I wrote back to the priest about his last response (e:paul,44381) to my email (e:paul,44377)

Armand,
I am not asking you to police the public street. I am asking you to get rid of the tenants whose clients cannot abide by the law - after months of being told what to do - and who require a significant amount more infrastructure that you can offer. It has gotten so much worse now that they can't park in the driveway, they just park across it or double park which is illegal.

You are right I should call the police. But seriously, do I have to call the police every day to get in my own driveway. That is ridiculous. The only reason these people are here is because you are making money off of it.

As you said in your Feb 29th email:

"If the situation does not improve within a reasonable time, we may be forced to ask the Dance Camp to find another place to teach. We at Ascension are dedicated to this neighborhood, so rest assured, we will stand up for your side on this."

What is reasonable time? It has been over 2 months and the situation has not changed in fact it has gotten worse.

The real problem is that no matter how much the dance camp tells all the parents, often the children are picked up by friends/grandparents/etc who are not aware of the rules. I think you just don't undertsant the volume of the situation. Try visiting the church around 5PM when they drop-off/pick up or on a saturday afternoon.

This is not a once in a while, one car thing. It is an every day thing involving many, many cars. It is an everyday issue that I have to fight to get in/out my own driveway and none of these people would be here without the dance camp.

You also said that you had ordered a sign on in your April 9th email:

"Yesterday we ordered a "sandwich" board that she will put in the driveway every day. It reads NO PARKING OR DROP OFF IN DRIVEWAY, THIS IS A PRIVATE SPACE AND YOU WILL BE TOWED."

I have to ask how it is possible that a simple sign, ordered April 8th is not finished by May 18th, over 2 months later. And honestly, where is this sign even going to go? On the back of a truck at the end of the driveway?

As another example , the other day a man in a red car, who's license plate I could not capture from the in the house, sped up our driveway at like 20 miles per hour all the ay up to in front of our garage.

The older lady security guard asked him not to park there because it was not their property and then he yelled out the window, "I am not parking, just dropping them off real quick" and she said, "okay." This is never ok.

However, I can't blame her because what is she supposed to do? She has no way of enforcing the rules and I don't think there even is a way to enforce the rules. I know how rude and angry the people can get and she is just one, very nice older lady policing the situation.

Really, the answer is not hosting something that you do not have the infrastructure to support.

As I said before, the other groups using the church do not make this an issue at all.

Paul

So the priest responded to say they are doing their best and that is all they can do and that I should call the police. How about the fact they are only there because you are running a money making business renting space to them. If any other business on Linwood was doing the same thing it would be a huge deal. Imagine a doctors office with the same problem. In fact I am now going to have to make this a block club issue. If you don't have the infrastructure to handle he volume of people then don't run a business that requires that volume.

Dear Paul,
We have control only over the driveway itself. We cannot police the public street. The Dance Camp has hired a security guard for their closing times when parents are picking up their children.

If someone is blocking the entrance to our driveway, we call the police. Alas, for the Buffalo police it is a low priority and by the time they've arrived, usually the perpetrator is gone.

I feel the Dance Camp is being accommodating to the neighborhood and in this case, hiring a guard. The AA groups are on notice about their noise level, parking and trashing our lawn.

I'm sorry that things have escalated to the point when people begin to swear at one another. Obviously it's at a boiling point for both you and the Dance Camp.

Let's see what the security guard can do. Karen has written to all the parents, who have done their best. It's usually when a non-parent relative who is not aware of the driveway situation comes to pick up a child. As I mentioned before there is a sign being made that states: DO NOT BLOCK DRIVEWAY. No stopping or drop off. It has not yet come back from the printers but when it does, we'll install it down by the sidewalk.

Plans have been talked about even before I arrived about putting in a parking lot on North Street. while this is a viable option, at this point we don't have any money for it... but it's still an open option.

Armand

Tueday Morning
My mother is constantly raving about this store called Tuesday Morning over on Sheridan past Niagara Falls Blvd . They had so many awesome deals. I found this great microwavable, reusable gel heatpad that seriously has no smell at all. It is made of some amazing non-toxic gel and works so good. I am using it right now. They also have them on amazon but for some reason only in 2 packs. They are made in Canada. I would suggest it to anyone as a great, safe alternative to an electric heating pad.



They also had a lot of strange home deco stuff. Like what the heck is this? I referred to it a the conchgina, which leads me to my next consumer discovery of the day. I feel bad highlighting the ridiculous conchgina when there was so much cool houseware and gardenware but it is just so photo-worthy. I would definately suggest checking the store out.



Clamato and Budweiser In One Can
We took a stroll over to Forest Lawn to see (e:matthew)'s families plot and on the way back we stopped at the gas station on the corner of Delaware and West Delevan. In the beer section they had this really nasty drink - and to think I like clams and beer. Who is their target market on this one. The clam and tomato juice folk or the budweiser in a can folk. They seem like such different audiences.



I like Frank Lloyd Wright's work but the new monument is just down right fugly.


refrigerator
Before all that we went refrigerator shopping. For those of you have not seen our mid 80s refrigerator with the broken off door handle that doesn't close - you know why we need a new one. After throwing out a lot of freezer burned crap from the door being opened for hours and thawing and then freezing over and over, I now want one with a door alarm. I think it will save lots of money. I also can't believe how efficient refrigerators are now.

I want this one, The Jenn Air JSD2695KES . The issue is that Orvilles and Home Depot both have it for $2099 but us-appliance.com has it for $1859 plus free shipping and seems to be pretty reputable. I am curious if Orvilles will match that. At Home depot it comes with a $200 gift card for Home Depot but it has like a $60 shipping charge. Anyone have experience with matching at Home Depot or Orvilles?




What's super crazy is that the 3D model is downloadable for use with Google sketchup

What could make planning a kitchen easier?

I seriously, cannot believe today's driveway issue. Its so sad because I like the idea of the dance camp and the people that run it, but the parents/grandparents/guardians that don't follow parking rules and laws make me insane.

Today this one woman was double parked completely across our driveway with her car off. When we came home from the grocery store, the following situation occurred as you can read in my letter to the Priest of the church.

This diagram helps with the letter below.

Father Armand,
The driveway situation is really not any better.

I feel bad about the situation because the dance camp tappyK and the other older lady who works there are so respectful of the driveway and nice and I like the idea of their dance camp. It is not them I have a problem with. It is some of the parents. They seem to try really hard.

I just had an incident in the driveway where we were coming back from grocery shopping and a woman was parked double parked in the street, completely across both sides of the driveway with the car off. Terry beeped like 5 times to try and get in the driveway and she would not move. At that point I got out of the car and asked her to move. She moved up like 2 feet and I assumed she was moving up more.

At that point I had gone in the house to open the backdoor to unload the groceries. When I came out she was still in the middle of the driveway and my temper got the best of me and I yelled, "What the fuck is going on here, get the hell out of my driveway." as I was really mad a the point and terry was blocking traffic all the way up to north.

Then she asked me who I was and what business it was of mine if she parked there. I said it was my driveway and that she was illegally parked and to move. Then she said she doesn't need to move because I cussed at her at that she was going to get out of the car and "slap the shit out of me." I then walked away to go take a picture of her license (attached) plate and matt asked her why she was at the church she refused to tell us.

Clearly your infrastructure cannot handle the traffic flow from this dance camp. You really need to consider building a true parking lot on the North St side of the church. I should not have to deal with this kind of drama every time I want to get back in my driveway. It is really embarrassing when I am bringing guests over, as happened the other day.

No matter what, THIS HAS GOT TO STOP. I don't care what the heck you have to do but if the dance camp parents continue to park in or across my driveway, I am going to continue to escalate the situation with them until one day someone like that large black woman "slaps the shit out of me." and then we will have a much more serious issue.

Paul Visco

I really like this song. Okay no really I am just testing uploading this for (e:jenks) and (e:joshua) but I do like it. It was 1.8MB and in MP3 format. I am not sure about music uploads as I don't want to get sued.

::DOWNLOAD SOUND::

So (e:terry) was cutting his hair and he asked (e:matthew) to trim the back for him. He meant the back by his neck. (e:matthew) misunderstood that he wanted him to touch up the back and didn't check that (e:terry) had already taken the safety off.



He looks mean when bald and angry.

I started to feel sick last night a bit before bed. Then when I woke up this morning, I felt nauseous. Now I am sick to my stomach and have a headache and am achey. God, why now - can't I just have one freakin moth malady free. I felt so great since the appendix thing. I actually have not had one sick day since then.

Its the one thing I hate most about this supposed Crohn's thing is that I never know if I just have a cold/flu, which I think I do this time, or if this is going to be the beginning of something terrible.

Okay this might sounds like a cheezy advertisement but it is really written out of the pure enjoyment of using this application.

You may have seen me without my iphone this week. Thats because it now lives simcardless in the bottom of my bag after I discovered a new program called Resco Radio for my windows mobile. Between that and the much higher connection speed of my windows mobile Tilt phone I am in mobile internet radio heaven.
I have been listening to German radio on it non-stop all week and to make it even sweeter, it now records any shoutcast station to the storage card as MP3 so you can listen to it later. So that is a mp3 plays an unlimited amout of free radio from around the world and can even store it for later use.

If you have a windows mobile PDA or smart phone - YOU FREAKIN NEED THIS NOW! Here is the link on Handango for the PDA version
and the smartphone version

Its 19.99 but you get a 30 day trial to start. It is the best mobile internet radio app out there, well besides streamtuner for the nokia n810.


The ipod part of the iphone might have a slick interface, but its really not cool when you own about 4 songs. I have relied on internet radio for music for so long it was hard to give it up for the iphone. Now the icandy has mostly worn off. At least till the 3g iphone comes out and it has internet radio.

Food
Friday night, we went to Europa Bistro on Elmwood and I had pheasant, it was totally delicerific. I would suggest anyone who loves European food head on over. (e:matthew) had polish Golabki which looked pretty good too.


Garbage Pile
I called the city to pick up the "garbage" left over from our bathroom demolition. It costs $82 for 12x3x3ft.


I thought that was reasonable as the wood was going to just mold in our garage and a lot of it was just garbage (broken glass, old plastic doll house, etc). I put it out and the city guy said he would come by in the morning to assess the cost, we would then have till 1PM to bring the money down to city hall and they would take it away.

The thing is I put it out on Thursday night and Friday morning at 9:20 I got a call from the city saying I forgot to put my garbage out and need to reschedule. The thing is I did not forgot, someone must have taken it all. I find it hard to believe because a lot fo it was no reusable in any way. Like I could see someone taking the wood, but every scrap of everything? Well, it was free so I can't complain. I would have put out more stuff from the attic.

Air Pollution
According to this article I was reading, air pollution increases the risk of Blood Clots. The really surprising part was the picture of pollution in Beijing. I had no idea it was so bad. It seems so far removed. Apparently, they are going to reduce pollution just before the olympics by shutting down factories, stopping construction for two months and reducing traffic



Imagine what it feels like during the "clean" time if you live there. Imagine the impending doom feeling of it coming back after it is gone.

I guess it was bad in riverside when I lived there one summer - but not like that photo. Someone, recently wrote or told me about some chinese friend driving down the way to Niagara Falls and saying how it smelled like home - was it one of you guys?

Work
Is so freakin' crazy. I am back to loving it but its just crazy how much there is to do! I launched one of the apps I was working on today and the the department that uses it seemed to really love it. I think tomorrow is going to be a really dramatic, life changing day. Hopefully, in a good way.

I also saw this cancer fighting robot surgeon in a conference room the other day. It looks like the future.


The Fireplace
I keep working on the fireplace in the side parlour/office. It is starting to look really nice.



I am so glad I stripped it, even though I am painting it because the detail stands out so much now. I think I am never oil painting again though.

(e:mike) and I went to Wegmans to get everything for our Mother's Day dinner. We managed to top my mothers multi meat meal maximum with 6 of our own meat options. (e:terry) and (e:matthew) also played crucial roles in cooking and decorating. Actually, they were really tiny portions of meet because they were just part of the wraps. I think we ate more veggies than meat per person.

We had:
Calamari, crab legs, chicken, sirloin, shrimp, sea bass

Along side:
bean sprouts, carrots, pickles, olives, chopped ginger, chopped garlic, orange peppers, hungarian peppers, wakame salad, sweet potato

On:
Rice noodles and Romain lettuce leaves

It was a Korean style inspired meal but had no real Korean flavors. My parents really seemed to love it and it was fun watching everyone create their lettuce leaves.



For dessert we had watermelon with strawberries and whip cream along side chocolate cookies.

My mom drank tea made with one of the pretty tea balls we bought in San Francisco.



Before anyone reams me about eating Sea Bass, we bought it because at wegman's it was the only fish labeled sustainable.

It was so delicious and the perfect texture.



We got my mom a digital camera. The same one as (e:mike)'s but in pink. At first we weren't sure if she would like but then she took to it right away.



Wegmans has so much good food int he prepared lunch section. That is where (e:mike) and I ate lunh to get ready to prepare dinner.
They even had polenta


And they also sold mini fresh herbs for around $1 which I think it s great idea.


This, however, was a horrible idea? Who thought that blueberries were so awesome but just lacked a convenient carry case? Worst of all it still says you have to wash them?