Copper Thiefs

This morning, when we arrived at the office, we discovered someone had broken onto our property. Our building sits on 20 acres of land surrounded by a fence and two gates. Each gate is locked at night with a chain and pad lock. Someone cut the chain, drove around the building, cut the locks on the 6 foot tall electrical boxes, cut out the copper neutral and ground wires, and then moved on to an enclosed (but not locked) area with another electrical box attached to the ceiling. They stacked 4 chemical barrels together, piled four pallets on top and stood on top of that to reach the electrical box. And then, based on the fact that a large green pair of bolt cutters were left hanging in the electrical box, we think he nicked a live wire and shocked himself. We are hoping badly enough that he needed medical care and he can be tracked down. He (or they) did approximately $20,000 worth of damage. For about $1000 for worth of copper that they will probably sell to a salvage yard to get cash for drugs.

We need to shut the power off to the building because it is now ungrounded, but we couldn’t shut it down today, because it would be too clear to the thieves that all of the wires are safe to cut now, and they could come back to steal the rest of the copper wiring. So the building is sitting in a semi-dangerous state until 7am when they will turn the power off so that these people can’t do more damage.

Tomorrow should be fun.

What a strange world we live in.

Laptop Search!

Ok folks, I need advice. I need a new laptop. Mine is slowly irritating me (and itself) to death. My desktop is now officially 7 years old (although it works like a champ for everything except Photoshop) and I do believe it is time for a new laptop with some power. On the other hand, I can’t spend a lot of money. I would LOVE a Mac iBook in all of it’s Titanium glory, but I can’t even come close to affording the $2400 price tag. I did find a few that I think I like on TigerDirect.com, my favorite electronics website. A couple of them are refurbished, but I’m not too concerned about that with TigerDirect.

A friend of mine also offered to hook me up with his work discount on a new Dell. But, there are several dilemmas associated with that, A) Dell’s always seem overpriced to me; B) I don’t really know if his discount makes for a better deal than the TigerDirect computers, and C) I can’t put that on my credit card and pay it off. I am pretty sure I will have to just pay him cash. (And I have 3.9% interest for the next 6 months, so paying it off wouldn’t be bad. AND I would earn AAdvantage miles!)

So my questions are three fold:

1. What is your favorite laptop brand (not desktop. They do not seem to necessarily be equal in quality)?

2. Do you know anything good or bad about the following brands:  Dell, Acer, Toshiba, Gateway, Everex, and don’t even bother telling me about HP Laptops. They are pieces of crap. Says the woman who owns one.

3. 15″ screen that weighs 6lbs or less or 17″ screen that weighs 8lbs or so?

Marital Sacrifice

My father told my mother today that he hasn’t driven a new car since 1979.

He always got the hand-me-down.

Crazy, isn’t it??

Guess he likes his new 4Runner…

Memorial Day Tutorial!

I went to the lake this weekend…but it rained. And rained. I wound up coming home early…where it was beautiful and sunny, of course…So I did some lawn work. I came up with a terrific clean up method!

I bought two flats of Pentas to replace my Pansies from the winter.

The bed that I put the flowers in is long, so rather than buy a hundred plants, I plant them in clumps. So first, I needed to pull out my Pansies. But that leaves piles of plants to clean up. So, I pulled out two restaurant bus tubs I have, and lined them up next to my work area. I used one for the pulled Pansies, and one for the plastic containers the Pentas came in. The beauty of this plan is that I had lightweight containers to drag around, and when I was done, they were very easy to dump in the trash can and into a yard waste paper bag.

It seems like such a small thing, but it really made the clean up quick!

My system at work…(click through to the picture…there are notes on it)

While I’m at it, I should also recommend my awesome tool. This sucker makes it so easy to turn over a flower bed! I just pushed the mulch out of the way, and twisted my way to a soft patch.

I can’t wait to see how the flowers take.

 UPDATE: The pictures don’t link to my Flickr account (where there are notes). Click here to go to my Flickr account.

My Best Skill? Negotiator-Extraordinaire!

Car shopping is DONE! Want to see what we bought?

After the jump!

Life is Like A Car Salesman. If They Jerk You Around Long Enough, Suddenly, You Become Impervious

So, the crap that is going on in my life. While I can’t really talk about all of it, let me give you this bit of information:

Have you ever heard of the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory? I learned about it back in college. Well, it’s an inventory of major stressors. Each stressor receives a point value. You add up the points, and it tells you how likely you are to have a breakdown in the near future. Here is a link to a version of it. It leaves off a couple of the specific things that are going on in my life, so I had to adjust for that a little but even with that, I scored a 197. Their diagnosis is:

From 150-199: Mid Life Crisis. 33% chance of illness such as: headache, diabetes, fatigue, hypertension, chest and back pain, ulcers, infectious diseases, etc.

That puts me just 3 points away from a “Moderate Life Crisis” which increases my chances of the above illnesses to 50%. Ahh…good thing I missed by three points, then, huh!?

One of the stressors? Buying TWO cars for my parents! Oh yes. TWO! They have a 12 year old Town Car that is on it’s last RPM and a 350Z which, while it is running perfectly, has a lease that is up. I have been bugging them for a year to replace the Town Car, knowing that this exact thing would happen and we would have to get two cars at once, but did they listen??

So, being the negotiator in the family, I have spent 30, yes, I said 30…we counted yesterday) hours on finding them cars since Saturday.  These are the days I am glad I work with them because this sort of thing becomes “work-related”.

My father, who seems to live life with the 1990 US Dollar, informed us that we had to buy 2 cars for $500 a month total. That has put quite a wrench in the buying process, as you might imagine…Given that a even Hyundais are around $20,000 these days. We finally got him to $620 a month, which has us now in the market to lease two cars, instead of our original intent of buying one and leasing one.

I have a story for you about one of the local Toyota dealers, but the story has not come to fruition yet, so I am going to wait. But let me just tell you this, if my parents didn’t have me there fighting for every penny in the negotiations, I am pretty sure they would have decided all they could afford was a Kia. Those salespeople are such asses.

REMiniscing

I have two medicines I have been taking on occasion at bedtime lately. One is a prescription decongestant (because I get stupid congested in the middle of the night, and I can’t figure out why) and the other is a muscle relaxer which is left over from when I hurt my back roller skating last year. And well, I can’t let those muscle relaxers just go to waste! And they are about to expire!! So when I play volleyball or workout or am otherwise all muscle-y tight, I take one before sleeping.

Here’s the best part, though. Both drugs give me crazy dreams. I love it! I think I would almost take them just for dreams! They are super-vivid, bizarre, and often very telling about my life. Did I tell you about the Christmas tree dream?? A couple of weeks ago, when I was trying get over dating a short guy again, I had a great dream. I was shopping for Christmas trees. I was looking for a tall beautiful tree, but all I could find were short ones. Finally though, I stumbled on a short beautiful tree, and immediately, I knew it just right. Short or tall, it was perfect. Hmm…No symbolism there, huh??

Or, how about the one I had Saturday night (decongestant induced…didn’t even have any alcohol in me…). I dreamt I was on the TV show Lost. Suddenly, Locke told everyone (I was Kate, of course!!) that he knew a place we could stay that would be safe and warm as it was beginning to turn to winter. So we go there, only to find that there is a beautiful house on the island. With people living in it. People who love cats. Locke tells us, that we have to become kittens to stay there, but that we will have a wonderful life there. So we do. We all morph into cute little kittens. I am a black kitten. Life is good, we romp and play, and sleep on the heated, enclosed porch.

One day, for some reason, we kittens get to go to the supermarket (yes, on the Lost island). As we leave, the woman who lives in the house drops the carton of eggs she has bought. It hits the ground opens up and the Charlie kitten notices that it’s not eggs in the carton, but ’shrooms!! He mixes them (somehow they turned to powder) into a soda, and says we should drink some. We do and then we go about walking home. The whole time, I am waiting to see the effect of the magic mushrooms.

Then, BRRRINGGG! My cell phone goes off. I was woken by a friend’s text. I am SO curious what my brain would have created completely sober to suggest I was a high kitten! I have never done ’shrooms either, so it wouldn’t even have an experience to fall back on.

So now the question is what makes a dream mean something? I mean, I obviously got the Lost references from TV and the ’shrooms were from an episode of House. So do you take those things out of the equation? Or do they still have meaning? And if they have meaning, what the heck is it!?

Time For a New Start?

Sorry for the elusive post yesterday. My life basically got upended yesterday when I was least expecting it. I don’t want to go into details here, but let me just say a few things:

• Don’t have just one child. The guilt and weight of life that parents put on their only child when they start to age is unfair and unavoidable. Even when they don’t intend for any of that to happen.
• Just because you might think a family business gives your friend some bizarre amount of job security, it doesn’t mean it’s true. The insecurities just don’t happen to come from a pink slip.
• Save your money! You never know when you will really, truly need it, but you certainly don’t need it for that $5 Latte.
• Never think you are in the clear. That is the surest way to be uprooted.

And finally, will someone please tell me how you know when it is finally time to let go? To give up and move on? When you know you have fought the good fight, and there is no sense in going to battle anymore? When it is time to take that giant leap and pray that it pushes you foward?

Well, Shit. Here We Go Again.

Mother fucking fickle world. Everything seems hunky dory, life is coming up roses, plans are being made, and BAM. Freight truck coming through!

The phrase I never want to hear again, “I just want to be sure I can hold onto my life insurance policy for your mother.” Oh. My. God. That is the worst statement I have ever heard.

Hating the world right now, and carrying the 300 lbs of my parents on my shoulders.

High School Drama

Ever watch Ugly Betty?

You know the goofy, gay assistant, Mark?

WELL, I went to high school with him! Since I started watching the show, I kept thinking he seemed so familiar. I recognized him from somewhere. I assumed it was just another TV show. Uh, nope! He was in theater with me! I was a Techie and he was an actor. I fixed his spats in Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat! We joked around in class, and during rehearsal. And my recollection is that one time when he did his monologue in theater class, he got in trouble for being too dramatic! I guess it finally paid off for him!! Haha!

I don’t know why I didn’t put two and two together, but yup, I knew him! I guess that’s what 10 years does. That and the fact that a flaming gay Fashionista’s assistant on TV is about a million miles away from high school in Plano, Texas!

What a small world it is!