Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Crime is Stupid, But Not As Much as My Wife

There has been a slight up tick in crime in our area lately, specifically car break-ins. Accordingly, our neighborhood association sent around a letter with tips to prevent them.

One of the tips is to always park your car in the garage or at least as close to the house as possible.

Coincidentally, I am currently doing some work on the house, so half our garage is now devoted to tools and my work area. I cannot park my car in the garage.

Here's where the trouble starts.

I usually just park up close to the house next to a light post next to the drive way like this:

This way, I can walk out my front door and easily around to the driver's side while making sure the car is well lit.

This is unacceptable to my wife. The letter clearly stated "as close to the house as possible". So she does just that whenever she drives my car:

She will even move my car closer after I get home from work. I have told her repeatedly that this is both unnecessary and annoying. In this position, I have to walk through the dirt or wet grass to get around to the other side. It also blocks the sidewalk from anyone walking up.

It does not matter. She will not be deterred from her crime fighting.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

My Wife, the Luddite

I've mentioned before that my wife is afraid of computers. This fear apparently extends to all electronics.

Example 1. We keep getting letters from our local electrical utility offering us a free, digital thermostat to replace the old, ugly rotary one we have. I'm all in favor of this, but my wife will have none of it.

"What's the big deal?", I asked, "It works the same and looks better."

"But I want to be able to control the temperature!", she barked.

"You still can; you just use the buttons to put in the temp you want. Plus, you can program it to change the temperature when we're not home."

"No! I want to do it!"

"You still can--"

"NO! I JUST DON'T LIKE THEM!!"

Example 2. We don't have cable, so I had to get some of those digital converters to use on the TVs and mount an outdoor antenna. I think the picture looks great, but she hates them.

Because you have to turn the TV on with one remote, and do everything else with another now.

That and sometimes the picture goes a little "pixelly".

On the upside, I'm slowly talking her in to getting cable. I can't wait to show her how a DVR works.