Operation Pink Herring

How the baby ruined our TV

A few months ago, Joel declared that we should cancel cable once the baby arrived to save money.

My first reaction was hell to the N-O. Fresh off reading this post, I was fairly terrified about feeling lonely, bored, and isolated during those first few months and I saw the suggestion as a personal affront. Sure, let's cancel cable! That sounds like a fantastic idea! While you're off at work with your fancy fast internet and your people to talk to and important work-things to do, I'll just sit at home with an infant attached to my boob, staring at the wall in silence! And while you're blissfully sleeping through the night I'll just wake up every two hours and quietly hold the baby with one arm while I hold up a copy of War and Peace in the other arm at 3am. Who needs TV when I can be educating myself AND feeding a baby in the middle of the night? And then I believe I cried. Have I mentioned that pregnancy hormones are fun?

Still, I was not pleased with the suggestion, even after I recovered my wits and peeled myself off the tear-stained floor.

BUT. Then we decided to actually do something about turning our second living room into the baby's room.  Previously, we had a big couch downstairs with a flat-screen TV connected to the main cable box and Xbox with surround sound and all that crap. We used this for Netflix Instant and occasionally one of those old-fashioned "DVD" thingies. On the second floor, we had a loveseat and a smaller TV connected to the Tivo. This is where we watched most of our TV (and coincidentally, where we ate dinner, since the coffee table up there doubled as our dining room table). So our first step in Preparing for Baby was to take the Tivo and coffee table downstairs and set them up in the Big TV Room. We then promptly (meaning five weeks later) put all the second floor room furniture on Craigslist. We weren't exactly following the What to Expect When You're Expecting Official Timetable to the letter, but whatever. Progress! We were making it! 

There was just one teensy little problem. When we connected the Tivo to the main cable box downstairs, it started recording every show with this little red flag icon instead of the happy green circle icon we have known and loved for many years. We ignored this at first. But then when I went to watch a rerun of Law and Order I'd recorded, I got this strange little warning telling me that "due to copyright settings," once I started the program, I'd have 24 hours to finish it before it was automatically deleted. Pardon moi? Upon further investigation, we learned that the little red flag also meant that we had only seven days to watch a recording before it was also automatically deleted.

As far as first world problems go, this was a pretty huge one. I came home one day to find Joel frantically watching an episode of Eureka. "I can't talk right now!" he said as he triple-beeped his way through the commercials, "I only have 36 minutes to finish 42 minutes of this show!" A week later, I stayed up way later than I wanted to in order to finish watching Project Runway after forgetting that it went to a 90-minute format last season. Normally I would have just stopped it whenever I felt like and resumed watching it when I was good and ready, whether that was the next day or two months later. BECAUSE THAT IS HOW TIVO IS SUPPOSED TO WORK. But no, I stayed up until the late, late hour of 11pm (shut up) and finished the goddamn show because I wasn't going to have time to watch it the next day. The whole time, I bitterly remembered the night I became utterly convinced that we needed to pony up for a Tivo. We were coming home from the grocery store and it was 7:57pm and Prison Break was about to come on. Joel slowed down while we passed the house and I jumped out of the still-moving car (possibly I have dramatized this evening in my mind a wee bit) and raced inside to set the VCR while he looked for a parking space. I struggled with getting the VCR properly set up and we missed the first ten minutes. This was back before all shows were available online, and also back when Prison Break was a good show. It was a tragedy of minor proportions and I decided I was sick of it. We got a Tivo a few weeks later and the Tivo set us free. The end. Until now.

This little copyright debacle has been going on for about a month, and friends: it sucks. We went on a babymoon vacation to South Carolina (and met the lovely Angela!) and while we were gone, all our shows were deleted. We can no longer bank up three or four episodes of a show and watch them back to back on the weekends. The Tivo is basically useless, and without the Tivo... TV is basically useless. And these two now-useless commodities are costing us $75 a month.

I tried contacting Tivo's customer service, and they were helpful enough, but ultimately concluded that it was a Comcast problem. I tried contacting Comcast and they were... not helpful. At all. The first person I spoke to on the phone said she'd never heard of such a thing and it must be a Tivo issue. The person I talked to on via their online chat help suggested that all our problems would be solved if we switched to a Comcast DVR for a low introductory price. As a last ditch effort, I tried contacting Comcast Bill on Twitter. I've seen other people have great success solving customer service problems via Twitter, and I figured it was worth a try. And what do you know -- it worked!

Well, sort of. It worked in that Comcast Bill put us on some kind of VIP Customer Service list and I got a call from a very nice gentleman who was very concerned about our problem that same afternoon. He agreed that we had a serious (SERIOUS) problem on our hands and set us up with a service appointment that same weekend.

It didn't so much work in that the service tech was unable to actually, you know, fix the problem. He tried switching out the cable box and spewed out a lot of mumbo jumbo about "cable cards" and our elderly Series 2 Tivo "not having one" (and he also had some helpful advice about how we should find out the sex of the baby so that we can know if we're "in for trouble" or not), but the bottom line is this: we either replace our perfectly fine Tivo with a newer model and pray that fixes the problem, or we suffer with the faulty copyright setting forever.

Strangely enough, I have almost stopped caring. It's the summer and there's not much on. I'm totally over Covert Affairs and Pretty Little Liars. So all my shows are getting deleted? Whatever. I'm just pissed that we're now paying $75 a month for, basically, nothing.

Friends, I think we are going to cancel cable. Hold me.

The grumpy cyclist

An acquaintance came into my office yesterday and told me all about this shuttle I could take home instead of riding my bike.  I would just need to walk a block over to the shuttle stop, wait outside for the shuttle to arrive, and then I could ride it to the stop that is only a block and a half from my house.  The shuttle comes every half hour, she told me, and it's great!  And then you wouldn't have to ride your bike in the dark!

 

Well, thanks. Except instead of walking a block, waiting up to half an hour, and then walking another block and a half, I think I'll stick with the bike, which I have to wait zero minutes for and takes me directly to my doorstep in less than ten minutes.   

 

I know that people mean well, but this kind of "suggestion" really annoys me.  This same lady is also extremely concerned that I have been riding my bike about 5 miles to a class after work once a week.  The ride kind of sucks because it's uphill on the way there, but it takes only about 15 minutes more than it would take me to drive and park, plus it means I don't have to feel guilty for not going to the gym that day. And better yet, I don't have to deal with parking when I get home at 9:30pm.  Yes, it's dark, but I have a super nerdy red flashing light on my helmet, another light on the front of my bike, and I am careful.  

 

Last night I did decide to drive to the class because: 1) I'd gotten about three hours of sleep the night before thanks to a raging case of insomnia and the idea of moving my legs made me want to vomit, and 2) it was pouring rain.  I made it home a little faster in the car, but then I had to drive around for 25 minutes looking for a parking space. Finally I gave up and parked the car in the no-man's-land ghetto and had to walk five blocks home.  I don't think trekking through the ghetto alone at 10pm and leaving my car there overnight is any safer than riding my bike home in the dark.  

 

She means well, I know that.  She insisted on driving me to this class two weeks ago when she ran into me in the parking lot after work, even though I politely protested and reminded her that if she dropped me off, I'd be left with no way home and I would really be fine on my bike.  No, no, she wouldn't hear of it.  In the time it took to cram my bike into her trunk, I could have been three-fourths of the way there and she could have been home.

 

Before I had my bike, a girl at my old job used to be horrified that I walked to work.  "Don't you have a car?" she asked incredulously. Yes, I do. However, parking costs $120 a month here. I live less than a mile away, I like getting the exercise, I like not paying for gas, and I like not killing the planet. I am more than capable of walking, I told her (politely).  Every time it would snow or rain, she'd say "You walked in THIS?" when I arrived. Yes, I walked today.  I've been walking since before you worked here, and I'm still alive.  Occasionally, if it was really, really pouring, I'd drive.  But honestly, when you have to walk to wherever your car is parked, and then walk again from the parking lot to the office, driving really isn't saving much time in the rain.  "But what about when it SNOWS?" she asked.  Well, in the time it would take me to shovel out my car and navigate the unplowed city streets, I probably could have walked in.  And then after work, I'd have to shovel out another parking space, if I was lucky enough to find one, to put my car back in.  So...I'm fine, thanks.

 

 

I am really not sure why this sort of concern bothers me so much.  I hope and assume that it comes from a place of caring, but it feels an awful lot like judgement; like their way is the right way and my way is the wrong way and I should change to make them feel better.  Instead of making me feel happy that they care enough to be concerned about me, it makes me feel rage-y because you know what?  You're not the boss of me.

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Five minutes after I published this post, Joel sent me a link to this article which illustrates reason number five (right behind exercise, saving money, saving the planet, and saving time) I prefer biking or walking over driving around this city: $252 parking ticket!!1!  NO THANK YOU.

 

And the oven is fixed too

The dark ages have come to a close.  Our internet and phone service were restored yesterday afternoon.

Normally I wouldn't have been as rage-y about the lack of Internet, because after all, I spend all day at work on a computer. I can get the basic email-checking, bill-paying and web-surfing during the day, yes, but we've been trying to plan some sort of anniversary trip thing, since by some sort of time turner witchy magic we have been married for almost a year. In this age of coupon codes and roaming gnomes, it is not possible to plan a vacation without the internet. Well, it's not possible to plan a discount, last-minute vacation without the internet, and if you know us at all, you know that we're very much the last-minute, discount vacation types.

We didn't want to be literally last-minute, though, so we tried our very best to soldier on without home internet. First, we went to the close-by Starbucks on Wednesday last week, having read that they had just transitioned to free internet. We each bought the cheapest thing we could consume (a small iced coffee for Joel and an orange soda fizzy thing in a bottle for me) and then sat down for some interneting. Five minutes later, we found out that the whole free internet at Starbucks thing was true, starting July 1. At this point it was 8:30pm on June 30th. So! We packed up our computer, I screwed the bottlecap back on to my orange fizzy drink and we biked over to Barnes and Noble in the sweltering, record-breaking, I-just-took-a-shower-goddammit heat. At Barnes and Noble we were able to successfully able to connect to the internet for an entire twenty minutes before they closed. It was just enough time for me to finish my $3 orange drink thing from Starbucks.

There were several different variations on this scenario over the following days. We went to Joel's office on a Saturday, except we were unable to figure out the network key, so I sat and watched Joel do computer stuff for a few hours and THAT ended in good moods for everyone. Joel spent an hour in the coffee shop across the street from my yoga studio unsuccessfully trying to connect to their broken network. On the Fourth of July we returned to our trusty Barnes and Noble, where the free internet was no longer working because of "interference" and all the cafe tables were taken up by tourists (my personal favorites were an elderly Asian couple who were intently paging through a picture book called Baby Animals). Let me tell you, after this whole ordeal Panera Bread has won my undying affection. Four hours of uninterrupted internet access. It could only have been better if we were, say, IN OUR OWN HOUSE.

But, anyway! We have an anniversary trip booked and I got a really good cup of french onion soup out of the deal.

I was a little bit ruffled by this entire situation, in case you couldn't tell, but I think that the family member most traumatized by this outage was the Tivo. You see, we have the Tivo hooked up to our wireless network so that it can have high-speed conversations with the internet about all of the wonderful programming options out there for citizens with basic cable. When it can't talk to the internet for some reason (say, when we didn't have our own internet for several years), it uses the phone line to talk to the hamsters at Tivo central. When the internet AND the phone line are down, the Tivo gets a little bit crazy. It threw increasingly frantic messages up every time we turned it on, telling us that program information was running low! Please to connect to internets for talk with hamster friends! I CAN HAS INTERNETS RIGHT AWAY PLZ! Finally, we turned on the program guide on Tuesday and saw a blank, open space stretching from 7pm on Wednesday onward. Forget December 2012, armageddon was coming on July 7 as far as our poor Tivo was concerned. And he was afraid.

We had a scheduled appointment with Verizon yesterday, made weeks ago, but I had little hope would get anything accomplished. Someone had already come out the week before and been shocked that the pole with all the phone and internet wires was not in our backyard (note: we have no actual yard), but in the alley of a house up the block on another street. This also shocked Verizon when they came out to install our internet several years ago and every other times they have come out for service. Every time they are completely flabbergasted that there is no way to access this stupid pole from our house, which is kind of annoying because, 1. this is not the first time we've been over this, and 2. we are not the only city dwellers in this situation, guys. But the dude last week said he'd contact the owners of the house that does have access, and that he'd call Joel the very next day to work something out. He never called, obviously. I tried pleading with the Verizon customer support representative on Twitter, and that accomplished about as much as you'd expect. But someone in the technology world must have heard our Tivo's distress call, and somehow everything just got fixed yesterday at about 3pm, four hours shy of the Tivo apocalypse. And then there was a brownout around 9pm and we the internet was broken again for a while, but we're not going to talk about that because I don't want to cry.

So things are fixed and everyone is happy. YAY. Except the Tivo, who can't get it through his antennaed skull that we narrowly escaped the pit of despair and everything is OK now. He is still giving us frantic PLEASE CAN I HAS INTERNETS messages after we finish a program. And when we turn the TV on. And at the bottom of the Tivo screen. Obviously he has suffered serious psychological damage from the near-miss and is going to need lots of therapy. Which is why I'll be demanding at least two months of free phone and internet, just for starters, when I call up and yell at Verizon later. Yelling at people is my new thing. I yelled at a gang of thug-wannabes in the movies this weekend -- they were being seriously, disruptively loud and we are serious about The Last Airbender around here -- and then I demanded my money back from the theater after the movie was over. I am half proud of myself and half nervous that I'm turning into the older lady at my office who calls up to yell at her credit card company at least once a week, but either way I have two free movie passes. Hello, Edward Cullen.

My enemies, let me show you them

Joel and I are out at a restaurant having dinner – that’s one of the benefits of living in the city, when it snows 20 inches you can walk to the movies, and then later to a bar, in effect going out more than you do when the weather is perfectly nice – and I’m looking at Twitter on my phone. I’m about to reply to Kristabella about the Vampire Diaries, and as I type “did you know that Stephen is Steve McQueen’s son”, Joel informs me that it’s actually Jason, not Stephen-with-the-big-head, and he’s Steve McQueen’s grandson, not son. Oh. Well. Backspace-backspace-backspace.

Then we get to talking about Steve McQueen, who I often confuse with James Dean. Joel explains that Steve McQueen is the dude in The Great Escape, which I’ve seen most of, and which I actually liked. Wow, I say, he’s like, all wiry and super-skinny, right? He’s cool like James Dean? Yes, he did boatloads of cocaine and was very skinny, Joel says. And he possibly died racing his car, which everyone knows is about as cool as you can get. Oh, like in that episode of Supernatural, I say, but no, again, that’s James Dean. I don’t understand how this guy is SO cool, I say, and so we do the sensible thing and turn to Wikipedia (have I mentioned that I adore my new phone? It’s quite handy to be able to settle these questions immediately) to find out just why everyone thinks this Steve McQueen character is so goddamn cool.

Ok, first of all: his photo is his mugshot. Second of all, he is making a peace sign. In his mug shot.

Further evidence of coolness: He was an avid racer of both motorcycles and cars, he performed his own stunts, he has a type of Mustang named after him, he was on Richard Nixon’s Enemies List.

And that’s where the conversation stopped being about whether Steve McQueen was cool or not and started being about how you know what I need? An Enemies List.

OPH Enemies List – last updated 12/23/2009

• The guy from the Free Credit Report.com commercials
• Kristen Stewart
• Whoever's idea it was to cancel The Unit
• The guy from the gym who calls my Pinky*
• Max’s (RIP) previous owner
• Car Accident Guy
• Sheila Dixon
• Catherine Hardwicke
• Our neighbor**
• Whoever leaked Midnight Sun
• Handicapped parking space asshat
• Snakes
• The dude who bought my Jetta and keeps getting it impounded***
•  Calleigh Duquesne
• People who can’t parallel park (I mean people who park in the middle of two spaces and have no common sense, not people who can't nail a space on the first try.  Although, I'll have you know, I can nail a space on the first try.  As long as no one is watching and making me nervous).
• People who run to the store to buy toilet paper and bottled water every time the forecast calls for snow****
• Scooter thief 

I have the feeling I might have to  make this list into a permanent page, because I know there are more enemies out there.  Douchebags: they're everywhere.

* Funny story about the gym. So, maybe I told you guys, but I got married and I was really busy doing all kinds of important marrying stuff and I sort of stopped going to the gym some time around, say, June, so that I could focus fully on biting my fingernails and creating superfluous Excel spreadsheets. And then there was the wedding, and then we were on vacation, and then my knee hurt and then I had knee surgery, and then I was recovering from surgery and long story short: I didn’t go to the gym for over six months. When I found out I was going to be having surgery, I meant to call and put my membership on hold so I wouldn’t be paying for my unused membership, but, well, I never got around to it.

So I went back for the first time last week, and I was really nervous. Would it still be in the same place? Would my card still work? Would I get stuck in an awkward conversation with my Gym Nemesis about why I’ve been gone for so long?

I walked in and I’d never seen the guy working at the desk, SCORE. Maybe Gym Nemesis doesn’t even work here any more, wouldn’t that be grand!

When I swiped my card it made a bad-sounding dinging noise so the new guy asked me to swipe it again. No dice. It turns out my membership had been canceled in August, when I changed my name and totally screwed up their automatic deduction system. Score one for procrastination! He said it was no problem, gave me a new application to fill out and said I could just bring it with me the next time I came. He waved me through, I managed 20 minutes on the elliptical, determined that everything was pretty much in the same place as it was six months ago, and went home.

The next day I returned with my completed application in hand. I turned the corner to see none other than Gym Nemesis working the desk. Maybe he won’t remember me! I’ll just pretend that I’m a totally new person and hand him this application and – - “Hey, Pinkie.  Where've you been?”

Fuck.

** Funny story about our neighbor: for no reason at all, she hates us. Well, I should say, she hates me. She seems to have no problem with Joel, which is super since I’m the one who bought her a cute (not creepy) Welcome to the Neighborhood card and introduced myself when she moved in. Anyway, she doesn’t like us, her yappy dog doesn’t like us. So on The Great Snow Day this weekend, Joel is out shoveling the sidewalk (including hers, because he is nice) and she asks him if he can collect her mail next week. And then she elaborates, saying usually she asks her First Tier Friend, Mr. Old Man, but she really can’t ask him "to come out in this weather." Sooo... not only are we her second choice for vacation mail collector, but she hopes we slip on her (unshoveled) stairs and break a leg.

*** Funny story about my old car: apparently you can’t just sell a car, the car remains yours in the eyes of the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration until the new owner registers it in his own name. If, say, he prefers to drive the car around unregistered and all unlawful-like, and then, say, he gets his car towed for parking illegally, you will get an Official Certified Letter from the Official County Government demanding that you come and officially pick up your car, even though it's officially not actually your car at all and you have neither the required proof of ownership nor the keys.  This Official Certified Letter will threaten all kinds of official fees and penalties for failure to officially pick up your car and pay the official towing and storage fees.

I ignored the first letter because it came just before the wedding. When I got a second letter, I called every number listed on the damned thing, from the county police station (“nothing we can do, call the MVA”) to the MVA (“nothing we can do, tell him he needs to register the car”) to the impound lot (“nothing we can do, there aren't any Volkswagens here”). I noted all these supremely helpful conversations and filed the letter right next to the Bill of Sale.

And now I’ve gotten a third letter. This one says the car was impounded on December 3, which leads me to believe that Mr. New Jetta Owner is somehow retrieving his (my) (our) poor Jetta each time. I don't have any way to contact him, since we communicated only via text message and his number was erased when I got my new phone. The best I can manage it to call the County Police, the MVA, and the impound lot again, note the conversations and file the letter away, hoping to the Ghost of Volkswagens Past that when I go to renew the registration on our Mazda next year, the MVA doesn’t tell me that I owe some horrific amount in fines. I figure in that case, I can always “sell” the car to Joel. Or, failing that, we can move far, far away and change our names.

**** Funny story about people in Maryland: Every time it looks like a single snowflake might fall, there is a run on toilet paper and milk.  I honestly don’t understand this. How long do people think they’re going to be snowed in for? Do they really not have enough toilet paper to last them through the weekend? If the snow really does pose an emergency (which it sometimes does, here, because of pure incompetence on the part of the city), really, toilet paper is what you’re putting in your survival kit?

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And, well, just so this isn't the most bitter post in the history of Christmas, look!  Snow!

If it's going to be cold, it might as well freaking snow.  That's what I always say.

I like to call this photo "Nevermind".

Ok, I hate the parking situation, but I do love our neighborhood.  Especially when it gets all snowy and I half expect to see a horse pulling a buggy down the cobblestone streets.

 

The thing about Maine

I support gay marriage.  Having just been married a few months ago, I can tell you there are a lot of legal benefits afforded to married couples.  We are now eligible to be covered by each other's group insurance policies at work, which saves us over a thousand dollars a year. The day before we were married we'd been living together for six years, we owned a house together, but we weren't eligible under each other's policies.  The day after we were married, we were.  Our insurance rates went down; our taxes will be calculated differently.  Just because we have that marriage certificate.

There are a lot of legal benefits that go along with marriage, and I don't think it's fair to deny these to citizens on the basis of sexual orientation any more than it would be fair to deny them to people based on skin color, age, or religion.  That's what I believe.  That's what I will vote for.  Not everyone agrees with me.  Many people disagree.  Do I think they're misguided and misinformed?  Yes.  Am I disappointed over the election in Maine?  Yes. 

Do I think that everyone in Maine is a stupid idiot who doesn't deserve a vote? Absolutely not.  It really saddens me to see all the hatred being thrown around.  People are saying that everyone in Maine is an idiot.  The "why" explanation in Brizzly yesterday said Maine was the "land of cretins."  Here's the thing: most states do not have legalized gay marriage. If you're calling everyone in Maine an idiot because gay marriage is now outlawed there, what does that make you, if your state doesn't allow it either? 

And here's the other thing: the election was very close.  Nearly 50% of the voters were for gay marriage. 

And here's the third and last thing: People in this country are allowed to disagree.  I don't enjoy being called an idiot because I support gay marriage.  Name-calling is completely unproductive.  Calling someone stupid is not going to help them see things from your point of view.  It's certainly not going to make them change their mind.  It adds nothing to a discussion.

Let's grow up, people.  Calling each other names isn't going to move us forward, no matter which direction you consider forward to be.  

Times a-changing

I don't know about you guys, but when I was a whiny little brat who refused to eat the nutritious dinner my hard-working mother had lovingly prepared, I got to eat a bowl of Frosted Flakes instead.  Maybe some graham crackers with a little sugar sprinkled on top or some cinnamon pop tarts if I was feeling really crazy. What I did NOT get was a pizza delivered because I refused to eat real food.

This commercial crams everything that is wrong with America into a 30-second spot. OK, well that may be a slight exaggeration, but do you know how hard paella is to make? Actually, I have no idea how hard it is to make, but I DO know that paella is delicious. And therefore probably hard to make. And I am pretty sure saffron is expensive. And also reasonably sure that saffron is an ingredient in paella. VERIZON: Consider yourself ADDED to my official list of terrible commercials that are ruining the world.

Citizen's arrest

If I had to pick the one thing I hate most about city living, it would be the parking situation.  Hands down.   Why, internet, what's that?  You'd like to hear all about the latest development in the ongoing parking saga?  SO GLAD YOU ASKED. 

Parking, it sucks.  Parking on my particular block sucks even more because we have two handicapped residents, and both have designated handicapped parking spaces outside of their houses.  That's fine and dandy, except for 1) their spaces are big enough for a yacht, 2) one of the spaces is arranged so that there is space for about 3/4 of a car between the end of the space and the "no stopping" sign at the end of the block, and when the meter maid is in a grumpy mood she gives out tickets to anyone parked in this 3/4 space.  This could have been avoided if they had moved the space up two feet when the city marked it off, and 3) one of the handicapped dudes is a total asshole who refuses to park in his designated space.

But! Back in the fall we reached a happy turning point in the parking saga:  our street (and several others in the neighborhood) was converted to angle-in parking.  There was a heated debate over this proposed change, with the nay-sayers claiming that angle-in parking would ruin the "historic look" of the neighborhood.  (To that I said, tell me if you care about the "historic look" of the neighborhood when you've been cruising around for 45 minutes looking for a parking space.  And how is changing the direction of parking ruining the historic look, anyway?  I mean, we're still talking about parking CARS, trade in your sedan for a horse-drawn carriage and then talk to me about the "historic feel" of the neighborhood)  In the end, practicality won out and I came home one day in October to find that I suddenly lived on a one-way street with freshly painted angle-in spaces.  This was a glorious day.  Sure, it's a little annoying to live on a one-way street. Now we have to go around an extra block to get to the house and it's harder to double-park while unloading groceries, but WHATEVER.  This has really helped, parking is a bit easier to find.  O, happy day!

Except for one little thing: The handicapped spaces.  When the city came to re-paint the angled lines, they failed to move the signposts marking off the boat-sized handicapped spots.  So, now the signposts spanned two spots each, from the middle of one spot to the middle of another.  Which spot was the actual handicapped spot was anyone's guess for Handicapped Space #1.  For Handicapped Space #2, they'd thought to mark off the actual handicapped space with hash marks.  Unfortunately, the dubiously marked Space #1 is the space belonging to the asshole neighbor.  I've seen him call the two truck twice so far on people parked in one of the dubious spaces, EVEN THOUGH THE OTHER DUBIOUS SPACE WAS OPEN FOR HIM.   I'd resolved to call the city and demand that they come over and move the signs or paint a handicapped symbol on one of the spaces or arrest him for being a total asshole or something, but Inever got around to it.   Instead I just made sure to never park in either of those spaces and grumbled about this asshattery to myself. 

And then yesterday, when Joel and I came home, Mr. Old Man, the kindly owner of Handicapped Space #2, called us over to let us know that the parking cop had been by and tried to give Joel a ticket for parking in the space NEXT TO his marked handicapped spot.  We were incredulous.  How can we get a ticket for parking next to  the handicapped space?   Well, the parking cop told Mr. Old Man that the hash marks on his handicapped space did not actually designate a handicapped parking spot.  No, they meant "No parking whatsoever in this space".  The cop explained that this was so that a wheelchair van would have space to unload.  Mr. Old Man explained that he didn't have a wheelchair, nor a wheelchair van, so he'd be happy to just park in that space.  The cop told him he couldn't; he needed to park next to it.  On either side.  That's right, the spaces on BOTH SIDES of the hash-marked space belong to Mr. Old Man and his ONE car.   The old handicapped signpost is in the middle of one of these spaces, but any rational person would assume that the sign was outdated (since it is) and negated by the markings on the actual new space.  There is absolutely no signage of any kind indicating that the spot on the other side is off-limits.  That's the spot Joel was parked in.  That's the spot we almost got a ticket in. 

So, five of our glorious angle-in spots are now off-limits for two handicapped vehicles. I cannot even put my rage over this into words.  I want to call city hall and demand they fix the signs.  I want to report Asshole Neighbor to the cops for calling the tow truck on innocent people when one of his two half-spaces was perfectly available for him.  I want to report the entire situation to the Sun's Watchdog (we're not the only ones with ridiculous signage, check this beauty out.)  I want to cry about the entire situation on my blawwwwg.

We also got a call from BGE last night.  They'd like to come out and service our meter because apparently it's "not reading correctly".  I am pretty sure that's BGE code for "we're going to try to charge you more money".  They offer appointment for this mandatory service that I did not request during convenient 8-hour windows.  Weekdays only.   

My god, I hate this city. 

My parking skillz. Let me show you them.

Parallel parking is hard.  There's a reason everyone fails it on the driver's test -- myself included.

When people come to visit us, they often say something like "I can't believe you have to parallel park!  I could never do it!"  Well, yes you could.  If you were faced with the choice to either 1. drive around indefinitely looking for a wide, open parking space or 2. manage somehow to parallel park in the space in front of your house, I guarantee that you'd start learning how to parallel park.  It's just like learning how to drive a stick shift:  it seems impossibly hard before you know how, you'll stall out a whole lot in the beginning, and after a few months (uh, maybe weeks for people who learn faster than I do) it will feel so natural that you won't be able to explain it to others.   Five years later, when your boyfriend asks you to teach him how to drive stick, you'll run through half a tank of gas in an empty parking lot, saying things like "no, you let of the clutch WHILE pressing down the gas -- no, not EXACTLY at the same time, but sort of, like... I don't know!  You just DO IT!" 

You (meaning, I) can't really learn how to parallel park unless you're forced to do it ALL THE DAMN TIME.  After four years of living in the hell that is overcrowded street parking, I have a black belt in parallel parking.   I'll admit that I suck at judging whether or not I can fit into a space -- sometimes, just for the hell of it, I'll try to get into a space that I'd swear wouldn't hold a SmartCar and what do you know?   I'm in it on the first try.  Other times I'll think I've got a spot nailed, and after trying ten times to get my rear bumper to fit into it, I'll realize that my Jetta cannot, in fact, fit into a space two and a half feet wide.   But give me a space that's actually wide enough and I can get my car into it, regardless of side of the street (I do favor parking on the right), whether the space is on a 45-degree incline, even if there's a screaming cat pissing on my backseat while I'm trying to cut the wheel.   My one weakness: An audience.   

If someone else is in the car, I invariably screw up the parking job.  I think that stage fright is a pretty universal phenomenon, and that leads me to my point here:  yesterday I saw a girl trying to park her sedan in a space that was plenty big.  She was having trouble, but she was making progress.  UNTIL, this dude walking by appointed himself her Official Parking Assistant.  He stopped walking and stood in front of her, making motions with his hands and yelling instructions.  "No, you've got plenty of room!  Keep coming, keep coming!  KEEP COMING, you've got space!  OK, stop, CUT THE WHEEL, CUT THE WHEEL!" 

People in Baltimore do this ALL THE TIME.   It's happened to me on more than one occasion, and I just don't get it.  Do these people actually think they're helping?   The girl last night was visibly annoyed and embarrassed, but she muttered a thank-you when she got out of her car because the helpful Samaritan was just standing there, waiting to be congratulated for his good deed.    Once I saw a girl abandon a perfectly good parking space because some creepy dude "helped" her parallel park and then hung around her door, waiting to be thanked.   

So here's my public service announcement for the week:  If you see someone trying to parallel park, LEAVE THEM ALONE.  No one wants an audience when the tap the bumper in front of them.  Uh,  not that I've ever tapped anyone's bumper. Those scratches were on my car when I got it. 

Charitable giving under duress

(Credit for the Law and Order-esque title belongs to Defiantly Definitely RA’s comment from yesterday.)

(Credit for the rant below belongs solely to me…all hate mail can be sent directly to [email protected]!  Happy Friday!)

So, I have this cousin.  Second cousin thrice removed, actually.  She’s always been into sports casually – she was on the soccer team in high school, she plays in her office’s softball league, that sort of thing.  In the past few years, she’s taken up unicycling with a well-known organization that raises money to help Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too.  She’s really into it, and I want to be happy for her – except she’s always asking me for money.   And her unicycle races are always in warm vacation spots.  And she comes back with great pictures and stories about what a great time she had at the last race. 

Lord knows I’m not one to knock vacations.  And I’m certainly not against helping Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too.  I like my cousin.  I’m glad she’s happy, and I’m thrilled she’s found a worthy cause she’s passionate about.  So what’s the problem? 

Well, first of all, she’s never expressed any prior interest in kids, reading, illiteracy, or volunteering. However, she does enjoy sports, teams, working out, and going to warm places. So, I suspect that she’s more dedicated to the actual unicycling race aspect of the organization than the fact that it is helping Kids Who Can’t Read Good.   That would be fine with me, except for the fact that she barrages everyone she knows with emails asking for us to support her next vacation race.  First, it was just a mass email with a link to her personal unicycling webpage asking for donations.   The webpage and email gave some statistics about illiteracy in America, details about her training, pictures of the last race she went to and a little thermometer that showed her fundraising progress. Across the top of the page, a banner proclaimed, “Anything you can give helps!  This is a really great cause.” 

And this is the first of many, many emails requesting financial support for her vacation race, and as we get to the fourth or fifth round of “please donate” messages, I notice that the address line is dwindling because she’s weeding out those who’ve already donated and only targeting the delinquents.

Asking for donations?  Fine.  Even sending a reminder email to everyone right before the deadline for donations is fine.  But specifically targeting people who’ve not donated and continuing to request contributions from them is not okay.  By choosing not respond to her initial request, I’m politely saying “no thanks”.  Sure, maybe I just forgot, but that’s what a reminder (ONE reminder, not weekly “reminders”) is for.  I feel that continuing to request “anything I can give” is akin to coercion, and I don’t like it. 

As for the repeated reminders that “it’s a really great cause!”…well, of course it is.  Who would argue that Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Wanna Learn How to Do Other Stuff Good Too aren’t worthy of support?  But there are hundreds and thousands of other causes that are every bit as worthy and deserving of my financial support, and I am perfectly capable of deciding which of these many, many causes my money will go to.   I find it insulting to have the platitude “it’s a really great cause” thrown in my face time and time again, because that’s a non-issue. Of course it’s a great cause. So when someone tells me that repeatedly, I can’t help but feel like A) They think I’m too stupid to realize what’s a great cause and what isn’t, B) They think I would not donate to charities without their prodding, or C) They think their “great cause” is better than mine. 

I'm sure that there are lots of people who don’t donate to charities. But that’s their prerogative. I probably don’t donate as much as I should, and I could make excuses like “I’m saving up for a wedding”, or “Max’s vet bills were really high this year”, or “Hey, how ‘bout the price of gas these days?”, but the truth is, I don’t have to make excuses.  It’s my money, and I choose how to spend it.  If I want to blow my paycheck at Ann Taylor and Barnes and Noble instead of helping Kids Who Can’t Read Good, it’s my conscience that will have to deal with the consequences.

I’m not trying to say that no one should try to raise money for charitable causes.  And I’m not trying to say that people shouldn’t value one cause more than another.   What I am trying to say is that constantly being asked to give to other people’s pet projects – which logically must come at the expense of donating to my own favored causes - grates on my nerves.   It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, and it makes me feel selfish. And I don’t think that’s fair.

Here’s a real-life example (we all realize that I don’t actually have a unicycle-racing cousin, right?  I just made that up!  Right out of thin air!  Maybe I should write a novel!):  A few weeks ago, our house phone rang, and thinking it might be Joel calling to tell me when he’d be home, I picked it up.   Normally, I don’t pick up the house phone because land lines are SO 1992 only telemarketers and wrong numbers call us at home.  And often times the wrong numbers are calling collect.  From the County Jail.  Awesome.

But the phone rang, and stupidly I picked it up.  “Hello?” I said (original, I know).  There was a pause, and then I heard the telltale din of a call center in the background.  “Hello, Ms. Herring?” a cheerful young woman asked.  “Um, yes.” I said, bracing myself for the pitch.  She proceeded to delve into her script about how she was calling on behalf of Some Cancer Charity, whose mission is to help cancer patients afford the medications they need during treatment .  I cut her off as soon as I could, and told her that I wasn't interested in the politest tone I could muster.

“Well, let me just tell you a little bit about what we do,” she continued, undaunted.  “Like I said, we help cancer patients and their families to afford the basic – “

When I insisted (politely) that I just wasn't interested, she hit me with this zinger:

“But Ms. Herring, how can you not be interested in helping cancer patients?”

And that’s the point where I hung up on her.  I refuse to be made to feel guilty for exercising my right to chose where my money goes.  Of course I want cancer patients to have the help they need during treatment!  I also want Kids Who Can’t Read Good to learn how to read.  I want to save every little crab in the Chesapeake Bay and I want to stop global warming and I want to help orphans in Indonesia.

I also want to be able to pay my mortgage.

I understand that every charity needs to raise funds somehow. I wish everyone had a cause that they felt so passionate about that they’d want to tell their family and friends about it.   But I don’t want to be made to feel guilty for choosing to support the causes that are closest to MY heart.   If my coworker wants to send around the link to her Avon site and invite anyone from the office to talk to her if they’re interested in buying something, I'm fine with that. If parents want to leave their kids’ fundraising catalogs in the break room with a sign up sheet, that’s perfectly wonderful.  But when an employee barges into my office every day for a week jangling a bag of change and asking for donations (to support a very worthy cause), I feel coerced.   I think there’s a difference between a passive and an aggressive collection campaign, and I think it’s a fundamental one.  I’m sure that the aggressive strategy raises more money in the end, but at what cost?  I feel embittered over it, and I know that I’m not the only one. 

It makes me sad that I feel like a bitter charity-hating hag sometimes, and that I have enough angst and anger over this issue to fill three Word document pages, but unfortunately, that’s how it is.  I’m sure that organizations employ these tactics because they work, and because they feel that raising enough money to serve their mission is important enough to warrant such aggressive strategies.  But I hate it, and I’m not going to be guilted into to donating my money to any cause, no matter how “great”.  Charitable giving isn't all that charitable if it's forced.

Whew.   As good as it feels to get that out, I'm afraid to post this for fear of offending the great wide interweb... but I'm going to do it anyway.  But in case it wasn’t obvious, let me just say this:  I’m not talking about you. I’m not talking about any person or organization in particular.  I’m talking about a trend that bothers me.  I've thought a lot about this, and I welcome (respectful) dissenting opinions, but please know that this is not a personal attack against anybody.