Sunday, January 22, 2006

WTF??!!!

What kind of person would want to steal a six-year-old minivan with 130,000+ miles on it, and with both rear seats removed??? Why choose that vehicle among all the thousands available in the huge parking lot?

My brother-in-law was down near Detroit today, and someone stole their old minivan. He and a friend were hauling some things, so after dealing with the cops (who made it clear they didn't give a shit at all about Bob's stolen minivan), he had to go rent a U-Haul truck to get him, his friend and their stuff back home.

My sister said of all the things she's ever worried about, someone stealing their minivan never even made the list. Why would anyone steal it? Why risk any jail time at all for that old thing? Even if you were stealing a vehicle so you could haul something, that minivan wouldn't be a very good choice. Had to be someone completely stoned out of their gourd or completely stupid. Or both.

It snowed & snowed...

Woke up yesterday morning to several inches of snow!


Our snowman is already leaning this morning... and the sun is shining brightly right now at 9:22am... it's supposed to be a warm day today. Bye bye snow.

FYI...

I have survived yet another 4th quarter close/year-end on my job. That makes a total of 7. Only about 9 more to go.

I don't really hate my job all the time, just sometimes. Once in a while, I'll hate it for part of the day; some days I hate it all day long. For anyone out there saying to themselves to me, quitcherwhinin and just quit... I will do so if you promise to pay my mortgage payments and buy iTunes cards for both my kids.

I have painted myself into a corner in respect to my job situation. Where I live, there are not a lot of opportunities. In fact, at this point, there is no other job available to me that would pay remotely what I'm making now. I can't even make a lateral move to another job at the company where I work because I have specialized skills that, without a college degree, won't transfer to another job easily. I can live with this situation because of my family. The four of us enjoy a nice life, we pay our taxes, and my husband and I will make sure our kids have more choices as adults that we gave ourselves.

On the plus side, I can wear jeans and sneakers every day to work, & I have pretty flexible work hours... and that's not all that common where I work.

So I can take the negative at work, since I have a bigger positive at home.

And at least none of my family is in Iraq, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, anywhere in Africa or working in a West Virginian mine...

Perspective.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

My favorite AM radio station

Sometimes when I'm sick of hearing on NPR about Iraq, Israel or other war-torn areas and am just not in the mood to listen to pop, rock, country, etc. (yes, that truly happens to me), I switch over to the AM radio stations and cruise through the static to find a station that's at least somewhat audible. I can usually find a French language station that comes out of Canada; Ontario, I think. Late night AM can be really interesting. AM stations come in better on my car radio at night. There's usually an advice program with live call-ins going on, lots of drama. Religious fanatics. Political fanatics. They [think] they rule the AM airways. Lots of sports talk.

A couple of years ago, while cruising through AM, I found a station out of Detroit that is not in English. I'm pretty sure it is an Arabic or Hindi (Urdu?) language. I know there's a large population of Arabic people and large communities of people from India and/or Pakistan in the Detroit area.

On my radio, it's 690 AM. I love the music this station plays. The drawback is that I hear music only about 10% of the time when I click on that station. The rest of the time, it's usually a man's voice speaking. The language is very melodious, and the tone of the voices is usually calm. It can be quite relaxing.

Everyone once in a while, there are what I assume to be commercials. Often, then it is a woman's voice, and the talk is peppered with English words and phrases. It's like, surprise! a word I know!

Like this bit I heard recently:

Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada [this would be the melodious foreign language] ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ... Botox ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ... Liposuction ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ... Laser surgery ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ...

and then this:

Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ... 10 bags for a dollar ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ... 2 for 8 ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ... Coors and Coors Light ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ... Johnny Walker Black 37.49 ... Ah lalada dala dalada ahlada ...

For whatever reason, I find this very entertaining.

Sunday, January 01, 2006

2006... I mean really, 2 0 0 6 !

I feel like I won't be able to get used to writing or saying "2006." It doesn't sound real to me. 1986. Now that's real. 1976. Hey, even 1996. Ugh. I'm old.

We had a wonderful dinner last night at one of our local "grill" restaurants. Especially nice since we had gift cards for the place. We all 4 were in a party mood, we got a perfect corner booth, and we made lots of noise laughing. It was great. Mid-way through our first margarita, Kev realized we had ourselves a designated driver in Joycie. Yippee! Spent a small fortune in margaritas, but it was very nice. The bill came to a little over $103, so I used 2 of our gift cards, which were $55 each. I must have been feeling very good, because I tipped our waiter the change from $110 gift cards total plus $30 in cash. He said thank you about 4 times. Happy New Year!

We had planned to go to a movie, but I nixed that and we're going this evening instead. I was too full and too looped to enjoy a 2-hour+ movie, and Kev agreed. Sam got "I Robot" for Christmas so we planned to watch that... right up until it started and then Joycie and I were so not in the mood for it. Women ruled in the house last night, and we watched more episodes of the "Gilmore Girls"... whoo-hoo!

Stopped the DVD & switched to TV just in time to hear "6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!!!" and see the ball drop in NY. Since we had watched none of it all night, it took us a few minutes to realize that voice was Dick Clark. Boy, did he sound old and different. But it was good to hear him. And then the goof ball guy called him Dick Carey. What an idiot. Guess he was still reeling from the major smooching he got from Mariah. Heard someone say that everyone should experience New Year's in New York at least once in their lives. I respectfully disagree. I would hate it. Too many people. Far too many people in one place at one time, and with booze. No thanks. My best friend, Sandy, and her family live near Dallas, and as her wise 22-year-old son said to me recently, "I hate People. I can only take People in small doses." (Boy, is he livin' in the wrong spot for that!)

So here's to 2006, the future, and only small doses of People.

The worst invention for Christmas

One family in our town went a little crazy at Wal-Mart.