Splendiferous!

The Federal Judge from Nebraska blocked the ban on partial birth abortions. What's really interesting is that the ban is applicable to pregnanices as early as fourteen weeks. Fourteen.

As far as the NNWM goes, the Total™ is now 4322. Didn't do too much today yet. Last night was really productive, putting me to 3600. Should be at 8000 by the end of tonight if I am totally on schedule.



Michael Roberts woke up on a Thursday morning expecting it to be like every other Thursday morning he would experienced in quite some time, which was not in itself a bad expectation. Things had not changed the last six years in his life, so why should they change today, right? He had the same cereal he always did, in the same bowl, with the same amount of milk. He took the same seven and a half minute shower he always took, and spent the same five minutes shaving that he always did (he hated shaving though, as it is one of the worst tortures man inflicts upon himself). He had the same cup of coffee he always had, while reading the same sections in the same paper. Michael Roberts’ life was the picture of constancy, never ever changing. He spent the same fifteen minutes driving to work, stopping at the same stop signs and red lights, and, okay, it is highly likely that the point of this paragraph ahs been made. Michael Roberts is having a normal day, expecting it to be normal, but completely unaware of something drastic and life changing that was going to occur. Got it? Good.

Fast forward to a few hours after lunch.

The phone rang on his desk, with a ring that was perfectly normal and not at all foreboding or forecasting any sort of doom, and …

Hey! OW!

Alright, alright, alright.

Enough with the normalcy and suspenseful build up.

Sheesh.

Why is everyone so damn pushy.

OW!

ALRIGHT, moving on, so the damn phone rang and Michael answered it.

“R&B Air and Heat, this is Michael.”

R&B Air and Heat, of course, is Michael’s employer. Big surprise there, right?

“What sort of sound is it making?”

A fly flew lazily into the room, and began to buzz around the phone.

“Oh yeah, that is typical. You have had the unit about a couple years now, yeah?”

The fly landed on the desk, when all of a sudden….

…

Ha, it seems everyone is hanging in complete suspense and mystery about what is about to happen which no doubt will be extraordinarily dramatic and shocking, so those who are light hearted should leave. Now.

It is amazing how empowering it is to sit here and have total control of the story. Bwa ha ha ha!!

“Oh? Where do you live?”

Okay, so the fly narrowly avoided being smashed by the palm of a human hand and flew back out the window, as no one was possibly able to guess.

“Yeah, that model tends to do that after a year or two. Not very reliable. There are much better units out there. You had the bad luck to get a place with the bad one”

And odd thing to note about R&B Air and Heat is that during the summer, as it is now, the window is inevitably open. That is because, ironically enough, R&B Air and Heat’s air condition is broken, and has been broken for, oh, about three years now. Strange, huh?

“Alright ma’am, I will be there in about twenty minutes.”

Michael Roberts hung up the phone in a way that was totally contradictory to the very dramatic nature of the phone call that just ended.

“Hey, Rick, I’m headed over to Maple Ridge to do some work on one of the five-nines that are always falling apart.”

Rick Harding is one of the other four people who work at R&B Air and Heat besides Michael Roberts. No more than two people are ever there at any given time. Michael and Rick are there on the weekdays during the normal working hours, while two other guys, Brian and Ed, work only on the weekends. The manager, Fred, rarely actually comes in to work and does not really do much. Incidently, R and B do not actually stand for anything. One would think that R and B stand for the last names of the guys who started the business, but that would make sense, and nobody in his right mind would want that. Rumor has it that the original owner was a big fan of that particular genre of music. R&B Air and Heat are able to get by with so few employees for a number of reasons. Actually, there is only one reason and that is because there is not that much demand for air condition and heating unit technicians. And there are several reasons for that. The first is that the town is small. The second is that the guys at R&B Air and Heat are just so good at what they do, despite the fact that they still have not fixed their own air condition unit, which is really kind of distressing. Okay, so there are really only two reasons, not several. R&B Air and Heat is the only air conditioning and heating unit place in the entire town. There used to be another place, but they really sucked. They were the ones that installed the five-nines which were talked about so much everywhere that always fall apart every five years. Which gives guys like Michael Roberts seemingly lots of work, but only enough to keep him somewhat busy during the day. Anyway, Rick Harding is a buddy of Mike’s from high school who also got a job fixing left over five-nines. He is pretty cool.

“Yeah,” replied Rick. He does not talk all that much.

“I will see you tonight.” By tonight, Michael Roberts meant poker, at his place. Poker is a traditional Thursday night experience for him and his friends, followed by the traditional going to the bar and the winner buying everyone a round the next night, where someone inevitably makes an ass out of himself, usually in the presence of a female who is not looking for a good time, the prude, or at least the rebuffed ass will claim.

“Mmm hmm.” See? Two syllables. Two lousy syllables. Hardly ever talks.

Michael Roberts grabbed his hat and his keys, and left R&B Air and Heat for what would be the last time in his life.

Ha ha, just kidding, he will be back to work in the morning.

Maybe.

Mysterious!!

About twenty minutes later, Michael Roberts’ faded Chevy pulled up to the address in Maple Ridge. Maple Ridge is an apartment complex owned by an elderly couple that are really nice and offer really low rent for some decent places, but generally only to other old folks. The only problem is that they were friends with the morons who installed the less than fantastic air units, and as such were entirely unwilling to replace them for anything else, because that would be “dishonoring their memory,” which is completely idiotic given that no one actually died, they just went out of business since they offered really crappy service and moved away. Hurray for run on sentences!

By this time the protagonist (shame on you if you do not know who that is by now you fool) of the story was knocking on the door of number 205 E.

The door opened.

“Hello ma’am, I’m here from R&B Air and Heat. May I come in?” Michael repeated the mantra he said every day several times a day with perfection. In the back of his head he was congratulating himself on saying it right, (for some reason he used to have a really hard time saying that and would not often switch words around and hilarity would ensure) so he did not really notice the person answering the door.

“Oh yes, do come in, wo not you?”

Her voice brought him out of the back of his mind, and it was fortunate that he was not saying his little spiel just then because he would have completely and utterly messed it up.

The voice was light, with a hint of relief and exasperation, the kind of sound someone who had no air conditioning in the middle of summer would make when the air conditioning repairman had just arrived.

The owner of the voice was beautiful. Very beautiful.

She was what would be referred to in some circles as drop dead gorgeous. She was a little bit less than five and a half feet tall, with the body of a young woman in her mid to late twenties, a medium build, dark, dark, dark hair (very dark), dark, dark, dark eyes(also very dark) that just gave a knowing look that said “I am sexy”, and skin the color of copper, or bronze, or some other sort of metal that was what very tanned skin would look like. It also probably did not hurt his initial impression of her that she was wearing very short and very tight shorts, black with elastic tie in the front, and an equally tight and rather low cut tank top, also black. And she shone with the perspiration that can only be compared to the look of an extraordinarily beautiful woman who has been living without air conditioning in the middle of the summer and sweating oh so lightly from it.

By the time Michael got past the initial appearance of his customer, he realized that she had said something else, and by the look on her face, which was slightly amused and very, very slightly irritated, the kind of irritated look someone who had no air conditioning in the middle of summer would get when the air conditioning repairman had just arrived and then stood on the front doorstep staring and not coming in despite two inviting offers to come inside, it had been another inviting offer to come inside. He had heard the first one, he was just been blown away by the sound of her voice, which was quite beautiful also, sounding like she was singing and singing only to him, blown away so much that he had failed to hear anything else. The phone really failed to convey this even remotely.

“Yes ma’am, can, uh, you just show me to where the, uh, unit is, please?”

“Right this way,” she replied with a light little laugh and a smile as she led the way to the, uh, unit.

Michael scowled at his own stupidity while she showed him in, which is a good thing, because he was so engrossed in insulting himself that he missed her smile. If he had seen that he would have been equally blown away by the smile, as it was easily as dazzling as the rest of the woman was. After he was done scowling he did take the liberty of checking her out from behind, and if there had been anyone else looking at his face as he did, which there was, but at this point this is arguable, but if one really knew what was really going on with everything one would not argue at all and just agree, as there was someone. Anyway, uh, hmmm, yes, if there had been anyone else looking at his face as he did check her out then it would have been quite apparent to that anyone else from Michael’s face that he was clearly thinking something so profound that it can best be summed up with exactly what Michael was thinking, which was just one profound word, the incredibly profound word of “damn.” Get used to run on sentences, because they are funny. In other words, the view from the back was equally as thrilling and equally as enjoyable as the front was, and Michael was both thrilled and enjoying himself.

“Here we are, the bloody thing.” (No she was not British, or at least she did not speak in a british accent, she might have been British for all anyone knows at this point, but for the sake of argument it will just be said that she is not British for the time being.) Moving a cardboard box filled with plates and utensils, she revealed the elusive and troublesome bloody unit.

Michael just noticed the cardboard box, and looking around he noticed a lot more of them. He had not noticed them before because he was, understandably enough, rather quite enjoying the view. It definitely appeared that the woman had recently moved in, and he said as much.

“Yeah, moving was a bitch, but what can you do, you know? I did not really have a choice.”

“You are lucky that you were able to get in these. Was the move job related?” he responded, while bending over the unit, examining it, poking it here and there.

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“Must have been great moving in to find out this was not working.” He dug in his bag of tools.

“Yeah, it was annoying, but the heat is not that bad. Besides, I rather like the warmth.”

“Yeah it is not really an issue once you get used to it. Take me, I have lived here my whole life, and I like it here well enough. I barely even notice it any more, really.” Selecting a screw driver, he began to open up the case.

“Oh really? Myself, I have been everywhere. Sometimes it feels like I am only in a place long enough to get prepared to leave for the next one.”

“Traveling all the time, eh? You must see a lot of interesting places, meet a lot of interesting people, all that sort of thing.” His hands began looking for the one piece that was always broken.

“Yeah, I guess. It gets dull after a while. Every place, every face, they all blur together. But this place, well! I do not even know where to start!”

“You have got to be kidding me,” he looked up at her incredulously and noticed that she was leaning over, looking at what he was doing with actual interest, not just feigned politeness. He also noticed that she had a nice rack, as his mind was putting it at the moment. Not too big, and not too small. Just the way he liked it “Nothing here ever changes or is interesting. You’re probably the most interesting thing to happen to this place in the last fifty years.” He turned reluctantly back to his work as his fingers found what he was looking for.

“Oh, no! I love it here already. And what happened fifty years ago that could be more interesting than me?”

“Ha! Oh nothing as special as you, just an arbitrary number. Maybe I should say at all instead of the last fifty.” If he had been looking at her he would have noticed that she was glaring at something he otherwise would not have noticed. But he was not, and he did not. “Got it.” With a snap he pulled out an extremely sorry looking piece of metal that looked like it had been used as a shark’s chew toy.

“Am I really that remarkable? Oh, is that the problem?”

“Yes.” Turning around he offered up the offending piece, which she took. “You see, the connection on this is really poor and it gaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” He was about to say it gets extremely hot extremely fast and breaks even faster, but this was interrupted by the sudden arrival of a rather black and rather stealthy cat in his lap with extremely sharp claws that had also arrived in his lap. This is, of course, the recipient of the afore mentioned glare, not that it cared at all, as cats do not really care what anyone thinks of them.

“Mephy! Do not attack the nice repair man!”

“It, um, has rather sharp, um, claws. Uh, would you mind if, uh, ow?”

“Mephy, release, now. Do not give me that look. I do not care if you have not eaten lunch yet. Neither have I. You eat when I eat and you know it. Release.”

The cat gave a quick shake of its head, looked at Michael in a way that quite clearly said “I own you,” and hopped off, much to the extreme joy of the owner of the lap in which he had previously been seated.

“That is a nice, um, cat, you have there. Uh, she? is quite the cat. Muffy?”

“Thanks. Sorry about that. His name is short for Mephistopheles.” After noticing his look she added that she rather enjoyed Renaissance era English plays, particularly tragedies. “He certainly fits the part, does not he?”

“Most definitely.” Not that he had any idea what she was talking about. He made a mental note to ask the guys tonight what they knew about English literature, as he found it all rather boring. Not that they would likely know either, but they were sources of surprising information sometimes, particularly in things that chicks might talk about. Like plays.

“So are you going to replace that part or just fix it?”

“Oh, replace it, definitely. This brand melts at the end really quickly. This one will work much better,” digging in his bag and finding the replacement part as he spoke.

“Sweet. What did this thing do anyway?” she asked while turning over the metal tube.

“It connects two other sections and blocks the heat from them and keeps it towards the back. That way when the air is on you will get cold air instead of hot. Plus the other parts will not overheat and explode on you.” He sounded like he really enjoyed explaining all of this, as do most people who really enjoy their particular job sound when explaining things about their job.

“Ah, so since it melted on this side, then…”

“Then the cold air was merely mixing in with all of the heat instead of going out. So you got a lot of noise and no results. There we go.”

“That is it? It is all completed and fixed and everything?”

“Yeah, you should be fine for another seven or eight years, and by that time you will need a new unit anyway.” Getting up, he put the cover back on and put his tools away.

“Wow, that worked out really well, and fast. Thank you so much! How much do I owe you, ummm, Michael?” she replied, looking down at his shirt for his name.

“It was no problem ma’am, my pleasure. Here is the bill ma’am,” handing her the bill, or at least something that was doing a very good job of pretending it was a bill if it was not in fact the real bill itself.

“Call me Gloria, please. I can not stand all of this ma’am business. It makes me feel like an old woman! Cash is fine, yes?” She dug in one of the many boxes for some money.

“Alright, Gloria. And yes, cash is fine. I will need to go to my truck for change though.”

“No you do not. Keep the change,” she replied, handing him a folded up bill that was of a denomination which was much higher than what he was expecting.

With a look of surprise, he took the bill. “Thank you very much!” He took a moment to search through his bag. “If you need anything else, please do not hesitate to call us, or me, again.” He handed her the result of his search.

Taking his business card, which just so happened to also have his home phone number in case of any emergency evening or night calls or at least that is what he would say the reason was, she thanked him again. “I will definitely call you if I need anything.”

“See you around.”

“Mmm hmmm.” She shut the door.

As Michael walked out of the building and got into his truck, he thought his luck might be changing. Gloria was certainly the hottest woman he had ever met, and she was really nice too. Down to earth. Yes, things just might be looking up. Humming a bit of tune that he could not quite place and did not really know why he was humming it in the first place, which was actually Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady” and certainly would make sense to Michael if he actually bothered to try and figure out what the song he was humming was, he drove back to work to finish up before heading home.

Gloria watched Michael drive away, and then smiled.

“Do not look at me that way, Mephistopheles.”

Mephistopheles huffed and left the room.