HGTV: Eat Your Heart Out!

We hereby nominate ourselves for the award of Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Reclamation or Salvage or Something. Essentially we're very proud of what we did with our old billiard table.

We purchased this table back in 2001 (from Craigslist no less). We loved the woodwork and although the manufacturer had long gone out of business, we were able to estimate the table was probably made in about 1917.

Alas, in 2009, we packed the table in crates as we made the first of several moves. Unfortunately, previous homes did not have the space or we did not have the inclination to unpack and set it up. (Plus it costs money to have it done right.) But finally, when we arrived at our current house last September, we picked out a room and decided to set it up.

The day before the installers arrived, I went around gathering up the miscellaneous pieces and parts and brought them to the new game room. I picked up the four rails and unwrapped them from their protective cloth. I tried to figure out how they pieced together and that's when I realized there should have been six rails. Uh-oh.

We looked all over the house and garage but could not find the missing rails. I figured we must have left them at our last house in the huge detached garage.

The next day, the billiard guy stopped by, and I told him our tale of woe. I figured somehow we could get replacement rails.

"Your best bet would be to contact the manufacturer," he said. "They could probably make replacements."

"Yeah they've been out of business for forty years."

"Hmmm, well, when you find them give me a call back," he said as he left.

We knew we would never find them or get them back. Now we were stuck with a good looking antique empty shell of a table. Then it hit me, with the walls and the sunken middle, it sure looks a lot like a ...

craps table!  That's right, we now have live Las Vegas action gaming in our game room!  We just put some plywood down, ordered the felt and St. Pauli Girl worked her magic to add padding on the walls of the table.

We used the slate as the bartop for our new bar.

At this point I would like to point out that this table is strictly used for entertainment purposes and all chips used are worth exactly zero dollars and cents.  The owners of this house and craps table neither approve or disapprove of gambling.  If you feel like gambling has devoured your soul, we urge you to seek help from problem gambling resources.

 

I can assure you that this house runs a very honest, fair game.

So Property Brothers, Rehab Addict, Waco Fixer Uppers, Hilary and David, you can all stick that in your peace pipe and smoke it ... Or wait, you can all get wheelbarrows of cash, I mean, worthless chips, come on over and let's throw some dice!

Should Have Sold It

My father-in-law once told the story of someone trying to dispose of some old furniture. The gentleman put the furniture in the front yard with a sign that said "free." After a week, no one had bothered to grab it so the man replaced the "free" sign with a "$20" sign instead. The furniture disappeared later that night.

Luckily in these modern times, hordes of people are constantly scanning Craigslist ads for free stuff. I am quite certain that I could post an ad for "free case of empty motor oil cans and a box full of used diapers. Act now, and I'll throw in a broken rake." And I would be contacted within the hour. Then I would get email messages for another week asking, "you still got those empty motor oil cans?"

Our most recent house had an old wooden free-standing swing in the front yard:

We didn't much care for it and would probably never use it. We put it on Craigslist, free to anyone who wanted to come haul it away. Sure enough, within an hour, a gentleman by the name of Enos said he would come get it.

A little while later, Enos sent a text asking for directions to our house. This didn't look promising as most people who are familiar with the internet and Craigslist are usually pretty familiar with how to find maps to addresses. An hour later, Enos still hadn't shown up while another dozen responses rolled in hoping to claim the swing. We texted Enos who said he would come the next day.

Since I work from home, I kept an eye out for Enos. At about 10:00, I saw a pickup truck in the driveway and a couple of people messing with the swing. I texted St. Pauli Girl that the swing had been removed so she could take the Craigslist ad down. A little while later, I glanced back outside. The truck and the bench seat from the swing were gone, but the swing frame still stood in the front yard.

"No big deal," I thought. "Probably didn't have enough room in the pickup. They're probably coming back for a second load or getting some tools to disassemble the frame."

But Enos never came back. A flurry of texts went back and forth between St. Pauli Girl and Enos:

St. Pauli Girl: Are you coming back for the rest of the swing?

Enos: No, it wouldn't fit in the truck.

St. Pauli Girl: But I was offering you a swing. You just took a seat.

Enos: We can just put some hooks in the ceiling and hang the seat from there."

St. Pauli Gir: Or... or... or you can take the frame, and you won't have to bother with hooks.

Enos: Oh, well we already sold it.

So I guess we get to test my theory that you really can get rid of anything on Craigslist with our new ad: "Free wooden frame. Would make a great swing. Just needs a seat."

And if that doesn't work, I'll take my father-in-law's advice and put a "$20 for sale" sign on it.

A Tip for Great Service

I've recently noticed a lot of articles arguing that the U.S. should eliminate tipping in restaurants and replace it with service charges or higher prices. While I mostly agree with the premise, I think most of the arguments against tipping are wrong. For instance, one common argument is that tipping does not result in better service because you tip after the meal/service. Well if you really want good service:

Many years ago, an uncle told me about his trips to Las Vegas and how to live like a big shot. He would go sit at the hotel pool and order a drink. When the server brought the drink, he would hand her/him an extra $20 and say, "Make sure that glass is never empty." You know who got great service? My uncle.

In my youth, I spent one summer working at a convention center setting up rooms/stages/banquet halls/dance floors for various meetings, receptions and conventions. Despite the manual labor, most of the time we sat around in the big easy executive chairs while smoking and running away to hide when the bosses came around. One week, a large appliance convention rolled into town. We met the head guy for the convention, and he pointed out how he wanted the room set-up.

Just as I started to pretend we had another room to go set up, he pulled a wad of cash from his pocket and handed $20 each to my co-worker and myself. "I trust you'll be around," he said.

You know who got great service? That appliance convention.

We pretty much stayed by that guy's side all week and even helped unload two trucks full of dishwashers, washers and dryers, and stoves. By the end of the convention, we had pulled in an extra $100 each in tips which was $100 more in tips than I made all summer. (At this time I'd like to apologize to the family reunion that didn't have enough chairs that week. Seems like we were too busy with the appliance convention to help you out.)

As many long-time readers may recall, St. Pauli Girl and I owned a restaurant for six years. One day I studied our liquor invoices and wondered why we had ordered a bottle of Glenlivet 18 year old Scotch as we already had plenty including the 12 year old Glenlivet. I asked our bartender who said, "Oh yeah, someone called and requested it. Said he would come here more often if we had it. Don't worry, you're going to love this guy."

Later that night, this man (we'll call him Felix), came in with a rather loud, rowdy party of six. When they got to the table, he handed the hostess $20 then went to the bar, ordered a Glenlivet (18 year old) and tipped the bartender $20. You know who got great service? Felix and everyone he ever came in with.

Felix came in almost weekly always with four to eight people. When he walked in the door, the entire front of house staff would practically mob him to say hello, hug him and hopefully get a little cash. Felix knew everyone's name and anyone new on the staff made it a point to stop by his table and introduce himself/herself.

Felix happened to be a very picky eater. In fact, Felix didn't really order from the menu. He ordered one of our pasta dishes with sauce we used on another dish and "absolutely no cheese! If cheese is anywhere on the table, I'll go crazy and never come in here again."

You know who gets to special order their own entrees that aren't on the menu? Felix and anyone else who throws out cash like rice at a wedding.

I never really came to love Felix as our bartender had suggested I would. Probably because he didn't tip me although one of his friends did buy my Guinness necktie from me for $50. But he always made the place more lively, and the staff loved him.

So even if the U.S. does totally get rid of tipping someday, we'll never truly really get rid of tipping because some people just like living large. And it's no different than politics. You know who gets great service from an elected official? The people that gave the politician a lot of money before the politician won the election.

Of Mice and Cats

If you have never lived in a drought area, you might be surprised that one of the side effects is the attractiveness of your home to mice and other rodents. Yes, we live in a drought area.

We first became suspicious when our cats would sit very still in front of the refrigerator for 15 minutes at a time as if waiting for something to come out from underneath. But of course they could have also just been hoping we'd pull something out of the refrigerator to feed them.

St. Pauli Girl first noticed the mouse droppings in our pet food cabinet right before Christmas. We immediately went into the first stage of denial and assumed they had been there since before we moved in or the mice had gotten their fill of pet food and moved on.

A few days later, we were having happy hour at the kitchen table when I noticed a blur out of the corner of my eye. I looked around and chalked it up to an illusion. But then I saw the mouse scurrying across the kitchen floor and underneath the cabinets.

"I see the mouse," I whispered as I remained as still as possible. "It's under the cabinets and looking right at me."

St. Pauli Girl wanted to get closer to see, but I urged her to remain still as well. The mouse moved a few steps closer and looked at me again. I'm not sure why I waited for it to get closer. I doubted that I could dive on the floor and catch it.

The pet food cabinet had originally been the location of the kitchen sink when the house was built 50 years ago. So it had ventilation holes in the bottom of the cabinet that hung out over the floor. The mouse looked at me one last time then ran to the cabinet and climbed up inside through the ventilation hole.

"Ha! He's trapped," I shouted as I jumped up. "We've got him now!" I ran to the other room and grabbed one of our cats. "Dinner time," I told her.

I carried her to the kitchen and set her in front of the cabinet. I pulled the cabinet door open. "Go on, get the mouse!"

The cat just looked up at me as if to say, "why did you wake me from my deep sleep?"

She stood still, and if she smelled the mouse, she really didn't care. But then my plan backfired as our dogs, old Bo and puppy Bonny, saw the cat on the floor and immediately charged. They all took off running, screeching and barking to other parts of the house. We were on our own.

We pulled the various pet food containers out only to find an empty cabinet. There were more ventilation holes in back through which the mouse had probably gone back into the wall.

Now that we had an actual mouse sighting, we went from the denial stage to the hunting stage. We bought several mouse traps and placed them in strategic spots throughout the house. But three days later, the traps remained empty.

A few nights later, we sat at the kitchen table again when I once again saw the mouse creeping along the floor beneath the cabinets. This mouse was huge; he made Gus from the Cinderella movie look like Dolph Lundgren. Apparently he enjoyed our generous servings of pet food. He tried to climb up into the pet food cabinet and got stuck. But this time, the dogs were on it; I didn't even bother to wake up the cats.

Bonny immediately latched onto the mouse's tail and tried to pull it out, but the mouse put up a fierce resistance. After several minutes, the mouse finally came out of the hole in a desperate attempt to escape. But the resilient Bonny kept at it, grabbed the mouse in her mouth and appropriately carried it to the dining room.

We didn't want Bonny to dismember the mouse in the dining room so we encouraged her to take it outside. Big mistake. She lost her grip, and the mouse scurried away.

A few nights later, we were relaxing in front of the fire in our living room with Bo and Bonny sleeping at our feet. Our cats were sleeping somewhere far away, probably in the lushest chairs they could find.

Suddenly St. Pauli Girl yelled, "The mouse!" as it scurried out from behind a curtain.

Bo and Bonny jumped into action chasing the mouse back behind the curtain. But this time they would not be denied. The mouse darted about, but they kept after it. Finally, Bo, who is about 98 in human years, managed to grab the mouse in his mouth. Sensible Bo headed straight for the door where we let him outside to finish up the grisly business.

Later we hailed Bo the conquering hero while making sure we didn't make enough noise to wake up the cats. So apparently you don't have to teach an old dog new tricks which is great because you can't teach cats anything.

Flying on the Ground

We continue from the previous post with more "Great Moments in Customer Service."

Several years ago, I made it a personal policy that a trip must be more than 1000 miles before I will consider flying. It's not that I am afraid of flying; it's just that I have found a 1000 mile trip in a tiny car with no air conditioning, screaming kids, bald tires and tornado warnings is just as pleasant as a 1000 mile flight. Usually we even drive the 1200 miles to visit my family, but I found some cheap airfare for the holidays, and we decided to fly instead.

The travel experience went pretty well even though we could only fly within 120 miles of our destination and had to drive the rest of the way. The final leg of the journey home involved a short flight from Dallas-Fort Worth to our small paradise here in the Great Republic. As we sat on the plane and neared our departure time, the captain came on the intercom and said, "Well folks, we're all set to go. We're just waiting to get fueled up. I keep calling for the fuel truck, but no one is answering the phone."

Although ensuring planes get the necessary fuel would be considered the primary part of the job of the fuel truck operator, I decided I would shrug off this inconvenience. Everyone has a bad day now and then. Plus, we're already on the plane for the last leg of the journey, not much else could go wrong.

The fuel truck eventually showed up, and we departed maybe twenty minutes late. After a short flight, we touched down an hour later at our home airport.

"Isn't it nice we live so close to the airport now?" St. Pauli Girl asked. "We'll probably be home in ten minutes."

The plane taxied from the runway then stopped just short of the gate area. The captain's voice came over the intercom, "Well folks, there's another plane currently at our gate. He should be on his way shortly. We'll have to wait here a few more minutes."

Let's review our time dictionary:

If you say:                               I hear:

Just a second                          1 to 5 seconds

In a moment                           5 to 30 seconds

In a minute                             30 to 90 seconds

In a couple of minutes            1.5 to 2.5 minutes

In a few minutes                    2.5 to 3.5 minutes

In five minutes                       4.5 to 5.5 minutes

15 minutes                            Oh no

A long time                           I'll never hear from you again

Even if you don't totally agree with my chart, I think we can all agree that "a few minutes" is a lot less than "30 minutes" which is how long we waited for that plane to move. And this is a small airport. There are only eight gates of which only five are actually used. How hard could it be to go to another gate?

Finally, the plane started moving to the gate area. You could hear the entire cabin sigh in relief. The plane maneuvered toward an empty gate 8. Then suddenly, the plane did a complete 180 degree turn back to where we came from then stopped again. The captain's voice came on again, "Well folks, we're not quite there yet, we just had to move out of the way for another plane that just landed."

I watched in awe as the other plane pulled up to an empty gate. I could see passengers standing up, ready to disembark. About five minutes later, our plane started moving again. This time I could see a crew set up to guide our plane to a gate. We finally managed to get off the plane 45 minutes after having landed.

I went to retrieve the car while St. Pauli Girl waited in baggage claim for our lone bag. I pulled up to the baggage claim area only to find a long line of cars ahead of me. They were all idle and no one seemed to be exiting the terminal. Another twenty minutes passed with no sign of action. I tried to call St. Pauli Girl but she didn't answer. I noticed a few people with baggage come out of the terminal. I pulled out of the line of cars and decided to double park by the door. When I got there I saw St. Pauli Girl with no luggage. She reported our luggage hadn't come off the plane yet.

Turned out that our wonderful airline had only two people working that night. They had to load up the plane that we had been waiting to clear the gate and handle our plane after we parked. At the same time. I'm pretty sure those flights had been on the schedule for a few months. I'm pretty sure a smart cookie supervisor could have scheduled enough people or called in someone on fear of losing his/her job or death.

We eventually got our bag and made it home two hours after having landed. (Did I mention we live five minutes from the airport?) But to top it all off, we paid $25 for the expert handling of our luggage! I'm pretty sure I could have offered anyone in the terminal $20 to go retrieve our bag from the plane, and we'd have gotten it within five minutes.

So I've decided to update my policy: 1500 miles or less, we drive.

Carjacking Versus Valet Parking

Like a lot of people, we did some traveling over the holidays. That can only mean one thing: another episode of Great Moments in Customer Service!

One night, my brother and his wife treated the entire immediate family to dinner at an upscale steak house which we shall refer to as Ruth's Chris because that was the name of it. After a fantastic evening of great food, drink and cheer, we ambled to the parking lot where the alert valet had already brought our cars up. Except for one.

My brother and sister-in-law were the last to leave. As they looked around for their car, the valet mumbled something like, "I'm sorry. I can't find your keys."

Now I'm not an expert, but I would think that the most important thing they teach you in valet training is to always secure the keys. Sure, parking and retrieving the car are important, but really, the whole enterprise falls apart if you don't secure the keys. Instead, his training apparently consisted of:

A. How to burn rubber

B. How to fishtail the car in reverse into a parking space

C. How to jump curbs and do wheelies in SUVs.

D. Always remember to change the radio station to something awful and crank up the volume

E. Scour for loose change in the seats

F. If we have time, we'll teach you how to store the keys

You might think, "Yes, that was an unfortunate incident, but you just get the spare keys, and it's just a minor headache."

But it was much worse.

Imagine Monty Hall came into the parking lot during dinner to play "Let's Make a Deal" with the valet. Monty tells the valet, "I will let you pick any car on the lot, and you will give me the keys to that car. If by the end of the night, that car owner is still able to leave in a timely manner, I will give you what's behind door number three. If not, you get the goat behind door number two, and you're fired."

A smart valet would probably pick an older vehicle which perhaps he could get into with a coat hanger and then hotwire so the owner could eventually leave. Unfortunately, this valet picked my brother's car which was probably the worst possible choice because:

A. The car was very expensive

B. It had one of those new fangled computer programmed locks where you can't even insert the key in the door (much less a coat hanger)

C. The spare key was 400 miles away

D. My brother had to leave town the next morning (preferably in his own car)

E. My brother and sister-in-law are lawyers

After awhile, there wasn't much more the apologetic valet could do other than grovel. My brother approached the manager of the steak house to notify him of the incident. Having just spent a few grand on dinner, he thought maybe the manager of an upscale joint would send out some cooks and servers to search the parking lot for the missing key. But apparently upscale does not translate to this steak house's service. The manager responded more like the manner of service you could expect from an airline, the DMV, Leavenworth prison, or maybe North Korea.

The manager simply noted that the valet service was a contractor, and the restaurant had nothing to do with it. Sure that's all nice and legal, but you're pretty much admitting that one night you might have valet parking and the next night it just might be carjackers. You just never know.

My brother ended up with a rental car to drive home. They towed his car to the nearest dealership where it had to wait three days to get a new key properly programmed. Then the car had to be transported 400 miles to his home where it now happily resides once again.

On the bright side, I learned that you are not necessarily being cheap by avoiding valet parking, because apparently what goes on in a Ruth's Chris parking lot, stays in the parking lot. Unless it's your keys.

Up on the Rooftop

We didn't put up outdoor Christmas lights this year. (Not that we have ever set up a spectacular winter wonderland in the past; we have always put up a modest string of lights or two just so the neighbors didn't think we were a family of Scrooges.)

Simply put, I looked at the outside of our new house and realized lights could not be put up without climbing up on the roof. Longtime readers will think this is because of my recent ladder incident. Although there may be a smidgeon of truth to that, the real reason was that in my old age, I have become scared of heights.

My 12 year-old self would never have believed this. Although I certainly never did handstands on the edge of tall buildings, heights never bothered me, and I sometimes very much enjoyed them.

Back in the day, my family annually put up a somewhat elaborate display of Christmas decor including lights, wooden reindeer pulling a wooden sleigh carrying a wooden Santa Claus. After getting vandalized one year, we started putting the reindeer and sleigh on the roof as appropriate. Our two story split-level house had a lower roof on one story and a higher roof on the two-story side. Originally we put the reindeer on the lower roof but decided people might miss it if coming down the road from the opposite side. So my brother amazingly convinced my parents that we should put the reindeer on the higher roof.

We set up our ladder on the lower roof only to find it didn't quite reach. I think we were going to try it anyway by climbing up as high as possible, grasping the overhanging ledge with a hand or arm and then pulling the rest of our bodies up. Luckily smarter minds decided we should borrow the neighbor's ladder instead.

Our house also had a basement which actually sat above ground on the side and in the back. This meant a three story drop from the top roof to the concrete driveway. Of course the first thing we did up on the roof was to glance down to appreciate the long drop. Then we sat and took in the panoramic view thinking we could see the entire world. Setting up the reindeer wasn't much fun, but I loved being up on the high roof.

Flash forward thirty years to find myself standing on a ten-foot step ladder getting ready to climb on the roof of my one-story house. From the step-ladder, I would have to throw my body onto the roof while I imagined myself quickly sliding down the slope and down onto the patio below. I stood on the ladder a long time before I finally talked myself into it. I survived and learned that using the step-ladder wasn't so bad.

Ten years after that, we now had an extension ladder which should have made climbing onto the roof even easier. After a big hailstorm, I watched roofers all over the neighborhood practically sprinting up ladders and stepping onto roofs. I decided I could do the same. After chickening out a few times, I climbed up the ladder without thinking and without stopping. I made it to the roof easily.

I spent about an hour cleaning up debris and cutting branches from an overhanging tree. As I cleared the debris, I realized I wouldn't get closer than five or six feet from the edge. The closer I got, a nervousness grew in my stomach. I imagined myself getting dizzy and threw branches from as faraway from the edge as I could.

"This is strange," I thought. "I've never felt like this before. I still remember running around on the top roof of my parent's house never worried about falling."

When I finished I walked back to the ladder and sat down on the roof. I realized I would have to go to the edge to climb down the ladder. I slowly slid down the roof from my sitting position until I rested next to the ladder. I turned and tried to set my left foot on a rung only to push the ladder away. Luckily it didn't fall but that made me sit back down and rethink my predicament.

After a few more failed attempts, I realized the ground was only about ten feet down. A jump wouldn't be so bad. Or better yet, if the gutter could support me, I could just slide down, hold onto the gutter then drop easily to the ground. I seriously contemplated this until I realized the gutter would never support me. Twenty minutes later, probably too tired to care anymore, I finally managed to slowly get my feet on the ladder and climb down.

There are other incidents which make me think I'm scared of heights now, but being afraid to go on the roof has mystified me. Maybe it's just a matter of age perspective:

Twelve-year-old self probably looked down and thought, "If I land just right and drop to the ground like a paratrooper, worst case scenario is a broken arm or leg."

Current self looks down and thinks, "If I fall, best case scenario is a broken arm or leg."