Ma'am, how much time did causing that accident save you?

Seems like no one out there knows how to drive these days. I will say that living here in Chattanooga is much better than living in Tyler, TX. The drivers there are complete and utter idiots. But we have a pretty large group of idiots here as well. The other day while leaving the hospital, I nearly got hit twice within two miles of each other. First, I stopped at a 4-way stop just beyond the hospital, and I waited for the first care to pass through the stop sign on my right. I began to go forward when the car behind the one that had just passed began to accelerate and go through the stop sign as well. Then the car on my left began to go, and they nearly collided while I drove around the side and got out of that intersection as quickly as possible.

A mile or so down the road, I was going through another intersection, this one with a light. I had a green light, so I went through and as I was doing so, a mini-van to the left of me (who had a red light) began to turn into the intersection and nearly sideswiped me. I don't know what possesses these people to absolutely ignore all traffic laws and just drive willy-nilly around the road.

The other day, I stopped at the fabric store on the way home from work. As I came out of the store and got back in the car, I turned to pull back out onto the Hwy. An accident had happened not more than a couple minutes before this, and thankfully no one was hurt. But what caused the accident was some woman attempting to save 20 seconds and beat an oncoming car so she could turn into the parking lot I was in. I don't know what possessed her to turn so close to an oncoming car. She managed to turn directly into their drivers door. She was in an SUV and the other car was some tiny Ford.

Her attempt to save herself 20 seconds turned into a huge ordeal of explaining herself to the cops, dealing with insurance, making sure no one was hurt, and just a general overall headache. ... It's just not worth racing traffic to save time. It will eventually end up causing you more of a mess. That's why I just drive the speed limit, follow the rules, and get there about 45 seconds later than that idiot who zoomed past me and cut me off just to beat me to the stop light.

Hey, at least I've never gotten a speeding ticket, and my insurance is cheaper.

blockbuster sucks...their own words.

So we went to Blockbuster tonight to rent a movie. Usually we don't go to blockbuster. They're too expensive. But we wanted to watch Music and Lyrics, and it's not a new release, so....it's not at Redbox. Anyway.

We got to Blockbuster and before we found Music and Lyrics, we ended up with an old Bill Cosby "Himself" DVD. The two movies are both old releases, so we expected it to be fairly cheap.

We get to the register, got rung up and the lady says it's ten dollars and something. I asked her why it was so much, because that's the same price for a new release. She had the most deadpan response and she said "they are all the same price." "Why?" I asked. "Cause Blockbuster Sucks" she said. Wow ... and they pay you? "They always make me work Friday and Saturday...my weeekends are shot. Go to netflix" she said.

Ok, well .. if you say so.

i thought the economy was bad ... you really want to kick us out?

I know it's been a while since I've posted here ... I apologize for that. It has been a crazy summer already, and we've only begun. Anyway .. I wanted to share a bit about our recent short vacation to Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Overall it was a great trip and I thoroughly enjoyed the rest and beach-time. We even got to see two sharks swimming just a few feet away from us. Of course we high-tailed it out of the water after we realized that it really was sharks. Anyway ... we ate out a few times, and I was so infuriated by what happened while eating out.

Our first day in Fl, we were picked up by our friends Andy and Heather at the airport and drove down to Miami to see South Beach and eat lunch. We went to a great little restaurant on Miami Beach called Chihuahua Cafe that served amazing authentic mexican food and had really good service. We had a gift certificate for all these restaurants from Restaurant.com so we could save quite a bit of money while eating out. Anyway. We had planned to go to a small Italian restaurant called Bocca Restaurante Italiano located in North Miami. North Miami by the way is not necessarily the nicest or best part of Miami, but this area looked ok, and inside the restaurant was clean and nice. The website did not say we needed a reservation, and since it was a wednesday evening at 7pm, we figured it wouldn't be too busy.

We arrived at the restaurant and no one greeted us, so we just sat down at a table. This was a small restaurant, with only about six or eight tables in the whole restaurant. Three of the tables were full of customers. We sat there for 5 or 8 minutes before the waitress came to greet us. She didn't even have a smile on her face, neither did she say hello. She just blurted out "You don't have a reservation, so you're gonna have to wait, OKAY!? Okay." and walked away. She didn't offer us menus or water or anything. Like I said, it was a small restaurant, and she was none too discreet about her words, so every head in the room turned to look at us. We sat there for another five minutes or so, before the boys decided to run across the street to the store and we would call them when we could order. After a while, we heard yelling in the kitchen, something about how it wasn't her fault that she'd ruined the man's chicken, and who cared if the whole table had eaten without him and he had to eat alone, LIFE GOES ON. This poor man she was talking about was sitting RIGHT outside the kitchen door, and heard everything. Then she huffed out to our table and told Heather and I that they were way too busy for us, and we could maybe come back after 8:30 that night, but we had to leave THEN, because they had people who had made reservations coming in and they were more important. Once again, every head in the room turned to look at us as Heather and I scooped up our bags and walked out of the restaurant. I was shocked ... I'd never been thrown out of a restaurant before...It seems like if the economy is really so bad, you would be grateful for any business that comes. We would've tipped afterall.

Needless to say, we didn't feel like waiting 1.5 hours to go back to her sour attitude, so we went across the street to Panera bread. That's usually a fool-proof option, right? Not. This place was so filthy, I couldn't find a table to sit down at that didn't have grime and crumbs all over the place. We ordered what we usually get, soup and salad and a sweet tea. I don't know about you when you order sweet tea, but for me, when I order sweet tea, I usually mean the brewed tea with a lemon in it, not the nasty Nestea raspberry tea from the soda machine. So they charged me for the tea, and then I get over to the drink table and there is no sweet tea. Only unsweetened, and it's horrible. It tastes like Licorice, and I had to throw out it. The manager huffed to me that they didn't serve sweet tea, and it was in the soda machine if I wanted some. I said that's fine, I'll just get some Dr. Pepper. Strike One.

Our food finally came. I had ordered Broccoli Cheddar Soup with a new salad they had. My plate came with a bowl of wilted lettuce and a few strawberries thrown on top and a sandwich. I politely told the girl at the counter that I had ordered soup and not a sandwich and she looked at me like I was insane. She grabbed my sandwich off the plate, rolled her eyes, and grabbed the tiniest paper cup she could find and put LITERALLY three or four spoonfuls of soup in the cup and threw it on my plate. Heather and Andy got sandwiches and Heather opened hers up before biting in -- the lettuce was rotten. Andy had already eaten a few bites of his, and paid for it the next day with a stomach bug.

We all took our plates back to the front and asked for our money back, explaining all the problems we had. Thankfully, the manager was polite and willing to give us back our money, though he mentioned that they'd just re-opened (this was at 7pm) and they'd been shut down (maybe the health department????). Nathan noticed that while we were getting out money back, the girl who had given us our food was yelling in the back about us, looking straight at him and talking about how annoying we were. Geez, I didn't realize it was annoying to expect un-rotten food and the right order when I PAID for the food.

I was just amazed how horrid the service was. We had a good ending to our evening though...We drove back to Pompano beach, and found a nice little restaurant called Frank's Restaurante that served amazing food and had excellent service. We were the only ones in the restaurant, so the waiters were so friendly. There was even signed pictures in the back of Frank Sinatra and other celebrities who had been at the restaurant. So if you're even in the Lauderdale/Pompano beach area, take the exit for Atlantic Ave, go all the way down to the beach, and Frank's is on your right hand side in the last block before the beach.

Special K Loaf

Here's my Special K Loaf recipe for those who are interested =)
Just so you know, I don't measure anything. I just dump it in. I get the biggest bowl I have and by the time I'm done, it's filled to the brim. I also bake this in the largest pyrex dish I have, which (I'm not sure of the measurements) I believe is 11 x 14 or something like that. Anyway. enjoy. =)


Fill the bowl 3/4 full of Special K (or cornflakes, they both taste just as good).
Mix in one bag of shredded cheddar cheese.
Add one tub of large curd cottage cheese.
Saute' burger crumbles in a skillet with a little olive oil cooking spray, and cook till they are browned.
Chop one large white onion and add into the mix.
Empty two packets of Lipton Onion Soup mix into mixture and add burger crumbles to the bowl.
Add 6-8 eggs, or however many it takes to moisten the mixture.

Mix thoroughly, spray cooking spray onto baking dish and pour mixture in. Pat down and smooth out. Bake at 400* for about 45 minutes, or until golden brown on top.

Best when eaten with mashed potatoes, fresh steamed broccoli or salad, and Apple pie a'la mode for desert. =) It may not be the absolute healthiest, but it's delicious, even as left overs. And the leftover loaf (if there is any left over) makes an absolute amazing sandwich.

just one of those days.

It's one of those days. You know what I'm talking about ... the perfect blue skies with not a cloud in sight. The wind is barely blowing and the sun is shining down and makes everything look just a little brighter, a little better. It's the kind of day that makes you love spring and everything about re-birth. Today makes you just want to throw caution to the wind and take off somewhere -- be spontaneous, and maybe not come back tonight.

It's the perfect day to jump on a Harley and pack an overnight bag and take off to the beach. It's the kind of day that makes you want to throw on some shorts and a tank top and scrub down the car out in the driveway, or maybe just lay out in the sun in the backyard on a lounge chair.

Today makes you want to drink a milkshake, because it's just that warm outside. Today makes you want to take off to the lake and lounge in a boat all day, drinking root beer and lazily trailing your feet in the water.

Today makes you want to get a puppy and run outside in the park with it. Maybe take your kids out and fly a kite, except you'll mostly chase after it because there's just not enough wind to keep it flying. It's the kind of day where a cup of lemonade just hits the spot, and a hot dog is bliss.

It's just one of those days...and I'm at work. =(

really..what's reality?

I'm tired of all these reality shows on TV. I don't watch them really, but I've seen a few different episodes, and they all get housed in incredible mansions, and lay around doing nothing but talking to the camera in their little "interviews". Or then there's the "reality" shows that turn out to be scripted, sort of. You know, the ones where young girls live in impossibly expensive apartments and drive ridiculous cars and work as interns (that's a non-paying job) at magazines. But you see, this is my problem with these shows -- that's not reality. Who do you know that lives like that? Here's my perspective of reality:

Reality is finding out your pregnant before you get married, and have no insurance to pay for the maternity care. Reality is finding out that since you actually do have a job, you may just be too "rich" to qualify for government aid to help you get through this tough time in your life.

Reality is working full-time while putting yourself through school, just to make a better life for yourself and your family. Reality is making too much money to get enough financial aid to cover your expensive school bill, but not enough money to pay that bill.

Reality is finding an amazing pair of shoes that were originally 90.00 in the store on sale for 19.99. Reality is buying those shoes, then taking them back, because you realized you'd be $20 short on rent for that month. Reality is cutting coupons just to save the extra five dollars, so that maybe you'd have enough money that month to rent a movie and have a date night with your spouse.

Reality is canceling your anniversaries to go to funerals. It's watching your family suffer through the death of your niece. It's watching your father suffer through pain that cannot be diagnosed, and not being able to do anything for him because you can't afford private insurance. It's watching him deal with government programs such as the VA system to provide all his health care, and seeing how it never gets anything done.

Reality is doing filthy jobs just because it pays the bills. It's not driving a Beemer around LA looking hot. It's not blowing money on designer clothes while cameras follow you around. It's doing what you have to to make ends meet. It's not quitting the one job you have until you find a better one. It's sticking with the job you have because it's better than no pay check.

Reality is living with your decisions and paying the consequences. It's frustrating to see people living with no responsibility or care for their actions. We've become a nation of no consequences. We can always pass the buck, blame someone else. It's not our fault, it's our parents ... or the person that came before. This is going to kick us in the butt sooner or later. But if we stay grounded and aware of what really is real, we should be prepared, right?

o how I hate commercials.

this is a short blog. I just think that if you pay for television, you should not have to be subjected to commercials. I hate commercials so much. If you are still watching free television with rabbit ears, than by all means, enjoy your commercials. But I pay enough each month that I should never have to watch another commercials for the rest of my life.