Back to School

There's a tornado watch in effect here until 8pm. When I walked outside around 4pm the sky was rather alarming. When I returned to the Liberry at 5, however, everything looked clear and blue. We'll see. All I know is we badly need some rain. Some of the potential tracks for Ernesto have him crossing Florida and re-strengthening over the Atlantic before plowing straight up the Chesapeake. We don't need rain quite that much.

School is back in session, meaning I'm distracted by a lot of really fantastic T&A, much of it born the year I graduated high school. There have already been two major parties in our neighborhood. On Saturday the party in #4 was so large there was spillover into our yard and onto our porch, said spillover already having spilled over from yard #3, the abandoned house, where the kids from #4 had decided to set up their kegs. I can deal with noise, but stay off my lawn! I politely asked several people to get off my porch at 10pm. At 10:45 I again politely moved several people off my porch, this time with the help of a couple of the renters from #4 who were throwing the party and who saw the veins throbbing in my forehead. "All these kids in my yard are stepping on plants," I told them. Underfoot were some red maple saplings I'd been nurturing, the hostas (which are almost done for the year), and some rosebushes.

At 11:00pm I turned on the porch light again and saw a guy pissing on our porch. Behind him were two jocks wrestling on the lawn and some girls had the lid off my composter and were throwing empties inside. That did it. I called the cops and ten minutes later an enormous herd of rushing teens went crashing through the bushes between my front yard and the yard at #1; they were trying to get over his fence and left a swath of broken shrubs and empty Busch Light cans. I'd say there were more than 100 kids in front of our row of townhomes, all fleeing the four responding cruisers from Towson Precinct, the State Police barracks at TU, and a Baltimore County Sheriff's Deputy. In the alley behind our houses another 100 dispersed quickly into the neighborhoods. After the cops were done with them I gave the inhabitants in #4 a chewing out worthy of my worst nightmares--I've become what I detest. I felt like a fraud. I hate being The Man. The kids in #4 told me they'd buy me new trees and re-mulch the yard, and one sprayed the piss off my porch with a hose. I recall screaming at Matt, the kid who bought the house with his dad: "Your father told me if I ever had problems with you that I could kick your ass. I'm sorely tempted." I kept poking him with my finger like some old coot. Seemed to work though, because they cleaned up every scrap of trash from all the yards and were apologizing profusely all along. I guess this old nerd can be a bit threatening.

Last night #1 had a big party that went on until past 2am. I gave up caring and put in the earplugs I use when I use the wet-dry vac and read about Emptiness.

I have a job interview next Wednesday. Somebody actually read my résumé and called. How novel!