thursday.

The next day dawned and we went hunting Chiropractors. It turned out there was one near where we had been on Sunday so we killed a morning getting Mrs Stevie a new back, then I exchanged the omnibus edition of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen I'd bought on Sunday for one with the first twenty pages bound into the book. I was uncertain when I opened it whether I had a defective copy or whether Alan Moore had chosen a particularly bizarre mis-en-scene beginning for the story. Turned out it was the first one. And so to bed with painkillers.

Friday.

Back to NASA so I could visit the Vehicle Assembly Building - the big building you see in Apollo 13 where they put the Saturn V "stack" together before trucking it to the launch pad.

Yes it is just a big shed, but it is a big shed I've wanted to see inside for, well, forever. Besides, it was teeming down with rain again and who wants to tour a launchpad with water sluicing off the steelwork?

I should explain that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. An artifact of the lack of a shuttle and no vehicle yet ready to replace it meant that the VAB and one of the two launch pads used for the shuttle launches were available to be toured by the public for about six weeks or so. This was about two weeks before that window was due to close for good, for the VAB would be needed for the new space lifter and so would both launch pads, which were being refurbished and upgraded for that purpose - as was the crawlerway.

It was annoying that it was raining so much because I would have loved to tour the launch pad, but getting pictures would mostly involve shooting upwards - into gallons of falling wet.

We had a good time, watched both the marvelous IMAX movies, listened to Bob Springer's presentation again and got his autograph on the picture we had taken with him.

When we got back to Kissimmee it finally stopped raining so I suggested we dine at a "Bahaman" restaurant we'd taken note of when we'd arrived at the timeshare. I was in the mood for some Caribbean Cuisine too.

Sadly, another distinctly ordinary dining experience was my lot.

Saturday.

We drove halfway home. Did some light arguing. Stayed in the same hotel we used on the way down.

Sunday.

We drove the rest of the way home. End of vacation. End of vacation story.

I know this post lacks a vital something but I can't be arsed to make up tales of space aliens or earthquakes. The truth is that the most exciting thing that happened was the thing that threw Mrs Stevie's back out, and she has threatened to visit me with extreme violence if I so much as hint at the scenario, equipment or costumes involved. All I can say is it was dead good until it wasn't, which is sort of my life encapsulated.

So you'll just have to imagine it.

INTERLUDE - April First in Chateau Stevie

I roused myself this morning at the urging of my alarm to see the sun shining brightly through windows inexplicably not made light-proof with oaktag and tinfoil.

I checked my watch and the date was April first, not the second. The time was 7 am. The alarm clock agreed. This was looking bad.

I donned my glasses, and instead of the expected fog of vaseline-coated lenses or the blur of some prescription long-outgrown the world sprang into sharp relief. I let out my customary whimper at seeing clearly all I could survey and carefully pulled away the bedsheets, but they proved not to be stapled to the mattress. I wiggled my toes, which for some ungodly reason had not been superglued together.

A sudden suspicion thrust into Mr Brain and I leapt out of bed to run to the bathroom mirror to survey the cosmetic damage, simultaneously running my hands over my face and head hair to see where I had been artistically relieved of hirsute coveration, then yelled a curse at the fiendish distraction and danced around madly trying to avoid the carpet of glue traps - that weren't laid out carefully for my unsuspecting feet.

Carefully testing the door handle for electricity I exited the bedroom without encountering a sheet of syrup-coated plastic wrap stretched across the frame. I entered the bathroom with the same manic caution I expect SWAT teams entering crack houses employ, and tested the fixtures and fittings for improvised booby traps.

Nothing.

I showered without the hot water being shut down, dressed in clothes that had not been creatively re-hemmed, re-buttoned , re-sleeved or fitted with controversial heart-shaped cut-outs. By the time I was fully dressed I was on a hair-trigger, my awesome danger senses screaming like Mrs Stevie in the presence of spiders¹.

I transited the living room at high speed lest there be an ambush of some sort in the offing, grabbed my bag - THE BAG! Stupid stupid stupid! Laughing maniacally at this near-miss I emptied the contents onto the floor.

By the time I had repacked the harmless contents² I was late for work, but that was my own doing, not some nefarious trap set by others.

I made tea using a sealed Keurig cup (which makes acceptable tea and ensures that the tea hasn't been adulterated with senecot powder) and left for work.

My car tires were not flat and the Steviemobile fired up first time so I was not required to open the hood and thereby expose myself to some remotely-triggered ambush from the engine compartment. As I drove down the road I heard no "exhaust pipe whistle" in operation, nor did I see a rapidly inflating condom in my rear-view mirror. I almost hit a lamp-post but that was due to all the checking I was doing instead of looking where I was going so that didn't count.

I missed whatever it was the family have set up for me. I am currently sitting on a Long Island Rail Road train wondering when the shoe will drop.

I feel like Gene Hackman in that movie where he ends up pulling his beautiful apartment to pieces to find the surveillance devices he knows are there but cannot find.

1. Which reminded me that I had completely forgotten the "special surprise" I was planning for her this morning↑
2. Unless you count the Pocket Handbook I keep in there which has much in it to suggest mischief of the over-engineered sort↑

Monday, Monday. Can't Trust That Day

Monday dawned, with a light drizzle that continued past breakfast.

This was a bummer because we had thought to go to Kennedy Space Center that day and take a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tour one of the two now-idle shuttle launch pads.

Because of the renovation going on to accommodate the Elon Musk Space Craft of The American Way Of Life Made Whole Again¹ And Manifest In All Its Glory And Like That, one of the two pads was available for the public to walk around inside and make rumbling, whooshing noises² as they conjure up a replay of the many launches that actually took place on this very hallowed ground. Breath deep. There's traces of oxidizer in that air.

Or maybe it's guano. This is a nature reserve after all.

But walking around a big wet scaffold in the rain getting dripped on by the run-off from the girders is nobody's idea of fun, so we canceled. We had a week, after all, and the sun would have to come out sometime⁴.

So, around mid-morning, it stopped raining and Mrs Stevie decided that "we" wanted to go to Epcot.

"You want to go to EPCOT, right?" she snapped.

"No"

"What???"

"Doubt in my mind whatsoever that the Ever Popular Community Of the Future is exactly where I want to be on this fine day in Florida!"

"And no whining about your legs this time!"

"Can't promise that. The legs are old and mutinous."

"I said no whining!"

"Got it."

This would be a red letter day in that for the first time in ages we would have to buy tickets for a Disney Park⁵. We drove over at a leisurely speed, there being no need for haste, and in no time at all we were at the car park attendant's booth so we could rent a parking space.

I suggested that Mrs Stevie ask about preferred parking again as we were pulling up, which started an argument because the daft woman couldn't remember that we had done that same thing the last time. She rolled down the window to pay and we were engulfed in the usual cloud of radiator steam and tire smoke, which forestalled any more hurtful comments at my expense in the coughing fit that took her.

After parking, haunted by memories of that previous visit to EPCOT and the endless search for our vehicle among the hundred thousand others there in a World Gone Mad, I checked what the nearest pole said in terms of Disney Characters and numbers and repeated it one hundred times Or I would have but Mrs Stevie hit me at somewhere around twenty eight and told me to "shut up that stupid chanting". And so we went in search of "fun"

Two minutes inside the park we were engaged in a frank exchange of views on the subject of Dinner. I felt that we shouldn't eat at Germany again because I wanted to try something different for once⁶. Mrs Stevie vetoed England⁷. I voted against France because of the chance of snails. Mrs Stevie vehemently denounced the idea of Mexico, because of the chance of the Aztec Twostep - a canard I'm sure but there was no arguing. I suggested Japan and she went green and shouted about not wanting to eat anything raw that had tentacles⁸ - but I pointed out the strong possibility of Hibachi Cuisine and she subsided long enough for us to find out at the Guest Services office. Hibachi it was, at Eight Bells O' Clock PM in the Evening.

And we went forth to experience fun at all costs.

We stopped by various things we hadn't with the kids, such as the Sea pavilion, where we spent a lot of time gawking at various bits of marine life in tanks. The Manatee population has dropped since our first visit together, now numbering three (I think) where before they had six. Since they used to all be rescuees from power-boat collisions I guess that is good news. I dunno. The daft animals lie right where boats will pass over them and cut them with the prop, and you can't see 'em in the rivers to avoid them apparently.

In another smaller display I saw some very aggressive cuttlefish strobing at each other. These odd beasts would be stripey while asleep, then they'd wake up and realize there were six others in a comparatively huge space (the animals were about three inches long and the space about three feet in diameter) and they'd start threat displaying by rolling their dark stripes over their bodies from front to back like crazy. The grumpiest animals I've seen in a long while.

There's a huge aquarium at the back, in which sharks and other large fish swim. You can lose hours looking at the stuff in there. I went downstairs during a lull in the crowd and sat waiting for Mrs Stevie against one of the windows into the deep tank, and a manatee swam up and blew bubbles at me, which I think you'll agree was quite rude and entirely unnecessary behavior.

A little later it did the same thing to a small child who was delighted, which took me back to the years with the very young Stevieling who had a fascination for animals we thought would develop into some sort of career path, but didn't in the end. I sat watching the kid and smiling, then realized a parent was watching me and was not smiling.

I explained that I was remembering my own kid at that age and we traded parental talk for a bit and he left with his family to see what else was there. I turned to look through the glass and was startled into a shout by the manatee waiting in ambush to blow bubbles at me again.

Mrs Stevie fell in love with a T-Shirt in the gift shop depicting the seagulls from Finding Nemo with their "Mine" "Mine" "Mine" mantra daubed all over it, but wouldn't buy it there, which turned out to be a mistake since it transpired that that was the only place you could find the thing. She (and I) expected we would find it in the Disney Village shops too. Wrong!

If you have young kids and come to EPCOT you should bring them into the Sea pavillion and take them to the Finding Nemo-themed attraction. It is a clever use of technology and live voice-acting to allow the Stoner Turtle from the movie to interact with the kids in the front rows. Very clever and the young kids love it. I no longer feel that sound-synched chat avatars are a demonstration of just what a waste of space human beings can be. If it can be harnessed to entertain a child usefully, I'm for it¹⁰.

We rode the demented Soarin' ride, a sense-around simulation with unintended humor in the way it jump-cuts around the place. It shows you what it must be like to go hang-gliding on Demerol. We once again went for a spin on the high speed go-kart of g-forces, this time designing our own version of the Stevieling's laughable Yeastmobile, producing a design that the computer said beat the twin-turbo gas-guzzlers were up against on every test but one, and that was such an unimportant feature I've forgotten what it was.

So the Parent Green Annihilator joined the Parent Sport Annihilator in awesomeness - the Annihilator marque clearly has something to offer everyone and I'm quite surprised that no car manufacturer has approached Team Stevie about turning these futuristic designs into actual road-worrying vehicles. All I can say is that Detroit still lacks the vision it needs to take the world by storm and displace the Korean and Japanese manufacturers from their high horse(less carriage)s.

We took a ride on the spaceship simulator, which was still fun and made me feel sick as a dog. But we choose to ride the spaceship simulator...we choose to ride the spaceship simulator...we choose to ride the spaceship simulator, and to experience the Exxon World Of Energy¹¹ and do the other rides, not because they are fun, but because they are required. Or something like that.

Mrs Stevie said "let's go see the Captain Eo 3D show" at one point and I laughed and told her it was closed down. But she insisted we go look even though I told her she'd look like a twit when she was staring at plywood and "coming soon" stickers.

Naturally, the show was open for business as though it had never been hurriedly covered in plywood and closed "pending renovation" during those interminable Michael Jackson vs A.N. Oblivious Parent trials that were such a blessing to the failing newspaper industry of the Early Oughties. Seriously, they boarded the thing up so fast that I had to wonder if they found any skeletons of workers who didn't get out when they pulled down the boards post M.J. mortality and announced the advent of a renovated print. I guess it is cool to like Michael Jackson again.

Captain Eo is a 3D movie from the dawn of the CGI-assisted 3D technology era. It is the story of a rag-tag band of, well, actually I don't know what they are supposed to be. Let's call them Space Rangers, who are sent to give a gift to the evil (naturally) queen but who lose it on the way and are forced to combat her rage and clone warriors with choreographed dance, which - against all expectations to the contrary - works like a charm and all is well.

George Lucas was involved, and one of the crew is that daft elephant that plays keyboards from Star Wars. There's a cute CGI cat with bat wings too, but boy does the movie steal from the early 80s SF zeitgeist. Every piece of scenery looks like it was lifted from the third deck of the Nostromo post-infestation, and the HM Eviltrix is a cross between the Alien and the Borg queen woman¹². The dance numbers are pure Thriller and you just have to love that 80s big hair look¹³.

The print was nice and fresh though, so some work had been done.

We had coffee and dessert in France. We took a ride on the water taxi for no better reason than we couldn't remember ever having done that before. We wandered around Italy and Mrs Stevie bought jewelry for The Stevieling and was flirted with by the Italian zygote who sold it to her so I finally got to sit down and rest my aching legs without having my ear chewed off. We wandered into the museum in Morocco and I lost track of time looking at Berber and Tuareg jewelry and stuff, and marveling that stuff made in my lifetime was considered museum-worthy.

Then we wandered over to Japan and I bought each of us a cotton kimono to supplement the silk ones we already had which couldn't be reliably dry-cleaned and which were now collectors items apparently. I'm more than a little sure that the cute little saleschick¹⁴ was the same one who sold me the Stevieling's kimono six months before.

And then it was upstairs for a fine Hibachi dinner with six much younger people from the West Coast who were kind enough to speak English and not some sort of dialect of gibberish just to annoy the crumblies, and who were very interesting people to boot.

We got kicked out just as the firework display started, and although the World Showcase is carefully designed so that just about everywhere provides some sort of mass vantage point, I can recommend the balcony running around the Japanese restaurant complex as an especially fine place from which to do one's pyrotechnic observation.

And so we wandered out the long way round the lagoon, being some of the last out of the park as a result, which was sort of a funny feeling. I hadn't dawdled past closing time in a Disney Park since before The Stevieling had been born. It wasn't that I missed doing that, it just brought on a sense of how much water had flown under the bridge since then. In fact, the bridge in question was washed out long ago thanks to erosion of the abutments by the water flowing at breakneck pace under it, but I believed that if I squinted I could still see parts of the now submerged structure.

"Stop that sobbing!" snarled Mrs Stevie. "If you can't do anything useful, look for someone official so I can tell them when we parked and they can use their magic thingy to tell us where the car should be."

"No need", I said. "Our vehicle is in "Pluto, row 9, slot 115".

And, for a mercy, so it was.

1. After those idiot wbankers showed everyone just how unworkable it all was by turning he knobs up to 11 and blowing out the woofer↑
2. People who just stand around looking at NASA infrastructure are shorting themselves on the experience, as I told Mrs Stevie³ during the misunderstanding at the Saturn V exhibit some years ago. You've paid 50 bux to stand next to the rocket, no-one, no-one can stop you re-enacting the magnificent launch sonics in all their glory, even if he is a real astronaut↑
3. Who disapproves of rumbling, whooshing noises↑
4. True, but irrelevant as it turned out. Watch this space↑
5. For ourselves. Stripey Bill will remember that I had had the dubious pleasure of forking over funds for The Boyfriend's ticket last time we were in the area.↑
6. Or as I put it at the time, I was sick to the back teeth of Wiener Schnitzel and stinky sauerkraut↑
7. Just to be difficult. She likes English deserts more than I do↑
8. A previous experience in which she and I were taken to a sushi house against our wishes⁹ had placed just such a dish in front of the person to her left↑
9. Neither of us see the attraction of eating raw fish for fun↑
10. Don't bother yapping at me about "how useful can it be?" You came to Disney for Walt's sake. Don't do that if you can't enjoy it on its own terms, 'cos you'll be wasting your money↑
11. Sometimes. We missed it this day due to buggering around in other places↑
12. Which means Paramount stole her from Lucas and Captain Eo I suppose↑
13. Actually, I was only a partial fan of it myself, though when combined with the American Football Shoulder Pad Look and given a spritz of Nipponesque™ it could suddenly become the sexiest look in the world - see Rachel from Blade Runner for what I mean↑
14. While I find just about all young Japanese women deliciously cute, this one was especially notable in the "don't let Mrs Stevie find out" stakes↑

In Florida, Sans Stevieling

Sunday dawned, and got underway without us because we were kidless and undriven Disneywards¹.

We arose and had a leisurely breakfast. The weather was clear but cool for Florida, and a quick check on the local news showed that further north the weather was giving it some stick and showing the people of the Eastern Seaboard a thing or two in the line of freezing their lugnuts off. I felt sorry for them, but it wore off over eggs and toast.

We decided to waste the day just driving around in each other's company for the hell of it, because we both had distant memories of that being pleasurable rather than the mobile argument of recent years. So that's what we did, driving way up 192 to see what happened when Where It's All At moves to somewhere else.

When we first bought into the Orange Lake Cash Cow that end of state route 192 (which is shaped like a hog-leg) was well in the country and all the motels, hotels and timeshares were miles away on the other side of I4 (which sort of bisects 192). As time has run on the land around OLCC has been bought up (for fabulous prices) and developed into gifte shoppes, restaurants, and (you guessed it) hotels, motels and timeshares. This, in turn, required the installation of a spaghetti nest of roads and the flyovers which provided shelter from the elements and a dousing in filth during the last visit.

Now the foot traffic through this area has increased, which would necessitate the development of new places for those weary feet to rest a bit, but offsetting that is that some if not most of the parks and attractions have en-suite accommodations now. Disney, still (I would hazard a guess) the major draw of the area, has themed hotels and timeshares in the various parks or adjacent to them. The monorail passes through one hotel on its way to Epcot (yes, through, via a huge atrium) and that one is one of the oldest on the property. Costs have risen generally too, which makes a stay inside Disney not as unattractive price-wise as it once was.

The upshot of all this is that while once the hotels and motels around Oldtown were once in the thick of the visiting population, we've noticed that they look a bit run down and money-starved of late, and Mrs Stevie wondered aloud what Kissimmee would look like west of that, and where the real people of the area lived and shopped. So we went for a look.

Personally I think there is nothing so depressing as passing through a town or a neighborhood where the money has gone away. I used to spend days walking the Welsh countryside around the village of Corris², and in those hills stand numerous tiny abandoned hamlets, shells of buildings that lost their purpose with the collapse of the slate mining industry somewhere around the beginning of the last century.

Mrs Stevie and I had once had to pull off the main drag on our way to Florida so we could get some supplies for the baby Stevieling, and had driven a few miles on the pre-interstate road that had once carried traffic south. The town we stopped in was a couple of languid businesses barely hanging onto life and a bunch of collapsed abandoned structures. It was appalling to see the damage the arrival of I-95 and the departure of the traffic had wrought. In those ruins and the slate shells of those buildings hidden in the foothills of Cader Idris were the unspoken ruins of people's lives. I've been busted flat three times in my life. The thought of having it happen again at my current time of life is, to put it mildly, terrifying.

And so we drove into a mild version of the same as we motored west along interminable strip malls. The abandoned properties began to outnumber the viable businesses until there was a noticeable change and we were in Normal People Land. The strip malls didn't stop, they just changed in emphasis from sneaker factory outlets and Ye Crappe Shoppes to Chinese Takeaway restaurants and less flamboyant supermarkets and a comic book store, which we decided to stop and look in as it sold board games too.

I tootled around in the store and picked up a couple of things that looked intriguing³ and we set off back toward Touristville. We also stopped at a Walmart so I could buy cheap sneakers. My old ones were falling apart and Would Not Do.

It was in the car park of the Walmart that Mrs Stevie spotted a flock of birds infesting a small tree and became irrationally enthused on the subject of wildlife photography at the exact same time as I was putting all the non-sneaker things Mrs Stevie had found to buy in the back of the van.

Mrs Stevie is an inveterate photo-ditherer, buggering about needlessly in front of some ephemeral thing she wants to immortalize until whatever it is gets fed-up with the whole business and departs for somewhere less annoying. The canonical example is the time she took The Stevieling in her christening dress and attempted to photograph the happy, smiling and laughing child. The Stevieling was still too young to have developed any strength in her tiny legs and so needed propping up in any seat. Mrs Stevie did not want cushions in the shot, and so what transpired was a comedy of ditheration and needless sodding about worthy of Buster Keaton.

Mrs Stevie propped up The Stevieling and retired to the spot she judged best for the photo point-of-view. The Stevieling sat balanced precariously on her little bottom, smiling and being cooperative. Mrs Stevie dithered, and dithered some more until The Stevieling's small motions upset her balance and she began slowly to tip sideways onto the cushions of the chair. Once she was at an angle of about ten degrees she began, not unreasonably, to cry, and Mrs Stevie leaped over to sit her up again and play with her until she cheered up, which seeing as how The Stevieling was such a happy child she did almost immediately, whereupon Mrs Stevie repeated the exercise.

About ten times.

Each time The Stevieling's tolerance for the whole tedious affair got shorter until she was crying inconsolably in her chair, at which point Mrs Stevie snarled “Why won't she stop crying?” which induced me – in a fit of sympathy-induced madness – to tell the woman exactly why and all thoughts of photography were forgotten so that a frank exchange of views could take place.

Anyway.

Mrs Stevie was pointing her camera at the birds but not doing any of the other things necessary to capturing an image of them, least of all alerting me to what she was doing. And so, when I slammed the tailgate closed, all the birds flew away.

I turned around to see what she was doing and was subjected to a stream of the most virulent hate-speech on the subject of the size of my brain. She was not moved by arguments predicated on my not having eyes in the back of my head, nor on my suggestion that if she was waiting for the birds to line up in a given way she was on a hiding to nowhere since we were in a car park and if not me, someone else was bound to slam a door or two before they did scaring the annoying little sods.

She yelled at me some more and wondered out loud if she would ever have the chance to photograph such a large collection of such unusual birds in a tree small enough for them to be at just the right level. I said probably. She said Oh yeah, where? I pointed to the tree just behind her where a new flock of the same birds had gathered to watch the fun. She whipped up her camera. She dithered. Someone slammed a car door off in the distance and I ran for the safety of the wagon as the skies filled with birds and vile swear words.

Properly equipped with Cheap Sneakers and a picture of the Annoying Birds “we” decided I should also visit a sneaker outlet store to see what I was missing. These factory outlet stores used to be good deals with low prices for over-produced lines in the 1990s but they seem to be everywhere now and the prices have climbed quite steeply too. The first sneaker outlet store I went into was also the last (I vowed).

It seemed to be full of South American youth, loudly arguing with anyone who would stand still long enough, and sneakers running the gamut from bilious yellow through bilious green to bilious purple. To be sure, there were sneakers in the traditional white, but they seemed sized for giants or gnomes, or to be designed for feet of unearthly geometry. The South American youths seemed to feel blinding neon footwear was De Rigeur so I suppose I am somehow missing the point again (though I still can't imagine what manner of being would wear those other Non-Euclidean sneakers). A grand waste of time, and one in which it began to rain.

We headed back toward Oldtown, where we paused for a look to see what was left of the attraction. I think I've mentioned before that it used to actually be a place themed for "The Good Old Days", with a genuine antique carousel and various Olde Tyme Shoppes including a General Store in which you could buy 5 cent bottles of Coke in green bottles. But every year one of the old businesses closes down and is replaced by something less "Old Tyme".

All that is left of that Old Town ambiance as was is the photography business where a couple of times Mrs Stevie and I and whomever we were with had masqueraded as depression-era bandits or Persons from The Wild West (they have the biggest wardrobe and bestest props of any fake photo place I've seen and they don't use photoshop, they use scenery) and the ice cream parlor. The place is now filled with T-Shirt vendors, go-kart tracks and catapult-powered "rides" of the most idiotic sort.

It is, however, a favorite place for various motor clubs to meet and hold competitions, and that day there was a parking lot full of Corvettes on display, from fully loaded modern wedges of meh (sorry, Chevvy, I don't care for the boring look of the post-Stingray Corvette) to lovingly restored originals from the late 1950s and early 1960s. Mrs Stevie was entranced for once in something I was interested in so we spent a while after the rain wandering around the display of American Motoring Might.

In the 1970s the conventional wisdom of the car modder was that the only American car worth having in England was the Stingray since once the hydraulic lifters had been pulled out and replaced with ordinary tappets the car could not only do an easy ton⁴, it would stay in a stright line while doing so⁵. The Stingray and the Mustang (which gave lie to the "only car worth having" mantra by being lethally fast⁶ if rather less stable at high speed and a tad on the ugly side; never was much of a fan of the 1970s "fastback" concept myself) were both very popular in the UK of my early driving years.

I'm told that a whole generation of American Airmen made quite a killing importing Stingrays and Mustangs (at U.S. taxpayer expense) and selling them to the local youth. You could see dozens of examples of both on the roads of Norwich of a Saturday night, as there were five US air bases within a 40 mile radius of the city in those days.

After buying a new teapot and a bag of humbugs, then sating ourselves on cars and ice cream we wandered home to discover The Git had parked his Escalade as far to the right as he could and the other side neighbor had parked as far to the left, gifting us with a nice long walk from car to front door in the pouring rain.

I made sure to check the wagon's doors were locked with a double press of the lock remote. I don't normally do that as it sounds a loud blast on the horn and Mrs Stevie apparently had done a deal with the Burlington Northern Railway on a surplus horn from a defunct SD45-2 diesel-electric freight locomotive when she selected the options for this wagon. It made the putty fall out of the villa's window frames and loosened the screws holding the little brass numbers to the front door when I blew it.

I was careful not to stand in front of the van when I did this because a previous experiment had induced a concussion and bleeding eardrums and Mrs Stevie had punched me hard in the face once she had been released from the Emergency Room. To judge by the screams coming from inside the villa, Mrs Stevie's choice of automotive accessories was appreciated.

We retired with a smorgasbord of fruit and wine and cheeses to while away the evening, and about half an hour later the front doorbell rang and a couple of security staff stood dripping outside. We invited them in and offered them towels and hot tea from our new teapot as they quizzed us about some disturbance next door involving a klaxon of some sort.

I said I'd not heard anything unusual, but perhaps an emergency vehicle needed to cross the lights at the entrance of the complex while they were on red and had sounded the klaxon in question. The trees that had originally screened this part of the property had been cut down and the highway noise was certainly more noticeable than when we first bought into this part of the club, so a fire truck needing to break the law in the interests of the community as a whole was my best guess. The officers apologized for disturbing us and went next door to talk to them about it all.

It certainly was a puzzle.

1. Unkind souls might wonder why we bothered at all, then↑
2. Yes I know there's two of them right next to each other. I'm abbreviating Upper Corris and Lower Corris for the sake of getting on with it and not getting bogged down in details most people would only experience through the wonder of the ordinance survey or Gogglemaps™↑
3. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Omnibus Edition and book one of Y: The Last Man, though I somehow resisted the lure of the wardrobe-sized Ogre board game, possibly because they wanted a hunnerd bux for it↑
4. 100 mph↑
5. A boon on the comparatively very narrow English roads↑
6. The lethal part is true; I had an acquaintance years ago who grew a beard to hide the frightful scars he won rolling one of these beasts at Warp Factor Argh!↑

When The Going Gets Good, I'm Outta Here!

So, what with the weather and the wounds and the general malaise brought on by the realization that yes, this probably is all that there is, I have had no will to write of what I laughingly call "my life" and the things that fray it at the edges.

However, recognizing that my public¹ is out there and hungry for more of the goings on and goings off at Stevie World Of Naff², I shall now relate the events that occurred during the trip Mrs Stevie and I took to Florida sans Stevieling during the last week of January.

And what a treat you are in for, dear reader. An epic crossing³ filled with thrills, chills and books on CD!

Things started promisingly when we set out on the Friday around 10 am (reasoning there was no need to rush into things⁴) and got as far as the first turning back toward Chateau Stevie, whereupon I discovered I'd left my sunglasses at home and we went back to get them. Normally this would have put a damper on the mood, and today was no exception as I was forced to listen to a litany of the most vile slanders and stuff dragged up from the past that normal people would have forgotten by now. It quite made me yearn for the time I leaned on Troll's muffler.

We set out again And I made a bee-line (assuming we are talking about drunken bees here) for the Southern State parkway despite the muffled cries of the GPS system safely locked in the glove compartment, which had different ideas most likely involving a five hour sojourn in the Manhattan Friday Morning Traffic Jam. Fortunately I know my way from Chateau Stevie onto Interstate 95 south, once having had to drive between Washington DC and Long Island every week, and so was not even remotely tempted to let that demon-infested GPS⁵ advise me on so much as when to draw breath.

Traffic was heavy to motionless as we merged with the Belt Parkway and only the drone of the CD player as it read from Patricia Cornwell's "Predator", a book so relentlessly awful on every level that it proved impossible to switch off. No sooner did Mrs Stevie opine that surely this was the worst realized character ever to see print or that surely this must be the most unbelievable event ever written than someone even more two dimensional would walk on stage or something ridiculous would happen.

Outside of the self-published rubbish one can find on Amazon for the Kindle reader I can't think of a time I've had a worse experience in the hands of a published writer⁶, and if I hadn't stopped reading Cornwell's "Scarpetta" books after the one that had the Libyan Terrorists burst in right at the end (on account of she had gone stupid) I would have been disgusted.

This torrent of naff carried us through the Staten Island Roadworks Crawl and the New Jersey Roadworks Stop For A Bit Every Now And Then. We were again well behind schedule as far as the trip was concerned, not as badly as in the summer but bad enough, and Mrs Stevie had put her foot down (on various soft parts of my anatomy) and insisted we would stop overnight in a hotel "at the halfway point" rather than attempt "that hellish drive" again, so I was concerned that the halfway point might actually become the third-of-the-way-there point lest we not be able to find a room for any price.

Eventually the traffic lightened up and the book came to an end. Mrs Stevie and I pondered whether the abridgment was due to editing for time or because the reader simply couldn't take any more of this idiotic story and skipped to the end, but the effect was the same - a blissful silence in the vehicle that obviously needed filling, and so Mrs Stevie fired up another tale - "Dance of Death" by Linda Fairstein.

This story had a lot going for it: decent characters, neat murder plot, but it went all over the place and had so many characters I lost track of who was who. At one point I fell asleep and missed twenty minutes, but it didn't matter because so little had happened that I could pick it up as it went along.

One disturbing fact was that even though were driving South as fast as the State Police would let us, when we stopped for gas the weather was still very windy and bitingly cold, well below freezing, which was worrying. There was no snow, but until you've felt the windchill on temperatures already not funny at all you've never been cold. The Steviemobile had experienced a couple of days in New York when I thought the engine would not turn over, so thick had the oil in the sump become⁷.

In New York we were seeing the sort of weather they get in Canada and those people put electric heaters in their engines and have electrical supply plug-ins for hotel parking spots to mitigate frozen engine oil. I'd seen a bad winter in Maryland in '96 and had no wish to see whether they'd laid in so much as a bag of sno-melt in the interim (they had not). The Southern States were about to get caught with their collective trousers down by the storm system buggering up life in the Northeast and I had no wish to be in the middle of an object lesson in Civic Thermodynamics.

We decided to stop near the border of South and North Carolina, but had to drive quite a bit longer than we had planned (it worked out to a bit over 13 hours in the end, including the Forgotten Sunglasses Fiasco) and actually drove past the hotel we had settled on, ending up in another.

We checked in, pulled the bags we needed from the pile in the Honda Odyssey ⁸ and, after arranging the heat to be a little more aggressive, went to bed around midnight.

Saturday dawned and we leaped out of bed, showered, dressed, breakfasted and got back on the road after gassing up the wagon again. It was still cold enough to freeze your tongue to the car if you licked it, so I made a note not to do that again.

"Will you drive first?" demanded Mrs Stevie.

"Yuthsp" I replied.

The day drew on with the weather only beginning to get reasonable for the geography after about another five hours, well into Georgia, where we celebrated the end of "Dance of Death" by stopping for lunch. Traffic was not heavy, and the Southern States had taken the rather radical step of not ripping up large tracts of the Interstate to slow things down so we had made good progress as the story reached the bit where bleep and bleep grabbed bleep but were bleep before bleep could bleep his bleep⁹. The food was good too. Things were looking up, which should have been the clue that trouble was brewing.

Fortunately the anti-vacation demons were impatient and so rather than infesting the vehicle and disabling it in some expensive and maddening way they decided to nerf our in-car entertainment and make us choose as our next book "The 8th Confession" by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro. Now this was an interesting tale, nominally by a famous action/adventure writer of some stature but actually by some woman whose name was printed in small print in the same color as the big "8" on which it was overlaid - at least, large parts of it were by her as I find it hard to credit that James Patterson would obsess over clothes and yo-yo between extremes of feeling about men so much as happens to the female lead character in this pile of bleep, and I didn't hear one word about ammo or calibres or anything remotely manly from any of the male characters.

This story went to the polar opposite of the Cornwell disaster, and characters were so richly detailed neither of us could keep track of them. It didn't help that they were annoying.

In fact, annoyance was the ambiance of this audio book too, as it was read by a lady who had seemingly been a Marine Corps Drill Sergeant in a former life and who bellowed out the first few words of each new chapter in the same manner R. Lee Ermey used whenever addressing Vincent D'Onofrio in "Full Metal Jacket". She also used this technique when a new character hoved into view which prevented sleep at the wheel. On the downside, it prevented sleep in the passenger seat too. I could have used a small bout of sleep to escape this tedious and loud book.

We pulled into Orange Lake Country Club at around five pm, whereupon a young fellow smilingly invited us to check out his special offers on tickets to here, there and everywhere. He flirted with Mrs Stevie which meant I didn't have to, which cheered me up initially. It was all going swimmingly until he casually mentioned that to receive this bounty all we would have to do would be to attend an hour's presentation on the new timeshare in Pennsylvania - at which point I flatly refused to have anything to do with it.

He was nonplussed¹⁰ and asked how we could be sure we wouldn't be buying another timeshare.

"I'm sure! I snarled. "Look at us; I'm nearly sixty and she's a hundred and four! Of course we aren’t going to buy a timeshare in Pennsylvania. I'm broke and she's got one foot in the grave!"

I was saved any further argument with this idiot by Mrs Stevie having one of her irrational rages. While it got us away from the dratted salesdrone I felt it was a bit strong that she should blame me for the annoying sales pitch and that chasing me around the clubhouse threatening to insert a beach umbrella into me was a trifle undignified.

We made our way to the villa we hadn't seen for over a decade and discovered that the orange tree that had given us so many delicious juicy oranges the last time we were there was now some sort of ornate bush from Mexico that produced flies. I'd also forgotten that the parking space for this villa was not in front of it (because of the tree-come-bush) so we'd be relying on the neighbors 'getting' that and leaving space for us, which they didn't. I don't know why they felt it important to make us walk further through the weather when their own cars could be parked in front of their villas and still leave space for us, but there you go.

One guy was so incensed by the situation that we went out later that night to find an Escalade parked so close we couldn't open the driver side doors and he couldn't open his passenger side doors either. He must have had to unload his passengers and then re-park in annoyance mode to pull that one off. We countered this ploy by not rising with the dawn. He was a family man and had dates with Disney calling for early starts. Our time was ours.

It was refreshing to see that some people could hold onto their gittism even in the teeth of a good time though.

1. Now assessed as a badger named Stripey Bill living in a set somewhere in the New Forest, though I suspect my Google Analytics Evaluation Purposes Only Edition account may have been hacked and this is in fact a bored teenager named Stripey Bill↑
2. A working title↑
3. More accurately, since we were driving South, then North: downing and upping, but that sounded too rude to put in the body of the text↑
4. An error matched only by that made when Napoleon said "Let's go get those Russian bastards lads. No need to take your coats, this'll be a doddle"↑
5. uk: SatNaff↑
6. A lie: The Seventh Seal by I Had A Pre-Emptive Stroke After Reading His Daft Book And Forgot His Name Forever Thank Azathoth was exquisitely dreadful↑
7. Oil gets thicker with cold, thinner with heat. Multigrade oils are a way of having oil that is thin enough to start a cold engine but that stays thick enough to work when the engine is boiling hot↑
8. Me: one, Mrs Stevie: Four↑
9. No spoilers!↑
10. I'd always wondered what that looked like↑