Friday highlights

I'm not working in the office today, but just got an email from my boss that we had a record sales month, for March. The owners are giving everyone $150 cash bonus today. NICE! That will be great for my upcoming "girl's night" at the end of this month. Myself and 4 high school girlfriends are re-creating a night we had 34 years ago :)  But we are upgrading our hotel experience (LOL) so it's going to cost me about $75 for my share, plus whatever we do for dinner. Normally, spending that wouldn't be a problem to fit into my budget, but with all the selling/moving/etc costs coming up, I was really going to have to do a bit a tweaking. We've been planning this for months, and there is no way I am not going. Now, I do not have to tweak the budget (and should have some left over).

We had to call the sheriff again last night on our white trash neighbors. Ever since the 2 boys cleared their warrants, they have been out of hiding and back to their normal drug dealing activities. And since none of them have a car, they use a friend (it rotates who does it) to run the drugs. So a car will end up going in and out over and over. So, last night about 8pm this car comes in fast, gets down to the culdesac (it's gravel) and starts doing spin outs. About 80% of the culdesac is on our good neighbors property. He (finally) got a bit ticked and tried to call slumlandord, but got same response from him DH got earlier yesterday when he called to complain about the traffic ("my phones not working right, I'll have to call you back"). The car left and about 10 minutes later returned again (had gone to make a delivery, of course). Good neighbor finally got off his passive butt and walked over and knocked on their door! The dad answered and good neighbor told him to have his visitors knock off the doing donuts in the culdesac (as well as spitting rocks into his yard). The dad just waved his hand over towards their shed, like he could care less and went back in the house. The kids came out and neighbor told them to knock it off and as he's walking away they start yelling at him and so he's arguing back. DH was standing on our property and heard it and got a bit nervous for good neighbor, so ran inside and called 911. By the time they got here (about 10-15 min) it was over. Pretty sad that the sheriff feels unsafe enough coming here that they have to send 3 cars! They did go down and talk a few minutes to them. Plus it helped that it wasn't the usual "one neighbor (us) against their BS story". Now the sheriff had 2 neighbors corroborating what happened. That dad is a wimp (though that's not the word I used) - no wonder his kids are a complete waste of space and air.

I guess slumlandord did end up calling good neighbor back later last night. At least slumlandord got an earful about his crappy renters from someone besides us for a change. He gave our good neighbor the same crap he feeds us. I guess he brought up the condition of the corner or our road, all torn up these past 2 1/2 years by his renter bringing his truck and trailer in. He said that didn't cause it (gee...it was fine 20 years before that) and he's not fixing it. SMH.

Coming up  next week are some pre-trial hearings for some of the ones currently in jail (4 from our neighborhood/nearby neighborhood). Slumlandord told good neighbor last night that he's going down to the court today to try to work out getting his son re-hab, so he doesn't have to go to prison for 4 -5 years. This is the guy recently caught with drugs and a gun (he's already a felon). If he get's off for rehab, I am going to be so mad. He's already had lots of chances. Time to be punished for his choices.

DH was talking last night with one of the guys from the nearby neighborhood.  He called up the councilman and said "listen. it's now been a year since I contacted you. Nothing has changed and in fact it's worse. Summer is coming up. I want to be able to enjoy my property (they have 5 acres and horses) and my neighborhood this summer".  Councilman said that there are 2 pretty liberal judges up for re-election and they have been asking him for their support. Neighborhood guy said - "well then why don't you bring them out here and show them what is going on and what their liberal sentencing is doing to my neighborhood" . Councilman thought that was a great idea.

My daughter just sold a very expensive camera lens she has on ebay. For $800. The buyer doesn't appear to have any ebay history, so I told her to be VERY cautious and make sure the money is 100% completed and verified through her paypal account before she ships it out. Now the guy sent her extra money because he wants it overnighted to his son as a gift...but she apparently can't verify the funds with ebay/paypal until she does a postage label (apparently due to the high dollar amount of the sale). From what I remember of DH selling all that stuff for his friends widow, on ebay, if he's not verified with Paypal then his funds can take a couple of days to clear from "pending" status to completed and be available to transfer to our bank account. I just told her to print label, I guess, but if it's showing in paypal as pending funds, then the guy isn't getting it sent out until is clears. I hope she doesn't get scammed on this. It's a lot of money, so she needs to be 100% sure. I feel better that she sold it through ebay, but she still needs to be careful.