Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

I don't know if the man a few blocks away means to be feeding pigeons, but they're the ones that seem to find his birdseed most palatable. There are more of them each day. At least it keeps the squirrels out of his birdseed.

A couple houses down, there's a huge Dumpster outside a house, and some sort of notice in the window. I guess they kicked out the tenants and are now moving out their mess.

The Dumpster makes a convenient place to drop off bags of Una leavings when I'm walking my dog.

The yellow caution tape that's been strung in front of a little pink house now seems to have a purpose. They're replacing their uneven sidewalk, which is currently a gaping hole. I guess that before the work was started, they put the tape up to prevent people from having accidents on their wildly uneven sidewalk and suing them.

A lot of people seem to have put upholstered furniture on the corner today, which of course, guaranteed an overnight rain. But that's okay; none of it looks terribly appealing to me anyway, and I barely have room in my apartment for something new.

Some of the houses in my neighborhood have new flags hanging out, replacing damaged ones. I had to think whether there was a recent special occasion that would have warranted this. Of course: last Saturday was the three-year anniversary of September 11. But recent news has concentrated more on the effects of three hurricanes which have slapped Florida around.

I actually know some people in Florida, and from what I know they've all been fairly lucky. I'll have to check up and see what Hurricane Ivan did.

When the trash collectors come to my neighborhood, they fling the empty trash cans down, if you're lucky, on the grass and not the road. It looks like a marauding bear invaded, or an ambitious raccoon.

I'm lucky maintaining friends in real life isn't as task intensive as it is in The Sims. Depending on how needy your friends are, you might need to invite them over every other day, or at least talk to them on the phone every day, just to maintain the friendship.

I recently got a phone call from a friend I haven't seen in nearly a year, even though we both live in the Philadelphia suburbs. We still consider each other friends, but then again, we're not as demanding as The Sims.

Of course, real life doesn't have cheats, some of which I'm learning about from reading tips on playing The Sims.

Wouldn't it be great, though, if every time you did something you didn't like, you could just not save?

Copyright 2004 by Alyce Wilson

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