The Agrinautica

   When Boss Dave originally bought his current 16 ft boat, the salesperson gave him attitude saying he wouldn't be able to afford it. Dave pulled a cashier's check for $27,000 (the cost of the boat) in front of the salesperson and said "see this, you just lost yourself a sale" and bought it from someone else. He's not the kind of guy who looks as wealthy as he is.
   When the boat needed servicing though, he went back to the first place since it was the closest, but they refused to do anything for him on account of, well, thinking he was an ass.
   So Dave called the boat manufacturer (Boston Whaler) to report that one of their liscensed dealers was refusing him service. Later that day the owner of the boat store himself called Dave asking him to bring his boat in.

   The other day Office Dave, Ryan the Elder, & Office Amy were in the boat fishing off the backside of Catalina when they were boarded by the Department of Fish & Game.
   Now Dave had thought he had lost his fishing permit a few weeks ago so he got a new one, and then he found his old one. Amy doesn't have a fishing permit, but they figured three liscenses, three people. It should be okay.. I mean the purpose of liscenses isn't to regulate who specifically is out there, and they don't say "nontransferable" on them.
   Anyway, the DFG troopers found this entirely unacceptable, tossing the extra permit on the deck and stepping on it. Then gave Dave a misdemeanor conspiracy to commit fraud ticket or some such sauce.
   The next day Dave manages to get the head of the California Department of Fish & Game on the phone. While he maintains that the permits aren't transferrable, he vows to have the agents involved givin a firm shellacking for acting like stormtroopers.
   Dave's lawyer is optimistic that if it doesn't say nontransferable on the permit one can't be blamed for transferring it, and if the ticket is worse than $1000 Dave's gonna lawyerize them.

   There's this house in Coto whose roof is too steep to clamber up, but too slanted to lean a ladder against. I was there first with technician Bobby, but he couldn't get it out. Then I returned with our senior techician Ryan -- we spent 45 minutes setting up and he went up there with a harness but then determined he couldn't do it. So yesterday morning Boss Dave, Ryan, & I came back for a third attempt. Dave went up with the harness & nailed 2x4s into the roof for added footing, while Ryan was positioned halfway up (on a lower roofpeak actually) and passed equipment between Dave & myself on the ground.
   After more than an hour of set up we were finally in position and working when a car came to the bottem of the drive way and started honking. Driver shouted something like "learn to park!" and demanded we repark our cars asap. We thought it was the homeowner gone berserk because she couldn't park in her driveway -- despite this boss dave shouted from atop the roof that she could go to hell. It turns out though that it wasn't the homeowner, but some deranged coto resident who thinks the world revolves around them and that even though they could easily go around the back of our truck thtey shouldn't have to deal with any kind of inconvenience from us lesser folk.


Picture of the Day

Jeremy pretends a piece of comb is a mustache

   Today I reported in to work at Bee Busters for my first day this summer. I get into the office and I'm like "my, the office looks so clean!" "yeah National Geographic is here?" "what?" "Dave wants you to report to Laguna Beach for filming" ...

   And so I spent my morning being filmed. Nat'l Geo has spent a week or so filming Dave & his Bee Busters antics, and this was the last day. I guess they were reinacting something some noob technician did earlier, only with me acting as the noob technician.So I got to you know, open the door five times, step out of the car five times.. etc. No wonder it takes so long to make movies.
   Scenes with dialogue were filmed with the dialogue, and then without it ("for the international audience")
   The craziest thing was that the script called for me to be attacked in the face by bees. Hooray! Yeah Boss Dave was like "you don't mind getting stung a few times do you?" ("uh, no?" (thinking "uh, yes")) So we wiped pheremones on my sunglasses to attrack the bees to my face and pretty soon I couldn't see on account of the bees all crawlin on my eyelids and suchforth.

   And then the silliest part, they wanted me to "act like I was being stung" and of course "act natural," but natural for beeing stung for me is NOT dance around in a circle batting my head like they wanted -- if I'm getting all stung up like that I am running in a straight line somewhere far away. Actually the one time I got stung a dozen times at once I just grimaced and finished the job.
   But yeah so, I'll be making my big international television debut dancing like a ninny.

   I made it through the shoot without getting stung, but later that day a bee got in my veil and stunginated me. I ran in a straight line out of there to shake it out.

Two more pictures: ( The Stars (The Bees) )