Teacup Café XLII

[Acalewia]

BB! Missed you, my old friend <3

[Mari]

Happy New Year, for all of you on the other side of the world!

[Earniel]

Happy new year, and the best wishes for 2017. May 2017 be good.

New Year's going to be nice and quiet dinner with my folks, cleaning out the few remaining gifts under the tree and maybe a movie and snacks. Looking forward to it.

Not so looking forward to stressing over calling in the cats in time for when some of the more jackass neighbour start setting off fireworks way before 8 PM. If the last few days have been an indication, some people here in the neighbouring streets have no pets themselves and precious little thought for other peoples' pets and way too much fireworks in their shed...

Originally Posted by Acalewia

I'm the same way, Earniel. I make everyone comfortable in my house when they visit, with the exception of smoking and vaping. They still need to go outside for that. I'm sensitive to vapors as well. Which I recently learned...

I'd agree, making other people comfortable shouldn't come at a personal health-expense either. Sometimes all it takes is a decent seat outside, out of the rain, for visiting smokers and everybody can be satisfied.

But I guess every time a family gets together, there's going to be drama llamas

Now I'm having visions of people sitting at holiday feast tables with an actual llama looking over their shoulder and nobody daring to address the llama in the room...

Originally Posted by Mari

We survived Christmas! No drama, only a little stress and lots of fun.

Yeay!

Originally Posted by Acalewia

Yay! My in-laws actually took their cigarettes outside

Doubly yay!

[Acalewia]

Originally Posted by Eärniel

Not so looking forward to stressing over calling in the cats in time for when some of the more jackass neighbour start setting off fireworks way before 8 PM. If the last few days have been an indication, some people here in the neighbouring streets have no pets themselves and precious little thought for other peoples' pets and way too much fireworks in their shed...

poor babies!

Now I'm having visions of people sitting at holiday feast tables with an actual llama looking over their shoulder and nobody daring to address the llama in the room...

lmao!

[Earniel]

Yeah, the cats don't like fireworks much, except for the PsychoCat since he's deaf. So we called them indoors as soon as we got home and fed them like three tasty meals in the hope they'd be too full and sleepy to be bothered much.

And indeed, first bangs were before 10PM with a barrage of fireworks at midnight which bothered NormalishCat enough to wonder through the house looking out of sorts and I didn't see TraumaCat at all until next morning so I hope she was holed up somewhere she felt safe.

You know, the worst thing really, is that personal fireworks are technically forbidden in this county, but usually condoned unless, say, you set your neighbour's roof on fire. Still, too many people still don't think fireworks through. What goes up, MUST come down.

I remember the memorable Year when the new neighbours from across the street celebrated ther first New Year here with fireworks lighted on the street. Oh yes, away from their house allright, they read the instructions so far. Pity they forgot there were houses you know, on the other side of the street. We collected quite a bit of firework sticks that year, included one that missed me by inches and the one we had to pull of the veranda glass roof, on and the one in the pool. (Good times...) And just as we were bitching amongst ourselves about inconsiderate neighbours we see another neighbour purposely crossing the street, looking decidely grumpy, with in his hand a bouquet of firework stems... We never quite saw what went down or what was said (curse them incoveniently planted hedgerows!) but those new neighbours never lit fireworks on for New Year again.

[Mari]

Wow, that must be one impressive neighbour then! Coolio.

[Varnafindë]

Originally Posted by Eärniel

You know, the worst thing really, is that personal fireworks are technically forbidden in this county, but usually condoned unless, say, you set your neighbour's roof on fire.

In Norway, fireworks with sticks are forbidden, and many cities forbid the use of personal fireworks in the central area - and some of them have official fireworks in the city centre instead, with hired professional pyrotechnicians (?) to do the job safely.

Where personal fireworks are allowed, they are only allowed from 6 p.m. on New Year's Eve until 2 a.m. on New Year's Day. And fireworks may only be sold on the last three or four days of December, and only licensed shops may import them from abroad.

The sticks were forbidden about ten years ago, and there was a significant drop in eye injuries after that - and I think also a drop in roofs being set on fire.

But people still do stupid things, so injuries still occur and houses still burn.

[Acalewia]

Where I live, it's illegal to shoot fireworks in the city limits, unless set off by professionals at the behest of the city during the 4th of July celebrations, but people do it anyway. Scared the poo out of my own PsychoCat

[Earniel]

To be fair, now that I think of it, complaining neighbour had one of them old-fashioned tatch roofs and two young kids in the house, so yeah he definitely had reason to be grumpy with fireworks so close to home. New neighbours weren't bad, just clueless. What goes up must come down. And just because something goes up in flames and explodes up there, doesn't mean it'll be done with being on fire by the time it comes down.

I'm kinda glad we don't have the fourth of July here. One giant round of fireworks in the year is quite enough for me, never mind two.

[Acalewia]

Glad his house didn't catch on fire

[Alcuin]

We had a housefire many years ago near the Fourth of July. The recently retired fire chief lived across the street from us, and spent about an hour searching for the smell of burning house before he discovered our roof smoking.

When the fire investigators arrived, they first tried to blame my young son, and attempted to brow-beat him into a false confession. Then they blamed my wife for not extinguishing a burning cigarette. She felt guilty about it for many years.

A decade later, I had a conversation with one of the local police detectives. He told me neighborhood teenagers using bottle rockets accidentally shot one under our eaves. It smoldered for a couple of hours before setting our house ablaze. The police and firemen knew this, but because the insurance company would sue my neighbors, and the teenagers would be charged with using illegal fireworks and hence with arson, they pinned the blame on my wife. When I spoke to him about the effect on my son and wife, he just shrugged.

My son still doesn’t trust firemen or policemen. I don’t blame him: neither do I.

[Acalewia]

That's BS. It's no wonder people don't trust police. I'm sorry your family had to go through that

[Mari]

How strange!

[Earniel]

Yikes! That's pretty aweful. Sure puts a damper on relationships with the neighbours. Hard to look at them again after learning they were all complicit in it.


On lighter news I appear to have past the 14 000 post mark unnoticed. Man, I never realised I'm so talkative.

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by Eärniel

Yikes! That's pretty aweful. Sure puts a damper on relationships with the neighbours. Hard to look at them again after learning they were all complicit in it.


On lighter news I appear to have past the 14 000 post mark unnoticed. Man, I never realised I'm so talkative.

Congratulations on the 14,000 post mark! I hope you remain quite the chatterbox: it is comforting.

There were no repercussions with our neighbors. The retired fire chief died a few years afterwards, of natural causes, I might add. The neighborhood teenagers, whose parents probably never knew what happened, moved away after graduation, and there were several of them from different families, so we never knew which ones were responsible. We didn’t learn the truth for over ten years: the retired fireman was gone, his family sold his house; the teenagers were gone; and there is no one on whom to pin any blame.

But it does give me pause when I read the papers or watch the news and learn the “official story” of what’s happened during the day. I believe it wise to take “official” truth with a grain of salt.

I have a friend who grew up in the Ukraine during the Soviet era. He told me his grandfather received the official Communist Party weekly for farmers, because he was a farmer and a registered Party member. Each week when the newspaper arrived, his grandfather never read it, but immediately gave it instead to the donkey, which ate it. My friend, then a boy, asked his grandfather why he took the paper if he never bothered to read it. His grandfather sagely replied that he was safer as a Party member, and besides, the donkey was hungry.

[Mari]

Pffft, so busy with packing moving boxes while at the same time renovating the new house. 2,5 more weeks to go... o_O

[Earniel]

Must have been a hungry donkey indeed to like paper so much.

It's amazing what amount of stuff you have in your house when you need to pack it up, eh Mari? Good luck with the move. Is the new place in need of much renovation?

[Mari]

Actually, it's not that much stuff. I've been patching up room by room the last couple of years, so lots of excess stuff has already gone towards the skip. Combined with the need to finish things like electricity, flooring, painting etc. to a certain point before I have to move out, it's rather hectic though.

The new place... on the surface it didn't appear to need much, but by now we might as well have gutted the place. All the walls needed stripping and the house had to be completely rewired (that one was unexpected, not a fun surprise). The kitchen and bathroom we took out completely, but we had a builder do the building up. Unfortunately the kitchen itself won't arrive till end March. *sigh*
Right now we're working on the floor though. We can't finish all the rooms before the move, but it's starting to look like we may be able to finish at least the rooms that get heavy furniture.

[Mari]

NB: I'm very tired, so if my post is a bit incoherent: sorry.

[Acalewia]

Yikes. Sounds like a mess, Mari