Betland Still Lives!

Hello!

Guess what I forgot to do last night? Blog. Guess what I forgot to do Monday night? Acrochallenge.

I suck, don't I.





















Well, for those of you who've had to listen to me piss and moan, the Community Band's spring concert came off Sunday. I got a nice dozen roses for doing the video, I played my parts, and I beat a hasty retreat.

By the way, LilyG asked if we'd ever see this video, and if you're desperate enough to want to, I'll see what I can do. It's nearly 30 minutes long so You Tube is out, and trying to upload it here on blogger would take somewhere around six months. I could try uploading it to my website. Anyone interested? If not, it's OK.

Granny got her official release from the lock-up today, and no, my grandmother's not being let out of prison, my mom (Granny) was released from the hospital today. A friend of Paw's (Dad) took him down and they brought her back home. That's a relief. Keep good thoughts, please.

I had someone steal $100 of TheCompanyIWorkFor's money right out from under my nose today. That sucked bigtime. I knew she did it, I basically saw her do it, but I had no proof that she did it, and therefore, she got away with it, walking off thinking at the end of the day we'd be $100 short and no one would know why. But we know. I hope someone robs her before she has a chance to spend it.

I hate a thief.

I've been playing with my new toys, courtesy of Mr M via birthday presents to me.

See, here's the deal. My birthday present from Mr M was originally to be a Muppet. FAO Schwartz has these things called Whatnots (a whatnot being the nameless generic Muppets roaming the background of any sketch). Three foam bodies to choose from, an array of eyes, noses, hair, outfits, pick and choose, and woo de doo, 90 bucks later, you have the Muppet you designed. I've been wanting one ever since my buddy ThePete purchased his, Jay the Pal.

Problem with that, though. Three bodies, 12 eye sets, hairdos, outfits.... How the hell can I choose? I've been working on it since January and I still can't come up with my perfect Muppet. I've narrowed it down to about three, but I just keep going back and changing hair and eyes, well, and outfits, and when you've got someone like me who's not exactly the brightest bulb in the decision-making department, you're bound not to have a Muppet in short order.

And so finally Mr M said, "Screw that, buy your own damn Muppet. In 2010 apparently, and that's if you get your shit together." And so he bought me something else. One thing was the keyboard I've been raving about and am still raving about because I love it enough to ask it for its keys in marriage, and the other was one of those computer drawing tablets where you draw on the tablet and it shows up on your computer screen. I'm explaining this like you don't know what it is, and I'm sure you do. Sorry. Anyway, I've had lots of fun playing around and discovering how to use it, and it makes me wish I had as much talent as I do creative ideas about what to do with it all.


















(That was my very first effort, using the paintbox colors. Mostly doodling and practicing since.)

Hey, here's something. I've written quite a bit about the house to the north of me. The house one down, once owned by the beloved Shirley and now rental property that has given me no small amount of grief over some of the tenants. And the upkeep (or lack thereof) of the house. I've never written much about the house one south of me.





















It's a house, with the same basic build as the Poderosa and One House North, but it wasn't used as a residence. It was a business. A business that abandoned the house when it was basically condemned by the town for having water damage to the floor so bad the floors were pulling away from the walls. The house fell into disarray, which saddened me, because I did so like the owner of that house. When the business was still there, he was in and out infrequently, was always quiet, had very little come and go traffic, and let me know right from the first day that I was free to use his parking lot to turn around in so I wouldn't have to back out of my driveway into oncoming traffic.

The house was actually bought by the folks who own business Two Houses South, and they informed me last Friday that the house was finally being torn down. They said they didn't know what was going up there, if anything, but they wanted to let me know. I knew anyway, save the date, because of the red "condemned" signs on the house.

Anyway, it all began Saturday, the morning after I'd stayed up all night making the band video, and I'll be damned if they didn't have the thing pretty much demolished in the three hours I slept. I woke up to find this...






















...and about 14 tons of trash in my driveway and yard. I went on to B'burg that day, but when I got back every single bit of trash had been picked up, thank you demolishers, and I was left with an empty lot. And a stunning realization.

It started when I noticed that along with the house being torn to smithereens, so was my tree. The big tree in my backyard I've cussed while mowing around, but whose leaves turn beautiful colors every fall. I was right bummed about that, and noticed that the tree was in the parameters of the orange property line cones, and kept thinking, "Did they uproot my tree by some stupid mistake of property cones?" Then when the land was graded, I noticed it was graded up to those very cones, almost right next to my driveway.





















I was perplexed, then it hit me. All three of our little houses there, the Poderosa, One House North, and One House South, are all the same basic design. Except! Somewhere along the line the dennette was added on to the side of my house. The property lines were right! If I didn't have the dennette, I'd have just as much space from my driveway as One House North has on it. It wasn't my tree! Those weren't my leaves!

And I've been mowing a shitload more yard than I've needed to the past two years. And "sorry" to all the Mowing Boys past who'd been mowing more yard than they needed to.

And finally, speaking of houses, my dear Poderosa has needed some minor upkeep for over six months. Some random nails had pulled from the roof, causing about six raised shingles, and a piece on the eave of the side of the house had come loose. I mentioned this to a client of ours who does carpentry work and he said that was something he and his son could do.

They also did that while I was gone last weekend. And they didn't charge me a single dime. Nice people exist. Unlike the scum-sucking ratbag who stole money from TheCompanyIWorkFor today.

That's all.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* By the way, may I humbly apologize if anyone's visited a website or blog on my blogrolling column there above. Those bastards have gone and put ads at the top of any website you visit from there, and any other you link to from that website, and on and on. One long line of ads at the tops of sites. And to add insult to injury, you can't comment on any blog you visit from the blogroll. I detest this, and am thinking of doing away with it altogether.