DUVET DAY.

 Single life sucks. But hey ho. It has to go on.Today was the ceremonial changing of the duvet day. I have only recently gone back to a duvet. They are quite unusual in the USA so I had a comforter, which equates to an eiderdown in the Uk, but I digress.

I have acquired a couple of new duvet sets back home in Blighty. It has never been my favourite pastime but it had to be done. And so.

First remove the old duvet cover, find dryer sheet from last weeks wash inside it and the sock I have been missing all week. Easy Peasy. Do up buttons on duvet to stop other washing ending up inside said duvet cover and place in washing machine along with pillow cases. I just do them separately as they are new and I reckon my rather garish choice in colours might lead to anything else washed with it taking on a black or purple tinge.

Smile in satisfaction and have a cuppa. Part one completed successfully.

Part 2. Get new clean duvet cover from airing cupboard and undo buttons. Find pair of undercrackers inside that I didn’t even realise I was missing

The struggle begins.

Try to get duvet inside cover. Give up in muck sweat after 5 minutes and retire, scratching head to finish off cold cuppa.

Attack task in a different manner. This time after a few minutes I realise that the duvet is on the floor and I am inside the cover. I stagger around like a demented multicoloured ghost encased in an ever tightening red and black duvet cover. A couple of crashes later and I escape, sweating profusely. I will win.

I pick up the broken ornamental vase I have broken from the floor. Bugger it. I’ll glue it up later.

I am not giving up and I attack the duvet cover again. Swearing seems to cow it into submission and I stand back with a satisfied grin on my face.

It is on… but inside out.

I sigh and go for a cuppa.

I decide on stealth tactics next and creep up on it. Grabbing both duvet and cover I grunt as I force the duvet into said cover. One button flies off and pings off my mirror. But it works.

Duvet is in cover… sideways. I retire, sobbing.

Finally through sheer bloody persistence I get it on. Not inside out. Not sideways on. Bloody perfect.

Remove washed duvet cover from machine. Buttons now undone and pillow cases hiding inside, a pathetic soggy screwed up mess. I put in drier.

It is only 11am but I pour a gin and tonic and sigh sadly.

I need a wife.

I cry……

Copyright Stan M Rogers 2017.

VAPING ADDICTION (JUST FOR FUN)

It was too easy ya know. One day one of my friends took me too a vaping session. Ah had always promised mama that ah’d never get hooked on the demon vape so ah was con-fi-dent ah wouldn’t but ah did.

Ah started innocently enough just a few puffs on a buddy’s vap -oh- rizer but ah was hooked. Ah plucked up my courage one day helped by a jar of great gramma’s homebrew and walked into my local to-bac-oh shop. Ah wore grandpaw’s best wig so nobuddy would recargnise me and ordered one of those thar e-lec-tronic doo dabs. It was one a those de-spose-able ones. It was called an nJoy ah think.

Wouldn’t do any harm I guessed. Just a few puffs and ah’d git rid of the dang thing after ah’d tried it.

But ya know what? Danged if I didn’t puff that thang dry and go buy another one. Ah soon had a habit and ah was puffin’ away on ma old steam stick all day long. Ah hid it from the folks of course but ah was soon a ten a week dude. Man I was suckin’ on those babies like cousin Emmy’s kid on her teat. (Ah rememba that well. Ah think she was in fifth grade at that time.) Grandpaw denied it was his and we tend to believe the old buzzard as Grandmaw says he’s been firing blanks for years.

Grandpaw.

Now ah had always been warned that those danged e-lec-tronic doo dabs could lead to harder things and ah needed to up the steam. Those nJoys just simply wasn’t cutting the danged mustard. And ah was purdy well hooked by now so ah went looking for some of that doggone harder stuff.

Ah bought me one of those Kanger eVod thingummy jigs. Ah bought the darn thang on-line so no-one would guess ah had a habit. Goddammit that thang sure hit the sweet spot. Ah would often load my dawg up in ma truck and head out to the top 40 to enjoy my steam. Shucks. You jes can’t beat it. Ah was as happy as ma dawg Barack humping my leg. Ah don’t rightly know what breed he is but Grandpaw reckon’s he’s a Mississippi Leg Hound. He sure do like to eat too. We often find old Barack ass up in the garbage bin looking fa scraps.

Ma Dawg Barack.

He even got the blame when our neighbour Mary Ellen’s dawg disappeared last year. She had one of them thar little fluffy things. Ah think she called it a Shit Sue. Damned if ah know why but I know Barack was shitting hairballs for three days after the lil critter went missing.

Last Known Pic of Mary Ellen’s Shit Sue

One day ah was up thar sucking on my favorite juice mix at the time (80% nic-o-tine, 10% bourbon and 10% anti-freeze) when I bumped into Grandpaw. Barack was so happy he went to greet the old-timer. Grandpaw let him finish then came and sat beside me. Turns out he’s a dang vaper too. “Ya know what Billy Bob he says. That bunch a no goods up thar in Wash-ing-tun are trying to outlaw this vaping. It’s downright un-a-murcan if ya ask me. That Prezeden O’Bama … he sure got a lot to answer for. You jes can’t trust an Irishman I swear.” Grandpaw spat to show his displeasure.

But ah digress. Ma habit got worse. Ah needed more steam. I started building ma own vaporizers. Now those danged things are tricky. Ah kept settin’ fire to thangs. Got ta be so bad that the Local Fire Department would station a fire truck perm-a-nent-ly outside our trailer. Ah set fire to it, to the garage, to the truck and even to Grandpaw once. But ah think ah have the hang of it now.

Dang, This vaping is dangerous.

Ah needs plenty of power for ma vaping habit so I use four Chevy Truck Batteries in series connected to ma tank which is one of Great Grandmaws old whisky stills. Ah have re-fined my juice now to 50% nic-o-tine and 50% rocket fuel. Dang that sure hits the spot. Ah have to be careful tho. Last week I wiped out half of the town after the dang thing exploded. Luckily ah was out in the truck shootin’ varmints with my cousins Billy-Bob and Billy-Bob at the time but hell that fireball sure was spec-tac-u-lar. Yessir, Barack even stopped humping Billy Bob for a minute when it went up.

Ah got kicked outta town after this one

Ma cousins Billy-Bob and Billy-Bob

Ah have had to move to another State now. The Sheriff run me out so I am living in a fine trailer in Nohope, Kentucky with ma sister Mary Sue. That’s her in tha picture with our baby Billy-Bob. She sure is purdy aint she?

Me n ma Sister Mary Sue with our lil Billy-Bob

But ah still have my vaping habit. It has got so danged bad now that I sit in small dark rooms uploading How To Rebuild Your Vap-o-rizer in-strucshun-al videos to YouTube. Ah even had ma hands tattooed special like by Mary Sue but the I LOVE BARACK one seems to be gen-er-ratin’ me a lotta hate mail. Shucks he’s ma dawg guys.

So all you potential vapers out thar. Beware. This here vaping is kinda a-dic-tive. Ah should know.

 

© 2014 Stan M (Billy-Bob) Rogers. All rights reserved.

 

LYCAMOBILE INCOMPETENCE.

Heard of Lycamobile? They are a mobile phone network in the UK and also worldwide. I have a phone in the UK with one of their sim cards in. It is actually a spare Samsung which I purchased unlocked for about £7 from Sainsbury’s a while back.

Why? Well Lyca offered a great way for me to ring my wife in the USA. Calls were only around 5 pence per minute, a lot cheaper than using the main networks so I slapped one of their free sim cards into the phone and away I went. Lots of calls to my baby without breaking the bank before I traveled to the USA myself.

All well and good and now that I am in the USA I noticed their offer to send a sim card to friends/family in the USA. This offer also applied for other countries too. It offered very cheap if not free calls between Lyca phones in the two countries. Brilliant I thought. I gave my mum the Samsung phone with Lyca’s sim card in it and aimed to get another Family and Friends sim card in the USA so we could enjoy cheap calls and also so my mum could call me easily in an emergency.

A waste of time.

I applied on behalf of my wife back in November (2013) and waited for the sim card to arrive. After a month I tried again … no response.

Next I contacted their customer services … no response. After several more fruitless emails to their customer complaints department, I finally gave up believing the whole offer to be a scam. Yes I did receive replies but in poor English and they had no satisfactory result.

I heard no more until last week when I received a sim card from them. It seems that my sim card has been putting its feet up in the Caribbean for a couple of months. It actually came to us in February (2014) via Montserrat, West Indies. I must admit that with the amount of snow and bitter cold we are experiencing here in Ohio I quite envy it. See the pictures below. The Merry Christmas greetings on the envelope I find to be a bit of a piss-take seeing as we are almost at Valentine’s Day now.

Oh … and the sim card? Absolutely no bloody use whatsoever. It is a UK sim card which does not work in the USA. I despair of Lycamobile’s customer service which has been … I was going to say appalling, but it has actually been non-existent. I had even re-sent our US address to them several times. Thank you so much Lycamobile for this entirely frustrating waste of time.

UPDATE.

Lycamobile finally sorted me out. They sent me the correct USA sim card which didn’t work in my phone but that wasn’t their fault. It turns out that my Samsung is not compatible here. Since then I have bought a cheap BLU phone and it works in that fine. Lycamobile even gave me a months free National Plan worth $16 as compensation. More power to you Lycamobile. 🙂