Life in the burbs

I can sum my experience up in three examples. One, parking. There is a retarded 3 hour parking rule that requires one to park their vehicle on the streets no more than 3 hours at a time. You can however get a parking exemption that allows you to park for 24 hours. This can be done 15 times a year. Now, you would think that a system that contains an online submission method would be sophisticated enough to have the meter maids plug into this online list and NOT place a ticket on your dashboard. No no. I parked 12 times on the street last month and received a parking ticket 11 times. You can get the ticket canceled if you call the city the next day and advise them of your situation. In a vain attempt to avoid another ticket, I placed the following signs on my car. Two of the signs were hand written with the words "PARKING EXEMPTION. READ THE SIGN." The third paper was a copy of the parking exemption. I had to call today to cancel my 12th parking ticket.

TWO... the yard sale. There is plenty of competition for yard sale traffic on a summer Saturday morning. Three years in a row, I have held a yard sale on my lawn. The reason? They're pretty darn good at emptying my basement. I spent two hours on Friday night making these amazing signs that could be read in the dark thanks to reflective tape. I posted them at the street corners and at major intersections at 1 in the morning. Much to my dismay, I woke up at 6 to find that ALL of my signs were taken down. As a matter of fact, the other 10 signs for other yard sales were also missing. Rowdy teenagers or jealous fellow yard sale-r? You decide.

THREE... the neighbor... again. I'm all for allowing nature to be nature and to embrace our fellow creatures as we share real estate. However, harbouring a family of birds in your housing is GROSS. Housing? I have no better word for it. About a month ago, two birds got busy and placed their eggs inside my neighbour's house. Picture shows the awening for the front walk way and the providing bird that dropped his/her food into the hole that his family has made. It's quite lovely if you look at it once. But EVERY morning at 6 these birds start crying for food and don't stop crying until 9 or 10 AM. Nature... good. Another attempt to devalue my home through bad house maintenance? ... bad. The other devaluing activities? If you haven't seen the gawdy lights, see article below. Toss in two $2500 chandeliers where the visible one from outdoors shows a popped helium balloon hanging off it (for 6 months now). Also toss in the rusting Mercedes from 1980 and the bed sheet curtains, and the devaluing ranks on my nerves.

And that's what life is like in the burbs. You may think not alot is going on, but you have to watch closely!

Now Hiring: Simple math skills not required

New job, Meg's weekend assignments, and the dog... three reasons I have not been able to publish a thing over the past few months. So what would cause me to return to the grumpy board? McDonalds of course. I challenge anyone to beat this memorable McDonalds experience. I went through the drive-thru at McDs after Lexi's swim lesson on Thursday. Starving (and needing to feed my daughter some nutritious nourishment) I used my two-can-dine coupon to get fries for Lex, and the rest for me! Here's the transaction.

"Welcome to McDonalds. What can I get for you today?"

"Yes, I have a coupon for two-can-dine?"

"Okay, go ahead."

"Two Big Macs no pickle, fries and two cokes no ice please."

"That was medium fries? <...>Was that two Big Macs? <...> With no pickle? <...> And what was that to drink? <...> Sprite? <...> Okay. 10.15 please drive up."

In case you didn't catch that, my answers were in <> brackets. Typing it line per line would have been a bit much. So anyways, looking at the coupon, the value is two-can-dine-for-7.98. You do the math. I did. So when I drove up to the window I here was the exchange.

"Excuse me, I think you have the total wrong. The coupon is for 7.98. You quoted 10.15."

"Yes, we charge tax in this province."

"Okay, tax isn't that high. I think you entered it wrong."

"I didn't enter it wrong.  I keyed it in correctly and the price is supposed to be 8.98.  You owe 10.15."

"But the coupon says 7.98."

"Why don't you just pay and then look at the receipt and if you have a problem then, we can talk about it."

Interestingly enough, I just happened to need a dollar change to go buy something else, so I let it go.  When I read the receipt, sure enough the price was for 8.98 plus tax.  In other words, a 7.98 coupon cost 8.98 at this McDonalds.  The 7.98/9.98 debate carried on.  This post is long enough and I do have to include the banter with the manager.  Yes, after much debate, I could tell that the window person clearly did not undertand what I was saying so I asked for the manager.  I explained the situation to her, or Jenny to give her the respect of being a manager and having a name.

Jenny:  "My staff keyed in the coupon properly.  The price is 8.98.  What do you want me to tell you?"

Me: ... ... ... (5 seconds for dramatic suspense).  I'm not disputing the way she entered it.  I'm happy to hear that your staff know how to use the cash register.  But the COUPON says 7.98.  And if you add these numbers together, you get 8.98.  So the system is wrong.

Jenny:  "The computer is not wrong.  Computers are not wrong.  The coupon is wrong. Let me see the receipt.  Well, if you add the numbers together you get 6.98 so you're not even right."

...  Way to easy. I let it pass.  What could I have said?  I wanted to say, "Great! Pay me my 2 bucks then!"  or even better, "Look, I know that math skills are not a requirement to work at McDonalds, and apparently that applies to management levels as well." but I didn't.  I recapped the story for my father-in-law telling him I said the latter and he said that was a horrible thing to say.  And he's right.  I may have the best sarcastic one liners and even though a person deserves it, they don't really.  So I took a deep breath, told her to give me my dollar and I'd be on my way.  

Was it worth a dollar?  Well, for me, it was worth the blog post.  For Jenny, as I drove by 10 minutes later, I saw her smoking away like a chimney behind the dumpster.  At least I didn't ask for the tax refund as well right?

Know your limits Madame neighbour... you can afford to know them.

Or better yet, understand that moderation is the key to a beautiful home. A couple of years ago one of my happy go lucky neighbours dropped 5000 dollars of credit to buy two chandeliers. One of the gaudy creatures lives above their dining room table, with the base not one foot from the table top. For those that need quick math, that's a 4 foot chandelier in a room with 8 foot ceilings. Now, I really don't care if one chooses to purchase the most expensive trapeze slash ultimate-accident-waiting-to-happen for their now 3 year old son and hide it within the confines of their home. I do however protest when a purchase is made to devalue MY HOME. I don't know how many cliches I can plug into this post, but I will say that moderation is key, know your limitations and bigger is not always better.

My neighbour apparently had been shopping for the perfect outdoor light to replace the standard one sitting on their 4 ft x 4 ft entrance way. Why do I give the dimensions to this 2000 square foot home? Because I want to be clear. It is not the Taj Mahal. It is not the White House. It is not even the house down the street. You know... there's one in every neighbourhood. The house that everyone else looks at and says, "Man, I'd like to live in that house." This is not that house. So when one goes out shopping for a front entrance light for a 4ft x 4 ft entrance way to a 2000 square foot home, one should NOT buy the lamp for that 7500 square foot home with a 20 ft x 20 ft entrance way. What do I mean? Take a look. The first front porch shows the... thing purchased by my neighbour. It shines a beam of light into my kitchen every night for about 20 minutes. I assume that it remains on for only 20 minutes to save on energy costs. The porch on the bottom is the neighbour across the street who have one of the standard lights that was replaced... just to give you an idea of the... change.

To add to the humour (and this is completely a coincidence) that is a park bench for children in front of the super-sized lamp's house. While it does help portray the mammoth privacy killer, I will say that the lamp isn't that big. It's only 3 feet high and I've only seen the husband smack his head once on it. So if you see me walking down the street one day with a cane and sunglasses, you'll know how I went blind.

One upmanship at its best

My son is cute. He gets looks, comments and compliments everywhere we go. You could say his ego is writing checks that his body (at present) can't cash (Topgun's been on TV quite a few times this month). Anyways, I was walking through Longo's, getting the usual 1-2 items for dinner. Tagging along was the super stud. You can tell I have him with me by the trailing, "Awwwwwwwe..." and "OMG"s as we walk on by.

I got up to the cash and experienced what felt like that Monty Python skit... the one with all the rich guys talking about who had the poorest upbringing. Anyways, as I was paying for my grocery, the cashier turns and says, "What a cute kid. It looks like he's teething or trying to chew through that harness there..." I kindly responded, "Thanks (I think). He's teething. Strange thing is he started teething at 2 weeks. Either that or he's not getting enough fibre in his diet." Playful banter... what a useful(less) skill.

A normal conversation would end there. However, I guess there was a point to her mentioning the teething. "That's nothing." she said, "Try having your teeth completely rot through at two years old, then having the doctor rip them out, discover that there are no adult teeth and having to wear a plate for the rest of your life. THAT'S STRANGE."

WTF?

I had two responses in my head. "You had me at rotted teeth." or "Yes, that is strange. Thank you for putting my son's life in perspective." I'll let you decide which one I said.

I should say I told you so... but it's a new niece!

My sister-in-law Jennifer went into labour last week. She delivered a beautiful baby girl named Charlotte Abby.

A true recap of the first 5 minutes at the hospital. She showed up at Okaville delivery and the only words out of her mouth were, "Give me an epidural." The nurse asked for her name, details about the contractions, health card... "GIVE ME AN EPIDURAL!" The nurse again said, "We want to help you but we need to know who you are, what are the symptoms? How far apart? Things like that to get started." "I'M NOT ANSWERING ANYTHING UNTIL YOU GIVE ME A GODDAMN EPIDURAL!"


You may think I'm exaggerating but the story was told and coroborated between my mother-in-law and the nurses on duty. BTW, I'm an uncle again! :-)

Too cool not to comment...

Planning a trip to Michigan State University. Meg is teaching so why not see what the big hoopla is about them big 'ol American institutions right? Anyways, as I was planning out the driving directions to the hotel, the conference center etc... I stumbled across video cam photos for the locations. At first I thought pretty cool. I've looked up addresses and there are photos taken and submitted by users to identify street corners. But no. If you zoom in using Google Maps, you realize that the entire city of Lansing is photographed. Try going to 55 S Harrison Rd, East Lansing, MI 48825, USA and you'll notice the streets are all blue if you select Street View. If you click on any street you can see a street level picture that can rotate 360 degrees. In fact, if you then zoom out to the world view you'll notice that the map is spotted blue with little cameras. The cameras mean that you can click all the way to street level in almost every major metropolis in the US, as well as some cities around the world!

I used to eat at this Twisty Treat EVERY NIGHT when my parents took me on vacation EVERY YEAR to the same resort in Florida. I have to stop... nostalgia kicking in!

Wait... who are you?

Here's an interesting article. Some german artist named Natascha Stellmach claims that she has Kurt Cobain's ashes and she plans to smoke them after an exhibit on the 11th of October. Who the what? Apparently, the ashes were stolen from husband murdering Courtney Love and this woman (?) says she has them. Well... I HAD to see what this person looks like. Interestingly enough, she looks EXACTLY like Kurt Cobain! Seriously. Go to google.com and search for images. Type in Natascha Stellmach and you will see all of the pictures of her. She looks JUST like him!