the weekend

It feels like it's been a really long week. Here, however, is why I'm really excited: I have a two-hour class this afternoon and then I'm done for the weekend. Tonight Elizabeth and I have to do some minor apartment cleaning (like washing the dishes) and then pack up our bags for a trip to OMAHA tomorrow. We're going to get to see Joel and Jase and hang out for an evening, then go to a conference with D.A. Carson on suffering on Saturday, and then drive all the way home... and watch the Cowboys play on Sunday. It sounds like a fantastic 3-day weekend. The tough part is that my 8 a.m. Monday class takes 10 hours to prepare for, so Sunday might not be that fun after all (unless Dallas wins).

Anywho...

Car doctors and trash

I haven't showered yet today (don't worry, I will soon). Elizabeth and I have taken our car in to one of its TWO appointments with the car doctors this weekend. It's got a couple of problems and we need to fix them before we road-trip to Omaha next weekend. After dropping our car off this morning, we're basically stranded here in our apartment until we get the car back tomorrow. We did some house cleaning and some apartment cleaning too. My favorite part was returning a big wooden chest to the yard in which it belongs. See, every time there's a large piece of furniture by our dumpsters, we have to call in a bulk pickup to the trash company, and they charge our building $50. That's fine with us if it's one of our residents whose garbage it is, but this morning we saw an eviction taking place across the street and someone's possessions were strewn out all over their yard. A couple of hours later one of the wooden chests that had been sitting in the yard had been brought down to our dumpster and abandoned. That's NOT okay, because now we have to pay for other people's trash to be taken away... So Elizabeth and I picked that chest up and walked it right back across the street and set it in the now-empty yard. They'll have to find some other suckers willing to pay to have their garbage disposed of.

EVICTED

Holy smokes!  How could I have forgotten?

Elizabeth and I had our very first eviction today!  It wasn't a particularly fun experience, but it's kind of nice to know what one's like.  This tenant in our building hasn't been paying rent, and he and his drug-doing friends have been gone for awhile... but the eviction process takes awhile. They took a good chunk of their stuff with them, but they left a bunch too.  So what happens is the sheriff shows up and knocks on the door and then lets you unlock the door and enter. Then he basically checks everything out and makes sure nobody's around while Elizabeth and I and a couple of guys from the company we work for started hauling stuff out and putting it on the lawn. People in the neighborhood have been by, picking through the furniture and stuff all night long. We're supposed to wait a "reasonable amount of time" before we throw all the stuff in the dumpster (I guess the idea is that the tenant can still come back and claim his stuff... which won't happen).  We asked what a "reasonable amount of time" is, and the sheriff said it can be anything from as soon as he's gone until three days from now.  So, it looks like Elizabeth and I will be stuck throwing a bunch of this guy's crap in the dumpster in a couple of days.  You wouldn't believe how some people choose to live.  We found at least three crack pipes (mom, don't freak out -- I only know what it was because I asked the sheriff).  Man oh man. Let me know if you want to know more about evictions.  They're interesting.