Sporadic

Explination of the crap pond mentioned in “Spin Grandma”.

So the day before thanksgiving arrives and I have house guests. Mom and Bob are in from down south, and Jen is staying with me because the guy she’s subletting from is back for the holiday.

This is fine, I have the space, but what I don’t realize is that my plumbing cannot take the strain. For the past couple weeks, I have noticed that when someone takes a “longer shower”* that a shower smelling pond builds up in my garage. This is not a big deal, but I’m worried because it doesn’t bode well for the future since it means my sewer line is not draining properly.

On the day before thanksgiving, this comes to a head. The pond is back and it’s not just shower residue…there’s um…”sewage” floating in my garage. Yes, friends ans neighbors- I had a growing crap pond in my garage on the day before people would be coming over to eat things and presumably… excrete them.

Suddenly, the “well I should probably do something about this” became a mandate.

so we :

1.) snaked the drains (disgusting but no result)

2.) Called the landlord,  which then led to:

3.) tore up the deck because he *swore* there was a bigger plumbing intake down there and I had just covered it up

4.) Stood around staring at the crap pond

5.) tried snaking the drains from the other side which led to:

6.) some random woman saying “The city should be able to snake it from the street for you”

7.) called the city and then

8.) waited

9.) and waited

10.) Finally the city guy shows up at around 9pm and he snakes the city side and there’s no subsidence in the crap pond. Then he says “Flush a toilet” and I say “No, because it’s just gonna fill the crap pond some more”.

11.) Finally after some pleading and cajoling the city guy agrees to put his flush hose into my garage drain. First I cram it in and try to get it to move… it doesn’t. Then the city guy helps out. He wangles the thing for about 5 min and finally with a geyser, which we watched from the street, the crap shoot in the city main drain flows free and

12.) The crap pond drains away. The final draining of the crap pond leads to

13.) I hose all the crap into the drain and then liberally spread Clorox all over my garage floor, for which I ruin a par of brown cords (bleach stains) but now my drain flow through and everything is great

It took like 12 hours, and 7 people and 14 “street consultants”**, but the disaster was averted and the pond was vanquished!

Thanksgiving went off without a hitch but the thing I was most thankful for was family or friends or yummy food… it was that there wasn’t a lake of human poo in my garage.

amen. 

* Read: more than 5 mins

** Comments like “wow you got a real mess on your hands”

*** BTW the title is a reference to the crap demon from Dogma, in case you don’t remember here’s the screenplay… just search for Golgatha if you want to read the appropriate scene.

really quick hits:

Have you ever had a song that you didn’t know what it meant and then suddenly you knew. I thought a bunch of them on the way home tonight on BART. Here’s the starter list:

Delta Dawn: Delta Dawn is actually dead

Angel (of the morning): Juice Newton is a huge slut

I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus: (2 versions) Mommy is a huge slut

I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus: (2 versions) Oh crap! Santa is Daddy!

Excuse me while I kiss the sky: Jimmy hendrex is into some weird stuff

Excuse me while I kiss this guy: <Ibid>

The stroke: Billy Squire is *really* into swimming

On my way into work today I was wearing the same jeans I was wearing a few days ago. It’s not that I’m a dirty person but anyone who really understands jeans knows that most pairs have about 4 or 5 wearings in them before you need to wash them.* So reach into the pocket and find some change from a previous wearing. There’s two quarters and 4 pennys. Now quarters you have to keep- that’s 50 cents, you’re almost to a pack of gum. But the pennys, you may dispense with.

Years ago, when I was living on Valencia Street with Devyn our next door neighbors were a bunch of 20 somethings from Indiana. Great guys. We’d play basketball, there would be cross apartment parties, Devyn developed and then rejected crushes on most of them, it was a generally genial and social environment. So one day I’m walking back from who knows where with Chris and James and suddenly Chris throws a penny up and then kicks it “punt style” into the street.

“What Are you doing!?” says I, alarmed, because my depression era grandparents have hammered home the fact that you keep and roll all your change. They’re probably spinning in their mauselum at the thought of this.

“Penny kicking” says Chris, “I am going to show you a game that will provide you years of enjoyment.”

He was probably kidding, but he was right, once I got past my initial fear of throwing away money, I realized that this was big fun. Competitions can be held. Cars can be targeted. Squirrels can be marauded. All you do is drop kick you penny. It can be played anywhere. Although I do recommend a “standard shoe” like a doc martin or the like, Tennis shoes can be difficult because the penny can stick in the webbing.

Don’t get me wrong, I still keep and roll change, but only if I forget to kick the pennys first**.

However, over the years since then I have wholeheartedly enjoyed booting a penny across a parking lot.

MO Update:

Thanks to everyone who donated. Our team made $6,793.48, which Microsoft will double! I alone, thanks to many of you made $545! Awesome! Thank you!

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*unless you spent the day standing a small crap pond in your garage, but that’s another story.

**It can happen.