Fingers Crossed

My husband has this idea that if he were to win the lottery he would donate 50%. I have told him he could donate that 50% to me. 'Cause, otherwise, that's just plain stupid. We've had the conversations on a few occasions and the majority of peeps agree with me. But, he's 'made a deal with God.'

Today I got fed up at work. So I swung by and picked up a few tickets on my way home. Why not? Surely if we won the largest mega millions jackpot EVER we could figure out how to fairly/justly/smartly split it up.

But then I got a better idea. A genius, brilliant, amazing idea. So I said a little prayer as I bought my two tickets. If Michael's ticket won we'd donate 50% of the money. If my ticket won we'd donate 51% of the money. God can appreciate a bribe, right?

So, if you don't hear from me this weekend, I'm in a sulky funk because I have to go back to work on Monday.

My Poor Baby

Yesterday was a bad day for my car. I drove through what I thought was old smeared paint in a parking lot. Turns out it was fresh, wet paint and it got all over my tire. No big deal. Except when I drove home that fresh wet paint flung off the spinning wheel and splattered all underneath the wheel well. By the time I got home to rinse it off it was too far dried. Thank goodness it didn't get on the pretty metallic blue paint job. 'Cause then stuff would have really hit the fan. But still, I have a speckled undercarriage that is quite visible. Hopefully, it will eventually wash away.

Then, pulling up to dinner the 'low tire pressure' light came on. Interesting. I figured it was a fluke. I remembered the sales guy saying it could sometimes come on and it might reset itself. I couldn't possibly need air in my tires a month and a half into owning the car. Or if I did, I didn't check my tire pressure on the old car nearly enough.

Leaving last night the light was still on. Okay, okay I'll get air tomorrow....KIRPLUNK! The whole underside of the car hit with a grotesque crash as we cruised over a speed bump. Why you might ask? Because the right rear tire was completely flat. Luckily the hubby was there as I have managed to get out of changing all of my flat tires thus far. Over a decade of driving in three different vehicles and I have never once changed my own flat. And, until today, I have never once had to take the flat to get plugged.

Today, I lugged it to the shop for repair. Two hours of my life later...I was finally back on the road with four 'almost as good as new' (as the service guy stated) tires. And a spare tire rattling around in the back because they somehow managed to loose the thingamajig that secures the tire in place, even though I made a point of placing it in the trunk near that jack last night. No problem, they ordered me a new one. And then informed me ordering the part was 'more trouble than it was worth.' But they are so great that order it they did, without my asking them to, and I can pick it up on Friday.

Maybe I'm just not patient enough, but I feel two hours is a bit ridiculous to plug a tire. Not to mention I was slightly put off by the comments about returning me an almost good as new car, short one part, with the implication it was my fault. So when the service guy told me to expect a survey about my experience I thought, don't expect much. Then he informed me 'The only acceptable answer is....?'

[insert blank stare here, as I had no clue what the heck he was talking about]

'Tens. Because nine is a failure."

[insert second blank stare because two hours of my life are gone and a perfect score you're not going to get]

NC-Double A

I'm not the biggest sports fan on earth. (You can ask my husband. Sometimes I flip and demand ESPN be turned off NOW--I just can't handle it for another second. I've always been more of a playing or watching in person sort of fan). Nevertheless, you are going to get a few sports related blogs here soon. And not in the I've been playing sports or heading to any games sort of way.

First things first, the NCAA tournament. I was invited to enter my bracket in a friendly competition. My husband and sister both entered. I didn't. I figured if there was any sort of monetary gain riding on it my bracket would most definitely bite the big one. Turns out, I am rather quite proud of it. I picked 3 out of the 4 final four. Not too bad for someone who didn't follow the regular season, like, at all.

On a whim, and really just because it was easier to fill out a bracket online than on paper, my bracket did get entered in the ESPN Tournament Challenge. And, because I'm competitive, even if there's no real hope of me winning, I have been checking it out on a semi-regular basis. I am quite proud of my stats so far. I had a bit of a drop in the second round where two of my elite eight teams dropped like flies. But, the #2s who dropped right of the bat were only one round too early for my bracket, as I had neither of them making it to a third game. And since then I've watched my scores slowly rise. I am currently in the 98.8 percentile. And I've watched my rank go from 2million-something, to 500 thousand-something, to 200 thousand-something to it's current 76, 537. Not bad in millions of entries. Also, not the best of odds to win it all. But I'm still going to brag about it. For just a little while.

In March

Today I went for a run. And by run I mean brisk walk. Because, let's be honest, I don't often exert the amount of energy it takes to run. It was 80 degrees out. In March. I wore a tank top and shorts and was a bit hot. In March! I had the air conditioning on in the car. (I had to drive to and from the walk as I live on a dangerous street to walk down and didn't feel like playing chicken with the cars today). When I was tired of walking I sat in the park pavilion reading for awhile because with the breeze blowing it was just too nice to leave. Then I went home and washed both cars, because it was warm enough to do so. In March. I got a bit of a tan today. In March. In Maryland.

The other day I made these.

I used the recipe from girlmeetslife.com. Cake Batter Blondies...a party in your mouth. I followed the recipe except instead of adding sprinkles I used a funfetti cake mix. Genius, right? Except, it turns out a funfetti cake mix is now nothing more than cake mix and...sprinkles. Gone were the moist, colorful, globs of some incomprehensible ingredient. The weird globs are still depicted on the box. So where did they go? They were a major awesome factor in my youth. And I miss them. Disappointment.

Anyway, these blondies were the easiest thing ever to bake. You literally mixed 5-6 (depending on your cake mix choice) ingredients popped the batter into a pan and popped the pan into the oven. A cinch even for the baking illiterate. The only addition to those instructions is that the "batter" is really more of a dough. It doesn't pour into the pan easily the way normal brownies or cakes do. So just plop the dough into the pan and mush it around a bit so it fills up the space.

For those of you crazy enough to give up chocolate for lent (which no one in this house was), these will get you through. And for you chocoholics out there it's okay to branch out sometimes. These are much pretty colors than your typical brownie. Try it. You'll like it.

You Know You Live in the Boondocks When...

You open your front door and find roosters on your porch. Yep, roosters. Five of 'em. They looked something like this:

(They had migrated down the driveway by the time I got my camera and deleted pictures from my full memory card.--Sign of a true photographer, always ready to catch the spontaneous shot. I'll have to work on my hobby. And my procrastination skills. Uploading pictures has been on my To-Do List for months.)

But I digress...

I was happily taking shots when, out of nowhere, the pesky cat approached. The Pest has been annoying me for the last month and a half. He seems to have taken a shining to the new car. And I frequently find him sitting on the roof, or proof of his recent presence. He pounced, the roosters flipped a shit, they all rolled around in the shrubbery for a bit and then a fat, juicy rooster came flying out five feet from me. I squealed. (I'm sorry! I was startled. It was quite the squawking, feathery ruckus.) Then I berated myself for not having caught it on camera or video, cause it really was quite amusing. The cat scuttled away and the roosters continued meandering down the driveway.

Until they realized we weren't going way, got a bit annoyed at the clicking of my camera and started to assemble a charge. The cat returned. (One small point in his favor). The roosters retreated to their trenches. And I found a fresh, muddy set of paw prints up the windshield and across the roof. Mother F'er!

So I walked over and gave the roosters a pep talk. Stop hunkering in the ditch! Man up! Kill the cat!

Rooster's Formulating their Plan of Attack

And then the roosters rolled their eyes and left. I guess they didn't understand my passion.

Earlier Today...

M: Babe, whatcha doin?

E: Googlin myself

M: [laughs]

E: Every once in a while you have to Google yourself. Make sure there are no lies out there about you.

M: You ever Google me?

E: Yeah, but there are too many of you out there to determine if there are any lies about you.

M: That's how I got you to marry me.

E: Yeah, it was too much effort to do the research to figure out why I shouldn't.