I know you're [inlink]kara,91[/inlink] probably looking for a local boating buddy, and it's not even my boat per se, but my brother just bought a sailboat! He drove 450 miles in one weekend to preview two of the four contenders, then made three round-trips from Connecticut to Lake Kerr, NC for the final winner. A 28' 1990 Beneteau First 285



Now renamed "Carolina Pearl" (after our [inlink]twisted,56[/inlink] grandmother) and safely moored in Norwalk Harbor.



This has been a long time coming for my brother. I remember when my parents announced we'd be getting a new brother or sister. My brother's response: "we could have bought a sailboat instead!" I think in the end he was happier to have our little brother. And now he has both!

We've certainly come a long way since the days Dad rowed us [inlink]twisted,229[/inlink] around Long Island sound, haha.

I love shopping in Japantown. Although it's so hard to decide what to get for lunch. They're all so damn cute!








Ok, maybe that one's not so cute.


And don't forget the sake!

(Apologies to previous commenters. I accidentally deleted this post. I hope this reenactment lives up to the original.)

Mama mia, what a week! I learned a hard lesson today, and I'm going to share it with you all right now. Do NOT suffer in silence, (or in my case, relative silence), until you blow up at the wrong person. ONLY to find out the cure for the pain was within reach all along. Click the heels of your ruby slippers three times! You do NOT have to bother the wizard!

Turns out Firefox was placing the "open file" dialog box out of sight below my dock. D'oh! I should have figured that out!

Safari did crash (consistently) right on cue, and still does after all my AppleCare maintenance. But once I found out my Firefox bug was a non-issue, I didn't care. Sorry I don't have a solution I can share with you (e:Jenks)! Except, use Firefox for estrip!

I can't even begin to describe this week. I think part of my problem is always trying to describe it online. That's never going to work.

Thanks again, (e:theecarey)! I took my estrip bumper sticker for a ride to clear my mind after my AppleCare appointment. Tried to take an incredible picture, but my digital camera battery finally died once and for all. Hopefully I'll get all my crap (including the battery charger) out of storage after August 15. This whole (tenant) thing started in February. I probably should have taken my realtor's advice and given my tenant 30-days notice the day I bought the place in November '05. But I just couldn't see myself standing on the sidewalk waiting to change the locks after the country sheriff forcibly evicts someone on my account. Then again, I could easily see myself with that $14k back. ;-)

The crazy thing is, the guy hasn't even lived here for the past 10 years. He stores his stuff here, and he made it abundantly clear as part of the settlement he won't be removing all of it before moving out, and he doesn't want whatever is left. But he does want his full security deposit of $200 back. (I hope my cost for the dumpster to haul away his stuff is less than $200. Then again, I can probably post "free stuff!" on craigslist and get plenty of takers. Which makes me happier than putting it into the landfill.)

I'm sure the woman who moved in 10 years ago is very grateful for the rent control rate she pays to my tenant, and doesn't mind living with all his stuff for the trouble. Meanwhile, all I want is to finally get my own stuff in my own place, and let the rent control tenant go to a government agency (subsidized by my property taxes) if he does indeed need to be subsidized rather than to me for support. ANYWAY! I'm not getting into that now. Back to my happy, happy place!

I can't believe my good fortune this week! I've been bracing myself for a karmic backlash to the incredibly bad vibes I sent to an undeserving (understatement of the century) recipient last week.

Instead, well, you read about the most amazing phone call I've ever received. And today! I come home from working late, grab my mail, rifle through the usual recycle bin fodder, then...what's this? Lo and behold! A hand-addressed envelope with an honest-to-god postmark? FROM BUFFALO NY!!!

The minute I saw the return address I knew exactly what it might be and who it was from. Thanks (e:Theecarey) !!!

It's everything I hoped it would be! Seriously! The Golden Gate Bridge has nothing on that orange. In fact, I think Christo's next gig should be covering the GG Bridge with estrip bumper stickers! How cool would that be?

(e:Theecarey) - if estrip ever needs a W. Coast PR division, I'm your man! I mean, woman!

p.s. - thanks to everyone who offered to send me a bumper sticker. I have some kind of stubborn, self-reliant streak that would rather be miserable than accept help from others. Thank god (e:Theecarey) saw through that! And thanks to the rest of you for putting up with me.

Now I just have to put things right with Steve Jobs. Although he is NOT getting my estrip bumper sticker. ;-)

Today was so nuts. I took the day off from work to appear in court to evict my upstairs tenant. I don't even want to go into the reasons, since in most circles, the mere thought of evicting a tenant immediately makes me evil. My crime is I bought the building and want to live in the best unit, and the only way to do that is to evict the tenant. (Even though he's on a month-to-month lease and only needs to give me 30 days notice to leave, but for some reason the only way I can get him out is to evict him. Which would make more sense if he was actually living there, but he's been subletting to someone else for 10 years now. And that's not even half the reasons I'm not getting into.)

Anyway, I don't want to evict him, so I pay him $14,000 instead. He wanted $36,000. But he knew damn well I'm only required by law to pay him and the woman who is subletting from him $1,000 each and give them 30 days notice, so they took my generous offer of $14,000 plus six weeks to move out instead. Meanwhile, I have to pay my lawyer god knows how much, but let's not get into that.

If that's not stressful enough, my iMac has been kind of problematic since I got it. ((e:Paul) has already lived through too much of my drama over this so I won't expose you to any more.) I started writing my 10 reasons to switch back to a PC (you have NO IDEA how sacrilegious - or as close to sacrilegious as I get - that is), and I finally hit 10 (actually it was 11, or more accurately the #1 reason caught me by surprise one more time and I was so pissed I wrote it up as 11) and I actually EMAILED THEM    to STEVE JOBS! Signing it with my AppleCare number.

Well, as these things typically go, the next morning I felt pretty ashamed of the way I phrased #11 (among other things), but I'm thinking, there's no way Steve Jobs actually gets email from the general public, right? I mean, I just guessed at his email address out of frustration, it's not like I can email STEVE JOBS!!!! Right??!!!??? RIGHT????!!!!!!!

Well, wrong.

So Steve's vice president of executive relations just called me and we're setting up an appointment for my iMac with an Apple genius. Oh my god, I am so embarrassed. I will never swear at Steve Jobs again! I swear!

Of course, the down side of that is, I may still swear at (e:Paul) occasionally. It's not easy being my hero.