Since no one else we know has a heat pump for heating and cooling, you all should know that when the outside temperature drops, heat pumps lose efficiency. Moral of the story, heat pumps air condition pretty good, but at times, don’t heat well. Old heat pumps are worse. Ours was old. Hence the high tech wood stove.

This wood stove had an automatic fan that blows hot air from the stove casing. It turns on when the stove gets hot, even has three speed settings for when you really get it cooking. It also had this really nifty “ejecto-log” feature. When you load this thing with wood, you had to be really careful when you open the doors. If you’re not, the damned logs would fly out all over your living room. Burning logs. On the carpet.

By now you’re wondering how cleaning house on Sunday night deserves a detailed description of the wood stove. I’m getting there.

MB has (MB is my wonderful wife) done the dishes. I’ve folded the laundry. Now it’s time to dust and vacuum. MB notices the fire is almost out, and casually mentions to me to throw some wood in there. Knowing about the ejecto-log feature, I’m super careful. No logs fly out, new wood goes in, the doors get shut, and I move on to the dusting.

MB fires up the vacuum. First the entry hall, now the family room, and on to the living room. By now, National Geographic had this cool show on about the raising of the Monitor (Civil War famous ship), and I’ve forgotten all about dusting. I’ve also forgotten those two little embers that fell out of the stove onto the little lip on the stove that catches these little buggers so you don’t burn down the house. Evidently the manufacturers didn’t know about the ejecto-log feature or they’d have built a bigger lip.

MB goes on to the living room, vacuums up all those little log leavings in front of the beautiful white brick hearth for the stove. She takes the vacuum nozzle and sucks the stuff up on that lip. The embers, of course, were now black and looked very much like dust.

Until of course, they got sucked into the vacuum cleaner. You know what happens when you blow on embers? The same thing happens when you suck on them. Vacuums suck.

MB continues on behind the sofa. About then she notices all this smoke coming out of the vacuum. I hear something like, “Uh Bob!”. By now there’s LOTS of smoke coming from the vacuum, and all the smoke alarms in the house are telling us all about it.

MB takes the vacuum to the door, still vacuuming all the way, bless her heart. We get it on the deck, open it up, and, by God, the bag’s on fire. She yanks it out, throws it on the ground, where I douse the thing with the garden hose. I ask her why the heck didn’t she stop vacuuming. Her thinking was that this was the last chance to vacuum until we could afford a new one, so she had better get the stuff at the front door. Now there’s an example of keeping one’s cool under pressure.

Send your special someone a Singing Valentine. Every year, all across the country, the Barbershop Harmony Society chapters send out quartets to sing valentines.

The typical program is:

4 Men (The Sweet Adelines do this too, so it could be 4 women) show up at the location of your choice at the time you want.

They sing 2 love songs, and present a rose and a card.

The cost runs in the $30-35 range.

I’ve performed at homes, restaurants, offices, schools, anywhere is OK. The public reaction is fantastic, the reaction of the “target” of the valentine is priceless.

Go to www.singingvalentines.com to find the BHS chapter in your area that delivers valentines.

Having performed these valentines for a number of years, I can guarantee you that a singing valentine is a gift to remember. Your honey will be knocked off her/his feet.

For what it’s worth, my quartet (PayDirt in the links) will be out on Friday the 13th in the Placerville, California area. So if you’re local to us, you can request PayDirt for Friday (but not Saturday).

Do yourself a favor and visit the singing valentines site above. You won’t regret it!

Well it all started on the first day of USS Denver’s 1983 deployment. We were all of 200 miles west of San Diego, headed for the Far East. The ship’s new dentist ( AKA “Fang”, or the “Tooth Fairy”), had just reported aboard. It was his first time underway, and this time we were not coming back for six months.

The ship’s Navigator is the Officer of the Deck (OOD), meaning he was in charge of driving the ship. A man of inestimable talent and humor, as he looked back and saw the Tooth Fairy watching the helmsman, he hatched an evil plan.

He got on the sound powered phone circuit, and switched control of steering from the helm down to the steering gear room (literally just above the rudders). The helm on the bridge was now doing nothing.

Then he asked the Tooth Fairy if he’d like to steer.

This was an exciting proposition for the new guy, so he jumped at the chance. Of course, the whole crew knew what was going on. There’s an old Navy tradition about these kinds of practical jokes. You milk them for all they’re worth.

As is with everything in the Navy, there’s a formal procedure for relieving every watch. The OOD made the Tooth Fairy do every little bit of it. Finally, the Tooth Fairy settles in on the helm, which isn’t doing anything.

The OOD gets on the sound powered phone circuit again and tells the guys in after steering to go a little left, a little right, and generally do a bad job of maintaining course. Then the fun starts.
“Mind your helm!”, the OOD bellows. “C’mon Tooth Fairy, you can do better than that. The course is 265, stay on it!” The Tooth Fairy is starting to sweat. The OOD ups the ante by telling the guys back aft to make it worse. More yelling, more sweating.

The Tooth Fairy has about had enough after about 10 minutes of this, and finally asks the OOD to have him relieved. To which the OOD answers, “Just let it go, the guys in after steering have been steering for the last hour…” Much laughter and one under the breath oath to get even.

Six months later. That same OOD wants to have his teeth cleaned before we get back to San Diego, which is the very next day. The Tooth Fairy is more than happy to help.

At the Navigation briefing for entering port, we can’t help but notice that something is wrong. When pressed, he finally breaks into a grin, and we can see that the Tooth Fairy has painted the letters “NAVY” on his front teeth in indelible ink.

Payback’s a b-tch!

The ladies rest their case.

I am here today to admit and unequivocally prove to the world that I am, indeed, the King of the Morons.

A few years back, I was an unemployed high tech type for about eleven months. Give or take what feels like a decade. We survived financially by doing nothing, buying nothing, and going nowhere.

Many couples have “relationship trouble” at retirement. They’ve spent their lives apart during the day. When they’re both together all the time, trouble happens. MB and I spent two years working at home together, and then spent eleven months with her working and me watching. And now more years with both of us working from home. The good news is at least we’ll still like each other in retirement. The bad news is that we might be eating cat food. But I digress…

So now her birthday’s coming up. We’ve skipped our Anniversary, Christmas, Valentines Day, and just about any other special day you can think of. Life’s pretty boring when all you can afford for a night out is to hit the $8 Chinese Buffet. But her birthday is going to be different. I’ve got to do something special for her. But then, if I spend all of our money on her, she’ll be mad at me for that. Admittedly, it’s a fine line to walk, but I am up to the challenge!

I start planning months in advance. If I e-file the taxes, I’ll get what little money we do have coming to us before her birthday. Now, what can I do for her? I can’t really take her out to a first class dinner. Jewelry better than Cracker Jack quality is out of the question. Well, she hasn’t gotten her hair or nails done in months…

Now there’s an idea.

So the day our return hits our account, I’m out paying stacked up bills and making hair and nail appointments. The vet bill for surgery on our Saint Bernard eats up a pile of what cash we have, so I know I have to be careful. But I make the appointment for her on the morning of her birthday.

I get home, there’s one more bill to pay, the car insurance. The insurance office happens to be just down the road from the Department of Motor Vehicles, so MB wants me to drop off her driver’s license renewal. No Problem.

Then I think, “hey, I need to register the boat too.” One trip, two tasks. Gotta love it.

Paid the insurance, renewed her license, registered the boat. My boat.

Fast forward to the day before the big event. She knows what she’s getting, and she’s really happy. I check the bank balance. Seems like we’re a little short to be able to afford the hair and nails. How in the heck did THAT happen? Oh, there’s that check for the boat registration. Uh oh.

Summing things up: I register MY boat. Now we can’t afford her only, very small but very significant birthday present. Did I mention this is her 50th birthday? Did I mention that on my 40th, she threw a huge surprise party for me? Did I mention we don’t have guns in the house anymore? That’s why you’re able to read this.

Forget the Dog House, I’m in the whole damned Kennel.

There can be no doubt that I am, indeed, King of the Morons.

If you’re ever driving through Somerset, California, and see some knucklehead out there standing on his shirt with a couple of rocks in his hands, wave and say, “Hi!”

This is a story about one of my better screw ups…

Just remember that the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story is that a fairy tale starts with “once upon a time”, and a sea story starts with, “hey man, no sh-t!”.

So there I was. All set to go out on a Friday night. The ship had just pulled into its berth in San Diego; we were shutting down the plant for the weekend. Had to be back underway on Monday. The shorter the break, the more important the weekend.

The week before, the local repair guys, called SIMA back then, had made a repair on 1B main feed pump’s discharge piping. It’s tough duty, about 250 degree water under 900 psi pressure. Well, that weld broke. Just as we shut down.

It was my job to arrange to have it fixed over the weekend. So much for Friday night. I was P.O.’d in a big way. So I wrote two work requests. One to fix the pump, one for my own gratification. Work requests are written in a specific format:

“Here’s what happened” XXX “Here’s what I want you to do.”

The real request was pretty mundane. But not knowing when to leave well enough alone, I wrote a second, private, not intended for anyone’s eyes, work request. My “private” request was:

“A weld you incompetent assholes made broke XXX Request you send a different incompetent asshole down here to fix the son-of-a-bitch. If you can’t do that by Monday morning, I’m personally going to come down there and kick some ass.”

I’ll give you three guesses which work request actually made it to the Fleet Maintenance Center…

I still don’t know how it happened. Doesn’t matter now. Didn’t then either. I got a real good butt chewing from the Lieutenant Commander (LCDR) that ran the place. I got another one from our ship’s XO, and another one for good measure from the C.O. But dammit, they fixed the pump by Monday!!

There’s another part to this story too. About 2 years later, I’m getting out of the Navy. That LCDR was still there. By now we had become friends. Basically, I learned how to work the system quite well, helped improve it somewhat, especially on the computer side, and generally got a real good reputation on the waterfront. I could get things done. I was also running the only overhaul in San Diego that was on time and under budget.

But now it’s time to leave. I walk in to say good-bye to the good LCDR. I don’t have an appointment. He’s in the midst of chewing out an Ensign for his poorly written work requests, explaining how the system works, and impressing upon him the need to give the proper information in these requests. In the middle of this chew out, he opens his left breast pocket, hands a folded up piece of paper to this kid, and says, “Now THIS is how you write a work request.”

Give you three more guesses which work request it was.