Saturday, May 28, 2011

DO NOT PASS GO. DO NOT COLLECT $200.

Okay, so I don't THINK I'm going to be incarcerated on Friday at 5PM, but there's more of a chance of that happening than usual. Don't worry, I already have a volunteer to bail me out if it comes to that.

I got a blasted notice from the city taped to my door. This didn't exactly seem like a casual notification either. First off, they bothered to waste two whole pieces of tape on sticking the page in the middle of my door. You know they mean business when it's not even a windy day and they tape it from above and below. Also, the officer who signed it did so in blue ink. It clearly wasn't just copied there. Someone took a whole .3 seconds to scribble a signature at the bottom of the page. On a side note, why do teachers bother teaching cursive? I swear third grade teachers are practically the only ones with legible cursive these days anyway. Whatever. Back to my criminal ways. The page is totally watermarked with a code enforcement something or other symbol thing. Looks official to me. Lastly, I have a case number. It is right up there at the top of the page. I'm 5-11-3574. Hide your kids, hide your wife!

I violated ordinance number 9-3-2** (Why the heck are there asterisks in ordinance numbers? It seems to me like there are ten perfectly good numbers to choose from if you want to make it longer...) and if I don't correct the violation by June 3 at 5:00 I will be "SUBJECT TO IMMEDIATE CRIMINAL CITATION WITHOUT ADDITIONAL NOTICE." Yikes! I'm guessing that probably means a fine, but "CRIMINAL" is in there. Criminals go to jail. Sometimes. Come on, it's not TOO far of a stretch.

Well, off I go to hack down my backyard full of waist-high grass and weeds. Yep. They've all gotta be under 6 inches in 6 days or else I'm gonna get busted!

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Phone Numbers and Freeways

Most Sunday evenings I head up to visit my family and join them for dinner. Tonight was no exception. I headed home and had a good time chatting and sharing the evening meal with the fam. I kinda stuck around up there for a bit cause I wasn't feeling the greatest and wasn't in a terrible hurry to return for anything this particular evening. I did head back and I suppose this could be called good timing.

I was merging over to get on the freeway and this guy in the lane next to mine was looking at me. That may not really even seem worth mentioning. No, he wasn't picking his nose. He wasn't dancing and singing to music or really doing anything that unusual. He was going faster than I was (I just was entering the freeway, after all) so he was passing me, but was still looking back at me. A little perplexing. It was more of a hey!-I-think-I-might-recognize-you look, not like the I'm-a-creepy-werido stare. Regardless, the guy speeds a bit more than I do and off he went. Whatever. Like 5 minutes later I end up next to this car. I recognized it since I don't suffer from severe short term memory loss and looked over. Same guy. He's looking at me again. We play the typical freeway leapfrog, catch up to a cop and slow down, change lanes to go around annoyingly Sunday-ish drivers, etc... A few miles later over again since this fellow is now driving right next to my car and he mouths something about calling or getting my number or something. Um, hello, I'm driving on the freeway... The guy is attractive and seems normal (as if looking at someone 3 times on the freeway can really tell you anything), but what?!? He starts fingering his number to me. What!?! Then he ditches that idea and writes it down and shows it to me. WHAT?!?! I couldn't make out the last few numbers and he wasn't exactly suffering from a lead foot like he had been back a few miles. We had turned into the poky drivers and were taking up two lanes driving side-by-side, so I sped up and got in front of a semi (I didn't cut in front of it, I've been reading those billboards in addition to the phone number digits scrawled on paper in cars next to me) and figured he knew how to catch up. That he did with a more legibly written number. This whole thing seemed funny and harmless enough. I called the number and got a voicemail. Just the "you have reached 8-0-1-yadda, yadda, yadda..." and looked over again. He was still there and was motioning to roll down my window. What on earth? I did and he said something about how his phone needed to be charged, he'd text later or something. Quick side note, It's surprisingly easy to hear someone in the car next to you on the freeway. I kinda thought it would be impossible, but it wasn't at all. Back to the story, he exited and I was almost to my exit. I've got to admit it was one of the more unique and amusing drives back from Sunday dinner. I told my roommates and one of them asked if I had left a voicemail. Nope, I didn't. If his phone was dead, he maybe didn't get the number. We were all quite amused by the sequence of events, so I sent a quick text just cause why the heck not? He apparently found a charger cause we communicated a bit. I'm not so sure we have a billion and a half things to talk about, but I can't say that it didn't make me laugh!