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If you're like me...

Oh what do you do in the summertime, when all your family leaves? When boredom sets in? When you can't stand to look at another Kakuro puzzle or watch another minute of basic cable? When you've read the online edition of the Economist from cover to virtual cover?

Well, if you're anything like me, you wonder why the packaging for the Safeway Select™ Supreme Pizza shows 13 black olives on the pizza while the actual pizza cooking in your oven right now has 44 olives on it (not counting the 17 that you already put down the garbage disposal). Or, if you're like me, you spend a few minutes while writing a blog post trying to figure out how to type the ™ symbol. It's Option-2 on a Mac keyboard in case you're wondering.

Perhaps you spend countless minutes each evening positioning and repositioning the sprinklers in your yard in the hope that sprinkler configuration #429 will finally be The One that gets it just right. Or maybe you'll amuse yourself by saying silently in your best imitation of your former mission companion from Idaho that you need to "move pipe" when it comes time to move the sprinkler. If you do, and you're like me, you'll feel a pang of loneliness when you wish that your wife was here to not laugh at your joke.

If you're particularly bored, you'll notice the detour sign for the closure of Cascadian Way between 140th ST SE and 138th PL SE and you'll enter a minor mental frenzy when you realize that 138th PL SE invalidates your emerging theory for how streets are named in Snohomish County. You'll then scour the county website until you find Chapter 13.120 of the county code which describes the official street numbering system. You'll bang your head against your parents' glass coffee table when you read that any east-west road lying between designated streets shall be called "place" except in the southwest quadrant of the county where any north-south street lying between designated streets shall be called place west.

When you regain consciousness, if you're anything like me, you'll sit on the grass for twenty minutes waiting for the humming birds to come back so you can take their picture in the flower garden. After 15 minutes the batteries on your camera will give out. For the next five minutes, perhaps as an after effect of your encounter with the coffee table, you'll convince yourself that you can see the hummingbirds sitting in the large cherry tree across the street. Oh yeah, and the humming birds will be pointing at you and laughing.

Maybe, if you're really bored, you'll stare blankly at your blog post trying to think of the perfect punch line for the nascent joke forming in your head about an artesian spring and curbside recycling.

If you're smart, though, you'll just shut off the sprinkler and go to bed.

Comments

Thelma said…
I miss you. I always laugh at your jokes and I'm happy you're coming to see me tomorrow. Your pastimes are a little worrisome. Especially the olive counting...
Olivia Cobian said…
I know your wife, and I'd think she'd laugh.

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