The 21 Days of Not-Christmas

Let's face it: The first 75% of December is little more than pre-Christmas—where everyone has more or less mentally checked out from work, school, and whatever else; and we're all just waiting for that last week of the year to arrive.

And so it was for us as well... only, on top of all that sitting around and waiting, we got to spend the past three weeks being sick, too!

Patient Zero

I woke up on 01 December with a mildly sore throat for the third day in a row and was 99% sure I was coming down with a cold (which I may or may not have definitively caught from Olivia at Thanksgiving).

By the end of the day I felt like I had barbed wire in my throat—which was weird, since I didn't remember swallowing any barbed wire.

And Kitten knew it was only a matter of time before she'd come down with whatever it was as well.

But, we still managed to find the energy to set up the advent calendar for Riley—in the dumbest possible location on the hutch in the kitchen, since that's about the only place where Odin wouldn't be able to chomp on it like he does every other thing in the apartment...

Our One-Year Odinversary

Speaking of Odin, Tuesday 03 December was the anniversary of our adopting our precious Odin Sigfrid last year :)

He's still a little ball of chaos, but he's come a long way in the space of a year! Here are those gruesome pics of his infected right eye just a few weeks before we adopted him...

And here he is now, spending his days lounging around with his brother or sister :)

And, remember when he used to be basically white?

Not anymore: His Siamese genetics have kicked into full gear, and he's getting darker every day...

...and even though he's getting bigger every day, he still looks like a kitten most of the time...

Here's a repost of last month's Odin video, for anyone who might have missed it the first time around...

Barnyard's Boytoy's Altimatum

In other news, our neighbor "Barnyard" (Ruth) has a new boytoy (after beating the snot out of her last one back in the summer). They've known each other for about 72 hours—which, in her book, is the threshold for giving him his own key and moving him in.

The dude drives a... red-esque... Nissan Altima—and I say red-esque because the thing's a low-rent hodgepodge of spare parts just like its owner is; and so, the body's about seven different shades of crimson, maroon, copper, et cetera.

So anyway, he used his keyfob to chirp his car at Athennia while she got into her car (which was parked right next to his) on Tuesday morning... and, mind you, this was around 5:30 A.M.—making it exponentially douchier than it already is to excessively chirp your car at someone without provocation.

And, this was like a good 5-6 chirps—so, legitimately hard to interpret as hey, maybe it was just coincidence that he happened to do it right while Athennia was standing there.

I don't know about you, but I've never heard of a car that chirps 5-6 times all by itself... except if you're spamming the buttons on the remote like an ignorant pre-schooler.

But, you know me...

...so, I suggested that we'd have to see if it happened again before we decided to escalate this into a full-fledged feud and start plotting his downfall.

Dethroned, Dismissed, Deceased

Speaking of downfalls...

On Wednesday the 4^th, Kitten called out of work...

But she only called out sick—unlike UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson... who called out dead, because he got a nasty reminder that even the self-appointed "elites" of this world tend to bleed and die every bit as readily as the rest of us do.

Kitten and I had a fascinating conversation over dinner the other night, juxtaposing the slippery slope of vigilantism and the almost unfathomable reality of "wow, this guy was literally such a misanthropic schmuck that someone actually wanted him dead for it."

It's a rare thing to find someone's entire life and death worthy of little more than trivial mockery... and yet, here we are.

I thought I'd sum up my thoughts through two quotes from pop culture...

Turnabout's Fair Play

Kitten called out again on Thursday, 05 December.

We took it easy all day but decided to venture out just long enough to pick up some Chinese food from Master Wok at the mall for dinner.

We almost got hit head-on at Woolston and Trenton Avenue on our way home, when some ignorant piece of Trenton trash decided to use the oncoming left-turn lane to instead barrel straight through the intersection at full speed just as we were making our left turn.

When we got back to our apartment and pulled into a parking space, Kitten saw Barnyard's boytoy's brick-burgundy bucket of bolts coming across the lot!

And, alliteration aside, Athennia at that point asseverated that an apposite advancement in this anecdote would absolutely entail ambling upstairs apace to our apartment and achieving the accomplishment of acting exactly as our abject assclown had, and applying an allotment of accountability for his antecedent action!

In other words, she insisted that we run upstairs and stand in our living-room window while she spammed the lock button on her keyfob to chirp her car at him as he walked by and see how he likes it.

The guy was dressed all in red like some skinny black Santa Claus who was just getting back from the regional Bloods meeting.

And he looked up at our window and waved at us with a dopey grin in response to our little hello (which of course indicates to me that he understood precisely why he was being chirped).

Then I waited just behind our door to see if he might have any inclinations to try to take things any farther when he got upstairs. But he declined.

T.G.I.F.

Friday morning I got up at 4:50 and made eggs for Kitten's and my breakfasts (which she normally does the evening before but hadn't felt up to doing last night).

Ol' Can'ta Claus the Bloody had his headlights on as Kitten left for work; so I stood in the window to make sure he wasn't lurking around outside or anything. But she got into her car and on her way without any trouble (and then he went on his way five or so minutes later).

Maybe his bullshit ran its course and he's finished now.

Maybe he realized we're not the passive middle-aged Caucasian couple he'd assumed we were—and that either one of us would gladly trade blows with him in a heartbeat if we really wants to brawl.

Or, hell, maybe he realized that we're both squeaky clean, whereas his loving girlfriend just got popped for assault (and who even knows what kind of crap he might have on his record?).

Don't know. Don't care. As long as he stays away.

Piranha Plant Escape!

Saturday the 7^th, we went over to my parents' house and ordered takeout from Taormina's.

I was lucky enough to capture this little gem during dinner...

Then Liv, Riley, and I played Super Mario: Piranha Plant Escape, in which your characters circle a tiny game board and try not to get eaten by the hungry piranha plant.

Liv was obsessed with trying to make the plant bite, and insisted on doing some pre-game experimentation for science...

Her attempts to learn the piranha plant's secrets were unsuccessful...

...Or were they?

Finally we were ready to play; so we asked Mario just how the heck we were supposed to play this little game of his.

This is what he said...

Then Riley looked up the rules and we got ourselves on track...

Liv played as Mario, Riley wanted Yoshi, and I opted for Toad.

But the highlight of the game was when Liv held up the unused Luigi figure and informed me, "This is a Muhweegi."

Later still, my mom got Liv playing an old game my grandmother used to play with all of us when we were kids...

I was a bit slow on the draw hitting the record button; but check out the devastated expression Liv puts on as soon as the game starts...

Handicapping the Nondicapped

On Sunday the 8^th, an anonymous letter may or may not have gone out to "Fuggy" (that able-bodied bitch one unit over who thinks the handicapped space is her personal parking spot—and who encourages her dreadful able-bodied offspring to park there when she's not home)...

Or, more accurately, an anonymous letter may or may not have gone out to our on-site rental manager complaining about Fuggy... although whoever authored it was both petty and crafty enough to tailor the majority of the content to Fuggy herself and mail her a copy as well, in the hopes of scaring her straight.

At any rate, the crux of the issue was not in fact the fraudulent use of the handicapped space, so much as the regular presence of Fuggy's three adult children's cars in our lot—for a total of four vehicles where everyone else's lease limits them to a maximum of two—which thereby results in the rest of us being displaced farther and farther away from our respective doors when we come home to an increasingly-full parking lot.

I ultimately removed all the snark and clever wordplay from my initial draft; but the final draft definitely read like someone who comes from a family of lawyers ;)

Choice highlights, anyone?

Here's Paragraph 5...

It is my belief that rules work best when applied fairly and equally, and that the many of us in this building who have two vehicles—and small children in tow, and heavy groceries to carry in, and authentic handicaps beyond a glut of entitlement and egocentricity—would greatly benefit from a swift and enduring rectification of this matter: Thus, I ask that two of the four vehicles listed above be relegated to parking in the visitors' lot or elsewhere, where their enduring presence does not unjustly displace other residents.

And my Paragraph-11 closing...

I sincerely hope that this letter alone will prove sufficient to produce a timely resolution and incentivize Americana to begin enforcing the parking rules set forth in our leases; but please note that those leases are legally binding to Americana as well—and in accordance with that reality, your continued permission of this reprehensible behavior going forward constitutes willful condonement of it as well as preferential treatment.

Everything in between was simply a more thorough explanation of the problem and how it affects everybody else in the building—along with helpful details like the makes, models, and license-plate numbers of all four cars in question.

I was more than a little disheartened for the first three or four days after the letter went out, when nothing at all seemed to change.

But then I realized that the rental manager could've given them a few days' grace period or something.

By the end of the week, however, the results had spoken for themselves: Those entitled kids have an inexplicable aversion to to parking in that handicapped space all of a sudden... and, more importantly, two of their four cars have disappeared from our lot entirely!

In fact, I noticed the other day that the one little twerp has started parking clear on the other side of the guard rail out back...

And more importantly, my wife who actually pays rent here no longer has to trek halfway across the parking lot at 5:30 in the morning when it's dark and below freezing and the Bloods are out to chirp her to death.

"The Good Stuff"

Tuesday evening (both of us still full-blown sick) we settled for Domino's for dinner; and when we got home, we passed our downstairs neighbor Keith—who saw us coming and held the door for us so we didn't have to fish for our keys.

His eyes lit up when he saw the pizza boxes; and he was like...

Aw, you guys got the GOOD stuff!

I don't know; I found the whole thing comical for some reason.

Of course, after he let us inside and we got upstairs and looked out our window, we saw that he'd only been going out to grab something from his car—and he was now headed back to the main door, but too close to the building for either of us to have any chance at getting back down there to open it for him in time.

Wok-ing Stuffers

Wednesday the 11^th, we splurged for Master Wok for dinner again—which is the real good stuff, except Keith was nowhere to be found when we arrived home with a metric ton of Chinese food in tow.

Then after dinner, Riley finally managed to wear Athennia down enough to get early access to a handful of stocking-stuffer Christmas presents.

Tires Minus...

Nothing particularly noteworthy happened until Saturday the 14^th, when Athennia took her car to Tires Plus because it was suffering from tires minus—as in tires minus air = not a good time.

The culprit turned out to be a carpentry staple in her sidewall... with an added tax of classic Ford Lugnut Swelling^TM.

...Plus Piranha Plants

Later that evening we went to my parents' house again... and ordered dinner from Taormina's again.

We spotted what may actually be the official vehicle of Christmas Consumerism on our way over (like, imagine if "Christmas" was a registered trademark of the Walt Disney Corporation); and, even though the sun insisted on ruining every picture I tried to take, you can still get the gist...

Also, we're no fans of Jeeps; but this one was clever enough to get a chuckle out of us as well...

Special thank-you to my mom for helping me wrap all of Kitten's presents before dinner—because I'm too inept to wrap something in a way that doesn't look like it was done by a demented ferret.

But then she got me back by forgetting to order my cheese steak when she called in dinner... though the Molerat was kind enough to split hers with me.

After dinner, Liv begged me and Riley to play Piranha Plant Escape! with her. And, if you don't want to watch the entire game that I captured in this video, at least watch from the 2:30 mark onward—which is nothing short of comedic gold...

Unfortunately, as we were sitting there at the table, Riley noted that she had a sore throat and felt like she was finally catching what Athennia and I were by now most of the way over :(

Scooby-Don't

The evening of 17 December, I noticed a police cruiser crawling through our lot and decided to wait and see what it was he was sniffing around for.

Finally he moved over to the lot across from ours, where a parked car had its hazard lights on.

I could only hear bits and pieces of his conversation with the owners but it turned out that a neighbor had called to report a car alarm that wouldn't turn off; and I managed to glean that, if the story is to be believed, some kids had trashed the car's steering column while hot-wiring the thing to steal it...

...And...

This was allegedly the THIRD TIME.

Kirstyn Strikes Again

I had recently decided to reach out to the USDA again and see if anything has changed in their dismal budgetary situation since I last spoke to our loan officer Kirstyn when she shafted us on the Kutztown property back in the spring.

So, I sat down Sunday evening and fired off a quick email—assuming that she'd get it first thing Monday morning and respond to me in a timely fashion.

And... on Wednesday morning, she did!

Now, it's no secret that people in every field are using artificial intelligence to make their jobs easier... but Kirstyn is the only one I know who seems to take her poorly-worded emails, feed them through ChatGPT, and ask it to make them even less readable.

But, here's what she sent me...

Currently we are running on a continuing resolution, and we do not have an Low funds and very little Very low funds. And December 20th is when they determine if they are going to pass a budget or another continuing resolution. We currently are back logged with applications that still have not been issued a COE since March. So even if you did apply, there is going to be a waiting period and I don't have a guarantee timeframe of when funds will come available nor do I have a timeframe of when you would be issued a COE, the current applications we have received and sent out a waiting period of 6 months, and which in fact could turn around to be longer depending on the funding.

Kirstyn Barner
Loan Specialist
Rural Development
United States Department of Agriculture

So, I took her stupid email and fed it back through ChatGPT, and I asked it to tell me in English what the hell Kirstyn was trying to say.

This was ChatGPT's response...

💩

So, I gathered that we will probably not be moving anytime soon—at least not through the USDA.

But...

That was before I knew I'd be receiving a settlement from that Equifax data breach back in like 1994 that everyone probably forgot about by now.

Imagine my surprise when I got an email last night with instructions on how to claim my cut on virtual gift card!

Windfalls and Snowfalls

At least we got our first snowfall last night...

You know, with Al Gore and Greta Thunberg insisting that we'll all be underwater within <checks watch> two decades ago, you might be inclined to think that "snow" is just one of those myths in your grandparents' stories about walking uphill both ways to school.

Yet, here we are.

Also, Athennia talked on the phone with Taylor for quite a while last night... and, I guess Taylor must've received her Equifax settlement too, because she was at a Christmas party in a mansion!

Sweet mansion, Tay!

(Really though, she and Ahlina were at a Christmas party being hosted by their boss—who apparently comes from some money.)

...And that concludes the non-Christmas portion of the month.