Life in my parking lot

I WANT TO ASSURE YOU, I AM NOT THE MS. CRAVITTS OF THE BLOGWORLD.

I don't stand by the curtains, peering out my window to spy on what everyone else is doing and, thus, make myself the Nosey Parker of my apartment complex.

However, my computer is right next to a window. I usually keep that window open for the fresh air and to hear the birds sing.

And that means I hear everything else that is going on in my parking lot. And in a strange way, a parking lot is a bit of a microcosm of life itself.

First, here's a pictorial update on a woman I've told you about before.

I'm now convinced she is actually a millionaire tin can tycoon who moved here from China and wakes up every day laughing at how wasteful we are.

She goes into the dumpsters and recycle bins -- even in the dead of winter -- to collect all the beer cans and other items our disposable society casts away.

On another parking lot peeve, my car got broken into last weekend. A $5 bill that my daughter had left there in full view was not taken and neither was anything else that I can tell.

The punk thief went through my glove compartment and left everything, including my drivers' registration and insurance, strewn about.


I couldn't understand why it wasn't taken because a big criminal ploy now is identity theft.


But a fellow apartment dweller approached me and told me he caught the guy in my car and chased him off, maybe that's why nothing was stolen.


ANOTHER misfortune of living about 20 feet away from a parking lot used by hundreds of people every day is that I'm subject to the vagaries of innane late-night drunken stupidity.

But I'm also at the mercy of people with car security systems who have no idea how to operate them. This morning, the woman below came out to her fancy car and set off her own alarm.

HONK! HONK! HONK! HONK!

This went on for 10 minutes before she finally figured out how to shut it off.

Don't they give people instructions on these things? I've never had a security system.

I wonder when they'll invent one of those little push-button thingies that would allow me to blow up their car.

Finally, and this has nothing to do with parking lots and I am just rambling, my computer apparently wanted a divorce or something this week.


After barely more than a year together, Cecilia, as I lovingly call her, was non-responsive when I, ahem, tried to turn her on.


She woke up one morning on startup with this message...


I have no idea what a DCOM Service Process Launcher is, but if you can read the message, I had only 44 seconds to act and to revive my relationship with Cece.

As suggested by a fellow blogger who knows more about female computers than I ever will, after several attempts at trying to caress Cecilia and find out why she wanted to leave me, I took drastic action.

I found the system restore button. I pressed it, firmly but gently, before the 44 seconds elapsed.

Ever since then, Cecilia has been doing pretty much everything I asked.

Don't you wish life was just like that?