Is this ridiculous? This seems ridiculous.

As part of my ongoing quest to try and figure out whether it's Me or Everybody Else, I present to you my latest quandary (which I happened to Twitter about yesterday): The Case of the Annoyingly Intrusive Garage Neighbor and Her Ridiculous Request.

Regular followers are already familiar with Annoying Garage Neighbor, as I have written before about her taking up the parking spaces in front of my house that aren't even in front of her garage. Maybe she figured out that was a total dick move, because now she only monopolizes one of the spaces full-time instead of two. Anyway.

(Basic story: She started renting the garage but instead of parking a car there she hangs out there sometimes and does God knows what. Sometimes there's hammering and loud music.)

ANYWAY, yesterday The Wife and I are coming out of our house on the way to go see "The Adjustment Bureau" (not bad, but might as well wait for DVD) and Annoying Neighbor is out there and she's all "Do you guys have a wireless network?" And she had just been interrupting my enjoyment of a 48 Hours Mystery on TLC bumping her shitty disco music so I was already irritated at having to interact w/ her. I go, "Yeah," and we're heading down the stairs and she goes "I was wondering if I could get on your network so I could work on some homework while I'm over here."

First of all, I don't know what kind of "homework" she does or why she can't do it in her own fucking house, but anyway, here's the point:

Isn't that a bizarrely intrusive request to make of someone you don't really know? I mean, really? Why don't I just give you the passwords to my bank account and email and you can just feel free to browse through those any time you want? Or maybe you'll just go Single White Female on us and change our password and lock us out of the network. Anyway, it's fucking weird, isn't it? I can't fathom asking someone I don't know something like that.

So I didn't really know how to react to this insane request and mumbled something about how it's a secure network and she goes "Well, I assume everyone has a secure network." Well OK then Miss Thing! You assumed right! I don't remember exactly what I said because the whole situation was so weird and now growing oddly confrontational and I was already going away to my Happy Place instead of staying focused so the only other thing I remember was her saying something about how she'd give us some money and I was like walking away and going "I don't think so," and then I said "Thanks," for some reason but I was already halfway down the block.

I don't know. Maybe this is totally normal and you'd gladly let the Parking Space Manipulator next door glom on to your wi-fi, but I really don't want someone strolling through my Personal Shit, someone I don't even know. Is that ridiculous?

(Then I couldn't really enjoy "The Adjustment Bureau" 100% because I was thinking about this whole weird interaction. Also, I hate going to movies on opening weekend. It's always too crowded and there are people wandering in 5 minutes after the start time and bumping around trying to find a place to sit and the whole thing's just annoying.)

ANYWAY.

UPDATE!!!!!!!!: Leslie might be in the running for Comment of the Year Award:

But you can’t because there is some garage-renting pop tart streaming episodes of Gossip Girl while she hammers away at some sort of Trojan Horse Armageddon Machine intended to exact revenge on her ex-boyfriend. Is a crumpled up ten dollar bill that smells like Clinique Happy at the end of the month going to satisfy you?

The next time you want to be this funny, Leslie, why don't you do it on your own goddam blog and stop making me look lame by comparison? OKAY????

Also, Chester has some intriguing technical ideas that are so far beyond the realm of what I'm capable of that they might as well involve building a rocket ship from household cleaning products or doing open heart surgery. But thanks, Chester! Oh, and FYI, it's not my garage; it's the garage immediately next door. We share a common wall, sort of.