The unseemly Smoketree underbelly

There is a plague upon this quaint, quiet suburban neighborhood... I think thy name is teenager...

I expected less property damage in the burbs than the hood - but alas, so far my annual neighborhood dues have only contributed to MORE expenditure...


Oct08 - I bitched about the pumpkin being taken off our porch and smashed down the road...
Nov08 - I bitched about the mailbox being beaten...
Dec08 - then it was run over - totally obliterated...

(drumroll please) -- and now the latest juvenile deliquient scheme - no doubt replete with cunning and rigorous planning...

Picture this - we wake up - the first Saturday of 2009, we're recovered from our houseguest and candy coma; we're bracing ourselves for the last day of vacation before 09 really starts... we look outside, it's chilly but not too cold - what will today have in store? yard work? shopping? hermitting? And something is wrong with the picture. It's not so much the inclusion of a strange element - but the opposite - something's MISSING... hmm


Jan09 - dumbass took our trashcan and drove it a block and a half away - dumping it in someone's ditch.

Luckily Rob had the wherewithall to go on the canhunt. I assumed it was stolen or we somehow had forgotten to pay our trash bill. In parallel to the canhunt, I rummaged through any outstanding mail to verify that indeed we were not deadbeats and were all paid up.

What followed was what I'd call adult temper tantrums - which I have much more frequently than my better half - well because I'm way more vocal, stressoutable, and enjoy my moments of being a drama queen... the rest of the day we went on relationship SWAT and pretty much did our own things alone so we didn't bite each others' heads off (for something that had NOTHING to do w either of us!)

For Rob that meant heading out to a bar, watching football and drinking beer. For me, it was heading upstairs to catch up on my trashy tivo'ed teen drama - One Tree Hill. Which cleverly btw - an homage to the network formerly known as the WB's original teen drama Dawson's Creek - they cast James Van Der Beek (Dawson) as a coke addicted Hollywood director - amusingly exactly what was always Dawson's dream - plus a drug addiction - SWEET!

All because of some punkass teenager - that or some Hokie that is really bothered by my UVA flag. Get over it - you got a bowl game and are now 'America's university'...
We'll stick to our #1 public university status - most recently apparently we made the 'best value in public school' designation - which I'm not sure is *exactly* the right connotation -- I mean 'best value' makes it sound like Walmart or Big Lots...

bit of a clash w our ultra pretentious 'The University' windshield stickers