Christine the Curmudgeon

So the landladies have apparently been putting their GARBAGE into our recycling bin.  They do try to recycle as much of their trash as possible, in order to avoid paying for the expensive garbage bags we have to buy here, in order to get actual GARBAGE picked up.  If we don’t use the city-approved bags, the trash will NOT be picked up.  Surely some wholesale distributors are getting rich over making low-quality trash bags that are sold for premium prices.  Anyhoo, mostly what they put in their recycling bin gets picked up, no problem.  But now they are throwing stuff that I think would be considered GARBAGE into OUR recycling bin!

Mister Curmudgeon is a doofus.  He wanted to use one of OUR expensive garbage bags, that WE paid for, to put the trash that the landladies threw in our recycling bin, just so the trash truck will take it.

I told him that if he did, he was a fool.  He’d be enabling these people to keep tossing their trash into OUR recycling bin, knowing that WE’D pay to have it picked up.

I got seriously yelled at by him over this.  Because of that, I made his ass eat leftovers.  Nobody yells at me for shit I didn’t do and gets away with it.

But I know I am right.  If there is too much improperly bagged trash that sits for weeks and is not picked up, it is not OUR problem.  The city fines THE OWNER OF THE PROPERTY for it.

When I managed to explain this to Mr. C., I THINK he finally got it.  Let the landladies get fined just ONCE, and hopefully that will be the end of them using our recycling bin as their personal trash can, rather than buying the bags like everyone else here has to!

Most of them are not as amusing as Bullwinkle, that’s for sure!  But, like Bullwinkle these people just THINK they know it all, when they know nothing.

There was this jerk sitting behind us at the ball game yesterday who WOULD NOT SHUT UP.  His ongoing commentary to his friends was annoying, as he acted like he knew EVERYTHING about baseball, about the ballpark, etc.  Yet he did not know the name of the team that the Portland Sea Dogs were playing against.  It was the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.  Sheesh, how can you go to a ball game and NOT know the names of the teams that are playing?

Not this guy…but he was too busy yapping away, he barely shut up for one second.  He sounded like one of those salesmen who’d try to sell you anything, such as offering term life insurance quotes, yet knowing NOTHING about what it is he’s trying to sell.  He was the one who told his pals that they could buy beer right through the end of the game…sorry, not gonna happen, beer closes in the middle of the 7th inning.

We did get some peace when he announced to the entire section that he had to go pee, and asked this woman who he was with for his phone (which he was telling her how to take pictures with, with obviously no success, from what we could hear).  He was going to call his brother while he was downstairs taking a leak.

We’d hoped that he’d chew his brother’s ear off for a while while downstairs, so we’d get a break from his endless commentary about stuff of which he knows nothing.  But I guess his brother must have gotten all of the brains of the family, because the jerk came back and announced to the whole section that his brother was not picking up the phone.  Methinks that bro is screening his calls.  I would, if this jerk were MY brother!

At least they all left once they realized that no more beer was to be sold.  Sometimes, that cutoff is a GOOD thing!

The PROPER use for those flip-up bus seats

There has been a rather annoying thing that Christine the Curmudgeon has been noticing lately.  It’s parents with those Hugh Jass SUV strollers who get on the bus with the thing, and then opt to flip up the seats (which is supposed to be for making room for passengers in wheelchairs), and park the behemoth stroller there.

In my opinion, this practice is almost, if not AS bad, as parking in a handicapped space when you are not legally qualified to do so.  So what if there is no handicapped person on the bus/in the space right NOW?  You never know when someone MIGHT need it at any given time, so if you don’t need it, don’t use it.

When there is no wheelchair person on the bus, this also takes seats away from people who may need them.  The seats are at the front of the bus, and there are signs asking people to give up these seats to elderly/disabled people who need them.  But very few people do so; no doubt that the woman with the stroller that was as big as an RV, so big that it should be carrying 5th wheel insurance, would move if someone boarded who needed one of the three seats that were lost due to the stroller being there. Srsly, I don’t know why the bus drivers allow this. The rule should be, no flipping up those seats unless you’re using a wheelchair. No exceptions.

Yes, if you have a baby, you do need a stroller.  But if your regular way of getting around is on public transportation, why not just get a smaller stroller, rather than something that is as huge as a Winnebago?  I see plenty of people on the bus with normal-sized strollers, which do not block the aisles, nor require the need to take seats from people, by flipping up the seats at the wheelchair spaces.

People in wheelchairs have no choice, and they are protected under the Americans With Disabilities Act.  I don’t begrudge them at all for taking away two or three seats on a bus or train.  But parents who choose to buy a stroller that is big enough to tow my car away with deserve no rights, no protection under any law.  Those Hugh Jass things need to be banned from all public transit (unless they are checked baggage on an airplane, or stashed in the luggage  storage bins on a long-distance bus).  And they should all be labeled as to whether or not they are public transit-permitted or not, that way, parents who plan to use the buses a lot will know that to buy and what not to buy.

Basically, if it’s not a wheelchair, but you have to put it in a space that’s supposed to be for a wheelchair, it should not be on the bus.  Period.

Christine the Curmudgeon posted before about annoying old biddies on the Boston Express Bus.  But there is another rant, this one about The Toddler Who Would Not Shut Up.

This was last week, as well, I forget if it was Tuesday or Thursday, but that’s no big deal.  I got in the queue for the bus as usual, so I could get my seat with the power outlet.  I was distressed a bit to see some rather annoying young children in the line in front of me.  But the good thing abut having them in FRONT of me in the queue was that they’d be seated first, and I could try to not sit near them, if such a seat was available with a power outlet, that is.

But then the most annoying kid of the bunch, a little boy who looked to be about 3-4 years old, decided that he had to pee.  He was there with his mother and his grandmother, so Grandma volunteered to take him to the bathroom.  Whike they were gone, the bus started boarding.

I was able to get on and get a power outlet seat far away enough from the other people with little kids.  But then, who comes and sits RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME, but Annoying Kid, Grandma, and Mom.  The adults took turns having the kid on their laps, otherwise, they’d not be able to all sit together.

This kid was annoying because HE WOULD NOT SHUT UP the whole time!  I had my iPod with me, but even that couldn’t drown out the high-pitched kid babble.  Fortunately, they got off in Salem, so I got to ride the rest of the way to Manchester in peace.

This is unfair.  I mean, Boston Express Bus has some strict rules about noise.  We are told at the beginning of each and every trip that we are to turn off our cell phones, or at least set them to vibrate.  Talking on the phone on the bus is not allowed, unless the bus is running late, and you need to call someone on the other end to let them know.  Even then, you are expected to keep it brief.  Texting is okay, though.

Also, they tell passengers that if they are using an iPod or other device that has sound, they should make sure that the volume is not turned up high enough so that everyone on the bus can hear out out of their earbuds.  These rules are enforced; once I saw a driver threaten to throw this guy off the bus because he refused to stop talking on his cell phone, despite repeated warnings.

So, if it’s a quiet ride they want for the passengers, then why does this kid get a free pass?  Because he’s a KID?  WHY couldn’t Mom and Grandma make him shut up?  Indoor voice, anyone?  But no, this kid was so damned loud, that my iPod couldn’t block him out.  Well, it would have, if I’d turned the volume up louder, but that would have broken one of the rules of the bus.

Even if I wanted to give up my power outlet seat to get away, I couldn’t have, as the bus was full.  And besides, the kid was so loud that I would have heard him no matter where I was sitting.

I’m sorry, but that kid was a zillion times more annoying than anyone’s cell phone conversation.  Fortunately, the passengers on the Boston Express Bus are mostly commuters who live in New Hamster and work in Boston, and want to avoid the shitty drive on I-93.  Not too many people with kids at all.  I’m not saying that kids should not be allowed on these buses, I’m just saying that the same standard of QUIET should apply to them, as it does for everyone else.

Today, Christine the Curmudgeon is going to rant about people who do not properly plan ahead – specifically large groups of people.

Several years ago, Mr. Curmudgeon and I dined at a restaurant in Portsmouth, NH called The Stockpot.  It is no longer there…too bad, it was a pretty good place.  Anyhoo, it was kind of a small place, at least the one non-smoking room was (at the time, smoking was still permitted in NH bars and restaurants).

We were there on a Saturday night in the summer, a busy time in Portsmouth and other seacoast towns.  Since it was just the two of us, we were able to walk into The Stockpot and get a table right away.

As we were sitting there, drinking our beers and enjoying our dinner, this group of nine people walked in.  The hostess told them that she could not seat them all together at the time, and that they’d have to wait.  The leader of the group started screaming at the poor hostess, as if this were somehow her fault.  But there was nothing she could have done, she did her best to calm this person down.  They left for a while, but then came back, probably because they realized that there was nit a single restaurant in all of downtown Portsmouth that could seat a group of nine people together on a Saturday night.  In the middle of the summer.  With no advance notice.  They were still waiting when we left, and they were loudly bitching and moaning about it all as we walked past them.

I was reminded of this incident by one that happened more recently.  I’ve been becoming a regular on the 3PM Boston Express Bus from Boston’s South Station to Manchester, NH, at least once a week.  This is because we go to a lot of New Hampshire Fisher Cats games, and for the weeknight games, it is easier if I go up on the bus, and Mr. Curmudgeon meets me at the stadium after he gets sprung from work.  His office is about halfway up I-93 between our house and the ballpark, so it makes no sense for him to have to drive home, get me, and them backtrack north again.  We’ll have season tickets for next year, so I’ll be using Boston Express Bus all the more; I hope they come out with monthly passes by then!

Anyhoo, these buses come equipped with free WiFi, as well as electrical outlets at some of the seats.  These are clearly marked, but you need to get in the queue for the bus early so you can get on sooner and snag one of these seats, if you need one.  Since I never go anywhere without my cell phone, Amazon Kindle, and iPod (and sometimes I bring my netbook if I need to do some work), I always get there early enough to get an outlet.  I always seem to have SOMETHING that needs to be charged up!

So I was on the 3PM to Manchester last Friday, sitting in my seat with the power outlet, my phone happily charging away.  At exactly 2:58, this large group of older ladies got on the bus, and once they saw that the bus was nearly full and that there was no way they could all sit together, they started bitching and moaning loudly about this.

Some people actually got up and moved so at least some of them could sit together.  I was not among them.  I was the one who planned ahead because I wanted access to a power outlet; although I do charge things up at home, using mobile web on a phone sucks up a lot of juice.  But that’s not the point – the point is that I knew what I had to do to get a power outlet seat, and I made sure to get there in time to board the bus and get one.  It’s not my problem that this bunch of old biddies didn’t plan ahead to get to the station early enough to be the first to board and get their choice of seats!  This is NOT the same thing as refusing to give an elderly person a seat on an MBTA bus or train, now that I would do.  The Boston Express Bus only sells as many tickets as there are seats, so nobody has to stand.  This was just a case where the old bats all wanted to sit together, and it wasn’t going to happen.

One of the old biddies sat next to me, but I put my iPod earphones in and ignored her as she glared at me.

Next time, get there earlier!  Sheesh!  If I ever act like this when I become an old bat, somebody please shoot me!