The Gibberish Before the Storm

The grill has been moved.  The deck chairs have been placed in the garage.  The outdoor table has been nestled against the railings.  A while ago the 75-foot trees in the backyard were removed in response to this summer’s unrelenting storm-a-thon...  

In other words, the hatches are as battened as they are gonna get.  

Here I sit writing this while enjoying a nice glass of imported sake... You know, drinking this with the right cheese/cracker combo really brings out the full-bodied flavor of the alpha particles.  So I guess it’s now a race between “tumor” and “super powers”.  Frankly, as long as it’s not a tie, I’ll be cool with either outcome.

Speaking of sake, I cannot believe how hard it was to get this stuff.  Oh, it’s not like I put all that much effort into it.  It’s just that it’s 2012 and I’m a Generation-X’er, see, so I kind of expect things to be pretty much magicked into existence at my whim. I simply can’t believe I had to, like, drive to more than one place than Siri commanded me to go to get the stuff.

I wouldn’t even be drinking this now if it weren’t for GeneSplicer casually mentioning the beverage several weeks ago.  Combined with the fact that I am almost hyperbolically easily swayed and the fact that GeneSplicer is more than trustworthy when it comes to alcohol, his “casual mention” morphed into a “Ludovico Technique scene from The Clockwork Orange imperative” so off to the liquor store I went.

The ABC store employee I spoke with earlier this week about slaking my now-unquenchable rice-wine lust was less than helpful.  I asked “Where can I find sake?”

I wish I was kidding about this next part, but I am not.  This slob (doing what I now recognize as the “morbidly obese baby-boomer world-weary slouch”) shifted his mass slightly in my direction and said “Sake?!?  No sake!!” in a Japanese accent that was spot-on... assuming you were a character from a 1940’s Bugs Bunny cartoon, of course.

Slightly sickened, I left and went about my life.

Today, I took advantage of the impending storm to do some city-based Geocaching and knocked out half a dozen while wearing my Invisibility Cloak.  For those of you that don’t know and/or simply can’t be bothered to click on the hyperlink embedded earlier in this sentence, my “invisibility cloak” is simply an off-the-rack Day-Glo orange safety vest.  I wear it to find caches that are in highly peopled areas, ironically to not draw attention to myself while I am mucking about with lampposts or hotel air conditioning units. As far as I know, it works great - especially today with so many utility guys around.  

Where it does not work well whatsoever is inside of an upscale wine shop, I found out today (a cache was near one, so I went in, you see).   Oh, they were polite enough, but, since I was covered in mud and burrs and brambles (they weren’t all in parking lots) and wearing the “cloak” I was as about as invisible as if I were to “Gangnam Style” into the place completely nude with fifty lit sparklers sticking out of my behind. 

They carried the sake I had been subconsciously directed to buy, so that’s cool.  After our transaction was completed I was asked if I was “on damage control”.  I assumed she meant that I had, on some level, the power to make Hurricane Sandy not be happening.  I lamely said “No, I have been working in nearby parking lots and they make us wear this so we don’t get hit by a car”.  

Absolutely perfect response with no context.  Very suspect response if, say, you had just spent the past ten minutes knowledgeably arguing the merits of hyper-specific Merlot-Franc blends with the proprietor who your wife happens to be friends with.  

She just said “Hmph.  Good idea.” in that tone of voice you pick up when you know the other person simply refuses to believe the garbage that just spewed from your mouth but nevertheless refuses to pursue it any further.  Now, that’s what I call customer service!

The rain is falling gently but steadily and the wind is mild but unrelenting.  As a precaution (well, precaution is a little strong... let’s say “talisman”) we have allowed the boy to sleep in our bed tonight.  Assuming electricity holds, I will let you know whether he proves to be our talisman or we prove to be his.

Good luck, everyone!