when the going get's tuff....
When I woke up today, it was absolutely critical that my tree biz went out and had a good day. We've taken a couple of days off recently, and the days we worked weren't the greatest for money.
So I was mortified when my boss (Bob Bandit) called me and said we were taking the day off AGAIN!!!
"We only got one cutter and my throat still hurts and," blah, blah, blah, bullshit.
"You guys are killing me," I said. I saw any money for Christmas going out the window. Shit, I saw money for rent going out the window.
I called Joe Venuti to see if he wanted to hustle up a couple little jobs we could do ourselves.
"Yeah, we could do that," Joe said in a sleepy voice. "But I think I'm gonna sleep for another hour."
I told him to call me when he got up, but I figured he was really too lazy to work and I resigned myself to a day of dicking around the house and blogging. I went and got a coffee and a bagel at Panera Bread and read all the details of the Saddam Hussein capture. Then this one spanish/indian looking girl walked by in blue sweat pants. She had a great ass, and I suddenly got very horney. She walked by a couple more times and we made eye contact, but I didn't really know how to strike up a conversation with her.
"Hey, I noticed you have a great ass," is all I could think of.
Anyways, I went home, went in my bedroom and started to masturbate, thinking about the spanish girl at the Panera Bread. Just as I was getting going the phone rang. It was Joe Venuti.
"You ready to make some money?" he said.
"Yeah. Just give me twenty minutes," I said.
So, I hurried through my little imaginary romance with the spanish girl and drove down to Joe's place. Joe has a ford ranger and we borrowed a chainsaw and ladder and a couple of other tools from his dad. Within a few minutes we had our own business: Mark and Joe's tree service.
We had a lucky first strike with our sales. Just a few blocks from Joe's house we saw a nice looking old lady putting up christmas decorations in her yard. She had a couple of shaggy palm trees and a sheffelera growing into the house. I walked up to make the sale.
"Hello!" I said, in my nicest, nice young man voice. "My parnter and I were just finishing up a job around the corner and I couldn't help but notice...."
Upon closer inspection there wasn't really much to do in the yard besides the palm trees. Just a snippet here and a snippet there. I told her we'd do it all for $150.
"Oh, I don't know," the nice old lady said. "I've got a guy who will be coming around in a few weeks and..."
"How about a hundred?" I said.
"Okay," the nice old lady said.
With that, Mark and Joe's tree service had its first job. I got right to work on the palms. They were just a couple of scraggly queen palms with not much to cut. But Joe's dad's saw wasn't a climbing saw. It was pretty heavy, so I had to kind of throw it up above me and then cut the fronds on the way down. I had to hold on to the palm tree with the other hand. Except for some palm tree dust in my eyes and hair I knocked the two trees out without a hitch.
The nice old lady seemed to really like having us work in her yard and she kept coming up and talking to us. She told me she a had a granddaughter that was really pretty and nice and worked in a hospital.
"Really?" I said. "Well, she's probably got a boyfriend," I imagine.
"No, no boyfriend at all. She's too picky," she said. "But I think she would just love you," she said.
"You think so?" I humored the lady with conversation while continuing to work. The job went so quickly and the lady liked us so much that I was sure I could get her to give us some more work. She asked me to come inside to see some kitchen remodeling they were doing. I figured while I was in there I could sell her on the trees in the back yard.
As soon as I was inside her little australian sheppard started barking at me viciously. It would have jumped on me, but it had a heavy chain attached to its collar. I listened to the nice old lady talk about her remodeling job and then asked her if she would want to cut any of the back yard stuff while we were there.
"No, I like to do all the stuff back there myself," she said. Just then, the australian sheppard broke free of its chain and went straight for me, barking viciously. Then the damn thing bit me on the calf.
"Damnit!" I said. "He got me!"
The nice old lady grabbed the dog and apologized while I escaped out the front door. Maybe, I could turn this into some sort of lawsuit, I thought. A dog bite is worth at least another hundred bucks. When I got outside I lifted up my pant leg and looked at the bite. It was barely a scratch. The nice old lady came out with a some disinfectant and a band aid.
"Look, why don't you let us trim these Jaccaranda's while we're here?" I said. "We'd much rather work for you than some other grumpy person down the street."
"How much for the jaccaranda's?" the nice old lady said.
"Another hundred," I said.
"Okay," she said. I trimmed the Jaccaranda's while Joe went to the dump. While I was working the nice old lady really tried to sell me on her granddaughter.
"I want to you to call her tonight, here's the number right here on the check."
"She lives here with you?" I asked.
"Yes, and her mother too. We're like a convent. My son in law was in the coast guard and he got washed over his ship. There hasn't been a man in the family since."
"Wow," I said. "That's too bad."
Then the nice old lady pulled out her granddaughter's college graduation photo.
"See, isn't she pretty?"
"Very pretty," I said, not lying.
"And I hate to say it, but she's got a very nice figure too!"
"Well, that's important," I said.
"Just make sure you call tonight. Promise me."
"I promise," I said.
We had one more trip to the dump with the jaccaranda clippings. We had to come back to pick up our tools, so I had one last chance to say goodbye to the nice old lady.
"You have a nice Christmas," I said.
"You too, and may God bless you," she said ernestly, looking into my eyes.
When I got back to the truck, Joe handed me something that the nice old lady wanted me to have. It was her granddaughter's 8x10 graduation photo. On the back there was a message.
It read:
Hi Mark,
This is just so you won't forget Elizabeth. Thanks for everything and Merry Christmas.
G-Ma, Virginia May.
Then she wrote her phone number again.
It's now 6:20 in the evening and I'm looking at Elizabeth's May's graduation photo at my desk. Should I really call this girl?
6:26:45 PM 
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Elizabeth
After Las Margaritas, I went with BASK and Suzi (pictured with BASK in previous frame) to the hyde park cafe. We drove across the bay to Tampa and had about 20 minutes for one last round and some goofy dancing before they turned the lights on and kicked everyone out.