Around 11pm last night the rumble and air brakes of a large vehicle was heard in the street, so we went to take a look. It was a flatbed tow-truck outside Mad Bin Lady’s house, the driver of which was preparing to load a car that was parked there, right in the spot where Mad Bin Lady has her silly “No Parking Anytime” sign nailed to a tree.
There was a lot of chain clanking, and the car began to be pulled up onto the truck. Then there seemed to be more people over there, and Mad Bin Lady’s raised voice could be heard. Unfortunately we couldn’t make out what she was saying, or who she was saying it to.
Shortly after that, the car was let back down into the street again, and the tow truck roared off without it. We then heard a woman shouting “Someone’s a crazy old bitch!”. A while later, somebody shouted “Is this street private parking?”.
And that was the end of it. The best theory we could come up with is that Mad Bin Lady, incensed that somebody had the temerity to park outside her house, had called the tow truck. Then, as the truck started to load the car, the owners (probably visiting one of our neighbours) must have come out to see what was going on and expressed unhappiness about having their car towed away.
What is hard to understand is how Mad Bin Lady would be able to get away with having someone else’s car towed, unless the police were involved, which there was no evidence of.
Tomorrow we are going to Las Vegas, or “Begas”, as Muffet calls it. My purpose is to attend a conference starting on Monday, but in the meantime I’m looking forward to a bit of relaxation Vegas-style with Sarahparah and Muffet.
This last couple of weeks I’ve been attempting to port a ridiculously complex and overblown application to Windows. This thing is so big I had to split it into *five* DLLs, to avoid the 65536 member limit on a DLL. It’s absurd.
And it’s still not working, although I am *this* close ::holds up forefinger and thumb indicating 2 femtometer spacing::
So much for that. Do you ever wish that interviewers would ask politicians questions they don’t know the answer to? I do. I am so tired of them being able to answer, or rather, not answer, but say a lot anyway. I want to hear something like:
Interviewer: Senator Obama, would you like to state your understanding of the Casimir Effect?
Obama: (pauses for a moment) I’m sorry I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about
Interviewer: Hoorah! My physics training trumps yours.
I should also post about my chat with MAD BIN LADY … but I will leave that for another post.
Long time readers of this LJ will remember the Bin Lady from Hell … the old bag who lives opposite and who calls the council to report her neighbours if they don’t bring their bins in on time, and who is not averse to moving her neighbours’ bins off the street and into inconvenient places on their property, in her glorious conviction of self-righteousness.
Other supremely irritating aspects of her personality compell her to stick or pin notes to things. For example, she has a small notice on a stick in the grass verge outside her house saying “Your dog is destroying my grass”. As another example, if a car parks outside her house, in the street, she will affix a note to the windscreen saying “Please park your car outside the house you are visiting”.
Today we saw that she has put up a big, official-looking, “No Parking” sign on the tree in the grass verge outside her house. What is going through her head? How does she tick? Does she believe that she has authority over parking in the street, that she owns the grass verge, over the appearance of the street, over her neighbours to the extent of insisting strict compliance with the bin removal codes?
I am sore tempted to wander over with a spare can of black car paint spray under cover of dark, and deface her No Parking sign. Or perhaps I should have a custom sign made for our garden wall, which is in full sight of her, saying “Interfering and Pompous Neighbors Will Be Pissed Upon”.
