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Ms. Tent
Thursday, July 15 2004
I was back at that Red Hook bank yet again this morning. It was my fourth visit, and this time my was job was to replace a large component called a fuser in the industrial-sized Lexmark laser printer. A fuser is a device that heats paper to nearly Fahrenheit 451 so that the toner (a pulverized plastic) can melt and bond with the paper's microscopic fibers. It would have been an easy process, except my printer seemed to include parts that the tech support guy in Bangalore didn't seem to recognize on his. Another thing that added to my difficulties was the hovering presence of the plump bank employee, the one who looks like a piece of furniture in her tentlike skirts. Though she didn't have a happy look on her face, she seemed to enjoy standing around and getting in my way as I wrestled with the machinery, scowling and making bitchy, patronizing comments. Unlike most of my computer housecall clients, bank employees uniformly regard repairmen as subhuman incompetents.
After I was all done and the printer was operating properly for the first time in weeks, Ms. Tent came over and tried to expand my mission. Scope creep was the last thing I wanted, so when she asked if I knew how to make the Lexmark print envelopes, I admitted that I didn't really know that much about this particular printer model. (Indeed, everything I knew about it I'd learned from somebody claiming to have an American name in Bangalore.) True to type, Ms. Tent replied, "I don't mean to be insulting, but I'm not surprised." At this point I would have loved to say, "And I'm not surprised you're an overweight bitch who resembles a piece of tacky furniture." But I just bit my lip and smiled because I'm really working hard on my customer relations skills. Later when I was phoning in my "I'm leaving the site" call to the service franchise for which I'm a subcontractor, Ms. Tent came over and stood there hovering as she loves to do, eventually interrupting me to ask if I was talking to my manager. "No," I said curtly, and then, into the phone, "Could you please repeat what you just said?" Ms. Tent is the sort of person to whom it might be really satisfying to mail a tupperware of your own feces.
Julius the new kitten being sleepy under the teevee room couch.
My new drill press in the laboratory. Also note the wet saw, legos, and newly-insulated coffee pot.
Sally with some computer equipment in the laboratory.
Eleanor (near left) and Sally in the teevee room at the top of the stairs.
A dobsonfly on the screen of the laboratory two nights ago.
Pieces of me these days. I wanted to be sure I had a photo of how obscenely long I allowed my hair to get this summer.
I'm so pressed for time these day that even my stupid birdhouse painting project is a difficult hobby to justify. Nonetheless I worked on it anyway, finishing a second coat of overly-orange oil-based red paint and then blasting it with a thin top coat of overly-purple red spray paint. The goal was to make the birdhouse paint match the paint of the house, although I didn't quite pull it off.
Meanwhile little Julius the kitten is gradually adapting to his new home. He's proving to be exceptionally needy, following me around everywhere I go and insisting on lying on my keyboard whenever I'm at my computer. I have to put him in exile to get any work done.
Depending on what you've read on this site, you think of me as a somewhat predictable bicoastalite or a quasi-redneck hayseed who somehow managed to escape the land where people live in things they call "trellers." Both opinions apparently have some truth, because I just took the Red State/Blue State Quiz at Slate.msn.com and I came out precisely in the middle. I don't pay people to walk my dog during the week, I know when Rush Limbaugh is on, and I've fired a gun. But I know who Jon Stewart is, I've lived without a car post-college, and I know the difference between a co-op and a condo.
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