John's Blog

Hi.

So yesterday I did many things. I’ll start with the neighbor’s place.

Disassembled the industrial steel shelving, loaded the pahts into the van.

All the electronics (more than I thought there’d be) loaded into the van. Like, six ancient laptops, four or five monitors (I lost count) two or three computer keyboards, and one of those old wicked large component stereo receivers.

Cur that shelf down to size, I made a nice straight cut if I do say so myself. The piece I removed was, you guessed it, loaded into the van. Roughly four feet long.

Put some time into figuring out where the studs were in the wall. Some discussion on how he wanted the mount oriented. By the way… I measure too much and like a magpie I seem to have a penchant for shiny tools. All shiny tools remained with their rightful owner, I left with all of the lackluster tools. Installing that TV mount will be the last step.

Now for the entertainment center. We both had questions. Just how big was it gonna be once it was slid into the corner. How far out would it poke into the room? How many stereo components would fit inside? After too much measuring with far too many tape measures I took the neighbor’s advice, cut the box open, rummaged around until I found the top panel, lifted it out and set it in the corner. That answered one question. As for the second question, it’ll have to wait until the thing is assembled.

I also gingerly cut down an unused antenna coax cable that festooned two of the four dining room walls.

As I was loading up the the van I couldn’t help but notice that the next door neighbors of my neighbor were sitting out on their tiny front porch, tokin’ some wicked nasty smellin’ ganga and tiltin’ back some Colt 45s. I knew one of the partakers having stopped to chat with him from time to time when I’m mowing the neighbor’s front lawn. He’s around my age, shuffles around real slow, and has his fair share of ailments he deals with.

As I was sliding into the driver’s seat I couldn’t help but look over there, just in time to see him slowly keel over onto his right side, all fetal. I got back out of the van and walked in a hurry over to the porch. One leg twitching. She was hollerin’ his name, no response. I got him sitting up right. He was sweating bullets. She said he was seizing. No response from him. She called 911. He slowly went over onto his left side. I once again got him sitting somewhat vertical. He was in the bag for sure.

I could hardly understand what she was saying into her cell phone but it must have worked because I heard sirens start up way off in the distance. My tax dollars at work. A minute or so later there was an ambulance and a fire truck a few feet away and a wheeled gurney out of the ambulance, perched in the street between them.

After watching the EMTs for a minute or so (BP cuff on, now responsive enough to laundry-list all his ailments and freely admit to doin’ weed and drinkin’) I said I was gonna leave things in their capable hands. He said, “Wait, wait wait” I turned around and returned his offered fist-bump. “Thanks, my man.” “You take care of yourself, now.”

I drove the van around the block. Locked the dogs in the house. Got the van into the backyard. Released the hounds. Unloaded the van with the help of three very curious dogs. Put all my non-shiny tools away. Fired up the air compressor in the garage and filled three low tires on the van. Got the van out of the yard and around to the front of the house without any dogs leaking out of the yard. I ate a light lunch. I let that settle for a bit. I harnessed up the dogs and we went to Vander Veer for walks. The sun was nearly down by the time we got home.

That’s it for yesterday. Cheers.