His nose is Store 24, I think …

The Davis Square Area Resident-Business Initiatve (DARBI) has one of the coolest logos ever — an anthropomorphized Davis Square (I believe his legs are Elm and Highland Streets),

Actions Which Made Me Feel Less Unmanly This Weekend

1. Borrowed my friend Rick’s 1992 Toyota pickup and retrieved my snow blower from Somerville
2. Used a power-washer to clean off a tarp
3. Had my fantasy football teams go 2-0
4. Didn’t shower on Saturday
5. Didn’t shave all weekend
6. Cleaned my basement
7. Resisted the temptation to get a pedicure when Juliet was getting her nails done (which is regrettable, as my toenails are a mess)

(File under “dabbling in gender stereotypes”)

Mystery gnome

Someone has placed a garden gnome in the side yard of our (soon-to-be) former home. I got home from work yesterday and noticed the little cement fella there. I thought to myself: "1. Did we always have a garden gnome? and 2. I really hope this isn’t some sort of hallucination; 2a. I always hoped that if I hallucinated, it would be something cooler than a garden gnome."

My fears in re: to 2 were allayed when Juliet told me that she, too, saw the gnome. Two people can’t have the same hallucination. I immediately assumed that our downstairs neighbor had placed it there, so I shot a quick e-mail to Ezra:

Me: Did we always have that garden gnome in our side yard?
Ezra: ?! er … no. Odd.
Me: Woah, this is freaking me out.

I’d post a photo but I’ve already packed up my SD card reader. So it’s a mystery, I guess. Top suspects for its placement:

• Ezra and/or Terri: Apparently not.
• Whimsical misfiring of my synapses: Apparently not, given that Juliet also saw said gnome.
• Next-door neighbor Gary: Not sure why he’d bother; he’d just berate me for caring for it incorrectly.
• "Colored kids from the projects" Gary accused of stealing gas from our garage: No.
• New owners of our unit: Could be, but why not wait until you move in?
• Magic gnome: Could have placed himself there.

Excellent condo for sale

From what I read, it is "truly in move-in condition." Please try my product. Actually, it has its own Web site, too. We will throw in the cat in the photo at no charge.

Ybab, Eci Eci

We had our first "storm" of the winter last night — what it lacked in volume it made up for in muckiness. Last night, after I got home and got the boy dinner, I tried to snowblow the heavy, wet snow … but luckily, my snowblower was stuck in REVERSE. Backwards.

Seriously, I engaged every gear (including reverse) but it would only go backwards. I was too tired to figure out how to snowblow my driveway backwards … and given that it was still raining, after struggling with a shovel for 30 minutes, decided to wait until morning, with the hopes that the rain would continue to wear away at the snow.

I probably should have looked at the weather reports. It dipped down to 15 degrees last night.So, I got up at 515, all set to head out and use shoveling as my daily workout. These days, my other goal when I shovel, beyond removing snow, is avoiding a heart attack. So I bundled up like Dick Cheney at an Auschwitz memorial ceremony and headed out.

There was two inches of solid ice on our driveway this morning. I struggled with it for awhile until I heard the voice of my neighbor, [redacted], saying, "You’re wasting your time."

I sometimes feel like [redacted] waits at his back door until I begin some sort of home project — anything from mowing the lawn to trimming the hedges to snowblowing the driveway. I think his heart is in the right place — maybe — but I also don’t respond well to matter-of-fact advice particularly when the matter is something I am ashamed to not know how to do so well (which is,l essentially, every home project). With his breath visible in the cold (or perhaps that was the unfiltered Camel he was enjoying), in his Johnny Most-on Drano-esque voice, he told me that our driveway doesn’t get enough sun, I should have gotten rid of the snow last night, I was using the wrong icepick, didn’t I have a different one in my garage (he actually knows what I have more than I do), I should really just concentrate on scraping off the car, etc.

The only part I took away from that soliloquoy was the "wasting my time" part, so I threw out some rock salt and went back inside.