Monday, January 07, 2019

Weird Little Yellow Car

Over the last couple of weeks, I've seen this weird little yellow car in my neighborhood a couple of times. It looks like it may be a mini-cooper of some sorts. Normally I wouldn't think anything of a weird yellow car. In fact, I love when cars are interesting colors. It makes them noticeable in traffic, when you see a little orange speed past you, or a bug-green car run a red light. These are helpful little cars when they are that color.

This little yellow car always has a guy in the driver's seat, an older gentleman. And he's looking at my house.  On Sunday, Geoff noticed him and said "What's that asshole doing looking at our house and pointing to us?"

Doug and I both got up to look, and sure enough, there he was. Someone was in the passenger's seat, and they were parked facing the wrong way down the street. The man was pointing and gesturing. And when he saw us looking out the window at him, he pulled away from the curb. In doing so, he almost hit a car head on (remember, he's pointed the wrong way down the street by parking in the incorrect direction). That would have been comical, if no one got hurt.

And we could go outside and say "dude, what's up with you looking at our house and stuff?"

I'm intrigued but also nervous.

Our lease is up at the end of July. What if this is the owner, and he's thinking of selling the house? We currently rent through a rental agency, and I was going to wait a month or so to talk to our agent about renewing the lease for another year.

Houses in our neighborhood are typically $450,000 and up. A cute little one around the corner was just rehabbed top to bottom and is on the market for $599,000. I hardly think it is worth it. It's pretty and all, nicely newly restored. But wow that's expensive.

A lot of properties in this area are skyrocketing due to Ah-may-Zahn HQ number 2 opening in Virginia in the future. They hadn't even granted the town the deal when prices for rent started to climb. Everyone figured it was a foregone conclusion, and they should jack up the rents to get in all those employees gonna make big paychecks at new HQ. The timeline for the HQ to be open is still years in the making - no one is going to be working there because there is no there for quite a while.

But even on the other side of the Potomac, up here in the county I live in, things have gotten very expensive housing-wise. If they don't renew our lease, we have to find somewhere else to live and to be honest, I may have to find somewhere else to work. Commuting down here from say Frederick MD (a wonderful place to live) is a challenge traffic-wise, and I would love to live closer to the ocean, but again... housing costs are insane and traffic is not much better out towards Annapolis or Upper Marlboro. I'd be living in a car, both for my commute and where I live!

And, Geoff is doing great at the community college where he is taking classes, he's very happy, and really working hard. I don't want to upset the apple cart that we carefully got into place with him this year.

So back to weird little yellow car and the man inside. Back in the day, I'd probably make up a narrative about hit. I used to do that with Dave when we did our Shenanigans. We'd sit at a bar and make up a short story about someone down the other end, holding court like they do in the middle of the afternoon.

But maybe I'm getting older, and I'm not as much fun as I used to be. I am starting to slightly panic over this. I'm kind of convinced he's the owner and he's going to want to sell the house and make a fortune on it. And I'll have to move. And now I'm worried.

Hopefully it is nothing but my imagination runs wild in the not-fun direction. We'll see what is going on...

Friday, January 04, 2019

These Dreams

Happy 2019, dear reader. All five of you real humans who I think still read this blog - I hope 2019 is full of love and joy for you. Or at least isn't a dumpster fire of epic proportions.

I don't put a lot of stock into dream interpretation. I've written a couple of times here about dreams I've had that were super bizarre, like my dream about Steven Page singing in a taqueria with incredible interior design.

Lately, I've had a lot of dreams about barns and about roads.

The barns are empty of animals, and are being used for events. In one dream I have often, we're doing some repair to a barn door. Hinges, new wood frame, making it secure and safe. I like the kind of barn doors that are on a rail or a track, and they slide open instead of barn doors that swing open. Last night, I had a dream where my boss was getting married, and the wedding was in a barn (very not her style!) and I was in charge of keeping an eye on the small children in attendance.

Sounds very much like my style if it isn't hers.

At the wedding, most of my daughter's high school friends were there. Which is weird, because only my daughter knows my boss. The cake was really good.

I dream about off ramps and bends in the road a lot. The other night I was dreaming that Geoff was behind the wheel, and he was eyeballing some dogs the way some dudes sometimes eyeball hot babes. He had a big grin on his face, and missed the turn. We went off the road and rolled over and over on a beach. I was yelling at him, neither of us were injured, and he was defensive and angry, and I think embarrassed that it happened. No dogs were injured in our roll over incident.