The Science of God: The Godcode

Good morning from the Chula Vista Resort and Spa in beautiful downtown Mexico!

The Rainy Season arrived this week. The temperatures are cooler, and I don’t need to water the gardens today for the first time in months. I have time to write.

* * * *

If you were to ask any three random people you happen to see on the street to describe God as completely as they can, you’d probably get five different answers. And only if those three people were all of the same faith. Different faiths, the results will vary exponentially.

If there’s only one God, which most of the people on this planet claim to believe, how can there be so many versions of Him? And how come none of Them make much sense?

Maybe it’s time for us as a people to rethink our perception of God. Step back and take a good look at this from a different angle. Try to find something that actually makes sense.

Behold! This is a new point of view. A re-examination of God from His perspective, if you will. As far as my credentials go, I don’t have any. I have a college degree in Absolutely Nothing. So if you’ve always wanted to be unimpressed by a complete nobody, you’ve come to the right place. I doubt any of my ideas are original. I’m sure someone somewhere has said everything I’m going to say long before I did. I’m simply going to reshuffle the deck and lay out the cards in a new order.

Best Practice Tip before Reading This: Anything you can learn, you can also unlearn. All it takes is the ability to imagine a different reality. Context is the most important factor in determining the truth of anything.

* * * *

Opinions on, and imaginings of what God is are legion. Some people think God is a heavenly version of Albus Dumbledore — magical — only all-powerful and all-knowing. Umm…He seems to be a bit blithe of scruple, and He is a bit sketchy on morals sometimes. You know, He lets bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. That doesn’t seem fair to me. And sometimes He seems like an abusive, deadbeat dad, but He still demands that we love and respect Him, all the time… Or else.

Popular opinion claims that God and Science are incompatible. What if they aren’t? What if God and Science and Mathematics aren’t simply compatible with one another, what if they are all one in the same.

* * * *

Imagine, if you can, that it’s your job is to construct a new universe. We got tired of the old one. You’re the Project Manager. The Big Boss. You have complete control over every aspect of the construction of this new universe. You have an unlimited budget. You have all the resources and facilities you’ll need to successfully complete this assignment, and if you don’t, they will be provided.

And let’s assume that you’re highly motivated to pull this off without a hitch. You’ve been waiting for this moment all of your life. All you have to do is hire the right people and get them to work effectively together as a team to figure out the process.

Who ya gonna call?

For me, I’m hiring every scientist. mathematician, architect, engineer and computer geek on the planet. And a really good HR Department. Those are the best people to make success in this endeavor possible. Anyone disagree?

* * * *

Long, long ago there was the Void. And somewhere inside of this vast Nothingness, God and God alone existed. And because He existed, God thought. There wasn’t anything else to do. TV hadn’t been invented yet, nor were there any TikTok videos to binge watch.

As often happens when we think about something, we get an idea about it, and so it was God. God had an Idea. He dwelt on His Idea as it expanded in His Mind, and God devised a plan to make His Plan real; it was the most beautifully complex idea ever conceived in this universe.

God focused His Will on His Idea, and God’s Idea became fused into His Purpose. God wove a Vision vividly outlining every aspect of His Idea, shaping and molding it, guiding and directing, orchestrating and conducting every thing to mesh perfectly together to achieve His perfect conclusion.

God analyzed every possible outcome, then chose only those storylines that fit into His Purpose, editing out everything that did not. In essence, He wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the first epic movie outlining every event and occurrence that needs to happen in this universe — from beginning to end, great and small, down to the most minute detail. And He even wrote the soundtrack, like Prince did in Purple Rain.

When God had done all of the math, and applied every scientific law and principle exactly where and when they needed to be activated — not just on Earth, but in every millimeter of the entire universe — when God had devised a Plan that would achieve His Purpose, and only His Purpose — God blew Himself up in the Big Bang, creating everything in the universe that ever was, that is, and that will be. Galaxies, solar systems, and planets. Everything. Including us humans.

God wrote, coded, and formatted something like unto a computer program that started running roughly fourteen and half billion years ago and will continue to run as long as it takes until God achieves His ultimate goal. It doesn’t matter if it takes another five years from now or another fifty billion light-years. God is eternal. Time has no meaning in the Kingdom of Heaven.

I call this program the Godcode. It’s the only answer I’ve been able to come up with that explains how God can truly be All-Knowing. He had to create a blueprint. He’s running the fucking show.

You can define all-powerful any way you like. But if you can create an entire universe of diversity and wonder out of Nothing — simply by thinking about it long enough, that’s setting the bar pretty damn high.

* * * *

I’m not going to explain the fruits of the Big Bang here. That would take forfuckingever! Anyhow, there are literally hundreds of thousands of resources you can find online that explain everything we currently understand about it if you’re suddenly curious.

Consider this: God was the only thing existing inside the Void before the Big Bang. God was still the only thing existing after the Big Bang. God isn’t merely in Everything. He actually is Everything. Even to this day. And all of those subatomic particles of God that went flying out into the Void in the Big Bang had been encoded with an exacting set of instructions for each and every particle to follow.

A Must-Do List, if you will.

* * * *.

Back in the 1960’s, a British physicist named Peter Higgs proposed the existence of the Higgs boson — the fundamental particle associated with the Higgs field, a field that gives mass to other fundamental particles such as electrons, preons, and quarks. They’re the smallest things we’ve been able to figure out so far.

His theory created a bit of an uproar in scientific circles for awhile — until everyone realized this guy wasn’t full of shit, he was a fucking genius.

If you ever attempt to break down something to it’s most basic form, bust it into a million, billion, trillion pieces, eventually you’ll get to a point where you can’t break it down any further because you’ve reached the smallest particle. That’s essentially what the Higgs boson is. Oh, and by the way, the other name for it is the God particle.

In 2008, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, completed the construction of the Large Hadron Collider. In July of 2012, CERN announced the presence of the Higgs boson particle had been determined within the LHC. In 2013, almost 50 years after Peter Higgs published his revolutionary idea, he received the Nobel prize for his work.

* * * *

Scientists, whether they believe in God or not, will tell you the existence of God hasn’t been proven. I would add yet. Here’s something to consider: Every thing in both science and mathematics are provable. God’s form is Science. God’s function is Mathematics. In that context, Science, and mathematics, in all of their major and minor areas of study are nothing more than branches and subsets of theology.

It’s not a question of if. It’s a matter of when. Science will prove the existence of God eventually.

Thanks to Peter Higgs and CERN, we have the data, the technology, and the facilities to accomplish this. What scientists don’t understand yet is all they have to do to isolate the Higgs boson particle is connect to the field it resides in. Once that feat has been achieved Science will be able to unlock its’ Godcode.

Here’s the really cool part: If you can tame so much as even one God particle, you can control all of them. Scientists will be able to create anything they can imagine.

* * * *

God, the Ultimate Scientist and Digital Universe Creator. If this scenario is a possibility you hadn’t considered before, there’s a reason for that. It’s not supposed to be. Our current perceptions of God and our relationship with Him don’t appear to be working out so well for either one of us anymore. It’s way past time for a change.

The Church, and by that I mean every form and subspecies of organized religion on the planet, doesn’t want you to know the truth about God and your personal relationship with Him. If you knew the truth, you’d know there’d be no reason for the Church to exist anymore. And then all of those poor priests, ministers, and preachers would have to go get real jobs like the rest of us.

The guys at the top, middle, and bottom level of every religious hierarchy have got it made. They have wealth, power and control, and fame/infamy. No one just walks away from those perks if they don’t have to.

If you have questions about God, read the Torah. Or the Bible. Or the Quran. And if you have ever taken this advice from your priest, pastor, rabbi, imam, or minister — how much better do you now understand God? Almost everything we’ve been led to believe is the gospel truth about God by organized religion in their holy books is a goddamn lie.

* * * *

Imagine you’re out on the town with your best friend. Y’all are having a great time, and then this guy comes over and starts telling your friend a story that you know isn’t true. What would you do, dear? You’d probably call bullshit and tell yon dude to take a fuckin’ hike, right?

That’s more or less the situation I find myself in right now.

* * * *

Some of you have already figured out that if God has already predetermined everything that has happened, is happening now, and what remains to happen — what the hell happened to free will? Aren’t we supposed to have free will, and can’t we do whatever we want?

Surprise! There’s no such thing as free will.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t that funny

Can you imagine it? You, personally — and it’s not just you — all of us. Yes, that includes me. Each and every one of us have as much free will as any character in any mmorpg. If you’re like me, you’re going to have to look that up.

The human concept of free will is the second greatest lie ever told by the Church. The first great lie is that we humans are separated from God by something called sin.

I’m pretty sure everyone will find the concept of the absence to free will disturbing. I did. It takes a while to get used to for sure, but there is some good news. All of you good, religious people out there that are struggling mightily to obey God’s Will and be good people so you can get into Heaven — you can stop sweating those points. You’re already fulfilling God’s Will, so chill out.

But if I’m already doing God’s Will, why aren’t I a better person? Why isn’t the world a better place?

Good question. It’s time for you to start figuring that out.

Look, we deal with situations like unto this on practically a daily basis anymore. Especially at work. It’s called a Change in Practice. We’re not doing the same old thing anymore. We going to try something different from now on.

See? I told you. Nothing new there.

* * * *

Not only is it physically impossible for us to be separate from God, it’s metaphysically impossible. We wouldn’t be alive without God. Without God, we couldn’t even fucking exist!

God is Everything. Everything is God. God is the Consciousness and Lifeforce that controls the actions and reactions of everything in the universe — whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral. Solid, liquid, or gas. Everything in the universe is doing exactly what God programmed it to do. And everything has been encoded to produce one result and one result only. The fulfillment of God’s Will.

Everything happens for a reason.

God doesn’t play dice with the universe. — Albert Einstein

When it comes to God and your personal role in God’s Plan, that’s the main theme you need to try to understand right now.

* * * *

There are only two reactions anyone that has read this far can be having right now. Well, I guess that wasn’t the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Or, That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ll ever hear. Some of you might even have a question or two… This might be one of them:

If we really are one with God, where did we ever get the idea that we’re separated from Him?

That’s the right question. There’s only one answer.

It’s an answer no one understands completely yet, and I have seriously questioned the necessity of this…alternate reality…many times. The best answer I have right now is we humans have somehow developed a type of split personality that is almost completely consciously unaware of our divine connection to, and with, God, much like unto Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

* * * *

God needed this to happen to fulfill His Will. He planned for this to happen.

But why?

That’s an even better question. As near as I can tell, God can only do the things He needs to do — the series of connections and interconnections of Time/Space, Chance, Circumstance, and Opportunity that had to be intricately woven together — just so — to advance and complete His Purpose. God cannot deviate from His original storyline. There can be no unforeseen plot twists that pop up from left field that God didn’t see coming.

Everything that’s going on in the world around us right now is exactly what God intended, even the parts that don’t make any goddamn sense to us. And they are also legion.

That’s why God hasn’t cured cancer. Or AIDS. Or malignant stupidity. Yet. We haven’t seen the end of this movie, so there’s still hope. If it’s part of his plan, it will surely happen. This difference between what we think God is and what God actually is is a literal illustration of an immovable object meeting an irresistible force.

Mankind, particularly our collective understanding of God, is the immovable object. Really religious people don’t question anything they’ve been told to believe about God. They know everything they’re ever going to need to know, and nothing and nobody is ever going to make them change their minds.

God’s Will is the irresistible force. In Science, when these two entities collide, the irresistible force wins. Every time.

You can look it up.

* * * *

But I thought God loves us…

He does, but God, the sentient force of energy that rules the universe and everything in it, is not human. God isn’t anything like us in appearance, in the things He thinks, or in the ways He expresses Himself. God’s Idea of Love is vastly different than the love humans feel. Our love is a very deeply personal emotion, usually attached to a special person. a place, or a thing.

God’s Love is not. That’s all I can tell you with any surety. There are far more things that I don’t understand about God than I do. God is working on that, but these things take time. And patience.

Just ask Peter Higgs.

Time Passages

Remember when we were going to do that two week thing to flatten the curve? Whatever happened to that? Are we still doing that? Does anyone know which phase of COVID-19 we’re in now? Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?

There is some good news. We’ve made it to October. In quick succession Halloween, Thanksgiving, then Christmas will be upon us, And then we can say, Adios, motherfucker to 2020.

And hope that 2021 isn’t one of those years that says, Here, hold my beer…

* * * *

Time Passages is a song by the Scottish singer/songwriter Al Stewart. The song is story about a guy who starts daydreaming on a cold winter morning before he goes to his dead-end, boring-ass desk job or something.

I research a lots of things that end up in my blog posts. Seeing how I know next to nothing about Mr. Stewart, I decided to look him up. He apparently has quite an esteemed status among those in the music industry, which is something I never would have thought possible.

I have at least one of his CD’s. I consider his songs to be musically intricate, but mostly corny. And Time Passages is one of his corniest. But here’s the ironic part: Al agrees with me. Even he thinks this song is crap.

* * * *

Time, being relative — it has seemed to drag by at times this year. But not even COVID-19 can make time stop. Life has gone on, which is what it always does. One of my virtual friends in Canadia had a baby. It’s a girl! Thank God. She didn’t think she could handle a fourth boy.

A couple of my virtual female friends in the States are unexpectedly in relationships — something neither of them thought would ever happen again. I hope it works out well for them.

We’ve all gotten older this year, those of us that didn’t get dead. Three of my real friends have lost family members this year. My best friend from high school lost one of his sisters to suicide. My best friend from the Minneapolis VAMC lost his oldest son to an accidental drug overdose. My best friend who chronologically fell in between my other two best friends — his dad just died.

Those deaths are immense tragedies to my friends, and they’ve hit me hard as well. My heart rejoices, and breaks, just like it always has. Even in this very strange year, there are some things that haven’t changed.

* * * *

I find it hard to believe that we’ve been living in Mexico for only four years. It’s even more unreal when you consider that this is the year I had planned to retire. I originally thought I’d work until I was 65, but then I had to change my plans and retire at the age of 61.

Yeah, that was a real bummer…

Our time here somehow seems like it’s been much longer, almost like we’ve been here most of our lives. Maybe it’s because Einstein’s concept of SpaceTime is four dimensional… I’d expound on that further, except I have no idea what it means, and I’m not interested in doing that much research.

Likewise with our darlingpreshadorbs purebred Mexican street kit-tens.

Mika and Mollie. See? I told you they were cute

My lovely supermodel wife and I rescued them a little over two years ago, and we cannot imagine our lives without them now. They keep us entertained, and shower us with a lots of love and affection.

We adopted them just before we moved into the Chula Vista Resort and Spa, the spacious gringo mansion in which we currently reside. And it seems like we’ve been here longer than two years, too.

Our lease is coming up for renewal soon. We know we’re going to be able to renew our rental agreement, we just don’t know for how long. We know our landlord likes us because Lord Mark just upgraded the washer and dryer, bringing the laundry room into the 21st Century.

We’re also going to collaborate with him on getting the swimming pool repainted. I think Lord Mark had it done on the cheap just before we moved in, and it shows. We’re planning on doing a much more lasting fix this time around, one that will stand the test of time.

* * * *

Time. The country of my birth is obsessed with time. Everything must run like clockwork. Time is of the essence, and time is money. Life runs at a hurried pace. In fact, it’s a rat race, and races are always won by the person with the fastest time.

It’s possible that time is also important in Mexico, but I haven’t seen much evidence of it here in the Lakeside Area. We don’t live in a sophisticated urban area. We live in a little rural village up in the mountains. Here, time is much more of a whatever/whenever kind of a thing.

It’s been a bit of a readjustment for us, but all in all, it’s been a good reminder. There are actually very few things in life that are so urgent that they need to be done NOW.

* * * *

Time. Nothing escapes the passage of time. Everything is changed by it. I was young once. I had hair. I’m going to be 65 in December, and I can’t remember the last time I actually had to comb my hair.

With the passage of time, some pains are lessened. And others are only made worse. In terms of aging and growing older, the emotional pains I’ve carried around forever are starting to fade away, apparently so they can be replaced by the physical pains of no longer being young.

Waking up in the morning is usually a painful experience for me. Thanks to years of risk-taking behavior, I have two bad ankles, one bad shoulder, two hips that take turns having bad days, a bum knee, and a totally fucked up back.

I’m relieved that no one has videotaped my first steps in the morning. It’s an unattractive combination of an ambulating penguin and the rusty Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.

_{See? I told you. And it’s my right knee, too}

In my opinion, it’s the worst part of getting old. I don’t know how this works for the rest of you who experience chronic pain, but when my pain level rises beyond more than usual, I am overwhelmed with nausea, which makes everything feel just a little bit worse.

I’ve lost at least 15 pounds since we moved here, and I wasn’t on a weight loss diet for any of that time. People tell me I look good for my age. I’m sure they mean it as a compliment, but from my point of view, I’m more of a pig that has learned how to apply lipstick.

* * * *

Time. I remember the days when time was a precious resource that had to be carefully monitored and managed. I used to be a registered nurse. There was never enough time to do all of the things you wanted to do in an eight hour shift.

Time is now a more or less mundane resource that I possess in abundance. My view of that might change as I grow closer to death. I spent the first third of my life trying to kill myself, the second third of my life wondering how I managed to survive, and now I’m finally learning how to live in peace with myself.

I’m going to guess that much like unto Socrates, I’ve spent a goodly amount of time examining my life. And after all of that introspection, I’ve come to two conclusions: One, I may have done a lots of things in my life, but one thing I didn’t do very well was take the time to actually enjoy it. And two, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to stop examining my life.

Seriously.

There are times when reviewing the videotape is a good thing. You can dissect your words and actions, analyze the outcome, and figure out what you can do differently to make improvements.

There are other times when reviewing the videotape will only highlight what a fucking idiot you were, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. All you can do is accept it, and be grateful that you are no longer that person.

I’m learning how to become that person. I haven’t been doing so great at it so far… I’ll probably get better at it as I becoming more practiced doing it. After all, it’s not golf.

* * * *

Time. It’s something you tend to have either too much of, or not enough of. It rarely seems to be measured out in perfect doses. The hardest part about writing this post has been knowing that I wasted so much time being wasted.

One of these days, probably right after I make peace with myself and my past, I’ll probably want to have some it back.

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

¡Hola amigos! ¿Cómo están?

I know I haven’t written anything lately, so I’d like to thank my faithful readers for stepping up and demanding that I get back to work. Yeah, that didn’t happen. I don’t know how I’d respond if it ever did.

I’ve been busy. My lovely supermodel wife’s boyfriend has been here for the last couple of weeks, so we’ve been kind of occupied with him. I say kind of because we haven’t seen him as much this time around. Todd has decided he’s going to move here, so he’s been busy sorting out the details of his eventual relocation.

We hooked him up with our beautiful and talented Immigration Attorney, Julia Vargas. They’ve had several meetings to discuss what his best plan of action should be. And they’ve gone out on several non-business dates. They’re spending the weekend together at the beach.

I hope it works out for them. They’re both good people.

* * * *

Several of my latest posts have been of a political nature, which implies that I’m a global thinker, or at the least, far more global in my thinking than I actually am.

I’m a guy. Guys, by nature, tend to be shallow, superficial, and think only about themselves. Clearly, I need to get back to basics. I’m going to try to keep this post generally within the confines of our yard. More specifically, it’s about the joys of home maintenance.

I’m fairly competent at doing minor repairs around the house. I can replace light fixtures and faucets. I can fix leaking pipes. I’m really good at building shelves. I also know when I can’t fix something, and when it comes to home maintenance, that’s probably the most important thing to know.

To be fair, we had home maintenance issues at our last house. We’ve been very fortunate that both of our landlords have been very responsive to our wants and needs, whenever I couldn’t manage them myself, and that’s not always the case here. Or anywhere else for that matter.

* * * *

I have a theory about life. If there’s nothing going wrong in your life, God will bless you with car trouble, just to keep you humble. I call it Mark’s General Theory of Life and Stuff.

* * * *

Little Known Fact About And Stuff: It’s an unofficial nursing term. Way back when I was in nursing school, some of my much younger female classmates used it to describe the symptomatology of their patients.

“My patient was vomiting fecal material, and stuff…”  Which begs the question, If your patient was essentially vomiting shit, what else can there be? You’d think anything that had been in front of it would be, you know, gone already. Well, that’s the first thought I had…

Believe it or not, that’s actually a true story.

* * * *

Back to my theory on Life, Car Trouble, and Humility. That was before I retired and started playing golf.

I don’t need any help from God staying humble anymore. Golf has all of the bases covered as far as that is concerned. My fairway game has improved. I’m consistently getting on the green in three strokes.

My drives are mostly beautiful. A guy I golfed with the other day commented that I must have a low handicap after watching one of my gorgeous tee shots.

“Wait til we get closer to the green.” I replied.

To paraphrase my nursing school buddy, Don Nelson, I can’t sink fuckin’ putts.

If you’re on the green in three, and you three putt, that’s always a six. It’s my new favorite score. I’ve become so good at it that one of my golf buddies said this after we finished the seventh hole last Sunday.

“Give me a Mark.”

Jesus H. Tiger Fuckin’ Mickelson!

According to people who are reasonably good golfers, there’s only one way to improve your golf score. And that is to keep playing. I’ll be on the course tomorrow. I’ll let you know if there’s any improvement.

* * * *

Okay. Back to my theory on Life, Car Trouble, and Humility. Again. The proof of this is we haven’t had any car trouble since we moved to Mexico, other than having to buy new tires. Twice. I attribute that to the roads here in the Lakeside Area more than anything else.

However, we have been blessed of late with a few issues at our new home that have been keeping us on our toes. The two biggest problems are in the kitchen.

The first is the refrigerator, which has mostly been nothing but trouble ever since we moved into our new home. I’ve written about this previously, if you’re really bored and want to check out  any of my other posts…

Our landlord, Lord Mark, Duke of San Antonio Tlayacapan, upgraded all of the kitchen appliances before we moved in, and moved the old appliances out to the casita. They’re old, and a faded almond color; clearly outdated in terms of modern decor. We were thrilled to see them replaced.

The new refrigerator is a shiny, stainless steel LG. We had an LG refrigerator at our house in Surprise, and we loved it. The first thing our shiny, new Mexican LG failed to perform consistently at was the water dispenser on the door. Both Lea and I drink a lots of water, so we’ve developed a great affinity for this handy gadget.

The water line in our refrigerator kept freezing up. It was easily fixed. Remove the frozen filter, let it thaw. Grab one of Lea’s hair dryers, melt the ice in the water line. Put it all back together, and violá! It worked like a charm.

There was only one problem. It kept freezing up.

The refrigerator is under warranty. Jaime Mendoza, our property manager here at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa, eventually convinced the LG Service Department in Guadalajara to send a technician to the Lakeside Area to fix it. Lakeside is about forty miles south of Guad. That took about a month. And all was well, until the ice maker died.

* * * *

I don’t use the ice maker much, but Lea does. She loves drinking really cold water. We’ve discovered she isn’t the only one. Our kit-tens, Mika and Mollie, do too. And Mollie is absolutely fascinated by ice cubes.

Another thing we’ve discovered is our rapidly growing kit-tens are really good at knocking things over, like, lamps. And ceramic chickens. And terra cotta armadildoes. And glasses of ice water. I started using a plastic water bottle because they can be resealed. And if the kit-tens knock that over, no clean up is required.

I think the only breakable things they haven’t already broken are the things we put on top of the book cases in the living room. And the only reason they haven’t broken those things is they haven’t figured out how to get up there yet.

* * * *

Jaime had to enter into another series of negotiations with the LG Service Department on our behalf, but before he was able to convince them that they needed to repair the ice maker on their warrantied product, the refrigerator stopped refrigerating, and then the freezer stopped freezing.

We moved everything that had been in the shiny, new refrigerator/freezer out to the ugly old refrigerator/freezer in the casita. Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with the way that old piece of junk works.

There was one bright spot with the bright and shiny LG. The water dispenser still worked.

It took Jaime about a week to convince the LG Service Department to send another repair technician to come look at the almost totally malfunctioning major appliance in our kitchen, but first we had to do The Twelve Hour Test.

Lea’s response was, “We’ve already done a one hundred and twenty hour test! This is bullshit!!”

My response to her was, “Honey, do you want your refrigerator fixed or not?”

So, yes. We performed the requisite testing. It was simple to do. Turn the cold settings up to maximum warp, put one glass of water in the refrigerator, and another in the freezer. And, twelve hours later, nothing had happened. The water in the refrigerator didn’t get cold, and the water in the freezer was still water.

Once LG was informed of the test results, they agreed to send out another technician. That was on Thursday. The LG repairman is supposed to be here next Tuesday. If we’re very fortunate, our refrigerator problems might be sorted out by the end of the month.

* * * *

The other kitchen issue is the faucet. We had asked Jaime to upgrade both the sink and the faucet, and he was willing to do that. The kitchen sink is stainless steel, but over several decades of hard use, it’s no longer stainless. The faucet was a mishmash of parts that didn’t match, and it leaked.

Jaime manages more than one property for Lord Mark, so it sometimes takes a while for him to get back to this property. Lea and I eventually decided to go look at new sinks on our own. That’s when we discovered that modern kitchen sinks are much smaller than our vintage sink.

Installing a new sink would have entailed completely redoing the countertop, and we didn’t think that was something Lord Mark would be willing to do.

No problem, we’re flexible. We informed Jaime we were willing to work at rehabbing the vintage sink, but we still wanted a new faucet. He sent us pictures of faucets he liked. Lea found one that she loved, and we had that installed a couple of weeks ago.

It was a weird-looking contraption, like unto the Terminator of Faucets. And the spray nozzle could really project jets of water.

I think it performed flawlessly for about a week before it fell apart. It was easy enough to put back together because even I could do it. Unfortunately, a few days later it came apart at a different junction, and a few days after that it fell apart at the first junction I had already repaired. That was enough for Lea.

“Tell Jaime I want a new faucet. Now.” she said. Jaime is generally very easy to work with, but just so I knew he’d understand the urgency of the matter, when I told him we needed another new faucet, I added, “You don’t want me to put my wife on the phone.”

He’s a smart guy. He said he’d get another faucet.

The new faucet also has a warranty. We’ll see how long it takes to get that issue settled. In the meantime, Jaime had his crew install a temporary faucet, which works perfectly. So, that problem is sort of settled for the time being.

Fortunately, there are a few hundred excellent restaurants here. Another fortunate thing is it probably doesn’t cost any more for us to eat out than it does to cook at home. I’ll continue to post restaurant pictures on my Facebook page.

* * * *

The only reason I named our new house the Chula Vista Resort and Spa is because it has a swimming pool. I’m not sure I’ll ever use it, but Lea probably will once the temperature starts to climb. Whether we use it or not, it looks cool. And it doesn’t cost us anything to maintain it. That was included as part of our rent.

Well, it looked cool. Until the water turned green.

I know next to nothing about pool maintenance. The first time I touched any of our pool equipment at our house in Surprise, I broke something. It was also the last time that I touched any of it. After that, I hired a pool service to manage everything related to the pool.

Our gardener is also responsible for maintaining the pool, so all I had to do was talk to Miguel, and he took care of everything else. However, I was curious why the water turned green. Miguel said the water here sucks; it’s too acidic, and that’s why the pool turned green.

We’re really glad we decided to install a water filtration system for the house now.

It took Miguel three days to shock the pool and vacuum all the crap out of it. The pool looked pristine for several days before the greening process started up again. He’s been testing the pool water daily and adding a series of chemicals to balance the pH levels. It looks beautiful today. I’m not worried about the pool. Miguel knows what he’s doing. If I try to help him, I’ll probably have to buy a new pump and filter system. Again.

* * * *

There’s one more thing that we’ve had to contend with, and that’s the water heater for the South Wing of Casa Tara. We have two small propane water heaters. We’ve never had any problems with the heater for the North Wing. It’s an older model with a pilot light, and that sucker can seriously heat up some water.

The other heater is a newer model. It’s an on-demand heater. The only time it runs is when you turn on the hot water in either of the bathrooms in the main house. I’ve had the opportunity to learn that the ignitor is battery operated, and if you know anything about batteries, you know that they have to be replaced eventually.

I discovered this when my lovely supermodel wife tried taking a shower with cold water.

If there’s one thing I know about propane heaters it’s this: If you fuck up playing with gas, you’ll probably blow up half of the neighborhood. I know how to relight the pilot if it goes out, but this sonuvabitch didn’t have a pilot light, and I didn’t know about the battery powered ignitor. Yet.

So I called my buddy, Elvis. He used to be a security guard at the golf course, but now he works for the gas company. It was Elvis who showed me where the battery compartment was. We put new batteries in, and voilá! Mischief managed. Or so I thought.

It seems the battery compartment is somewhat of a temperamental bitch. I’ve had to go outside and fiddle with the damn thing several times since we replaced the batteries. I happened to be in the shower the last time the hot water died, so Lea went out and whispered something to the effect of, Do this one more time and I’ll replace more than your goddamn batteries!

We haven’t had a problem since.

Maybe she should try that with the refrigerator…