the 94-year-old nosy neighbor

Last night (Tuesday, July 24, 2007) I went across the street (next-door, WHATEVER; I say “across-the-street”), supposedly to see the new Dish-TV installation recently installed at the behest of Vern’s son Billy.
“Billy” is Vern’s onliest child, and since Billy’s wife died recently, he has come to live with his aging parents. (Billy is 71.)
“I can’t believe they don’t have cable,” he said. He was sick of looking at everything through snow; particularly sports.
Margarite’s sister had recently gotten a satellite-dish through the phone-company, and also had sprung for Internet-service; something we might do.
Our Internet is undependable, although I don’t think it’s “junk,” as Jack loudly claims. Undependable in that if the power goes, it also goes at the Internet substation, so we go dead even with the standby.
We don’t have the issues Jack was having. Jack is fiddling FlagOut, and can’t even scroll through it. HMMMMMMMMMMNNNNNNN....... We never have that problem.
What I suspect is his contorted security was making everything flaky, which gave him an excuse to badmouth me — what else is new?
Um, Linda doesn’t have the problems he was having, and like him she’s driving a PC with Internet-Explorer. I don’t have his problems, and got a speed of 5.6 megabytes per second, which is awesome.
So Billy decided to get Dish-TV to make his sports watchable.
“I’m over here to look at your Dish-TV installation,” I said.
Vern walked in behind his walker. I guess he wants me to show up more than anyone.
And I gave him the business.
“How come there’s grass-clippings in your driveway?” he asked.
“Because we haven’t had a chance to sweep it up and put it in your driveway,” I said.
“Eight chipmunks so far,” Billy said, pointing at his have-a-heart trap.
“But I hear tell ya don’t kill ‘em,” I said; “just take ‘em down the road and set ‘em loose in the woods.”
“Yeah, but I set ‘em loose on your side of the road,” he said.
“Believe you-me.” I said; “if we see any chipmunks we send ‘em back across the street where they belong.”
Vern swallowed all this, and then complained about the robins sullying his driveway.
“They’re your robins,” he said.
“Yep,” I said. “I send the robins across the street to make a mess of your driveway. They ain’t messin’ up mine!”
“And I better not find any purple leaves in my lawn come fall.” Vern has a purple-leaf maple.
Any purple leaves go into his mailbox.

RE: “across the street” versus “next-door...........” My wife (Linda) says the 94-year-old nosy neighbor lives “next door,” although actually it’s “across the street.” It just that our actual next-door neighbors are 100 yards or more away here in the country, so we don’t know them. The only neighbors we do know are the 94-year-old nosy neighbor and his wife, Vern and Margarite.

“Jack” is my all-knowing macho brother-from-Boston. He visited recently.

“The standby” is our standby generator.

“FlagOut” is our family’s web-site.