Expect the Unexpected
Some old friends, some new. Some red thugs, some blue.
Trashy
Last Wednesday night, Kitten and I took an evening walk around the neighborhood and encountered this gem...
Show me your trash. Show me you're trash.
Certainly not I.
Joking Hazard
Then on Saturday the 22nd, we had long overdue dinner and hangout plans with our good friends Emily and Orlando!
I realized the morning of, however, that we had basically no alcohol in the house; so we ran out to GIANT and grabbed an assortment of Mike's, Smirnoff's, and Angry Orchard.
Then I got to work Instant-Potting some chicken and slicing a bunch of veggies for a mega batch of nachos. (Definitely should've taken a picture of that one. Alas, it slipped my mind.)
After dinner, it was time for Joking Hazard...
If you're too wimpy to handle raunchy, offensive, and borderline-illegal scenarios—much less to opine on which one you find most comical—now would be the time to leave :)
Let the games begin!
The way it works is, whichever player is "the judge" for the round gets to place two cards; and then the other players each play one card that they feel best completes the scenario.
So, for example...
...I played the 'You're Hired' card for that round—and had been pretty damn confident I'd win, until I saw that someone else had played a card depicting the blue guy licking the green guy back.
No chance in hell I was beating that card. <shrug>
The game continued...
...and continued to get raunchier...
Meanwhile, I had texted our neighbor Jeff an hour earlier that we had plenty of extra nachos and he was welcome to come up and feed his addiction.
He's never been able to resist the siren song of my nachos before; so I'd started to worry he was in Nacho Rehab or something...
But then he finally responded, and it turned out he and Lillian had been out at a wedding...
He could totally quit whenever he wants.
So, Jeff came up and got to meet Em and O.
Then he was asking about the game, and I told him to just take my spot for a few hands while I dished up some Schedule I nachocotics for him.
I don't remember exactly how Athennia explained the rules; so, instead, we're going to pretend she explained them the way it looks like she's explaining them in the pictures I snapped.
If you can't keep up, don't step up: You'll just cry."
This is 'go hard or go home.' So, if you're not gonna put your heart and soul into being as gross and offensive as possible, you can just take your little nacho plate and get the !@#$ out of our apartment right now."
Jeff definitely seemed a bit scandalized through the first round, and I was worried that maybe this had been a bad idea.
But then 30 seconds later in the next round... I forget what the context was, but he showed me our cards and pointed enthusiastically at one with two guys touching butts...
Ah, it's always such fun to corrupt someone.
A Neshaminy Travesty
Monday the 24th I had lunch with my friend Richard. We usually go hiking afterward; but it was raining and crappy outside.
I suggested we do Qdoba since he had never been...
And then we went across the street to the smoldering rubble of what used to be the Neshaminy Mall, to see if there's anything left.
Not much.
Literally one restaurant's still open in the food court. And probably fewer than 10 stores in the entire mall.
It's absolutely wild that, even with 25 years to adapt to Amazon's dominance, physical malls couldn't find a single thing they could offer that a website wouldn't be able to compete with.
I spent some time thinking about how I'd revamp a mall to cater to teenagers—with music, and skate parks, and junk food and stuff.
...But then some neighborhood kid helpfully reminded me how much I fucking can't stand most teenagers...
(My camera only wanted to focus on the window screen; but crank your volume a bit and you'll take away everything you need to.)
Bloods & Crips & Cruds & Blips
Later that evening, Athennia and I started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer—because it was well-received as a show and I never got around to watching it back in 1997.
And, uh... yeah... I really can't stand teenagers and their priorities any more than I could when I was a teenager. But I'm gonna try to stick with it for all seven seasons.
Also, to be fair, it's not like it's only teenagers who can suck as people: This happened later that same night...
This is just two guys. The one with the mouth is 26 and has priors—which I know because his brain seems to be under the impression that every thought it happens to have needs to be immediately broadcasted to the world at level 50.
And guess what happened the next night.
We tried to watch another episode of Buffy, but Loudmouth had other plans...
Athennia called out of work Wednesday the 26th on account of the pain from a giant sty in her right eye.
Aaaand you'll never believe what happened at sundown!
The thugs start off the evening publicly urinating into a bush on private property...
...and then they proceed to the usual festivities of Let's Be Loud, Ignorant Jackasses for an HourTM...
So...
I contented myself with reading the Morrisville Borough legal code in its entirety.
And I made a list of every law these two chucklefucks are violating.
And, the next time they show up outside my window, I'll have the ammunition I need to summon the cops and go down and bury these clowns in legal trouble.
As an anarchist, that's not my first choice. But Kitten finds it preferable than having me go full Ulrike Meinhof and drag my baseball bat out there to bludgeon them both to death for the greater good of the 500 other people around here whom I'm sure also don't like listening to them every night.
Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more.
—Ulrike Meinhof
At any rate, I can get these pukes for alcohol possession and consumption on a public street; littering; indecent exposure (for the public urination); loitering; noise; and violation of peace and good order.
But...
They haven't been drinking these past few nights, as they often have in the past. (They love to throw their empty bottles in the grass when they do—which would serve as the perfect proof, once the cops show up.)
And, the "disturbing the peace" section in the borough's Noise chapter specifies hours between 9:00 P.M. and 7:00 A.M.—whereas their visits these past few nights have been just slightly earlier than 9:00.
So—as impatient as I usually am—I'd rather wait for the perfect storm, where they've got alcohol on them and it's "after hours" and I'm aware of their arrival as it happens so that I can have the cameras rolling...
With Loudmouth already having a record (and perhaps being on probation or parole to boot), I have a real chance to send him right back to jail if I play my cards right. I do not want to waste that chance.
I'm willing to play the long game if it makes the checkmate sweeter and more permanent! In the meantime, I'm amassing enough video evidence to potentially get this on our landlord's radar in a meaningful way as well.
Expedited Editing
On Thursday, my friend Fotini reached out to ask for my help editing and polishing up a paper she's been working on.
We spent a few hours on it that evening—and then most of Friday morning and afternoon—so she insisted on throwing me some cash.
Mid-afternoon, I was treated to some more lovely evidence against my new nemeses...
(Then again, if you watch closely, you'll see the black guy litter as well.)
But hey, I'll take every bit of evidence these guys wanna offer up!
Realty and Fakery
Later in the afternoon, I got a text from Coldwell Banker to tell me (three weeks belatedly) what I already knew: Our second realtor Lucas seems to have ghosted us...
...See, here's the thing, "Mary Lynn": Whether it was Lucas, or you, or someone else entirely... someone at Coldwell thought, "Hey, let's sit on this news for three weeks before we reach out to 'em."
And that's bullshit.
So, after having our first realtor Angel move at the speed of molasses in January...
...and then having our 21-year-old little mouseketeer of a second realtor pull more or less the same shenanigans as of late...
I'm gonna call it: We're done with Coldwell. Forever.
And this is after the industry-wide change last year—where buyers are now on the hook to pay their realtors' 3% fee out-of-pocket, after decades of this commission being covered by the seller.
I never really wanted to pay that anyway.
So, if my so-called realtor doesn't realty wanna work, it turns out there are these things called the internet, and county parcel maps, and inspections, and due diligence...
Kitten and I may as well keep doing what we've been doing, continue handling all of the legwork ourselves, and then just use the seller's realtor at the very end and have them cut their commission in half since they're representing both the buyer and the seller: We save money, they get a slightly bigger payday for hardly any extra work, and everyone wins.
...well, except Coldwell. But I can live with that ;)
Philly Lite. Check-Engine Light.
We did Qdoba and McDonald's for dinner Friday evening; then Athennia and I jumped in the car and headed into Philly Lite to stop by Fotini's apartment for my 3% commission that, unlike a realtor, I actually had to earn.
Granted, the universe had to balance itself out somehow; so Kitten's Check Engine light came on halfway home.
We popped into AutoZone and borrowed their scanner, which insisted it was a $45 canister purge valve.
Sure.
Obligatory Super Troopers quote...
My guess was, it's probably an O2 sensor that's going to approach more like $500 after labor.
...But at least we'd still be able to drive over to my parents' cookout the next day.
Cookout!
My dad grilled a bunch of chicken; and we had French fries, corn, and baked beans as well.
Also, our garlic has finally decided to do something, after five months of doing nothing...
I had just told Richard at lunch on Monday that our garlic had all seemed to have petered out inexplicably this winter—for the first time since he first gave me some cloves to grow back in 2017.
Then he tried to get me to come clean that the picture I'd sent him of last season's harvest was a prank!
But, after eight years of Darwinning, it seemed over this past winter that I was suddenly Darlosing. And I had no idea why.
Not to worry though: We have about 20 sprigs coming up now—out of, I think, maybe 24 or 25 cloves that I had sown—so, perhaps we're still on track after all.
She's a Driver; She's a Winner
In other news at my parents' house, Riley may have turned 15 earlier this year; but Hannah's officially the first one to drive!
Look at that smile!
A Wild Ryan Appears!
That brings us to today—the final day of March.
Athennia blew off work in favor of a 10:00 A.M. appointment with her mechanic to address the Check Engine light (which, naturally, turned itself off yesterday).
She called me around noon—ready to explode with excitement as though we'd just won the Powerball (which would be weird indeed, given that we've never played).
But, honestly, how many !@#$%^& kids did her father sire?!
It turned out her old buddy Dave had been fired for going toe to toe with corporate and trying to stand up for his employees, and now there was a new guy named Ryan.
Ryan had hooked her car up to the scanner and couldn't find anything conclusive to justify having any work done; so Athennia had instead asked if he had time to service her brakes—which the dealership had insisted almost a year ago needed to be done ASAP.
Somehow she and Ryan got to talking and hit it off super well, and started talking about their respective interests, and spouses, and such.
It turns out that this guy's into programming and cybersecurity, and super nerdy to the point that she framed it as, "If he was a woman, you'd probably propose to him." And there was apparently such an immediate camaraderie between them that she had instantly called me as he did the same with his wife.
And then, she said she was headed over to AutoZone to grab all the stuff she needed for her brakes—because Ryan said he'd do the job for free if she just went and grabbed the parts. So, she was getting a $1,200 job done for more like $400. Sweet deal.
But, once she got back to the shop and he got under the car to get started, he realized that—what a shocker—the dealership had totally lied to her last year when they insisted that her brake pads were at a '4' (measured of course in 32nds of an inch).
After a year of driving 100 miles a day to work and back, the pads were actually just now at an '8'—twice the dealership's claimed thickness, and nowhere remotely close to a point where they need changing. So, Ryan urged her to take everything she'd just bought and go back to the store to return it.
In other words, there was nothing to be done on the car today... and it seems, if you believe in fate in any capacity, that the whole reason for Kitten staying home from work and taking her car in was for us to meet a potentially amazing new couple who might become lifelong friends :)
We even went back to the shop together so I could meet Ryan as well—and we stayed and chatted for half an hour or so until business started picking up and we were getting interrupted too frequently to bother trying to continue the conversation.
But we're going to try to hang out on one of these coming weekends.
Cat Pics
And finally, we've got some cat pics... and vids.
Enjoy!
