ISO Estate Sale: Cheap Car

Thanks everyone for all of the well wishes!! I'm doing better. I'm achy and my neck is my enemy at the moment. But there's no room to complain. I'm just happy to be alive.

I got the official word today. I have to buy a new car. Anybody know an old lady who wants to sell her 2 year old Honda that she only drove to the grocery store and back, with 2500 miles on it, for $7000? If you find her let me know. I'll buy it in a heartbeat. I really want to buy a bucket and drive it until the wheels fall off, but I just checked the safety ratings on the car I totaled. It pays to buy a good car and not just a cheap one. I was surprised by how safe my baby was. Best in the industry for front impact. Go figure. It sucks that I have to start a brand new car note. But I'm alive with a cut finger. I'm not complaining.

Here are some of my favorite comments this week:

Well that's ONE way to get a clean car! Damn. I told you I'd wash it for you.

I know you didn't feel like working this week, but dang!

[zzzzzzz! zzzzzzzzzzz!]

Yes, snoring. I called a certain someone from the emergency room to tell him/her about the accident and s/he fell asleep on me. Classic! To be fair, s/he had just taken meds that knock you out. S/he feels guilty. I thought it was funny. It was priceless!

Now I need to get on to the business of going back to Cali. I leave for Santa Monica on Saturday. I love my job sometimes. No complaints from me for the free trips. The conference starts on Monday, but of course we had to build in a weekend in L.A. I'll bet you anything it snows! Then I'm gonna be pissed. Well, not so much since I don't have to drive in it.

When did "not so much" become the new catch phrase? I think it belongs in the same category as "hot". That would be the say it again and I'll scream category. The thing is, as much as I hate it, I catch myself saying it--like 3 sentences ago.

I'm off to eat leftovers. There's been zero cooking for me this week.

Toodles.

How was YOUR Monday?

So, where's Lex been? Let's see. Yesterday she totaled her car 50 minutes after signing a new car insurance policy.

I let the car insurance lapse on my car for a while because I'm, well, broke. It came down to a toss up between rent and insurance after the forced move in August. I took a gamble. But it snowed Sunday in the DC area and after a very scary drive home from a dinner at my mom's place I knew I needed to fix that situation right away. I was looking for insurance companies online and I found an agent close to my house. I called to see if I could find out what time they opened Monday morning. The agent answered. It was midnight. He was at home. He said it was no problem because he was up anyway? {confused puppy dog face} I asked if he was sure and said I could call back in the morning, but he insisted so he worked up a quote for me, prepared my paperwork and told me to come in and sign the papers on the way to work in the morning.

I went in. I signed. He was great. I asked when the policy was effective. He laughed and wrote 9:16 am at the top of my policy. He joked that I have no idea how many people leave his office and total their cars 2o minutes later. I said, "No way!"

Well, WAY!!!

At 9:56 am I was going full speed (60 mph) on I-695. I am one lane over from the slow lane. As I approach the Liberty Road on ramp I see a black sports car lose control as he's getting ready to merge into the slow lane and go into a tail spin. His donuts spun right out into the traffic, right in front of me. RIGHT in front of me. I heard myself laughing at my insurance agent. There was nothing I could do. I knew I was going to plow into him...and plow into him I did. After the impact I felt my hands clenched on the steering wheel and I waited for the rest of the cars to slam into me. No other cars slammed into me. I smelled smoke and I peeled my eyes open. The smoke was coming from the air bag. Both airbags deployed. My face hurt. I was terrified to look into the rear view mirror. I was wet. There were wet pools all over my coat. I thought it was strange that my blood smelled like coffee. Oh, it was coffee. My nose hurt. I looked in the mirror. There was something running down my face. Tears. Heather ran over and asked if I was ok. She was on the phone with emergency dispatch describing everything including my state. She knew better than I did. I got out of my car and got into hers because she said my car was smoking. My knees hurt. But I could walk without pain. Good news.

I sat in her car. Police and an ambulance came. I went to the hospital. Everybody got all in a tissy when I told them I was going full speed and my airbags deployed. I cut my finger. I may have a small hairline break in my nose. I got a band-aid and a prescription for Motrin for inflammation and Flexeril for muscle relaxing. I went to the lot to get my computer out of the car. When I walked into the driveway I looked at my car and I saw the engine. All the silver stuff that used to be in front of it and around it was gone. I got my stuff out my car and signed some papers so that the other guy's insurance company could handle it. The other guy came in. He was fine. I was glad. He apologized. He was given a citation for the incident. He took responsibility for the crash although it was caused by the ice...but tell an insurance company that.

I was hungry. Daddy took me to Fuddrucker's. I almost fell asleep in my burger. Flexeril is nice. I came home. I went to sleep.

I'm stiff today and my nose hurts a little more. If you could see my car you'd understand how grateful I am to be alive.

I don't ever want to drive again, but I will, this afternoon when I pick up the rental. I won't ever drive in bad weather again, even if it costs me my job. My life is worth more. This is the 3rd accident I've had because someone else lost control in the ice. This is the 2nd such accident I've had trying to get to work in the ice. Never. Again.

I am blessed.

Idol 6--Yes, Here We Go Again

OH, GOOD LORD IN HEAVEN !!!! Why oh why do I watch American Idol every season? We're less than one hour into Season 6 and I'm already shouting at my TV, "Shut the f*ck up, already!"

Why do I take pleasure in hearing people make total fools of themselves? See, I KNOW I can't sing. Why don't they?

Who's Coming to Dinner?

I like food. All kinds of food. That should be no surprise to anyone who has read this blog for a while or watched me walk out of a room. My ass tells it all. I like good food. Great food.

I haven't had the fortune of sharing my love of all things edible with many people who share my diversified palate. It gets quite frustrating after a while. Anyone whose list of "what I don't eat" is longer than the list of "foods I love" is an absolute annoyance to me. Ex didn't eat mushrooms, Asian food, pizza, shellfish (I'll be fair, he claimed allergy), Brussels sprouts, nuts IN food or bananas. WTH?? Can you imagine how boooooring meal planning was with all these stupid restrictions?

I now keep a running list of which of my friends won't eat what. I hate that I have to do this, but I know so many picky eaters that I just know to ask up front. No mushrooms for this one, no sundried tomatoes for this one (OK who doesn't like sundried tomatoes?), no seafood here, no asparagus there, no pork for this one, add red meat to that for the next, and my personal favorite--no chicken on the bone. Oh, and no onions. I have a friend who doesn't eat onions...or mac and cheese. Ah! Don't all great meals start with onions and garlic? Oh, and I can't forget no raisins or cherries ;). It can make planning a dinner party really difficult. Maybe it's not hard for the average Jane who is going to offer a few staples that please everybody. Never mind the fact that it's the same spread they've had at every party they've been to since you actually had to cook Chex Mix. I'm no such Jane.

Here are a couple of things I keep on hand (or have on hand at the moment) that many people find objectionable: figs, dates, artichokes, sundried tomatoes, brie, every kind of nut you can think of, asparagus, anchovies, chopped clams, cremini mushrooms, shrimp, olives (black and green), all kinds of beans and chilis, and capers. I know at least one person who will turn his/her nose up to each of these. I love these foods, people. It's so hard to cook without them, to cook around them. This is great stuff!! These items are almost always in my house and I cook with them all the time. I've even mastered chopping onions so small that the onion non-eater doesn't notice.

Me? I'll try anything once. Yes, I've eaten things I don't like, but I think adults' lists of foods they hate should be much shorter than the list of foods they enjoy. Maybe I'm coo-coo?

I had a conversation with my class of adult English as a Second Language students about foods and nutrition. We talked about foods that are customary in each of their countries. My student from Central African Republic eats elephant, rhinoceros and monkey (says the palm is the best part). The student from Chad eats grasshoppers. Loves and misses them. Apparently grasshoppers are enjoyed in some parts of Algeria, Burkina Faso and Congo too. [Pausing for anyone who needs to to take a glance at a world map and catch up.] Some Haitians eat cat. And in Tanzania they drink cow blood. Now, while I said I had a diversified palate, I'm neither a vampire nor a cannibal. And yes, for me, eating monkey borders on cannibalism. (I'm not a full-fledged Darwinist, but you've got to admit that you've seem some folks whose appearance alone makes a damn good argument for man having evolved from ape.) I have however eaten chocolate covered ants and rattlesnake. And I ate blood sausage in Argentina, but it was cooked. So that doesn't count towards vampirism.

I'm not saying that we should make every meal time a Fear Factor event, but come on? What has a Brussels sprout ever done to anybody?

Is there anything I absolutely won't eat? Yes, of course. Cauliflower. It reminds me of when your body is trying to fight off strep and white blood cells collect on the back of your throat in little clusters. I'll pass. Every time.

What about you? What should I absolutely NOT serve if I invite you to dinner?

Fiddling around in the Dark

I really need a life. I have spent my entire evening deleting and replacing elements of my template html to see what things do. I was tired of my blog looking like your standard Blogger 1 of 10, but I'm not satisfied yet.

I got rid of the Christmas balls in the header, but I can't figure out how to get a header I like better. All of the pre-fab ones I've found aren't wide enough. I don't have Photoshop, in which I understand you can easily make your own header, and I'm not willing to buy one. So this is what we have for the moment.

I can't figure out how to make the hunter green go away. So, we're stuck with that for now too. I kinda like the mayhem.

I am such a freaking dork.

As much as I claim I need a life, I quite enjoyed myself this evening. This has been fun. I don't know what I've learned except that I'm not nearly as afraid to FUBAR my blog as I thought I was. I took huge risks tonight. You can't imagine. When I say I had NO idea what I was doing...I mean NO idea.

I even created an account on del.icio.us. Can I tell you have haven't the foggiest idea what that is. I thought it would give me free blog headers since I got to it via my google search for "headers blogger". Maybe someone can explain it to me. And while you're at it, tell me about technorati. I signed up for that to, but my little button never appeared and I've actually forgotten all about it until this moment.

I think this is my learning style: fiddling around in the dark until I find the light switch.

Cards, Games and Dashikis (Updated)

I have just discovered Yahoo! Games. As if I needed something else to contribute to my internet addiction. It's not that I never knew it was there, but I never bothered to really check it out....well, except for one exceptionally pitiful night when Katrice, Kwesi and I all sat in the same room, each with a laptop, trying to set up an online game of spades. It was pretty pathetic since I have at least 4 decks of cards I can put my hands on in an instant.

I played Spades last night. I wish the world would figure out how much better Bid Whist is than Spades and catch up. There's no Whist on Yahoo! I play a bunch of card games, but Whist is my favorite to date. I have just started to play Poker and it is fun beyond belief in a very different way. The betting adds a dimension to the game that catapults it to another level all its own. I love it so far--but then again, I'm playing with someone else's pennies. I could never play any game for real money. Although I'm a little loose on the spending tip, I could never, ever bring myself to throw the cash away like that. (And anyone who says, "but think of the money you could win," needs to get a sponsor in GA.)

I'm a card fanatic. I grew up sitting on my parents knees while they drank beer and played cards at their card parties. All gatherings of my parents' friends turned into card parties. I love card parties. I want to have card parties. I need my friends to get on board. I wrote a post a long time ago about Bid Whist and the only groups of people I could find who played were my grandmother's age. OK, maybe my parent's age, but old. I have, however, discovered another cohort that is resurrecting Bid Whist, the recently paroled. Apparently the old heads are teaching the young bucks in prison. I could invite a bunch of these guys over for Guinness and Whist. They're easy enough to find. No? Well then learn how to play and come play with me so that I'm not forced to host a Cell Block C party!!

My cousins know how to play, as does my brother and a couple of friends. The only person who's as obsessed as I am (who actually learned to play in the slammer-lol) has an overly crowded schedule and keeps promising me that we'll get a card party going. I'm waiting...[taps foot impatiently]. My passive aggression means nothing. He stopped reading my blog a year ago...too busy. What the hell are you people so busy doing???? There are cards to be played?

This is worse than a chocolate jones on the first day of my period. I really want to play cards. I want a group that's competitive, but not overly aggressive. I want a couple of tables going, some beer, snacks and laughter. NO SMOKING though. That was the least favorite part of mom and dad's parties. There is this one pic of my brother (at about 4) passed the hell out because he took a glass of straight gin to the head, thinking it was H20...or so the story goes. Ah, drinking folks' beers while they weren't paying attention, now THAT was the best part of the card parties.

These parties are also the reason for my appreciation of music by, say, Earth, Wind and Fire, Ohio Players, Commodores, Kool and the Gang, the Isley Brothers and the like. I think I even remember mommy with an afro. I wanted her dashikis so bad. She gave them to Goodwill before she realized I had plans for them. I was heartbroken. Heartbroken, I tell you. The ones they have today just aren't the same. Close, but no cigar.

I'm realizing as I write this that I am morphing into my parents. So is my brother. My parents have recorded the Young and the Restless, As the World Turns and the Bold and the Beautiful every single day since there have been VCRs. They sit, mom in the recliner, Dad on the love seat, every night and eat dinner while watching their "stories" until they each pass out and dad wakes them up at 2am to go to bed. Every night. Guess who's TiVoing Y&R?? Hell, no. Not me. But my brother and the wife. It's really, really sad. I expect to see Jack, Jill, Katherine, Victor and Nikki at my family reunions. THAT's how much these characters were a part of my upbringing. Mom used to spend my $5/MINUTE phone calls from Argentina telling me about Y&R. Who cares? They'll be doing the same thing in a year when I'm back in the States. Relax. And they were, of course.

I also love board games. Except Scrabble. I love Boggle, I hate Scrabble. I've concluded that my decoding abilities far out-shine my encoding abilities and so I'll leave Scrabble to the otherly inclined. I really, really hate it for some reason. I must say I hate Taboo now. It's done. Over. Dead. Kill it. Find a new game, please. PLEASE. Good Jeezus. I get so sick of getting dirty looks when I guess "Jack-in-the-Beanstalk" from so much as an inhalation. I know them all. The game has been on the market for 20 years. We ALL know them all. Please, if you host a game night...buy another game. I'm I the only person who knows dorks who host game nights??

Well call me one and all and let me know when you're coming over for the card party. I'll even print out cheat sheets for everyone who needs them (everyone needs one for Bid Whist until you learn the bids, don't feel bad). Come from Jersey, Denver, San Francisco and Indianapolis. There's beer and ginger ale for all. And no Taboo.

I WANNA PLAY!!!!!!!

Edit: All this excitement had me jumble Jack and the Beanstalk with Jack-in-the-Box, but you knew what I meant.

Junkie Udate: OMG! Yahoo! Games has Trivial Pursuit!!!!!!

I'm Running out of Titles for Posts That are Just Babbling

I have spent my vacation doing just about absolutely nothing. It has been glorious.

I hung out with friends a couple of days, but I've only left the house once in the last two days--to go to the gym for an hour. I made Katrice and Kwesi's Christmas gifts. I'm so sorry they had to wait, but there was no way for me to get it all done in time. I'm glad they were patient. I switched to the new blogger. I've cooked a couple of meals and taken out the trash. I got my Zune to play through my home stereo and that's about it. Good times.

Today is my dad's birthday. Happy Birthday, Papi! It's also my cousin's birthday. Happy Birthday, T!! It probably sucks for her that her birthday is shared with an old man. We're having a party for dad at my brother's house tomorrow. We're supposed to bring a game and a funny story about my dad. I like the cannabis belt buckle story. We'll see though. There are so many with that guy. He's so cute. Does anybody have any new board games that are fun? I'm so sick of Taboo.

I got really angry and frustrated earlier tonight. Here's my rant if you care.

I'm watching Oprah's show on nastiness in people's houses. It's gross. I'm not a germophobe by far, but this is grossing me out. They just said that dropping a carrot in your toilet would be better than eating a carrot out of your kitchen sink. Something about the toilet being flushed all the time. You're supposed to use a germicide and a brush with chlorine and water. Dishrags must be cleaned with bleach, same for sponges and air dry everything. No one should use a sponge for more than a month. OK, WHO uses a kitchen sponge for more than a month? Really?

I wish I had something creative and focused to write about tonight, but I only have energy for randomness. Vacation makes me sooooo lazy. I had all these plans that involved getting up early, the gym and studying for the LSAT. Um. I like sleeping past noon much better. It's coming to an end, so I have to milk it while I can. This is the first vacation I've taken that didn't involve moving. When I was off last month, my brother sprang a new house on me.

I think we don't take enough time to just chill out, right Heart? I was planning to take myself on a date to Border's the other night, but my internet addiction won out. I am such a dork but that would be a fabulous date, if you ask me. Buy me coffee and sit me in a bookstore so we can chat it up and read and chat it up some more. I'm a dork. I know.

If you read this blog with any frequency, you may think I'm a little schizo with respect to my relationship with coffee. I used to think it broke me out in hives. I've had it a few times over the holidays with no trouble. I'm fully convinced now that my hives are a function of stress. Maybe coffee triggers it when I'm stressed, but coffee alone doesn't seem to be doing it. Thank you all for all of your concern.

I'm waiting patiently to be stroked by Fresh. I know it's pathetic, but I want my turn already. I got the short end of ABC order. Not as bad as Lozo though. He's dead last.

I'm going to shut up now because I'm not saying anything worth saying...except that Dark Damien's diatribe is hilarious. You should read this on Wednesdays if you don't already.

I'm out.

Peace.

I Switched...Successfully, I Think

I switched to the new blogger today. I was terrified that some typical Bloggerness would go down and I'd lose everything, but it looks like I've safely crossed over.

Now my head hurts because I copied and pasted all 143 posts on this blog into Word before the switch. I just rolled the dice with the other 2 blogs.

I'm going to rest my eyes now.

8 Goals for the New Year

At 4 am when I was lurking around on all of my blog pals' blogs, I had all these ideas of what to write about today. Now, I gots nothin'. Should have just stayed up. Some of my most honest stuff comes out with sleep deprivation.

So, it's the new year. I've been thinking of some goals for this year, no resolutions. I suck at sticking to things. So here are a few of them, along with some anecdotal stuff so that you get why it matters to me at all. If I bore you to tears, come back at 4:30 am, I'm bound to have better stuff to say then.

Oh, before I tell you my goals...My girlfriend A and I have had some rough years in similar ways recently. At the end of each year we came up with a cheesy slogan to sum up that year. Here are a couple, along with our projection for 2007.

Can't Take No More in 2004
Got out Alive in 2005
Trying to Pick up the Sticks in 2006
A Little Taste of Heaven in 2007

OK, now some stuff I hope to accomplish in 2007:

1. Join a book club. My brother and sister-in-law kicked this idea around with me yesterday. We've decided that our brains are going to turn to mashed potatoes without deliberate stimulation. So, I think we're going to do a book club. My brother is not big into fiction, so we're going to alternate fiction and non-fiction. I need a list of suggestions for either. Tell me if you have ideas. I want to read Freakonomics for some reason. Has anybody read this? Any thoughts?
2. Return to my life's trajectory pre-Ex. This is a pretty pathetic story, but it occurred to me yesterday and I cried. I was a junior in college. No, let me back up. I remember being 16 and having tremendous frustrations about my church. I remember feeling like a revolutionary, like things needed to change, like I was the one to effect such change. So I left my church. (Yeah, revolutionary, right?) Then I became Pentecostal. That wasn't revolutionary, just stupid. By junior year of college, I had realized how stupid it was. Met Ex. He directed a youth ministry. It was pretty radical at the time. I liked that. I like him. It connected with my revolutionary spirit with regard to this church business. Big let down...it was more of the same old church mess all mixed up with Pentecostal mess. But, somehow it or he was enough for me to do a complete about face with regard to my life's plans. I was walking across campus early one morning to my Constitutional Law class. I passed in front of McKeldin Library and the big bronze statue of Testudo, our mascot. I rubbed his nose for luck, I think. At that precise moment I made a terrible decision that has cost me a lot of time and heartache. I decided that if I were going to be the wife of a minister, there was no time for me to focus on law school. And, since it "obviously" wasn't in the cards for me to go to law school, there was certainly no point in suffering through con law. I turned left, went to the Mitchell building and withdrew from the class. This was the day I lost my identity in his. I stopped defining myself in terms of me, always in terms of him: Ex's girlfriend; Ex's wife; Ex's assistant pastor. Ex's backbone and puppet-master, some would argue, but still in terms of him. I look back on that decision and I'm sad about it. It hurt to be able to pinpoint so clearly the day I chose to die and live in the shadow of a man. But, as much as I thought I'd feel overwhelming regret about it, I don't. I'm studying for the LSAT. I work at a law firm. My boss (Harvard Law) is super supportive of me going to law school and thinks I'd make a great lawyer. I was worried for a while that my decision to think about going to law school was just the next thing on Lexi's endless and always changing list of things she starts and never finishes. But as I reflect on how I got off track in the first place, I'm more confident than ever that I'm doing the right thing. The right thing for me, for a change. So, send me your neurons as I study for the LSAT, please. I'm not confident enough to take it in February, but I hope to be ready by June.
3. Get this damned divorce finalized already. Maryland makes is so hard. There are so many hoops to jump through. At first I didn't want to mention anything here about it, for fear that my plans will get back to him somehow (you know--dodging service of process or something). But now I don't care. The papers are coming dammit. Sign them and let's get this over with, will ya? I wish you all the best in your future endeavors, by the way.
   
4. Lose 57.2 pounds. I'm gonna do this. Check in on me on Fine Tuning from time to time. I can't believe I've told the world how much I weigh, but hey, I've told you much worse on this blog. Who cares?
5. Release the resentment I have towards "church goers". I've decided that my angst is not with Christians so much as it is the group of "church goers" who check their brains at the doors of the church, yet think they've got it all figured out because "the pastor said" or because "the Bible said". Those are the ones who make me want to scream. I've done some pinpointing of the issues I'm frustrated with and I'll elaborate on that on Unpacking Faith. Suffice it to say that I'm going to go to church Sunday to see if I can make it through the whole service without wanting to scream or pull out my hair. Just an experiment. No resolutions, goals or promises about going back to church. I just need to test the waters to see where I am.
6. Spend more time with my family. I really love those folks. But I put them through hell over the last couple of years as I went on a tirade, digging up and exposing family secrets. As much as I needed to know the truth about some things (and tell the truth about some things) my timing might not have been ideal for everyone else involved. Regardless of how everybody feels about me at the moment, I love them more as a result of the whole shebang. I had good times with mom and dad last year. The year before I didn't want to see them. (You know therapy makes you hate your parents for a least a good year.) I love them all so much and although I let many, many cats out of bags and bones out of closets I feel much better around them all. I love you guys. I feel like you finally know me and that's all that matters, to me at least.
7. Make more money and manage it better. This is an ongoing struggle, but I hope to get better with this this year. My boss initiated the raise conversation, but my Exec. Dir. is out on maternity leave. We'll see what happens when everyone's back in the office. The holidays wrecked any progress I'd made in money management. Good thing there were 3 checks in December. Hey, it's a goal. Get off my back.
8. Get re-acquainted with good music. This little number will help. It will also help me watch less TV. I'm also open to suggestions on this one. Andy sent me You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate. Everyone must have that song in his/her collection. Aw, I think this is "our" song. [blush, blush]
   
   

So that's it for me for this year. Nothing too unattainable. I don't think there's any place where I'm "being to0 hard on myself" as I've been told I am, often. Maybe you see things differently. Let me know.

I'll remember the funny stories later. I haven't been awake long enough yet.