First, I woke up at 9:30 this morning. Oops. Probably shouldn't have stayed up all night reading the new Harry Potter book. I was really surprised when Harry was killed at the end¹. I always figured that J. K. Rowling would keep the franchise going for a while yet.
Last night I actually subscribed to Yahoo! Personals. As in paid money to unlock some features, like the ability to contact potential matches. That seemed kind of important if I was to do anything other than window shop and send "icebreakers" (which are incredibly cheesy).
So I got this IM from a woman. Wow, that was quick.
Turns out she lives in Lagos and runs a business with her father providing raw materials to textile manufacturers. And she wants to know if I'd be interested in working for her. All I'd have to do is cash the checks that her U.S. clients write and I get to keep 10 percent and send the rest to her...
Yuh-huh. Make that one go away.
So next thing I do the personality tests, and set up my search parameters with things that I'm looking for. It's not a really exhaustive list, but it has some decent features. And I run a search that comes back with 153 potential matches (!), rated according to score. And at the top of the list is a 5/5 compatibility woman in St. Paul. I read her entry, and it actually looks good. Intellectual, strong, mid-30's, some compatible interests...
I write her an e-mail. More than an intro. Answered her "interest" questions. Mentioned how I wasn't looking for anything rushed, that I'd rather look to be friends first.
This morning, I had a response:
Sorry, not a good match. Good luck.
Well, shit.
I don't know what I expected, but it was something more than sentence fragments.
There were a couple of others that I pinged with short e-mails. Not particularly hopeful about those, but there seems to be a real scarcity of geek-creative type women on the personals. Or at least amongst my matches.
I know it's extremely doubtful that a personal ad will provide me with an actual, viable potential romantic partner. In a way I suppose it's silly to even try, as it does open me up to ridicule. But fer chrissakes, I was in a show where I wore nothing but a diaper and a pair of wings. I am no stranger to ridicule. And I suppose it's a lot like the lottery. If you don't play, you can't win.
At the same time, I should probably cease the active searching part. It's really kind of disheartening.
Then there was THE LETTER.
Yet another letter from the Minnneapolis Regulatory Services.
The drains on the north side of the house need to be capped.
Okay, I knew this, and it's not a horrible thing. It's not really an expensive thing, since I already have the concrete and such and the permit is free. The problem is that the north side of the house has a concrete sidewalk that as the house has settled has slanted toward the house, and if there is no drain, allows the rainwater to pool and run into the foundation. This is known as a Very Bad Thing™.
To fix this, I pretty much need to tear up the sidewalk along the north side of the house, trench it out, seal the foundation, install a french drain and compactible gravel, then re-pour the sidewalk. And since it's so close to the property line, I don't know if I can even do that. I don't know what the options are, but I may have to get by without the french drain on that side, because I don't know where it would drain to. I think I still have to tear out the sidewalk and seal the foundation, but I just might be able to get by with raising the existing concrete sidewalk slabs and injecting cement mix on the underside to level them out and slant away from the house. I think I'd still have to replace the two slabs where the gutter drains currently run, as those are likely going to have to come out so I can cap the drains below grade.
Just heard the unmistakeable sounds of a puppy whining. At first I thought it must be some trick of the ear, that perhaps I was hearing some far-off piece of furniture or equipment being moved and the squeaking friction of mismatched plastics was coming altered into my affection-starved mind. But no, as it continued, it had the plaintive whiny cry of a real puppy, and I had to go look. Sure enough, one of the guy's wives had come for lunch and brought the new basset hound puppy, who really wanted to get down and see everybody. I got some cute puppy time, which always makes things better.
It's bloody beautiful outside today. 77 degrees by the thermometer in my vehicle, and it felt cool.
I can't pass up a day like this to do some outside work (as much as I'd like to) so I'll probably be doing more block laying tonight. I also have Adrienne's thing to do, but I can do that after dark.
1. No, Harry doesn't actually die, it was a joke. In actuality, Ron and Hermione are taken aboard an alien spaceship and probed in a much nore descriptively graphic manner than I would have expected for a children's book.