great wall 6

 Very good Old Dog.  One of the first things I did after moving into Marina City was buy a telescope.  It stood before my window for a long time, but it wasn't all that handy because it was so high-powered that it was hard to aim it right.  And visitors would accuse me of peeping into windows.  Ok, I did that a little bit, but not to see nekkid ladies (I have the internet for Chrissake), but just to be nosy.

Handier is the pair of binoculars I have had since my teenage telescope days, and which did get a serious workout when I was a college freshman and my dorm was right across from a woman's dorm. Mostly I use it now when there is some disturbance down on the street.

And is that a priceless work of art I see?  Doubtless waiting to be hung in a place of honor.  Very good taste Old Dog.  And I see a couple plants in the window.  Old Dog is moving on up alright.

Any of you guys know anything about toaster ovens?  My toaster conked out the other day.  I like those banquettes but that means I have to slice them, and slice them thin enough to fit into those toaster slots and I wasn't always very accurate about and that meant I sometimes had to shove them into those slots which did no good for the bread and most likely speeded the demise of the toaster.

Well this was only thirty bucks at Target and I guess I can heat other things that the microwave makes soggy.  But I didn't realize what a monster it was until I took it out of the box.  It's only supposed to be plugged in when I am using it.  And the whole damn thing heats up so that you can't put anything atop it, and you can't brush against it.  And it burnt its first run of toast and I couldn't figure out how to turn it off so I ended up pulling the plug, and it took some derring do to extricate the toast without burning my hands.

What the fuck?  I remember Mom had a toaster oven and she, an old lady, had no problem with it.  But then of course she was used to dealing with things like real ovens, of which my experience is scant.

And now an interesting development in the story of The Heroine of the Great Wall.

This birthday was a big deal for Leon, because he had opened up The Great Wall ten years ago, also on his birthday.  “I came into this town with nothing, nothing man,” was the way he began the story he often drifted into after closing with the restaurant dark and the two of us drinking into the night.  He’d started working in a laundry in this very building, long hours of steam and sweat, until he was able to buy the place and then convert it into The Great Wall, “And look at me now,” waving his arm at the darkened dining room.  It was more than a restaurant.  It was what a Chinaman coming into a prairie town with only change in his pocket had been able to create.

And he still worked through steam and sweat, rising early, working in the kitchen, getting everything set up down to the last detail so that by dinnertime everything was just humming along and at last he could sit back in the monument to his hard work and ingenuity and watch proudly and begin drinking.

He was up now, still a little groggy from last night, sitting at Annette’s table which was strange because normally he wouldn’t have anything to do with her.  If he passed by me while she was doing her astrology romance thing he would rotate his finger near his temple and grin at me.

But here she was putting cream and sugar in his coffee and holding an ice bag on his head and talking giddily to him while he wriggled like a puppy getting a bath.  She pushed aside her little glasses and whispered something to him, little flecks of her lipstick dotting his ear.  She gave him a few more little pats and then she shrugged herself into her coat and backed away from him so that she almost ran into me.  She was saying something about a gift I think, but she just gave me an annoyed look.

I sat down across from him.  He took the ice bag off his head, looked at it disgustedly, and threw it on the table  “Sometimes,” he told me, “you get drunk and you do some really stupid things.” 

Well that was the point wasn’t it? “What did you do now?  Did something happen last night?  After I left?” I was always eager for a good story, and it looked for a second like he might tell me one, but then he frowned, shook his head and shoved the creamy sugary coffee away from him.

But I had an idea what the stupid thing was.  Annette had still been there when I’d stumbled out the night before, and though I certainly hadn’t noticed what she’d been wearing, I remarked casually wasn’t she wearing the same dress she had been wearing last night.

He gave me an elaborate shrug, how would he know.  Then he gave me a hard stare.  “Get me a drink,” he growled and he took it with him upstairs to his apartment to get dressed for his birthday party.