Sunday morning.
8:00 am.
Doorbell.†
No, no, no... wait. Let's get some background here:
Four weeks ago, I had a notice on my door, along with a release,‡ so someone could fix my deck railings,§ which look like a ramshackle country sheep fence.¶
"You'll have to be there for the first four hours so they can do some tests for leakage in the garage and house."
"Do your crews work weekends? I'd rather not missing any work if I can help it."
"No. NO weekends. NEVER. Idiot! Why would you even ask such a thing? Barbarian! Fascist!"#
So we agreed on Monday the 12th.††
You know where this is going.
In a spectacular, bruising, bloodying, life-sized game of Patio Furniture Tetris, I loaded out the deck and rendered my dining room useless for the next several days.
I'm pretty sure Manny and the Snow Removers do decks in the warmer months.
And I did more before 9:00 am than I had ever intended to do all day.‡‡
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Preceded by many, many backup signals. I hate backup signals.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Which I mention because I'd like to bitch about it as long as I'm bitching. Y'know, as an efficiency measure. I rewrote the release because it essentially said, "You agree to let our people in your house, now and forever, for the purpose of fixing, inspecting, maintaining bits of the house with no date or time restrictions and you agree to hold them harmless for any and all breakage or damage." I have finally discovered the practical application of being a Landman.
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): It was supposed to be fixed before I moved in. Then, after three years of asking, they let me know they weren't going to fix anything because the HOA was suing the builder for such things as wildly substandard deck rails and they didn't want to pay for anything the builders should pay for. Fortunately (since the giant set of patio furniture wasn't enough, then the planters weren't enough), the compost barrel was finally enough to trigger Murphy's Law so I could move the maximum amount of ungainly stuff into the house.
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Great for a quaint rural sheep farm. Not so great for an urban townhouse.
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): OK, her mouth may have said, "Oh, no, I'm sorry, we don't work weekends," but I'm sure her eyes said "Fascist!"
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): i.e. - tomorrow, but most notably not today.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Hopefully getting out of Kim's doghouse in the beginning of a misery-loves-company trend.
Showing posts with label Snow Guys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Snow Guys. Show all posts
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Friday, December 28, 2007
Do You Know What Time It Is?
TTHFCIF
But we'll get back to our blogtitle in a moment. Now it's time to do something we haven't done in a long time: Lick the Pig!
[SUMMARY: You are so excited right now.]
Let me tell you a little car tale: my little car† has expired plates. Like, four months worth of expired. I didn't know. Usually, the City and County of Denver will send a notice and I can send a check and they will, in turn, send my new stickers. Turns out they're "running really far behind"‡ this year.
So I went to pick up Genius Sarah at the airport Wednesday night. Through a series of hilarious mishaps worthy of the three stooges,§ I had to circle around three times before actually connecting with her.
On the final approach, one of the police officers stationed at passenger pick-up to keep terrorists from loitering directed me into an empty space by the United door.
"I need to go down to Air Canada," I yelled out the window.
He directed me again.
"No... you see, my friend is waiting for me at Air Canada."
He pointed at the blank spot by the curb.
"Air Canada! Way down there!"
He gestured emphatically with both arms.
I huffed and probably rolled my eyes¶ and swerved into the space.
The cop came to the window and said, "Why were you yelling at me?"
"Because I didn't think you could hear me."
"I pulled you over because your license plates are expired. Could you hand me your registration and proof of insurance?"
"Oh. Yes."
Because everything except the license plate was in order, he let me go with a warning and a lecture about how very inconvenient and stupid it would be to get a parking ticket for expired plates.
"Now tell me, young lady, why didn't you pull over when I told you to?"
"I didn't know you were pulling me over. I thought you were directing traffic and directing me somewhere I didn't want to be."
"Go pick your friend up at Air Canada."
"Thank you."
Yesterday morning, about six blocks from the office, I noticed a cop behind me and a lane over. As I was operating outside the law, I started to get nervous. Sure enough, like a raindrop to a freshly-waxed car, he pulled in behind me. And followed me for six blocks. And pulled me over right in front of the office.
"Do you know why I pulled you over?"
I briefed him on my airport trip and he let me off with a warning and his business card.#
Y'all may have noticed we (until yesterday, I thought it was mostly just me) spend a certain amount of time gazing out our giant office windows at cranes, billboards, fashion disasters... the dinner theatre that is downtown.
Can you see where this is going?
When I finally stumbled in to the office, Hans greeted me with a cheery, "So what happened out there, you hardened criminal? Doesn't look like you got a ticket."
Of course, the client was watching out her window and said to Hans, "I can't believe this cop is going to pull someone over in this weather."
"Hey... that's Marin's car!"
[SUMMARY: All the world's a stage, all the Mini Coopers merely players.]
Speaking of quotation marks, I found a doozy of a sign in the Kaiser Permanente pharmacy Wednesday. I wish I'd had my camera, but I had to settle for taking very careful notes so I could share with y'all.
Yeah, you don't get any weird looks% at the clinic when you start copying instructional signs.
Punctuation, format and capitalisation [sic]. Very [sic]:
If your Name is "NOW" on the
"Name Board"
or you are "Handicapped"
Please "WAIT HERE", Until
"CALLED" to the Counter for Service
*Thank You*
We didn't get to watch them put it up, which was bad enough, but it's still the same old billboard now for over a month.
Apparently Keystone has more money than M&M/Mars. At least I'm not craving chocolate every hour of the day anymore.
[SUMMARY: Advertisers have my number. I am sucker, once again.]
And speaking of window-watching, it must've sucked to be this guy yesterday:
I told Hans it would suck even harder if the parking lot guy came along with his clipboard and enforced the "no free parking EVER!" rule and gave him a ticket.
Funnier, too.
[SUMMARY: Seriously, a LOT of Comedy Central over the weekend. I think in punchlines.]
Partly I just like the composition of this picture, partly I find it a fine segueway into my next piglickable subject, which is the Return of the Snow Guys.
You may remember the Snow Guys from last year.
This is either a new crew or new methodology,†† but not much less annoying.
[SUMMARY: Here it comes, friends: the Bitch of the Day!]
There are no machines this year, so I don't get the joy of listening to the snowblower run for two straight hours up and down right in front of my house, only to look out and see a guy plodding along behind a creature blowing absolutely no snow off a perfectly dry sidewalk.
Last night, there were at least two crews of four guys on this job for upwards of eight hours.
I first heard them scrape and clang at 10:30, just as I was turning off the lights to go to bed. And they woke me up at 12:30, 2:10 and 4:30. I finally got up at 4:30,‡‡ madder than all get-out. They were still puttering around when I left at 6:15.
I want to stress here that our little neighbourhood is less than nine square blocks and less than seven blocks of sidewalk. No driveways to shovel.
I would also like to stress that I could clear the whole fucking neighbourhood with a garden trowel in eight hours.
At 4:30, I peeked through my blinds in classic "you kids get off my lawn!" preamble and saw four guys standing right at the foot of my stairs, talking. When people talk in that loud, laughing social way in the street, I can hear it in my house.§§ One guy was twirling his snow shovel on one point of the blade. Sometimes, he'd lose control and it would clatter to the ground.
Then the supervisor, who had been driving by every half-hour all night to inspire a round of, "Hey, Manny!" drove by and there was a brief, shouted exchange. The shovel ballerina got bored and began BOUNCING THE SHOVEL ON THE BOTTOM STEP, which sounded like a slow jackhammer.
I was trying^ to put on sweats, practice my irate phone call to the management company and compose the story for blogging when they stopped breaking and started shoveling. Again. They shoveled my stairs and porch for the THIRD time.
It WASN'T SNOWING last night.
Can you tell the level of perturb by the number of capital letters? Oh, yeah. I'm a lot of fun when you wake me up at 4:30 in the morning.
[SUMMARY: Breezy.¶¶]
Let's lighten it up,## shall we?
Hans and I went to Wahoo's for lunch and I spied this on the light over our table:
Let's zoom in:
[SUMMARY: Funny on so many levels.]
Finally, I'd like to share my entry in Cheryl's Holiday Cheer Christmas Lights Contest:
I saw this on my way home one day last week.
View from the left
View from the centre
View from the right
I didn't actually go in and browse around their yard, at least partly because the letter posted above that sign asked that donations be made to their mission in lieu of giving money to support their light show. I can think of about a dozen ways a meeting in the Kisling's yard could go haywire for me.
[SUMMARY: Christmas if for the light of heart.†††]
I'm going for coffee.
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): I think I'm clever.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): That's quotes as in "quote," not quotes as in "euphemism."
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): I'm Larry, Moe and Curly all wrapped up in one bungling package.
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): I know I shouldn't. Sometimes I can't help it. My inner teenaged brat is too strong.
%FOOTNOTE (percented): And by, "you," I mean, "I."
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): I had the fleeting moment of self-flattery when I mused he might be hitting on me. I had the more practical moment of self-preservation when I decided I'd flash his business card in case I got pulled over again, hoping the evidence that I'd just been warned would inspire another cop to leave me alone. I'll let you know how that works out.
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): I fancy the management company may actually have listened to the myriad complaints (and death threats... more importantly, threats of lawsuits) about last year's snow removal debacle.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Hence, the blogtitle.
§§FOOTNOTE (snakey!): And your thumpy, thumpy car stereos, oh you kings of Chihuahua perpetrating the stereotype.
^FOOTNOTE (careted): It was so walking-while-chewing-gum.
¶¶FOOTNOTE (two snow shovels, bouncing in the night): Brother is laughing. See, years back I put a very brief message on my vmail -- I maintain that a lot of the standard, "I can't take your call, leave a message, I'll get back to you, have a nice day" is understood and a waste of time -- and Brother told me I sounded bitchy. I was truly crestfallen, because, as I told him, I'd been going for "breezy." Now every time I get snappish, he looks at me and says, "Ooooh. Breezy."
##FOOTNOTE (pounding like a two-day migraine): Ha! Pun!
†††FOOTNOTE (triple threat!): Seriously. I think I'm funny. Because I think puns are funny.
But we'll get back to our blogtitle in a moment. Now it's time to do something we haven't done in a long time: Lick the Pig!
[SUMMARY: You are so excited right now.]
Let me tell you a little car tale: my little car† has expired plates. Like, four months worth of expired. I didn't know. Usually, the City and County of Denver will send a notice and I can send a check and they will, in turn, send my new stickers. Turns out they're "running really far behind"‡ this year.
So I went to pick up Genius Sarah at the airport Wednesday night. Through a series of hilarious mishaps worthy of the three stooges,§ I had to circle around three times before actually connecting with her.
On the final approach, one of the police officers stationed at passenger pick-up to keep terrorists from loitering directed me into an empty space by the United door.
"I need to go down to Air Canada," I yelled out the window.
He directed me again.
"No... you see, my friend is waiting for me at Air Canada."
He pointed at the blank spot by the curb.
"Air Canada! Way down there!"
He gestured emphatically with both arms.
I huffed and probably rolled my eyes¶ and swerved into the space.
The cop came to the window and said, "Why were you yelling at me?"
"Because I didn't think you could hear me."
"I pulled you over because your license plates are expired. Could you hand me your registration and proof of insurance?"
"Oh. Yes."
Because everything except the license plate was in order, he let me go with a warning and a lecture about how very inconvenient and stupid it would be to get a parking ticket for expired plates.
"Now tell me, young lady, why didn't you pull over when I told you to?"
"I didn't know you were pulling me over. I thought you were directing traffic and directing me somewhere I didn't want to be."
"Go pick your friend up at Air Canada."
"Thank you."
Yesterday morning, about six blocks from the office, I noticed a cop behind me and a lane over. As I was operating outside the law, I started to get nervous. Sure enough, like a raindrop to a freshly-waxed car, he pulled in behind me. And followed me for six blocks. And pulled me over right in front of the office.
"Do you know why I pulled you over?"
I briefed him on my airport trip and he let me off with a warning and his business card.#
Y'all may have noticed we (until yesterday, I thought it was mostly just me) spend a certain amount of time gazing out our giant office windows at cranes, billboards, fashion disasters... the dinner theatre that is downtown.
Can you see where this is going?
When I finally stumbled in to the office, Hans greeted me with a cheery, "So what happened out there, you hardened criminal? Doesn't look like you got a ticket."
Of course, the client was watching out her window and said to Hans, "I can't believe this cop is going to pull someone over in this weather."
"Hey... that's Marin's car!"
[SUMMARY: All the world's a stage, all the Mini Coopers merely players.]
Speaking of quotation marks, I found a doozy of a sign in the Kaiser Permanente pharmacy Wednesday. I wish I'd had my camera, but I had to settle for taking very careful notes so I could share with y'all.
Yeah, you don't get any weird looks% at the clinic when you start copying instructional signs.
Punctuation, format and capitalisation [sic]. Very [sic]:
"Name Board"
or you are "Handicapped"
Please "WAIT HERE", Until
"CALLED" to the Counter for Service
*Thank You*
[SUMMARY: Spectacular!]
We didn't get to watch them put it up, which was bad enough, but it's still the same old billboard now for over a month.
Apparently Keystone has more money than M&M/Mars. At least I'm not craving chocolate every hour of the day anymore.
[SUMMARY: Advertisers have my number. I am sucker, once again.]
And speaking of window-watching, it must've sucked to be this guy yesterday:
I told Hans it would suck even harder if the parking lot guy came along with his clipboard and enforced the "no free parking EVER!" rule and gave him a ticket.
Funnier, too.
[SUMMARY: Seriously, a LOT of Comedy Central over the weekend. I think in punchlines.]
Partly I just like the composition of this picture, partly I find it a fine segueway into my next piglickable subject, which is the Return of the Snow Guys.
You may remember the Snow Guys from last year.
This is either a new crew or new methodology,†† but not much less annoying.
[SUMMARY: Here it comes, friends: the Bitch of the Day!]
There are no machines this year, so I don't get the joy of listening to the snowblower run for two straight hours up and down right in front of my house, only to look out and see a guy plodding along behind a creature blowing absolutely no snow off a perfectly dry sidewalk.
Last night, there were at least two crews of four guys on this job for upwards of eight hours.
I first heard them scrape and clang at 10:30, just as I was turning off the lights to go to bed. And they woke me up at 12:30, 2:10 and 4:30. I finally got up at 4:30,‡‡ madder than all get-out. They were still puttering around when I left at 6:15.
I want to stress here that our little neighbourhood is less than nine square blocks and less than seven blocks of sidewalk. No driveways to shovel.
I would also like to stress that I could clear the whole fucking neighbourhood with a garden trowel in eight hours.
At 4:30, I peeked through my blinds in classic "you kids get off my lawn!" preamble and saw four guys standing right at the foot of my stairs, talking. When people talk in that loud, laughing social way in the street, I can hear it in my house.§§ One guy was twirling his snow shovel on one point of the blade. Sometimes, he'd lose control and it would clatter to the ground.
Then the supervisor, who had been driving by every half-hour all night to inspire a round of, "Hey, Manny!" drove by and there was a brief, shouted exchange. The shovel ballerina got bored and began BOUNCING THE SHOVEL ON THE BOTTOM STEP, which sounded like a slow jackhammer.
I was trying^ to put on sweats, practice my irate phone call to the management company and compose the story for blogging when they stopped breaking and started shoveling. Again. They shoveled my stairs and porch for the THIRD time.
It WASN'T SNOWING last night.
Can you tell the level of perturb by the number of capital letters? Oh, yeah. I'm a lot of fun when you wake me up at 4:30 in the morning.
[SUMMARY: Breezy.¶¶]
Let's lighten it up,## shall we?
Hans and I went to Wahoo's for lunch and I spied this on the light over our table:
Let's zoom in:
[SUMMARY: Funny on so many levels.]
Finally, I'd like to share my entry in Cheryl's Holiday Cheer Christmas Lights Contest:
I saw this on my way home one day last week.
View from the left
View from the centre
View from the right
I didn't actually go in and browse around their yard, at least partly because the letter posted above that sign asked that donations be made to their mission in lieu of giving money to support their light show. I can think of about a dozen ways a meeting in the Kisling's yard could go haywire for me.
[SUMMARY: Christmas if for the light of heart.†††]
I'm going for coffee.
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): I think I'm clever.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): That's quotes as in "quote," not quotes as in "euphemism."
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): I'm Larry, Moe and Curly all wrapped up in one bungling package.
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): I know I shouldn't. Sometimes I can't help it. My inner teenaged brat is too strong.
%FOOTNOTE (percented): And by, "you," I mean, "I."
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): I had the fleeting moment of self-flattery when I mused he might be hitting on me. I had the more practical moment of self-preservation when I decided I'd flash his business card in case I got pulled over again, hoping the evidence that I'd just been warned would inspire another cop to leave me alone. I'll let you know how that works out.
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): I fancy the management company may actually have listened to the myriad complaints (and death threats... more importantly, threats of lawsuits) about last year's snow removal debacle.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Hence, the blogtitle.
§§FOOTNOTE (snakey!): And your thumpy, thumpy car stereos, oh you kings of Chihuahua perpetrating the stereotype.
^FOOTNOTE (careted): It was so walking-while-chewing-gum.
¶¶FOOTNOTE (two snow shovels, bouncing in the night): Brother is laughing. See, years back I put a very brief message on my vmail -- I maintain that a lot of the standard, "I can't take your call, leave a message, I'll get back to you, have a nice day" is understood and a waste of time -- and Brother told me I sounded bitchy. I was truly crestfallen, because, as I told him, I'd been going for "breezy." Now every time I get snappish, he looks at me and says, "Ooooh. Breezy."
##FOOTNOTE (pounding like a two-day migraine): Ha! Pun!
†††FOOTNOTE (triple threat!): Seriously. I think I'm funny. Because I think puns are funny.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Lost and Flounder
-Bought the Book Club book a month ago. Lost it.**
-Bought it again. Read half. Lost it.
-Called Knit Picks yesterday over "missing" yarn. Gave wrong order number. Confused hell out of nice CSR, particularly when I continued to argue for a good three minutes over the dates involved:**
"But it couldn't have reached Denver on the 22nd -- you just ordered it on the 23rd"
"I don't know what you're looking at. Mine says it arrived in Denver on Thursday. And delivered yesterday."
"But the order was just placed Friday."
"Why you wanna fuck with the HKIC?" (no, I didn't really. Good thing since I was so thoroughly wrong.)
-Was knitting (Pink Magic) in the blank spaces at work. Made the same exact, stupid mistake EVERY FLIPPIN' ROW. Had to tink two stitches EVERY FLIPPIN' ROW. Have been working this pattern for weeks, almost a whole ball of yarn and still made the same mistake EVERY FLIPPIN' ROW.
-Got home last night at 5:00. Found book. Went to Book Club. Left book at home.
-Decided to knit/TiVi until an hour before Book Club. Planned to leave at 6:30 to allow that hour to stop by grocery store for provisions and travel to Book Club destination. Was smug and pleased when leaving at 6:20. Realised en route to grocery store Book Club at 7:00.**
-Went to Book Club. Took pictures. Left camera.
-Got in the car this morning. Got to parking garage. Had no wallet. Had to go home.
-Realised en route never went to bank for boss yesterday as promised.
-Went to drive-thru bank. Drove off without receipt. Had to go back.
[SUMMARY: I'm losing it, whatever it is, literally and figuratively.]
And it's snowing like a mother (I know that phrase doesn't make any sense) in Denver-ish, so the Snow Guys will be out in full force tonight.
*brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.scrape.scrape.scrape.* "Hey, Manny, why do you bang a blonde in the cab of a backhoe?"
[SUMMARY: And it doesn't look like I'm finding it any time soon.]
please send vodka
**FOOTNOTE (asterisked): If you look back, last month's book was also purchased twice. I purchased this month's book at that time, and have yet to find either original copy. Some people's socks go into another dimension. I apparently have book trolls.
**FOOTNOTE (asterisked): By the way, if you order from Knit Picks and obsess over your tracking information (*ahem*), when it says "DELIVERED" in big, scary letters (scary 'cause I know it *wasn't* delivered when it says DELIVERED), it doesn't mean delivered to you, it means delivered to your post office. There will never be an indication that the post office actually thinks they delivered your yarn to you. Yeah, I don't get it either. And I still don't have my yarn.
**FOOTNOTE (asterisked): Book Club has ALWAYS been at 7:00.
**FOOTNOTE (unasterisked): I did knit seven rows on the Stupid Blanket at Book Club (in the midst of the traditional book shower for the mother-to-be for whom the Stupid Blanket is being constructed). I made a mistake on one end that I have decided to leave. It won't be that noticable, it will save Bert (the baby) from the wrath of angry perfection gods and it will save me from frogging four rows of 150 stitches and finally putting my head in the oven.
or chocolate
-Bought it again. Read half. Lost it.
-Called Knit Picks yesterday over "missing" yarn. Gave wrong order number. Confused hell out of nice CSR, particularly when I continued to argue for a good three minutes over the dates involved:**
"But it couldn't have reached Denver on the 22nd -- you just ordered it on the 23rd"
"I don't know what you're looking at. Mine says it arrived in Denver on Thursday. And delivered yesterday."
"But the order was just placed Friday."
"Why you wanna fuck with the HKIC?" (no, I didn't really. Good thing since I was so thoroughly wrong.)
-Was knitting (Pink Magic) in the blank spaces at work. Made the same exact, stupid mistake EVERY FLIPPIN' ROW. Had to tink two stitches EVERY FLIPPIN' ROW. Have been working this pattern for weeks, almost a whole ball of yarn and still made the same mistake EVERY FLIPPIN' ROW.
-Got home last night at 5:00. Found book. Went to Book Club. Left book at home.
-Decided to knit/TiVi until an hour before Book Club. Planned to leave at 6:30 to allow that hour to stop by grocery store for provisions and travel to Book Club destination. Was smug and pleased when leaving at 6:20. Realised en route to grocery store Book Club at 7:00.**
-Went to Book Club. Took pictures. Left camera.
-Got in the car this morning. Got to parking garage. Had no wallet. Had to go home.
-Realised en route never went to bank for boss yesterday as promised.
-Went to drive-thru bank. Drove off without receipt. Had to go back.
[SUMMARY: I'm losing it, whatever it is, literally and figuratively.]
And it's snowing like a mother (I know that phrase doesn't make any sense) in Denver-ish, so the Snow Guys will be out in full force tonight.
*brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.scrape.scrape.scrape.* "Hey, Manny, why do you bang a blonde in the cab of a backhoe?"
[SUMMARY: And it doesn't look like I'm finding it any time soon.]
please send vodka
**FOOTNOTE (asterisked): If you look back, last month's book was also purchased twice. I purchased this month's book at that time, and have yet to find either original copy. Some people's socks go into another dimension. I apparently have book trolls.
**FOOTNOTE (asterisked): By the way, if you order from Knit Picks and obsess over your tracking information (*ahem*), when it says "DELIVERED" in big, scary letters (scary 'cause I know it *wasn't* delivered when it says DELIVERED), it doesn't mean delivered to you, it means delivered to your post office. There will never be an indication that the post office actually thinks they delivered your yarn to you. Yeah, I don't get it either. And I still don't have my yarn.
**FOOTNOTE (asterisked): Book Club has ALWAYS been at 7:00.
**FOOTNOTE (unasterisked): I did knit seven rows on the Stupid Blanket at Book Club (in the midst of the traditional book shower for the mother-to-be for whom the Stupid Blanket is being constructed). I made a mistake on one end that I have decided to leave. It won't be that noticable, it will save Bert (the baby) from the wrath of angry perfection gods and it will save me from frogging four rows of 150 stitches and finally putting my head in the oven.
or chocolate
Thursday, March 1, 2007
H to the O...
...to the A!
Let's hear it for my HOA. When Denver was suffocating under a foot-and-a-half of snow between Wednesday (Dec 20) and Thursday (Dec 21), nobody shovelled us out for three days, despite the facts that a) everybody knew the snow was coming and was going to be big and they should have been well prepared, and b) it stopped snowing Thursday morning and there was no excuse for leaving snow stagnating in clear weather. Now, I'm a bitcher (No, AntiM! Not you! Say it ain't so!). I bitched at the management company, who didn't even know the snow guys weren't doing their snow guy thing. The snow guys *told* the management company they were going out at noon... and at noon the next day they still hadn't so much as breathed heavy in the direction of our little covenant-controlled corner of the 'hood.
They had so many complaints that they went WAY too far the other direction: unnecessary 24-hour snow removal for the next snow a week later. We're talking big equipment, people. I wish you were here to hear my impression of middle-of-the-bloody night in my 'hood during those times:
*rrrrrrrrarrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhnnnnnn* *beepbeepbeepbeep* (that last one was the backup alarm. I hate the backup alarm.)
This bit of genius (the 24-hour snow removal genius) inspired snarky signs all over the 'hood warning residents to stop threatening violence and legal action (I am not making this up) against the snow guys or the snow guys would go home and... no snow removal for you!
They've since mellowed into a system wherein the snow guys come somewhere between 10:00 pm and 2:00 am, run a snowblower and a mini-cat with a plow for an hour (and I've watched a couple of times -- one or two swipes with motorised equipment seem to both clear all the snow and take only about 15 minutes), take a long break (in which I'm sure they partake of the ganja. I'm not judgin', I'm just sayin'), then start up again (waking up the finally-sleeping populace). Turns out they hired these guys to do overnight snow removal because it's cheaper than the daytime kind of snow removal.
How do I know this? I bitched at the snow guys at 2:00 one morning and they... um... *explained* it to me, as only two stoned perverts jousting with snow shovels in the freezing dark can do. Use your imagination.
Also, I can only assume they're being paid by the hour because it takes four guys with a snowblower, mini-cat and (at least) three snow shovels at their disposal four or five hours to clear three square blocks of sidewalk.
I could do it by myself with a garden trowel in less time.
I am covetous of sleep. I love my sleep. I was an insomniac for almost 30 years, so I'm picky about sleep. I can't sleep with backup alarms (I hate backup alarms) and snowblowers under my window.
In response to their ill-conceived snow removal system, I've developed my own system. I turn on a fan to create a volume of white noise sufficient to blot out the aural blight of snow blowers, snow shovels and stoned men yelling off-colour jokes to each other across the dark and empty streets. I woke up at 2:40 this morning, toddled off to pee (because it doesn't matter how little fluid is in my body or how many times I've peed in the last four hours, as soon as I wake up, my body needs to pee) and noticed how freakin' cold it was with the fan on. I peeked out the window to see clean, empty sidewalks and no snow guys, so I turned off the fan. An hour later? "Hey, Manny! What do you call a squid with a yeast infection?"
*rrrrrrrreeeernrnrnrnrnrhhhhhhhhnnnnnn* (snowblower -- sounds a lot like the heavy equipment, but whinier and with no backup alarm. I hate the backup alarm.)
I guess they came back from their smoke/toke break to... oh, who knows what they do? Admire their work? Do like I do when I wander into the kitchen and can't remember why? ("Huh. What do you suppose I came here for? Dang. I guess I'll shovel this snow...")
[SUMMARY: If I were running the world, snowblowers and backup alarms (I hate backup alarms) wouldn't keep me up all night, yet the snow would get removed. I think there's a vast middle ground between the two ends of that particular spectrum.]
I turned the fan back on. I'm tired this morning.
But I have knitting pictures, so it will all be better soon.
Here is a fine view of my knitting magazines. I ambitiously spent a weekend not too long ago culling magazines with no potential (which I gave to my friend Annie -- hey, one person's trash, another's lifetime supply of knitting patterns) and marking things I want to knit in the remainder. Note the festive tags, indicating things I want to knit.
This is the B&N Problem Sweater (as in "I have a Book Problem and a Knitting Problem) from the Vogue Knitting American Collection
I also have a picture of the lovely ribbed sweater from the Knit 'n' Style December 2006 issue that I'm going to knit BEFORE the Problem Dragonfly. It's lovely, in a lovely yarn (Dark Horse Fantasy -- isn't that a lovely name?), but I left the lovely picture on my lovely home computer, or possibly in my lovely camera, so you'll have to use your imagination for now.
Here are the WIPs:
Arrrgyle Socks in pink and brown, along with... the practise arrrgyle on which I taught myself intarsia. Yes, I forgot the nose holes on the practise arrrgyle, but that's what practise (and duplicate stitching) is all about.
I don't much care for variegated yarns because they so often look homemade in that not-so-good homemade way that evokes home perms and ballerina toilet paper cozies from the 70s, but I discovered (thanks to the magic of the Knitting Pattern a Day Calendar... thanks Aunt Chris!) that variegated yarn looks really cool in a linen stitch.
For example, linen stitch front... ... and back (it even looks really cool on the back. Love that).
...so I was very excited when my cousin picked a variegated yarn (it's Plymouth Encore -- she was looking at cashmere, but who needs a baby blanket that needs to be dry cleaned?) and figured I'd whip out the old linen stitch and really impress the not-knitters, but...
The baby blanket...
...and a closeup of the stitch (linen)... ...and a closeup of the edge (two leaves something from Nicky Epstein).
It turns out this yarn has REALLY long repeats (look at me, using the knitting lingo) and it stripes more than it linens. I probably would have gone with a nice, quick garter stitch if I'd known, but I feel I'm too far gone to frog it back now. Not to mention what a pain in the ass it would likely be to frog a linen stitch. In fact, it wouldn't go "rippit, rippit" in that smooth slip-stitch way we know and love. It'd be like riding a razor scooter on shudder bars: "Bam! Fuck! Bam! Fuck!"
Stupid Blanket.
Here's a tip from your ol' AntiM: if you're one of those people who has two (or three or twelve) projects going at a time (possibly because you have a short attention span, possibly because you're industrious, possibly because you want to knit all the yarn and all the patterns and this is the only way you see this happening), don't toggle between a linen stitch and a k1p1 rib. You may lose your ever-lovin' mind. You should see the tragic message I sent to the Yarn Harlot the day I did this. Nobody has time for that kind of whining, but I don't have knitty friends, so I had to piss and moan in the general direction of someone who might feel my pain.
[SUMMARY: I knit.]
Anyway...
Very little sock (plus cat for scale)... ...some yarn my nephew got me, kinda scarfy
That's "very little sock" as in "I have knit very little of this sock," rather than "This will be a teeny-tiny little fairy sock. Look! It's almost done!"
My nephew picked out the yarn all by himself. It think it was very brave of his mother to take him (a four-year-old at the time) to a yarn store that, while I love it, it doesn't love kids. That yarn has been sitting for two years while I try to figure out what to do with it. I don't know if you can see it, but it goes from thick to thin and back again -- I tried to do the linen stitch trick with it (since it's variegated, don't ya know), but it ends up looking like a six-fingered, mentally challenged person knit it at day camp. All uneven and lumpy and stuff. So I decided on a simple garter stitch scarf.
Those last two items have something in common: I took their pictures yesterday afternoon and frogged them all the way back to yarn balls before Book Club (yes, I finished the book, yes I provided snacks. Good ones. All is right with the world). I decided to do the Feather and Fan socks from "Socks Socks Socks" because I've seen some lovely results with the dreaded variegated yarn on that particular pattern. I decided to make fingerless gloves or gauntlets with the Nephew Yarn.
I've never frogged a project unless there was something to fix via the frogging. I heaved a deep sigh as I pulled the first of the needles, fear and loathing in my heart, but it turns out it's a lot of fun and kind of liberating to undo a whole whack of knitting. And the power! Oh, the power! "Ha ha, tiny knitting projects! Bend to my will! Quake before me for soon you may be nothing more than fibre in my hands!"
I'm a dork.
I'm a dork with clean sidewalks.
[SUMMARY: I am dork enough to think ripping several hours' worth of knitting back is worth blogging about.]
**FOOTNOTE (unasterisked): Have y'all noticed I have no idea how to punctuate around parentheses? And I'm not even consistent in the mistakes I make? I figure if I do everything I can think of at least once, I'll get it right at least once in every round. It's a good thing I don't knit that way. Besides, a friend once told me you can pretty much skip everything in parentheses when you're reading, so I figure you can pretty much skip good grammar practices. Parenthetically.
ALSO... I did a bunch of editing in HTML because stuff looked wrong and I couldn't un-wrong it from the Blog View for Dummies. I'm a genius. Still a dork.
Let's hear it for my HOA. When Denver was suffocating under a foot-and-a-half of snow between Wednesday (Dec 20) and Thursday (Dec 21), nobody shovelled us out for three days, despite the facts that a) everybody knew the snow was coming and was going to be big and they should have been well prepared, and b) it stopped snowing Thursday morning and there was no excuse for leaving snow stagnating in clear weather. Now, I'm a bitcher (No, AntiM! Not you! Say it ain't so!). I bitched at the management company, who didn't even know the snow guys weren't doing their snow guy thing. The snow guys *told* the management company they were going out at noon... and at noon the next day they still hadn't so much as breathed heavy in the direction of our little covenant-controlled corner of the 'hood.
They had so many complaints that they went WAY too far the other direction: unnecessary 24-hour snow removal for the next snow a week later. We're talking big equipment, people. I wish you were here to hear my impression of middle-of-the-bloody night in my 'hood during those times:
*rrrrrrrrarrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhnnnnnn* *beepbeepbeepbeep* (that last one was the backup alarm. I hate the backup alarm.)
This bit of genius (the 24-hour snow removal genius) inspired snarky signs all over the 'hood warning residents to stop threatening violence and legal action (I am not making this up) against the snow guys or the snow guys would go home and... no snow removal for you!
They've since mellowed into a system wherein the snow guys come somewhere between 10:00 pm and 2:00 am, run a snowblower and a mini-cat with a plow for an hour (and I've watched a couple of times -- one or two swipes with motorised equipment seem to both clear all the snow and take only about 15 minutes), take a long break (in which I'm sure they partake of the ganja. I'm not judgin', I'm just sayin'), then start up again (waking up the finally-sleeping populace). Turns out they hired these guys to do overnight snow removal because it's cheaper than the daytime kind of snow removal.
How do I know this? I bitched at the snow guys at 2:00 one morning and they... um... *explained* it to me, as only two stoned perverts jousting with snow shovels in the freezing dark can do. Use your imagination.
Also, I can only assume they're being paid by the hour because it takes four guys with a snowblower, mini-cat and (at least) three snow shovels at their disposal four or five hours to clear three square blocks of sidewalk.
I could do it by myself with a garden trowel in less time.
I am covetous of sleep. I love my sleep. I was an insomniac for almost 30 years, so I'm picky about sleep. I can't sleep with backup alarms (I hate backup alarms) and snowblowers under my window.
In response to their ill-conceived snow removal system, I've developed my own system. I turn on a fan to create a volume of white noise sufficient to blot out the aural blight of snow blowers, snow shovels and stoned men yelling off-colour jokes to each other across the dark and empty streets. I woke up at 2:40 this morning, toddled off to pee (because it doesn't matter how little fluid is in my body or how many times I've peed in the last four hours, as soon as I wake up, my body needs to pee) and noticed how freakin' cold it was with the fan on. I peeked out the window to see clean, empty sidewalks and no snow guys, so I turned off the fan. An hour later? "Hey, Manny! What do you call a squid with a yeast infection?"
*rrrrrrrreeeernrnrnrnrnrhhhhhhhhnnnnnn* (snowblower -- sounds a lot like the heavy equipment, but whinier and with no backup alarm. I hate the backup alarm.)
I guess they came back from their smoke/toke break to... oh, who knows what they do? Admire their work? Do like I do when I wander into the kitchen and can't remember why? ("Huh. What do you suppose I came here for? Dang. I guess I'll shovel this snow...")
[SUMMARY: If I were running the world, snowblowers and backup alarms (I hate backup alarms) wouldn't keep me up all night, yet the snow would get removed. I think there's a vast middle ground between the two ends of that particular spectrum.]
I turned the fan back on. I'm tired this morning.
But I have knitting pictures, so it will all be better soon.
Here is a fine view of my knitting magazines. I ambitiously spent a weekend not too long ago culling magazines with no potential (which I gave to my friend Annie -- hey, one person's trash, another's lifetime supply of knitting patterns) and marking things I want to knit in the remainder. Note the festive tags, indicating things I want to knit.
This is the B&N Problem Sweater (as in "I have a Book Problem and a Knitting Problem) from the Vogue Knitting American Collection
I also have a picture of the lovely ribbed sweater from the Knit 'n' Style December 2006 issue that I'm going to knit BEFORE the Problem Dragonfly. It's lovely, in a lovely yarn (Dark Horse Fantasy -- isn't that a lovely name?), but I left the lovely picture on my lovely home computer, or possibly in my lovely camera, so you'll have to use your imagination for now.
Here are the WIPs:
Arrrgyle Socks in pink and brown, along with... the practise arrrgyle on which I taught myself intarsia. Yes, I forgot the nose holes on the practise arrrgyle, but that's what practise (and duplicate stitching) is all about.
I don't much care for variegated yarns because they so often look homemade in that not-so-good homemade way that evokes home perms and ballerina toilet paper cozies from the 70s, but I discovered (thanks to the magic of the Knitting Pattern a Day Calendar... thanks Aunt Chris!) that variegated yarn looks really cool in a linen stitch.
For example, linen stitch front... ... and back (it even looks really cool on the back. Love that).
...so I was very excited when my cousin picked a variegated yarn (it's Plymouth Encore -- she was looking at cashmere, but who needs a baby blanket that needs to be dry cleaned?) and figured I'd whip out the old linen stitch and really impress the not-knitters, but...
The baby blanket...
...and a closeup of the stitch (linen)... ...and a closeup of the edge (two leaves something from Nicky Epstein).
It turns out this yarn has REALLY long repeats (look at me, using the knitting lingo) and it stripes more than it linens. I probably would have gone with a nice, quick garter stitch if I'd known, but I feel I'm too far gone to frog it back now. Not to mention what a pain in the ass it would likely be to frog a linen stitch. In fact, it wouldn't go "rippit, rippit" in that smooth slip-stitch way we know and love. It'd be like riding a razor scooter on shudder bars: "Bam! Fuck! Bam! Fuck!"
Stupid Blanket.
Here's a tip from your ol' AntiM: if you're one of those people who has two (or three or twelve) projects going at a time (possibly because you have a short attention span, possibly because you're industrious, possibly because you want to knit all the yarn and all the patterns and this is the only way you see this happening), don't toggle between a linen stitch and a k1p1 rib. You may lose your ever-lovin' mind. You should see the tragic message I sent to the Yarn Harlot the day I did this. Nobody has time for that kind of whining, but I don't have knitty friends, so I had to piss and moan in the general direction of someone who might feel my pain.
[SUMMARY: I knit.]
Anyway...
Very little sock (plus cat for scale)... ...some yarn my nephew got me, kinda scarfy
That's "very little sock" as in "I have knit very little of this sock," rather than "This will be a teeny-tiny little fairy sock. Look! It's almost done!"
My nephew picked out the yarn all by himself. It think it was very brave of his mother to take him (a four-year-old at the time) to a yarn store that, while I love it, it doesn't love kids. That yarn has been sitting for two years while I try to figure out what to do with it. I don't know if you can see it, but it goes from thick to thin and back again -- I tried to do the linen stitch trick with it (since it's variegated, don't ya know), but it ends up looking like a six-fingered, mentally challenged person knit it at day camp. All uneven and lumpy and stuff. So I decided on a simple garter stitch scarf.
Those last two items have something in common: I took their pictures yesterday afternoon and frogged them all the way back to yarn balls before Book Club (yes, I finished the book, yes I provided snacks. Good ones. All is right with the world). I decided to do the Feather and Fan socks from "Socks Socks Socks" because I've seen some lovely results with the dreaded variegated yarn on that particular pattern. I decided to make fingerless gloves or gauntlets with the Nephew Yarn.
I've never frogged a project unless there was something to fix via the frogging. I heaved a deep sigh as I pulled the first of the needles, fear and loathing in my heart, but it turns out it's a lot of fun and kind of liberating to undo a whole whack of knitting. And the power! Oh, the power! "Ha ha, tiny knitting projects! Bend to my will! Quake before me for soon you may be nothing more than fibre in my hands!"
I'm a dork.
I'm a dork with clean sidewalks.
[SUMMARY: I am dork enough to think ripping several hours' worth of knitting back is worth blogging about.]
**FOOTNOTE (unasterisked): Have y'all noticed I have no idea how to punctuate around parentheses? And I'm not even consistent in the mistakes I make? I figure if I do everything I can think of at least once, I'll get it right at least once in every round. It's a good thing I don't knit that way. Besides, a friend once told me you can pretty much skip everything in parentheses when you're reading, so I figure you can pretty much skip good grammar practices. Parenthetically.
ALSO... I did a bunch of editing in HTML because stuff looked wrong and I couldn't un-wrong it from the Blog View for Dummies. I'm a genius. Still a dork.
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