Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Javier is Missing

Javier is a nice man. He has been our lawn care-taker for three years. He takes the winter off. Now it is spring, and Kev's parents are coming, and the lawn could use a nice mowing. So Kev called Javier. And Javier is gone! I am sad. I hope Javier is OK. If he went back to Mexico, I hope it is because he wanted to, and not because he had to. I thought things were going well for Javier last fall. He just bought a new truck. I will miss Javier. And now we have a family dilemma. Should we find a new lawn man? Should we buy a mower? What to do? Plus the yard looks pretty bad, and we have company coming in two days.

I was thinking of trying to take advantage of the latest reality/designing trend and start a show about cubicles, where people who work really hard get surprised a team of designers to help them make over their boring cubicles into fabulous cubilcles and it makes them happy and is good for company morale. Who's with me? I am taking suggestions for the name of the show. The cornier, the better, I say.

One thing I hate about my office and most offices is flourescent lighting. It makes my eyes hurt and makes my skin look green. All the people on my new show would get natural lighting lamps in their cubicles.

Bird of the day: The cedar wax-wing. This is the Fonz of the bird world. Look for them in large flocks in high trees. They are small and yellow-ish, with a black mask and a crest (like a cardinal or blue-jay). They have a shrill and quiet "song." They like berries, and will come down lower to eat them. When I get home I will try to find a picture of one to post. A very cool-looking bird.

2 comments:

K. said...

How about:

Extreme Cubicle Makeovers
Office Overhaul
Thinking Inside the Box
Cubicle Chic

Your show can air right after my new reality series, The Procrastinator.

Speaking of cubicles...once upon a time I worked with this dude named "Kent" (his real name). He was a little off, you might say. He wore fatigues to work every day and had a beard that Osama bin Laden would be jealous of. One day he decided to outfit his cube with a cardboard roof so he could sit in darkness, which made his aisle look like a shanty town. We all thought he was the Unabomber.

-K.

john clarke said...

With all due respect to the missing Javier, I'm a strong advocate of personal lawn care. During my teens, I viewed mowing the lawn as not only an extreme beating but also an allergy nightmare. But I started getting shots in 1996 which cured the allergy problem, so I gave lawn mowing another shot. And I dig it. It only takes about 40 minutes, depending on the yard. And when you're done, you get to stand back and marvel at a neat perfectly shorn carpet-like lawn.

A few suggestions on getting a lawn mower. I favor the cheap, no frills, push style gas powered lawn mower. They're more reliable without all the fancy stuff like bags and self-propelled wheels. And it's good exercise to boot. I don't bag my clippings --- I just mulch it back into the yard. It's better for the yard and more environmentally friendly.

You can get a cheap mower at Home Depot for $120. Trouble with becoming a lawn mower owner is you have to have a shed in which to store it. And you gotta lock it up. Lawn mowers are easy currency for the crackhead theifs who roam East Dallas looking for stuff to steal and pawn.

So join the lawn mower army --- the same thing as the KISS army but better suited for those of us in our 30s.