Tormenting My Neighborhood ... Again

This is the email I just sent out to my neighborhood. I like sending emails out to my neighborhood. They don’t know what to think of me.

***

WORDPRESS HELP WANTED

I am looking for someone to come to my house, sit by my side, and coach me through setting up a Wordpress.com blog. I’ve got a Wordpress.com account and a hosting account at Midphase but what I don’t have is the patience or time to figure out WHY IT’S NOT WORKING. Specifically I require assistance in picking out an appropriate template, loading that template, migrating over content from a blogger account, and seeing the whole thing go - ta da! - LIVE.

I will pay you for your time, let you sit in the “good” chair and even, perhaps, make you a casserole. ‘Cause that’s the neighborly thing to do and I really, really don’t want to put this out there on Craigslist and have the Unabomber show up at my front door with his “Wordpress for Dummies” book tucked in to his camouflage jacket. I already have that book.

There are three qualifications for this plum assignment:

1. If you’re under the age of 18 and I hire you, you must agree not to make me feel old or stupid.

2. You must really know your way around Wordpress.com ‘cause I will smell it if you cram the night before and try to fake your way through it. If you do that I might still make you a casserole, but you should eat it with great caution.

3. You must be familiar with FTP and hosting, preferably Midphase or something comparable. Apparently they stopped picking up the phone the day they ran my credit card through as they’re way too busy playing with their Star Wars action figures to talk to me.

If you’re reading this and thinking OH, MY LIFE IS NOW COMPLETE call me or email me at:

Lori Jackson
(blah) blah-blahblahblahblah
LoriJackson@blahblah.com

And remember, an opportunity like this only comes around once in a lifetime.

***

I sent this one out right after I moved in to the neighborhood in 2007.

Today I filed a report with the Sheriff’s office regarding a suspicious vehicle in the neighborhood and wanted to alert the community.

A while back I noticed a silver/gray Honda (possibly Civic or Accord) driving slowly up and down the Parkway and around the pool area in the afternoon (around bus drop-off time). I stayed outside and watched him sit in front of the Upchurch’s house, slowly cruise the Parkway, disappear in to a cul-de-sac for a while and then park in the pool area. The driver looked to be a middle-aged white man. It looks like he stayed in the neighborhood at least 45 minutes that afternoon.

I mentioned this to my 6th grade daughter and she immediately knew which vehicle I was referring to as she had also seen him around the neighborhood on different occasions.

I hadn’t seen him in a while but last night another neighbor mentioned that she had encountered the same vehicle early one morning (6:15am) in January and she wrote down the vehicle’s tag number.

I gave all this information to the Sheriff’s office this morning and they will increase the patrols while the gates are open and keep an eye out, specifically, for this vehicle.

If this gray/blue Honda Civic happens to belong to your harmless Uncle Elmer and I’ve now called down the wrath of the Sheriff’s office on him while he’s out admiring the weeds in my yard, my apologies.

This email resulted in a flurry of prank phone calls to my house from “Uncle Elmer”, who, apparently, was phoning from jail after having been picked up by the sheriff and was a little concerned about his impending nuptials to a fellow inmate named Bubba.

***

And this one I sent last summer, after a 1,000 pound “decorative” concrete deer (aka “Buck”) disappeared from our curb and wound up in a neighbor’s yard wearing Mardi Gras beads and a bonnet. That neighbor wasn’t amused and demanded, via email, to know who was responsible. I, of course, responded because I, like, couldn't pass it up.


As far as “Buck” goes … THANK YOU TO WHOEVER MOVED HIM TO LEE’S YARD. I owe you a pack of Doan’s Back Pills.

You see, he was left behind by the previous owners – in the backyard next to the abandoned bathtub and the lovely display of broken pots. When we first moved in Aunt Bea would occasionally snuggle with him. But she quickly tired of him – too quiet, no sense of humor, broken antlers, rebar sticking out, faded coat. One day I couldn’t take his pitiful stare another minute so I tried to kick him out. But that boy has a bit of a weight problem and all I could manage was to drag him in to a pile of fire ants behind the palm tree.

Out of sight, out of mind. At least for a while.

As some of you may know, I was recently stripped of my “Mother of the Year” award for not only allowing, but encouraging, Wyatt to pee in the backyard. You do the math: wet kids + tile floor = indoor “Slip ‘n Slide” and trips to the emergency room. I am not ashamed. Well, I wasn’t until one day, as I was sipping a margarita and reading the Wall Street Journal by the pool, Wyatt poked his head around the palm tree and let me know he’s been peeing on Buck every day.

And that was the day I knew that deer was not only ugly, but he was a bad influence on my kid. Plus now he smelled really bad, thanks to the lack of any cleansing rains. So I loaded him up in a wagon and drug him to the curb where he sat, day after day, waiting expectantly for his new owners from Waste Management to take him to his new home. “A big sprawling farm”, I told him. “You’ll love it.”

Saturday morning came and Waste Management, well, they copped a big ole attitude. Evidently a thousand pound concrete deer with broken antlers, rebar sticking out and a faded coat was going to cramp their style. Sheesh.

So there he sat, shunned and neglected, until some angel of mercy swooped in and airlifted him to Lee’s house on gossamer wings where he now sits behind the bushes – the sassiest urine-soaked, faded out thousand pound deer with broken antlers and rebar sticking out you’ve ever seen.

The Moral of the Story? Whoever moved Buck to Lee’s yard … GO WASH YOUR HANDS.

~Lori

photobucket

please, someone clear this up for me:

who is PHOTOBUCKET and why have they taken over my blog?

i've changed the template.

i've checked all the layout settings.

i've unloaded and reloaded my lovely pictures.

and yet PHOTOBUCKET remains ... demanding that i "Upgrade To Pro Today".

um, no. not until you remove your stupid, stupid pictures from MY highly sophisticated home on the internet.

i'm obviously not smart enough to have a blog.

those indians are sure nice folks

so let me frame this for you ...

1. bought a macbook laptop.

2. loaded quicken on the mac

3. re-created our entire financial "sichiashun" on the mac ... both personal and business.

4. couldn't do something really simple in quicken on the mac.

5. spent 2 days attempting to communicate with quicken.

6. quicken hates mac, they told me they intentionally left that part out of quicken for mac just to irritate me.

7. quicken has no plans to play with future macs.

(BIG SIGH)

8. bought a new desktop PC, along with quicken 2008 for PEEEEEEEEEECEEEEEEEEEEEEES.

9. quicken 2008 loads nicely, finances are happy again and my bank loves me.

10, now, on to the fun stuff for my new PC, such as screen savers, email and whatnot.

11. the "good" folks at best buy told me i could load my existing office 2003 on Vista as i'd rather spend the $300 gazillion dollars they're charging for office 2007 on things such as ringtones for my cellphone and candy.

12. office 2003 installation gives me RUNTIME ERRORS ON LINES 60, 253, 56 and 79.

(i know what you're thinking ... NOT LINE 79!!!!!!)

13. office 2003 pouts like a big giant crybaby and won't load.

14. i ring up bill gates and let him know the folks at best buy are lying butt-heads and office 2003 won't load.

15. good ole bill rings up sayed shafaquat in india to personally assist me with the office 2003 temper tantrum.

16. sayed whispers sweet nothings in my ear ... things like "msconfig" and "disable boot".

17. sayed saves the day, office 2003 loads and my new Vista computer sings happily before i resort to sticking my cold wet finger in its ear.

18. like i said before, those indians are sure nice folks.

back by popular demand

well, my fans have spoken ... and by "fans" i'm referring to "alex in canada" (hey alex!) who reprimanded me via my husband to get back on the bloggin' horse ...

so here we are ... halloween has passed ... thanksgiving has passed and Christmas is upon us and i've missed a plethora of blogging opportunities because i've been way too busy doing the "not blogging stuff" that seems to fill up my days.

stuff like assisting john with "wii stalking" throughout san antonio. it's not that we really decided it was time to bring video games in to our household as part of our Christmas celebration ... it was more like the gauntlet had been laid when the newspapers announced a wii was really, really hard to get.

then we had to have it.

john won the wii game early one morning in front of our nearest best buy store. he was #15 in line to get the last wii that arrived that morning.

he marched in with his wii box strutting around all proud and then we looked at each other and wondered "now what"?

what does one do with said wii?

well, this is what you do. you go out and immediately double your initial investment with the purchase of two sets of the wii tennis racket/baseball bat/golf club set as well as GUITAR HERO and an extra nunchuk.

actually, i am the "Extra Nunchuk Queen" having been the one who actually located the nearly extinct extra nunchuk hiding place at wal-mart. i have no idea what it's for but it was really bugging me that we had 2 of everything except the nunchuk.

nunchuk matched sets. for the borderline obsessive compulsive personality.

someone casually mentioned it was for the boxing game. boxing?

i see lots of broken stuff in our future.