Things

Stuff today.

I spent a couple of hours out front pulling weeds and grass. They weren't huge - I just let it go for at least a month because of my hatred for the everlasting heat wave. Today they said something like this was the second hottest summer since they started keeping records. I TOTALLY believe that.

Well, when I went out there the sun was starting to set and it was already cooling off considerably. It was 63 degrees this morning when I went to work. Of course it heated up dramatically during the day - and I was busting my butt at work all day long. So, pulling weeds and the dogs out front was nice. My newly returned neighbor was laughing it up loudly with his neighbor on the other side - the ex-felon (though I have to wonder if the ex part is permanent) and I decided to tune that crap out.

I have also decided that since my neighbor is going to spend a majority of his time with that freak next to him, I am going to distance myself from both of them, unlike last "season" when he was here and I was talking to him anyway. I have further decided that I am no longer going to tolerate a street FULL of his junk vehicles.

Apparently he got the message last night - I made a phone call to certain authorities about one of his vehicles out there that didn't even have a license plate on it. Today when I got home from work. the trailers were off the street but there were still 3 of his other vehicles out there. It's progress. I will definitely not tolerate this dude selling vehicles out of his house ever again. It's just makes the neighborhood look pathetic. He hauls down these rusted out cars from Michigan and sells them here for greatly marked up prices.

Won't work in this economy anyway. People are hunting for bargains and stick their noses up at inflated prices on anything. This is definitely a shopper's market right now, not a vendor's. I know this for a fact just from my own company.

Well, anyway, the high temps are now below 100, meaning I can start thinking about this weekend in potentially planting rye grass and buying those 99 cent clusters of very pretty flowers - my favorites being Petunias. I want to load up the front with arrangements of them all over.

That will be a weekend gone in a flash if I start in on all of that - but - the grass will take priority if it's the right time to plant it. I will have to ask or look online. It takes weeks for it to fully come in and be "trampled" on - meaning dogs. I will have to surround that patch of grass with a good fence to keep the dogs off of it - again, it's going to be work.

Safeway has chicken breast - bone-in - on sale for 99 cents a pound. BBQ is on it's way. 10 day forecast shows highs in the low 90's to high 80's. I'm going to start spending a lot more time outside.

I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch, but the non-paying tenant made a promise to pay and I fully expect that payment. I think tomorrow. I'll have to re-read the notice, I didn't give that much perusal - I gave the idea that he IS going to pay more. If he does not pay - well I'll keep a lid on that, I have no reason to believe he won't pay now that he has said he will. Anyone reading me for the last 1 and 3/4 years knows what I eventually end up doing with non-paying tenants, and it ain't keeping them around so I can just have - freeloaders living here on my dime.

Today's driving adventure. Something is being built - I haven't asked what they are building yet - in an extremely busy/high volume shopping square. I have been in there 3 times now, and every time, the parking lot is completely full. There is no room for a semi to maneuver in there. I can't even get into the job site, I have to sit in the main thorofare where all these people are going back and forth the entire time.

Those people are, of course, extremely annoyed that a semi is slowing them down. I do not block the entire drive, but the volume of traffic is so heavy that people have to decide who is going to go and who isn't. One woman declared today that she needed to leave and I was blocking her from backing out of her parking spot. There was MORE than enough room for her to get her car out of there, but she wasn't taking my explanation that she wasn't driving a semi and that there is ample room for her car to move.

Yes, I spent a great deal of time pulling forward and then reverse to accomodate for all of this.

Then came time to leave. I was 400 feet or so into this place and there is NO way I am going forward. The turn ahead is so sharp and narrow, the only way to do it would be to take out the cars parked there. Yeah, right.

I wish I would have had my camera so I could have taken a video of this. I had to back out of there, and not, this volume of traffic in this place didn't like it. The corners are so sharp and narrow that backing was definitely a challenge of my skill - but not that much. No, the challenge was navigating the traffic. At the end of it, I had to block traffic coming in from the main street and traffic attempting to leave from fully 3 different directions.

Not only that, but these cars moved in very close to the point I had to stop and look at these people - who figured out my stare at them was that they needed to back up their vehicles because I am NOT running into cars if I can help it. And yes, I CAN help it. It took several minutes of backing around this turn to get myself positioned so I could leave nosing out, not backing out. Of course, you could see the agitated looks on these people's faces.

But, the job was done quite professionally and I didn't have to do a single pull-up. I just took it slow because of the huge volume of traffic and the fact I was movoing in their path - in reverse - and they weren't liking it.

No, they never like it, but these people love the end result of a business they want to go to and spend their money.

Ummm, I'm in a little better mood today, but - I still have a lot of things pressing me and I don't like being pressed. I am not a grape and I don't intend on turning into wine.

ben