Yanno, I blog a lot about my neighbors. Mostly the stupid ones. This time I want to shout out to my groovy neighbors.
When we moved in, we met our neighbors. They almost ran across the yard to greet us and welcome my family to the neighborhood. They’re in their 50’s and have grown kids. Over the past 7 years we’ve become close friends with the whole family. As a matter of fact, my youngest is bff with their granddaughter, my son is best friends with their son’s girlfriend’s son, and I’m best friends with their son’s girlfriend.
Well, we’ve had off and on problems with our air conditioner since we moved in. I’m pretty sure it’s a 1950’s model original to the house. We’ve done all sorts of repairs, replaced the condenser about a month after we moved it. 2 years ago and again this summer B replaced the motor and bracket, it’s pretty much been gutted and put back together countless times.
A week ago, upon returning from a camping trip it started making this horrendous noise. Now, granted, that sucker is LOUD anyways, but this awful rattle was beyond loud to the point of disturbing the peace. B said that he’d had enough and was going to just replace the whole thing. He called his dad (he’s a builder) and gave him the task of finding us a new unit, then the weather got humid and hot again.Â
Last night, B was outside working on trying to find the cause of the rattle, it was blazing hot in the house, I’d baked all day and it was pretty unbearable. Our neighbor came out to chat and found out that, yes, once again, the ac is broken. His company (he’s a builder too!) just did a major remodel of some golf pro’s house and they replaced 3 AC units. Two of the units will work here. One’s newer and very very quiet and he ended up calling his boss and snagging the quiet one for us. We got it so cheap I’m embarrassed to even say the cost.
His oldest son (my best friend’s boyfriend - crazy how this whole thing works out) is an AC guy, and he’s going to install it for us tomorrow. Amazing.
So here’s a shoutout to my GROOVY neighbors who are always here for us, kind, loving to my entire family (and all our pets!). I hope they never move.  I’d clone them if I could.
October 14th, 2008
Here’s what I did!
I didn’t have that problem on this blog (i had the weird characters issue), but on one of my other blogs I couldn’t login after upgrading. I searched and tried all the suggestions given to no avail.
When I upgraded wordpress I (1) backed up my database, (2) changed the theme to default (3) uninstalled all plugins (4) logged out, (e) ran the upgrade program. After upgrade, when I tried to login, I couldn’t. It would just revert to the login screen over and over. My search began…
After reading many suggestions, I deleted all cookies, changed password, remarked out some lines in wp_config, etc etc etc.
This is what fixed it for me. I renamed my /plugins directory, cleared cookies, and was able to login. After the successful login, I re-renamed the directory to /plugins again and everything is working peachy. I reset the theme after that and everything is still working properly, I logged out and I am able to login again with success.
I really hope this helps someone! I haven’t seen this “fix” posted elsewhere.
Good luck!
September 30th, 2008
OMG, so my neighbor put a couple HUGE “Democrat” signs in her yard today. I saw her outside and asked her “Are your signs are big enough?” <did i mention they’re huge?> and she responded “Have you had enough?”, I told her yep, I’ve had enough but seriously doubt I’ll be voting democrat this election. She responded.. “It’s because of the color of his skin.” Give me a break.
Is that going to be the comeback for any person that decides not to vote Obama? There’s gotta be a t shirt for that.
Don’t be a REPUBLICANÂ RACIST, Vote Obama, perhaps?
September 24th, 2008
I just upgraded Wordpress and there were a bazillion  characters throughout. I’ve managed to remove them and you can too :) Follow these steps:
open wp-config.php, find the lines:
Â
define(’DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);Â Â Â ANDÂ Â Â
define(’DB_COLLATE’, ”);
Change them to this (Comment them out)
// define(’DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′); //
// define(’DB_COLLATE’, ”); //
Â
Â
 Easy.
September 20th, 2008
As you may recall, during constuction of our deck, our lovely neighbors called the city and reported our Suburban was in violation of a code. Namely, parking on an unapproved surface. It was a $40 ticket for a non violation, so B wrote the city a letter, sent a copy of our plat (showing a concrete pad), pictures of our backyard, and told them to stickit, he wasn’t going to pay.
Got a letter yesterday stating that the ticket has been dismissed, it had been “given in error”. LOL. Squeaky wheel baybee :) I think I’ll spend the whole day sitting on my deck looking over the fence!
September 20th, 2008
Of course we passed the inspection :) The guy from the city even complimented us on the deck and wanted the plans. Go figure.
This is how the deck looks for inspection. We still need to add post caps and finish underneath, not sure if we’re going to do lattice or wooden slats or even doors on the left.
Stepping out the back door.
This is the view from the back door.
Looking back towards where you came from. We actually have a new back door but finding the time to get it installed has been an issue.
Looking Back from where you started.
This is a shot from the lower deck.
This is the lower deck.
And this is the view from the creek.
This view is from the creek.
The new back door is underneath that blue tarp 
September 3rd, 2008
B worked all day Saturday on installing the lattice to finish the deck enough for inspection. It looks great and should pass with zero issues! I called in this morning so hopefully the inspector guy will be here this morning.Â
B and I both have some nasty summer cold. Fever, chills, sore throat, nausea and headache. The mosquitos were really bad Saturday, hoping it has nothing to do with that! The kids went to Anime Fest with our neighbors over the weekend, I think they had a good time. They rode the Dart train there and back and that’s always fun!
Cowboys this weekend! This will be the first time in 2 years I can watch the games without having a raid leader hollering at me to pay attention to the game! Oh, and I signed up for Mines of Moria beta Friday, so I may void the previous sentence lol. Ahwell.
September 2nd, 2008
We bought this house in July of 2001.Â
When we were trying to decide whether or not to buy this place, the next door neighbors came over and introduced themselves, Ooohed and Ahhhed over the kids and basically welcomed us to the neighborhood. That pretty much sealed the deal for us.Â
We moved in and just adored our neighbors! On the left side, we had an elderly couple. The old guy taught our son how to play golf, played soccer with the kids in the front yard and was my son’s first best friend. The are a lovely couple, they took our little ones to their church Halloween carnival and were a 3rd set of grandparents! The neighbors on the right side are so cool. They’re older than us with 3 older kids and a granddaughter that lives with them, she’s a few months older than our son and immediately became my youngest daughter’s best friend. Â
We have an old couple that live across the creek from us, he’s a retired cop (that ought to tell ya something) and we were welcomed to the neighborhood by him by his informing us that he owns the creek and to keep our kids off his property. We’ve had run-ins throughout the years with him, he once hollered at me because I have too many kids. Not long after we moved in, we cleared out a lot of the undergrowth in our backyard and cleaned up the lawn, but I caught him looking over here with binoculars and we’ve since let the trees and bushes grow up. He’s one creepy dude and his wife is just as bad as he is.  They will be referred to as the “NosyAsses across the creek”.
but i digress..  Eventually, as things go, the elderly couple moved into a retirement home and their house was purchased by a couple, our age, with a son and daughter just a little younger than my youngest. I mean, how groovy is that? As it turns out, they aren’t groovy at all. Bummer. When my were young, they’d kick the soccer ball around the yard and the guy next door actually told them if their ball came into his yard again he was gonna KEEP IT. I mean it’s not like he’s 80 years old like the old man across the creek, he’s like in his 30’s. They ended up putting in a berm garden on the easement between our houses and constructed a 8 foot fence on our property (LINE?) - I’m pretty sure most of the fence is on our property but haven’t bothered having a certified survey done.. yet. I think they’re pissed that they don’t have a back yard. As it turns out, they share a property line with the old man across the creek and his property line actually ends about 15 feet outside their back door. Their front door opens to our backyard. They are using their front yard and side yard as an “outdoor space”. After they put up the fence it really closed off our porch and cut the breeze completely. Zero wind, zero view down the right side of the yard, just this ugly fence and tons of mosquitos. This couple will be referred to as the “Tools next door”.
We have a huge back yard. Our lot is a little over 3/4 acre. The previous owners of our home had about 6 yards of sandy loam trucked in to cover the sprinkler system they installed, on top of the ground. Nothing will grow in sandy loam, all the loam washed away years ago. We’ve scraped the majority of the sand off.Â
 
 
They put a concrete patio in the back and it leaned, was broken, the stairs tilted forward as you went out the back door (they were solid concrete) and apparently had broken off the house years before and they filled in the break with concrete.Â
They had a “carport” tied onto the back of the house (40 ft long by 20 feet wide) large enough to park a fleet of schoolbusses (well not really but it was big and our insurance guy told us there was no way in hell he’d insure that thing) - that was one of the first things to go.
For Father’s Day, this year (2008) I hired a demolition crew to remove the concrete. It took them almost a whole day to get all the concrete removed. They broke out the leany stairs (and took the brick behind them with them) and we had a 4 foot drop to the dirt below. B and I were trying to decide what to do with the back yard. We debated on just putting in a porch with a landing and stairs, a small deck and sod, a large deck using the full footprint (it’s 600 square feet) and several other ideas.
We finally decided on a multi level 600 square foot deck using the original (1950’s) footprint. The top deck goes straight out the back door to a small “porch” with a 12×20 foot area, the lower deck is “L” shaped with stairs leading to the back yard. The really great thing about the plan is that it’s level with our back door, no more leaning stairs, and my mom (is in a wheelchair) can be wheeled straight out the back door onto the deck. Normally when she visits, we’d just let her smoke in the doorway because there was no way to get her outside. B’s dad came out and drew up the plans and calculated the costs and we decided to go for it!
The first few days of construction went smoothly. B was working but our son was home for Summer and helped his Grandpa a lot! I offered to help, but Grandpa is so macho he wouldn’t let me do a thing except fetch water and make lunch LOL. By day 3, it was time to start putting the deck boards on. All day Thursday, I actually got to help! We got quite a bit done. As things progressed it was increasingly obvious that our deck would circumvent the fence the Tools Next Door put up and give us our breeze back. We can even see water in the creek, far out!Â
Friday, (8/15) our son had to go to a school orientation, Grandpa took the day off and I was served with a “red tag, stop work order”. The Tools Next Door had called code complaince and reported unauthorized construction. The deal is, even for replacing an existing structure we needed a permit. Well no big deal. B went downtown with a copy of the plans, got the permit pulled and justlikethat, we’re back in business. There wasn’t any work happening anyways. Saturday morning we resumed construction and got all the deck boards installed, the railing up and all we lack at this point is the underneath finishing work before we get it inspected and signed off.
Last Saturday (23rd) the Tools Next Door called the city and reported our suburban was parked “on the grass”. Okay, we were using our back driveway as a construction staging area and we moved the truck further down the driveway, it was parked on concrete (sorta) - the runoff erosion has collected there, but it is still on the pad. Even the city guy commented that it couldn’t be seen from the street and the view from the creek has been cut off completely, the neighbors on the right side have a truck that should have been redtagged 2 years ago when the inspection/registration ran out, so I know it was the Tools Next Door that called. (B is protesting the ticket).
Anyways, B bought the lattice last night and construction should be completed tomorrow, the construction approved by Tuesday of next week and I’ll post pix and if there’s any interest, I can also post the plans
In the meantime, I’m looking for ways to block the Tool’s view (a huge tarp should do), legal ways to annoy the hell out them (still working on this), and trying to find a survey crew to give me a certified property plat and determine whether or not (a) their fence is on our property, and (b) if we can have their berm legally removed - we have a case because of the rainwater runoff and the berm is on a utility easement.
It would be a lot easier if they’d just move. I’m not going anywhere.
August 29th, 2008
Sophie and Prissy took off today. Nobody really noticed they were gone. That’s pretty sad. B noticed they were gone tonight, but who knows when they escaped. They’ve been digging out and B’s been filling in the holes for a few weeks now. I hope they make good pets for a family with a big yard they don’t care about and a huge fence
August 7th, 2008
We’re back from our trip and overall had a very nice time.
Here’s the highlights:
- B got a ticket in Austin, radar never went off, he was just picked outta the crowd. Didn’t have a copy of insurance, so he actually got 2 tickets, duh.
- Sunday night - Comfort Inn Riverwalk, San Antonio - AC was broken in our original room, (they took care of it immediately). Visited the Alamo, did the Riverwalk tour, ate at a pretty crappy restaurant (i forget the name). An interesting note.. The Comfort Inn is actually the former San Antonio Jail. Neat history, tiny (DINKY) pool, decent location (although I’d recommend walking with a group), a few blocks from the San Fernando Cathedral, which we visited Monday morning.
- Scratched the hell out of my camera lens sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning :/
- After visiting the Cathedral we headed to South Padre Island.
- About 100 miles out, the rain started, ugh. It rained so hard we actually passed through towns we didn’t know were there until the return trip! Literally, couldn’t see 10 feet ahead of us. What a mess.Â
- Finally got to our hotel. Howard Johnson, got a room upgrade for no apparent reason (I’m guessing peeps cancelled because of the weather). The room was huge, and clean with a lovely view of the bay.
- Ate at Jakes, went to the public beach. Our son went swimming and choked down a bunch of Gulf water, puked on the beach and no sooner had it hit the ground than a huge flock of seagulls were on it. Truly the beach janitors! It was hilarious!
- Tuesday morning it rained. We played the world’s longest Uno game. The sun finally came out and we went to the state controlled beach (much nicer, less crowded). We ate at Louie’s Backyard, totally not worth it! Horrible wait staff, some kids at another table fed the seagulls and they pooped on our table.. (nice going), took about 30 minutes to get someone to replace our youngest’s drink. The food was okay, nothing great, definitely not worth the price.
- Wednesday we spent the whole day at the beach. No sunburn casualties, really. Everybody got a little burned but nothing too bad. Wore the kids out totally. We had to wake them up to have supper. Ate at D’Pizza Joint. Wonderful! The Pianoman is incredible. Food was great, kids wanted to eat there for every meal.
- Thursday, the kids were “beached out” so we spent the day at the hotel pool. Had a nice relaxing day, ate at Dairy Queen.
- Friday we headed home, uneventful drive. Stopped in Waco and at at La Fiesta, it was okay, we were all exhausted. Glad to be back.
…and how was your week?
July 15th, 2008
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