This Old Foreclosed House - Home Improvement Addition

In our last installment of "This Old Foreclosed House", we saw just how much fun it is living right next door to the world's largest mosquito breeding ground (aka: partially filled in with crap in ground swimming pool).

After complaints to the Health Department (too numerous to count) about the swarms of (probably) disease carrying mosquitoes attacking us from the ghastly quicksand of muck and stagnant water next door, the bank sent someone over jiffy quick (if jiffy means months and months, and quick means a year) to take care of the problem... by covering it with a tarp.  Seriously.  Stop laughing.

See, I told you they covered it with a tarp.  You thought I was totally joking.  Can't you see just how much better that looks by having a tarp thrown over the gaping hole filled with muck and garbage!  I'm pretty sure my house price leaped up by several thousand dollars just by stretching the tarp over it!

Of course, what the tarp people didn't take into account was that when you stretch a tarp over a hole, and loosely secure it with various and sundry semi heavy piece of readily available debris... when you get a storm with any sort of breeze and rain, you get this:

Which made my house price plummet once again.  A few weeks later, some different work people showed up and at this point I thought they had learned their lesson and were going to fill it up or whatever you do with craptastic in ground swimming pools, but no... they would not let the tarp idea go, and instead of fixing the problem:

They built a new house over the pool.  Ok, they didn't, but I thought they were, what with the extensive platform they built, the three days they put into building the extensive platform, and then the heavy gauge wiring they nailed to the platform (seriously, for a while there I thought they had relocated the Ground Zero Mosque), but then... they dutifully stretched and secured the tarp.  So there we have it.  A back yard that any new homeowner would want:

Its almost good enough for a dance party! 

If you'd like to blow up the picture a bit bigger, you can see that on the pickup truck parked in the other neighbor's yard (the one that use to have the chickens, but now only has some man and woman who scream and curse at each other nightly, while slamming doors and threatening to kill each other) they've put a computer and monitor.  I guess they are really into mobile computing.

In our next episode of "This Old Foreclosed House" we'll show you the "for sale" sign up in the front yard... in the small path of fallen tree that someone cleared so they would have room to put up a "for sale" sign.

The Zombies Got Me

My employer has an emergency contact site. You log in and add your emergency contact information and if something drastic happens, they can contact you (I have no idea what they expect me to do, other than cower and hide until the emergency is over, cuz I'm so NOT going into work during an emergency... of any sort).

Once a quarter, they send out reminders for you to update your emergency contact information. Typically I don't change any of my numbers, so its been quite a while since I've had to log in, but I did get a google voice number and I figured I'd add that in there instead of the 40 other phone numbers. I'm being nice, saving them some time and money by just calling one number to ring the 40 phone numbers I could possibly be at. Besides, if there is an emergency like my work place getting shut down, I want to be notified of that as quickly as humanly possible so I can go back to bed.

So, following the quarterly reminder instructions, I tried to log into the site... except I had no idea what my username or password were. I took a few guesses, but didn't get in, so I opted to answer the "forgot your password question", except it wasn't an answer they wanted, they wanted me to type in the question for the answer I had provided. Holy crap, seriously? I had no clue. So I clicked the button for "need password reset" and it opened up my mail program, where I guessed I needed to ask someone to reset my password. So I did... like this:

Subject: No clue
Body: I have absolutely no idea what my username and password are, and no clue what question goes with my answer. I'm a bit disturbed that a site that is for the express purpose of contacting me in case of emergency and guiding me through emergency steps is so hard to access. The contact information on this site can easily be found doing a Google search on my name, and not only will it reveal every phone number I've ever had, every address I've ever lived, but will also allow you to zoom so close to an actual satellite photo of my home that you can see me walking out to my mailbox in sleepy pants and robe picking my nose.

I highly doubt that during an emergency I'll have the wherewithal or the time to send an e-mail to someone asking them to reset my password. During the time I wait for someone to get back from lunch or a long meeting to reset it, an alert could have been sent out telling me that brain eating zombies are roaming the streets near my building and I need to hide in a closet or at least lock my office door. I won't have received this notice, and therefore, be the first victim of their nefarious brain eating deeds.

Isn't there a better way, and oh yeah, please reset my password.

Regards,

Four hours later I (and about 14 other morons) received an e-mail stating our passwords were reset and we were free to access the site, after changing our passwords and security question.

I sent back the following response:

Subject: Out of Office Reply
Body: If you have received this message, then the brain eating zombies have broken through my office door and eaten my brain as I was unable to update my emergency contact information.

There was no response, which leads me to believe that I work for people with absolutely no sense of humor.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

SHUT UP!

Ok, so how many new lightbulbs do you put into a light before you decide that the switch is messed up and you'll need an electrician to fix it? (and before all of you "do it yourselfers" leap in and tell me how easy it is, you do realize that I managed to zap myself on the head with a bug zapper, right?  Also, I want someone I can sue if my house burns down, I don't want to end up in some stupid youtube video of idiots who burn their own houses down, thank you).

Ok, so about a year ago, I flipped the light switch to the back room where the washer and dryer was and the light blew out.  FINE, get a new bulb and replace it, switch.... nothing.  CRAP!  Get another bulb, screw it in, switch... NOTHING.  SONOFA... FINE!

I go tell Lobsterman, who immediately says "well, just put a new bulb in".  This started a 15 minute rant about just how stupid do you think I am of course I already put TWO bulbs in, so any moron can see that its the stupid light switch and now I'll have to call an electrician and blah, blah, seriously, really, I mean am I that stupid, good gawd!

Today the other back room light blew.  We didn't have bulbs, so I thought... well, there's a perfectly new stupid lightbulb in the socket where the switch is bad, I'll just use that.

I'll pause a minute while you realize that THE FREAKIN BULB DIDN'T WORK!!!

Yep, for a whole freakin year it was the lightbulbs.  Went out to buy new ones (note to self: never go to Target the day before school starts), walked into Target, then straight back out of Target because people were fighting over notepads.  Went to the grocery store (because I was out of ice cream anyway) and apparently Armageddon or a major snow storm was approaching, as there were no less than 500 people standing in line while my ice cream melted.

Got home, and sure enough... stupid light works back there.  I should be happy... but there's this distant nagging voice in the back of my head that a lightbulb made me look really stupid.

So, the lesson here is to try at least 400 lightbulbs before you call an electrician.  On the bright side, at least I didn't call an electrician who would have said "duh, all you have to do is put in a new lightbulb" at which point I'd be in jail for shoving the electrician's body in the sump pump hole.

You've Got To Be Kidding Me!

Warning: this post will probably contain TMI, will contain discussions of bodily functions, and will mock a product.

I want to thank my friend (as usual, I won’t mention her name, but will give her the usual alias) Leather for sending me this link. It was actually a topic that I had been meaning to blog about for some time, but the abject stupidity of this product caused me to immediately rush to my computer (by way of the coffee pot, then I grabbed some miniature chocolate bars out of the freezer, got distracted by the laundry that had been sitting in the dryer for at least a day, then remembered what I was so irate about) to blog about this very topic:

Pooping

We all do it. We all know that sometimes it involves a bit of noise and most likely a bit of stink (despite some people’s insistence that theirs don’t), but this is why toilets are in their own little rooms, with their own little stalls for privacy and anonymity, and why toilets aren’t right in your office or in an open hallway.

Bathrooms were invented to allow people the ability to go stink and make noise with minimum disruption to the general workplace. NOBODY should be embarrassed to do whatever it is they do in a bathroom even if their shoes are recognizable under the stall door. That’s what a bathroom is for! Frankly when I walk into a bathroom and hear all manner of commotion and stink, I’m thankful that the person doing it isn’t in my freakin office doing it!

But apparently bathrooms are now places of shame for doing what comes naturally, or so some company thinks or wants you to believe because they’ve come out with a product called “Eco-Otome Toilet Sound Blocker”. Go read the stupid write up.

Now, if you read that and thought “Holy Crap! (no pun intended) that’s a fantastic idea and I need about 4 of them”, then I want you to leave this blog, delete the link, stop following me, and don’t even think about leaving a comment telling me how wrong I am about this product before you leave.

Let’s break down this whole ad (as seen on CNN... why doesn’t THAT surprise me):

“You are sitting on the toilet and know that people right outside can hear your every noise”. DUH! Most bathrooms are made of tile and metal, which not only allows people right outside to hear your every noise, but also manages to create a gigantic amplifying affect. Its that way because its easier to spray off all sorts of nasty muck from tile and metal than sound proofing material. Would you rather have a crap covered sound-proof toilet or a clean one?

“Small and clipping easily to your mobile phone...” I will ignore the poor english and shoot straight to... you’re embarrassed to have someone hear you fart and drop some kids off at the pool, but you’ll bring your cell phone into the toilet with you and chat with your friends while you take a dump?

“... makes the noise of a toilet flushing to hide the other noises you might be making.” Oh, so you don’t want people to hear you fart and splash, but you’d rather have them think that you are crapping so much that you must constantly flush the toilet to keep up with the mass of spew? Frankly I’m a bit leery of people who flush while still sitting because seriously... what is so foul going on that you feel compelled to flush while you’re still doing your business? Its a toilet, not a bidet.

“... white has a green slogan - after all, this little device means you won’t have to flush for real and thus saves water.” OH NO YOU DON’T! Don’t you even think about using a public toilet and not flushing when you’re done for me to find when I have to go! I walk into that nasty stall and find that, I’m turning right around and beating you with the decorative soap dispenser or whatever happens to be handy (most likely fake, dust covered plastic flowers).

So, frankly, about the only use I can see for this is for when you’re in a boring meeting, or maybe walking into the office kitchen, hitting the button, then walking out buckling up your pants.

This Old Foreclosed House - The History

As I may have complained bitterly and sarcastically in earlier blogs, we live next door to a foreclosed house.

I'm not going to get into the whole socioeconomic reasoning behind why someone would foreclose, or whose fault it was, or all of that stuff (if you'd like to take the easy way out: blame Bush), but in the case of our neighbors... I have no idea.  We're the "quiet people who keep to themselves" type who have yet to appear in a major news flash broadcast about some unspeakable horror (as all "quiet people who keep to themselves" are portrayed by the media), so I don't know what kind of woe or misfortune they had that caused them to foreclose... I just know that there were signs it was coming.

Now, before I get into the signs, you are probably thinking "gee, why didn't you reach out to help them if you saw signs, why didn't you offer your support and help to them?"  Well, my, aren't we judgmental and all pompous, like you would do that, and you know you wouldn't, but to be fair, when they initially moved in, we did the neighborly thing and was all nice and offered to loan them lawn care tools and all that... and they were buttheads.  So, screw em.

Now, on to the signs.  They had a great pool.  The old lady that lived there took such good care of that pool that it was beautiful, always clean.  The lawn was well taken care of, and because of that, we overlooked the fact that her fat poodle would waddle into our front yard and take a crap.  Plus she grew tomatoes and always gave us some, so it was a give and take neighbor-relationship. 

When the new people moved in, they initially took ok care of the house, but you could tell the pool wasn't a major deal to them and slowly but surely, it went to hell after a few years.  At one point they brought in dump trucks full of cheap fill dirt and seemed to try to fill it in... until the fill dirt company realized why they needed the fill dirt, and that just filling in an in ground swimming pool was illegal in the county and refused to bring more fill dirt.  With a crappy in ground swimming pool now only 1/3 filled, they covered it with a tarp to hide the dirt... then proceeded to throw stuff they didn't want into the pool. 

Then they stopped mowing and cutting back trees and bushes, which encroached into our yard.  It was at that point that I told Lobsterman that they were foreclosing.  He didn't think so, I did. 

Then the POD appeared in the driveway and I told Lobersterman that they were foreclosing.  He thought that maybe they were doing some major renovations that required them to remove bits and pieces of their belonging a little at a time on the weekends.  The POD stayed for a year and then they stopped coming by every weekend to get stuff, only showing up randomly.  Lobsterman said that they weren't foreclosing because they left all of the windows up in the house... I laughed, especially when I saw them dragging out parts of the house that should be considered permanent... like copper plumbing.

Through blizzards, torrential downpours, heat, cold, and in between, the windows stayed up, finally the electricity got cut (because their motion sensor light wouldn't come on as the feral cats hunted in their back yard), and finally after two years, a sign appeared on the door and padlocks were put on all the doors... foreclosed.

In the next installment of "This Old Foreclosed House", we'll explain the joys of living next to a potential crack den.