It is my policy to not do home service, or any kind of service on a machine during a full moon. Well, tonight I was off by one night and thought I could get away with it. You learn quickly that it is not just the full moon that messes with us, it certainly helps bring out the crazies, but there are a bunch of other factors that come into play and that can cause things to turn ugly, let alone weird. I should relearn to trust my instincts more often because the whole day (and this service call) was filled with bumbling antics and mishaps.

Regardless, Pierre is a client that was referred to me by an old Laniel Automatic employee who is a good friend of my father in law. An ex drinking buddy I believe, who has stopped doing home service a few years back. He regularly recommends me to his better clients who still call him to this day. I am obviously flattered by the trust coming to me from a former generation.

Pierre lives on the central south shore of Laval in my favourite kind of mid sixties suburban neighbourhood. If it was at all possible for me to like the burbs, I would live in a house like Pierre‘s. A one story bungalo and a basement with a one car garage that can easily fit a 1972 Impala comfortably while leaving enough room to work on it. A widespread bungalo that is generous in square footage with large open rooms and big freakin’ windows all around and lots of trees in the yard. It’s in an older neighbourhood of Laval when the land was cheap back then to build by the water. When developers weren‘t as greedy and calculating about squeezing houses together to maximize something or other and allowing just enough room between the dwellings for a lawn mower or two.

Pierre works for a company that does land surveys and he understands space, and he carries a calm and kind disposition about him. He had called me this fall and we kept trying to book some time for me to look at his GTB Jumping Jack machine which was having some reset issues and flipper problems, so not a difficult call on a normal night.

I left work at 4:30 and made my way east on Cote-Vertu. Everything else was jammed because of the snow we got over the week-end. Usually people drive cautiously, and/or badly when Montreal gets its first snow storm, but for some reason this year, accidents were happening left and right and people were screaming at each other out of their car windows for no real reason except pure frustration. It was unnerving in a way to see seemingly normal folks behaving like animals. Stopping at a gas station to get a coffee I saw a young guy yelling at an older woman because she took what he thought was his spot at the pump just before he was due to pull in. Seeing the tension rise in his tone, I got out of my car and was going to explain to him that he was going to die someday and that this self-righteous exclamation of importance at the Shell station was pointless. My intention was cut short when the older lady started telling him off in a language that I didn’t think was suitable even for my ears. That lady sure as shit let him know what she thought and he quietly waited for his turn as he sat back down in his car as everyone else filling their tanks recoiled to watching their pumps as if nothing had happened. Tension was everywhere on the roads tonight as people pretty much made their own lanes when they couldn’t get ahead of others who were driving too cautiously for their taste. It felt a bit like the end of civilization tonight on these badly plowed Montreal roads, - well at least people were still stopping at red lights from what I observed. Suffice to say that I was feeling quite uneasy tonight, especially after breaking the zipper on one of tonysaprano’s boots which he left at my shop last Friday. I had to use them this morning cause I left my boots at home before the snow fell this week-end and woke up without proper footware at the shop to face the day. Damn moon. Now I have to buy Tony some new rubbers before he breaks my legs at next Friday's Pow-Wow.

Once I got to Pierre’s place things didn’t get much easier, Pierre’s teenage son was home with his girlfriend when I arrived, and we talked a bit about the pinball. They both think it is the coolest thing, and then his girlfriend suddenly began beating up on him when he told me that she was no good at it. It looked like play fighting at first and then I got nervous as it escalated, he finally grabbed her in a headlock and tightened his grip until she calmed down. They both started laughing hysterically and I tried to keep working without making a big deal about what had just exploded. After Pierre got home (thank god) things seemed to calm down slightly and the teenagers began asking me a bunch of questions I couldn’t answer. Is it because I am too old, or because they can’t talk in full sentences. We evidently didn’t understand each other at all, and that worried me more that everything else that had happened today. I don’t know, maybe I am losing my grip on the this brave new world, but everything they tried to express to me about why they like pinball so much confused the hell out of me, so I kept working and nodding my head as if I understood. I tried rushing through the repair and managed to get through most of the problems but not without dropping screws in the bottom of the machine and having them disappear forever, tools falling out of my grip and cutting my dry hands on several mechanisms. Par for the course in winter, dry hands, lack of light tiredness and people at their wits end during the first major snowfall of the year and to boot, a big ass full moon rising. Tomorrow I am laying low.

R.A.B.

It is my policy to not do home service, or any kind of service on a machine during a full moon. Well, tonight I was off by one night and thought I could get away with it. You learn quickly that it is not just the full moon that messes with us, it certainly helps bring out the crazies, but there are a bunch of other factors that come into play and that can cause things to turn ugly, let alone weird. I should relearn to trust my instincts more often because the whole day (and this service call) was filled with bumbling antics and mishaps.

Regardless, Pierre is a client that was referred to me by an old Laniel Automatic employee who is a good friend of my father in law. An ex drinking buddy I believe, who has stopped doing home service a few years back. He regularly recommends me to his better clients who still call him to this day. I am obviously flattered by the trust coming to me from a former generation.

Pierre lives on the central south shore of Laval in my favourite kind of mid sixties suburban neighbourhood. If it was at all possible for me to like the burbs, I would live in a house like Pierre‘s. A one story bungalo and a basement with a one car garage that can easily fit a 1972 Impala comfortably while leaving enough room to work on it. A widespread bungalo that is generous in square footage with large open rooms and big freakin’ windows all around and lots of trees in the yard. It’s in an older neighbourhood of Laval when the land was cheap back then to build by the water. When developers weren‘t as greedy and calculating about squeezing houses together to maximize something or other and allowing just enough room between the dwellings for a lawn mower or two.

Pierre works for a company that does land surveys and he understands space, and he carries a calm and kind disposition about him. He had called me this fall and we kept trying to book some time for me to look at his GTB Jumping Jack machine which was having some reset issues and flipper problems, so not a difficult call on a normal night.

I left work at 4:30 and made my way east on Cote-Vertu. Everything else was jammed because of the snow we got over the week-end. Usually people drive cautiously, and/or badly when Montreal gets its first snow storm, but for some reason this year, accidents were happening left and right and people were screaming at each other out of their car windows for no real reason except pure frustration. It was unnerving in a way to see seemingly normal folks behaving like animals. Stopping at a gas station to get a coffee I saw a young guy yelling at an older woman because she took what he thought was his spot at the pump just before he was due to pull in. Seeing the tension rise in his tone, I got out of my car and was going to explain to him that he was going to die someday and that this self-righteous exclamation of importance at the Shell station was pointless. My intention was cut short when the older lady started telling him off in a language that I didn’t think was suitable even for my ears. That lady sure as shit let him know what she thought and he quietly waited for his turn as he sat back down in his car as everyone else filling their tanks recoiled to watching their pumps as if nothing had happened. Tension was everywhere on the roads tonight as people pretty much made their own lanes when they couldn’t get ahead of others who were driving too cautiously for their taste. It felt a bit like the end of civilization tonight on these badly plowed Montreal roads, - well at least people were still stopping at red lights from what I observed. Suffice to say that I was feeling quite uneasy tonight, especially after breaking the zipper on one of tonysaprano’s boots which he left at my shop last Friday. I had to use them this morning cause I left my boots at home before the snow fell this week-end and woke up without proper footware at the shop to face the day. Damn moon. Now I have to buy Tony some new rubbers before he breaks my legs at next Friday's Pow-Wow.

Once I got to Pierre’s place things didn’t get much easier, Pierre’s teenage son was home with his girlfriend when I arrived, and we talked a bit about the pinball. They both think it is the coolest thing, and then his girlfriend suddenly began beating up on him when he told me that she was no good at it. It looked like play fighting at first and then I got nervous as it escalated, he finally grabbed her in a headlock and tightened his grip until she calmed down. They both started laughing hysterically and I tried to keep working without making a big deal about what had just exploded. After Pierre got home (thank god) things seemed to calm down slightly and the teenagers began asking me a bunch of questions I couldn’t answer. Is it because I am too old, or because they can’t talk in full sentences. We evidently didn’t understand each other at all, and that worried me more that everything else that had happened today. I don’t know, maybe I am losing my grip on the this brave new world, but everything they tried to express to me about why they like pinball so much confused the hell out of me, so I kept working and nodding my head as if I understood. I tried rushing through the repair and managed to get through most of the problems but not without dropping screws in the bottom of the machine and having them disappear forever, tools falling out of my grip and cutting my dry hands on several mechanisms. Par for the course in winter, dry hands, lack of light tiredness and people at their wits end during the first major snowfall of the year and to boot, a big ass full moon rising. Tomorrow I am laying low.

R.A.B.