Not sitting on the fence

ok, straight to the point. It's my house, it's my yard, F*ck You HOA.

We wanted a fence, nothing fancy, just a fence. In fact, we really liked the ones that surround the rear yards of the townhouses across the street. So, we do the right thing and file a bunch of papers with the HOA, filling in the blanks in a couple of forms so they knew what kind of fence we wanted, how high it was going to be, who was going to be installing it and when it would be started and completed. Simple right? Bzzzzzt, WRONG.

To cut a long and annoying story short, we cannot have the fence we like or want. You see, we live in a single family home, we pay more HOA fees than the people in the townhomes, in fact we pay more than other people in single family homes because we live on a pipe stem. We cannot have the same fence that the folks in the townhomes have, we have to use an ugly three-bar ranch style fence because we live in a single family home and that's what the regulations say we can have. Not only that, but it must be a maximum of 3 feet tall. We tried to get an exemption stating that a 3 foot tall, 3 bar fence just is not going to keep our Great Dane from leaving the back yard whenever he feels like it. No go. Not a chance. However, we can have wire netting attached to the inside of the fence as long as it doesn't exceed the height of the top rail of the fence. The wire can either be colored green or left to go rusty.

Upshot of it all, we cannot have the nice, well kempt, 5 ft privacy fence like the spiffy looking ones across the road but we can have some piece of shit 3 bar, 3 ft ugly ass fence with rusty wire on it that would be better suited to surround some shack in the backwoods of West Virginia.

Fortunately, our other home, out in civilized Illinois, is not in a neighborhood that has an HOA. In fact, there are no HOAs in the entire city or the surrounding area. We have a really good looking privacy fence out there, looks good, just like our neighbors' fences. Most of the houses in the neighborhood have the same kind of fence around their back yards. (Helps keep the deer out of swimming pools). HOAs aren't needed. period. They exist for one thing and one thing only, to make more money for other people who don't live in your neighborhood.

F*ck you HOA. You suck.

Yes he is...

Seen on a bumper sticker: "He's not my President"

Well, actually, YES HE IS. You might not like it and like the other bumper sticker implies, you might not have voted for him, but like it or not, he is the President of the United States of America and he is YOUR president.

STFU, you lost, get over it.

Taxation without bitching about it

Driving around DC, you see a lot of DC license plates with the slogan "Taxation without representation". Why? I'm pretty sure these people weren't forced to live in DC, and I'm really sure that no-one is forcing them to stay. Here's an idea for all of you with that slogan on your plate, STFU or MOVE to an actual state. You are surrounded by two of them. Asshats.

Cranky in NoVA

My blog about living in Northern Virginia. Well, not really, it's my place to bitch and moan about the stupid little annoyances that accompany living in NoVA. Like, for example, driving ass-hattery around the DC beltway.

If you live in MD, unlucky, you might want to look here http://crankyincolumbiamd.blogspot.com/ for similar stories about living in MD.