December 6, 2010
-
The Daily News
1 Yeesh. I ain’t no t00n. Whatevs. But my life IS a t00n. But I ain’t no t00n, dat’s for sure. To all you FBers out there let me be clear: I ain’t no t00n.
2 I thought I almost burned the house down last night. I even may have saved it from the Masters of the Universe. I’m sure that I did.
3 Allow me to begin. I was returning home from lesson plans at Kinko’s when it began raining.
4 I expected light rains, but not the drubbing we took early last night.
5 Consider that winter this year has not been too wintery at all, if you look back. Baseball kept going all the way into November. So it seems that Winter was suddenly thrust upon us, like a cleansing greatness from the heavens.
6 AnywayZ, on Saturday, I decided to tell the school to chill, and instead of working on school stuff, I did this fun Christmas light design in my front yard.
7 I cleaned the gutters, and then began.
8 I’m all about lighting, as most of you probably know.
9 So on Saturday, I was tech guy once more, which instantly puts me into the role of a cartoon character, since it involves a.) a metal ladder, and b.) electricity.
10 I spent hours upon hours checking my lights so they would work well. I was careful to protect all the sockets from rain and dampness. I used all the right things.
11 What I do is I light the house like any ordinary schmoe would, and then bring in the big guns: a red and a green malibu light, one for each maple tree. I have these huge maple trees in front, and I ground-light them, angling each of the lamps just enough to bring in a gentle color gradation going up the trunk. This year’s aim was perfect, as the ambient glow also picked up these large candy canes I planted in the lawn. So one tree is lit green, the other red, and the lights dance and mingle on the lawn, lighting up the candy canes.
12 I EVEN put all of it on remote. VERY cool. Push on, and the entire yard lights up!
13 The fun thing is, I don’t overdo anything; it just looks cool. I’m not Clark Griswald, or even Goofy. I’ve publicly stated all week that I ain’t no t00n.
14 So last night I came home from shopping at around five, and the lights were on. They looked nice, but the fun part of it is waiting for it to get dark, because lights always look much better when it is dark.
15 I spent most of the morning taking care of school biz so that I could live like a normal human being “after five”.
16 I had just come home, put some music on, and was in the midst of making a fresh salad when I looked out my kitchen window.
17 I have these Coca-Cola polar bears on my lawn, and I have a light blue light on them also. It’s barely noticeable because it almost looks like a slanting moonlight.
18 Suddenly the wind came, the sky opened up, and it began to rain.
19 When I looked out the window, I noticed that the polar bears were not lit, and that the green light lighting one of the maple trees was smoking.
20 I briskly walked outside when my normal paranoia set in. Was the entire house going to burn down? Can I get electrocuted if I use a remote out in the rain? If I push “off” will the entire place go up?
21 Logic dictated that the blue light was simply burnt out, and that the green one was angled up so that the rain was causing it to steam. I rested on that for about five seconds and then decided that I had better turn off all of them, just to be safe.
22 Again, my paranoia set in. Should I try the remote? Will it somehow cause a spark? Can electricity find its way back to me so that I light up like a seasonal skeleton? Am I Clark Griswald? Or even worse, am I a…
t00n????
23 Nightmare before Christmas.
24 I have this pair of Sloggers that I wore all summer. Sloggers are those rubber shoes that they sell on the way to the garden center at OSH.
25 I don’t often wear them out in public, because they sort of remind me of shoes that Goofy would wear. My life is enough of a cartoon as is, but I ain’t no t00n.
26 I’m very sensitive about that, because most times, I feel that my life is a cartoon, and that I’m sort of like Roger Rabbit.
27 So I had visions of pushing a button and suddenly having a surge of electricity shoot through me, expanding me to enormous proportions, ending with my eyes popping out, and then propelling me around the room until I hit a door, fall to the floor, and deflate to a tiny shadow.
28 And yet doing nothing might cause the entire house to burst into flames.
29 Is there ever a time in life when we can just relax?
30 Fortunately, my frabjous mind ticks and ticks constantly. I allow logic to dictate most of my paranoid structures, so within seconds, I lit up with an idea.
31 Sloggers are rubber. Car tires are rubber. I’ve been in HUGE lightning storms in the Sierra, and one thing I learned was that a car is a pretty safe place to be in a lightning storm, because of the tires.
32 Tires are made of rubber.
33 Sloggers are also made of rubber.
35 I think.
36 Anyway, my scientific mind set in, the logical side of my idiotic brain, and I decided to take the gamble and to push “off” on the remote. The steam or smoke or whatever from the green light began shooting into the night sky, challenging the very heavens themselves.
37 I took the remote, aimed it at the heavens and screamed, “By the power of Greyskull!” My cat suddenly turned into a beast.
38 I pushed “off”.
39 The lights all went off.
40 The cat turned timid.
41 But I am convinced that somehow, I kept my house not only safe from fire, but from becoming victim to the Masters of the Universe.
42 I ain’t no t00n.
43 But my life is a cartoon.
44 Happy December.
45 Peace.
~H~
