Treatise of One New Years

Hello peoples of the internet.  I must say, you’re looking fabulous tonight.  Did you get a new haircut?  Or maybe it's just all those good holiday vibes?  Either way, it's that time of the month again where I've built up the energy to post a new, umm... article?... on the Hiatus.  I never really know what to call these things.  Maybe rant is more appropriate?  Ooo, or treatise?  Makes it sound so 1850's.  Let's go with that.

More than any other holiday bar the 4th of July, I look forward to embracing New Year’s Eve with open arms.  And not just because this year I get to bulge my eyeballs while saying "Twenty-Twelve" like the end of the world is doomingly near.  New Year’s Eve is the only holiday where it's socially acceptable to drink dangerous amounts of alcohol alone while shooting fireworks off my balcony and watching YouTube videos on how to fulfill the past years' resolution (learn how to Moonwalk).  Ok, fair enough, so maybe none of those things are socially acceptable.  But for the sake of this treatise let's just pretend they are.  And while we're at it, let's also pretend that a horde of cockroaches didn't break into my storage unit, take refuge in my box full of DVDs, and subsequently shit in every single case and on every CD over the past 11 months.

Today started off appropriately great.  I woke up with a hangover at 1 pm to my neighbors with the white paint-splotched roof screaming at each other because the woman who owns the house locked the tenants out, and one of the tenants needed his clothes to go to work.  So naturally, I sat in the quiet listening to the drama unfold instead of doing something productive.  A lot of F-bombs were flying around and I thought about bringing over some of the cookies I had baked as a gesture of peace and goodwill just to shut them up, but in my silent observance I got hungry and ate them all instead.  Oh well.

After I got bored of the yelling, I turned up some City and Colour and got to celebrating.  Which brings me to now.  So if you'll excuse me, I've got some fireworks to tend to.  Happy New Year’s everyone!  I hope you manage the holidays without losing any of the important limbs/digits.  See you next year.

If The DMV Had Legs, I'd Pay Someone To Break Them

Well, it's been an interesting week to say the least.  Spent half of a day in the DMV actively restraining myself from losing my shit, got a job, gave back the job, was chased down and tackled by a loose dog while I was jogging, and spent the better part of 3 days trying to de-flea our house after the roomie's dog got infested.

Word on the street is Florida law requires that you get a Florida drivers license within 30 days of becoming a resident.  Technically, I've been a resident since my stay back in 2006.  So naturally, I decided to go and get my license about 5 years late.  No biggie.  Well, in order to prevent hours of needless line waiting just to be told by some disgruntled government employee I didn't have the right paperwork, I thought I'd call ahead and check beforehand as to what exactly I needed.

• A valid Drivers License - Check!
• Social Security Card - Check!
• 2 Pieces of Mail with my Name and Address - Check!

Hell, this should be painless, right?  Ya, not so much...  I got there early to avoid the hour long line at lunch.  It turns out that the short line after breakfast is still an hour long, and reeks of urine and cigarette smoke.  After waiting the full hour'ish in front of an obnoxiously ghetto woman who proudly named her daughter Channel Nevaeh because "it's heaven backwards" (for full effect, picture that you're bobbling your head back and forth while pretending you've just found out your baby's daddy is the father of your child on Jerry Springer) and her brother with his cellphone-boombox who "looks like her, but doesn't look like her, but looks more like her baby, but... shit, nah, he don't look like me".  I caught myself cracking up out loud a few times thinking about Finesse Mitchell's Standup.  Luckily, my brain went into autopilot and shut itself off from the world to avoid saying something rash or insincere that might in some crazy fashion be misconstrued as racist.

By the time I finally reached the receptionist I was about as mentally numb as I'm capable of becoming without the graceful nudge of a bottle of booze.  However, this wasn't nearly enough to keep myself from uttering a long drawn out (earmuffs) 'fuuuuuccccckkkkkk' when the guy told me I also needed my birth certificate because Wisconsin, along with a small handful of other Midwest states, is not on the list of Recognized Drivers Licenses as a form of primary identification for Florida.  Apparently my social security card, Florida car registration, 2 pieces of mail with my name and address, credit and debit cards with my name on them, my pasty white complexion, accent-free English, and my current Wisconsin license is not enough to prove I'm me and that I'm not here illegally.  Great.

Long story short, I drove home through lunch traffic, got my birth certificate, drove back to the DMV through even longer lunch traffic, droned out for another hour and a half in line, then gave $48 to a DMV guy for printing me off a new license that took about 13 seconds.  I can't wait till I have to renew my car's registration next year!

Well, it's late, I'm tired of typing, and you're probably (hopefully?) tired of reading, so I'm going to wrap this up and do a new one tomorrow or Wednesday for the dog tackling and our house-turned-cement-factory/coke shack after the flea invasion.  Till then!

This Week’s Neighborhood Hero (Part 1 of a 1 part series)

I was thinking of starting a new series called Neighborhood Hero of the Week (NHOTW).  The plan is to devote a post every week for a full… well, week probably, to one of my dear neighbors who goes above and beyond what’s required of him/her to become ex-communicated from the pack.  As self-appointed neighborhood liaison (I haven’t informed the other neighbors yet), I feel it is my duty to exploit their failures for my own personal gain… or something along those lines.

This week’s Neighborhood Hero goes out to my kitty-corner neighbor Jim.  His name might not be Jim, but he looks like he could probably be a Jim.  Or maybe a Gary… On second thought, definitely a Jim.  I haven’t officially met Jim yet, but I have studied him from my third floor bedroom window in a totally law abiding, non-pervy fashion.

Jim is a selfless family man, a great pumpkin carver, a huge fan of driveway concerts (read: blaster of really shitty yet catchy music from his truck’s inadequate, rattling speakers), and even played a hand in establishing the community’s first ongoing sawmill project in his very own garage.  I know, keeper!   Now normally, I’m a huge fan of sawmills; the smell of fresh lumber, the abundance of sawdust, the possibility of being witness to a missing finger Easter-egg-style hunt!  What’s not to love!?  But this one is different, mainly because the festivities don’t kick off until sometime after sunset, right when I’m settling in for a little Californication rerun action, and it doesn’t smell good, nor are there missing fingers, ever.  So really, it’s just loud.   Really, really, loud.  And for that, Jim receives this week’s Neighborhood Hero Award.  Congratulations Jim, keep up the good work!

Next week's contenders:  Neighbors across the street who leave passive aggressive notes about our parking on our windshields?  Or maybe side neighbors who get drunk, argue, howl with their dogs, and paint abhorrently large chunks of their roof right outside our living room windows white?  Decisions, decisions...