Rant, Part One

I am re-printing below the fax sent to my dry cleaners yesterday, to which there was no reply.

I have respected their privacy by removing their company name and fax number.


15 February, 2006

***** Cleaners
Seattle, WA
FAX: 206-555-5555


Dear Clever Cleaners,

I was putting on my khaki pants this morning, straight out of the ***** Cleaners wrapper (you know, the plastic you dry cleaner people put over clean clothes that Dateline NBC says suffocates little animals) and I noticed that the cuffs were at mid-shin. Strange – they were never like this before. Previously they hung nicely at ankle-level.

Then I thought, those sneaky nut-cakes over at *****! They raised my cuffs. Believe me, I was amused and not at all upset that you people had a laugh at my expense. If you could only have been there, watching me staring perplexed at my high-water pants. Ha!

Then, quite remarkably, I noticed that your cleaning process had greatly improved the quality of the material in my pants. Oh how that cotton glimmered! They were shorter, yes, but they sure as heck were a lot nicer. Way to go, *****!

But further inspection revealed that these were dress slacks, probably in the $70 range, and not the khaki cotton Dockers I got at J.C. Penney on sale for $28.

Thus my conclusion:

You people have my pants!

To be fair, I also have your pants. Or someone’s pants. But the fact remains – you people have my pants, and I must hold my ground and refuse to turn over the high-waters until I get my khaki cotton Dockers back. I will describe them: they are khaki cotton Dockers, cuffs on the legs which hang at ankle length, small gray-colored lint ball in right pocket.

Please let me know if you have found my pants. I would like to wear them again. You may contact me at the number below.

Regards,

My name and cell phone number

The Pants Monster Strikes Again

In 2006, I blogged about a traumatic pants experience with my Korean dry cleaning people. Two years later I blogged about finding a new Chinese cleaning outfit (read about it here) and was pleased... for a while.

There is a dry cleaners on the corner that I walked into last week with a sweater, dress, pants and pile of shirts. I had never been there before, had they had not been recommended. They were merely convenient.

The first thing to raise an alarm in my mind as I walked in the door was that the attendant was Caucasian. Now, please don't think I have anything against Caucasians - I don't. I am sure there are many fine Caucasian dry cleaners out there. The fact is, I used one non-Asian dry cleaner in the past twelve years and the results were less than satisfactory.

When I turned in my ticket and retrieved my clothes an astonishing thing had occurred: the dry cleaner had duplicated a pair of my pants.

Same pants, same brand, same size, identical in every way, the only difference being that one pair was pressed better than the other.

I don't know how they were replicated, and a phone call to their store provided no answers. They were as confused as I was.

I am keeping the pants.

Rant, Part Two

I am reproducing below the follow-up fax to my dry cleaners, which I fired off after discovering that my pants situation had deteriorated since the day before:

16 February, 2006

***** Cleaners
Seattle, WA
FAX: 206-555-5555


Dear Clumsy Cleaners,

Upon rising this A.M. I experienced a tinge of annoyance at the lack of a reply to my fax transmission dated 15 February concerning what I thought at the time was an ingenious “old switcheroo” ploy undertaken by you with a pair of my khaki cotton Dockers.

Imagine, then, that annoyance burning into anger this morning as I discovered that you, my fine ***** Cleaners, have all of my cotton Dockers! Every last pair, except the ones I was wearing yesterday.

After getting up this morning I kept trying on my pants, newly arrived and bagged from your sterile establishment, and each pair of pants I pulled on came up to mid-shin height. None dangled inconspicuously around my ankles as my pants usually do.

To wit:

ALL OF MY COTTON DOCKERS HAVE BEEN REPLACED WITH HIGH-QUALITY DRESS SLACKS OF IDENTICAL COLOR BUT UNIDENTICAL SIZE!

How can this possibly happen in our free society?

Please, I want to put on my pants again. Let’s end this little game of yours and move on with our lives.

Please contact me at the number below. Also, please expect me to arrive at your shop this afternoon at approximately 6 o’clock to collect my pants. I will not release the dress slacks until I have assurances from your people that my cotton Dockers have come to no harm.

With growing annoyance,

My name and cell phone number

My New Chinese Cleaners

Asians are nice people, but they burn a lot of shirts.

-Don Rickles, Esquire Magazine


I like my shirts crisp and pants pressed, and because my wife is not very handy with an iron, and because I find ironing tedious, I choose to have others take care of my shirts and pants for me.

Back in 2006 I posted a story about a pants issue with my old cleaners which caused me to change cleaners.

My new cleaning outfit was green, environmentally friendly, and the prices were great. Problem was, they did a lousy job with my collars -- they were frequently crumpled. When I finally complained, they replied, "It's the machines. That happens."

So I left them last month, having grown weary of having to re-press my collars.

I have since found a little slice of cleaning heaven not far from the old outfit, a place run by a Chinese lady who is not only friendly but can press a shirt like no other. They're expensive, but the crease in my sleeves is pristine.

And, as an added bonus, they have not once switched my pants or crumpled my collars.

Nor have they burned a shirt.

Lots of Books!

“You are supposed mark the books you have read, want to or again and again if it’s one you keep reading.”

I saw this on my friend Rick's blog. I wish I knew how these books were qualified for this list, but I don't. I marked the ones that I’ve read in blue. 34 -- that's a third. Of these, I will most likely read the Tolkien and Hictchhiker's books again some day. The ones I want to read or are planning to read are in green.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) Sadly, this is my wife's favorite book
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. 6. 7. The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter 1 (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter 2 (Rowling) Two chapters only; left the book on a plane
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter 3 (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter 4 (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) Rick introduced me to this one in 1983
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett) Really liked this book
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) My pastor is big on Russian literature
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter 5 (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez) Love the title - know nothing about it
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75.The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. Tigana (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier) Started this one once...
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams) This paperback has been in my stack for 10 years
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) My Uncle Ron turned me on to Ludlum many years ago
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield) Did not like this one
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) ...or this one, either

Ten Questions

Found this on Rick’s blog and, though I have not been officially “tagged,” thought I’d take a crack at these questions, since I am a couple of tags behind:

1. What were you doing 10 years ago?
Living on the other coast, selling Ethernet stuff, launching experimental flying machines with my friend Tim

2. What were you doing one year ago?
Just about the same things I am doing now, but going to many more baseball games

3. What are five snacks you enjoy?
popcorn & goobers (movies only), butter pecan ice cream, cracked wheat crackers and Havarti, chips, the odd leftover slice of pizza late at night

4. What are five songs that you know the lyrics to?
Solsbury Hill/Peter Gabriel, Zak and Sara/Ben Folds, Daniel/Elton John, She’s Gone/Hall & Oates, Lead Me On/Amy Grant

5. Name five things you would do if you were a millionaire.
take a trip, start a business, move, upgrade to HD-DVD AND Blue-Ray, start a charity

6. Name five bad habits.
eating poorly, not getting enough sleep, avoiding my dentist, avoiding the unpleasant items on my to-do list, accumulating junk

7. What are five things you like to do?
hanging out with my daughter, going to film festivals, traveling, listening to live music, attending Steve Johnson Fan Club conventions

8. What are your five favourite toys?
desk dartboard, my chicken jet, my computer, my Treo (Atari game card only), Steve Johnson action figure

9. What are five things you would never wear?
overalls, leather pants, feather boa, spats, a gold medallion ala Al Sharpton circa 1986

10. Name five things you hate to do.
have blood drawn, plunge the toilet, fly standby, fire someone, vomit

Wardrobe Malfunctions

My wardrobe is a mess.

All of my recent clothing purchases have come as a result of packing errors and missed flights.

And I've been buying my clothes now at Eddie Bauer, a place I'd not shopped before last year. It's not because I like their merchandise (I guess I do, but that's not why I shop there). I shop at Eddie Bauer because it's on Michigan Avenue around the corner from my Chicago hotel.

I am adding to my wardrobe items not chosen to compliment what I already own. Thursday night I bought a blue shirt comfortable for wearing on a flight the following morning, a clean undershirt and new socks. I had missed my flight hours earlier and it was rescheduled for the following morning; I had nothing clean to wear.

I arrived in Chicago on one trip back in the fall, and when I got to my hotel I found a notice in my suitcase that informed me TSA had inspected by bag. And wouldn’t you know it – all of my pants were now missing! And I was in Chicago for four days. Talk about being inconvenienced by our country’s present security measures!

So I pressed on, as I usually do, only to find three pairs of slacks hanging on the doorknob of my study, where I’d failed to pack them beforehand.

Pants Resolution

My relationship with my cleaners of two years has come to a bitter end.

A restraining order prevents me from saying anything more.