My, My…

By Eduardo

We planted some zucchini in our garden, and found that they grow abnormally large and fast. This one grows about an inch a day.

Awesome.

Goodbye #92!

By Paco

Well… in the next few days, I will no longer be living at my little one bedroom apartment, number #92.

It has been a good run, all in all, I have been quite pleased with this apartment complex. I’ve been here for about 2.5 years with very few complaints… so in a way… I am bit leery of leaving. But I have accumulated too much stuff for this little place, and it’s time to finally “move up” to a bigger and nicer place.

A few thoughts and stories about #92.

1) In the grand planning of this complex the planners decided to install numerous speed bumps. Now, I am not against speed bumps, it keeps Tar Heads from flying around the complex, and running people over. But this place went BONKERS for speed bumps, BIG ONES! I think I can lay blame for my shot suspension on the old S10 square on these speed bumps. Basically they built about twice as many as they needed, and built them twice as high as needed as well.

2) Communication was never the managements best asset. They are friendly, and prompt, but poor communicators… case in point.

About 3 months ago I did a load of dishes in the dishwasher, to find that water had over flowed through the over flow valve that sits above the sink. There was water all over the floor, and all over my counter. This next morning, I left a message on the office phone about the problem.

A day later… no response.

So I called again when I knew someone would be there. I got one of the ladies that works there on the phone, she apologized for not getting back to me, and said she’d get it fixed.

Ok great.

Days… and days… go by… no word or sign of a repair.

Finally, after about another week I gave the office another call…

“Hi, this is Paco in #92…”

“Hi Paco.”

“I called a week or so ago about my dishwasher, and it’s still not fixed.”

“Oh, hang on a sec…”

Paco waits patiently…

“Ok… that was fixed about a week ago Paco.”

“It was?!”

“Yes.”

“Oh… well… I never got a call about it, or a note on my door, counter, anywhere telling me it was done.”

“Sorry about that, they are supposed to do that.”

“No problem, at least the repair man was prompt!”

3) My place became a hang out of sorts for some of the Amigos. Often a handful of Amigos would come over, and we’d play cards, sit in the vacant lot nearby and watch cars zoom by on the freeway… whatever.

Amazingly, we never pissed off any neighbors. In fact, once I met the guy that lived behind me, and he complimented me on being a nice quite neighbor. WOW! We must have good walls here.

Well, Pecos decided that he would mess with me from time to time by trying to put various items of mine a bowl of water, and set them in the freezer. I caught him trying to freeze my over knobs once. I don’t what his obsession was with this, but he tried it on more than one occasion.

In fact, once he was successful in freezing my toothbrush overnight in a Tupperware bowl.

In the morning, I found my toothbrush, and bowl, cracked due to the freezing. Thanks a lot Pecos!

I got him back once, by throwing his car keys in a not yet flushed toliet…

4) The apartments near me had some interesting people come and go during my tenure…

The one across from me started with a man who bitched and moaned any time he could get my attention about the people of my hometown. I wasn’t very upset when he moved out.

Then I got a guy that looked like he was in either a full blown mid-life crisis, or he was following the advise of that stupid bumper sticker… “The one who dies with the most toys wins!” This guy had a truck, motorcycle, jet ski, parked in various parking spots, and a bunch of other crap that I could see when he opened his windows. He MUST have moved to a bigger place…

I once had someone move in, that might have lived there for 2 weeks. I don’t know if I ever even saw that person.

Next door to me, I had a hermit guy that was never there, and when he was, he was inside, and never said hi or anything. He also had what looked like a small library worth of books, and an incredible bookshelf system set up.

Diagonal from me, is currently a goth couple. They are pretty nice people, the girl is really nice, she always smiles and says hi to me. I am not sure if the guy speaks. Once, I helped him push his broke down 280Z into a parking space, I am not sure if he said a word to me.

Recently I walked by their place, and saw them with slices of potato cooking on the BBQ. Interesting…

Well… that’s about it! Goodbye old #92!

A Fantastic Forgotten Find

By Eduardo

I was going though some old boxes recently, and came across this decade-old gem that I’d long since forgotten about. Thumbing through it brought back many great memories of Man, the dads, Hallie Ann, Chris & Sykes, and the nights when Jaimeacho and I would go out exploring in the vast untamed wilderness that was our home for a couple of semesters. I felt compelled to scan some highlights from it for your enjoyment, which are presented here in PDF format. Now that I’ve re-read the rulebook, I’m pretty surprised that we weren’t thrown out of that place (“Hey, let’s see what happens if we dump laundry soap in the fountain!”).

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the Timberlake Apartments Rules & Regulations Manual from 1995!

592 Olympic St, and the Gold Medal Idiot

By Jaimenacho

We’ve moved again. I think out of all the Amigos, I’ve succeeded in moving the most. This move was pretty smooth…considering I had the flu for ¾ of it. Paco and Pecos helped with the process, the three of us, and our limited physical prowess were able to move lots of heavy items, some of which went upstairs in a pretty small amount of time.

The house we just moved from was an interesting story.

We had just sold our home, and needed a rental. My wife’s mother who owns a property management firm, had a good place for us. It was an 1800 sq. ft. 4 bedroom house, in a nice neighborhood, good location, etc. The rent was $1100 a month, utilities included. That was a sweet deal. The deal was so good BEACAUSE the owner was trying to claim residency in the house, so he could sell it, and avoid paying considerable taxes on it. The deal seemed too good to be true, and I had weird feelings about moving into the house before we even decided it was a good idea.

The first thing that set me off was the fact he wouldn’t allow our dog to come. He was dead set against dogs, and Weimaraners even more. Apparently a Weimaraner pee’d on his mother at one some point in his life…and he’s had it out for them since. The end point was, no matter what…the dog had to go.

That wasn’t a fun process for me, I had to spend over $200 to GIVE my dog away to a good home. Plus the loss of time, money, and training that he had. This was the first “rift” with our agreement with out landlord…Walt.

Walt agreed ahead of time to pay the utilities, and being as he was trying to convince the world he was “living” in our house, the bills were in his name, and sent to our house. He also had a mail key to come get the bills, and collect rent when he wanted. He was always very good at collecting the rent, but failed to grab his bills. I noticed them stacking up, but figured, he had a plan, or something, because most people who were paying bills would want to get them or inquire about them at some point. I called him once to tell him, but that was it.

This came to be a problem.

We were having dinner guests one evening, and in the middle of preparations, the power went out. It had been raining off and on, so I assumed a car had hit a power poll, and the power was out everywhere. An hour passed, and I noticed a lot of our neighbors still had lights on…this was confusing. Finally, a light bulb in my head (where utility bills remain up to date) clicked on, and I wondered about those bills in the mailbox. I ran and grabbed the stack.

Sure enough, he’d forgotten to pay the bills long enough the city had shut the power off. I called Walt up to let him know, he’d forgotten to pay the bills, and we had no power.

One thing he did very well was make everything out to be someone else’s fault. He tried to blame the fact we didn’t tell him there were bills, for his not paying them. We told him one time. I brought up the fact he HAD a mail key, and was welcome to get them when he got his rent check. He said he wasn’t comfortable looking through our mail. Then why do you need a mail key? He got the power turned back on, but made sure we knew what it cost him to pay the deposit.

A few weeks passed and he called to tell us, he couldn’t believe we had the sprinklers going during the rain. He never told us how to work them, let alone where they were. That was the first I knew that they even worked. We turned them off.

A month passed and we had a message on our phone. We were apparently using too much electricity. Compared to the bills at his house ours were way too high. He was comparing his house, with our house because they were roughly the same Sq. Footage. The fault in his logic was.
A) They were in different cities.
B) We’re a family of 4. It’s just him and his wife.
C) They both work all day, there’s a good chance 3 of the 4 members of our family are home at any given point on any given day.
D) We have small children, we need to keep the house warmer than older people might be able to withstand.
E) Had he checked the averages for our house prior to us living there he’d have found they were only about $25 lower per month.

About this time Walt also decided to cancel using my wife’s mother as his property manager. Keep in mind he was about 3 months behind on paying her. I detect a pattern with this guy.

The next month we got a letter saying our rent was being increased by $200 a month because we were just unable to reduce our electricity useage, and we should try and be more conservative, or face further increases. $200 was MORE than our utilities had ever come to.

With that, we decided to put in our 30-day notice. He’s been calling us all the time since we turned in notice to “show the property.” This means our schedules are put off by him, and his schedule. Whatever, we’re done with that place.

When Kristen’s mom called him, as our property manager to verify that we lived there for our new landlord Walt answered his phone…”Hello this is Jeff.” He did it twice too, then when we got home, and used the same number…”Hello, Walt here…” Why would he be so childish?

We’re pretty concerned now that he’ll try every way he can to keep as much of the deposit as he can. I think he plans on getting his electricity deposit back out of ours. The problem is, I’m not sure he’s aware of all the rules regarding deposits, and how quickly they have to be returned to the renters. By law, if it isn’t returned within a set period of time ( I think 21 days)…you get it ALL back. We’re starting the clock the minute we turn in the keys. If his past practice of paying things on time is constant…we should get it all back.

The problems with living in this house were
1) It was BIG…took a lot to clean it up. It was nice, but a little too big.
2) IT was located on wetlands, which made the ground harder to drain…which meant having a swampy back yard nearly all the time, which made mowing difficult, and playing with the kids difficult too. It also made for lots of bugs, namely ants and spiders.
3) It had matte wall paint, which is you know anything about paint, is hard to clean…you can’t just wipe things off like with semi-gloss, or gloss. With kids that’s not fun.
4) The carpet was Berber from 50 years prior. It was old, matted, and felt like walking on fuzzy concrete. It was white, and got dirty constantly.

Things I liked about it;

1) The location. It was 5 minutes from the mall, and shopping, and 10 minutes from work. It had great freeway access, and was 4 minutes from my mom’s house for babysitting.
2) It was big, and made entertaining, and storing everything we had a lot easier.

Overall, I’m glad to be moving. Sure, I’m moving farther away from all those things I listed above, but the house has more character, and my kids love the stairs, and the “weird” shape of it. I’m lacking the storage I had in my other place, but that’s good…it’ll force us to narrow down our possessions, and have a garage sale. I’ll be able to get another dog, sure, not MY dog who is now NOT MY dog, but someone in Oregon’s, but a new dog.

But the thing I like BEST about this new house….

Walt isn’t ever going to call me again.

My time with “The Boys”

By Paco

Well… my nomad life continues. On and on… move after move after move… will it ever end? Will Paco some day finally put his “Root Down”?

Not in the forseable future.

I have officially notified the “boys” that I am moving out.

While it hasn’t been terrible living here, it has been somewhat annoying. The constant traffic of people coming in and out, the constant messes. It is almost like living in a frat house. The boys are cool… and good guys, but they are 20, I am not… and I don’t have the same lifestyle that these guys have now that I am 30.

So onward to my next home. Hopefully I can manage to stay somewhere for an extended period of time, even a year would be nice.

I will miss the days of beer bongs and video games though… sigh…

2123 Elmira Dr.- A thin line between love and hate.

By Jaimenacho

I loved this house for a lot of reasons. It was the first house I owned. I could do what I wanted to it, when I wanted to do it. If I wanted to paint the walls bright green, with spousal approval, I could. I loved the big tree in the front yard, even if I hated the leaves it deposited on my lawn every fall. I loved the neighborhood in general. I grew up there. My favorite childhood memories were all from there. It was a 2 minute walk to a grocery store, where I could get last minute supplies for dinner. The elementary school I went to as a child was 5 minutes walk from my front door. It was a friendly neighborhood. A walk your dog and kids in the evening neighborhood. I could walk my dog and think back to all the goofy experiences I had when I was younger. It was MY neighborhood for the 2nd time in my life. I loved that my Dad and I built a deck in its backyard during an entire summer. I loved that it was the first place I had my OWN dog. I liked spending holidays there with my family. It was the house my youngest son was born in. (Well the hospital near by anyway) . I was within a drunken stupor from the man-room. I envisioned myself retiring there. I wanted to fix it up the way it should be. I wanted this to be the house that went from being too crowded, to too empty when the kids went off to college. I wanted to retire without a house payment in this house

Retiring here, or living here very long wasn’t in the cards however.

For as much love as I had for the house, I had just as much if not more hate. I hated the leaves the giant oak tree dropped all over the back “yard”. The two yards combined were at least 20 hours worth of leaf raking each fall. I hated the fact the back yard was nothing more than a dirt lot, where weeds sometimes grew. It was full of Bermuda grass, which is the most difficult stuff imaginable to effectively remove. Starting a lawn would have been nearly impossible to do alone. I hated the dust the backyard left on the dog, which he left everywhere else. I hated paying flood insurance on a house that wouldn’t have flooded unless Noah was still alive. I despised the termites who made their annual pilgrimage from the depths of the earth out my kitchen window frame, and all over the window, every spring. I couldn’t stand that the previous owner had outlined every flower bed with massive river rocks that looked horrible, and were almost impossible to get rid of. The lack of closet space in the house was atrocious. I was sharing a closet with my 9 month old son. It wasn’t good. There was no real way to add storage either, short of converting the garage to an extra room. This required far more cash than we foresaw ourselves having in the near future. We weren’t getting rid of any stuff either. I liked the house though, and was willing to tough it out.

Financial constraints, and the above problems drove my wife and I crazy, and it was becoming so we were working strictly to live there. While I liked the house, I wasn’t too fond of working strictly to live in it. My kids needed a grass backyard. We wanted more closet space to store things, so our floors and counters could be used for things like walking, and cooking. instead of storing excess stuff. We needed to be able to have extra money left at the end of each month for things like, food, and oil changes in the cars, Christmas presents, Birthdays, going out as a family now and then, and basically enjoying some of what life has to offer. Living in the Elmira house prevented us from doing that type of thing far too often. We needed to move. Plus my wife and I are feeling maybe our family is ready to move on to another location, in another state, and start a new adventure.

Moving has proven to be painful in a lot of ways. Leaving the first house you buy is always hard. Leaving a house is like leaving behind all the memories good and bad from that place. Moving has required me to find a new home for the dog that we/ve had for the past year and a half. My son and I aren’t very happy about finding him a new home. Moving has also forced us to go through countless boxes from our past and reorganize, and refine our stuff. This was fun, and time consuming. When you’re living somewhere that you feel is permanent, you tend to acquire a lot more crap than you would living in an apartment. That stuff also manages to get disorganized, and scattered all over in that time. It’s taken several days to go through all our stuff and decide what is and isn’t important enough to take with us.

The day we had the truck to move was the day it rained. I had the luxury of loading a refrigerator up the U-haul ramp in the rain. 2 year old Adidas sneakers don’t grip as well as they did when they were new. I slipped on the slick metal ramp, and was crushed by the 200lb fridge. Fortunately I wasn’t killed, or break any bones. I managed to get a few gnarly bruises on my upper arms though, which bore most of the weight. My brother-in-law was ever so helpful.

“Are you ok?”

“I guess.”

“Are you under there?”

“Uhm, yeah dude, I am.”

“OH. Let me help you.”

“Thanks.”

After escaping the first near death experience, mostly unscathed, I decided to try my luck again.

Pecos had come over to lend a much needed helping hand. He had pointed out something in the back of the U-haul that I needed to adjust.

“Hold on I’ll just jump over the washing machine, and go grab it.” I said.

I jumped but my foot slipped again, and I fell to the bottom of the trailer, bashing my shin on the way down. The rest of the day my shin oozed blood, and bits of flesh. In addition to bashing my shin, I managed to strain my calf muscle too. This was all in the first hour of moving. I got to spend the next 3 days moving injured. Awesome. Finally after 5 days of moving, we’re almost done.

The new house has plenty of space for everything we own, except the dog. I just hope in the few months we live here that we can somehow avoid collecting more stuff, so when we move again in 11 months the process is less painful in everyway possible.

Return of our Dear Old ‘Dad

By Eduardo

While on my morning run today, I made my way down the path that leads past the college near my place. As I ran into a shady area, I noticed something moving along the ground. I slowed down a bit to get a better look. To my surprise, it was an extremely large crawdad.
As soon as it saw me, it got pissed – and flared its pincers at me, threateningly. It was as if it knew who I was, and I thought for a moment that it might possibly be seeking revenge for the mistreatment and embarrasment that it (or possibly a close relative) had suffered in the Timberlake incident.
I knew better this time, having grown a bit wiser in the last eight years. I know now that it’s proper to let crawdads creep where they want to, and that disturbing them usually leads to regret and sorrow. I didn’t mess with it this time, remembering what had happened years ago. I continued running, and let the ‘dad continue to shuffle along… presumably back into the creek from whence it came.

No longer enemies, I think we both grew a little bit today.
I feel much more at peace now, knowing that the Amigos Locos and decapod crustaceans everywhere can live together in harmony.