Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[pmcd9]

People park in front of my house from time to time, but never where we put the trash bins out.  And the mailbox is on the porch, the mailman walks the route, so that's not a problem either.  And if someone is coming to visit me, well, I have a driveway, they can park there. Sometimes my next door neighbor parks his car in front of my house for some reason.  I don't know why he doesn't park in front of his own house, but I don't really care.

[wombat]

I have always thought there are two kinds of people in the world, people that grew up in a city and people that grew up in the suburbs, and as one of the former, it was always totally weird to me how the latter think that they own the street in front of their house.

But I thought St Louis was a proper city, so that story confuses me. But now that I think about it, there are "cities" like LA where people do seem to think that way. There must be some equation about density and housing layout that would explain the dividing line.

But seriously, people, you do not own the parking space in front of your house. That is public property.

[Nabubrush]

I live on a corner - we have a spot in front and maybe three on the side? Diagonally across from my house is an old Masonic temple which has been converted into the meeting hall for a climbing club. On periodic occasions (maybe 4-5 times a week) there isn't a parking space for a block or two.

I try to only park in front of my house, but if I'm heading the other way when I'm parking, I'm not going to turn around and then turn around again when I leave. And yeah, your property ends at the property line. Related: in Portland we have a lot of responsibility for the little park strip, although it obviously belongs to the city. If we lose a tree or cut it down, we have an obligation to plant a new one. We lost both of our big trees but I replaced one with four lilacs, thereby sticking it to the man.

[Nabubrush]

Today I'm going to notice that we have exactly 6000 topics.

[Choop]

today i'm gonna drive to charlotte to spend a couple nights at the Ritz-Carlton, enjoying levels of luxury i could not afford on my own. have i told you all how much i love my wife's blog?

[jay-ell]

Today I'm gonna look in vain online for a nonfiction book about princesses for Chaos Girl.

I walked into the playroom to find her crying because her little plastic earrings wouldn't stay on. She saw me enter and held out the jewelry, wailing plaintively, "Mama! My earrings come off and I can't be a princess!"

Sigh. I explained to her that while earrings are pretty, they're not what makes a princess. A good princess is brave, smart, and kind. But that's not what she sees in Disney movies -- especially the older ones, like Sleeping Beauty -- and even the more enlightened ones like Tangled aren't quite enough to overcome the overwhelming message that beauty and poise are the most important qualities a girl can cultivate.

And Pocohontas and Mulan are boring as shit.

So now it looks like I'm going to be doing research and writing nonfiction children's books about real-world princesses. It's going to be difficult to maintain child-appropriateness without fudging the history, though. Does anybody have any suggestions? My Euro history is foggy at best, but I'm thinking of starting with Isabella of France.

[AugustWest]

Read her The Baroque Cycle.  There are some great princesses in it.  Not to mention the coolest Duchess ever.

[theinevitable]

Yeah, the overall thing in St Louis is that we have lost 540,000 (my friend referred to this as One Portland) people in the last 60 years, and so people think they can just do whatever they want. Hey, back before people started moving back to this street, I could park wherever I wanted! How dare you park in front of my house!
This wasn't a problem when I lived on a more major street over by the University, because there was never an open spot in the same place twice. On this street there are typically a few open spots in a few different places on the street. But normally they are all in front of (gasp!) someone else's house.

One guy at the party who is a native St Louisan said that he has to park in front of his house, because if he can't see his car it gets broken into. I wondered how the crooks know whether his car is in his range of vision, but didn't want to agitate him.

[wombat]

but didn't want to agitate him.

Usually a wise idea.

[wombat]

So now it looks like I'm going to be doing research and writing nonfiction children's books about real-world princesses.

Also a wise idea.

[jay-ell]

Yeah, it is not going to be easy to make these stories kid-appropriate without flat-out lying. I'm not afraid of exposing my daughter to tales of warfare, but I'm going to be skipping over a lot of rape.

I bought her a couple of books to get started, one about Queen Elizabeth and one about Eleanor Roosevelt -- First Lady is the closest thing we've got to an American princess, right? Surprisingly, they didn't have one on Jackie O. But the more I think about it, the more it looks like Princess Grace of Monaco might be the best place to start. She died youngish and suddenly, but at least she wasn't beheaded or anything.

Additionally, I want to adapt the Shakespeare play from which we derived my daughter's name into a version she can understand. I think it's possible -- kids aren't real concerned with a villain's specific motivations; they can just accept that Don John is a Bad Guy without further explanation. I intend to use this to my advantage.

At the bookstore, Chaos Girl chose a pop-up book on human biology. It is pretty cool, and she seemed to grasp the general concept that in addition to the body parts she can see and name, we also have body parts inside, like a heart, lungs, and intestines. So that was neat.

[Nabubrush]

I could have sworn I just posted in here after Ash.

[pmcd9]

Why are you people parking on the street in front of your own house? Don't you have driveways?

[theinevitable]

Almost no driveways in St Louis. Houses that do have a garage (in the city proper) usually have it behind their house, in the alley (and it's usually Model-T sized). Now that I found that picture I realize that comment was probably directed at people who own houses.

[Nabubrush]

I park in my garage, but if my garage was full I wouldn't be able to fit anything but a smart car in my driveway. It's about two feet shorter than my car, and if any part of my car obstructs the sidewalk, I get a ticket.