The 4th of July is over so please shoot off your remaining fireworks

Dear Neighbor,
I would like to request that you shoot off all your remaining fireworks tonight, as my patience is running thin. I'm glad that you've enjoyed the 4th of July holiday so much and I can't tell you how pleased I am with your patriotism. However, we're now well past the Independence Day celebration period.

I'm not sure if you're simply a pyromaniac or if you bought the family pack of fireworks at Sam's Club and you're just trying to get your money's worth, but it's time to fizzle out your wicks.

Typically, I fall asleep to music, a good book, or you and your wife screaming at each other (okay, that's not true. I don't read). But lately I've been lying in bed hearing loud pops, trying to determine if you've been shot by your wife or if you ignited another firework. After the "pop" I don't hear any cheering or celebratory laughter, so I can only assume that your wife hasn't shot you yet. This means you're in your yard, by yourself, putting on a pathetic and illegal firework show.

It's time to stop the pop. Gather all your fireworks and put on a grand finale tonight. I'll arrange for the fire department to stand by and you can get one of your buddies that you play poker with in your garage to video tape the whole thing and put it on YouTube. Then you'll have it for the entire year to enjoy at your own leisure.

Thanks for your understanding. Give me a call when you have a chance too - let's talk about how to get those Christmas lights taken down sometime before the end of summer.

Thanks,
Toby

"It's the worst thing you can think of"

With mother's day approaching, I thought I would share some life lessons from mom.

When I was about 6 years old, my brother and I were playing football in the front yard and our annoying neighbor (Otis) came up to our house. He wanted to be included in the fun, but we really weren't interested in his company. After he asked a few times and we told him to go home, it was obvious he wasn't going to give up and we needed to take further action.

So, my brother being the smart one had me do the dirty work. My brother holds up his middle finger and tells me to go up to Otis, put it in his face and say, "Get off our property." Nice Chad. Me, being the young innocent non-tainted mind sibling had no idea what it meant but apparently it was a nice way to tell Otis to go home. So, I did it. Otis marched right past me through our yard, rang the doorbell and informed my mom of what I did. "Thank you, Otis" she replied...."Now go home" (she didn't really like him either). I knew by the tone of her voice when she called me inside that I probably shouldn't have listened to Chad's solution for getting Otis home. "Toby, we NEVER do that" my mom said. I was clueless and said, "Why not? What does it mean?" Instead of giving my six-year-old mind descriptive details, she just said, "It's the worst thing you can think of." WOW! I felt terrible and I'm sure the horrified look on my face communicated to my mother that I would never do that again, at least not until I was old enough to start driving.

A few weeks later, I was spending the night at a friends house in his tent in the backyard and we were telling dirty jokes and eating the white bread we snuck into the tent. (Yeah, white bread. Apparently that was the best we could come up with). Anyway, I decided to share my insight with my friend, Jonathan, so I held up my middle finger and said, "Check this out....it means POOP!"

Ending Christmas with a bang

Yeah, it was a pretty good Christmas for the most part. My parents surprised me with a new Wii system, which wasn't expected at all. So, my arms are sore from playing tennis, bowling, baseball, boxing, etc. I know...pathetic.
Unfortunately, I wrapped up my Christmas with a bang...literally. I backed into a car in the street when I was leaving my parents house Christmas night. I'm not really sure what I was doing or how it happened, but I busted out the headlight cover of the other car and now she's going to make an insurance claim. Nice. I offered to pay her the $100 it's going to be to replace it, but she wants to file a claim. Whatever. I should've just driven away and not told her.
Anyway, this has been absolutely my worst year of driving ever. I got my first speeding ticket about 2 months ago, this Christmas accident, and some other minor fender benders I would rather not discuss because it will just make me bitter. However, I will mention that one included the whole front part of my Mazda 6 coming off and I was driving around town with it in the back of my car for a few weeks. See my former blog if you'd like the details.
Hope your Christmas was full of happier surprises than mine.

Wanna Treat?!? It's still warm...

I just spent the last 8 days dogsitting my parents two dogs. I don't know why I don't have a dog...oh..wait...I remember. Because I don't enjoy picking up steaming hot dog poop with my hand wrapped around Tuesday's blue newspaper bag. Notice, I didn't say Sunday's bag. That's because the Sunday paper is stuffed with ads and that Parade Magazine that no one reads. All that extra weight usually results in the paper hitting the porch a little harder at 4AM on Sunday morning when the unemployed Intel worker delivers my paper. The force of his anger and the extra weight of the paper usually rips a hole in the corner of the Sunday bag and that makes for poor protection of my hands 30 seconds after the dogs have pinched off a fresh one in the neighbors yard. Although, even after a short week of this delightful duty, I started learning other tricks to save time and the feeling of repulsiveness of picking up Pedigree biproducts. For instance, if you carry a bag along with you while you walk the dogs and throw some rocks in it, then bend down and grab a handful of grass directly next to the target, the neighbors think you're cleaning it up. Also, I was a little confused what to do with the bags full of poop? Is it okay to just throw those away in the Bestway dumpster? I hope so. Sorry Bestway...oh, and sorry to the neighbors who's yard I left poop in and just pulled some of their grass out.

Mary's meat sauce...and other things I wasn't interested in.

When I first moved into my townhouse I was 19 years old and my neighbor next door was a middle-aged woman who was single and looking for a nice young man....much younger. I apparently fit the role well. But it wasn't a mutual interest. You see, I'm too nice sometimes and one day I offered to help her with something. After that, me and my roommate became her "handymen". We hung curtain rods, changed light bulbs, carried in groceries, moved furniture, fixed her computer, etc. Once we had done our chores, she "rewarded" us with a special gift - frozen, homemade spaghetti sauce in ziploc bags. I sort of felt like Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer. We were always a little worried about the contents, so we never actually indulged in our parting gifts. Yeah, they went straight to the trash. Anyway, we continued to help her with various things until she started making comments in her grogly smoker voice, "If I was 30 years younger..." although we never got to hear how that phrase ended because Mary would begin to laugh, and then start a hacking-cough from years of smoking. On the days she wasn't feeling as forward, she'd tell us about her drinking problem and start crying - then (of course) "Come give me a big hug" and she would embrace us like a Katrina victim being air-lifted from their rooftop by a rescue party. Finally, she found a nice live-in-boyfriend (Rafael) at AA and she didn't need our assistance anymore. One Saturday morning, they came over and told us how much they appreciated us as neighbors and asked us if we wanted to have a BBQ that afternoon on the community lawn. It seemed a little strange, but we accepted. He was going to bring the beer (they both left AA after meeting eachother) and we were going to provide the burgers. Anyway, a few hours later, we saw them driving away with a truckload of stuff. We figured they'd be back in time for the BBQ in a few hours, but we never saw them again.