09/09/09! Awesome! Life hasn't been this great since 08/08/08! To celebrate, at 9:09:09 AM this morning I drank 9 cups of coffee and tonight at 9:09:09 PM I am going to pound 9 beers, watch channel 99. According to this article,

[the date 09/09/09] represents the last set of repeating, single-digit dates that we'll see for almost a century (until January 1, 2101), or a millennium (mark your calendars for January 1, 3001), depending on how you want to count it.

Swell. Also, it is the 252nd day of the year. Significant? Yes, when you add 2+5+2 you get -wait for it- 9! Ladies and gentlemen, this can't possibly be a coincidence. The end is near.

Or new iPods! I was hoping for a wow-tastic AppleTV upgrade or revision, but instead it's just a rainbow of iPods with tiny cameras built in. It's nice, but... who needs another thing that plays music and takes pictures? Seems like everything does, nowadays. And I'm a proud owner of an iPhone, which does simply everything. Well... everything short of getting me a beer and pouring it into a frosty mug, handing it to me on the couch, and climbing up behind me to rub my tired shoulders. Nowadays it seems the new better things are merely varied permutations on the old better things.

Today's aluminum patio cover got delayed due to a stucco problem. The general on the job has issues with the inspector, who he mentioned could bite him, of all things. So I returned yesterday's trailer to the equipment rental place and asked to borrow their lawn aerator. They gave it to me for free, which made my day, and I spent the morning aerating the lawn, front and back. The lawn is dying, sadly, so a summer's-end aeration amounts to little more than a yard-size tracheotomy, as it lays there, struggling to breathe in the September heat. What else am I gonna do? Dose it with gypsum, fertilizer and pesticide? Intravenous hydro-therapy under the cover of night? Okay, I'll do it -but only because there's no Living Will for these things clearly delineated in the Sunset Western Garden Guide.

My neighbor is crazy, and I don't care if they know I think it. In the dead heat of summer they hired the other neighbor's gardener and decided to till the ground and plant lawnseed in their backyard (which was an obviously stolen and transplanted plot of barren Mojave.) Fine, but they've got their back sprinklers running ALL NIGHT LONG. I'm not kidding about this. Oh, sure, it's growing and all, but it must be costing them a few grand and the good will of the neighbor on the other side, who's been asking if the SHAKA-SHAKA-SHAKA kept us up all night, too. I'd complain to the authorities about the senseless waste of water, but then... well... then my green envy would be wholly exposed.

Also spent about $999.99 to fix the family SUV today, since at high speeds it felt like the driveshaft was going to drop out of the chassis and roll down the freeway embankment. In Japanese, the word for "nine" is a homophone for the word for "suffering". This all makes sense now, since it's a Toyota.

UPDATE: Patti pointed this out. In the words of Keanu: "Whoa."

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