But my life has been a series a computer programming tasks, followed by home repair tasks - back to back, 18/7. I am ready for the part of summer that has things like food festivals and hiking.

The last tenant to go was supposed ot be out May 1st. If you remember from my previous entry about it, I gave her $100 to have her stuff out on the 1st. She already owes use so many hundreds of dollars, I figured what was one more, if she was just gone and we could begin the rental process again with different people.

Well, we went to go clean it on Sunday and all her stuff was still there. So I call her today to tell her to get it out by friday or its going to salvation army and she flips out. We get her rent from the city and I told her I was holding it until the stuff was out because she is renting the space until it is vacated.

So she has her grandmother call me, all upset that the poor girl has no money and why can't I cut her a break. Well, because she has screwed me out of $1000+, she left both apartments nasty, and she removed the appliances from upstairs and brought them downstairs - which means I have to bring them back up and they are way heavy.

It really makes me so mad because we have been so extra nice with her and she just keeps fucking it up. According to her grandmother she has been trying to get her stuff out since she moved out but for one reason or another she couldn't.

She still had the heat on 70 when I was there yesterday after going nuts about her spring heating biull being over $1000. I guess thats what you get when you leave the heat on between 70-80 24/7.

I kind of blame myself a bit because I saw her birth certificate yeserday and on the dining room table and she was born in 1991. Yes, she is 18. Had I known I would probably have never rented to her but I guess you can't do that anyways.

I think in the future I am going to back to students, they at least have to worry abou thtings like their credit score and having a place to live. My trial with the poor did not work out so well.

Yesterday during our tree planting expedition we were cleaning up the trash from El Wasseems over by Ferry and Oxford and planting some tree over there.

Across the street there was The Buffalo Free Market. Looked pretty neat. I guess there idea is people bring stuff fthey don't want and trade or give it away. The people in the neighborhood seemed excited.

In this picture there were only a few people as they set up, but within and hour it was packed with people.


It was such a weird mix of urban punk and ghetto. I watched some people pouring vegtable oil intto thir car for biodiesel. The house they seemed to live in was a house on one side, but burned out without roof on the other. It reminded me of this one house in germany that was split in half, one side crumbling into decay and the other very up to date.

El Wasseems on Ferry and Main street has the most digusting corner on main street. It appears people buy stuff at El Wasem's go outisde, unwrap and throw the trash on the street. The was an unbeleivable number of cans, wrappers, bottles, bags, etc. I think that really the store needs to be held accountable for some part of it and should probably clean up around their storefront but clearly they don't. At least they should have a trash can outside. I guess the block club is thinking about installing a trash can there. We had wanted to plant trees but people just drive over the sidewalk too much for that and the baby trees are expensive.

It seemed like the area directly around El Wasem's had another kind of shopping going on that was totally unrelated to the Buffalo Free Market across the street. The kind of shopping where young kids buy something on the street from not people that live in the apartment buildings behind the store. As an example, For a while when we were cleaning some ~15 y/o on a skateboard was hanging out against the wall of the store looking really out of place. Then a dude comes out of the apartment building, he and the kid trade something in their hands and the kid takes off on a skateboard. Maybe they were trading baseball cards, I doubt it.

At least I missed the joints.

Our block club is planting ~30 new trees on linwood today. (e:matthew)
was an organizer. I never thought I'd be up shoveling at 9am on a
Saturday.