A Spot of Blather

Now that I've been off Facebook several days (although I do admit to a few minutes on occasion of clandestine lurking), the idea was that I'd have more time to blog. I've lots of ideas for posts/series floating around in my brain, not the least being finishing up my 2010 book reviews (I'm supposing someone out there enjoys reading them) and writing about our recent cruise (although soon to be not so recent). I've also been (on the side) writing a short story about my first trip to England with my Father and step-mom and the adventures we (mostly Margot and me as Father was on business a lot of the time) had.

But, for now, I think I will just ramble on about miscellany.

I woke up this morning to find a light dusting of snow on the ground. This explains why my head feels as though it's about to explode; going from sunny and clear to sunny and snowy then, later in the week, sunny and sixty, well, my brain cannot compute and my allergies start acting up.

And thus I've laid another excuse for not writing about anything which requires any degree of significant thought.

Mr. B had an HOA Board Meeting the other night to which a posse of angry neighbors, pissed off about the no parking on the street rule, showed up; hoping, he believes, to throw him off and trip him up. Of course, our Mr. B is cool as a cuke and it sounded as though he handled it well, aided in the knowledge that after next month's meeting, he's so out of there (resigning from the Board; the neighborhood is gonna go to pot). Seriously, I'm so TIRED of these idiots going on and on about not being able to park in the street. One guy, the gang leader so to speak, has threatened on numerous occasion to sue the HOA and the Board. He says, "My lawyer says this, my lawyer says that", to which Mr. B replies "Our lawyer co-authored the North Carolina Planned Community Act and SHE says the rule is enforceable". I say, "Dude, if you're gonna sue, go ahead and sue and shut up about it. No one is scared of you!"

On the neighborhood message board, there has been plenty of debate over this parking issue, with the majority of the people who post totally in support of enforcing the rule. I've stopped posting on this message board because I've been accused of "protecting the President because she is his wife" (as if he needs my protection) so I don't weigh in on this; probably a good thing as I'd likely tell this ass cavity (a neat term my step-mom came up with) what I thought of him and his whining on and on about his "right" to park his ugly junky cars on the street. But, thankfully, others have jumped in and said things such as, "Wait, aren't you the one who parks two or three cars on the street, making it very difficult to get through?" When people challenge him, he shuts right up, but, he did manage to find several other people to join his stupid gang, others who have been fined for parking on the street and think their rights have been violated, to go with him to the meeting. Including, unfortunately, our next door neighbor (the father of the budding drummer, who, incidentally, can still be heard at times banging away when he should be in bed). Our neighbor, who is also a cop, said to Mr. B, "This isn't personal, man, but you can't enforce a no parking rule on city streets". Mr. B sighed and said, "Yes, we can".

Ok, enough about this except to add that I have been known to drive by the offending vehicles and throw my chewed up wads of bubble gum at them. Call me childish, but, hey, if their cars weren't sitting out on the streets, they wouldn't get bubble gum stuck all over them, now would they?

As an aside, when we were in Florida checking out neighborhoods and houses in Sarasota and Ocala, that was one question I asked the agents; "Is street parking allowed?" and, if the answer was "No, it's not", then, "Is it ENFORCED?" I can't wait to get out of this neighborhood we're in, and will only continue to care if we aren't able to sell our house and have to rent it out. Let's pray the market turns around! It sure seems to be doing so in Florida since the majority of the houses we saw and liked are now under contract.

Speaking of this house, we're still fighting with KB over getting our carpet stretched (or re-stretched or properly stretched; whatever). In typical KB fashion, they continue to ignore us. Unlike the dumb-dumb down the street that keeps crying wolf about suing, however, we will be suing KB; we're just following the appropriate procedure of notification, wait a period of time, bump it up to the next level of authority (assuming we can figure out who the you know what that is), etc. I did find it somewhat amusing the other day when I sent a copy of an email, pictures, and inspector's report that we never got a reply on certified mail/receipt requested to them from a post office that was literally two suites down from where the letter was going! This only because we need the proof that it was received and signed for.

Valentine's Day is fast approaching, which means another excuse to prepare a special dinner. We've finally settled on the menu, Mr. B's going to stop and pick up the wine tonight, and I'll shop for ingredients tomorrow. Saturday's the big night! Other than this, we won't do much; we stopped exchanging gifts as it seems somewhat pointless at this juncture.

Mr. B is heading into busy season. Yuck upon yuck, but at least there is an end in sight. Because of this, he's already done our various returns and discovered we will in fact get a substantial refund. We both sort of scratch our heads at this since we thought we'd altered the deductions such that we would approach zero sum gain. Well, hey, at least it's not the other way around. I told him I've already got that money bookmarked for our next cruise :-)

Speaking of travel, I'm mulling over what mine and Lucy's annual trip to Florida will shape up to be this year. When will we leave? How long will we be gone? I'm thinking I'll leave after St. Pat's day so that I won't miss seeing The Blue Man Group with my SIL, which will be entertaining or, what promises to be even more entertaining, the annual HOA meeting with the homeowners. One thing we do know and that is we'll be going down to Florida sometime after April 15th to continue our research. And, then, of course, we have the Indy 500 to look forward to at the end of May, which will include a fun road trip with our dear friends from California.

Of the ten movies nominated for best picture, we've seen two. Inception and True Grit. Both were good but I've heard The King's Speech is gonna whomp all over everything else; which means I really want to see THAT. I might even go by myself one afternoon, why not? True Grit was the first movie we've seen in the theater in probably two years. We couldn't even remember what the last one was. It's just so much easier to wait and get them on NetFlix or rent them from the library. I just finished watching the third installment in the Twilight series (some movies I watch by myself while working out; this one I'm fairly certain Mr. B wouldn't care to have seen as I doubt he'd be on either Team Edward or Team Jacob!) I have The Kids Are All Right to watch next; he might like this one well enough but his hours are slowly but surely starting to expand, leaving me with plenty of time alone.

What I've been doing with some of that time is start the process of going through all of our stuff and decide if a) we keep it/take it b) we attempt to sell it in a mega yard sale we'll be having c) we donate it d) we junk it. So far, we've made it through the garage (this was definitely a two person job) where I junked an entire box of writing I've been hauling around for decades plus a ton of pictures and other memorabilia while Mr. B junked old nails, screws, a package of pipe cleaners he has for 30 years, and other various stuff I have no idea what it was. I went through the shelves in the utility room where there must have been 4,000 plastic bags (for scooping out the cat boxes) and 1,200 half-empty containers of Lucy's various prescriptions. Today I think I may tackle the pie safe. So totally unlike me, but, I just have this urge all of a sudden to travel light, perhaps in preparation for my ultimate wish to retire on a cruise ship. Hey, we may be able to figure out how to take whatever pets we still have with us; we did see a woman on our last cruise with a dog.

It is now 10:10 am and it's probably time for me to stop this blather and sign off. Before I do, though, I will say that I haven't really missed Facebook. The few times I did a quick check to see if there was anything out there that I should know, there wasn't. I figure the people who want to keep in touch with me will do so, somehow.

Later.

Mrs. B