Neighborgate 2007

There are new developments in the rock stealing adventure. Rachel's boss used to live in our neighborhood. He knows this guy. Rachel asked him "hey do you know anything about the guy who lives behind us?" and his words were "Oh stay away from him....he's weird."


Apparently this guy has had run-ins with everyone. Rachel's boss said "as I recall, the people you bought your house from had major issues with him." Thanks for the heads up Jeanne. He also said that the guy's girlfriend used to come over and talk to him when he was in his yard and tell him that she feared for her life cause this guy was so crazy. There's also unconfirmed reports that someone died over there at one point, though I have no clue how this person died, or when this was. All in all, Rachel's rethought her plan to confront this guy. I'm wondering if we might be able to convince the homeowners association to pay for a higher fence along the back of all the houses bordering his property, since the guy sounds completely looney.

Gotta love Albany!

Me? A Thief?

So last night Rachel and I are nice and comfy on the couch watching National Bingo Night. Yeah, we're that exciting on a Friday night. Around 9:30, there's a knock on our door. I get up and answer it, and to my surprise, there's an officer of the law there. He asks if he can come in and talk to us for a second. "About what?" I ask. He says he has some questions about some rocks. Rachel and I both thought that maybe he wanted to buy them, which would be great since we want to get rid of all the river rock in our backyard. Heck, we'd have given them to him for free. But no, that's not why he was there.


The people in the house behind us have accused us of stealing rock from them. Apparently we have about 4 or 5 pieces of shale in our backyard that look like some rock they have piled up in their yard. So they called the cops. The cop asks us how long we've lived there. I say "since July." He says "this July?" I say "yes." Immediately the cop gets a smile on his face and says "It's only May. How did you move in in July of this year?" Smartass. Obviously I did not move in two months into the future. Yet he seems to think that he caught me in some sort of a lie, because he makes a point to say "so you moved in in July of LAST year."

Once the time of our arrival on Riverbow Ave is established, the cop then asks us if we've ever been in our neighbor's yard. I say no. He says "well he claims he has videotape." Why this guy is videotaping his rock, I have no clue. So I say "wait, this guy says he has me on videotape stealing his rock?" to which the officer replies "well he says he has a videotape......why do you think you're on it?" I reply "I'm pretty sure he doesn't have me on videotape." Now the cop's all over me. "You're pretty sure? So you're saying there's a chance?" Now I'm starting to get annoyed, so I say "can you show me the rock in question?" So we go into the yard, and sure enough, there's some rock back there.....the same rocks that were there when we moved in. We try and explain this to the cop, who says again "have you ever been into your neighbor's yard." And I say again "no, I've never been over that fence." He says "Have any of your friend's ever been in his yard?" To which I say "not to my knowledge." He says "But your friend's could've been in his yard?" Apparently I'm supposed to know everything that everyone I know is doing at all times.

At this point the cop has pissed off Rachel who comes into the yard and says "that rock has been here since we moved in. He probably couldn't see it because there were weeds there which we just pulled last week. We don't want the rocks. If they are that important to him, we will give him the rocks. He can also take these rocks here, and this one there, and there's a few over here he can have too." At this point the cop decides he's had enough and says "thank you for your time."

I don't know what we did to piss our neighbors off, but I'm really starting to hate this place. It's a foregone conclusion now that we won't be living in Albany any longer than we have to. Stupid city.

Lessons learned

This has just not been my week. First the Denny's fiasco, and now this.


Yesterday I woke up before my alarm went off about 5:15. Despite not going to bed til nearly midnight the night before, I felt fantastic. So I jumped in the shower, got ready for the day, kissed Rachel goodbye before she was even out of bed, and I was on my way to campus. My plan was to get most of my homework done before I had to be at work at 7.

Anyone who knew me during my first stint of college is probably saying "hold on - Andy's doing homework at six in the morning? Andy's up at six in the morning? Andy's doing HOMEWORK?" Yeah, I know.....it's weird for me too. Just go with it.

So I get to campus at 6 and make my way over to the computer lab. Because of some ridiculous rules, all our homework has to be done in the College of Business comptuer lab. Whatever. I'm just in the best mood.....I'm going to have my homework done, and I won't have to do it after work or on Friday. That is, until I discovered why I never do homework at 6 in the morning. The computer lab doesn't open til 7.

So to recap, I've learned this week that it doesn't always pay to be honest, and the early bird doesn't get worm. Or his homework done. Sheesh.

Honesty isn't always the best policy

This weekend Rachel and I went to Denny's for breakfast. It was her way of bribing me into going shopping with her. It worked. So off we go to the Gateway Mall in Eugene, by way of Denny's. Rachel had some coupons, so it was all good. The best coupon of the bunch was a coupon that was for $5 off any order of $15 or more. So after ordering our food, we came to the realization that our bill was around $14. It was obvious that buying something for around a buck would actually save us money by allowing us to use the big coupon. So I ordered a Coke. Problem solved!


Or so I thought. Our bill comes, and it says $14.27. A quick audit of the bill turned up a missing item....I hadn't been charged for my Coke! So I track down our server and politely inform her that she forgot to charge us for a coke. She looks at the bill and says "Well, I guess it pays to be honest. Thanks, but this one's on the house!" Now I'm faced with a dilemma. Do I get overly nice and insist that she charge me for the coke and potentially hurt her feelings for trying to reward my honest? I'm too flustered to do anything at this point, so I thank her and trudge back to our booth. If you figure our bill would've been $15.77 (assuming the coke was $1.50) the total would've come out to $10.77. Her "rewarding" our honesty cost us $3.50!

Next time someone tells you it pays to be honest, feel free to shove you Moons Over My Hammy right in their face.

Better to be lucky than good

Last night I had a game at Timberhill. For once it was a good game. Both teams were actually trying, the competition was pretty even, and the refs (shockingly) weren't being asses. Well this one guy tried to get a little dictatorish at the beginning of the game, but he calmed down after that. I think he actually said "Are you wearing stripes? Then shut up." Great refs I tell ya.


Anyways, the game came down the last second. We had the ball tied 66-66 with 9 seconds left. Pat drives, draws two defenders to him and kicks the ball out to me on the wing. I threw a pump fake at my defender, who goes flying by. 3 seconds left. I take one dribble and go up for the game winning shot. I have a wide open shot at the perfect angle for a bank shot. So I square my feet, and go up, my focus on the right edge of that little white square on the backboard. I let go of the shot and instantly know that I missed it.....short and to the left. In fact, I missed it so short and so left, that it went right in the hoop. Game over.

In other words, I missed the shot so bad I made it.

Sometimes it really is better to be lucky than good.

Enjoy your weekend. And enjoy National Bingo Night on ABC! Am I the only one who is totally excited about this?

Be nice to me....

.....I gave blood today.


I love giving blood. Really. It's an easy way to do something nice for the world. It might not be like Ted Turner giving a billion dollars to the United Nations or Warren Buffett donating a kagillion bucks, but it's my way of contributing. And I'm good at it. I can fill that bag in less than 5 minutes.

Anyways, I told people at work I was giving blood today, and I got the usual reactions of "good for you" and "I guess you can leave early if it's for a good cause," but my favorite was "are you gonna pass out? Most people pass out." No, most people do not pass out. But they are the ones you remember. I always admire the people that know going in that they hate needles and that they are going to feel queasy, yet they give anyways. Good for them. It's a lot harder to do something nice for people when it makes you uncomfortable.

However, today I saw something new at the blood drive. As I took my seat on the little lawn chair and got ready to donate, the nurse told me she'd be with me as soon as she finished up with the guy to my left. So I'm sitting there patiently as she does her thing, when all of a sudden I hear "Trish! Trish! I need you now!" I look over, and this nurse had somehow poked a hole in the guys blood bag, or more specifically the tube leading to the blood bag. Blood is just dripping everywhere. Thank goodness she'd already clamped him off, or I think it might've been worse. The nurse is frantically trying to stop the blood from leaking out of the bag while telling everyone to look away, lest they get queasy and people start hitting the deck left and right. It was pretty awesome, I must say. They had to move me to another bed so they could decontaminate the area, which I was thankful for since I wasn't that keen on having Nurse Poke-a-Hole having a go at my left arm. Everything went pretty routine from there.

Although they wouldn't let me walk to the refreshment table without an escort, so they call over this tiny girl named Heather. She was probably about a foot shorter than me at a good 100 lbs lighter. She says in a chipper voice "I'll be right behind you," as if this is supposed to reassure me. I said "So.....you're going to catch me if I pass out?" She looks at me for a second and says "well, no, but I'll break your fall!" She gets my vote for volunteer of the day. Does her job well.

Yup, I'm an idiot

So I injured my face this weekend.......on my lawnmower.


I'll pause 10 seconds while you stop laughing.

Here's how it went down: I'm mowing the lawn, and when I finished I noticed that my mower no longer had the shiny new look it had last year when I got it. So I decided to wash it off. So I'm rinsing off my mower with the hose, and then decided that the undercarriage also needed a good cleansing. Most people would just tip the mower on its side and resume washing. Not I. Nooooooo. I decide to tip the mower up, holding the handle with one hand while holding the hose in the other. So just when I'm about done, my arm starts getting tired, and the front wheels came in contact with the ground. The weight of the lawnmower pushed it forward bringing the handle of the mower crashing down across my face. I start screaming all sorts of profanities and Rachel thinks I just killed myself. She comes running around the corner of the house asking "what happened?" to which I respond "I hit myself in the face with the lawnmower....am I bleeding?" Once she stops laughing, she informs me that I have a welt covering the entire left side of my face. So yeah, my face is still a little bruised today, though thankfully it doesn't show.

How was your weekend?

Wild Kingdom - Albany Edition

So I don't know what happened, but my quiet little neighborhood has turned into a wildlife safari.


A few weeks ago, I noticed a flurry of activity outside our kitchen window. I went over to investigate, and a bird was building a nest in the three no more than 3 inches from the window. So for the past few weeks, I've been able to observe a purple finch in a nest tending to its eggs, which hatched last week. Then I got to watch this bird feed its little baby finches. All very awesome, except that when you walked on the walkway to our front door (which goes right by the nest) this purple finch would explode from the tree and zoom right by your head as a sort of warning as it flew to safety. Freaked me out a few times, and almost got a few of our guests. All in all pretty cool.

What's not so cool are the more domesticated of our animals in the neighborhood. The other night, we had a cat orgy going on in the street. Seriously. I looked out the window and these three cats are walking right down the middle of the road. All of a sudden, one jumps the other one. At first I thought they were fighting, but when the big orange one assumed the position on the back of the smaller tabby one.....I figured out what was up. All the while, the third cat, a black and white, was watching intently. Next thing I know, the orange one is done with his business and the black and white hops on. Never in my life did I think I'd see a slutty tabby cat take on two suitors in the middle of a street. It's enough to drive your property value down. The best part was that they finished, and the lady on the corner comes out and starts calling for her cat. Trust me lady, you're probably better off if that cat never comes home. It's probably got some feline STD.

Then last night I was having a hell of a time getting to sleep last night thanks to the barking dogs and the cat fight that was going on. At least, I think it was a cat fight. Either that or the slutty tabby is also into S&M. It was pretty disturbing. When you combine this with the guy who lives behind us playing Paul Bunyan with his chainsaw every evening, it's enough to make you go crazy. This guy chopped down two of the largest trees I've ever seen, and I think he's trying to do a chainsaw sculpture on the stump or something, cause he's out there every damn day with that chainsaw. I'd say that it's time to move back to Corvallis, but I'm still bitter about that frickin rooster that tormented me back in '05.

You know you're getting old when your neighborhood is too noisy.

Supersized weekend

Saturday was probably the busiest weekend we've had in a long time. We really packed enough for two days into one. We got up, worked out, did the laundry, had breakfast, and headed to OSU for a tour of the Hinsdale Wave Research Facility. That place is amazing. I had no idea all the testing they can do there. They test erosion patterns, the effect of waves on bridge structures, tsunami effects. They were saying that when the water receeds, it actually can do more damage than the wave itself because of all the debris. They actually try and predict the way the debris is going to affect certain cities by placing structures in the tsunami pool as they would be in the city. It's really amazing. I was very impressed. They're also trying to figure out a way to create electricity by harnessing wave energy. Can you imagine? That's a totally renewable source of energy that would have almost no effect on the environment. Of course it would probably only benefit coastal areas, but since 60% of the US population lives within 50 miles of the coastline........think about it!


Then we went to my grandparents house and met up with them and my mom for lunch. After lunch, we went on a historic homes tour of Corvallis. I know what you're saying.....booooooring. Well, one of the houses on the tour was my great grandpa's house. The guy who lives there now is in the business of buying old homes and restoring them. He liked my great grandpa's so much, he lives there. He's done a really nice job with the house. My grandpa kept saying how happy he was that someone was living there that appreciated it and cared for it. It was fun hearing my grandpa tell stories of how things used to be in the house and who lived in which room, etc. Apparently after my grandpa and his brother moved out, my great grandparents kept separate bedrooms! The other houses on the tour weren't that impressive, but we spent about 4 hours or so on this tour. Then Rachel and I went to the fish market to buy some salmon to cook dinner for my grandparents and mom as sort of an early mother's day gift. I love salmon, but always wondered why most of the salmon you see at costco and other stores is always atlantic salmon. I got my answer when the fresh oregon chinook cost $27 a pound! Thank goodness for the gift certificate we got for christmas....came in pretty handy. I will say this though...that's some damn good fish. By the time they left, it was about 8:30 and we'd been on the go pretty much for 12 hours. We went over to Hollywood and got a few movies, and spent our Sunday watching movies. Here's a recap:

Blood Diamond: Fantastic movie. I really enjoyed this one. It's pretty intense though, I wouldn't recommend watching it while you're tired. It'll wear you out. Great performances by all the actors in the movie actually.

Little Children: Kate Winslet has made a career out of strange movies. This might be the strangest. It's more of a movie to make you think than a movie to entertain you, so I wouldn't recommend it unless you're into that. I'm not really into it.

The Devil Wears Prada: If women really act like that in big cities and/or in the fashion industry, thank goodness I live in small town Oregon. It was mildly amusing, but at one point, Rachel said "if I ever dressed like that, I'm pretty sure people would laugh at me," to which I replied "I know. I'd be one of them, because I'd be walking 5 feet behind you." Fashion is weird.