The Perfect Day

    You know that feeling after a good day when you've gotten all the things done that you had planned, and life seems to be going just perfectly? You do? Well then, I kind of hate you. Not actual hate, I guess. Just very jealous. Mr. Snarky NEVER has those kinds of days. I hate to admit this, but I'm not extremely handy. I can get by; I'm not totally incompetent when it comes to fixing things, but I definitely not a master handyman either.

    For instance, we bought a new stereo for our car a couple of weeks ago. The one in the car is completely dead. It was an aftermarket stereo, so I figured it wouldn't be that tough to switch. You know, just unplug a couple of wires from one, stick 'em into the other, and voila! Yeah... no. First off, the pins from one don't match the other, so you've got to disconnect each wire from one and solder them onto the other. It looks something like this...

It's really simple. You just attach the yellow wire to the opposite yellow wire, making sure to... 

    Then there's the stereo installation kit, which you use to make the system fit snugly into your dashboard. The biggest problem I had with this was opening the package. It was in one of those plastic nightmares that are practically indestructible. I was trying to keep the package fairly nice in case it wasn't the correct kit and I'd need to return it. I failed miserably, and after about 5 minutes, I went into the kitchen, grabbed a steak knife, and hacked the stupid thing into oblivion. Then I went back out to the car, pulled the old unit out of the dash, opened my new stereo, and then saw that it would take a lot more than just unplugging from one and putting it back into the other. So I did what Homer Simpson would do.

"If it's too hard, just quit!"

    That's right. I gave up. I have kids and/or a nephew that would probably be glad to help me, or, there's always Car Toys. So I decided to do this other thing I've needed to get done for a while. Mow the lawn. Now, in Oregon where we live, it rains mostly all winter long. Sometime in March or April, the rain stops and it stays mostly sunny and nice for 5 or 6 months. Somehow, every fall, I manage to not get the lawn mowed nice and short before the rains start. Every other house on our block did just fine. Not me. The grass on the side of the house looks like a green hay field. We've had a few sporadic days of nice weather here over the last few weeks, but the rest of the time, pretty heavy rains. Every nice day we've had, I've been at work. My off days... not so nice. Until today. After my disappointment with the stereo, I went straight for the garage, pulled my nice, expensive, five-year-old Toro out. I gassed her up, pulled the rope... pulled it again... and again... about 100 times... and the damned thing wouldn't start.

   

And this was on TV. I was doomed.

    So then I get inside the house and I'm watching the end of the Hockey game, and meanwhile Mrs. Snarky has taken apart the entire bathroom, scrubbed everything, put it back together, repotted a couple of houseplants, finished the laundry and made dinner. When she was done, she could barely walk because her back was hurting her, but she wasn't quitting. Made me feel like a real bum. Whattaya gonna do? I got nothin'.

Try again tomorrow I guess.

Snarky