things I don't need to see (don't read if you're eating)

Yesterday evening the fun hog and I went for a bike ride and then decided to check out the new patio at Illegal Pete's on Broadway.

We went out to the patio and ordered beers (happy hour, $2.50). Then the fun hog graciously offered to get us some food. While we had been drinking our beer I noticed a youngish (20s) blond haired kid in normal looking clothes who walked onto the patio with a huge can of budweiser. He sat at a table in the middle of the patio. Seemed normal so I didn't pay any more attention to him....

Until I heard this terrible noise. It sounded like someone trying to fill a bathtub. I looked behind me and the blond kid had his head down on the table and was puking, not violently, just kind of...like the puke was rolling out of his mouth like a waterfall.

I walked up to the bar and tapped the bartender on the arm. "There's a kid puking over there" I said, pointing at the kid. "Oh, I just clocked out" she said. Three other people who were sitting on the patio started complaining (kid was still puking). A guy who worked there came out, took a look at the kid, went back inside, and busied himself at the cash register.

I went back up to the bar and was like "you HAVE to do something". Families were coming in and the kids were running by puke boy. Plus, I was not really excited about eating a burrito while someone puked behind me. The bartender made a phone call and around that time FH came out with the food.

I said "Let's face the other way and don't look behind you." He was like "You mean at the guy covered in puke?" Um, yeah. At some point the kid was removed and the puke was washed away. Overall I think the incident was handled badly by the staff. It took forever for them to respond and do anything. The off duty bartender said "oh, he was probably just drinking and had too much." The on duty bartender said "he was probably out with friends".

But if that were the case where were the friends? If he was super drunk why did he sit in the middle of the patio instead of at the edge where he would be less obvious? The off duty bartender said "I don't recognize him and I've been on duty all day." No shit. He wasn't even drinking a beer they served.

Granted I'm not great at understanding people but to me it seemed like a cry for help. This kid walks into a restaurant with alcohol and is so inebriated he's puking all over himself. Except for the bartender going over to him no one tried to help him.

I postulated to the fun hog that he was depressed about something, obviously feeling alone, and went to the restaurant to get some attention, even if negative. I hope he was taken to a hospital if that was the case and that he got help, or is getting help. The fun hog said "you just made up a whole story about this kid's life and maybe he was out with friends, had too much to drink, wanted to get some food, but didn't quite make it." Maybe that's the case.

I did nothing to help him. I don't know if I should feel bad about that.

it turns out it wasn't about farts

On the 4th of July a friend of mine, who (obviously) has kids sent me an email and all it contained was this:

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=W_WtTAQf-9Y&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DW_WtTAQf-9Y

So I watched the link, which is for a cartoon about 
these things called octonauts that go around exploring 
shit under the ocean. 

I sent the following response, a commentary as I watched the cartoon:

Part of me has a hard time getting past the fact that these dudes look like fucked up Japanese sex toys.

Have to admit I'm totally trashed. 4th of July, lots of fireworks.

How weird that they make the what ever whale things speak with a texan accent. People always fucking copy me and end up famous*.

Is that a fucking rabbit in an air breather? I like the dude with the eye patch and the russian narwhale dudes. Seven minutes in. Someone better fart and make me laugh.

Cool. There's an autistic dude, wonder if he's an aspie...

K, there's weird vegetables talking and a dude that looks like an amputee. Or maybe I'm drunker than I thought.

Haha, pseudo orcas to save the day. Why are those fucking vegetables sitting on top of him? Oh, they're bow head whales, those pseudo orcas. What ever. They look like orcas. I kind of like orcas even though they kill great whites.

Probably not sober enough to email. Or watch cartoons. So please ignore this. There was some factual truth in the cookie cutter shark cartoon. Will have to investigate this thing about narwhales or how ever the fuck you spell (dear yahoo, stop underlining my shit in red when it's mis-spelled because it's fucking annoying - is this a feature I turned on? fuck me) it getting trapped in ice later. Too drunk to sit upright on my exercise ball so it's hard to type and do a google search. Thanks for sharing.

Happy fucking 4th of July! Think I need another drink. Cheers and gunpowder!

Aforementioned friend never responded to my email, so I thought, hm, maybe don't email that friend while drunk anymore. Then today I got this:

I wouldn't know what a fucked up Japanese sex toy looked like but am impressed you do. I sent it to you because of the whales talking Texan, thought you might enjoy. 

Hope you blew some shit up for the 4th!

For the record, I know what the toys look like because I saw them in a movie. I like subtitles because it's like reading a book but with pictures. And someone did fart in the cartoon, though it was toward the end.

I guess I should stop assuming everyone is as obsessed with farts as I am.

Though, haha, forgot to mention in my post about my aunt and uncle, that at one point at dinner I said "this isn't like a REAL family dinner because no one has mentioned farts or poop". Minutes later their neighbor sent an email of their dog pooping in his (the neighbor's) yard and then we started talking about farts. It was nice for things to be normal.

*in my children's book the great white sharks, aka the whitey biteys, speak with a texan accent 

I'm not the only one who thinks my swamp cooler is an asshole

A guy named Bill showed up first thing Thursday morning to fix my swamp cooler since everything I had tried had failed and my only option was to start drilling holes, which I didn't feel comfortable doing.

It turns out the reason the pulley kept loosening and falling off is because the set screw is supposed to screw into a little piece of metal called the key that goes under the set screw.

My key had somehow gone missing. No idea what happened to it. And unfortunately it's not something you can go out and buy. Bill made a key out of some metal bits he had in his truck. I don't think he realized that his voice carried through the vent that goes from the swamp cooler into my house because he was cursing at my swamp cooler and he seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn't curse if he thought someone would hear him. He called my swamp cooler a "fucking thing!" and "piece of shit". I also heard him pounding it with his wrench.

It works now.

The suck part is the pillow bearing (that round metal thing behind the pulley) is shot to shit and the rod the pulley is mounted on is warped from when the pulley came loose and those two things can't be fixed.

Bottom line, I have to get a new swamp cooler next year. Oh well. I learned a lot.

the jason's deli adventure

My Aunt Sarah and Uncle David arrived in Denver Friday night. My aunt was recovering from altitude sickness. We walked to wahoo's in the rain. So much for the drought. As soon as they showed up so did the rain.

Which leads me to the adventure...Saturday we went to Roxborough and did a hike.

On the way home we were talking about what to do for dinner. Initially we were thinking to walk somewhere. But then we decided to go to jason's deli because my uncle wanted a salad, it has a salad bar, and I'd never been there. I found the closest jason's deli, which was on union street in Lakewood, and got directions.

As we had been hiking a storm was moving in. As the afternoon wore on the sky got darker and darker. By the time we were ready to go to dinner a torrential downpour had started as well as a pretty spectacular display of lightning.

No worries, I thought, running to the car. I can drive in this easily. But as we drove down my street we saw manhole covers that had popped off. Water was bursting out of them like a street water feature or something.

I got on the highway and water from other cars was splashing on my windshield, momentarily blinding me. And traffic was terrible. I turned off on 6th Avenue and there was standing water everywhere. Cop cars were blocking some of the exit ramps because they were flooded. My aunt saw a car submerged in the water off one of the exit ramps. I started thinking maybe going out in the storm was a bad idea.

We finally got to our exit (I was looking at east bound 6th avenue, which had stopped traffic, thinking "that's going to suck on the way home"). Feeling relieved I told my aunt and uncle "so it's only two blocks from here!"

EXCEPT the fucking street was barricaded by cop cars. All traffic was being routed down a side street. Since Lakewood is a suburb I never go there and had no idea where we were going. Hoping the designers of Lakewood might have at least made some of the streets on a grid, I started making a bunch of turns figuring we'd get to jason's deli from the other side of union. Meanwhile my uncle was putting the address in my gps.

We got to union street finally and that was when the gps came to life. We were driving past a gas station and the gps said "you have reached your destination!" But it was lying. I drove behind and around the gas station. No jason's deli. I drove around the other side of union street. No deli.

So I called them and asked where their location was in reference to the gas station. They were a block away. And I also asked if they had power because a lot of the buildings on union street didn't have power. They did so I got back on union street and drove a block.

There was a cop car blocking the road AGAIN and we couldn't see the deli. I pulled an illegal u-turn, drove down an alley behind a bunch of office buildings, drove through another parking lot and FINALLY there was the deli.

We parked catty corner to the deli and got out in the still driving rain. We crossed the street and arrived to some employees who were very happy to see us. It was virtually empty inside the deli. They seemed a little surprised, actually, that we had made it with the blocked roads.

As we sat down with our salads I watched the cop car drive away. Really? After everything we had been through and walking through the rain to get there NOW the cop car decides to leave????

The rain finally stopped, we finished our salads, and walked back to the car...EXCEPT that the sprinkler system around the sidewalk we had to use kicked on after the rain and was spraying water all over the sidewalk. My uncle and I chose to walk on the street but my aunt ran through the sprinklers with her umbrella.

Earlier in the day my uncle had asked why I didn't get a newspaper to find out about local news. I replied "local news is stupid". So we had to laugh when we got back to my car because farther away in the parking lot was a channel 9 news truck broadcasting.

Is a blocked road that exciting if you aren't trying to get to Jason's Deli????