Share the Road

This is a first draft of what was going to be a contest entry, only I decided to go in another direction, so I'm posting it here. The reason I bolded first draft is that it's unfinished and dripping with what one of the local art schools calls "first ideas". However, I think it has its good points. If nothing else, this is a pretty accurate story of life and parking in our neighbourhood up till a couple of weeks ago.

“What are you guys doing up there?” I called as a heavy THUD shook my basement office.
“It wasn’t us!”
No, it wasn’t. It was a construction crew out in the back lane, excavating a hole big enough for both our cars to fall into.
Okay, no big deal. Would’ve been nice if the city or the contractor or somebody had let us know in advance, but . . . Anyway, by the looks of things, I still had a little time to get the cars out of the driveway before it was cut off by the brink of the abyss.
For a while, we parked in front of the house. Again, no big deal. Just a little further to carry in all the groceries. And it couldn’t go on forever, could it?
No – it ended one morning when we saw, planted right by our cars, a sign saying NO PARKING BY ORDER OF CITY ENGINEER.
So we couldn’t park in our own driveway or in front of our house. This was beginning to be a big deal, but then we realized we had the perfect fallback parking space: In front of an empty house around the corner. Our only fear was that the realtor would track us down and complain about how hard it was to sell a house in today’s market even without a rusted-out clunker parked in front. That, and getting a child with a laptop and a trombone over to the car every Thursday morning.
This lasted until the crew started parking their backhoe in the space.
Then it finally became a big deal. We parked wherever it seemed vaguely possible: In front of the house across the street, after asking the people there. In front of the house on the corner, without asking, though I knew the woman there and didn’t think she’d mind. Besides, no one else would want to park in front of her house – the place was so close to the corner it was illegal.
One day I left the car in one of the spaces by the park for half the day. Hey, I pay taxes.
Just when we thought the construction project was going to last longer than either of our cars, the crew disappeared. I saw them at work over on the expensive side of town. They left behind only a stray LOCAL TRAFFIC ONLY sign and a few unpaved spots in the lane – nothing big, only a few inches deep.
We sighed with relief and went back to parking in our own driveway and walking less than half a mile to our cars.
Then, one morning . . . THUD.
Does anyone have an empty lot to rent?

Minimum Security Hotels

C.S. Lewis once compared life on earth to a building which some residents believe is a hotel, and the rest believe is a prison. The first group thinks the place is awful, the second thinks it's not so bad, considering what it is.

Some Trip Advisor reviews remind me of this. And it always seems to be the staff that thinks the place is a prison.

This, for example. Read how a guest asks the hotelier where his dinner is -- it's been an hour and a half since he ordered. And the gracious host tells him he's "not at McDonald's."

Guest cancels his order, other people who've been waiting start clapping. Landlady throws them all out of the dining room and locks the door, screams at them to go to their rooms and not talk to anyone. Hotelier threatens to call the police.

Okay . . .

Oh, and the guest gets charged for the meal he canceled.

This is mild compared to that:

The lady who answered the room service actually recommended I order a pizza from a small place in town. Strange recommendation from someone running room service, but I was appreciative of the honesty.

Leftover Vegetables

A guy named Alonzo Bodden, on the Jay Leno show, says pretty much what I feel about health scare stories in the news:

A couple of years ago, tomatoes were deadly. Remember that? A tomato was deadly, and the year before that it was spinach. The FDA is run by a seven-year-old kid that hates vegetables.

Tomatoes and spinach? C'mon! Everyone knows it's carrots that'll kill you. Also parsnips, turnips (anything that ends in "nip" bites), cabbage -- I call it Attack of the Winter Vegetables.

How's this for a new signature? Illegible enough?

Well, that bit in the middle does look somewhat like a W.

What have I been doing the past couple of days?

Among other things, like doing extra assignments I recklessly volunteered for, I've been perfecting (imperfecting?) a deliberately mediocre comic strip.

No, I didn't draw it -- I can't draw. It's made by turning photos into faux sketches with the "edge" effect in MS Photo Editor. I know . . .

(If you can't read the text, click on the strip for a larger image.)

Technique

Wanted to share my highly detailed notes that eventually became this article.
Below is an exact transcription of the original scrawl:

• last time . . .
• still . . .
  
• petcetera guy questions
• what it looks like, etc.
• FAQ: #1
• Then, after several days . . .
  
• But . . .
  

Where would I be without my notes?

The name says it all

Circa my childhood, when hats were still mandatory in places: The wastebasket hat.

From Dover (picture, not hat).

Late-night conversation

Above: Sound of helicopter.
"I thought the black helicopters were supposed to be silent."
"Well, they're getting old now, so . . . "

Attempt to monetize forty minutes waiting in a stalled car

. . . taking generic pictures to sell for a dollar each to go with my (paying) blog posts:

"Hey, guy, I wanted a picture of the trees in the park, not your car! . . . Never mind. What I ended up with is a picture of neither."










Here's another one from the same occasion. Rearview mirrors can be so revealing:

. . . or not.