Maniacs. They're all maniacs.

The Juventus guy is at it again. I call him that because his secondary vehicle is a white 1970s-vintage Econoline-style van upon which he's emblazoned about two dozen different decals and adornments boosting Juventus F.C., his favorite soccer team. An entire story in its own right, but that's just background info right now.

Today, he seems to have gone for a drive in his main vehicle, a late-70s Mercedes-Benz. It's nice. A perfectly fine vehicle. But he's kinda nuts about it. This morning, I've been watching him for about the last 9 minutes. He caught my eye as he pulled into the curb spot that's right outside my window, and right next to my computer screen. It appeared to be a normal park-job, perhaps not centered between the driveway entrances sunken into the curb on either end of the car, but reasonably close.

He got out, stepped back from the car six or seven feet, eyeballed it up, got back in, pulled forward six inches or so, and got out again. He was still not centered, but a few inches in the other direction. Mind you, he was still comfortably in the legal spot, just not centered.

He put one hand on his hip, and (apparently, as I saw this all from behind his body) the other on his chin. Clearly, this was a challenge. He got back in, backed up a few inches, and cut the engine. Perfectly centered, from my vantage point. He got out, backed away, and reassessed the sitch. Something was not right. He got back in the car and turned on the engine. For a minute or so, maybe only 30 seconds, he sat there, motionless as far as I could tell. There was some little activity, and the brake lights (or, the one that I could see) came on. The car sort of lurched a bit. No actual forward or backward progress, just a jolt.

He got out and walked around to the other side of the car, stepped up on the curb, and set himself up AGAIN in his thinking pose. He paced up and down the sidewalk three or four times, measuring it up. I fully expected to see him pull out a tape measure, but no. He made a circuit around the car and, apparently satisfied, went into his apartment building. Victory!

And what caused me to write this? The activity described above took place in about 8 minutes. Before the next minute ticked on my computer's clock display, he bolted from the building, got in the car, and drove off.