DLand - The City Inspector from Mars

It's been a long time, been a long time, been a long time.... Well, I got a cold when I got back from my trip. It's been just enough to annoy me but not enough to warrant cold medicine. The biggest thing of interest has been the recent crisis chez Mom and Dad. My parents seem to hop from crisis to crisis in their lives and the repercussions ripple out across the city. So their crisis of late has been the city itself. Most of you might not know what it's like to have "the city" coming after you. It's been a part of our lives. This means that you have too many cars in your yard or you have built too many sheds or you have too many plastic tubs in your yard. This causes some old woman (I don't know what it is about these old women but it's usually them) to call the city and complain. So the city man comes out and says that you can't park cars except on paved parts of your front yard. And you are limited to fluid changes for car repairs on your property. The man is insane. I'm sure there is a happy medium between how my parents currently live and the Betty Crocker world that the city inspector lives in. He said that a "reasonable person would find the number of cars on the property ridiculous". Well, we're not discussing what is reasonable or ridiculous - only what's legal. And they all have tags and insurance so screw you.

I can't even explain how my parents live. We shouldn't have to. Mother says that you can't explain why you have so much stuff. Either the other party will understand why you live why you do and you don't need to explain or they will never understand and there's no point in explaining.

But it's been an exhausting week or so. The city should come next week and the yard has to be emptied and as well manicured as possible. I'm not going to get into the gorey details of all the crap in my parents' large suburban piece of land. But needless to say it's been about half a dozen trips to the metal recycling place and a dumpster worth of garbage. And we're not done yet. Pack-ratting really is a sort of sickness. But it's my parents' right to collect crap if they want. I have strange hobbies too. We all do. Except for the city inspector dude who apparently lives in a one bedroom apartment with no pets and no dirty dishes in his sink. I'm sure there's a law about that too. Ugh.

Every once in a while I get jealous of other families whose parents could come over for dinner or vacation and have hobbies like golf or knitting. But like Jeremy says, they're sober and they love us.

Oh, and since I might be feeling down on my parents for living like rats, I should note that they are some of my favoritest people. I thought about it when we went to one of their rental properties (the place where the dumpster is). The guy who lives there used to live there with his "buddy" and son (Mom's term - not mine). Well, his "buddy" died and then the guy got sick - too sick to work. My parents let him keep living there, though, because he had no where else to go and he was treating the place well. So, Mom says the other day that the bicycle guy is working again (bicycle guy doesn't drive but bikes everywhere). He apparently is feeling better and can pay rent now. He has a new "buddy" now, she says, and this one drives him to work. Mom was worried that bicycle guy was going to make himself sick again from biking while it's cold but he apparently is doing okay. Dad then says that they don't give to charities because they have rental properties. :)

In other news, I bought a book on Italian to see if I might like to learn it. I'm thinking I might be more interested in Greek, but Italian is probably easier and I should start with easy given my spare time for mastering languages. We'll see how it goes. I'm brushing up on it to see if the language disgusts me and then I'll look at finding a class. Need to ask Carl what kind of venue his Spanish class is in (community college, crash course for tourism, etc.).

Oh, and Cox Communications is a bunch of lying bastards. I called Monday morning to sign up for our cable modem and the lady said it's not in our area yet. So two days later, these construction signs show up in the neighborhood saying that they are currently doing utility work to bring us these great new services. Lying bastards. So I have to drive past this damn sign every day and wait until it goes away to call back. Dan compared it to winning $1,000,000 and then being told you have to wait 8-12 weeks to see any money. I reiterate - bastards.

Jeremy has been hired as a part time Library Associate I (the same position he applied for). These people are smarter than I gave them credit for. They did this so that when they have finished making a full-time position he only needs to transfer instead of apply. Very cool. So he starts either the end of this week or next week. And he will be working across the street from our neighborhood. I should make him walk to work. Muahahaha.

Ooh, other good news is my creative Nomad jukebox came in the mail. I have yet to play with it since it will most likely be a time consuming hobbie to put all my music on it. But it should be neat. I hope to finish it in time for a trip so we'll have our entire cd collection on this magic box in MP3 format. Can't wait. God, did you know there are people in the world who don't listen to music?! I believe in Snidegrrl's theory that a car must have two things - the ability to go and the ability to make music. Life is that way too. As long as you can get from A to B and have a tune in your head, it can't be all that bad.

On that note, it's time for me to vamoose.