more of yesterday

My wonderful neighbors continue tonight to pop fireworks they didn't get around to last night. Is this fun and I just don't know it?

I'll live I guess.

fireworks

Tonight is one of 2 nights I dread each year. Not because it's the fourth of July or New Year's eve but because it's an excuse for dips to set off fireworks. And leave the resultant trash strewn around the neighborhood. Bottle rocket debris on the roof, roman candle trash in the street.

Are they too stupid to know they're just burning money.

Call me a grump I don't care. There are firework shows almost nightly. Why do you have to set off your own?

Drinkers

So I'm eating a mediocre meal of chicken strips and awful fries at Church's today minding my own business when a group of, how should I describe them?, low IQ hillbilly types sits down behind me.

The topic of conversation is drinking. How it affects their family members, how they got charged with a PI even though they only blew a .081. Now they'll have to go to court and get a court appointed attorney. But hell they'll beat it for sure.

Folks, the days of bragging about your alcohol consumption and it's related hassles is so 20th century. Get some responsibility about you.

$2 dollar bills!

So I take my scrap metal to be recycled and put a little cash in my pocket. I had some aluminum window frames from my house remodel, a well used Ducane Bar BQ and lots of nuts and bolts, along with old cutlery and other scraps of metal.

Get there and wait patiently in line for my turn only to be over run by some "Hispanic" who barged ahead of me. By the time I tried to call the place while sitting in their parking lot he was called ahead of me. Of course I'm not about to get out of my car and confront someone in Houston whose primary source of income is recycling old engines and air conditioners.

But I got hm back by glaring at him. This is what it's come down to in my old age, glaring.

You sir are today's irritant.

Drones

I needed to find out how much I paid in school taxes in 2006. I could not find my receipt from them so I gave them a call. Fully knowing I would have to go to their office anyway, but sometimes I can be an optimist.

All I needed was the amount paid to submit for income tax. Yes, I have yet to file 2006 taxes but that's another story.

I called, the lady drone answered, almost immediately transferred me and of course it disconnects.

I immediately call back and the phone rings, rings, and rings.

In short, I got to take a trip to the tax office where the lady drone diligently stamped my new receipt, DUPLICATE. So there!

If there is anything I've learned from being alive this long, it's don't ask why they never answered the phone or why I got disconneted to begin with, they're drones and they like it that way.

Lingerers

I went to Whataburger this morning for a BOB, (breakfast on a bun), in case anyone ever reads these little rants of mine.

Quite a few cars in the parking lot for a Sunday morning. Go in and there's 6 guys just bullshitting. They had already eaten before I ever got there.

Old white dudes with nothing better to do than take up space at a fast food joint. Talking about the most inane things. Overheard one guy talking about a family and said one of them was "the smart one", oh thanks for picking him out.

Go do whatever it is you do. I know the workers were tired of you when they saw you come in.

The "neighbor"

I use the term neighbor sarcastically because this guy is anything but neighborly. He likes to shoot the neighborhood cats with a BB gun. I've lived in my neighborhood for 20 years and I can't remember seeing him in anything but scrubs. And trust me, he's no MD. Some kind of lab tech.

He and his Filipino wife do the yard work in scrubs. The reason I mentioned his Filipino wife is not out of any racist bent it's because I know the guy is so insecure he can't handle an American woman.

He has done something better in those 20 years. He's quit putting his yard debris into the drainage ditch and clogging it up so that when it rains it overflows. He now takes his debris across the ditch to the undeveloped land on the other side and dumps it in the forest.

But he still puts his leaves in the garbage. IDIOT. Leaves are the best compost around.

He's today's daily irritant although every time I see him he irritates me.

Texted phone number

Received a text message today. Open it and it's a phone number. Google the number and there's no information on it.

OK, I'm supposed to just call a number you've sent me? Wrong. This is irritating because someone, whoever sent me the number, thinks this is a good way to contact someone. Don't think so.

Ever resourceful, I called the number using star 67 to cloak my home number and find out the number is probably business related.

Wouldn't it have been much easier to call me, leave a voice mail? IDIOT!

Divorced and 54

What's irritating today is having to deal with being single at 54 and attempting to find a likable soul using Internet dating sites. Totally foreign to me. Rejection is just a delete away. I've sent out countless polite emails and received less than a handful of replies.

Tonight I called a woman I'd been emailing and it was a very uncomfortable experience.

I am going to forgo this avenue and let serendipity run its course.

Singing Families

Watching America's Got Talent and here comes a singing family. This is today's irritant for sure.

It started for me with the King family and disinegrated from there, talent or not.

Although I did dig the Lennon Sisters.

Curiously

Since starting my (mostly) daily irritant blog, curiously I've become less irritated by things that normally would really irritate me.

Must be reverse psychology at work or I'm more aware of the things that irritate me and have learned to tolerate them better.

So should I end this blog? Surely there must be something that irritates me on a daily basis.

For today, let's see.

Sorry, nothing.

Saturday

Nothing really to be irritated about even though I ventured out today and went to the Family Dollar and Kroger. Some opportunities for irritation but it being Saturday I could handle it.

So today's irritant and a continual one are the folks who speed down my street. They average abut 50 MPH in a residential area designated to be 35 MPH.

When I walk my dog I give them the stare as they blow by, hey, that will slow then down.

Road Hogs

This one is truly a daily irritant or an irritant anytime I get out on the road. They are the people who continue to speed a minimum of 10 miles over the speed limit no matter what road they're on.

My favorites are the lone young guys in their heavy duty Ford or Chevy pickups. The big ones you could pull a battleship with. They constantly roar by going 90 MPH on the beltway around Houston. And they always seem to be on the cell too.

I think either somebody else is paying their fuel bill or more likely they're just to ignorant to calculate how much money they're wasting with every gallon they burn through.

Miller Lite needs to do a power ballad song about these guys.

Here's to you real men of waste.

surprisingly

I ventured out today to perform some aspects of my job that require face to face contact fully expecting to encounter a multitude of irritating situations and people.

To my surprise I encountered none or at least none so memorable that I wanted to rant about them in this blog.

So, I guess I'll have to once again go to one I've saved for these occasions.

And this one is a pet peeve I suppose along with being an irritant. In fact I personally think it is rude. Anyone who does not return emails that obviously require a reply. I'm constantly left wondering if they got the email. And I'm sure since I'm not the brightest computer guy out there you can do something to email that lets you know it's been received, but the point is we are rapidly losing any civility or courtesy we once had.

ME

I'm my biggest irritant today. I'm irritated with myself for not posting yesterday as the goal of this blog was to post an irritant a day. I want to do this for a year. What a goal huh? Well, we all have our dreams.

match.com

Today's irritant is one I've been saving, which is technically not what the blog is about, but since I'm working from home today and don't expect to encounter any memorable irritants I'm using this one.

I, stupidly, joined match.com in hopes of connecting with someone and maybe meeting and then doing simple things with like a movie or a play.

But all match really is, is a used car lot of sorts. Look but don't reply seems to be the norm. Everything hinges on your photo and your profile. Sorry, but I'm not going to lie about myself to boost my chances.

But here's the true irritant. I get winks from women all over the world and they are just attempts to ensnare lonely men. I don't follow up on any of the come ons.

Sorry, not the greatest of posts today but it's done.

Astro fans

Today's daily irritant is up for grabs...so many to choose from since I ventured out among the crowd by attending the Astros and Yankees game.

Let's see...as many Yankee fans attending as Astro fans. I was not surprised the Yankee fans were jerks, but I doubt they all came from the East to see this game. Which means they live in or around Houston but still root for the Yankees. You could just go back you know, we wouldn't miss you.

But seeing as how this blog is about what irritates me the most I have to go with this small one.

Sitting in from the row at a ball game requires almost constant getting up to let people to the aisle.

The very first time this happens the fat guy sitting next to me gets up and jams his elbow into my shoulder, pretty hard really and no much as a sorry from this guy, there with his son by the way.

So here's to you Mr. Rude in your cargo shorts you're too old to wear. You did wolf down the fries and dog rather well though.

The dog next door

I love dogs, all kinds of dogs. I have 6 of my own. The dog next door barks all day. And it's a little dog, really little so the bark is yippy. I try to ignore it, I even bought one of those sonic repellers, doesn't work on him/her. It works on my dogs who must be thinking, we can't bark but the little shit next door can?

I even drilled a hole in the "privacy" fence so the mic would pick up his yaps and send the signal to him/her, nothing.

The next door neighbor never gives the dog any attention, that's the problem. The dog is barking from lack of human contact.

So, I let it go and go and go. See, I'm afraid of the homeowner's association. I'm a rules breaker with 6 dogs, the max is 3.

Still he yips and yaps.

Anonymous note in the mailbox maybe?