a blog by stephen

Link: How NOT to steal a SideKick II

Picture it. Vineland, NJ. Lunch </Sofia> -

Today at lunch I saw a gentleman and his wife. After paying their bill she asked him to hold her purse while she used the bathroom. He looked over at me and said he wasn’t going to hold her purse because he didn’t want anyone to think he was a “homo”.

I thought to myself “Even the Queer Eye “Fab 5″ couldn’t help you! Ain’t no one EVER gonna think you’re a homo. No amount of wax can help those eyebrows.”

Fun times in economically depressed NJ.

First a little background…

As some of you know I live at Cherry Hill Towers in Cherry Hill, NJ. You probably also know that there a number of unresolved issues here which continue to plague my life:

• The below par (bad reception/poor download and upload speeds on internet), crude (re-broadcast of Dish network), faulty (frequent issues with cable modem), inadequate (for a “luxury” apartment community),
  inferior (to Comcast), insufficient (I and many others are not happy with it), low-grade (again, a re-broadcast of Dish network), piss poor, non-standard monopoly on cable/internet
• Excessively loud HVAC which wakes me up at night, causes me to pause TiVo when it comes on, move to the bathroom to take phonecalls, etc. There’s been a “noise muting device” in the works for what seems like months, but this hasn’t surfaced yet and no one knows when it will.
• Lack of response and need for followup from with the Cherry Hill Towers management team on my issues and concerns.

Well! …

Sometimes I can’t help but feel that people strive to irritate me… This evening I had a fair amount of laundry to do so I took it down to the high security (access controlled by building access card + cameras) laundry center on the 1st floor. As it turns out it is higher security than I thought as it apparently locks itself up around 10pm. I put my laundry in at 9:45pm so as you can imagine I am ever so slightly annoyed. I simply cannot fathom why a controlled access laundry center needs to be locked up overnight.

My voicemail to the leasing office went something like this:

. . . I hope to god the laundry opens at 5 with the gym and not at 10 with the game room or i am going to go from irritated to livid faster than you can rewind this voicemail to play for your coworkers - because I know you will! Lastly, I expect to see the door unlocked 24/7 or the current mystery hours of operation need to be clearly posted and notified to residents via a memo. Please call me at 856-XXX-YYYY to discuss.

One might ask why I am using the laundry center? I use it because the “All in one” washer/dryer are interesting and cool in concept, but 1) take forever (I am talking hours!) to dry a load of laundry and 2) everything is wrinkled. Going down to the first floor laundry center is just easier sometimes.

Lately, I find myself biting my tongue when I see potential residents viewing the property. They ask how I like it here and I lie to them - at some point the courtesy of my lies will stop.

More on this later….

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For more about the FightAIDS@Home project, visit World Community Grid - Home

I joined the “Gay US” team, more info @ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WCG_Gay_US/

Apparently Diet Coke and Mentos, when combined, garner an interesting reaction. Do try this at home! Check out the video at http://eepybird.com/dcm1.html