Take me!

So, I was driving to work the other day and there was a boat on the side of 680. This gave me pause: how do these boats end up on the side of the freeway? I mean, is someone in a giant pickup towing his boat run out of gas and then decide to unhitch on the side of the road? What exactly was the thought process that occurred when they decided to leave their $100,000 boat sitting on the freeway? I mean, I could just come up and take it.

Winner Winner NOT chicken dinner.

Hello all! Mike and I have entered a contest that runs from today until August 25th. This is to win an engagement ring and an all-inclusive honeymoon from Diamond Nexus Labs. Vote for us early AND often at LOVE ROCKS! If you vote, you will also be entered to win a $1,000 gift card from them.

Who knew?

On Friday night, Mike accompanied me to San Francisco so I could meet a stranger and sell him the tickets I had to the Idina Menzel show. We got there earlier than the buyer, and parked on Franklin half a block from Grove just next to the Ballet. Little did we know that we would be in for a Jerry Springer-like drama....involving homeless people.

When we first pulled up, there was a homeless woman standing eating an apple next to her shopping cart, which was full of, among other things, bottles and cans. About 15 minutes after we got there, a pickup truck with tall plywood sides pulls up next to the woman. The man who got out of the cab was this big bald guy, and he loads the woman's cans and bottles into the back of his truck, hands her some money, and then she storms off, clearly irritated.

Just as the man gets back in his truck and is about to pull away from the curb, another homeless person, this one an African-American comes limping up the street with his shopping cart yelling at the guy not to leave. As the driver is unloading this shopping cart, yet another African-American street person rolls up with his. To make a long story short, he unloaded both carts and handed them money, and then the homeless guys started yelling at the driver. One of them got up in his face real close and I thought for a minute that we were going to see a fist fight between the homeless and their recycle manager. In the end, the driver was yelling, and he got back in the cab of his truck, slammed the door, and sped off. Who knew the homeless had so much drama?

Shameless plug

Mike is selling is DVDs that he no longer wants...find them here...http://www.amazon.com/gp/shops/storefront/index.html?ie=UTF8&marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER&sellerID=A113RJ8S9XHUOT

Inspected By

So, I look down at my shirt this morning, and lo and behold, there is a little sticker stuck to the front that says "QM 4." I assume this means quality manager 4, and is the person who inspected this shirt, although I did wash it last night, so it could have come off another shirt.

This makes me wonder again about the people who stick those stickers on there. Do they actually inspect my socks? Is there some little man sitting there with a magnifying glass making sure that the Chinese children working for 25 cents an hour are doing a good job? Who are you inspector 4?

Bathroom Etiquette

So, I open the door to the women's room at work yesterday, and there is a lady sitting on the pot in the middle stall....with the door to her stall open. After I got a quick peripheral view of WAY too much of her, she closed her door and made a comment about how claustrophobic it was. Um...okay. At least the doors on the stalls at work open out, which is more than I can say for many other bathrooms. Ladies - you know what I am talking about.

You go to the bathroom (the stalls in the women's room at the Dublin church building are a great example of this), and the door opens in, and swings within an inch of the toilet seat. This forces you to either straddle the seat or press yourself as close as you can to the stall partition just to get the door closed. And of course, the geniuses who designed the stall put the toilet paper dispenser on the same side of the partition as the opening to the door, so you are there with your leg practically in the toilet, your butt crushed by the toilet paper dispenser, and your hip being smashed by the door as you try to close it.

It's no wonder women go to the bathroom in packs - we need sympathy for our bathroom acrobatics.

Doggy, and other nonsense

So, two lovely women pointed out that I have not blogged in awhile. Part of this is because I have been driving 140 miles every day of the work week and trying to balance school and work and my social life. Clearly, I failed. :)

Anyway, as you can see in the picture on the left, there are three dogs. Becky is holding her dog, Bailey; I am holding Mike's dog Jessie, and Mike is holding the dog I adopted: her name is Darla.

Here's the deal: Mike and I looked at Darla mid-March, but her adoption fees were $225, and we were told that she has a heart condition as well as a bum leg from where her previously fractured pelvis had healed. We wanted to adopt her, but I am not allowed to have pets in my condo, so we needed to have Mike's parents meet her to make sure she would get along with them (and Jessie). We opted not to get her at that time.

On May 8, I noticed she had been listed as adopted on the twitter feed, but when I checked for the picture of her adoption on the ARF website the following week, it wasn't there. On Thursday, May 13, I went to the ARF page, and happened to notice that Darla was there on the main page with a note that her adoption fees had been prepaid. Mike immediately jumped out of his seat and called Kathi and Chuck to see if we could go down Friday afternoon and adopt her.

So, we went down there on Friday, and she met Jessie (again), Becky, Chuck, Kathi, and Bailey. Needless to day, everyone got along, and so she came home with us. She has settled in nicely to the Athey home, and the vet said she doesn't need her heart meds. I am grateful to the people who paid her adoption fees and gave us a carrier, a bed, a toy, a leash, and some food. She is super cute and quite feisty for an 11-year-old.

Close up