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Trailer trash found here

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Imagine my surprise when I saw THIS parked next to my house when I arrived home Thursday after work. IMG_9795

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I expressed what my middle finger communicates in all ways possible right then and there.

Our neighbors across the street have a part-time hobby of flipping trailers (good for them), so I figured they were the culprits. I gave it a couple days for them to either assume the crap in their own driveway or dump the hopeless trailer.

On Sunday morning -- Valentine's Day -- I woke up to beautiful morning featuring that same crappy trailer parked outside our house. How romantic. It had been two days and now I was pissed.

I marched over to talk to the neighbors who shared their sympathy with me. They didn't claim the trailer and said they had already called the city about it. Of all street corners in Tacoma, someone had chosen mine to dump the vehicle. Ugh. From there, I knocked on the doors of the other neighbors just to disassociate myself from the trailer, let them know that we were doing something about it and otherwise plead that they don't consider me white trash.

I called the City of Tacoma, too. The trailer has plates on it, but all the lady on the phone told me was that there wasn't a record of the trailer being stolen. Well no shit, Sherlock. Who would want to steal this? I filed my report to little satisfaction.

By late Sunday, some cats (not Fabrizio) were crawling in and out of the porous trailer, which is filled with junk - tires, wood, etc. This could have been a meth lab for all I know.

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The City of Tacoma also let us know that it could take THREE WEEKS to remove the trailer. The thing got tagged with spray paint in TWO NIGHTS. I didn't mind because it actually improved the aesthetic.

So what to do now? We can try to tow it somewhere, but half of the tires are flat (probably punctured after the trailer was dropped off). We can push it out into the street to create a hazard, but it might just get pushed back to the curb rather than be towed away.

We're going to continue to bug the the city about it because that's all that we can responsibly do, or just put our garbage cans next to it and hope the garbage man gets the idea.

The night of the magical, mystery energy drink

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Amanda has been working overnight shifts this week, which has allowed me some additional time (and expectations) to finish hanging and touching up our kitchen cupboards. I planned to finish the cupboards last night but was feeling sluggish. My insomniac Dad left a couple bottles of 5-hour Energy at our house and I figured it’d be worth a try getting an extra energy boost to get the job done. GroomsAdvice.com recommends grooms drink it before a wedding over other energy drinks, so this would be a good test.

At 6 p.m. I drank the concoction, which tasted no worse than any other expired energy drink that Scott often forces upon me when we’re skiing. I didn’t notice a difference in the way I felt either. According to the directions, you’re supposed to feel the energy boost after five minutes. I didn’t feel much of a difference after 10 minutes, so I forgot about it and got to working.

I finished the job at around 10 p.m. WAIT. 10 p.m.? I thought it was 7:30 p.m. at the latest. That sneaky bastard of an energy drink snuck up on me big time. I was totally focused and felt amazing – not usually the case after a home project.

I felt giddy, too. I took a break to watch The Office and it was HILARIOUS. Can’t tell you why, but that show had me cacklin’. At commercial I put the show on pause and grabbed my guitar. I played ONE song FOR 45 MINUTES. It passed like four minutes. I rewinded the TV (Thanks, DVR!) and finished The Office. It was like the commercial never happened! I was living in a blissful time-warp. Call me Marty McFly.

It’s funny how you appreciate little things about people when they’re not around. By 11:30 p.m. I was really appreciative about how Amanda keeps me on a schedule. She likes to go to sleep by 10 p.m. without fail, and that always benefits me the next day. In fear of having a terrible morning, I shut down the house and went to bed, reluctantly fighting the urge to watch Bruce Lee vignettes on YouTube.

Fabrizio joined me on the bed. I curled up and tried to sleep. No luck. The bed was moving. I felt like I was on a magic carpet! It was Fabrzio’s fault. He was cleaning himself, which I’m sure he does every night, but this time I could feel his every little lunge to clean his paws. It felt like he was lifting the bed and slowly waving it like a flag in the wind. I pushed him to the floor to transform my magic carpet back to a bed.

Then, at around midnight, I could only hear my heartbeat. It actually wasn’t my heart. It was a hummingbird that replaced my heart. I thought for some time about the hummingbirds that frequent my grandparents condo in Palm Desert. I fell asleep with the comfort that I like hummingbirds and that I had one now.

5-Hour Energy isn’t technically liquid crack, but it sure does feel like it. The company is totally transparent about its ingredients, which include Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, Niacin (Vitamin B3), Folic Acid (Vitamin B9), Citicoline, Tyrosine, Phenylalanine, Taurine, Malic Acid, Glucuronolactone and caffeine.

I know what the vitamins and caffeine are. The rest of the ingredients are just dinosaur names. 5-Hour Energy warns that “A small percentage of people are sensitive to Niacin (Vitamin B3) and may experience a “Niacin Flush” (hot prickly feeling, skin redness) that lasts a few minutes. This is caused by Niacin increasing blood flow near the skin.” That sounds normal, right?

The real problem with 5-Hour Energy is that it falsely advertises. If you’ve been keeping track of my timeline, my energy boost lasted six hours – It’s even better than the brand claims!

Back to my story… I woke up at 6 a.m. for a work call at 6:30 a.m. and I was scared that I would feel the side effects of my energy kick. If alcohol has a consequence then so must this liquid crack.

Not the case. I felt really great. Certainly normal and I felt rested. After the call I cleaned up my repairs mess from the previous evening and even remembered to take out the garbage out to the street for the garbage dudes to pick up. That rarely happens without reminder. I felt accomplished.

I also felt nervous. In the words of Tobey Macguire’s Spiderman, “Great power comes with great responsibility.” This 5 Hour Energy is some powerful stuff, so I must use it sparingly – namely on my wedding day, during finals week and on the weekends.

All the buzz about Google Buzz…

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Sorry I’ve been a little slow to blog here lately. I’ve kept busy writing over at Flip the Media for MCDM. (I was quite pleased that my Engadget post caught so much attention!) Earlier this week, I wrote at Flip the Media about the potential for Google to leapfrog competitors if it took its then-anticipated social Gmail application to mobile. As expected, Google announced yesterday “Google Buzz” which you might already have in your Gmail. It can also be accessed via mobile browser (for now).

What is Google Buzz? Well, it’s basically an aggregate of many social networks like Twitter and Flickr and (but not Facebook) that sits in Gmail. If you have TweetDeck or Tweetie to manage your Twitter account, it’s a lot like that. You can of course also create status updates or share content through Google Buzz, too, which makes it a really convenient option if Gmail is already your primary email provider.

Google Buzz is Google’s answer to Facebook. It provides a stream of information about what your friends are doing. Capiche?

When accessed from a mobile browser Google Buzz utilizes the GPS on your phone to notify you about surrounding people and services. This poses a threat to existing location-based services like Foursquare, Whrrl, Yelp, etc.

Google Buzz looks like is a stripped down Google Wave (if you know what that is.) I don’t think Google Wave has been all that successful because it’s yet another site that you have to log into separately. The problem with Google Buzz is that people who aren’t overly nerdy like myself or Al Castle are already fatigued from the multitude of social networks that they feel responsible to check.

Evidence:

Moos’ first post in Google Buzz: “Great...one more thing to keep track of.”

Julie’s first post in Google Buzz: “oh great, one more thing to check. ;)”

While Google Buzz actually intends to centralize social network connections, it FEELS like another place to check.

Right now, Google Buzz looks a little primitive, and there’s some confusion about keeping Gmail contacts and social network contacts separate, but the potential is there. Google doesn’t succeed with every product, but I sure hope it puts the resources into Buzz to make it a success.

Remember the old days when everyone was using a different search browser and came up with different results? (Think HotBot, Excite, WebCrawler, Ask Jeeves, Ask.com, Yahoo, Google, Dogpile, AltaVista, Lycos, MSN Search, Bing, AOL Search, Infoseek, Go.com, Netscape, MetaCrawler, and All The Web.) That SUCKED. It was difficult to find information, or the same information consistently. Google came along and centralized search, which made the Internet a whole lot easier to navigate. That’s what I feel Google Buzz can do or some other service needs to do – Centralize all of these social networks so that we can spend more time connecting with each other and spending less time trying to keep multiple profiles updated.

Also, I can’t wait for Google Buzz drinking parties.