dog owning dicks

I have a neighbor on one side of me with two retarded, ugly, fat dogs. I love people who own dogs but don't take care of them. For the past 6 years I've had an ongoing battle with them to keep their dogs from barking non-stop. Annoying.

Then, in September, my crazy neighbor moved out and new people moved in with...a retarded, ugly, fat dog that barks non-stop, even when they are home. Now my house sounds like a kennel and I have dogs barking on both sides.

This is a summary of our email exchanges:

Me (to my new neighbor):

Hi [let's just call him fucking asspipe], your dog was barking yesterday for most of the afternoon and now this morning. My house guest is still here. If you could do something about that I would appreciate it. Steve and Abby are gone for the weekend so we've also had to contend with their dogs barking pretty much nonstop on the other side.

I'll be around this afternoon if you want to come by to see my place. Let me know.

Thanks!

Asspipe:

Sorry we were out a while yesterday! Promise we will be mindful and good news is Candace returns to work 12/1 and Apollo goes with her to work. Are you home the week of Thanksgiving?

We will try and swing by this afternoon after golf.

Aside from the dog issue we'd love to meet you :) Maybe you can swing by 1 night this week for a glass of wine? We heard you've done some cool stuff upstairs and we're doing some work too.

As for the dog, sorry, I hate it too. Is there anything you'd suggest for when we're not in the house?

Me:

I would like to meet you both as well! I have a guest this week and am not sure what our plans are yet. I'll let you know. And if you'd like a tour I'm happy to give one. I've redone everything in the house.

As for the dog, I'm not sure. When my ex's dog stayed at my house I used to take him for a long walk before I left and he was fine. Maybe the vet could make some suggestions.

I've been dealing with Steve's dogs for over 6 years now and am getting ready to turn that over to the city to handle. So, sorry if my email seemed bitchy. It sounds like a kennel in my house when all three dogs are barking. And it has been typical that their dogs bark all night until they get home which makes it impossible to sleep.

Anyway, enough about the dogs. When I figure out my schedule this week I'll let you know.

Thanks for the response! 

I find it funny when people ask me to solve their problems, like why their dog is barking. My guess, it has no toys to entertain it, they don't exercise it properly, and they don't leave a light on for it when they are gone at night. If it were my dog, I would be mortified and would research the shit out of the problem until I fixed it. That's why I'm not an asspipe.

Me (a week later, on a week night, when asspipe's dog had been barking for 6 hours, at the time I sent the email it was 1130 at night...and yes, I still get up at 5 am):

Your dog has been barking since I got home at 545 this evening. Can you please do something?Thanks.

Asspipe:

We are doing our best. Seriously. 

We take him to work every day. Does Steve at Find Solutions know that we take him to work Every day? We are great dog owners.

Why don't you come introduce yourself instead of just emailing complaints all the time. How long have we lived here and you can't say hello? We are neighbors.

Do not email me again until you introduce yourself. Cool?

 So now I have to meet and be friends with someone who doesn't give a shit about his fucking dog? And he's a great dog owner? WTF? Also, I have tried numerous times to schedule a time for us to meet but he never responds. So fuck him.

Anyway, I've turned the situation over to the city and we have to go to a mediation session and come up with an agreement. The mediator contacted me and was like "you might not get what you want." As if people have a right to have an animal that barks non-fucking stop for hours on end with no regard to other people.

I'm going to hopefully get a friend to go with me so it's not my four neighbors against me.

The worst part is I bet that if they just took their dogs out for some exercise this would not be an issue. But, why have a fit happy dog when you can have a fat lazy one.

Drama...I hate it.

christmas chef

Due to my success with breakfast burritos I have decided to spend a few hours every day for the next three days making shit.

Today, I made the beginnings of a lemon basil sorbet. I hope it's as good as the one I had at this french restaurant my parents took me to when I was in Williamsburg over Thanksgiving. It has to chill over night in the refrigerator and then I'm going to put it in the sorbet making machine I got for my niece but then accidentally shipped to myself because I was drinking and forgot to change the shipping address. Anyway, my niece already has a sorbet making machine.

Tomorrow I will make more breakfast burritos with a changed up recipe. I'm adding potatoes and some other shit. I was going to look at a recipe but then was like well if I add enough bacon they will taste good. I will also be attempting some strawberry frozen yogurt.

Then on Sunday I will make meatloaf because I had a request for that. I like to exchange weird emails every christmas with my friend G. This is the one I sent this year:

Me:

Also, I am going to attempt to make a meat loaf on sunday. I found a recipe which I will follow more or less except I want to add some additional stuff to it. I guess I'm getting cocky after my breakfast burritos. Maybe that's a bad thing. I also have to roast some potatoes but I'm not sure what temperature roast is. I'm pretty sure my old oven had a button that said roast. Or maybe it said broil. I can't remember now. I assume roasting and broiling are different but with cooks who can say, they are so imprecise. 

I tried to find the answer on line but got a temperature range of 200 - 375 and apparently there's something called slow roasting which may or may not apply to potatoes. I got bored and stopped reading the article.

I need to find a famous chef who studied as an engineer so I can learn to cook shit and not have to do research every time I want to do something simple like make a fucking potato.

G:

Ha ha, I hope the potatoes die well! 

slowly to Rapid City

Friday night my soon to be official flight instructor asked if I wanted to go on a cross country trip to Rapid City South Dakota on Saturday night. Um, YEAH.

It was part of his solo check list he has to do to get his commercial license. I tagged along so he could practice also being an instructor. Our initial flight plan was to leave Denver at 630 pm, fly to Cheyenne, land and take off, fly to Rapid City, land and take off, and then fly back to Denver, which would have gotten us back to Denver at 3 am (the plane we were in manages about 105 MPH).

My instructor's instructor (luckily) suggested we crash in Rapid City Saturday night and fly back early Sunday. I never realized this but when you rent a plane you only pay for the hours you fly so you can keep the plane out for a day or two and it isn't that expensive.

We got to McAir around 4 pm on Saturday. After some socializing with the staff there we went out to check the plane. It was around 430 and the temperature had started dropping and the wind was picking up.

I was surprised how tiny the cockpit was in the plane. It was smaller than even my Toyota MR2. I learned how to do the outside airplane check, how to undo the chains that hold the plane on the runway (not so easy to do when it's cold and windy), how to check the fuel (you have to drain it from 13 different spots on the airplane and then you have to climb up on the wing and put the fuel back), and how to do the cockpit pre-check. And how to navigate a runway that has patches of ice (not so fun with those little airplane tires).

The flight from Denver to Cheyenne was really turbulent. But fun. Like being on a roller coaster. The wind was really strong so we were getting bumped around a lot. Visibility was pretty good. The plane was freezing. The heat knob thing for the cockpit wouldn't pull out. By the time we landed in Rapid City the cuffs of my jeans, which I had gotten wet on the runway doing the pre-flight check, were frozen solid.

west jet lobby in Rapid city...

glad it was nice because we waited almost an hour for the airport shuttle - we got to the hotel at 11 pm and had to get up at 5 to be back at the airport for takeoff - yes, I'm doing this for fun

Weirdly I could hear radio traffic but could not hear my instructor as he was responding to the various towers we communicated with. I hope my head set isn't fucked. I was supposed to do radio calls this morning but begged off since I wasn't sure what to say. My instructor, who does a very accurate impression of Borat, tried to teach me the radio calls when we had a few down minutes. I think I will learn a lot if he continues to say things in a Borat accent.

Yesterday was a confusion of gauges, weather shit, weird calculations for flight plans, and basically I was just grateful I got my seat belt buckled correctly and the door closed properly. Today I was able to read the gauges and sort of understand the instructions from the tower.

We took off in a very strong headwind (I stayed in the plane while my instructor did the pre-flight outside check - it was fucking cold and the plane was shaking as if it were flying). Then we got into a layer of fog (had we planned to take off at our originally scheduled departure we definitely would have been delayed) and flew in that, off instruments because there was no visibility, for 30 minutes. It was pretty fun. I took some pics of the fog and of Denver as we approached...

south dakota hinterlands, lots of snow, not much else

approaching the front range

Denver off the nose - those weird black blurs are the propeller

Anyway, over the holidays I'm hitting the books for ground school and will hopefully get in a few more flights this winter to prep me for when I start my private pilot's license in the spring.

breakfast burrito

The past few weeks have been super busy at work, I've haven't had much free time.

But, using a free hour I had last sunday, I managed to make breakfast burritos. No recipe, I just made shit up. I brought them into work and two guys I work with who come from countries where many burritos are consumed said "these are legit!" So, maybe I've found my cooking niche. Burritos.

I made them with eggs, bacon, feta cheese, three types of peppers, onions, jalapenos, and then topped them with green salsa

I had to eat the first two because I fucked up wrapping them - but then I realized if I spread the salsa on the tortilla before I wrapped them they would stick together - and they taste good! though I was counseled to put black beans (Mexico) or potatoes (Spain) in them - roasted potatoes, apparently - when I asked "what temperature is "roast"?" I think I slightly destroyed my credibility as a cook