My Mother And Birds

For those of you who don't know the story behind mom and 'The Birds', here is the version I was treated to:

Once upon a doublewide, a noise was heard in the kitchen. My father investigated, his ear coming to rest upon the hood of the oven. A quick knock on it released a terrified sparrow that proceeded to bang about the appliances, causing quite a ruckus. My brother and I proceeded to roll about the floor, laughing our heads off. But it gets better, friends and Aunties, as my mother came in to determine what the ruckus was all about.

And proceeded to scream her head off.

Which prompted the poor sparrow to think he had found another soul to suffer with in harmony. He flitted straight towards her, thinking that if anyone knew the way out, it would be the tall flightless one equally terrified as it was.

So she ran.

Down the hall. With the sparrow in pursuit.

She screamed and yelled her way into the master bedroom. As did the witless little sparrow.

Mother slammed the bathroom door shut.

The sparrow slammed into the bathroom door.

Mum locked herself in the shower, whimpering while Dad and I removed the now completely unconscious sparrow from the house, barely able to stand from laughing so hard.

To this day, Mom's relationship with birds still to this day brings a tear of mirth to my all.

Catch Up

Recently I headed back to my hometown for a visit. I took a week off so I could take the kids camping and hiking. Thanks to there being a freak snow storm on Spring Break, the camping trip was canceled. Instead, we goofed off, in true Herzog fashion.


The kids took me to the movies, I caught up on sleep, we treated Mom and Matt to dinner at Chico's, and I fed Dad the leftovers ;) A good time was had by all. And to make up not camping to my kids, I took them on a long and grueling hike above the Columbia.




We even managed to get a word in with one of the locals!

First sign of spring...

Are robins, and I saw my first one in Kititas today!!!!

A TV almost killed me...

I know I've posted about the dangers of being a satellite technician before, but Saturday I nearly bit it as a 27" old style console TV decided to fall on me from above.

Very few of the techs I work with can actually visualize this, but I'll try to describe it: I was working on bringing in cables for a standard receiver the customer wanted in her bedroom media armoire, and had to move the existing shelving a bit to get them to budge. The TV was sitting on the top shelf, a shelf supported by four tiny pegs in the armoire's sides. Well, I had moved the TV an inch or so forward on it's shelves, as its back was actually pinning all the cables and wires of the components on the bottom shelves (the Dish Network receiver and the VCR, namely). I managed to scoot things around and mess about with the cables twice before this television, sitting at least 3' above the ground, decided to pitch forward onto me, who was kneeling below it, my head and right arm eye level with the shelf below the TV.

I caught the television with the right side of my head, my shoulder, and my right wrist, but only in defense, and the TV toppled into my lap and then crashed onto the floor. The customers came running in to find their tech half under their now shattered TV, holding her head and obviously trying her damndest not to swear.

This resulted in yet another wonderful visit to the ER, this time in Ellensburg, where I met yet another quack of an ER doc who prescribed me, of all things, Vicodin. Last I checked, if a person is allergic to codeine, vicodin should NOT be prescribed for pain. I had to have x-rays and wore a neck brace (briefly, thank god, because those stupid things are so not designed for square jaws) and was given an anti inflamatory shot that did freaking wonders.

The next morning, all I could do was cry, I was in so much pain. I couldn't take the damn scrip and fill it, I couldn't call the ER and ask for another prescrip, I couldn't freaking move without crying...

I'll have you know that I'm not thrilled to be the only tech in Yakima who has had a television fall on them. It hurts and is definitely not a great way to garner the respect of others in your field.

The things I have to do...

I'm going to start taking my camera with me on jobs.

You would not believe the mess my last customer's crawl space was. First, to get to this filthy space, you have to go through a closet floor, which is usually my favorite crawl space access. Once you drop in, though, it immediately becomes apparent that moving around is not going to be easy, even in low crawl mode. The original heat and air duct work, all tin tunnels, was wrapped in 5 inches of fiber glass insulation, and just happened to enclose the space you land in when dropping in to the crawl space. If that wasn't bad enough, they'd added a few new ducts, the 3' tubes that look like overgrown drier hose. And, because these people were thorough, they'd insulated THAT as well.

Now, I'm not real crazy about spaces like that, but it's okay, as long as there aren't a ton of webs. And, at first glance, this space wasn't all that bad. But I guess that's because these webs were Black Widow webs, which don't pick up dust like normal webs. EWWWWW... Even then, I'll usually still be able to get through the space without giving much thought to the webs, unless the builder is present.

Picture me, squeezing my fluffy body with two layers of clothing into a space about 8" tall, and coming face to face with no less than 4 male widows. ICK!!! When faced with those situations, I tend to try to rationalize my way through the rest of the job. Which takes forever.

Having successfully talked myself into finishing what I've started (after all, the holes in the walls are already drilled, cable already dropped, I just have to feed it to the outside vent), I continue forward, and manage to grab 2 out of 3 cables and take them to where I'm routing them with little in the way of widow confrontations.

And then: I have to feed the last line through to the living room from the family room, so that the receiver's AV can be mirrored. As I'm crawling to the feed hole I started, I happen to look up and see a hornets nest the size of a 26" standard television. OH MY GOD! These critters had managed to lay claim to one of the space's air vents and proceeded to build into the space. It was a crazy huge hive, the largest I've seen in person. I don't think spray would have worked on that one.

So, yeah, a two hour job turned into a 6 hour job, all because of an unbelievable crawl space.

Ick.

Where Creative Juice Comes From

"He will make Cheney look like Ghandi!"

Those are strong words, words that make one wonder exactly who could possibly make Cheney, the American God of War himself, look like a peaceful demonstrator???

Watch this flick...