The people that you meet each day

We're still getting to know the neighbors on our new street. There's the older guy two doors down who's shaped a bit like Tweedle Dee, has fat, cigar-like fingers, often wears the same overalls/plaid-shirt/straw hat combo when he putters in his garden, and can tell you great stories about the Valley in the 50's.

There's the Car Family across the street who, at any given point in time, have at least 6 different cars parked in their garage, driveway and on the street in front of their house. Hot rod projects, a Porsche, some low-key sedans. Nothing on blocks or anything, all pretty nice. It makes me wonder, are they really popular, do they really like cars, is it a family of mechanics? It's easy to assume they're up to something more nefarious than that, like drug dealing, but I don't get that vibe at all. I mean, except for all the cars.

My favorite so far is the Armenian family next door. The patriarch was the first person to welcome us to the neighborhood, and he stops by often to check on us and give us advice. It's not unusual to see him wandering outside of his house late at night, in his shorts and white tank top, smoking really long, skinny Virginia Slims 120s. He has a daughter in his teens who was appropriately embarrassed when he made her come over and say hello. And he has a very large, extended family that comes over frequently for parties in the backyard.

These neighbors have an entire kitchen on their back patio, including extra fridge and an oven/stove. This past Saturday, they had the whole clan over for swimming, music and food. You could hear the matriarch of the family lecturing all the other women who were cooking, "It has to be fresh. It's so much better when it's fresh! You could get from store, but it's better when fresh. Here! Peel this!" As the night went on, the music got louder an louder. (Not that we minded--it just means that when we want to party in the backyard with music? No problem!) At one point I was just listening to their tunes and suddenly turned to mAc and said,

"Are we listening to Armenian country music?"

Yup. We sure were. Awesome.

Later that night, our buddy stopped by to share some of their feast with us. Specifically, he just kind of walked in, yelling for mAc, and proceeded to shove some kind of delicious tortilla-wrapped pork roast down his throat before giving either of us a chance to say, "Why, that would be lovely, thanks!" As soon as he saw me, he went back to bring me food as well, again giving me barely the chance to say thank you before I was chewing. Generous, but a little intense. As far as neighbors go though, it could be worse.