Moooon Riiiiveeerrr! Or another "C" word

Time to come clean about a couple of things:

I'm not Brad Pitt, dressed in fake ears and hiding behind a bush making favorable noises about carrots.

I'm not a real bunny. That is in the sense of my leporidianic genes have always been pushed into sitting in a corner playing third string behind a jock-like clique of homo-sapien bully chromosomes.

I'm not thirty.

But I can remember being thirty.

Sort of.

In fact, late last year I celebrated a birthday that came with a complimentary card from my health insurance provider reminding me it was time to train the home movie camera where the sun don't shine.

Happy Birthday. Time for a colonoscopy.

I went to see my provider, Dr. "Butt" Diver and the crew of the Anal Explorer last July to have him comment that with a certain birthday coming up, it was time for a brand new adventure for "Butt" and the crew. This is part of the reason that my follow up visit seems to have slipped into the following March.

But "Butt" was unperturbed and reminded me again it was time to snake Candid Camera into a dark corner and "we thought it would be funny if..."

Sigh.

Most of my friends are hitting this milestone and we daily commiserate on email about the friendly reminders we're getting on an daily basis. Now that I'm in the crosshairs, I'm doing my best to sing along. I don't mind and despite a lot of bitching, I'll eventually sign up for some good general anesthesia and belly sleeping.

There are just two things that bother me. Things I have to share.

One would be the process of sweeping out the halls the night before.

Two would be the idea that with my luck, I'll wake up and have a nurse hand me a cigarette.

"Here, at this point, it really doesn't matter."

A toast to all my mid century compatriots.

Bunny on.

Its still 11pm on the 30th!

If angst is associated with late December and what to select in a wall calendar for the upcoming year, you might consider two things;

1) Instead of making the commitment to one theme for the year, enthralling as "Mice Portraying Major Shakesperian Characters" or "Gremlin Power: The AMC 70's Glory Years" may be, try investing in more than one datekeeper and change themes with the seasons.

2) You really should have more important things to worry about.

But before you count out the second scoop in your raison's d'etre, let's think about point one. It's where I have my year going and, quarter by quarter, a new angle on life will be exemplified in an 8 1/2 x 11 color reproduction with pithy captions.


2012 Heroes: Men of the Sassamansville Volunteer Fire Company

January: Earl Schussnig

Earl drives Ladder one, although with no structure in town being over two stories, he sometimes wonders why. A seventeen year veteran, he's never lost a foundation.

February: Dave Stollsfus

Dave's specialty is accident rescue and no one can forget when he used the jaws of life to pull the case of Coors from the burning wreck back on 63 and Big Road before the heat skunked the beer.

March: Mick Economy

Mick's the bartender on off hours and remember, moderation counts. When you can't find the door, you're cut off, friend.

2012 Cuisine Showpieces: Women of the Royal Fork and Spoon Gourmet Buffet

April: Dierdre (juice machine) lives in town with her two daughters who have different last names. She dreams of ocean cruising and being able to upgrade to steerage.

May: Anne (hot entrees) knows just how to accent fresh whole flounder by subbing a stuffed olive for the eye to give you that "guilty" stare.

June: Wendy (chinese sterno hot trays) won't let you sneak that second won ton past her! She hopes to make head cashier by attrition and natural cause death on the job.

2012 Hobby Wonderlands: The Men of Model Railroading

July: Cory hails from Brookfield, Wisconsin. He's 5 foot 9 and weighs in at 112 and likes cuddling, walks on the beach, F units and eastern Appalachian coal haulers.

August: Jim's a native Nebraskan six foot husker and a sturdy 265. Can't fool Jim, he's a dyed in the wool open grid benchwork and hard shell scenery man. Ooooh!

September: Andy is quiet and reserved and would rather spend an evening in conversation than at a bar or club. Look deep into his eyes to find out if snap track and ready to run really did ruin the beauty of scratchbuilding. Andy likes Conrail and hopes you do too.

2012 Spirits of the Season: Couples of the State Store

October: Ray and Luwanda (State Store 4910-Lycoming) Here's a fun twosome who won't ever not price check your box wine over the loudspeaker.

November: Enid and Emil (State Store 1310-Beaver Township) "E and E"s discriminating taste buds will always lead you to the perfect Pouille-Fuisse. Just ignore that they pronounce it "pull yer fuse."

December: Santa and the Missus (State Store 48-Allentown) Let "Santa" entertain the kiddies while the Missus directs you to the perfect holiday grain alcohol for your punch base and please take me with you the old drunk falls into a funk on New Year's that lasts until August!!!!

See you next year!

Bunny on.

Radio Killed The Radio Star

An inordinate amount of time was spent this past weekend resurrecting the car radio. The radio was brought back from its self induced coma a few years back in about ten minutes over a small glass of decent whiskey.

I must be sixfold more stupid today than I was those few years back.

The battery died then, and the radio has the feature of encoding itself into a secure, non-playing state whenever power is cut off at the source. Its a security feature, the theory being that if the radio were stolen, its power source would be cut off and it would be essentially useless in another vehicle or connected to a power source, resting attractively on a coffee table somewhere. It won't work again until you punch in the right code.

Great in theory but in practice, there are holes. For starters, who knew? I mean, when I fired the car up after having the battery disconnected, the radio gave me a funny numeric code and then said "Safe" on its display.

Yes, I felt safe at the time and presumably so did the radio, but I would have felt safe and entertained had it been playing soothing music as well.

So unless you hang a sign in the window warning potential crooks that you're going to need a code to re-set this thing, and they bother to read it, you're still going to come back to a busted window and a hole in the dash through which the wind can be called "Mariah."

Of course, the thief might return said purloined radio to you with a note:

"By golly, you got me. No code, you smart fellow you. Guess you win this round."

Fondly,

Peter R. Pertrapor

So I poked and prodded the thing but to no avail. Then once home whipped out the owner's manual to have thing tell me about the secret code. The code was of course printed on the back of the code card which I was advised to tuck in a safe place outside of the vehicle. I of course followed that advice, twelve years ago when I bought the car. Now, three houses, four wallets, sixteen dozen safe places later the owner's manual might as well read:

"The radio code is printed on the back of the radio card. Ensure that this card is not in the vehicle. Take it out of the vehicle, set it on fire and hide its ashes in bits across three non-contiguous states. Learn to hum or whistle."

The code was reprinted on a new vehicle checklist that was filled out before I took posession of the car. I had the list because it was the first thing I snatched from the dealer and stuffed into the nether recesses of the glove compartment, greedily wanting the bill of sale and keys instead. The checklist noted that a pre-delivery inspection had been performed and that the battery was properly charged, the doorlocks worked and the tires were correctly inflated. When I found it last weekend I noted that "brake rotors in round and balanced" wasn't checked so admittedly the first time I braked at speed, I should have expected the car to do a conga dance across three lanes.

Now having the checklist and the code, I went right back to the radio and punched the code in, dutifully transposing the first two digits in a fit of numeric dyslexia that from time to time grips me, resulting in awkward apologies to wrong numbers on the phone and stops at a massage parlor instead of the the optometrist I thought I punched into the GPS. Unfazed, the radio promptly shut me down and locked me out from re-entering the code again.

Neener neener neener.

This aloof behavior was not detailed in the owner's manual. Rather I found out on the web that after two errant attempts, one was obliged to wait an hour after which all would be re-set and you could try again without prior penalty.

Don't you wish marriages were like that?

Telling the story to a friend this morning, he commented that perhaps I should not disconnect the battery. Not practical, said I, as I need a power source for the weekend squirrel executions.

Truth be told, we disconnected the battery in order to re-set the engine computer. To get the "check engine" light to go off, we replaced manifold bypass hoses, installed a new PCV valve twice, replaced the OXS and finally put in a new manifold aspirator. But the thing kept faulting so we cut the battery, lit a few candles and chanted "forget, forget" over the transaxle for an hour.

Seems to have worked.

On leased vehicles with mileage caps, I might try it again. Or re-connect the poles backwards so the odometer reverses when you drive.

But seriously, when it finally occurred to me to key in the code such that the radio display matched the radio code I wondered how addle-brained I had become since I last swapped out the battery? Am I that dumber? Or can I attribute it to the season and the lack of visual and olfactory stimulus that comes with January? If everything's grey and smells vaguely of wet raincoats, is it a wonder that the difference between sleep and ten o'clock at the office is that the coffee has lumps?

Nah. Nice try. I'm stupider.

Bunny on.