Nothing that happens on Leap Day counts

Oh, if only.

Steph already blogged about it, but I figured I should at the very least mention it myself. And, heck, Leap Day only rolls around once every 2/5th of a decade, so blogging on today is almost mandatory. Or something. I'm very tired.

But, yeah. Today was a bus day for me, which meant that Steph, and the littles picked me up at the bus stop (or, as I prophetically wrote in my 'leaving work' email today, the "bust stop"). Steph drove out onto the street, and the large white Dodge pickup truck in front of us stopped and began backing up.

As is the case in situations like this, time went all womlu, and seemed to simultanously speed up and move in slow motion. My brain wants to remember that Steph tried to back up herself, but it didn't really happen that way, I just think that I had wanted it to. What really happened was Stephanie screamed, and I had time to think, "He's backing up. He's not going to stop. Steph should go in reverse too. Maybe he'll just tap us." CRUNCH!

Oh, and at some point during all that, I leaned over from the passenger seat and laid on the horn, in an unsuccessful attempt to get the driver's attention. I remember too, that I kept honking even after he had come to a complete stop and the damage was already done. Part of my brain seems to feel/think that I'm honking still, that I'll be honking forever. (LIke I said, I'm really tired)

Anyway.

Tears were shed (Stephanie and Irina. I don't know/remember if Silas cried or not), and then the guy called his insurance company, while I searched (in vain) for our up-to-date insurance card. Meanwhile, Steph took my phone and called 311, and we waited for a police officer to show up.

To make a long story short (too late), we were all okay (although, obviously, extremely unhappy with the situation), and the van is still driveable, so, once the officer took our insurance info and the other guy's insurance info, and filled out the police report,we headed home. And now we're going to remember this stupid accident every four years. Crap.

oh, right, i was blogging, wasn't i?

remind me to keep on that.

it's amazing how many different thoughts/feelings/opinions one has about a day over the course of 24 hours, isn't it? Today has been incredible, funtastic, shitty, headache-inducing, mellow, boring, asinine, regal, busy, lazy, hilarious, and Wednesday.

Can't wait to see how tomorrow plays out.

random bits from today

I decided/learned that zombies hate mailboxes. (It's true. Have you ever seen a zombie near a mailbox?)

Sang the hot dog tune about 15 times - and that was in the 6pm hour alone!

Saw lots of road construction.

Finished book 2 of "Preacher". (It's not great, but I've got to see how it all ends.)

Watched "Horrible Bosses" - started off slow, but had some very funny moments to it. Haven't quite figured out what my haiku review will say about it, if I opt to do one.

Thought about just posting a random youtube video on days like today when I don't have anything to say. I may end up doing that in the future...

Cleaned another portion of my office up. It's slowly becoming (gasp!) organized!!

Blogged random stuff from today.

Worst. Ear Worm. Ever.*

back in December of this year (heh. or, rather, December of LAST year), we went out to get some groceries, and while at the supermarket, we saw a Salvation Army employee standing in front of his donation jar. He sang a little ditty as we went into the store:

"Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog. Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog."

We continued on our shopping, and everything was cool.

On our way out of the store, we encountered the man again.
And he sang the song to us once more:

"Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog. Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog."

And that was enough. Two times we heard that song, and it has been stuck in my head, off and on, for the past two months.
It was catchy enough, and almost familiar enough, that I knew it HAD to come from somewhere. So, I looked it up.

It's from the Mickey Mouse Club, evidently. And, as far as I can tell, was written (and performed, perhaps?) by They Might Be Giants. Which goes a LONG way in explaining why it's stuck so well. But, seriously. This song just won't get out of my head.

*Worst? Or Best? I guess it depends on your view, and how you define the success of an ear worm (or, meme, as they should be called - back before the word meme got coopted by internet quizzes and flickr and whatnot.)

A few Sundays ago, as I was leaving church, I found God's wallet. It looked like an ordinary wallet when I first saw it, but the identification inside stated that the owner was the Almighty.

I was quite surprised by this finding for many reasons. First, I did not know that God carried a wallet. Upon further thought, though, it made sense. Even the Lord needs a place to store His money.

The other surprising thing was that He'd lost his wallet at all. I had always assumed that God was all-knowing. Logic would dictate that an all-knowing being could never misplace anything. I dismissed this, however, with the fact that perhaps God had other things on His mind, and just hadn't come back for His wallet yet.

Which was the third surprise that occurred to me - God attended the same church that I did!?! So... my religion was the right one! Cha-ching!! Instant access into heaven!
And, I suddenly realized, now that i had God's wallet, I had the potential to become...like a saint or something. I could imagine it vividly... me. ... the patron saint of lost wallets. It brought a smile to my face.

First, though, I needed to return the sacred possession to the owner.

I briefly considered the Lost and Found, then discarded the idea in favor of tracking Him down and returning it in person.

I looked around the near-empty building. Most of the church-goers cleared out rapidly at sermon's-end, but a few like myself had not yet made it to the doors. None of the people still in the church looked like God. That is, no one was an old man with a long white beard, donning robes and glowing. Perhaps, I reasoned, my conception of God's appearance was wrong.

I opened the wallet and removed the driver's license. (God drives??)

The photo was blurry and unclear. Not Glamor Shots material, for sure. I could detect a somewhat high forehead atop which sat some (in my opinion, unnaturally) curly hair. I wondered if perhaps God had had a perm before the picture was taken.

His skin looked flawless (not a surprise) and did have a hint of angelic glow about it.

He was sporting facial hair, although it was brown, not white, and it was well-kept and short. It did wonders on concealing his age. Judging by the photo, he looked to be maybe 40 or 45. Not a day over infinity.

According to the ID, his birthdate was 01/01/01. His address was, ironically enough, the address of the church.

Looking through the rest of the wallet, I discovered a passport, a social security card (all 9s), a credit card (MasterCard, of course) and several denominations of bills (American money, and foreign bills of all kinds: yen, pesos, Euros, shekal, francs and more.)

I also found some "family" photos. There was, of course, teh Father, Son and Holy Ghost, several shots of Jesus (I could see the resemblance), one or two really old ones of Mary, plus an autographed picture of God shaking hands with Elvis Presley. The writing on the back said, "Long live the King. - EP"

Finding nothing else of interest (all things considered), I put everything back as I had found it, and carrying the wallet, left the church to see if God was still in the parking lot.

There was someone getting into a Pathfinder who, from the back, looked like they could possibly be God..

I ran to the person and tapped him on the shoulder. "You forgot..." I stopped when I saw that this man was NOT Our Father. He looked at me with a puzzled look on his face, "Yes?"

"Um. You... forgot to introduce yourself." I finished, sticking out my hand,I gave him my name. Cautiously, the man shook my hand and introduced himself.

"Well," I said, "guess I'll be going, now that I've met you." I tried to sound genuinely happy, but I'm sure the man thought I was psychotic.
"Okay." The man answered. "Nice... to meet you." He climbed into his truck and drove away.

The parking lot was utterly abandoned. I would have to track down God somewhere else.

Haiku Review: Super 8

Super 8: mix in
E.T, Goonies, ID4,
Cloverfield, lens flare.

This film was okay
as an homage to Spielberg,
just wasn't 'super'.

Calling it "Average
8" - more accurate, but would
have sold less tickets.

Haiku Review: 88 Minutes

Muddled, generic
"thriller" with no real suspense,
does have Hamcino.

Who's the killer? And
is the other guy guilty?
The answers are meh.

I had wanted to blog every day this year - or at the very least, every day that I had something to say - but seeing as I have nothing to blog about right now, I think I'm going to go ahead and give myself permission to skip today.

...and seeing as how I've just blogged, I do believe that gives me a 'get out of jail free' card to use at some point later in the year.

The CenturyLink Saga

Note that this saga ends ...anticlimatically.

So, we had Century Link as our cable provider for most of 2011, but due to finances, we simply could no longer to justify paying 60-whatever dollars for televised entertainment, and opted to cancel it. So, I canceled, back in October, and I distinctly remember during that conversation that Century Link told me, "We will send you a box in the mail so you can mail back the cable boxes."

Fast forward to Decemberish, and we still haven't received a box in the mail. So, whatever, we figure, we'll just keep the cable boxes as decorations. (They were technologically pretty.) Around this time, though, we were having dinner at the Dairy Queen near my work, and we saw a Century Link building right across the street. Steph made a comment to me that I could "return the boxes there in person". I agreed. And then, of course, didn't do it. Heh.

So fast forward a few more weeks, and we find a Century Link bill with a 260 dollar charge on it. Apparently they REALLY want the boxes back, and were willing to charge us insane amounts of money until we returned them.

That brings us to the present. Or, yesterday, I suppose. We got the Century Link boxes together, along with the remote controls (well, the remote controls minus one backing panel) and the router, and I put them in the front seat of the van so I could return them to that Century Link near my work during my lunch break.

THAT brings us to today. Lunchtime arrives, and I get in the van and drive down the road a half mile to that CL building. As I'm pulling into the parking lot, I see a sign on the gate that says, "This in not the business office. That is at 330 S Valley View Blvd".

Hrm. Okay. So. I'm a little peeved, but whatever. I drive down to Valley View Blvd, which is just a few miles down the road. But at that part of town, I'm at approximately 3700 S Valley View. [sigh]. So I drive and drive and drive, and make my way thru I don't know how many miles of construction, and EVENTUALLY get down to 330 Valley View.

As I'm pulling up, I'm noticing that there ...aren't a lot of cars there. Or, more specifically, there are NO CARS in the parking lot. And then I see a piece of paper taped to the front of the building. Uh-oh. Pieces of paper taped to buildings are never good.

I park, get out, and find out that the Century Link offices have moved to 2101 N Rainbow.

Now I'm super irritated, but have to drive back to work, because my lunch hour is nearly up at this point.

However, Rainbow is the road I take home, so, I figure, I'll drop off these boxes on my way home.

I finish up my work day, and then proceed down Rainbow. I find 2101 and pull in there. As I get to the door there, I see a sign ...that says the hours are 9a-6p. :)

Once inside, it took all of 20 minutes (maybe less) to get the situation sorted out, and all the extra charges dropped from our bill. Hooray!!

Habit!

They say that to have a habit form, you have to repeat the action for six weeks. (Or, something similar to that. Or maybe I just made that statistic up out of an amalgamation of things I've heard/read over the past 30-some-odd years.)

ANyway. Let's assume that it DOES take 6 weeks for a pattern of behavior to become a habit. I suppose that means that mid-February, I'll finally be used to blogging again. I hope that it becomes easier by that point. Heh.

Tomorrow is the first work day of the new year, and I'm not looking forward to it. In addition to the mountain of work (almost literally at this point - the paperwork in my office is seriously stacking up), I have 3 different locations to stop at either while on my lunch break, or directly after I get off work. That's the bad thing about starting the new year off with days off. You expect that to be the norm... So, maybe it only takes 2 days for habits to form.

Don't call it a comeback

Although I guess that's technically what it is.

Yep, I'm blogging again. Which means there might be something to all those 'end of the world' theories about this year after all.

10 X Ten

Happy 10/10/10!

Here's a boq. (I've asked (and answered) these questions before, but, they're apt for today's date.)
You can answer in the comments, or if you'd like to make this viral, you can answer it on your own blog, I just ask that you link back to me.

<b>Where do you see yourself in 10 seconds?</b>

<b>Where do you see yourself in 10 minutes?</b>

<b>Where do you see yourself in 10 hours?</b>

<b>Where do you see yourself in 10 days?</b>

<b>Where do you see yourself in 10 weeks?</b>

<b>Where do you see yourself in 10 months?</b>

<b>Where do you see yourself in 10 years?</b>

<b>Where do you see yourself (or humanity) in 10 decades?</b>

<b>Where do you see yourself (or humanity) in 10 centuries?</b>

and finally...

<b>Make a Top 10 List.</b>

September went by pretty quickly, didn't it?

Of course, now that tomorrow is October (!!!), the rest of the year will slip into fast forward. Especially with all the events coming up this month. There's thee Renaissance Faire on the 8th, as well as payday.
And that Sunday is 10/10/10...which ...while very cool, I don't know what I'll do to celebrate. Probably just be all, "Cool. Today is 10-10-10!"
And then there's the 22nd. We'll see how that goes.
And of course, Halloween at month's end. And, hey, cool! This year it's on a Sunday, so I will actually have it off from both jobs. Hooray!

And now, the word cloud from September:

Visibility was poor, and he'd been speeding - just a little - and it was raining cats and dogs, and yeah, he'd had a few too many drinks before leaving the bar, so in all fairness, the accident was his fault. But it was still also the Freak's fault for being in the road in the first place.

At least, that was the justification Alexander used to help him feel better.

If he'd not been intoxicated, though, he probably would have called the police, and things would have turned out much differently. Perhaps the Freak would have been saved, and that would have made a world of difference, because then - most likely - there wouldn't have been the Retaliation, which resulted in so many deaths.

Sometimes Alexander was kept awake by these thoughts and the guilt that came along with them.

Knowing that, inadvertently, he'd been the cause of unimaginable suffering... it could weigh on a guy's conscious.

Mostly, though, he felt rage toward the Freaks. Nobody asked the original Freak to show up in the first place. Nobody asked him to stick around, fighting crime and saving lives and being all heroic. And certainly nobody asked him to be in the middle of the road that night.

But he had been.

And, so it was that Alexander Luthor had hit Superman with hsi car, critically injuring him.

Alexander felt another pang of anger - at Superman - when he thought about it some more. What kind of superhero is able to be killed by a speeding car? Wouldn't it have made more sense if, instead, his car had been crunched, and the Freak had walked - or flown - away unscathed? THat's how the comics and movies had always depicted his abilities.

But as it turned out, the comics and movies got it wrong. In plenty of ways. There was no Kryptonite - the Freaks could be killed by the same means as humans - they just had super-strength, and could fly. Also, "Superman" - the original Freak - was not the last of his kind. Something Earth learned the hard way once Superman's death made the news.

Pick a song

So, you're driving along, listening to the radio, and scanning the presets. You hear three tunes - which do you choose to listen to?

A) "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" by the Smashing Pumpkins

B) "Kiss Me Deadly" by Lita Ford

C) "Sober" by Tool

Your friends don't dance.

I've had that song stuck in my head all day.


Also I'm not P@. I'm Saren. again. Because I started this blog and I'M GONNA END IT.

I'm sure that's a line from some movie. Somewhere. I say this because quoting movies makes you cool.

Okay so. Dad walked out and asked me to blog for him so I wanted this to be all creative and stuff and not like when I was blogging for him just to put in a filler. I guess I still am though, putting in a filler. but. but.

no butts.

Haiku Review: The Fourth Kind

Aliens? God? Hoax?
It's up to you to decide.
(But it's aliens.)

Except that it's not.
Because the "footage" was fake,
to make more drama.

Fake money stories

Warning: Not that interesting!

I only have a few stories involving counterfeit money that I can recall. here they are!

About (my god!) 15 years ago, a friend of mine's mom worked in a casino. At one point during her shift, she received a counterfeit 100 dollar bill. Somehow or other, she ended up giving it to my friend and let her spend it. yay for moms with wacked out moral compasses!

About a year ago, I had a 20 dollar bill in my possession that was fake. (I didn't know it at the time) When I went to spend it at Taco Bell (of course!), the cashier informed me that it was a counterfeit bill - and then attempted to give it back to me. Haa! I told him I didn't want it (and coincidentally, when I was being trained at the sev about fake money, I was told that if any come my way, I'm supposed to hold on to them). The guy did give me the meal, though (but not the change. So, even though it was only 15 or 16 dollars, it cost us 20. Or nothing, if you want to look at it another way).

And about a week ago I went through the McDonald's drivethru with a coworker, and attempted to pay with 100 Grand. They didn't accept that, but at least it made the cashier smile.

borrowing Soupy's thunder

I'm not stealing it, see. I'm just borrowing it, I guess.

Soupytwist has been blogging about art all this month. (Or maybe it's Art. Probably both.)
Anyway. She has talked about movies and television and books, but one thing that she hasn't mentioned (that I've seen) is video games.

So. Can video games be art? I would argue that they can be, if movies are, since video games are just movies that are controlled by individuals.

But, then, if video games are art...what about board games? Or card games? Or just any game at all - is freeze tag performance art? Or is it simply fun?

And what constitutes a game, anyway? You can make a game out of anything if you try hard enough (it's sometimes the only way to make time pass in a bearable fashion "Let's see how many people buy Marlboros this hour.") so...I'm not sure what my point is, other than I've been awakr for waaaay too long, and so I'm pretty exhausted at this point.

I'll bet she does

Funniest line from a political commercial:

"I'm Sharon Angle, and I approve this mess--"

Heh. I know that it was unintentional and that it was just the last half second being cut off, but it made me chuckle. Now, if only the other 29.5 seconds of the spot could be cut off as well...