Home Repair, Brought to you by House o’ Dan

Home Repair brought to you by House o’ Dan.

This week’s project: Pest Control

Tools required:

1. Fear of bugs caused by a tick burrowing into shoulder at age 5
2. Various sprays, poisons, gasoline and flamethrower
3. “Fast shoes”
4. Dan

Steps:

1. Discover wasps swarming around hole in garage.
2. Remember fear of bugs.
3. Shudder.
4. Watch as “zillions” of carpenter ants fly into house.  Again.  Shudder.
5. Discover that carpenter ants have made an alliance with small Argentine ants.  Carpenter ants to provide air support as Argentine ground forces assault back door.
6. Call exterminator.
7. Exterminator gives estimate.
8. Put eyes back into sockets.
9. Buy sprays and poison at hardware store.  Set traps for ants.
10. Make joke about never being stung by a bee/wasp.
11. Realize that you’ve never been stung by a bee/wasp.
12. Put on “fast shoes.”
13. Spray wasp nest.
14. Run
15. After 15 minutes, stop running.
16. Enjoy!

Next on House O’ Dan: “Over the Stove Microwave Installation”

Home Repair, Brought to you by House o’ Dan.

This week’s project: “Sediment Removal from Hot-water Lines”

Tools Required:

1.  Monkey wrench
2.  Monkey business
3.  Can-do attitude
4.  Dan

Steps:

1.  Fail at shooting cold water through hot water pipes to clear sediment (easiest way to do it.)
2. Get idea to take apart sink to clean out pipes by hand.
3. Smash head repeatedly under sink in small area.
4. Turn off hot water.  If you like surprises, don’t turn off hot water.
5. Apply wrench and attitude to hot water pipes.
6. Exclaim “ewwww” several times at discovering results.
7. Clean out pipes.
8. Replace pieces you took apart in step 5.  Preferably in the right places.
9. Turn on hot water
10. Enjoy

Next on House O’ Dan: “Pest Control and You”

 

Who Didn’t Die On the Cross

Last Easter weekend, I ran around the backyard hiding Easter eggs before heading out to church.  While in the middle of that, it struck me that my priorities were a bit misaligned.  I was in a frantic state more because I didn’t want my 3-year-old daughter Kenly seeing me hide the eggs, rather than I was going to be late for church.  After all, it’s not the toys and eggs that Easter really is all about.  Just as with Christmas, the real meaning of the holiday is lost among snazzy new outfits, candy and a rather scary idea of someone magically breaking into your house, prowling around and leaving things for you to enjoy in the morning.  I understand though small children (and a lot of adults) just can’t comprehend the story of Jesus, let alone multiplication tables.  But at what age should my kids begin to realize that Christmas and Easter are much more than Santa and jelly beans?

It was thoughts like this that dogged me this week until last night when I overheard Kenly talk about Easter with her 1-year-old brother Jay.   She said “Jay, did Sleeping Beauty die on the cross?  No, Jesus did!”  After that, I knew my wife and I were on the right track and that 3 year olds keep astonishing me with their intellectual capacity.  I’m hoping next Christmas that Kenly will use Snow White and the Seven Dwarves somehow to explain the Immaculate Conception.

Birthday Sharing

My son had his 1st birthday last week.  He was too young obviously to understand what was going on and to unwrap his birthday presents.  However, never fear!  His sister (3 years old) took over for him: opening all the presents, taking them from him and totally dominating my son’s new Tonka truck.

This may cause the guys at the construction site to do a double-take.

The Oscars? Movies? What are those?

I vaguely remember going to movies.  That’s one area of my life that I never thought would change over time.  Hanging out with friends, going out drinking/dancing/vandalizing and being happy are all things most people realize will change with marriage and children.  It’s near impossible (actually it IS impossible) to bring a 1-year old who has just started walking and a 3-year old to a theater and watch a 2 hour movie without getting thrown out during the previews. 

Maybe I didn’t think about it because it just wasn’t an important part of my life.  However, when the award shows started up and the Oscars finally came to town, I realized that I hadn’t seen any of the best picture nominees.  The only movie I had seen (on DVD mind you) nominated for any award was The Avengers.  I think it was nominated for sound-editing or Hulk-smashing (which lost to the documentary: I Hulk, I Smash.)

I knew all the actors and actresses.  I remember the movies when they came out: 

• “Hey Honey, Argo is based on a true story, we should see that.”
• “Wait, they’ve made a new Bond movie!  Sweet, I HAVE to see it!”
• “Les Miserables?  I think I had to read that in high school.  Whoa!  Maximus isn’t really going to sing, is he?”

But alas, my going-to-the-movie days are on hiatus.  While I hope to watch some of them on DVD in the near future, it’s just not the same.  The sound, the spectacle, the artery-hardening popcorn!  My living room and 46″ TV do not compare to the big screen.  But hey, at least I won’t feel obligated to watch any award shows.  That’s 84 hours of my life back!

Little People????

Conflicted about the description of the contents of this toy, I’m unsure if, as an overweight person, I should be offended or not. Naaaaw, that’s just funny stuff, Son!

To Tweet For the First Time…Again

After months of inactivity, I have dusted off my Twitter account and put my random thoughts back into the digital rotation.
Why would anyone care about what I have to say with limited text? I have no idea, but I’m tweeting away any way.

If you need any more randomness in your life, and I’m sure we all do, come follow me: @MendesKhan.

We can create hashtags together.

#inserthere

Label Fun at the Doctor Office

So, is the petri dish-grown chlamydia ready to be applied with the K-Y lubed spatula? And Red Top? Don’t get me started!

Releasing the Creative-Juice Hounds

In a more concerted effort this 2013 to finish one of the  many novels/screenplays/naughty limericks that I have started to write over the years, I have decided to focus my creativity a bit more. 

Recently, my Dad sent me a box of books that I haven’t opened since I packed them up my last year of college.  Inside was the book What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter.  I had to buy it for a short-fiction writing class in pursuit of my English degree.  Never opened it though.  For some reason the instructor had it on her book list that semester, but we never used it…  I’m hoping that doing the exercises will give me some new ideas to help me finish one of my writing projects.  At the least, I will have corrected two wrongs from college: not doing exercises from this book and wearing a gold-hoop earring.

The first exercise is to write a few opening lines of a story, that puts the reader immediately into the middle of what’s happening.  One example the book gave is from the story The Undesirable by David Huddle: “I got over to the side of the road as far as I could, into the grass and the weeds, but my father steered the car over that way, too.”

Here are five of my openings (soon to be the first lines of blockbuster films I’m sure)

“What The…?” Statements of 2012 – In Review

As 2012 is now behind us and we are all still here (no thanks to the Mayans), let’s remember the crazy fun-filled statements of 2012 that I overheard by viewing this “Best Of” list:

• We are like a stool.  Each group is a leg of that stool and when one group fails our stool will plop to the ground. – Said on a conference call at work.
• Pick a language!!! – said by a fan at a Dodgers/Mariners game, when the jumbo-tron showed that Jesus Montero’s favorite soup is “Pollo and beef”.
• Do I know what beaver smells like?  No, I’ve never smelt beaver. – said by Ranger Clint, the guide to a nature hike I went on with my daughter.
• If they were still together Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett.  I’d be totally fine with my wife banging Lyle Lovett. – a group approved response from one of the other guys.
• He’s not brother, he’s my…brother – Neil Diamond cover band singer forgetting the lyrics.

To see the entire tome of statements, visit this page (https://dansnutshell.wordpress.com/what-the-statements-of-2012/) or click the page up above you lazy bum.