The never ending battle that I have with Comcast seems to have been momentarily settled -- since we switched to HD we have gone through six converter boxes as it never seems to work right. The shows we are watching skip a lot, and the sound will mute frequently for no reason. Yesterday I once again make the journey to the Comcast store, waited in the un-necessarily long line, watched children that were lacking guidance and discipline run around the place like lunatics. Seriously, when you tell a child no, and he throws a fit, and you ultimately give in and allow the previously forbidden behavior, they learn -- throw fit = get what I want. I learned that on Supernanny, I can't take all the credit.
Anyway after I reached the counter I was as pathetic as possible, tried my hardest to appeal to the nice agents emotions, and it worked -- she gave me a different model that (gasp) had never been used before, lets keep our fingers crossed that it will continue to function as designed.
As I was re-reading my post about fun times in Utah I was reminded of another really humorous story that I thought I would share. One morning while watching the news I saw an interview with a guy that owned a business installing Christmas lights. Being the go-getter that I am -- I too formed a Christmas light installation business by noon that very day with a friend of mine. It was a crazy idea, but resulted in ridiculous success. Early on in our venture we would accept any client (later we limited it to those who lived in gated neighborhoods, and had at least one 60K + car in the garage).
One of our first customers was this really old couple, once we arrived my buddy told me to drive on, and not even stop. I was tempted but wanted to follow through with the appointment I had set. There was a string of mini-lights on their front walkway that appeared to have been there since 1960. The woman who lived there told me she called to have them replaced because they no longer worked. These lights actually disintegrated in our hands as we removed them. Mind you we didn't need a ladder, the roof line was so low that we could reach them from standing in the front yard. Once we got it all done the nice lady had an extra string left over.
I asked her where she wanted them, she told me that she wanted them put on her bush. Now I've scoured the Internet looking for a picture that somewhat resembles what this bush looked like, and here is the result.
Picture this bush in the middle of a front yard -- the pinnacle of the landscape if you will. She seemed very proud of her bush. Anyway I confirm with her a couple of times that she actually wants this thing illuminated. She confirms my suspicions, and I begin wrapping, or really draping the bush in mini-lights. Now as you can see this bush is very brittle, and highly entangled. As I pushed the lights in between the branches the entangled mess was getting worse.
As I was nearly done the nice woman came out and declared "I've decided I don't like how that looks, lets just take those off." This was going to be a delicate operation, every time I removed part of the string, hunks of branch would break off in my hand. At some point the lady comes out on her porch to preview my progress, at the same time I am getting a little more aggressive, I pull the lights just a little, and suddenly the entire bush breaks off at the ground and is in my hand. I am instantly horrified, but to my relief the homeowner doesn't seem to notice. I start laughing pretty hard while quickly ripping off the rest of the lights. Once I get them all off I shove the stump end of what is now a twig into the ground and continue laughing almost uncontrollably. The nice lady notices, and wonders about what I am laughing -- I play it off and quickly wrap things up -- and away we go.
Every time I see a bush like this I think of this story, and oh how funny it was to be there -- the horror that I felt when her prized bush was literally destroyed at my hand. I remember thinking that whomever mows the lawn next will hit it, it will fall over and they will think that they destroyed the bush.
Oh fun times -- please have a great day -- and BELIEVE that there will soon be a post with pictures.
3 comments:
Loved all of the postcards!! We miss you, are you coming our way anytime soon??
First off, AMEN!!!!! on the temper tantrum equation. So true, so true, but hardly any parents anymore get it. It's so annoying.
Second, I enjoyed the hilarious bush story. Steve, you remind me so much of Doug, especially when you said -- we had our own light business up by noon the same day. That is totally a Doug-type thing to do. Made me laugh!
Christmas lights are inexpensive, chic, and can make every place instantly feel warmer and cozier. We should find qualified one for christmas light installation
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