Life at the Fortress of Ineptitude

Well, it’s been an interesting week here at the Fortress of Ineptitude.

For the first time in over a year, my wife Andrea wasn’t home all week here at the fortress. She began her new job on Monday. 

Her old job may have screwed her over royally when they laid her off last fall but she did score a pretty sweet severance package. But those funds are finite and starting to wind down. 

Besides, Andrea just needed to get out of the house. 

We’re navigating this new work situation with one car. So far, we’re making it work. 3 days a week, we carpool. The other 2 days, she drives herself and I work from home.

I’m not a big fan of working from home. There are times during the work day when I get tired and I wish I could go home. But I just suck it up and push through the rest of the day.

Except when I’m working from home, getting tired and wishing I can go home is problematic in that I am in fact already home. 

In my office at work, the distance to my bed and nap time can be measured in miles.

Working from home, the distance to my bed and nap time can be measured in feet. 

Working from home can be challenging. 

Another thing new at the Fortress of Ineptitude this past week is we now have a new roof.

The new roof was installed on Tuesday which was a carpool day. The roofer we hired suggested that I probably didn’t want to work at home that days as tearing off the old roof and putting on the new roof could be kind of loud.

I still go to see the roofers in action anyway thanks to another misadventure with our security system. 

I got a call from our security company that our alarm was going off. As I’ve mentioned in a prior post, we had some problems with the fire alarm going off without an actual fire.  We had it fixed, then fixed again, then replaced. 

It’s been working fine but now the security alarm, not the fire detector, was going off. I realized that the vibrations of the roof workers might have set off the alarm. The security person said he would shut off the alarm and the security system remotely.  I figured I better still go out there to make sure I was right and no one was robbing the fortress.

Before we finally buckled down last summer to seriously organize our out of control clutter, I was frequently tempted to leave the alarm off and the door unlock. On the door I would attach a note that read, “If you are going to rob this house, take EVERYTHING! If you take ALL of the crap inside, I will not prosecute.” Andrea disagreed with that idea. 

Anyway, I got to the Fortress of Ineptitude and sure enough, there was a team of guys on the roof peeling off the ancient shingles.

I called out to the workers, “Hey, how are you guys doing today?”

One of them answered, “Hola a ustedes.”

“I live here. Just wanted to see if everything’s going all right.”

They looked at me puzzled.

“Well, I’ll be heading back to work. Good day, gentlemen!”

One of them waved and said, “Buenos días a ti también, bastardo blanco!” 

What nice guys!

Anyway, the roof looks great and matches the roofs of our neighbors who had the good sense to replace their shingles long before me. 

Our daughter Randie will be home in a few days for Thanksgiving.  It will be good to have her back home here at the Fortress of Ineptitude.