Life in the Hood

Dog Daze

Yesterday as I was walking home from work (all good hippies walk to work you know) I heard a yowling in my neighbor's yard. I stopped and peeked around, but other than the three piles of garbage, two garbage cans laying in the mud, five flat basketballs, kitchen chair, grocery cart and the pickup topper laying in the corner I didn't see anything. I shrugged, looked at my privacy fence (which the neighbors have broken several times) in dismay, and went on inside.

Today, on my way home for lunch, I heard the same yowling. This time I spotted the yowler. A pair of forlorn eyes gazed at me from inside the pickup topper laying in the corner. Yep, my neighbors put the dog inside the topper, which is sitting on a patch of mud in their yard, and blocked it shut with bricks. The poor pooch doesn't have enough room in there to stand up, so he's just sort of crouching there, yowling and staring at the world.

I called the Animal Control people. They said they'd send someone over to investigate. I'm curious whether the doggie will be there when I get home or not.

The sad part is that the dog belongs to a little kid, I think. The boy doesn't seem to have much, other than five flat basketballs and a mother that yells a lot, so I hate the thought that the adults in that house are not only being such bad role models that they abuse dogs, but through that action they're going to cost a boy his dog. It makes me sad. But not sad enough to let the dog be neglected.

That reminds me, I have to change the kitty litter tomorrow, no matter what! The poor cat's about at wit's end, and I'm out of fresh sand for him...


Van-dalism

The bosses bought a new delivery van today. For the past few days I've been mentally designing the paint job... I finally settled on something, and e-mailed them my proposal this morning. Somewhat subtle - press gears on the side, our logo, and our phone number. On the other side was pretty much the same thing. It had a neat graphic on the back... My thought was to go with something catchy, but classy. The graphic didn't really need to be recognizable as a printing press, but something that indicated sophisticated machinery at work.

The bosses decided to go with flames. "Hot off the press." Catchy. Or is that kitschy? So they're getting flames painted on the van. It doesn't look bad - just not what I had in mind. (The photos here are my proposals. I'll see if I can get pictures of the flames later...)

"Too bad we can't park it here at work," the boss said. "We're going to let the delivery guy take it home with him at night." I asked why. "Why?" I asked.

"The first delivery van we had, we parked it here by the loading dock at night. Within a week all the hubcaps were stolen..." (Does anyone know why people steal hubcaps? When's the last time you bought a hubcap from a guy off the street?)

In the past few years, the company van has had the hubcaps stolen, we've caught a homeless guy pooping behind our loading dock, the side door's been jimmied, I saw a cop chase a robber through our parking lot, and we've been hit with graffiti four or five times. It's a good neighborhood to raise a family in...