Fair enough. Who wants soggy cabinets?

When they showed up this morning (10 minutes late, which for Portugal in general and workmen everywhere, is right on time, or possibly early), I saw that the cabinet was shrink wrapped. Maybe they didn't want to get their hair wet.

"They" are the handyman guy and his teenage assistant. Handyman Guy is about four feet tall, has a bad seventies type perm, and generally looks like an extra from Welcome Back, Kotter. You could sit him in the front row between Horshack and Epstien and he'd fit right in. Now that I think of it, maybe he'd need to slap some Grecian Formula, but he'd be just fine if they ever do Welcome Back, Kotter: The Reunion. Which, you know, I hope they don't.

Whatever. I'm slowly falling in love with Handyman Guy because he is competent. He really does know what he's doing, and that makes a refreshing change, to say the least. He took it upon himself to check all the other kitchen cabinets, and replaced several cheap-ass plastic hangers. Right now, he's bolting several cabinets together, which is what should have been done in the first place. On inspection, a couple cabinets had been, but most hadn't-- whoever put them up in the first place either ran out of time or got lazy or both. And he's fixing the exhaust chimney over the stove, which looks like another wooden cupboard door but isn't, and has an annoying habit of swinging open. I've been wedging it shut with a wad of paper, which he found highly amusing but rather clever, if futile. (There was no way to do it with duct tape-- I tried.) (Speaking of which, this is a hoot. In fact, the entire site is something you need to see-- not just amusing, but useful, too.)

Now, where was I?

Oh yeah. So, I'm thinking this guy is too good to be true. Good guys like this never show up to fix things in our little universe. (Well, there were the Authorized Service Personnel who finally fixed our dishwasher, but remember-- we had had another guy try to fix it before and had been living with the problem for months thereafter. In OUR home, ASPs are a last resort.) I figured that there must be a catch somewhere and I thought I found it half an hour ago, when HG said that he needed some parts or tools or something. I asked him when he planned on returning, and he said he would be right back.

Right back. Yeah, like I was born yesterday.

Good handyman that he is, he saw that I was a wee bit skeptical, and clarified his answer. Ten minutes, he said, and I'll be darned if he wasn't back here in nine. (Yes, I did time it. I thought it might be amusing.)

So now all I have to do is wait for them to finish, put all my stuff back in the relevant cupboards, clean, and my kitchen will be back to normal.

I'm so happy.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I am finding it hard to believe that it's Thursday already. I think that Monday is to blame. I was incredibly exhausted, for one thing. I slept a bit later than usual (until about 9 or so), and spent the rest morning working on my stuff for the magazine. Elvis called in the afternoon, needing me to do some stuff for him. Urgently, so I did that right away. It took a while, and then it was time to hurry up and get ready to go into Lisbon. I hadn't even had lunch, and I'm rushing to the train to go to a dinner organized by Elvis' work.

And that's the problem right there: Who organizes a work do on a Monday night??

Work dinners are for Thursdays, or maybe Wednesdays or on the weekend. Not Mondays. Add in the exhaustion, and it's no wonder I can't tell what day it is. Today, for example, feels like a Wednesday. In fact, I had decided to finally go to the exchange library, which is only open on Wednesdays. I've got a bunch of books to donate and Elvis is running low on things he hasn't read and actually wants to, so I figured I'd go when they've finished with the cabinets. It's only open from 11:00 to 1:00 pm, so I was wondering if I would make it on time after all.

Just before I started this section, I realized that today is Thursday and it doesn't matter what time they finish because the library won't be open at all.

And I did know, at some level of my brain, that today is Thursday. We've got a happy hour tonight, and I sent out the reminders yesterday and everything. It seems that the many levels of my brain are suffering from a failure to communicate.

I guess this means I'll have to stay home and clean.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Saturday was a hell of a long day.

On Friday night, we decided to have a quiet, low-key evening. We thought maybe a movie, get home to bed at a reasonable time, wake up for the karting refreshed and un-hungover.

What we discovered is that "low-key" is a very relative term for our particular group of friends. We did go to the movies, and saw League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which was. . . not extraordinary. After the movie, we should have gone home. Instead, we went to the pub. However, we were sucessfully low-key in that: (1) we stayed until about 1:30 am, and thus did not stay until they kicked us out, as we all too often do; (2) we did not go to the Irish Pub, which is where we usually go if we decide to leave the pub before they kick us out; and (3) we did not go to the Late Night Bar of Evil, which is anything but low-key. So it wasn't all that bad. Relatively speaking, we had a shockingly restful and early Friday night.

Saturday, I got up at 6:30. Elvis got to sleep in until 7:30, but it didn't make him any more cheerful or easy to live with. Then again, the only time we're usually up at that hour on a Saturday is if we're just getting home. In any case, we made it to Joe's in plenty of time, the three of us picked up Pooka Boy and Dudess (neither of whom looked good at all), and we were off to the races.

I've written about the karting already (did I mention we had FUN?), and after that we drove back here and went to GBGB for lunch. It was raining again (I'm not sure if it ever stopped here-- the track we went to is about an hour to the north of us), and it was nice. GBGB overlooks the beach and has a corrugated metal roof, so we watched the wild surf and listened to the rain strumming down on the roof, and ate hamburgers and drank beer and were happy.

We also watched a guy in a wetsuit swimming in the bay, back and forth between two buoys. He was towing a bright yellow float behind him, so that the boats could see he was there.

Dudess: Watch. I'll bet you he goes seven laps.
Pooka Boy: What do you mean by "lap"?
Dudess: There and back, Dude.
Pooka Boy: Seven? No way. How far would that be?
Joe: A mile? Maybe two?
Elvis: Maybe he's one of those cross channel swimmers.
Dilettane: He has gone to the trouble to get himself all kitted out like that... Still, he must be nuts.
Joe: Insane. Without a doubt.
Elvis: He's crazy. It's fucking raining.
Dilettante: Well, he was going to get wet anyway.
Joe: It's not raining-- it's storming. What if there's lightning? He's mad!
Pooka Boy: Oh, no doubt about it.
Dudess: (shrugs)
Pooka Boy: I'll guess three. Or five.
Dudess: Dude, I'm telling ya. Seven.
Pooka Boy: How do you know?
Dudess: Du-ude. I just know.

Time passes. More beer is ordered. Wetsuit Man is on Lap 3.

Pooka Boy: How did you know?
Dudess: What?
Pooka Boy: How many laps he'd do.
Dudess: (shrugs)
Pooka Boy: You know him, don't you?
Dudess: Maybe.
Pooka Boy: MAYBE?
Dudess: Well, maybe I have a date with him tomorrow.
Pooka Boy: Aaaah.

Turns out the guy does it every single day. Which is good on him, but I still think he's nuts. Why not swim your laps in a pool, like everybody else? (Actually, and I didn't find this out until later, he IS nuts, but that is another story altogether.)

We left around lap five or so. It was still raining heavily, so Joe gave us a ride home so we could shower and change and possibly take a nap. (I didn't. Elvis did.)

After that, we went back out again.

We might have skipped it, but Nigel came in from Lisbon, which he doesn't do all that often. (Nor do we go into Lisbon, so I suppose we're even.) It was good to see him, and I got my second wind in short order, so that was all right. We ended up at the Late Night Bar of Evil, which was hardly a surprise. We'd missed out on going Friday, so we felt sort of obligated. Also, when Nigel comes out with us, we usually plan on staying out at the LNBOE at least until the first trains into Lisbon start running in the morning.

Or the second. Or, possibly the fourth.

Which still doesn't adequately explain how the three of us, plus Dudess and Peanut, ended up in the LNBOE at half past five in the morning, singing our hearts out. Unfortunately, we don't all know the words to the same songs, but we didn't let that stop us. Just sing the words you do know! Nobody will notice if you repeat a verse twice, and someone else is bound to be getting it right, anyway. And if all else fails, there's always American Pie.

Which should adequately explain why Mr. Evil decided to put the music back on, at least for a while. I think he decided that he'd rather have a visit from the police than listen to us any longer. Which sort of backfired, because Peanut refused to stop singing, but the rest of us (mostly) did, so that helped.

I have no idea what time Elvis and I got home and to bed. I stopped looking at my watch once I realized that I'd been up for over 24 hours. We had fun, though, and that's what counts.

Isn't it?

It is definitely time to wrap up this epic entry. Aside from the fact that it's extremely. . . epic, Handyman Guy has gone off to be a superhero somewhere else, which means that I have cabinets to fill with miscellaneous foodstuff.

Yippee!