Is This A Dirty Joke?

Q: How many Big Strong Men does it take to get the furnace down the cellar stairs?

A: How the fuck should I know? And: Do you like my new kitchen table?

Seriously, we could cut a hole in a tablecloth, put a candle in that sticky-outy pipe thing. Hell, I know lots of people who paid much more than $500 for their kitchen tables, and -- well, and they were actually dining room tables, or dining room sets actually, that came with dining room chairs and everything, and you could actually eat off of them and stuff (the tables, that is, not the chairs, although I don't see why not)...

Andy and his Royal Helper gave up waiting for the Kid at 11:58, but Andy said if he showed up within a half an hour we should call his cell phone and he'd turn aroung (except he said "around," without the typo). Kid showed up -- I shit you not -- at 11:59. Andy pulled out of the driveway and drove off to the left; Kid came from the right and pulled in while we could still see Andy's car.

I called him, he came back. God bless him. The four of them (which I just now realized had just two names between them) tried for over an hour to get the damne thinge (which is kind of like Olde Shoppe, except not on purpose) down the cellar stairs, but it would not go.

There's this corner, see, around the top three steps. It turns out that the only way to get it around the corner is to let one guy hold it on his own, and not even Lou Ferrigno could pull off a stunt like that. The Hulk, maybe, but not old Lou.

Now, I'm going to say this once, and I'm going to whisper, so please pay careful attention:

I TOLD THEM IT HAD TO COME IN THROUGH THE WINDOW!!!!!!!!!!!

So the end result of today is five hours of waiting around, $40 bucks out of pocket for Royal Helper (who dothed protest, but the Princess insisted) and a furnace in the kitchen. Andy insists the smart thing to do is blow the bulkhead now -- and he's right, it would be the smart thing. If those cinder blocks were stuffed with silver coins, and if I had more than a week to get the furnace hooked up before they charged me assloads of money as a punishment for waiting around——

Wait a second, who the fuck is Keyspan to tell me to hurry up? Screw-ew-ew them! Didn't I wait five months for my gas line to go in three years ago? Didn't I wait all day back in April for a contractor who never showed? Didn't I then wait two weeks for my next appointment? Haven't I been waiting since freaking springtime just to talk to somebody from Keyspan about this? And now they wait until after they deliver it to tell me there's a deadline for installation? Keyspan -- and their new British owners -- can go ahead and kiss my royal ass.

Kid says he can get it through the (ahem) basement window, but I think I just made up my mind. Andy says he'll blow the bulkhead for us and let us pay him when we can. I have to admit, I did harbor fantasies of waiting till the book came out and then arranging a little cross-promotion by calling up a certain Dirty TV show host to do the job. But I guess we'll have to go ahead and let Andy do it now. Poops.

Don't look so sad, Mikey. There's lots more dirty work to be done around this shithole...