Fence Update: I got the cease and desist letter today (it was bold like that in the letter too -weird), Seemed kind of weak to me but, of course IANAL, so I’ll up a few bucks and have someone look at it.
The Fence issue is down to the letters section today, There was a really nice, well-written letter of support for my cause followed by a guy expressing concern about the driveway closing “if there were” a water or sewer line on my driveway. (yes, I know that sentence doesn’t make sense)

In other news I did switch from Right-Guard “sport” deodorant to Right-Guard “eXtreme sport” today, so perhaps things will brighten up a bit.

It’s been seven or eight years since I’ve done real_police_work, but I’m starting to get the hang of it.
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I had some pithy observations about the differences between where I work now and where I worked the last time I was on the street, but thought better of posting them right now. <g>

Yesterday was my last day with The Team. I’m going to miss those guys. It’s a filthy story of political expediency that you probably wouldn’t believe anyhow, but if you want to hear it you’ll have to buy me coffee. The short answer is that The Spearster and I are just a little too insensitive to be pointing rifles at people.

So, tomorrow I take my insensitive self out to meet the public and try to learn how to be a real cop. I’m not kidding, if you beat your old lady or rob a store or something and I show up don’t pretend I didn’t warn you about my insensitivity.

But enough about that. The other thing is The Fence. When I bought this house it came with a newspaper office and a small road that ran in front of the newspaper office. Now how and why this road happened to be on my property I don’t know, but I guess it would be convenient if I were running a newspaper. Which I wasn’t. So being as I wasn’t the only person using this road but I was the only person paying taxes on it and, as my insurance man pointed out, the only person paying insurance on it; I asked Mrs. Mick to call the county and see if they would take it over. The county said that there was no road there and if there were a road there (which there isn’t) they wouldn’t want it. Why wouldn’t they want me to pay taxes on it.
So I stopped thinking of it as a road and started thinking of it as a driveway that other people happen to drive down sometimes. Now a few months ago we finally got rid of the newspaper office (Did I mention I’m not running a newspaper?). In order to get that thing out of my yard the fence between the yard and my driveway (yes, the strip of tarmac formerly known as “the road”) had to come down, and being properly lazy and having a bit of hubris, I realized it would be easier to run a little fence across my driveway on each side than to run a fence all the way along my driveway. So once again I approached the county and got the same story about there being no road and if there were a road they wouldn’t want it. Mrs. Mick talked to everyone we could imagine this change might effect and I talked to a few people in the know about our newly-formed-city structure and politics as to whether there be some procedure for informing …someone that I was closing my road driveway. No, of course there wasn’t by-golly. In this freedom-loving burg you do what you want with your property.
My insurance man threw a party.
So I get a guy to build a fence (Those of you that are my true friends know this about me: I don’t help people move no matter how much I like them, and I don’t dig post holes.) and I leave on a nice vacation.
I guess you probably guessed this but when I got back from vacation I had been on the front page of both local papers (neither of which I run, having no newspaper office) as “the grinch who stole ‘The Extension to Church Street'” and “a righteous land owner that the city had singled out for it’s own socialist agenda”. Obviously the two competing newspapers disagreeing on the nature of this story hasn’t made the news die down any quicker. The mayor has been by with mildly threatening letters and there have been special city council sessions, but no real action yet.
So anyhow, stay tuned for updates and if I can get copies of those “twenty-seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with the circles and the arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is to be used as evidence against me” I’ll post ’em. 🙂