I am really, really concerned. 

I have the theme song from Captain Kangaroo going through my head, over and over and over again.

What’s going on up there??

Um, I don’t know much about running a country but when the electricity of an ENTIRE COUNTRY can be taken out by a “technical glitch”, I’d say that you have got one big-ass single point of failure there!

Blackout plunges entire country into darkness

Who turned out the lights??

I have not been on “the diet” for quite a while - months, in fact.  But we’re going to North Carolina in early May and I at least wanted to fit into my regular clothes and not have to resort to my “big girl” clothes for that trip.  So, I’m back on “the diet”.

It started Monday and I’ve lost 1.5 lbs. so far.  That’s nothing - I know that - but at least it’s heading in the right direction.

The thing is?  Dammit - I’m hungry!  I want to gorge on the cheeses and cookies and more cheeses that are in the house.  I want, I want, I want!

I hate dieting.  *sigh*

I want to squish the heads of everyone who uses a cell phone while they are driving.  I want to squish their heads until their eyes pop out and roll away on the dusty ground. 

Because, honestly?  I don’t know that these people would notice the difference between the useless heads they have right now and their squished and eyeless noggins after I’m done with them.  I don’t think they notice anything at all.  Things like stop signs and traffic lights and, oh, let’s say, small children crossing the street!  Freakin’ morons!!

Oh, and if you talk on the phone while you’re driving, I didn’t mean you, of course. 

Wait!  Yes, I did!  Stop talking on the phone while you’re driving!!  It’s unbelievably unsafe!  The world operated just fine before everyone in it had a phone strapped to their heads 24/7.  I’m sure whomever you feel the need to talk to can wait five minutes until you pull into the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly. 

Sheesh, people!  Don’t make me get this mad again!  I don’t like the way my voice sounds! 

Now, gimme a hug and have a good day.

In my bathroom, I have a little dish that holds miscellaneous small items (barrettes, safety pins, etc.).  I always keep at least one elastic ponytail holder in that dish.

Every morning, I come into the bathroom and that ponytail holder is on the floor next to the trash can.  I pick it up and put it back in the dish.  Then the next morning, it’s back on the floor next to the trash can.

Now, I don’t know which one of our cats is doing this - I don’t even have a suspicion at this point because they’re all mischievous furry things, but I have an image in my head.

I picture myself walking into the bathroom one day and seeing one of our cats sitting next to the ponytail holder and looking up at me.  I imagine that she will be thinking, “Mommy, I don’t know how this keeps happening but this ponytail holder keeps being out of place.  Thank goodness I’m here every day to put it back in its proper spot on the floor!  Thank goodness for me!  I love you!”

I can just picture it.  I love my cats!

For a couple of days now, I’ve been getting goose bumps on my left forearm and feeling like I have ice water running through my bone marrow.  I’m not cold.  I don’t think I have a fever.  The only thing I can come up with is that someone has not only walked over my grave, but they’ve camped out there.

The only problem with that theory is that I have no intention of being deposited in the ground when my body gives out.  So, pray tell, what is the appropriate description of this feeling when someone who is destined for the torch feels it?

We have to get our vehicle inspected this month.  I made an appointment last week for today.  The guy on the phone asked me what time I wanted and I replied,

“Oh, I’m going to have to drop it off.”

To which he replied,

“OK, great.”

That’s all he said.  “OK, great.” We go to drop off the car this morning.  Yeah, they’re closed.  No after-hours drop-off at this place, no sirreebob.

Do you think it would have cost him a whole lot of his day to tell me that “Oh, by the way, you have to drop it off during working hours”??  Would that have killed him?   

*sigh* When will spring arrive? 

INTENSE LOW PRESSURE JUST SOUTH OF LONG ISLAND WILL MOVE SLOWLY NORTH TODAY. THE LOW WILL THEN WEAKEN A BIT AS IT REFORMS EAST OF NEW JERSEY TONIGHT. THIS SYSTEM WILL CAUSE STRONG WINDS OVER THE REGION WITH GUSTS TO 60 MPH.

COLDER AIR HAS RETURNED TO THE REGION. THE AIRMASS IS JUST COLD ENOUGH TO CHANGE THE RAIN TO A HEAVY WET SNOW IN SCATTERED LOCATIONS. ONE OF THESE LOCATIONS WAS IN SOUTH PHILADELPHIA, WHERE THERE WAS A REPORT OF SNOW COVERING THE GROUND.

Ferchrissake.  It’s April 16th.  Enough already!

I work a fairly early shift - 6:30 to 3:30.  Not the earliest here by a long shot, but still pretty early. 

I left yesterday at around 3:45.  I happened to check my e-mails later - around 4:45.

Along with 20-some new e-mails, I had fifteen new meeting invitations.  FIFTEEN!  In one hour, I got invited to FIFTEEN meetings.

Could someone explain to me how I’m supposed to get my work done if I’m in meetings all day??  Because this continues to elude me.

Why didn’t anyone tell me?  Huh?  Why??

All my adult female life, I’ve been using men’s razors to shave and thinking nothing of it.  Oh, sure, once in a while I’d look at the pretty pink packaging but always swooned at the prices and scoffed at the commercials.  How much different could they be?  And I can get 10 Trac II blades for $10 but I’d be spending $16 on three of these fancy “girl” blades?  Uh uh.  No.

Well, I finally tried one.  I picked up a package of three Venus disposable razors.

Folks, my Trac II days are over.  Why didn’t anyone tell me that there’s such a difference?  Huh?  Why??  What else is out there that I’m not using that I really, really want to be using??

Damn.

And highly counterproductive.

I find that when I plan on completing an assignment or working on a project in a given couple of hours of the day (let’s say, between 6:30 and 8:30), some emergency always arises and makes it so that I can’t accomplish that task during that time that I set aside.

I wonder if I’m actually creating the emergencies by scheduling this time for myself…

I should stop all this planning.  For everyone’s sake!

We have been tossing around the idea of getting a new car for four years.  If you knew us well, you’d know that that is completely unlike us.  We used to be a-new-car-every-two-or-three-years kind of people.  But we’ve been hanging in there with our very utilitarian 1998 Plymouth Voyager (which never contains passenger seating) and our 2000 Subaru Outback sedan.  What more did we want?

About 2 years ago, I took the Subaru in for inspection and told them to look at the transmission.  It seemed sluggish going into overdrive and definitely slow going from reverse to drive.  After several trips back, they finally agreed that there might be something slightly amiss.  But “it’s within spec”.  We heard that several times.  Apparently, there’s some known issue with Subaru transmissions that can creep up anywhere from 40,000 miles on.  We had close to 70,000 on it at the time.  Should I feel special?  No.  I want 150,000 minimum before major car expense from my cars!  That’s just how I am.  Anyway, they told us that it could go at any time or it could last 10 more years.  Did we want to pay $3500 to have a rebuilt transmission put into it?

We decided we didn’t want to do that for several reasons (not the least of which was that we didn’t have $3500), so we basically put the car in the garage and used the Voyager, which only had 35,000 miles on it and it was two years older than the Subaru!  We did use the Subaru during the winter weather and it did fine.  In fact, there were times when it seemed absolutely perfect.  But did we want to get to the point where we had to pay $3500 just to be able to trade it in?  No.

Oh, but having no car payments is SOOOOO nice!!

But it’s time for inspection again and did we want to spend the money on inspection now if we were going to be thinking about trading it in soon anyway?  So we hemmed and we hawed and we finally decided to go look.  We wanted to keep the all-wheel drive capability but I was hesitant to get another Subaru.  That meant we basically had to look at SUVs because pickins are slim (and expensive) in the all-wheel drive sedan market.  I had wanted to get a hybrid but we really didn’t need a big SUV.  We just needed something all-wheel drive and able to haul a little bit of stuff.  (We are planning on trading in the van for a little toy sporty thing down the road at some point, so we’d lose our hauling ability.)

God, how long is this story going to be??

End of the story is this.  We went and got a Toyota Highlander (bigger than a RAV4 but, really, we couldn’t deal with the instrumentation on the RAV - it was like a cheap Chevy!).  We were aiming for a hybrid but when the sales guy couldn’t get the $40,000+ hybrid started - ever! - we got very nervous.  So now we have a regular old gasoline powered SUV - not huge, but not tiny either.  And I am SO glad to be back with Toyota.  I had forgotten how nice they are!

Now.  How do I deal with a $475/month car payment and a depleted savings account?  What have we done??