Back From Vacation, Part II

     Well, another all too short vacation has come and gone, like so much sani-flush and now it's back to work. I didn't get a chance to arrange for a guest columnist this time around and I hope they found somebody to fill in. If they didn't, I want to assure all four or five of you that I did NOT write a weather map last week. I didn't get a chance to buy the paper last Friday, so I don't know. Friday is always a tough day to get a paper. The circulation dept. tells me that, for some reason, Friday is the highest demand of the week and that their demographic study of the situation shows that demand is especially high among bird lovers. Be that as it may, this vacation was much different from the last. For one thing it was, except for one small incident, much less exciting.

     The demands of the ever increasing scope of the Grumpy Bachelor International Cartel and World-Wide Mega-Monopoly, Ltd. (GBICWWMM,L)'s projects took up a lot of my time. I had scheduled a major staff meeting one day last week to discuss our many projects and also to add a new member to the GBICWWMM.L.

     I got up early that morning (11:44) in order to get the kitch ... er ... World Headquarters in a non-toxic condition and decided it was a perfect time to test one of the GBICWWMM.L's newest quality of (bachelor) life enhancing gadgets; the high pressure disinfectant pump. It works sort of like a small version of a pumper fire truck. If it works as planned it could be a great time saving device. Our research showed that name brand disinfectants are surprisingly inexpensive if bought by the tanker truckload, so it has a lot of cost saving potential, too. And, because the disinfectant is delivered under high pressure, it cleans out as well as cleans up.

     I am happy to report that it was a howling success and the, uh, World Headquarters was cleared and cleaned in a matter of seconds, as was a good portion of the rest of the house when the on/off valve got stuck.

     That gave me a lot of time to kill until everybody showed up for the meeting, so I decided to finally get up in the attic and, at least scope out the situation and come up with a battle plan, although recent events gave me a pretty strong idea about how I was going to approach the task.

     I managed to find a working flashlight and ladder; not in the house, of course, there wasn't much left in the house now. Actually, I found them on my neighbor's back porch. Well, not so much on the back porch as it was inside the back door that led to his back porch. That is, inside the door, through the hallway and down the stairs to the basement. But it was all right - I had a key.

     Once I got up in the attic, I was delighted to find it was in pretty good shape, which was not surprising, since I had never been up there before. But I knew that, inevitably, would change. I don't know what it is about me, but there is something about my presence that causes things to go to seed. I could walk into a freshly scrubbed operating room and within minutes it will look like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe story. I think they call it Karma.

     Anyway, I had been rummaging around for a few minutes when I heard a noise downstairs. I knew it wasn't the cats since they had wandered into the , um, world Headquarters when I was flushing it out and I know it's a long walk back from Howard.

     I rushed over to the attic's trapdoor to see what was going on, but the vibrations caused the door to swing shut. To my horror I discovered that the force of it closing had wedged it tight. I couldn't open it. I could still hear the noise and voices. Then I heard the refrigerator door open. I spent quite some time frantically tugging at the door. Not in my 'Fridge, Buster! A bachelor's refrigerator is his castle, although in the case of mine, it's more like the Alamo after Santa Ana got through with it.

     I finally got the door open and rushed into the World Head ... uh ... kitchen. Nobody was there but the refrigerator door was wide open and there were finger scoops taken out of my stash of overnight hummus. And somebody had been going through my writer's portfolio! I felt violated (which, in my life is better than nothing) but before I could dwell on it too much, the doorbell rang. The staff was arriving for the meeting.

THIS WEEK'S RIDDLE: How can you tell when an advertising manager and a radio personality have been in your refrigerator?

NEXT WEEK: The answer.

George Breithaupt is still a photographer, copy editor and columnist for the Mount Vernon News. We never thought we'd ever say this, but after last week's "column" we were kind of glad to see him back. For the first 10 minutes, anyway.