A beautiful & busy weekend

The weather seems to have finally broke. (I'm sure by posting that I'm guaranteeing a mid-May blizzard).

And it's been gorgeous!

I took a half-day on Friday after a lunch meeting I had previously scheduled.

The terminal tower is now wearing an enormous Cavaliers jersey in honor of the play-offs. Go Cavs!

I went to Bedford to mow the lawn and found that my pear tree is already blossoming. I hope we sell it before I get to try some of those pears. But it's pretty none-the-less.

After mowing that lawn, I got Grandma some gas for her mower. And went home to pick up the other lawn mower so Mom and I could tag team the GIGANTIC Solon rental lawn. It was mow of a pain b/c the mower kept stopping b/c the grass was so long. When I got to the swingset left behind by a prior tenant, I noticed how rusty it was and decided to rip it out - WITH MY BARE HANDS! ROAR! It's quite cathartic to systematically remove a structure that not intended to move.

This being the truly first nice day of the year, I forgot about the damaging power of the sun and didn't put any sunblock on my bald head - resulting in a nasty burn. I fell asleep on the couch and woke up the next day feeling like someone had beaten me up. Mom said the same thing. This landscaping gig is hard work.

When I got up Saturday, I became Don of NY. I beat the Godfather game on wii eliminating all the rival families.

Then I met Greg at the rental to start painting. We went to Wal-Mart to get paint (hey, it's cheap) In the paint section it took us 15 minutes to find an associate to shake our paint. I noticed that all the cans of ceiling paint were dented and had dried paint on the side. I asked if she'd give us a discount because they were damaged.

"Unfortunately, I don't have the ability to do that," she told me as though her Wal-Mart superpowers were limited to telekinesis and doing inventory.

"Well, who can do that?"

"A manager," she retorts.

"Is there one around?" I questioned.

"I can page one," she said staring at me blankly, not moving.

"Would you?"

"Sure."

Now Greg will vouch that's how it went down. Wouldn't a rational person cut the crap and when someone asks for a service that requires a manager, immediately locate a manager? But we're at Wal-Mart, we've got to play by their rules. So she pages a manager. No answer. She pages again this time with "Customer is waiting" tagged on the end. No answer. She pages a third time with an audibly annoyed "customer is waiting." Still no answer.

"Apparently the managers don't want to talk to me today. Take the paint up to one of the people in the red vests at the front of the store and they may be able to help you," she says. By this point, figured Kevin was already at the rental house, which he was. So I wasn't going to wait around for the possibility of a red vester giving me 20% off a $9.43 can of paint. Maybe Wal-Mart should change their tagline to "Always low prices and the service to match."

So, Kev, Greg and I painted pretty much every ceiling we could find. And started on the kitchen. Then I went and traded the Godfather for some emergency room game for the wii, which sucks. I played that for a bit and then went to Mariella's.

We went to the bar at the corner of her street. She's never been there in the 4 years she's lived in her house. It was cool minus all the NASCAR crap (NASCAR: never got it. never will.) The owner gave us a complimentary house shot, the apple pie. It really does taste like apple pie! I'd go back for those. We watched the end of the tribe game (dammit although Hafner CRUSHED that ball) and then Cleveland All Pro Wrestling came on. It was at the same time embarassing yet completely awesome. They've ripped off everything from the WWE right down to the commentators, one badguy and one goodguy. Maybe I fashion myself a costume and try out. Fear the Killbasa and the Polish Boy. (Greg would be the Polish Boy.)