Excuse me, may I squeeze in?

Today when I left work I decided to go by a Walmart to see if they had the oil I like to buy, Mobil 1 5W-30 synthetic for my white Saturn. Even though I can't change my own oil because of my living situation, the Saturn dealers will let you bring your own oil, and they'll change it and just charge labor. Fine by me. Well, I was about to get on M-14, which is like an interstate and I see traffic backed up really far in the left lane to turn on the highway, BUT, this was about 1 mile from the turn. So, I figured that lane was just backed up from the red light. So, I move right and go up...and nothing, no openings at all. The road ends, and you have to turn on M-14 because of construction. So, I'm up at the end, in the right lane, and nowhere to go because traffic is backed up in the other lane about a mile back. So, I move slowly, and almost stop. I even get a confused look on my face, like other drivers will see me and go "aw, he must not of known the RR tracks are out, let's let him in". How embarassing. I don't even have an out of state license plate anymore. So, instead of looking confused and lost, I just looked like a greedy car driver who breaks in line. Oh well, I got in, and made it to M-14 much faster than the other cars. Sorry everyone.

Another thing that I realized. Our administrative assistant, Jamie took Wednesday through Friday off. For vacation? No, to get ready for her "yard sale". People in Michigan are insane about yard sales. They take vacation to host one. On the weekends you see dozens of signs saying "neighborhood yardsale" etc. Bill's wife Mary Kay told me that when they've hosted them in the past, they'll have people come up to their house 2 DAYS before the actual yard sale and say "I'm going to be out of town, but I really wanted to see what you had, can I look and pick out what I want?". She said also they'll come really early the day of, and just wait outside your house. She's even had people come up to her door and ask if she's ready to start the yard sale. There are dedicated yard-salers here. Apparantly though you can make around $500 by hosting one...if you have enough junk you unload.

I ended up finding my oil though, not at Wal-Mart, but Advance Auto. $25.00 just for oil. I don't think I'm going to keep this synthetic business up any longer. My Saturn now has 176,000 miles on it. The sunroof is broken, it's getting old and I'm just going back to regular oil. There comes that point when you still like your car, but don't baby it so much. I still like it, but $40.00 total for an oil change is too much, especially for this old of a car. It never had a name, like some people's car but Paul called it Rupert.

I got my first paycheck today! The first one is nice because there's not health insurance taken out, or 401K but the next one I'll have to start paying. It's nice to have a cash flow now.

I'm going to Indianapolis tomorrow to visit Matt for the weekend, so there will not be any posting until Sunday, maybe Monday. Linda, I hope you and your friend at work will make it ok, hang in there. Have a nice weekend everyone.