The Rants Came Marching One By One (March minirants)

The BBQ Pit
221

Collection agencies are bad, but process servers are even worse. I’ve had them beating at my door and shoving papers into my hands. Too bad, so sad. The address was never mine, and the name was never mine, so I’d call the Constable the next day to say that a process server had left papers with me and that I didn’t know the person. What should I do?

Concerned citizen and all. What I was actually putting it on record that Jane Doe wasn’t properly served despite what the sleaze bag process server said.

Dang about the no hail damage.

Our Arizona home sold, but Tony’s trailer has been such a nightmare. It’s not a mobile home, don’t think that. Think a 40 foot long, single wide trailer that still has the wheels under the skirting. Now imagine that over the course of 20 years, “rooms” have been added. These additions have never had permits or been inspected.

Its a perfect example of redneck trailer trash and an eyesore in the neighborhood. Once we had Tony moved and the trash cleaned out, we were going to have the entire thing bulldozed and then Tony could sell the land.

The neighbors were happy, we were happy, what could possibly go wrong with that plan?

We made the mistake of involving Planning and Zoning. Well, not WE, because I knew it wouldn’t work out well. My husband, the anal retentive land surveyor and evil oil guy demanded that we do it legally and get permits and stuff.

Its been such a nightmare. We can’t pull the trailer down until the inspector assesses fines and such for the “additions”, but he won’t inspect the place until he feels safe in it. We are not willing to put money into fixing the floor on a place we are going to have pulled down.

I’ve been forwarding all of the messages to the neighbors so they know that we are trying. Hopefully, someone will accidently drop a cigarette in the grass and it will go up in flames.

222

You got City Hall involved. We have to get City Hall involved in our Real Property Report, and I anticipate it being a long, expensive, frustrating process. Nothing like yours, mind you, but it will still be annoying, I’m sure.

223

That’s ridiculous. No way to go over the guy’s head? City should have no problem just condemning a wreck, especially when it’s dangerous just to step into the place. What a stupid circle to run around!

224

We actually have RV parking on the north side of our house for one (maybe both), and the other can be parked on the street if need be. We don’t have a homeowner’s association here, and there are several families who have visitors park their trailers on the street during the spring and summer. Everyone pretty much follows the “don’t be an asshole” rule and doesn’t park them there for months at a time.

225

I pit waiting.

I’m rather pregnant, 37 weeks. This past weekend, we moved to a larger apartment. The timing was obviously not great but we needed to move before the baby came. It was horrifically stressful and nothing happened the way I wanted it to and it was mostly my fault. The whole weekend ended with me having a small breakdown and crying my eyes out. Monday morning, I got into work and noticed unusual swelling in my hands and feet. After a couple hours of trying not to worry, I left work, paged my doctor and was told to go the hospital. My blood pressure was elevated and I had protein in my urine. But it was all borderline. They sent me home to do a 24 hour urine sample and put me on bed rest until the results came back. The results are due today.

So I wait for a phone call. And I wait and wait and wait. Am I sick? Am I just stressed out? Am I meeting my baby soon? Are we waiting for that too? I’m sick if waiting and feeling worthless.

PS - I pit bed rest too.

226

Cat pee.

Goddamn cat pee.

227

Best I can tell you is to sit down, breathe deeply and fight the urge to bitchslap people and/or punish yourself. Just think, if there is an issue, you’ve caught it. If not, breathe deeply again and try not to let all the moving boxes stress you out.

Our little Miss has been diagnosed with ‘phlegm’. Yeah.

I’ll give you three guesses which end the pill goes in and you won’t need two of them.

228

OK. I finally pulled on the proverbial big-girl panties and called {cell phone company} to shut off my dead husband’s phone account. Couldn’t even emotioanlly deal with that for a couple of months, and meanwhile was tossed into the deep end of dealing w/other crap, so back off judgemental types. (By this I mean, my parents.)

ME: “Hi. My name is (purplehorseshoe) and I’m calling about (accnt #) and he is deceased, so that number needs to be shut off please.”
Cust. Svc Agent: (asks for a few pertinent details)
ME: (gives pertinent details)
CSA: “I’m so sorry. {{{ beat }}} And how are you dealing with that?”

:confused::(:eek::confused:… really? You’re not my fucking therapist. I’m dealing with that by finally shutting off his cell phone. #$%!"

I don’t know – and don’t want to know – the details, but I can easily get behind (HA!) the general sentiment of this rant.

229

I’ll second that. Usually there’s more than one inspector and usually there’s a manager or lead inspector. They might not want to give approval to tear it down until they know that there aren’t any hazardous materials inside. I can understand that part.

Would he or his boss be willing to work from pictures? Not that I know whether it’s easy or possible to get any. If it was here, and he wasn’t willing to trust my pics, I’d consider asking him to borrow the mobile cam that’s used to inspect storm drain and sewage pipes. Or the bomb robot from PD. There could be a charge for that, although inspectors are usually pretty good at setting up swaps. Like having PD use the opportunity to train their folks on bomb robot operation in weird places.

Would it take more than one sheet of plywood to give him a safe path?

230

This is more whining than a rant, but there are two bands performing tonight in town. Once of them I like, but don’t know a lot about, and one I have really enjoyed since the late 80’s. My husband is not terribly familiar with either of them. A friend is also giving a lecture prior to the concert (which is free with concert ticket) on the history of this style of music.

So I went to the website to see how much tickets would be. The tickets themselves were reasonable, but when you add on all the damn Ticketmaster fees, and service fees, and taxes, etc. the tickets are $20 more expensive, making the total for 2 tickets around $90-$95. I cannot get to the box office before the concert to purchase tickets without all the fees.

Before we knew about the concert, we had discussed going out tonight to see Tim’s Vermeer, which we both want to see. Last night, I asked him if we still had a date to do that. He said something about the concert, and I told him the tickets were too expensive.

Yes, the tickets are too expensive - for me to drag him to a concert where he doesn’t really know the bands and doesn’t really have much interest. If we both were into it, I would be there in a heartbeat. But I won’t spend the money when I know he’s not really overly interested. I’m probably making assumptions and everything, and it’s not unreasonable for me to ask for what I want, yadda yadda, but I just can’t do it.

And I’m mildly depressed and whiny about it. So that’s my tale of woe. Nothing to see here, move along.

231

Snipped to here:

If it is something you wanted to do, you should do it. It’s part of being a spouse to attend functions that he may not care about because they will make you happy.
This is a lesson I am learning myself, also. Asking for what we need/want from our SOs can be hard, but it is worth it to learn to stand up for ourselves. I wouldn’t have spent most of December and all of January on the verge of divorce if I had just been more assertive about what I need. (long story, won’t detail here.)

232

Dear hotel conference centers,
When you put hot water out for tea please don’t use an urn that has had coffee in it. It makes the tea taste like coffee. And when coffee grounds come out I really have to question how well you clean your equipment.
Thx!

233

Why would you feel worthless?? You’re having a baby! :cool:

Be patient and think happy thoughts. I will think happy thoughts on your behalf. :smiley:

Have a nice baby!

234

The worthless feeling comes from not being allowed to do anything. I don’t feel sick for the most part, though I’m rather uncomfortable with all the baby sitting in me. It tortuous to stare at the things I could be doing, feeling like I could do those things and just not doing those things.

To make it worse, I didn’t get the results today. So I’m guessing I’m fine but no one has told me if I’m allowed to return to work or at least get out of bed. This sucks!

235

New med - sulphur burps. Nothing I can do about them, tums makes fruity sulphur burps. Baking soda and water makes salty sulphur burps.

:eek: <burp face>

236

That’s right up there with “And how are you holding up?” and “I know just how you feel”. But at least you could close that account over the phone; the cable bill is still addressed to my father, and he died in 2005. That was the only company that refused to close or rename an account over the phone; at the time, I was informed that I would have to cancel the service and open a new account, which would result in a service outage of up to 3 or 4 days. The last time I inquired (about a year ago), they wanted me to go to an office in a rather seedy part of town, fill out a special form, and present it with a copy of the death certificate.

I hate that so much. The first time it happened to me, the water actually looked fine…I thought there was just something off about the tea. I’ve gotten to the point now that if the appropriate facilities are available, I microwave a cup of water.

237

Just have a friend drop by with a tractor and chain to hook onto the trailer tongue and try to steal it. Then give up and go home when he’s moved it about 10 feet and everything collapses.

238

This. 100+ this.

Honestly, its not dangerous. The floors in the add-ons feel saggy, but even if they did break, it would only be a 2 inch drop to the dirt.

Lots of good advice, thank you everyone. There are several problems here. Tony still owns the place, so he has to be the one who needs to talk to City Hall. Tony isn’t very good at doing that. There is also the part where my very beloved husband just had to do this right and get City Hall involved.

Had we done it my way, I’d have asked the club to recommend a clean up crew and just paid for the trailer to be dozed and dumped into a trash dumpster which would have been hauled out right away. It would have only taken one day, but noooooooooo…Mr. Ethical Cross all of the T’s and dot all of the i’s just had to do it properly and wouldn’t listen to me about it sometimes being easier to ask forgiveness than ask permission.

Do I sound a little testy? Well, its because I am totally ticked off over this whole thing.

Well, hell. Insensitive isn’t the right word…clueless? But still.

If it helps at all, I still have my deceased rescue director’s number on my cell. She died a few years ago and I never was able to delete it. It was ported to my new cell and I’ve left it there. Giving up that last connection is just too hard for me to do. I honestly can’t imagine how much it must have hurt to shut his number off.

239

This is a non-issue that has zero impact on anyone’s quality of life, but it seriously has me in a RAGE.

I can go the public library’s web page to see when my books are due, see if I have any reserved books waiting for me, whatever. OBVIOUSLY, to do these things that are specific to my account, I need to log in to the site.

So when I go to the site, I click on the “log in” button. And it takes me to a page WITH A BIG FAT WARNING SAYING YOU MUST BE LOGGED IN TO ACCESS THIS PAGE. And then the space to enter one’s user name and password is below that.

This makes me see red. I CAN’T VERY WELL BE LOGGED IN TO LOG IN. That is what I am here to do, TO LOG IN. Because I selected the button that said LOG IN.

It doesn’t stop me from logging in, of course. I just log in and everything’s fine. But every time I see that warning, I nearly have an aneurysm. FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

240

I so want to do this. I have friends who would do it, but noooooooooo…Mr. Ethical “we need to do this by the book” would feel obligated to have caution tape and flagmen out.

On a LIBRARY page, which should be a safe haven. I totally understand your rage.