Sunday, March 29, 2009

Rear Window...

Emphasis on "rear"...

So now that I work from home I am becoming a Jimmy Stewart'esque voyeur outside my rear window which looks over the condo parking lot. See Pix.

Here is my standard view out my home office window:


Two incidents I witnessed in the last 3 weeks from said window:

Story #1. Too Much Chili?

Sorry for the potty humor. I was sitting in my chair looking out the window, feet up on the sill peacefully, quietly, happily as I contemplated what to do outside on a nice Sunday now that sun had come out.

A man comes racing around the corner of the condos on the hill. He drops his pants, crouches, lets out a very long groan and then appears to poo. Next, he strips off his shoes, socks, pants and stands there is a tshirt and baseball cap and wipes himself with his sock. Now, this is bizarre enough but I started to get a little wary when he stood there for 3-4 more minutes peeking suspiciously around the corner.

I admit, I got a little nervous. I called the police. But not after snapping many, many pictures to prove that I don't make this stuff up. And There was no reason why he had to bend over so many times with his back to me...there is also NO WAY he could have NOT known he was visible to everyone. The woods were like 15 feet away by the way.





The Arlington County dispatcher and I tried to not to giggle as I recounted my story (I didn't want to end up with my call on some website where they play funny 911 calls). They said the police were on their way. I immediately had remorse that I called. What did I think was going to happen?

As I waited I walked up the stairs to the hill and glanced in the direction of the "corner" and there was still a crumpled sock lying there in the distance. I was not going to go any closer and figure the police could do that part of the investigation so I went back inside. BUT THEN, the weirdest thing happened. Said stocky man, relieved of whatever burdens he was carrying around, turned the corner again. Fully dressed. He calmly walked to the "spot" and cleaned up after himself. Then calmly walked down the steps to the garbage and threw out the bag. Finally, calmly walked up the steps without a glance over his shoulder as if this was a perfectly normal Sunday afternoon activity.



The police showed up and I was embarrassed I called. I told him I only called cause it was weird that the guy was hanging around for so long after he was, er, done, but that I really didn't think there were any lingering issues...

I have 3 theories - (these condos only have one bathroom)
Theory #1. His plumbing was broken and this was a defcon 1 poo
(or would that be defon 5? Which is the more serious? I can never remember. Maybe Poo Red Alert if it was from the Deparment of Homeland Security's point of view. Or maybe it was just the poo to end all poos. Yes, I wanted to see how many times I can use the word poo ...I'm slowly forgetting this is on the world wide web and anyone can read this and judge me)

Theory #2. He had a new girlfriend over and was trying to not scare her off. What a gentleman.

Theory #3: Drug mule. That was credited to my sister.

When I saw him dawdling at the scene of the crime for so long, I was tempted to call out "hey buddy, how come you aren't housebroken yet?" But I have learned that people are crazy and it would be just my luck that he WAS in fact a drug mule and I had witnessed the, er..."delivery" of a pound of heroin and if he knew that I knew my murder headline would read "Woman killed by half naked man wearing a baseball cap". I decided to mind my own business.


Story #2. Jetta on the loose
530pm. A Friday in March. I am working away and hear a loud crash! Oh, I thought, some poor sucker just bashed into someone in my parking lot. I turn to look and see that the poor sucker is me and I am not even in my car. My car was parked, peacefully, quietly, happily in the lot. A jetta was now attached to the bumper.

Aside - I was new to this work from home thing. So I was still in sweatpants, a giant 1998 Colgate Shirt (why are all my shirts from Colgate XXL?) and no, er, bra. So I'm thinking the guy is going to drive off quickly so I slap on flipflops and run outside at breakneck speed, run to the drivers side window ready to yell and...there is no one in the drivers seat...huh?

Apparently he had left the car in neutral and it rolled into my car. I figured he'd be out in a few hours and he'd move it.

Tick tick. 8pm. Still there. Tick Tick. 11pm. Still there. Well, I thought, he will certainly get towed away since they prowl our lots nightly and treat even the most minor parking offense like a Hummer parked in a handicap spot in front of the white house blocking an ambulance.

830AM - still there. Now I have to call the police. Yes, two calls in a month. I am getting my tax dollars worth.

I politely explain there is not very much damage but that I needed the car to be moved so I could get out. And I didn't have anything to keep the jetta from rolling again cause it was in neutral.

My cheap silver Chevy wit hhe plastic bumber =1
nice new black jetta - 0 - Little silver dent



Police show up. Knock on the guys door and he runs out in PJs (ha, now you know how it feels) all sorts of embarrassed and moves his car as the police officer made fun of him.

I decided I am just going to sit here and peer out the window and dazzle the world with the happening of "The Arlington Condos" on my blog from now on.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Ripped from the Headlines...

I went on a news blackout for a couple weeks. Watching the market tumble with a substantial chunk of 11 years of my work efforts was causing me to twitch.

But now that we are on the uptick again, I have gotten back into my ritual of skimming headlines and reading the news. I go to a few different sites to try to balance the bias. Here is my order over my morning coffee:

1. Washington Post.com - Tho I keep trying to boycott it, it IS my local newspaper so I skim the headlines. And keep a tally of the number of critical Obama articles. So far, still zero.
2. CNN.com - I dunno where to get an unbiased view but I have convinced myself I will get a good range of headlines and news here so I read this for the "real news"
3. Foxnews.com - Sweet, sweet admitted bias. I love it. Its like therapy and the inflamatory headlines make me giggle.

BUT today I noticed a disturbing trend. A large majority of the headlines looked like they were from the Onion but they WERE REAL NEWS. ALL IN ONE DAY.

Here they are in no particular order of how far they made my coffee come out my nose. I didn't make ANY of these up and they are from TODAY only. From the traditional media outlets websites. In case you were wondering, YES, the end is near.

1. Family 'Too Fat to Work' Collects Annual $30G...
2. Shoe camera used to watch naked women
3. Mom Helping Son With Down Syndrome Lose Virginity
4. 'Violent' Chimp Out of Control, Victim's Family Says
5. Report: Airlines Lose 40 Million Bags
Me: This isn't particularly funny except when I realized 20million of those bags were mine
6. Magnetic Fields From Power Lines Disorient Cows
7. Bob Dylan's toilet smell blows in the wind
8. Amish farmer gets jail in outhouse dispute
9. Tough to stop: Teams that score end up on top
Me: Thanks, Captain Obvious.
10. Man stuffed with corned beef wins $5k
11. Grassley Accuses AIG of Sucking 'Tit' of Taxpayer
12. Florida Man Wearing 'I Heart My Marriage' Shirt Arrested for Allegedly Choking Wife

After I reviewed the main news sites, I realized that FoxNews and CNN had the most ridiculous headlines, MSNBC was slightly behind them, CBS was pretty normal and ABC News didn't have anything silly. So I guess I need to revise my reading habits and maybe stick with stodgy old ABC and CBS.

Oddly enough, comedy central.com didn't have any headlines...O wait, Jon Stewart just THINKS he is a real news guy now...

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Oyster Rehab is not a Republican Issue, or a Democratic Issue. It's an American Issue.

I'm sorry. I didn't want to make this a political blog but I can't help myself. I do promise that I will at least research before I write.

And I did research (read: someone needs a life). I looked thru a chunk of the earmarks in the federal budget. Now, $7.7 billion is pocket change to what our new government, drunk with power, have thrown around BUT you all voted for change...and you ain't getting it.

Candidate Obama in the first presidential debate: "Absolutely, we need earmark reform. And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely."

Hey, O, I think you missed this line:

$800,000 Oyster Rehabilitation in Alabama

Who the heck gave those oysters enough alcohol that they needed rehab?

And just to show this isn't a one sided rant - that one was an Republican earmark...shame. SHAME. Hard to stand up for small government when you ask for $800k for your oyster constituents, Senator Shelby. You idiot.

Wait, Oysters must be vital to our economic recovery plan because here is another one that must have missed Obama's personal line by line study:

$2 MILLION for Chesapeake Bay Oyster Recovery MD & VA

Wait, one more, I am off the Oysters now even tho those were NOT the only two earmarks for those slimy little things, seriously...:

"To the city of Billings, MT $296,000 to purchase digital video cameras, a tactical blanket system and a tactical armored security vehicle"

What the hell is a tactical blanket? Oh...


Billings, Montana has a violent crime rate of 186 incidents per 100,000 people compared with a rate of 596 nationally. Yes, they definately needed to spend $300k on a tank.

No, I am not against stuff to protect police officers - BUT if Billings, MT wants a tank for their cops and Alabama wants to have an intervention for their oysters then let the citizens of Billings and Alabama pay for it while the Federal government focuses on the big problems like maybe buying tanks and armor for those guys fighting those wars over there...

But I AM against broken campaign promises from someone who preached change, hope, rainbows and unicorns. Yes we can. Si se puede.

And the defense of "Well Bush did it too, he was a horrible president, Cheney is Satan's spawn!" will only get you laughed at after my eyes stop rolling. He is gone, move on and focus on the new guy and hold him to the same standards of scrutiny and accountablity to do what he said he would do.

Plus Bush never campaigned on change and hope and reform (it was more like war, pestilence and evil)...Where is the same level of outrage to the same old bad government for the new guy? Or are we too busy ogling the First Lady's guns in those dresses she wears? Focus, people. Make sure you got what you voted for. Reforming earmarks was an easy one, what about when we ge to the hard stuff?

See I do research my rants. I am still hurting from someone calling me an "uninformed conservative". So there.

Link to Earmarks: http://www.taxpayer.net/resources.php?category=&type=Project&proj_id=1961&action=Headlines%20By%20TCS