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Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The Boy Is Free, and Other Niceties of Life

The Boy went to his last probation meeting yesterday. All his fines are paid, all his requirements (drug class, DUI class) are met, the probation officer signed off and he’s a free Boy. Needless to say, his attitude was pretty good last night… even if he still reeks of cigarettes. He’s agreed to pay back some stuff he owes us, with his debts getting first cut of his landscaping job — but we’re limiting the bite we take so he can save up for a car. I hope he holds up his end… and I’ve said it before, if he’d ditch the smokes, he could afford a car that much sooner. Someone put a minivan right across the road from FAR Manor’s driveway last week; they want $400 for it but Mrs. Fetched said she saw it blowing oil. I suppose if you had a decent motor already, and a place to effect the swap, it would be a good thing to do. (I have no clue whether that VW he was talking about a while back is still in the picture.)

The girlfriend is no longer, and just after I came up with a blog-name for her (“Snippet” ’cause she’s short). She got the roving eye this last weekend, and I’m not sure what-all happened in a big dust-up the weekend before he came back home, but his tossing her bag of clothes across a front yard was involved. I understand things had started to get pretty rocky between the two of them, and whatever went on in the last two weeks pretty much finished it off. With any luck, he’ll steer clear of “romantic” entanglements for a while; they tend to cloud his already-tenuous judgement.

A deer came through and ate all the foliage off my jalapeƱo plants! At least they left the peppers. I’m surprised the dogs didn’t chase it off, but they might have been snoozing under the studio. It will be interesting to see whether the plants survive that particular insult. The stupid deer may have also eaten the wild blueberries, because they’re gone now too. There’s not much of a window between ripe and falling-off with those blueberries, so I may have just missed them over vacation week.

I won a set of Future Sonics Atrio headphones (link to review) from The MacObserver. Woo hoo! According to UPS, they should arrive tomorrow. They’re the type of headphones that go in the ear, so I might be able to use them under my motorcycle helmet. Having tunes (or podcasts) on the bike… how decadent. I’m not sure whether they’re blue or black, but who cares?

And the writing was on the wall for a couple of weeks, but it’s now official: SCO filed for Chapter 11. It would be nice to whiz on SCO’s grave when it’s all over, but I suspect the line for that will stretch all the way from Santa Cruz to Vancouver. Special “congratulations” to CEO Darl McBride, who took a cool, innovative company and ran it into the ground with frivolous IP lawsuits. He’ll likely end up in far better financial shape than he deserves to.

I made some parsley-pepper pizza dough last night, and we cooked us a couple of pizzas tonight. Yummers! The Boy had gone off to band practice, and came home a few minutes ago to find all the pizza pretty much gone. I think he found some leftovers though.

Work is finally starting to get less crazy, at least for a while. I have a couple of loose ends to tie up on a couple of projects, but the one that’s been driving me up a wall is done… unless the freak-out artists come up with something else. Today, it was “you need to update the revision number since you fixed the transparency on that photo.” Then, “we need PDF, not EPS” (after asking for EPS yesterday). But I think we’ve passed that water under the bridge now. I got to cut out of the office early so I could take some photos this evening for a certification run; I emailed them to the engineer and he was happy. It looks like I soon might have time to do some administrivia I’ve been ignoring for a few months.

So it’s only Tuesday, but the week after vacation is starting well.

9 comments:

  1. Well, that's a relief, for TB to have all those obligations out of the way.

    We had three bucks in our back yard last night. Two young ones, and one with a bigger rack. Then, while taking a walk, I came upon two does and a third I couldn't see well enough to "gender." At one point, the two does and I were staring at each other from about 25 feet away. Then the third came up, made a loud alarm noise that sounded like s/he blew through her nose, and they all turned up their white tails and skedaddeled. I can enjoy them because I guess I don't have any plants they want to eat! :)

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  2. So much to deal with. Good to hear that your son is free and clear.

    The rabbit that apparently ate my grapes has left for better locales. He was residing under my Mazda for a bit but would run out when I started it. Then he would taunt us by reclining and stretching on the lawn.

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  3. Wow, Nancy, that’s amazing. I suppose some of your neighbors are already plotting their hunting strategies? I wonder what jalapeno-flavored venison would taste like.

    Boran, we had a squirrel pull that on us… or rather, one of our dogs.

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  4. FAR, I can't tell you how pleased I am that The Boy made it through his legal mess. That's a real accomplishment -- a lot of people can't do it.

    It's funny that deer are picky eaters!

    Nancy, it should like you live in heaven. Or a Disney movie.

    Boran2, I used to live in a house with a gravel driveway. And grass grew pretty tall in the strip between where my tires normally drove.

    AND for a long time a family of rabbits lived in that grass. It was really spooky to come home at night. Their little heads would peak up over the top of the grass when they saw my headlights.

    For a second or two, we'd stare at each other. Then they'd all take off & I'd drive up the rest of the way.

    Since I was spending most evening's at Mister's house, this happened enough that it became routine.

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  5. lol, boran2. Now and then we get those sprawled-out rabbits, too, and it always cracks me up.

    katiebird, that's such a cute image of those little heads popping up. Like targets in a carnival game. My bad.

    And, yeah, far, I'm pretty sure some of my neighbors dream of bows and arrows, at the very least.

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  6. With two dogs running loose, rabbits don't have much time to sprawl before they have to run for it. But it's funny how they would lay in the driveway — you'd think they would figure out that it's not a safe haven after a while. FAR Manor has a gravel driveway, with a little grass here & there, but it doesn't get much over putting green height.

    Nancy, you'd probably love the shirt we got for my brother-in-law (Mr. Sunshine) last year. It's a deer, tied to a target and grinning at all the arrows on either side of it. The caption is, "NOW what's your excuse?" We had a great time teasing him about 8 years ago, when The Boy was nailing squirrels with a BB gun (at age 11) while Mr. Sunshine was coming home empty-handed except for his deer rifle. That side of the family is pretty accurate with guns, and The Boy got some of that. He's not much for hunting these days though, although he likes to fish (or throw a line in the water, smoke, and shoot the breeze with a friend or two).

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  7. Glad The Boy is finally in the clear. Hopefully he'll stay on the fine line and get things straightened out.

    I read about SCO and things like that always burn me up. It seems no matter how bad the CEO is, they get rewarded for even running a company into the ground.

    Hope your w/e is going fine.

    Take care.

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  8. Oooh ... it's been awhile since I've been able to say this:

    What FM said ... :)

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  9. Hey folks!

    Again, FM, it's good to see you back. I have to agree with you about CEOs. The CEO of Earthlink did that to DCA (a place I used to work at) — or he didn't act on what should have been obvious to anyone at the time, same thing really. He made out better than the employees for sure, and probably the shareholders.

    Olivia, good to see you around here too. I can hit F11 now, which scoots all my open windows out of the way, and see where I'd rather be....

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