Our neighbors across the street (the Loud Family, as we’ve been calling them since ’99), recently completed a home improvement project: they dug a big-ass hole in their front yard (with much of the work completed at 11 pm, thankyewverymuch). After the hole had ripened for a few months they proceeded to pile broken concrete blocks around it, set up a ring of Malibu lights around it (with spacing of about 18″ between each of them), and filled it with water. After the water had fermented long enough to contribute to the local mosquito population they went ahead and added a pump to it and jury-rigged a waterfall/pond setup out of the whole contraption. It’s quite nice. And the white temporary tied-down awning they’ve erected over it is the crowning touch. It’s fabulous.

But all that is just stage dressing. The point of this entry is The Duck. I mentioned The Duck a few entries ago, when I talked about the freak who was stalking our cats. The Duck was an interesting part of the story, but I really only mentioned it for the ambience of the story. Tonight, he gets his own entry.

After building their fabulous property-value-destroying front yard pond and waterfall, the neighbors realized that they had not yet achieved perfection. To do that, the pond needed livestock. Ducks. Because no neighborhood is complete without the soothing tones of Quack-Quack-Quack! echoing across manicured lawns.

So, yeah, they’ve got ducks. And okay, fine, ducks are fine, I grew up on farms and in small towns and so I’m not unfamiliar with barnyard animals in a residential setting. I’ve got nothing against the ducks, even though they’re right outside my bedroom window. I actually think it’s nice, in a really weird way, to wake up on the weekends to hear them clucking at each other. It takes you out of LA for a minute, hearing ducks quacking and clucking at odd moments.

So all that is all good. Ducks are just ducky. But one of these ducks has cabin fever, he can’t stand being shut up in the pond. This duck has to take a walkabout every night, and he usually takes a position right in the middle of the intersection in the street out front. That’s where he was in the freaky cat-stealing-guy entry.

Well, tonight I was reading Zoe her bedtime story, and we were having a good laugh at the fact that while reading this story that was about snow ducks, we could hear real ducks quacking in the street outside. It was funny. And then the dogs started going bananas because someone was knocking on our front door.

It seems an elderly woman was driving by and had to stop for the duck. It was sitting right in the middle of the street, bold as brass, and was completely unafraid of cars speeding toward it. So she stopped for the duck, and it then sauntered into our driveway. She figured it was our duck and was kind enough to try to let us know that our duck was on the loose.

See, that’s funny right there. Suburban Los Angeles, a quiet middle-class residential neighborhood, and people are knocking on doors to let you know that your duck is stopping traffic. That’s some wacky shit there.

I went outside and shooed the duck off. I herded him down the street toward his palatial pond and he took off and flew away into the night. I helped the old lady back to her car (it was getting dark and she was a little shaky on her feet), and as she drove off that stupid duck came gliding down out of the sky and landed right in the middle of the street where he’d been in the first place. I shooed him away again, and again he just made a big circle and landed right back in his favorite spot in the middle of the street.

At this point you’re probably wondering when the duck’s owners get involved. They don’t. They only come out at night to do front yard construction and play basketball in the street and blast their car stereos on weeknights. I’ve never seen them in even the general vicinity of their duck. Theirs is a latchkey duck, apparently.

Anyway. I’ve shooed the duck off twice and it persists in perching in the street. What else can you do but break out the camera and take pictures?

First, here’s the duck just hanging out. This is from a few days ago. That’s our driveway in the foreground and, obviously, a duck in the street.

People like to walk their dogs in our neighborhood, and having a rambling duck in the area leads to pictures you don’t get a chance to take every day. Here’s a dachsund going after a duck. Only in LA…

These next two pictures are from tonight. In the first one, we see yet another car that has stopped for the duck. These folks drove by a few minutes after the duck returned for the second time. They, like many others, were concerned for the duck and stopped to see if they could help. They soon learned that this is a duck that does not want their help.

In this last one, the helpful people learn that this is apparently an attack trained duck. He’s going after the girl in the skirt, and he literally chased her around the car, quacking, while she screamed like, well, a girl.

They gave up and left after that. You would, too, if you’d been attacked a duck. The poor girl was traumatized. And the duck? He took off after awhile too.

But he’ll be back. It’s what he does. He’s a mallard on a mission.

Dear owner of the BMW 740i who parked thisclose to me in the mall parking lot today:

Gee, I’m awfully sorry about your passenger side door. I accidentally slammed it with my door — hard — several times — really hard — as I leaned out my driver window to put the note on your windshield. I normally would have stood next to your car to place the note but you were parked so close to the driver side of my truck that I couldn’t squeeze in between our cars, let alone open my door to get in if I’d been able to get to it. (I actually had to get in on my passenger side.) I’m also sorry for my poor penmanship in the note; I know it can be difficult to read my chicken scratches, so I’ll reproduce the note here for your convenience:

“You’re lucky I didn’t key your car, you prick. You shouldn’t park so close to beat-up cars — we just don’t care about dents. Obviously. Have a nice day…”

I hope there’s no hard feelings on your end. I know I feel better.

Just so I remember this in case I ever contemplate playing poker again: I’m done with poker. I just donated $200 to the Zipperhead No-Foldem fund and that’s the last penny those nippleheads are getting out of me. It took me just 15 minutes to go through my first hundred dollars, and then it took me another hundred to figure out that I’m just Not Going To Win — At All.

The hand that told me how things were going to be (saving me $100 if I’d listened then) was about my 10th hand at the No Limit Hold Em table:

On every hand up to that point, the standard pre-flop bet was $3. I was dealt Ace-King, so I raised it up to $10. Three players called.

Dealer puts up Ace-King-4. I have two pair and I’m first to act. I bet $10 again. I probably should have gone all-in right there with two pair, but there was only about $40 in the pot and I had a monster hand so I wanted to build it up. I bet $10. One player calls, the other two fold.

Dealer puts up a 2. I have top two pair, I’m down to one player with a pot that isn’t going to get much better — I go all-in with about $50. And he calls me. What the fuck?

The last card doesn’t matter. We turn our cards up. I have AK for two pair, he has 3-5, giving him A-2-3-4-5 straight. He wins. I sit there dumbstruck for a moment.

This fucker called $10 preflop with absolutely nothing, then he called another $10 with a gutshot straight draw, then he caught the one of four miracle cards in the entire deck that would give him the winning hand. 48 other cards in the deck either improved my hand even more or locked me in as the winner, but he caught his miracle card.

Un-fucking-believeable.

$80 later, on my last hand of the night, I again made two pair on the river, but the board paired to counterfeit my hand and give the pot to the clown on my left who had spent the night bluffing and folding every single hand but this one.

I was, to put it mildly, furious. I think I might be banned from the Bicycle Club now, because I tore my cards in half and threw them at the dealer as I got up to leave.

It’s just as well, because I’m fucking done.

Thanks to the boundless generosity of my man in Israel — David of the always fine Treppenwitz — I have a new email address and I’ve decided to use it as an avenue of contact for my Pie readers. I figured the comment feature was a reasonable way to let you talk back without me being spammed into infinity, but I think this gmail thingie will lessen that risk. Besides, using nunya@biz.com might not have been obviously bogus enough for everyone trying to email me from my comments entries. (Names withheld to protect the… Well, you know who you are. Ha.)

Anyway, you’ll find it over there to the right underneath the archive links… Or, oh what the hell, I can just go to the trouble of typing it for you here: pieguy at gmail.com.

As typed, it’s been kinda sorta de-spam-ified. I trust you’ll be smart enough to know you’re supposed to use the @ symbol instead of typing “at” when you address your email. If not… Well, it’s probably best for both of us that I don’t get your message — if you’re a regular reader then you know I don’t suffer fools gladly but I’m glad to make them suffer.

So there you go. I have new email and I’m inviting all three or four of you to use it. Let the floodgates of email open!!!

Thanks, David!

Since getting certified as a scuba diver last month, my efforts to get back into the water have been repeatedly stymied. I’m starting to get a little cranky about it. (“A little?” is what Beth will say upon reading this.)

The weekend before I left for Fairbanks I learned there was an opening on a local boat (the Sea Bass, in case you care) for a Saturday dive trip. I paid $85 for the open spot, then paid my local dive shop $40 to rent gear for the trip (wet suit, BCD, regulator/gauges/octopus, tank & weights). That night I discovered a problem with the gear that made using it dangerous. I got up at 4:30 the next morning anyway and arrived at the boat at 6 am, hoping someone there would have a way of fixing it. No one did. I went home.

Score: 1 diving opportunity gone.

Last Monday, my instructor called me to say there was an opening on a 3-day dive trip this weekend she knew I really wanted to go on (on the Vision, in case you care). She had bypassed the waiting list to call me first, and she offered me free rental gear to make up for my problem last time out, then when I hesitated before saying “yes” she knocked $100 off the price. After talking it over with Beth I decided that I had to pass no matter how much it hurt to do so — family and $$$ considerations won out. We decided to do a family weekend at Catalina Island instead, where I’d be able to get some diving in and hang with the wife and daughter.

Score: 2 diving opportunities gone.

Friday I went to the shop to pick up rental gear for our Saturday trip to Catalina and discovered that A) the shuttle boats to Catalina were totally sold out for Saturday and B) the Vision had gone out with two openings. You can only imagine my frustration at A and my pain at B.

I decided to take the gear anyway and hope that something would open up on a Catalina shuttle. That night I worked the phones for an hour until I found one opening. Beth and Zoe wouldn’t be able to go but at least I’d get to go diving, and it wasn’t the shuttle my friends were going on but at least I could meet them there.

Saturday morning I got up at 4:30 am and found that the vision in my left eye was … impaired.

Wait. Backstory: I have glaucoma. I was diagnosed with it probably 10 years ago and I’ve been on medication for it ever since — I will be for life. I’m quite young to have glaucoma and I’m lucky we caught it when we did and so far it has been completely under control. Okay, resume the story again…

Okay, so my left eye was acting wacky. The vision was cloudy, hazy, and there were halos around bright lights. Situation: ungood. With my condition, I have to be worried about this. If it’s increased pressure in the eye I could end up blind in that eye really quickly. I really had no choice: I had to scrub my plans to go diving and see a doctor instead.

Score: 3 diving opportunities gone.

The eye thing turned out to be … we don’t know. My vision had cleared by the time I was seen by a doctor at the ER (and that’s another story of incompetence in itself), and when I had a full exam by my optometrist later in the day she couldn’t see anything wrong. It was all a big “Hmmm…”

I’m really starting to wonder if this whole diving thing is cursed for me. I keep making plans that fall apart, and I keep spending money and never get near the water. This isn’t at all what I had in mind when I signed up for my classes.

I just want to violate all the laws of nature and breathe underwater. Is that so wrong?

Ray Charles died today. He set the stage for much of what passes for Soul and R&B these days, and his passing is another sad marker of the end of an era of what was, to me, real music.

I saw him once a few years ago at the Hollywood Bowl. He seemed terribly weak and frail even then and his voice was a thin echo of what it used to be, but even with all that it was a great night of music. I’m glad I got the chance to see him perform.

Bye, Ray. We’ll miss you.

My flight home from Alaska leaves Fairbanks in exactly two hours. I won’t be on it, though, because I’m already home. I’ll spare you the convoluted details of everything I went through to get here. Instead I’ll give you the simple details.

I got to the Fairbanks airport last night (this morning?) to find that the 12:50 am flight with 12 open seats was actually completely full, but another flight was four hours late and leaving 4 minutes later and I was able to get on that one to Anchorage.

With a 15-minute connection window, I then caught a flight from Anchorage to Seattle (next to the wouldn’t-shut-the-fuck-up woman who at the end of the flight had the balls to complain that “Wow, 20 minutes’ sleep isn’t enough, it’s almost worse than staying awake.” No, it’s worse staying awake listening to you jabber at me for the entire flight.

There was no way I was going to make the 7 am connection in Seattle … until the flight from Anchorage got in early at 6:35. The connecting flight was two gates over and I made it with about 2 minutes to spare. Sweet.

And now I’m home. And now I’m going to sleep, probably to hear the incredible talking woman in my dreams.

But best of all, I’m not in Fairbanks anymore. Life is good.

Cue Corey Hart singing “I wear my sunglasses at night…” because it’s 6:30 pm, the sun is at high noon, and I … am … OUTTA HERE!!!!

My flight out isn’t until 10 am tomorrow, but there’s a flight at 12:40 tonight with 12 open seats and I’m going to be there to try to fly stand-by. If I get on that one it’ll get me to Seattle at 5:00 am, and there’s a 7:00 am flight from there to Burbank with 50 open seats which I’m just about guaranteed to get on. If everything lines up for me (which, dammit, I’m about due for, considering how nightmarish this trip has been), I should get home before I was supposed to leave Alaska.

Meanwhile Doug the Rain Man is talking to me even as I type — while I’m clearly NOT LISTENING TO HIM — still bitching about my software and mooning after the old system. Blah blah blah blah…

Ladies and gentlemen, the Elvis tattoo is getting the hell out of the building!

The guy I’m working with here — let’s call him “Doug” — is having problems pulling a report and he just complained to me for the umpteenth fucking time about it. Normally I would try to care deeply — deeply, I tell you! — about this problem he’s having, but this time around I just can’t. Because he’s not trying to pull the report out of my software, he’s pulling it out of someone else’s, software I don’t know a damned thing about, software he’s supposed to know how to use because he’s been using it for years. Not my problem, bro, handle it yourself.

So Doug came over to me just now, showed me the report, and bitched about how “what we need to do is figure out how to eliminate this column from the report.” And then he stared at me, expecting me to have the answer.

I gave him an answer: So you’ve got a goal now, Doug. It’s good to have goals.

For me, that’s tact.

Today, I fulfilled a dream I didn’t even know I had: I’ve now eaten at the Denny’s at the top of the world.

I’m particularly pleased that I wore a Hawaiian shirt for this picture.