i mostly know how to do things through stringent missives. and, true to this nature, i've dubbed May the month of reclamation in our home. what are we reclaiming? well, really quite a few things. how about our home itself. our sanity. our dignity. our ability to walk through the the hallways in the middle of the night without kicking something stamped 'fisher price'. i'd like one of the hooks of m...

my garage door is broke. since having a garage we've had the clicker, openy thing. when it stopped working, i just stood there, in front of it repeatedly pushing the button on the wall, with no results. after about ten minutes of this, i did what any cold-blooded american male would do, i went and asked my wife what i should do.

m: pull the red ripcord to disengage the door.

t: then what?

m: then open it.

t: how?

m: with your hand.

t: no button?

m: no button.

suffice it to say, she may has well told me to reach shoulder deep into a water buffalo's birth canal to look for the television's remote control. if it were the 20,000 pyramid the answer to this scenario would be 'things troy just doesn't do'. when i asked marty about replacing it, she said we don't have the money, right now, for a new garage door. i assured her the new opener would be way cheaper than the small child i was prepared pay to stand at the door all day long waiting for me to pull up so he can raise and lower the door for me. marty told me to find a cheaper child.

i'm coming off two weeks of being off. going into it i had large visions of all the stuff i would accomplish. while i started out strong i petered out about 79 hours into the sabbatical.

as for what i do have to show for my vacation; one partially painted dining room. unless you would like to include pulling four inch-plus hairs from my neck.

i sympathize with the burglar who selects my home to rob in the wee hours of the night.

i've lived here 5 years, know the floor plan and have yet to nocturnally navigate it, post bella, without:

1. kicking over a bucket of marbles in the 2am silence
2. running my scantily clad groin into the handle of a fisher price vacuum cleaner
3. stepping barefoot on a two day old, half-eaten and fully husked banana

sadly, we no longer have any valuables that have not been bellafied (aka broken) so they will be doubly pissed at their misfortune.

marty's mother is a freezer. there isn't a culinary item ever eaten that hasn't passed through the walter's super freeze found at the bottom of their basement stairs. milk, christmas cookies, hell, i bet you'd even find nonfood items like light bulbs in that cellar deep-freeze. the two things i've heard my mother-in-law say more than anything else is "oh, sure you can freeze that" and "run down an...

there is a guy in my neighborhood some call the most anal resident but they are wrong. he is the most anal person ever invented, and he's pissing me off.

here's the deal. he has this gas powered blower and weekly he sets out to relocate every blade, grain and follicle he doesn't deem attractive away from his home. the magic radius seems to be 150 feet which coincidentally is about how far the beginning of my property line is from him (he's two doors down). so he meticulously escorts the natural varmints away from his front door and stops his maintenance in front of my home. this leaves a small wave of outdoor dust bunnies sitting on my sidewalk and street, yes he does the street too, remember we're talking about the most anal human to ever sport an anus.

now while this habit has been noticeably annoying i've never really sweated it too much, but the other day i was sitting on the front porch reading, heard something, looked up and saw him walking back towards his home. i looked into the street and saw that he had just dumped some twigs and dried leaves right in front of my house. it was apparent he hadn't seen me sitting there and he was too far away by the time i realized what happened to gig him in the act.

to my point. i'm seeking applications form the more deviant among us describing what it is you would do to this guy for me. please make your submissions generously verbose. also, include any past experience, references and what you feel would be an appropriate fee for your services. photos of previous work would also be appreciated.

and, i'd totally do this myself, but ...

this is one of the seven reasons i haven't been around a whole lot lately.

Last night a greatly impressive storm descended upon our city. Down the street from us a great tree got splintered which made our garage fiasco look like Charlie Brown's Christmas. We have been without a phone or dsl line for over 15 hours now which is inhibiting my posting something more impressive than an excuse (from work). When back in business, I will make up for it in short order.

Bad karma equals fallen trees, broken roof tiles and felled power lines. Case in point:

Troy wake up.

No.

Troy wake up, a tree fell on our garage.

I said I'd get up in ten minutes, just give me ten more minutes.

Troy, I'm not kidding. A tree really fell on our garage.

Of all of the lies Marty has used to get me out of bed in the morning, I can only pretend today's was a fabrication. Because five minutes after this discourse I spent my post holiday Monday morning dealing with this.

In thinking about it over the day, I have concluded that this serves as a friendly warning from the environment for my front yard landscaping project where I've devastated this tree's long undisturbed brethren. How many times do I have to argue that we are not alone here guys.

And, man do we under-appreciate garage door openers or what? I spent five minutes scratching my head trying to figure out what you do when the clicker-thing doesn't set the massive door to motion? Can you believe that you actually have to touch the door to make it go up and open. Don't even get me started on the host of organisms and contaminants that are now permanently married to my epidermis from this transaction. Ughhh!