If you’ve watched any Olympics coverage you’ve doubtless seen the commercial. A good looking hunky shirtless guy irons his girl’s clothes while making 6-month Anniversary reservations on the phone. There’s some background patter about the Chevy Traverse, and then you see the guy cleaning the toilet. (Sorry, I couldn’t find the video online)

At first, my kids just asked me what this ad meant and why it was a car commercial. That’s a fair question, but I had to watch it two or three times before I figured it out. It strikes me that commercials which are that hard to figure out might be missing the mark. But then I’m clearly not in the target demographic. In retrospect, I should have just said it was a commercial for girls and left it at that. But I’m only that smart in hindsight. So I try to explain that Chevy is depicting a “perfect man” from a girl’s point of view and equating that to the perfect car.

But this begs the obvious question, is that really what girls want? Well… no. It’s what some girl’s think they want, but most girls wouldn’t really want you to act like that. Well… maybe the cleaning the toilet part… and the washboard abs, most girls would rather like that (but not the 2 hours a day you spent in the gym). And okay, remember an anniversary now and again, but don’t remember more dates than they do. Some would like you to iron your own damn clothes, but most wouldn’t want you anywhere near theirs. And in my experience, they’d be suspect of a guy who can accurately separate laundry. Guys do laundry on the theory of “if it gets wet, it’s clean”. In fact, we think that about most things which is why we don’t clean the toilet. It’s already wet.

“Gee that sounds awfully complicated.”

Yes, but not really. Clean up after yourself. Pay attention to her. And frankly, knowing how to fix the toilet is often more highly valued than knowing how to clean it. Remember Red Green‘s sage advice: “If women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.” An adage that is more true the older you get. Which is fortunate since you tend to get more handy as you age, but not more handsome. Unless you’re Sean Connery or Paul Newman… I suspect no one cares if they can fix a toilet.

I’m fresh back from a long week at the lake. Blogging’s been sparse lately as a result. I had a pretty tech-free week. Granted, I checked my email via my phone, and addressed a few of Mom’s tech support issues, but otherwise was off the web for 10 days. And yes, I’m recovering nicely.

I had plenty to keep me busy though. The bunk house is pretty well set. The toilet flushes (mounted exactly 2 bays from the wall), the lights light, the fan spins, the mirror reflects, the door swings, and the metal roof sounds great in the rain. All in all a success. One minor hiccup on the beds. We built them all out of fresh (green) lumber as that’s what the Amish sell for cheap and that’s what the rest of the place is built from. However, it turns out that when you slap a mattress atop green lumber, it acts like a big sponge. Doh! So we dried the mattresses out and placed a vapor barrier under them. I expect they’ll be dry enough by spring that this won’t be necessary.

We also resurrected the boat shelter. Lots of new steel frame parts, a few new straps and supports to prevent another roof collapse. Keep your fingers crossed for a mild winter.

And finally we fixed the boat. It ran for a day and died an unrelated death. It died on my son this time, the one who swims 5000 yards a day. But he breaks down 50 feet from the dock. That’s not fair. Anyway, I dragged the boat home to work on it over the winter… unless it gets stolen first. That would be an awful shame.

Oh, and speaking of swimming… yeah we did a bit of that intentionally too… but how ’bout that Michael Phelps? We do get 2 channels of Olympic coverage up there, but one is Canadian and for some reason they seem to focus a lot on minor athletes sporting maple leaf emblazoned jerseys. But we did see all of Phelps’ swims. It was an amazing feat, but kind of cool to me personally as well. I was near my sons’ ages when Mark Spitz swam in Munich for 7 gold medals. He was an inspiration for many of us who swam competitively back then. In a way it felt like passing the torch down to my sons who are now being inspired by Michael Phelps and his 8 golds. Not all were so inspired though. One young lady (who shall remain nameless) was mostly focused on Phelps’ mom, who was just the cutest thing. But don’t mind her, she’s just sore because cheerleading isn’t an Olympic sport… yet.