On Saturday, Amanda and I hosted a kind of housewarming cookout. The house isn't done, but it's far enough along to show pretty well. In order to get it fro m "paper on the floor, dust everywhere, bare walls" to "you want to take the tour?", we worked a lot on Friday night and Saturday morning.
Luckily, Dan Riley, friend extraordinaire, was coming into Providence, from Philadelphia, for the cookout and was more than willing to pitch in. He got there on Friday evening, after a million hours on the road, and he helped clean up, hang doors, etc. He also played some Wii tennis. Poorly:
His trip to Providence was hopefully pretty good on it's own, as he got some fantastic steak tips, got to listen to my sister talk constantly, and found out what the best Nerf football ever made is (it's this one). Also, he got to meet not just Crazy Jeff Doors, but also Crazy Jeff Door's female companion. Lucky him.
As if meeting him wasn't enough, he also got to witness not only the craziness that is Jeff Doors, and on top of that, me yelling at Jeff.
Three days previous, Jeff didn't show up at my house. He called me at 6:30 in the evening to ask if he could come by and do 'a couple hours of work'. I told him absolutely not, as there's no way I want him crazying up my house past nightfall. He seemed miffed, and hung up.
The next day, he didn't show up at my house. I gave him a call (which is really giving his huge female partner a call, because he doesn't have a phone) and I found out that he was working on a deck somewhere else. She said that he would be wouldn't be there the next day either. I asked her to have him call me so I could get the story from him. She said OK, and we hung up.
At 9:30 that night, my doorbell rang. I was intrigued. I checked the front door, and no one was outside. I started to make my way to the kitchen door and heard Jeff announce himself. Amanda had just finished showering, so I warned her to stay in the bathroom, as "it's Jeff Doors".
Livid, I answered the door, after some more impatient knocking by Jeff, and he explained that he needed to pick up some tools for the next day of deck building. I glared at him, but held my composure and let him in. He grabbed some tools, made a list of things he's missing (which he has found) and headed out the door, closing it behind him. Upon hearing that, Amanda made her way to the second floor bedroom, which didn't yet have a door on it, to get dressed. Not two minutes later, Jeff burst through the door and bounded up the stairs. I was in the living room, and hurriedly went to the foot of the stairs to see what was going on.
Jeff was gathering tools on the landing. Awesome. Luckily, Amanda, still in a towel, heard him coming up the stairs and got out of his line of sight. That was a close one.
Thursday came and went with Jeff not working in my house. Friday, however, he had promised to come by and do something. When I got home from work in the early afternoon, there was no sign of Jeff. I immediately called him and reminded him , once again, that I was having friends/family over the next day and he needed to get his crap cleaned up. He happily let me know that he was going to get something to eat, take a shower and head over. I hung up.
Two or three hours later, I called him again. He let me know that something had come up and his girlfriend's son's engine "would have blown if he didn't do something". I told him that I didn't believe him, and that I didn't care, and that he needed to come clean up. He told me he'd "be there in an hour". I laughed at him. He then said, "well, an hour and fifteen minutes." I laughed again and hung up the phone.
Two and a half hours later, he arrived.
He did some more work on the banister on the landing, talked way too much and I tried to avoid him. He summoned me a few times with questions and I did my best to remain calm and answer them. He also provided a little comic relief by asking, "do you know who the best carpenter in the world is?"
"Please don't say Jesus," I replied.
"It's Jesus," he said.
"Ugh. He's dead. He's not a carpenter anymore. That's ridiculous."
"Oh, he's not dead."
"Yes he is," I countered. "He hasn't made a table in years."
"He's alive, sitting at the right hand of the father."
"No. He's dead. He may be sitting there, but there are no living people in Heaven. Being dead is an entry requirement as far as I know."
I'm ok with people being religious, but don't say stupid things like that to me. Please.
Also in our conversation? He asked me if I had looked him up on the internet yet. I said no, but my interest was piqued. He informed me that if I did, I would find out that he had been a, "bad boy". I am dying to find out what he is talking about, as he wouldn't divulge the info, but I have no idea what his actual last name is, and thus can't look him up. He told me once (it was some convoluted story about how he has two last names, both of which I have since forgotten), and he refused to tell Amanda (probably because she is a female, who he generally lacks respect for). I will certainly relay the news as soon as I find out.
Jesus and probable felonies aside, I let him know that Amanda, Dan and I were heading to dinner. It was around 7pm. He told me that he'd be there when we got back. I cringed.
After dinner, I was about to pull into the driveway, but his girlfriend's van was sitting in it. We saw her shuffling slowly towards the house (roughly two minutes after we discussed the probability of the two of them necking while we were gone). I parked in the street and we made our way into the house. We quickly learned that his girlfriend should not "have gotten that iced coffee and Burger King" while motioning to her stomach. Gross. Super. Mega. Extra. Very. Gross. No one ventured to the bathroom to find out why.
A few more hours thereafter, and Jeff had finally finished up. Or so he thought. The main reason that he absolutely needed to show up and work was to clean up his stuff so we could get the house prepared for guests. I looked upstairs and asked him what all of his scrap wood was still doing up there. I let him know that he needed to get rid of it. He started to do so and Dan, Amanda and I continued the process of house keeping.
On one of may trips to the garage with garbage, I noticed that Jeff was not, in fact, getting rid of the scrap wood, but instead, he was throwing it in the driveway next to the house. I told him that it was unacceptable and that he needed to actually get it off of my property. He refused. I slowly lost my ever harder to keep composure over the next few minutes.
I don't remember the specific order of things (not because I was a raving lunatic, but because my memory is generally bad), but I'll do my best to record the transpirings.
I told him that he needed to get rid of the scrap wood. He said that he wasn't going to take it. I told him that he has to take it, as it's not my job to clean up after him (even though I had been doing it for months). He then said that "all you have to do is cut it up and put it out with the garbage". I let him know that it's not my job to do that, it's his. I told him to take the wood with him. He said he couldn't, and I told him that I didn't care how he got rid of it, but he had to.
My voice raising, his lowering, I bellowed at him to, "be a effword professional."
He responded that he was, in fact, a professional. I wasn't yelling, but certainly speaking with more power, "you come here whenever you feel like it and only do half of your job. A professional actually cleans up when he's done. Effword be one."
Sheepishly, he told me that he'd be there in the morning to clean up. I immediately snapped, "what time?"
"Ten o'clock."
I laughed at him. After a beat or two, I said, "if you don't effword show up at ten o'clock, you're going to owe me $50."
He raised his voice a little, "like hell."
"If you show up at ten, like you say you're going to, then we won't have a problem. Get this essword cleaned up."
I went into the house thereafter and Jeff followed. He started to try to talk to me.
"Shut up Jeff. Just do your effword work."
Not the best, most mature response, but I was kind of mad.
A few minutes later, he muttered, "screw it, I'll take the wood."
Hooray.
He left around 10 o'clock that night and that was that. Rereading this, it seems like I was a little harsh on poor Crazy Jeff Doors, and that may be the case, but his wood is off of my property. I never insulted him or actually yelled (only spoke more powerfully, and peppered in some vulgarity, for seriousness' sake), so I guess it could have been worse.
The next day, we cleaned up some more, had a killer cookout, saw some friends and family, listened to my sister talk too much, and played some video games.
Sunday brought breakfast with Dan and not much else. I decided to take the day off. Amanda and I went to a movie theater and saw the first thing that was playing (sadly, it was the new Harry Potter) and that's about it.
Even though not much work got done, it was still fairly productive. We live in a relatively clean house and not much remains on the work front.
Back at it tonight.
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