Happy Columbus Day! There are those that turn their noses up at today being a holiday, but I say fuck ’em. A day off’s a day off. Hell, if they wanna give me a day off for Hitler’s birthday, I’ll take that, too (though it wouldn’t be Nazi paraphernalia I’d be celebrating 4/20 with). It’s definitely a good time for a three-day weekend, and I’ve even been slightly productive.

On Saturday, I cleaned my bathroom, which was starting to get kind of a gas station vibe (and there was what appeared to be a small black and gray dog sleeping in one corner) going since it’s become my exclusive domain (it’s the master bathroom, and I of course, am the master) and we apparently fired the cleaning lady. So, twice year, whether it needs it or not, I give it as good a cleaning as I can manage given that I’m not all that fussy.

Well, I cleaned the shower and toilet, anyway. The vanity, I think I’ll just get a new one one of these days. And the floor. I should replace that, too. The big problem seems to me to be that somewhere along the line they “improved” all the cleaning equipment to the point where they’re basically useless.

We don’t even have a freakin’ toilet brush. We have these plastic sticks that hold really crappy scrubby pad/ sponge-type things (with a button on the stick that you’d think would squeeze the water out of the pad, but you’d be wrong because it actually releases – more like “launches” – the pad into the toilet bowl.

And after about two seconds of manly scrubbing action, the pads are worn and worthless. The advice I got was to do it “every week.”

Hah! Like that’s gonna happen.

I also wanted a scrub brush with a long handle (so as not to have to grovel on my knees) to clean the shower. When I asked if we had such a thing, I got the kind of look you’d give a crazy person. Instead I got this “glass surface” cleaner with a telescoping handle (that would have extended it from about 12 inches to 18 inches – not exactly what I had in mind – if the thing that locked it into place actually locked it into place, which it did not) and a head that – according to the box – you were supposed to cover with a “microfiber” cleaning cloth. Which of course was not in the box, but wouldn’t have helped anyway because I needed to do some good old-fashioned hard scrubbing (somebody had allowed several layers of what I would describe as “soap scum” and some other stuff that if I didn’t know better might have mistaken for mold).

At any rate, I managed to get things fairly clean. I’d have cleaned the floor, too, but another thing they have apparently decided to “improve” are mops. ‘Cuz as far as I know, we don’t have one (you know, the kind with a sponge and a scrubby thing that you pull the handle and it wrings out the mop instead of launching it across the room like that poor excuse of a toilet cleaning thing).

Oh we’ve got a plethora of other devices (some of which even plug in, for what purpose I do not know) that look to be somewhat related to mops, but I have no idea how to use any of them and they all appear to require some sort of disposable pad type of thing (what the fuck is it with throwing everything away these days?), but if we have any of those I have no idea where they are. And I can’t ask, because whenever I ask where something is, it turns into a recitation on how much I suck – a fact to which I am more than willing to stipulate, and which, frankly has been already entered into evidence repeatedly.

So screw it. I did the best I could with what I had to work with. Some time between now and April, I’ll just have to order some regular cleaning supplies (assuming they still make that kind of stuff).

Anyhow, so that was Saturday. Well, that and watching SU lose but not as badly as we all expected to #1 Florida State. In fact, it was entirely watchable, all things considered. In fact we did well enough to drop FSU from #1 to #2 despite the fact that they beat us by 18 points (which tells you a bit about what the pollsters think of us). So, not a win but not the 59-3 debacle of last year, either.

I got the pool closed up yesterday (I will now commence to spending all winter worrying that I did something wrong) and put the cover on.

Mice managed to eat some pretty large holes in the cover (after four years, they’ve suddenly decided it was tasty?), the little bastards. I’ve now decided to declare a full-out war on mice. Yesterday, I ordered $50 worth of mouse traps from Amazon to add to my mouse trap collection, and I’m pledging to be diligent in placing, checking, and replacing them. Enough is enough. I’d rather not have to kill them, but I’ve tried reasoning with them and threatening them, and now I’m afraid the little assholes are just gonna have to die.

Sorry PETA.

Speaking of death, it appears that God has lifted His veil of protection from Texas. Hurricanes, drought, floods, and now Ebola. It’s time to build a fence around Texas and hire border patrol agents to keep them from sneaking out. I might be willing to make Austin kind of an East/West Berlin type of thing. We’ll see.

Today I’m trying to decide if I should cut the grass one last time and get the mower off, or (since it doesn’t really need it) wait a week. I think I’m leaning toward waiting ’til next week. After all, it’s Columbus Day!