Day Four-Ninety-Seven - Welcome to Texas

I love my neighborhood.  One of the things I like best about it is the cultural diversity of the area.  It is not unusual at all to see Hasidic Jews in all their ethnic garb walking down the bike/pedestrian trail.  Many times as I walk or ride my bike on the trail, I'll see Indians and Pakistanis in their ethnic garb, as well as others also out enjoying the trail in our neighborhood.  We all get along, it's culturally nice and I like it.

But here's the thing that drives me crazy.  Every year at about this time the area has a new very large influx of Asian immigrants who don't plan to live in the USA for long.  Just long enough to get their relatively cheap education at UT-Dallas.  They're here on student visas.  This past week, they were arriving in the apartments around the area in droves.  Literally, droves!  I saw 12 of them exiting a single Super Shuttle at the apartments down the street on Monday with tons of luggage.  That's fine.  I think it's great that they can come here and get an inexpensive education and then return to their home country to make it better.  (Or perhaps to answer the phone anytime I call my credit card company....)  The issue I have has to do with their total disregard for personal space and that they are under the misguided impression that the world revolves around them.

I get it. They are young "enlightened" people, who just like young Americans that travel abroad feel that what they are doing is worth having everyone around them stop and observe. Hey everybody!!!!  Look at me!  I'm away from home for the first time without my parents and I'm an idiot!!!!  I totally get it.  But it doesn't mean I like it.  In fact I am fed up with it.

Since they are just arriving in the country they are stocking their homes and dorms.  I went to Target yesterday afternoon for a very painful hour.  Normally, I can get in and out of Target in no time at all, you know as long as there is enough money in the bank to cover it.  I was slowed quite a bit yesterday by non-English speaking Asians who were trying to figure out complicated things like milk.  I waited patiently for more than 3 minutes while two men speaking a foreign language I have never heard, debated milk blocking the entire milk case as they did so.  I'm not sure about the nature of their debate.  But they kept picking up different types of milk ranging from organic to domestic to even soy and then discussing them.  Then once they finally decided on organic, they ran into the issue of whole, low fat or fat free!  It was apparently a big deal for them.  After 3 minutes, when a line began to form, I decided that I had been polite for long enough and interrupted there milk debate reaching between them to get my fat free organic milk.  When that happened they seemed somewhat shocked by my presence and quickly moved aside and let others get their milk.

When it was time for me to check out.  I went to the shortest line I could find.  Another of the women who I remembered as being behind me at the milk case during the great milk debate was in the process of checking out.  The checkout was nearly cleared and there was a young Asian woman behind her but nothing was on the the conveyor belt.  She had a basket full of stuff but was just standing about watching what was going on around her.  Perhaps at the Target in India, some little slumdog kid comes out and empties your cart onto the conveyor for you so that the young ladies don't have to touch the vulgar thing.  But in Texas, you are responsible for putting it on the conveyor yourself.  I guess no one told her about this.  So, I put one of those bars down across the conveyor and started emptying my cart thinking she would get the message and begin to empty hers in front of the bar I had laid down.  To her credit she did finally figure it out but not until after the boy working the checkout had turned the conveyor on moving all of my stuff up to the front so that she kept having to push it back so that she could get more of her stuff on.

It was really enough to make you feel sorry for her.  She was clueless.  I finally started holding onto the bar so that she could finish emptying her cart.  (Little Jose working the checkout had no clue about the struggle taking place and was NOT going to turn that conveyor off to save his life.  No, really, I'm not making this up.  His name was Jose.)  Then she was completely unprepared to pay using American money which she was probably dealing with for the first time.  Someone else from her group of students finally took pity on her and came to help with that process.  Of course, they seriously crowded my personal space when that took place.  But at least they were moving the process along.

When I finally got out of Target, she along with a large group of other foreign students were making their way across the street toward UT-D pushing their shopping carts from Target.  (By the way, it is unlawful to remove from the parking lot.)  Just as I drove by a Richardson policeman was stopping behind them.  I'm assuming he was politely letting them know that removing the carts from the premises is unlawful.  God bless him.  I'm sure he had his hands full.

The thing is that they come from horribly over crowded and miserable places.  Because of that, they have little regard for personal space.  They are okay with standing against me in line.  This is Texas.  We have wide open spaces here.  We don't deal well with being nudged in the back by strangers.  I particularly don't deal well with it.  In fact, I get down right ugly when someone standing behind me continually rubs up against me.  Ask anyone.  They will tell you.  I also don't care how cute or funny all of your friends think you are. When I am in a group of strangers, I prefer that we all remain strangers.  I don't want to be entertained by you.  I don't want to hear your overly loud conversation either in my language or in a some crazy-ass foreign language.

So my message is this.  Welcome to Texas.  Please keep your voice down and keep your hands to yourself unless you are handsome, rich and between the ages of 50 and 60 and plan to buy me dinner.

Day Four-Ninety-Three - Who's Crazy Now?

What the hell happened????  When did dogs take over the world and begin television programming?  I went out with friends last night who are mostly dog owners and was informed that there is now a TV station specifically for dogs.  Really!  It's called DogTV.  If you have DirecTV, it is channel  354.  I can confirm this because it is currently airing on my television as I type.

Right now it consists of bubbles rushing to the surface of water and underwater bubble sounds.  Before this, it was a close up of a lava lamp with classical music.  I can't believe that some of you think cat people are crazy.  Oh, now they are showing dogs dozing off on the furniture I'm assuming while you are away from home.  Way to instill bad habits in your dogs!

The most frightening thing about this, though, is that on the Guide there is a banner that states that this is a free trial from 8/1 - 8/14.  From that I assume that this is a premium channel and if your dog gets addicted to it, you'll have to pay extra for a TV channel for your dogs.  People, my cats do NOT require premium TV channels.  In fact they might be content if the TV was never even turned on.  Now they are showing video of a quiet morning in some foreign land and people fishing.  By the way, only 6 minutes has gone by since I changed channels to this DogTV and already I have described to you, what? four different doggie viewing experiences that they have aired?  Should I draw from this that they must assume that your dogs have remarkably short attention spans????  Doesn't speak too highly of them.

My cats can watch a piece of prey for an hour waiting to see what moves it will make and determining how best to take it down.  Of course, sometimes that "prey" is a little red dot from the laser pointer I use to get them moving.  But still, they will follow it around as long as my finger can continue to press the "on" button.

I have a friend with whom I go out pretty often.  When we leave her house, she leaves her TV on for the dog's entertainment so I'm sure she is loving this channel.  In fact she is the one who told me about it yesterday.  If I left the TV on in my house when I left, my cats would go to another room to get away from the constant noise.

I like dogs.  There have been many times that I wished I could have one.  The problem is that I have never really lived in a place suitable for dogs.  I don't have a back yard and I don't have the time to devote to walking a dog a couple of times a day since I don't have a yard.  Additionally, as it turns out, I am apparently a low maintenance kind of pet person.  It didn't dawn on me until today.  But an animal that must be taken outside every single time it needs to pee is a problem for me!

Sure, I'll admit that I have people come to feed my cats daily when I am away from home.  But if it got down to it, I could leave for a week, set up an automated feeder and waterer and leave them alone and come home to two healthy cats.  They'd be a little pissy, but they would still be healthy and all of their waste would be in their litter boxes.

On the other hand, I don't doubt for a minute that if I died in my apartment and it took more than a few hours for someone to find me that Shiner would begin feeding on my fingers by the end of the first day.  He's a survivor, what can I say?  But you've gotta respect that about him!  He doesn't require entertainment or anything else from humans.  He'll figure it all out on his own.

So call me a crazy cat lady all you want.  At least I'm not paying for premium satellite service for a dog. Who's crazy now?