It is the Week of Estimates. They usually go like this:

“So, there’s the job. How much do you think it would cost?”

“This surprising amount for which you haven’t budgeted.”

“Oh, okay, then forget it.”

Not entirely. I’m just getting an idea of what these things should go for, because I’ve no idea. This morning a garage repair fellow came by. Earnest and knowledgeable and personable. Local business, not a franchise. (This seems to be a theme so far.) He asked where I’d heard about the company, and I said “The Homepro mailer,” and I should’ve added “the thing I’ve ignored for years until it suddenly seemed like a good resource.” Ah: well, there’s a ten percent discount. If I did the work in the winter? Five hundred off. I wanted him to keep going until he actually owed me money for doing the job, but that was about it.

Had an appointment on the calendar for the kitchen counters, the ancient once-perfect / now-tired kitchen counters, but no one showed. Couldn’t find any record of the appointment anywhere. Odd. Well, found another company, made another appointment.

On Thursday the handymen descend for a variety of small projects that are beyond my abilities, like drywall. Note: I did an entire basement of drywall once. This is how I know it is beyond my abilities. It’s when I redid the basement of our previous house into a cave for TV and such, and created a dank silverfish lair I only used when Natalie was born and I had to find another place to sleep now and then. I had a big CRT high-def TV, a whopping 30 inches, I think, and I spent New Year’s Eve alone while wife and infant were in France on family business. Ringing in the new decade.

No clue what was coming.

KEURIG UPDATE. I presented my dilemma again to The Grok, and detailed all the steps I had taken, and said nothing worked and I was burdened by despair. Whereupon TG came up with something it had never said before: a series of button-pushing-and-holding to force the rinse cycle. This worked. Worked again. The descaling light went off. All is good, and I can return to making a pot of coffee that sits on the burner but nevertheless goes cold after 20 minutes.

I am now officially that guy, the “retired” fellow liberated from the stocks of convention, now free to speak his mind without care what others think. (Note: this is not true.) At the gym there were two guys doing some social media posting BS. One was overdressed in brand-new gym clothes. The other was scraggly. They goofed around with barbells for a while, then the scraggly guy took pictures of Mr. Outfit, who was posing on a bench, looking away with that Expression of Destiny, one leg resting on a standard bar. The cumulative weight on the ends was 10 pounds. The weights looked like bottle caps. When the camera swung around in my direction I said “Hey, guys” - and jerked a thumb at the sign that said no photos. They made idiot grins of incomprehension and continued. I repeated myself. They looked confused. I said “No pictures,” and they got dark looks and slunk off, looking back with glowering faces. For a minute I thought I was going to get jumped later in the locker room or parking lot, but then I remembered they were lifting ten pounds.

Sorry, don’t mean to go all Joey Swoll on you, but the sign is there for a reason. House rules, which I will cheerfully enforce because I enjoy exercising petty authority on behalf of everyone else, none of whom may notice or care.

The odd thing about this gym - and there are many, mostly pertaining to the clientele - is the bucket of Tootsie Rolls on the front desk. Seems to defeat the purpose. The main thing that irritates me, because I am just that way and should not be that way, are the idle youts who just wander around doing things half-arsedly and taking nine minutes in between sets to look at their phones. I suppose that’s what you get in the afternoon. The place just has a vacant vibe, that’s all, and the music is generally dreadful. I mentioned one song to one of the staff, how it was a complete steal of “Girl from Ipanema,” and he said he doesn’t hear the music anymore. I do not know how you cannot hear the music. Yes, you get accustomed to the thudding din, but if you’re the least bit engaged with the world you have an opinion about the different types of thudding din, no?

Speaking of which: daughter sent me a video a few weekends ago from a concert, saying she thought I would like the band. I always like it when she sends a song. It means the world. I would never have thought of sending my dad a 45 through the mail, because I thought he’d like this band because I’d found a 45 of “Over and Over” by the Dave Clark Five in his stack, and this New-Wave band had the same stripped-down sound, etc.

Why did my dad have that record, I’ve always wondered. He would’ve been 39 when it came out, and I thought he’d made that Middle-Age Dad Move and shifted to country. I know my Mom was not keen on rock at all, and despaired when the kids next door formed a band and played in the garage. (They also raised spaniels and sold them, and believe me, the mood on the block about those guys was similar to Jed Clampett moving in.) I seem to remember they gigged locally as “Spirit,” although there was already an LA band by that name.

Anyway, the song was “Summer Is Almost Over,” by Polo & Pan. I’ve listened to a few more of their songs, and these guys are all over the map, style-wise.

This does not end up where it begins, although it constantly changes, mostly by accretion, not development. Deadpan Euro vocals. Then it turns into a different song. Such are songs these days.

I stood outside after midnight with earbuds on the last day of summer and played this loud, and was happy for lots of reasons.