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The OHS website mandated that I update my profile, so here it is....
Sunday, December 12, 2021
To the class of last century’s year of 62:
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over now which means Emma and I are broke – again – and it’s time for the Christmas letter you have always cherished.
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain
This year, for the most part, has been spent playing with sheds. Naturally, a story is involved here, so bear with me. Years ago, there was a vacant lot between us and a neighbor to the northeast. The lot had an access-way to a woodshed that I had built (sorta), so our wood supplier could drop the wood very close to the woodshed. The lot finally ended up being sold to a jackass and his wife who are someday going to build a house on it. They immediately plopped a huge utility shed blocking our view and eliminating access to our woodshed! So, in a different location, we built a new woodshed (nicknamed the “Taj Mahal” – replete with chandelier and art work) - I tried to paste a picture here, but this website doesn't allow it.
I then modified (rebuilt) the original woodshed into an aptly named lawn implement shed - again I futilely tried to paste a picture here. There is a placard on the shed with the name "The Nutt House."
I’m still in the process of tweaking both buildings, but it is indeed fun and keeps me out of trouble – kinda. Most people send family pictures with their Christmas greetings; not me - I send pictures of sheds.
I bet it was pretty hard to pick up girls if you had the Black Death...
The pandemic has been a pain in the derrière, hasn’t it? First THE pandemic: Covid-19, then the dreaded Delta variant and now a new variant, Omicron. Who in the hell makes up the names of these things anyway?
However, one positive thing the pandemic has brought us is new entrepreneurial opportunities. Millions of people have carved a fertile but short career out of making face masks for millions of other people. What would the local sheriff have done 150 years ago if we were all wearing masks? He wouldn’t know who to lock up. And now there is an entirely new (at least to me) product called a gaiter. What in the hell is a gaiter?? When I hear that term, I think of a Florida reptile.
I have come up with an idea to make money off the pandemic. The perfume and cologne industry surely has almost run out of names for their fragrances. We could come up with pandemic related and other names to match or compete with existing names and sell those names to various companies: Poison: Vaccine ; Chanel #5: Covid-19; Kalvin Klein’s Shock: Insanity, Eternity: Alzheimer’s, Euphoria: Diarrhea, Shock: Gonorrhea; Jovan’s Fever: Flu, etc. And my pick-to-win new name would be Hemorrhage. I stole that from Victor Borge, my favorite concert pianist/comedian of all time. Sadly, Mr. Borge is dead now I believe. But, anyway, I think you get the idea – we could get rich off this pandemic.
If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments...
This year Emma’s younger brother, Roger Moore, and his side-kick, Marco Polo came up from Colorado to visit. Considering the cost of fumigating their house and repainting the bedroom we invaded, they figured it was cheaper for them to travel here than for Emma and me to visit them in Cortez, CO. I don’t know why they don’t just plant us in the tepee like they did the one year we were almost run over by a stampeding herd of buffalo. It was a lot of fun being with those two. We went to Centralia and terrorized a lot of flea markets and thrift stores. We did the same to establishments in Olympia. In one Centralia store Marco snuck away from us, sat at a table in the display window and pretended to be a mannequin. We were soon asked to leave the premises.
Each year that Roger and Marco come to visit, Emma and her elder brother, Methuselah, Roger and Marco go to the coal mining town of Wilkison to a cemetery where her grandparents are interred. They go there to paint the concrete lids on Emma’s grandparent’s graves and tidy up the surrounding area. They also tried in vain to find the cross someone stole from the graves – how crude, cruel and stupid. Methuselah’s contribution to the effort was not stepping into an open grave and staying in the shade….
Joan Rivers: “It's been so long since I've had sex, I've forgotten who ties up whom.
And, lastly but not leastly, this year we were visited by my favorite (only) niece, Jennifer – aka Carla (her juvenile-delinquent name), her almost grown-up teenage daughter, Hope, and her soon to be juvenile-delinquent, Jayse. The last time Emma and I had seen Jennifer was when she was attending Furman University (FU)in South Carolina on a soccer scholarship as a goalie. Emma and I were living in Mableton, GA, at the time and we even attended some of her games – at least one of which was in Tennessee. At the start of each game coming out of a huddle, it was a shock to hear the team scream at the top of their lungs, “FU!” I was elated!!!! Later I assisted Jennifer in her illicit activities involving the usage of a fake ID at various establishments to which she accompanied us in the Atlanta, GA, area, hence the alias, Carla. We thoroughly enjoyed the couple of days they were here with us this summer– alas, too short. I believe the role of motherhood fits Jennifer/Carla well, I don’t care what Hope and Jayse say….
A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband; a man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
About the only other excitement was the incident of scammers attempting to steal my money. A nice man with an Indian (Asian) accent telephoned saying Comcast was refunding $249 to us because of some undefined poor service they had inflicted upon us. Having experienced a lot of poor service from Comcast, that certainly seemed plausible to me. All I had to do was provide him with the name of our credit union, my account number, my social security number and the name of our first born. That’s where I fooled him; he didn’t know I had no children, so instead I gave him Emma’s name and SSN.
Fortunately, the people at Washington State Employees Credit Union are a bit more astute than I and are used to this kind of felonious activity. The credit union manager assigned a Wonder Woman to spend several hours setting us up with a different checking account number and blocking the old one. Want to know what the new number is?
A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband; a man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
Emma and Earl
Go Seahawks!!
