Friday, July 25, 2008

Still Sorting Things Out

BOOKS
My books and his books mingle in the Fiction section

Update: Dutch and I are in the process of settling in our new apartment. A third of Dutch's 1000+ book collection is still at his old place. The rest is quickly filling all available shelf space. At first, I was pretty sanguine about it, thinking "how many books could he possible have?." But now the reality of all those little bookies is starting to make itself palpable. When all is said and done, we'll be able to boast one of the largest smallest private libraries. Cicero, anyone?

boxes
yet to be unpacked

Update: After living here a month, we finally have internet. I used to be able to sit at home and pore over cookbooks obsessively and put official things off but now I have no more excuses.


Update: I just put Important Papers in the Mail, so theoretically, my new name will be Camille Marzipan Offenbach van Dutch. I am unsure because the Social Security website is very vague, and has contingencies for non-naturalized adopted dwarves living in US Territories who filed tax-returns under unverified aliases all the way through infants born with birth certificates issued by US Consulates in Foreign Parts, but hardly anything about people springing from the loins of US citizens a scant 600 miles away simply adding another last name. On second thought, maybe that is a good thing.



Us vs Them



Meter Maids, originally uploaded by pecanpieguy.

WAR!
I now live in constant battle with the Department of Parking and Transportation. When Big Red slept every night under the eucalyptus trees of the Presidio, I rested easy knowing I was on Federal Land far from the jursidiction of the minions of the DPT. No more. We now live on a street that never has any parking. Even during the day the cars stay put. No one drives to work in the morning. They probably take the bus. Its gotten to the point where everytime I leave the house I make a mental note of the cars on the street. The one time we found a spot in front of our house, we woke up to a hefty fine the following morning because of street cleaning. I had actually forgotten the day of the week the night before. While any lucky owner can stash their cars in front of our house for a week at a time, two streets over they require parking permits, which allows anyone to park for a 2 hour maximum, and there is always parking, but we are not allowed to get a permit for that area because we don't live there. Its interesting to note that the permit area houses are more like mansions, while we live in a solidly middle class neighborhood. It seems that the DPT favors the rich.

Its easy to get discouraged when I think of the armies of Meter Maids out to get poor ol' Big Red, so I have decided to give Big Red a point every day he evades a parking ticket. That way everyone wins.

Big Red (since June 11th) 49
DPT + $80

2 comments:

H said...

It reminds me of the Cake video for "I will survive." I guess there IS something good about living in the land of ample parking...

Anonymous said...

There's a Friends episode about the woes of city parking... I howled. Reminds me of when I used to park Brodwin the Happy Marshmallow on the sidewalk. The desperation was for serious: the sidewalk-parking habits of the 'hood made the front page of the Examiner.

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