I'm not sure who won the bet

Babymama got Pown'd by her kid. Bug was out there after school the day the tree went down. He was using a toy hand saw trying to cut it down. This occurred for several days. On Saturday I had gone to the quilting class, and Asshole noticed that she was out with her brood, like a swarm of locusts. Her pendulous brother was helping her. They cut the tree and it's limbs to a more manageable size, placed them on a blanket and dragged the wood into the green belt. Way to go! Luckily it will only take 100 years to decompose, but it's natural materials. Bring on the vermin! Funny thing, her brother managed to haphazardly chop at the other dead tree on her yard. It's still standing, just looking f'd up as all can be. The dead limb is still against her house, and the other fallen branches are still hanging around in her backyard. Kioskman did nothing to help. Yea, great homeowners huh? Oh wait, Babymama is a property manager too! Well she must manage ghettos if this is how she maintains her home too.

Wohoo! Is this 3 or 4?

Heard the rumblings of a lawn mower outside. I didn't get to see the jiggling saddle bags from Babymama. Kioskman took over the task this time. Temps are gonna be in the 90's, and they have their mower on the the lowest level. The grass will burn, and die. Hmmm, some point you gotta realize that a lawn grass is better than haphazard lengths of weed grass and it's seed heads.

Still can't think kindly of them, so I'm snickering as I see Kioskman has been home for at least 4 days. Nothing to it huh? Sales huh? Yea, we just came back from a mid week trip to SC. Goof had to conduct interviews for a new project he's undertaking. Stinky and I spent the time in the Hampton pool. The wifi in the hotel was rather weak. Had a fantastic seafood dinner at the Blue Marlin in Columbia. We had Chilean Sea Bass. Yea, yea I know it's not a sustainable harvest and it's being over fished. We caved. But I did pay double for wild harvested Florida pink jumbo shrimp, and wild caught sea scallops this past weekend. I don't know if the scallops were dry frozen though. I've got a few recipes I've been looking over to try.

Wish me luck, tonight I'm slow cooking dry rubbed St Louis ribs for dinner. If it doesn't work out that's alright, I also picked up some T bones for later in the week. Grilling is great when it's hot, forget turning on the oven. Though, I may have to for the southern grown peaches(it ain't from GA, probably FL. I may grill these with brown sugar and a bit of lemon juice on the grill. Otherwise, it's fruit crisp/cobbler time! I got some Ranier cherries calling me too.

Waffling on mowing, more on the past weekend

I am trying to decide if I want to mow today or not. I need to raise the cutting height on the mower, and most likely won't need the bag and just straight mulch. I also need to fill the gas can, and I forgot to grab the can this morning taking Stinky to school. That plate was on the lawn until Tuesday. Goof had me take it in and he used it for target practice in the back.

I've been itching to set off the fireworks we got. I love that stuff. The store we were in was huge! Goof's observation was that it was bigger than the one he went to on the Birmingham drive. I found the novelty ones I couldn't stop laughing over. The laying hens! They are such a hoot. The first time we tried one was back in 2001 on our vacation in SC. We had made 3 trips to various fireworks stores and on the last trip we were driving back from Savannah to Charleston and saw a huge store that was open until 2am. Now why does that mess with my head? For months after that I kept teasing my friend in SC, 'Last call at the bar is 1am! Get that drink on and head out to the fireworks store and blow your hands off!' A few years later she told me about some idiot that managed to decapitate himself because he packed some metal pot full of fireworks. Seriously, no matter how much I love fireworks, safety and respect should be given to the stuff. Somewhere in my ancestry there must have been some nutty relative that had fun making the stuff up. A great foreign film is Pao Da Shuang (1994) english translation: Red Fire Cracker, Green Fire Cracker. So back to the fireworks. I had seen the laying hens at the store, but they looked kinda lame. No idea what they did, and I thought it would be a waste of money. Our last purchase we got some free fireworks. One of the hens were included. So we had used up our supply of tanks, planes, helicopters, and bottle rockets, not much left really, and so I lit the hen up. OMG it was hilarious! It's a cheap cardboard figurine of a hen laying in a nest. You light it's fuse, and sparks fly out of the chicken's ass! After that's done, the chicken's head blows off! The sense of humor and irony! One tired chicken. So I got a full box of those, and a box of roosters too. I'm not sure what the roosters do as I haven't opened the packaging yet. I did get suckered by a box of mandarin ducks. I thought more sparks flying out of a fowl's ass, but nope these are spinners. It's gonna be a fun summer. Goof has already made arrangements for one of his peers to stop and pick up more bricks of firecrackers when she next makes a trip down from Birmingham. Honestly I doubt either will remember. Last time he was there, he missed the exit and just wanted to come home. It looks like he will have to travel to SC for work too. I may have to visit my friend if he goes to Charleston, blow up some fireworks at her house. Oh by the way the bricks of fireworks? We use singles or small packets of them to train that darn red dog not to bark along our side of the property. So far he's learning not to run to our side and bark because the screen door opens. Goof says Babymama doesn't like fireworks, so I wonder if she's finally keeping him inside the house instead so we don't set them off. I can't say for certain, but I know the dog is avoiding running over to bug me.

Oh I didn't mention much about the weekend trip. We went to the Montgomery dog show. It was a small show for the breed, and the usual politics were played. Stinky and Goof were bored out of their gourds, and we spent most of Sat in the pool. He did not want to get out.


He was in there until 9pm! Stinky was very popular in the pool. We had stopped at a Toys R Us and picked up some water toys. Water cannons are awesome. There was a martial arts group staying at the hotel and the kids were a lot of fun. Mississippi kids. Goof couldn't stop smiling these girls had some serious Scarlett O'Hara accents. The southern drawl that has left Atlanta. One little girl decided Goof could play her daddy while she was there. Literally the girl was attached to him. She needed a protector in the pool? Goof and Stinky are pretty good mimics and they have been practicing their accents. Me, meh. I don't have much of an ear for that. Though one of my friends says I'm beginning to pick one up. Oh yea, I can see Stinky grown up and he's gonna goof around with his friends and talk like that character on Pushing Daisies. Wilfred Woodruff, the Chinese redneck. The first time I heard an Asian person speak with a southern drawl, I was so amazed. A Korean woman had come into the pharmacy to fill a script. She must have come over very young or born here. A really deep thick drawl. Wow my ears couldn't wrap around it. I told my CA coworkers about it, and they laughed. Even though I was born here, I can understand a thick Asian accent call it environmental training growing up in the Bay Area, but if someone coming into the Oakland pharmacy with that accent to fill their scripts? That would be so outside the norm. Everyone would be talking about it. Here it's just another facet of living in the south. Think of it this way the San Francisco / East Bay is approximately 25% Asian. I think the metro Atlanta area is at the most 6% and mostly concentrated on the East side in Gwinnet county. There really isn't a distinct accent for the west coast. Oh sure sayings, but not any particular accent that denotes where you came from. The coworkers use to laugh at me. I would ask the patients to repeat themselves. I thought it was just too noisy for me to understand, not that the accent was so thick. They told me the deeper south I go, the more chances I would not understand them. I had no problems with the accent in Charleston and Savannah as far as I remember. Goof still thinks his peers talk to slow. He tries to slow his speech down, but he sees the confusion in their faces as he's still too fast for them. I only wonder what they think of the VP.

More adventures in lawn maintenance

I moved the lawns on Friday in prep for the weekend and rains that came. With the new mower it's a dream. I was actually able to get it all done in a little over an hour front, sides and back. One thing that irritated me was Babymama's drama. As I was mowing the front yard, I saw something. It was in between the power box and light post on our property. A melamine Teletubby plate. I chipped the edge of the plate as I ran it over. At first from a distance I thought it was a paper plate. I picked it up and tossed it back on Babymama's side. Later that evening we saw Dramaqueen, Bug, and Fred on the lawns and Goof witnessed Dramaqueen tossing it back on our property. Goof stuck his head out the window and told them to pick it up. Dramaqueen responded 'We didn't do anything!' Goof told them to look over at our garage. We have it on closed network dvr. Want us to make a copy for your parents? They picked it up and took it in the garage. We went out that night and on coming back we saw the plate back on the edge of our property. Obviously we are dealing with a pain in the ass White trash bitch now. We have some ideas we will implement at a latter date. She obviously wants to be passive aggressive and that's fine with me. I know how to play that game. She's not gonna like us even more.

Leaf blowing sucks

I spent a total of 3.5 hours on lawn maintenance today. I'm pooped. 2 hours blowing leaves, and the rest mulching and bagging the stuff. The leaves aren't completely off the trees yet! Goof says there wasn't as much this year because of the lack of rains. Geez, what a pain. Funny thing, it was a beautiful warm day today. I made it pretty awkward for Babymama. Well, I'm sure she must have nagged Kiosk man. I blew straight down the property lines in the front. He got out and mulched his leaves after we were done. I think I've mowed 5 times this year since I quit my job. They have mowed theirs 5 times this year total.

They didn't do anything in the backyard, but the front looks better than it did before. We went out earlier this evening to look at our lights and I noticed that they put up one string of green lights in their window. Just one window, the one closest to the door. I wonder if they will put more decorations up. Last year, I guess she had gotten the same icicle lights we did. Goof put ours up and offered her the use of our ladder if she wanted. They never put up the lights. She's too big to get up on a ladder. Kiosk man must have been too lazy to care. They left their halloween decorations out until just this week. I wonder if she will put out her snowman. I know that it's petty, but gosh it does make the neighborhood more festive with the lights and decoration. A few neighbors on the main road have put theirs up, and it's nice to see them driving through. One guy was putting his up last weekend in the dark. When we drove back, we noticed that one set of lights had the blinking fuse in place. It was a little strange to see a row of lights on the house, and one section blinking. He got that fixed a few days later. I think strings of lights on the house is enough. No need to bother with other decorations on the lawn.

Perhaps next year we will do more halloween decorations. I'm not sure.

Grass and more grass

Yea, I mowed the front yard and part of the side yard today. I'll get the back tomorrow. Funny thing. I finished the front area took a break before starting on the side. When I came back out and started on the side, Enabler came out. She waved at me, I waved back. Hey, just being polite. but she wanted to talk to me. I pull out my earphones and cut off the mower. It seems the box in their side yard has a dead young squirrel in it, and she wanted me to know that they found it this morning and when the boys come back they were going to bury it. Why? Honestly don't squirrels that fall out of trees and die have the possibility of carrying disease? West Niles, rabies all that crap. You want your grandchildren to bury it? Whatever, par for the course with this woman. Nothing else was said. No questions about Fred and Stinky's incidents. I guess they don't matter to her.

Yesterday evening we noticed that Enabler's church friend was over again, and he was cutting up the tree that was in her backyard. Of course as you expect, they dragged the branches and trunk off to the side. It's not in the green belt. I think that might be considered her property. More opportunity for snakes. There is no way I'm gonna let my kid go through that way for certain.