I usually don't drink beer, but the day's a real hot one.  My wife talked me into buying the metal framed green chair with plastic webbing I'm sitting in.  It was a good choice because the chair is really pretty comfortable.  She bought me a hammock a few years ago thinking I could lay in it out here on the patio, but I never use it.  I found the remains of the twelve pack in the refrigerator in the garage.  My son puts it in there so that when he comes over he can have a beer.  I like wine.  A lot of people drink wine because they think it's the new thing to do, but I've been drinking wine for some time, even before it became the thing to do.  I have a lot of  bottles of wine.  I even have one that is recommended for wine investors.  I used to drink more beer when I was younger, like my son.  I've always liked a good shot of booze, too.  Jack Daniels, Glenlivet, Johnny Walker, Chivas Regal, Bombay, Belvedere, Gray Goose, Single Barrel, royal blue label, gold label, Sapphire, all good names, all good labels.  I only drink hard stuff once in a while, for instance, when I'm with Monty.  He doesn't like cheap booze.  He keeps it in the freezer.  It's always real cold.  He likes to sit in the spa and drink it with frost on the glass.  The hard stuff can get you drunk before you know it.  It's like the guy who drinks 151 proof tequila.  Where's this guy going.  It's not like the stuff tastes better.  A wine cooler is better on a hot day than the hard stuff.  I saw the beer in the refrigerator about noon time, so I got my cooler out and put the beer in it, with ice, so it would be real cold.  The wife and daughter left a little while ago and it's to hot to do anything around the house.  On a hot day the first one goes down quick.  I'm going to take a little time with the second one.

            The trouble with laying in the hammock is that I can see the ceiling of the roof over the patio.  It has stains on it because the roof leaks.  It's been leaking for a few years now.  I've fixed it before but it needs a new roof.  As long as it isn't raining it doesn't bother me, except of course, if I'm laying in the hammock looking at it.  I wonder if that's why my wife bought the hammock for me.  I know how to put the new roof on.  I'd have to tear off the old hot tar gravel roof, carry it around to the front of the house, load it in a truck, that I'd have to go down and rent, and then haul it to the dump.  Then I'd have to go down and buy the new roofing materials, truck it to the house, carry it around the back, carry it up the ladder, and put it on the roof.  You know, those rolls of roofing weigh ninety pounds each.  Then I'd have to nail the base sheet down and get my torch out and heat the roofing as I rolled it out.  It's awful hot to be torching down a roof.  Maybe if I got an early start it would be better.  Boy, those beers are really getting cold now.  It sweats while it's setting on the top of the cooler next to me.  It's so hot though, you can't let them set there too long or they get warm.  A cold beer on a hot day.

            A leak started in the dining room by the window.  I've fixed my wood shake roof on the main house, too.  All the neighbors have put new roofs on their houses.  I used to go down and help the next door neighbor fix his, until he put a new roof on.  He asked me for a bid before he did it.  He said it was the lowest bid he got.  I tried to give him a good deal because he was my neighbor.  He decided to use a different contractor because he was worried that if something went wrong it might cause hard feelings.  I can understand why he used someone else.  I was worried about the same thing.  He and his wife have unrealistic expectations about some things.  In a way it was a relief, because I wouldn't have made any money anyway.  People think you can put a roof on really cheap if you're in the roofing business.  Not that I'm in the roofing business.  Some people just think I am.  I would have to have the guys who work for me help.  We would have to rent a truck, tear off the roof, put new wood sheeting on the roof, and put the new roof on.  The workers compensation for roofing is over fifty percent of what I pay them.  There's liability insurance, social security, Medicare, and the office work needed to do all the paper work required by the government and state.  It adds up to about seventy five to eighty percent more than I pay the employee.  A homeowner can buy the materials for just about the same price as I can.  This ones so cold I can feel it in my forehead.  Slow is good, though.  I'll drink it a little slower.  I guess by the time it's done you can save about ten or fifteen percent.  Maybe not even that much.

            I was in the grocery store the other day and saw a woman get arrested for stealing.  The guy who stopped her put hand cuffs on her and pulled a package of what looked like fish out of her pants.  He was dressed like a customer in the store.  He must have been a security guard or something.  He was awfully rough with her.  She didn't look like she was homeless or anything and it wasn't as though she was making a fuss.  The next time I went in I asked the cashier, that I usually go to, who he was.  She told me he was an ex-Chicago policeman.  He wasn't that old so I figured something must have happened to keep him from being a cop.  From the way he treated the woman, I think he still wanted to be a cop.  Anyway, I know I wouldn't have put my hands down the front of a strange woman's pants looking for fish.  I wonder what would have happened if the woman went to court and sued the store for him putting his hands down her pants?  I guess that's why fifteen percent might even be high.  I had a young guy working for me.  I found out later he was using drugs.  A lot of tools went missing in the couple of months he worked for me.  Then there are the people you work for.  I did a job for a lady whose husband was on disability.  It was a housing rehabilitation job.  He injured his leg and had to have it operated on.  The operation would have made it possible for him to go back to work, but he wouldn't stay off the leg to let it heal.  While we were doing the job, the incision opened up and it got infected.  The doctor said it would need another operation.  Of course, he wouldn't be able to go back to work.  He drank during the day while we were working at the house.  The guys working for me wouldn't leave any tools on the site.  They figured he would take them and hock them, because his wife wouldn't give him any money for booze.  Sure enough, after we finished the job, I get a letter from his wife saying that stuff in the garage was stolen.  Being as she had given us a key to the house, while we were working there, she wanted all the locks changed.  After she called the City Rehabilitation Department and threatened to go to small claims court, I bought all new locks for her house. It cost me about sixty dollars, but it was cheaper than going to court and paying my employees to sit a half day in court to say they returned her key.  Well, I guess things could be worse.  I still have a couple of cold beers left. 

            The place I do some photocopying raised its price for photocopies from four cents to six cents.  You have to put this copy counter in the machine to get it to work.  Then you take it up to the cash register, when your done, to pay for the number of copies it says you made.  Every time I go in, I see a copy counter in a machine or on the countertop with copies on it that weren't paid for.  It always bothers me because I'm paying for those copies.  I might still be paying four cents if everyone would pay for the copies they made.  How much does it cost copy stores and grocery stores because people steal?  How much does it cost me?  Enough to pay for a new roof on my house?  The employees working at the copy store don't seem to care either.  I see people walking out without paying.  Why can't they see them?  What's the use of getting upset?  It isn't going to change anything.   I need to throw these empties in the trash.  It doesn't look good if someone comes by and you have a lot of empty beer bottles sitting on the patio.  I almost never drink beer, but today, today they hit the spot.

            One time I was in the spa at Monty's and a guy who had spent some time in Russia was there.  He'd developed a taste for Red Army Vodka, so Monty got a bottle of Red Army Vodka.  The guy said that Red Army is the one to drink in Russia.  They're big on vodka in Russia.  The shot glasses were frozen and the Red Army Vodka had spent the night in the freezer under the cooling fan.  Monty's got one of those stainless steel Sub-Zero freezers that you can really crank the temperature down in.  He says it's critical you get the bottle under the fan because you want the vodka to get thick like syrup.  I like Gray Goose better than Red Army, but it was still good.  The frosty shot glass was heavy with ice and filled with thick syrupy Vodka.  Monty builds houses.  I wonder what Monty's doing today?  You know, come to think of it, I have a bottle of Gray Goose Vodka setting under the fan, right now, in the freezer, in the garage.  The frozen shot glasses are in there too.  Gray Goose, thick, like syrup, a frozen shot glass, with frost on the sides.