BALL EIS KORAKAS*

Such a lovely day, my bile is already on the rise. It’s already in the upper 70’s and the sun is hardly up. The humidity is at 70% too, a nice touch. Doing nothing more than sitting perfectly still outside is enough to make you sweat.

The weather isn’t the only thing on my shit list today. Tim, the grumpy insulation contractor, is slowly working his way onto my “People to Be Vivisectioned” list. He was supposed to start June 27th but didn’t show until the 30th. He worked two days last week. He has yet to show this week. I called him Monday to see when he’d finish. He promised that he’d, “be out early Tuesday to finish the job.” As you may have guessed, he was a no show.

So, we’ve started looking for a new insulation contractor. If Tim is lucky, he’ll miraculously show today and finish. Otherwise he’ll be out of a job and he’ll have to haggle with my wife for whatever his half finished job is worth. The last guy who did that left with a bloody nub, but, then again, he probably stole all of our tools too. So, who won that little exchange?

If I wasn’t such an ineffectual, passive-aggressive pencil-pusher, I’d go all Deadwood on his ass. You know, run him down in the street and gouge his eye out or something. Or, I could just call him up and call him a cocksucker (speaking of which, why does HBO even bother to call the show Deadwood? Based on the one whole episode I’ve seen, the whole dialogue seems to be proper nouns and pronouns mixed with the word cocksucker. It seems like they ought to just call the show Cocksucker, but who’d watch a show called that?), but the chances of that are pretty slim.

Also, the folks I bought my kitchen sink faucet are on The List. With the exception of these folks, I’ve had good luck with all the items I’ve bought on eBay for the Devil Queen. I sent them a money order nearly three weeks ago. They claimed that they didn’t receive the payment until the 5th of July. Now, knowing the post office, this is plausible. However, since they are shipping it via UPS 2nd Day delivery, it should already be here. Aside from putting the final coat of polyurethane on the kitchen floor, this is the last major project for the kitchen. Without the faucet, I can’t mount the sink, plumb the drain, or install the dishwasher.

I could ramble on with my never-ending shit list, but most of it falls into the “Who gives a shit, are you twelve? Grow up!” category. However, in my defense, I would like to point out that I have the mental functioning of a twelve year old.

Anyhow, I’m getting ahead of myself now. My wife and I took off all of last week. We divided our time into two distinct categories: working like slaves on the Devil Queen and indulging in Dionysian orgy of excess that would make Nero proud. What is the point of working hard if you don’t get to party hard too?


[“Ball eis Korakas” is from Classical Greek. Literally it means “go to the crows” which is taken to mean “Go to Hell.” See, that year of High School Greek finally paid off]