Suburban warfare - it begins

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I just moved to the suburbs two months ago, and I am already planning the first war with the neighbors.

Apparently in suburbia, when you rake your leaves, you put them in big brown bags and then place them near the road for the city to pick up during designated days. My new house is lucky - I have woods in the back so that I can dump them there without bagging. Yay!

The neighbors aren't so lucky. Boo. So they filled up about 10-15 huge bags and then proceeded to leave them for pickup... on OUR lawn. Not just touching the border, but on the grass. Now, I'm not a suburban expert yet, but I know this much: This is Not. Cool. Border disputes can cause serious casualties. Just ask Europe or Asia.

This current infarction comes after months of (illegally) parking in front of (and sometimes on) our lawn instead of in their driveway, so we already dislike them and may - I admit - be a bit biased towards them.

As such, I have devised several potential options for handling the leaf-bag situation. Please feel free to vote or write in alternate candidates if you feel so moved:

1. Asking them nicely to move their trash off our lawn (ugh, that's SO yawn. I live in NYC - I prefer the passive-aggressive approach. Or just the aggressive one.)

2. Returning the leaves to their original positions...spread out in a nice, even layer all over their lawn. This is most effective if done the night before the town's pickup schedule date. (Downside: time consuming and would have to be done in wee hours of the night.)

3. Stacking the bags around or on top of their illegally parked cars, sandbag-style, so they have to move them to get into or drive their cars. (I like this one best so far.)

4. Moving the bags in front of their house's doors so they are blockaded in. (Fire hazard, but not sure I care.)

5. Stuffing tailpipes of said cars with tightly-packed, wet wads of said leaves. (Might be too subtle, and unreliable results may nix this one.)

6. Krazy-glue leaves all over said cars (very effective, but may have unwanted legal ramifications).

Hmmm... now that I think about it, this may be how the whole Hatfield/McCoy thing started...I am not sure, but I would sympathize with them if it was.
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Sweater shopping FAIL

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I went shopping for a sweater today. what a stupid experience. I saw a sweater in the window that I really liked. I'm not often an impulsive buyer, so I have seen it there for a few weeks, and today I decided to buy it.

I went inside, searched, and was unable to find it in the vast array of clothing racks... so I asked a salesperson for some assistance...

me: hi! do you see that sweater in the window?
her: yes.
me: do you have any of those i can try on? I can't seem to find them in the store.
her: let me check. (she checks) looks like we're out of those.
me: oh, bummer. how about the one in the window? what size is that?
her: medium.
me: oh! can i buy that one?
her: no.
me: um. why not?
her: it's in the window.
me: can you take it out of the window?
her: we take it out when the windows are changed.
me: but it's right there... i can touch it. it's not hard to get to.
her: no. you can't have it. it's in the window.
me: so... you have a sweater, in stock, that i want to buy... but you're refusing to sell it to me? i just want to get that straight...
her: um... well... it's in the window...
me: you realize that makes no sense, right?
her: it's in the window....
me: nevermind. goodbye....

You know, I never really liked that sweater anyway. So there.
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On this election day...

Yes, I voted. No, I'm not crazy.

And in honor of this this amazing right that I have to vote in my country, I would like to bring you some of the best signs that were displayed at the "Rally to Restore Sanity" on Oct. 20th. (thanks to Huffington Post)