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.

DLand - St. Patty's Day Prelude

In Southwest Virginia today. This was all for the 4th Anniversary of our Software Product. The whole office drove over to celebrate with the folks in the library. The stinky part was leaving at 5:30 am to get there in time. We made it okay, although it was VERY foggy. The gang there had brought in sandwich fixings and a HUGE cake made by Wanda, the best cake maker on the East Coast. We all chatted and munched and had a good time. It was good to go back and see my old co-workers. But it's true what Thomas Wolfe says; you can't go home again. It's always different. So we had lunch and Russ and I traded notebooks (which makes me a very nice person since I now have a very old notebook with only 1024 resolution and Russ now has a very kick ass notebook with 1400 display resolution). But I travel so little, that I don't really need a notebook. And I can get to anything I need with Terminal Services. I love Microsoft. Monopololistic business practices are my friend. All my software can talk to each other. But that's a totally other topic. :)

Then it was off to the Home Place for dinner. The fog was atrocious, but we made it there unscathed. The place was pretty empty for a Friday night, but the food is always good. I stuffed myself. It was nice to have all Atlas employees in one place at one time and not have it be a conference or some other stressful event. It's a shame we can't all live in the same area. Maybe one day.

The real bummer was that my headlight went out during dinner (don't ask me how that happens - I had two working headlights when I got there and only one when I left). But I followed Dan home and it was fine. One of my little projects today is to go play "helpless girl" at Advance Auto and have them put a new headlight in my car.

Dropped Shawn off at Kroger to meet his brother (which was a mild fiasco given his stressing out over spending the weekend with his bro) and then headed to Vlad's apartment. My spider sense told me that Nick had recently been here (the wet shower curtain and clean boy smell in the bathroom), but I had the apartment to myself. This would have been better had this not been the Bachelor Pad of Doom. Just let me say that moldy brocolli on the stove can totally sour the smell of an entire apartment. And thus I cleaned their entire kitchen in order to hunt down the dead thing smell and their guilt and shame will be payment enough. Nick never came home last night (I'm not his mother so whatever) so I'm still Home Alone. It's been kinda pleasant. I've got lunch plans with Vicki today and then might call Mike and Rae. I'm hoping the sky will hold out and stay a little sunny as opposed to icky and grey like it was for two days. We'll see how that goes.

But now for the good news! Jeremy called and he didn't get the job we were hoping he would get. I know that doesn't sound so great so far, but the guy said that they gave the job to the woman who had been working that job part-time for the past three years or so. Duh. He also said that they were so impressed with his application and interview that he's forwarding his info to his boss. Then an hour later or so another lady calls (the boss I think) and says that she wants to hire him part time until she can make a full time job at another library doing very similar things to the job he applied for. This job was at a public library attached to an elementary school and community center. It was a job well suited for my Jeremy of all Trades sweet pea. So things are looking up. Fortuna has smiled on us.

And as if that weren't enough good news for a rainy Friday, Jeremy calls again later and says that Cox called and we now have digital cable and CABLE MODEM at the house! Happy day! I have been so morose over our crappy phone modem. And it was insulting to live 10 miles from another city that had it covered. I thought I would never download pics at anything more than a crawl. But Fate has thrown us a internet access life preserver and we'll be zipping along in no time! Yippee! The diary entries will surely improve from this technological breakthrough chez Genie.

Happy St. Patrick's Day and Happy Birthday to My Beloved Software Product!

DLand - The Garden State

Well, this diary entry comes from a hotel in Princeton, New Jersey. I'm thinking that this little town is where doll house makers come to get all of their ideas. We drove in Route 206 and on either side it was charming house after charming house with big trees and wrap around porches and elegant glass doors. I'm looking forward to leaving this afternoon so I can get a better picture of them in the daylight. We're here installing software for Princeton. I have been to a couple of Ivy league schools and I must admit that I get a little antsy travelling any more North than New Jersey. I'm always convinced that the people are going to be insane. Usually, I'm pretty right. But these people have been fine and the installation has gone smooth as silk like they say.

Kevin, my travelling companion, had OSTRICH for dinner last night! I was too chicken, I admit, to order it for fear that it would be weird and I would have no dinner. But I stole part of his and it was excellent. It was juicy and tender like the best steak you've ever had. The waiter said it would be like chicken but it was more like the most succulent beef you've ever eaten. I definitely recommend it. My meal was the mundane salmon filet. Tasty but far from ostrich. I can be such a wuss sometimes.

I have been learning all kinds of little knowledge tidbits while watching TV. A lot of TV is trash, but I seem to have fallen into the land of learning these past few days. For instance, did you know that bees can dance? When a bee leaves the hive and finds food, she comes back to the hive and then does a dance to tell the other bees where the honey is. She walks around and wiggles her butt in a certain direction. The direction of the wiggle tells the bees what angle related to the sun to travel and the number of wiggles tells the distance (like the number of yards). I think that's fascinating. I never would have thought bees could be so complicated. It just goes to show you there's a lot of magic that we don't see.

Ack! Gotta run or I'll be late!

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Oh, well as Frank Sinatra would say: "Night and Day". Just got out of the training session at about 4pm. It was supposed to be from 9 to noon. Ugh is the first thing I say. Well, the systems people were very squared away. But the library people were true to form. One of the bittersweet parts of my occupation is that I deal with both technical people and library people. Both are very strange birds (as my mother would say) and with limited social skills. The main complaint that I had with these folks is their inability to see the forest for the trees. The entire training session was one big string of customization questions or internal political issues. Talk about a mental workout. They all had good intentions and I'm sure it will all work out in the end, but geez!

So I was so irritated by that exhausting day and the prospect of driving home at 4pm, that the doll houses didn't seem nearly as impressive on the way out of town. Mostly I noticed the poor condition of Route 206 with all it's pot holes. Speaking of pot holes, my chauffeur Kevin took 95 instead of 295 so I'm bouncing along the engineering wonders of Pennsylvania highways. I would think that if a state gets ridiculed by everyone for having crappy roads, they would do something about it. But I think at this point that PA prides itself on it. It's as if they're testing the fortitude of travelers. It's like travelling across a concrete jungle - at rush hour. So overall, I'm still not impressed with the neighboring states on the east coast. I suppose we'll stay where we are for quite a while. I'm still thinking I couldn't live in a state where you can't get to an ocean. It's all what you're used to.

One little hightlight of this trip so far was the water tower with Sesame Street characters painted on it. If you're in Morgantown, New Jersey you'll see it for sure. It is the home of Sesame Place, whatever that is. But it was very awesome to drive by the 80 foot Big Bird. That and I had scallops for lunch. It was a weird arrangement with warm cherry tomatoes and what looked like garden weeds but it was a treat to have scallops if a bit strange.

Well, we're heading for gas and dinner. More news later.