Adventures in Yard Maintenance, Part One: Last year the yard spigot I had installed a decade ago on the back of the house started leaking at the handle. Today, I finally got our regular plumber to come fix it. (Last year, he said he would get around to it. Last week, he said Monday. Monday, he said Tuesday. Yesterday I said now or never, and he showed up.) I could have tried to replace it myself, but I knew the connector was rusting and the copper pipe was crimped, meaning that I was just as likely to break it. Given how much work the professional had to put into it, I definitely made the right call.

Adventures in Yard Maintenance, Part Two: After hearing horror stories about the size of armadillo dens, Mom decided to run off an armadillo who had recently taken up residence under our front porch. Since she knew armadillos are un-poisonable, she had me throw some mothballs under the stairs in the hopes of killing off their food supply. What I didn't think about at the time was that I also live under our front porch. Paradichlorobenzene vapor is heavier than air, so it gradually settled down into the armadillo den... and then came through the concrete block walls into my bedroom. After three days I had stood all I could stand and had to crawl under the stairs and dig out the mothballs. I don't know if the armadillo learned anything, but I sure did.

Adventures in Yard Maintenance, Part Three: Still covered in dirt from the porch, I decided I would use some of the Ortho Poison Ivy poison that my aunt had brought over and left on my patio because she was tired of it being on her patio for a year. What I did not know was that the reason the poison had been sitting on her patio for a year was because one of her handymen had broken the sprayer. When I went to use it, I spilled poison all over my hand, and got none on the ivy that needed the poison. So poison ivy wins yet another round in our decades long war.

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My latest painting:

I wanted a photo of me punching that Mystery Box, and I couldn't take it myself, so I enlisted Mom's help. She has never played Super Mario Bros., and she didn't quite understand what I was after or, apparently, that you can keep pressing the shutter button on my phone to capture a whole bunch of images (because, you know, there's not actually a roll of film inside the phone). And that is how you get an expression like that on my face.

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My favorite barbeque joint is celebrating 100 years in business, so I painted them a birthday card:

That logo was designed by David Boyd and has been part of their street sign since at least 1992 when I worked my first ever summer job there as a curb hop, a position they have since eliminated, maybe because they had a hard time finding qualified curb hops. In my case, I just wrote whatever the customer said on my pad and handed it to the employee behind the register who re-wrote the order for the kitchen. Not that I didn't try; I think they just didn't trust me to take the orders correctly, and in all honesty, they were probably right. In addition to being my first job, it was the first job I was fired from.

(Don't feel bad for me. As lowest man on the totem pole, it was also my job to clean the barbeque pit every night. Being fired from shoveling grease out of an oven was an undisguised blessing. And I've since been fired from many jobs, so it would prove to be good training.)

Here's to one hundred more!

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I've shown Mighty Mouse before, but here he is by the mailbox, flying as the animation gods intended.

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Mister Trouble never hangs around when he hears this Mighty sound: "Here I come to save the day." That means that Mighty Mouse is on the way!

He gets the situation well in hand!

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I've almost finished my latest painting. Henry tells me it's pretty good.

And that's why dogs are a man's best friend.

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Back in May, Google drove through my neighborhood to update their Street View (for the first time since March 2022). Right now this is what you get if you Google my house:

The good news is that Google is very concerned about my privacy. Per their Google-Contributed Street View Imagery Policy (google.com/streetview/policy/):

We have developed cutting-edge face and license plate blurring technology that is designed to blur identifiable faces and license plates within Google-contributed imagery in Street View.

That's nice. But sometimes it isn't enough to blur just a face.

"I see you've noticed the ears. They're actually easy to explain...."

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I did not paint that. It came with the house when Mom bought it, along with carpet that smelled of cat piss and ceilings painted brown to match the walls. We got rid of the cat piss carpets and brown ceilings years ago, but the coconut trees have been here the whole time. Until now.

For reasons that are completely unrelated to the fact that we're having house guests next weekend, we've decided to finally paint the solid green laundry room in tasteful Icebreaker Blue, Dutch White, and Purple Prince to accompany the Weeping Wisteria in the adjacent mud room. (You can probably imagine what blue, white, and purple look like, but do you know what color wisteria is? Hint, hint.)

Anyway, when our house guests arrive and wonder why the house smells like fresh paint, well, that's just me hiding the nuts in the laundry room.

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My toilet wasn't filling well, so I bought a new fill valve. Then I pulled the old one out and put the new one in. It all went smoothly. I didn't break anything or hurt myself. That's it. Sorry, there's no entertaining story when everything goes right.

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When I started this painting, I was trying to have it done by May Fourth. But, as a wise puppet once said, "Do or do not. There is no try." And I did not.

However, in honor of Star Wars Day, I'll make my apologies with this here recent-ish picture of the work in progress.

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