The Gas [expletive deleted]

I hate the gas man. We have a name for him which I will choose to omit for my younger (older?) readers. The gas man gave us a leaky gas tank. The gas man said he would be right back with a receipt. It is at this point that he became the The Gas [expletive deleted]. I hate him. We called him. He didn't come. We called the next day. Again, he didn't show. Sometimes he would say "treinte minutos," and then hang up before we even finished our sentence. So we went to the school to get a Mexican to call. No dice. Lots of yelling. Little dice. They called again the next day and again got the runaround.

At this point we realized that this was getting quite childish, and I decided that the only way to respond was in the most childish way possible. This also led to my proudest "en espanol" achievement: a successful prank phone call. I nailed him. I don't really know what else to say. Honestly, I was shaking for about five minutes after it, and my roommate practically couldn't breathe from laughing. I feel like I have truly accomplished something on my Mexican adventure.

My roommate also brought up an interesting (though now thoroughly debunked) point that maybe some cultures don't have prank calls. I decided that that was absurd. In what culture will a 13-year-old kid with access to a telephone, telegraph, or smoke signal system not make prank calls, beeps, or puffs. The Boy Who Cried Wolf was a prank caller without a telephone. That was a long time ago, no? The moral of that story is that if you make prank calls, wolves will come and eat your family. Or you... I can't remember. Anyway, wildlife can't survive in this environment, so I'm not so worried about the wolves.

Oh, another highlight of my week occurred as I was walking home from my last class on Wednesday. As I was about to cross the street, a police escort appeared followed by five full-size luxury buses. I was confused at first, but soon realized that I was in the presence of five buses worth of Miss Universe contestants. Traffic was moving slow enough that I seriously considered throwing myself in front of one of the buses on the off chance that forty of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen would rush out to help me. That could be worth a broken rib. Or two...

The Crazy Guy on the Roof

So there is this guy that comes out on the roof sometimes. He is generally unshaven and poorly dressed. He comes up the stairs carrying a pillow, a shiny silver box, and an umbrella attached to an old broomstick. The umbrella contraption is lashed together with a telephone cord. He puts the broomstick through one of the holes in his plastic pool chair, opens the umbrella, sits on the pillow, and pushes the chair as close to the edge of the roof as possible, putting his feet up on the raised ledge. Then he opens his shiny silver box and just stares at it, sometimes for hours. He will sit there under the protection of his umbrella through rain and the blaring sun, always staring at his silver box, and periodically shifting a few feet to the right or left with no discernible pattern. Then, without warning, he will close the silver box, gather his umbrella and pillow, and go back into his house, only to return a few hours later. You can try to talk to him, but he is so focused on the contents of the shiny silver box, that we will likely not even notice.

His name is Adam, and he now has no excuse for not posting regularly since he has discovered a wireless signal on his roof. I am flying to Austin on June 3 and then to Cali on June 6 for the summer. Don't know if the blog will survive. Maybe it will go on hiatus for a bit and perhaps return in some other incarnation when I deem my life to be interesting enough again. We shall see. Oh, and it seems likely that I will be in Austin in September if anyone feels like finding me a job. I have degrees in business and Spanish and am good at making ridiculous rooftop umbrella devices.