Ello Gov'ner

I took Nana to the airport tonight so she could go back to South Carolina. I very much enjoyed her visit and I think Walter liked having someone home with him during the day.

Last night I got a suprise phone call from Jay asking me about headlight bulbs. He said he wanted to change his burned out headlight bulb himself, but the owner's manual said in one simple step to "remove the radiator reserve tank" so he stopped right there. I thought that was funny.

I'll have to make a trip out to California sometime this fall to visit 2 people I know who live (and will live there): Jay, and Kiki.

I don't know what's going on here, but right now in Novi it's 37 degrees and I think that's way too cold for late April. Last week was a teaser. It was in the high 70's and really sunny. I have no idea what's going on. I do know I'm going to bed right now though, g'night!

What We Did This Weekend

I'm going to let you in on a little secret...what Grandma Hazel and I did this weekend. She got here about 45 minutes late on Friday. After I picked her up we ate dinner in Canton at Panera. Then we drove through Plymouth, to Northville so I could show here where I work. Back at my apartment, Walter welcomed her with jumping and craziness.

I think we were both really tired because we went to bed pretty early and slept kind of late (8:30 ish) on Saturday. We got ready and went to Partridge Creek Mall in Shelby Township. It's an outdoor mall that is dog friendly, so we took Walter along. We walked around for a while and put Walter in the car and ate at P.F. Changs. I took the long way home, so we drove into Detroit just a little so she could see the burned out houses and some strip clubs, then we took 8 Mile all the way back from Detroit to Northville. After that I showed her some of the houses I looked at in Plymouth and then we went to Meijer to get cooking supplies for dinner. We made chicken and dumplings and cornbread.

Today we went to church, at lunch at Famous Dave's BBQ, and walked around Twelve Oaks Mall and went into stores with $200 pairs of jeans that we couldn't afford. I played tennis this afternoon with Alex and his brother, then went back to church for their information session with Dan, and now I'm typing you this sentence.

It was a good weekend.

I've decided I'm going to throw a party/get together on May 16th here at my apartment. It's already my 1 year anniversary of living in Michigan and I want to invite a lot of people from work over to kind of say "thank you" for a good first year. I'll plan out good food to have out and spirits too. I think I'll move all my living room stuff into the dining room so we can have plenty of room to play the Wii in the living room. I'll send the invite out tomorrow and begin the planning.

A Friday Update

I'm about to go pick Grandma Hazel up at the airport. I'm so happy it's the weekend. The first thought that goes through my head every morning when I wake up is "I wish I could keep sleeping". It's funny how my first thought isn't that I'm hungry, or what will I wear, but that I want to go back to sleep.

It is absolute cruch time for my Civic. I'm watching every dollar...literally. I can't wait to get it. My first new car...only a few weeks away!

This Is Why

Some people told me they were disappointed in me, or that they would stop reading my blog because of my lack of posting (2 days worth). So I wanted to let you all know there is a good reason I did not post for the past two days. Those are:

Monday: It was Monday, and good TV shows were on
Tuesday: It was Earth Day - so I rode my bike

So that's why. I'm not ashamed. I went to game night tonight. I'm not sure if I'm just tired or grouchy, but it seemed to be one of those environments tonight that when you go to make a move, everyone has to analyze and critique was you just did...out loud. So you'd hear things like "Pshh, that was dumb" or "I don't even understand why you just did that" or "you're not making any sense". I like to think when I play a game I use a strategy, and I admit, my strategies usually are different from other people. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. What definately doesn't help is having people comment on your every move. So that's lame, don't do it.

Watch Your Mouth

Yesterday I was going to meet Terissa at work. This coming Friday, there is a "bring your child to work" day and Terissa asked me if I would help her make a drawing for it. I decided since it was nice out I would ride my bike to work to meet her. Well, I think I will start taking a paintball gun with me so I can correct those who act like idiots.

I was riding through Northville. I came up to a parking lot exit, and see a man exiting the parking lot. He stops, makes eye contact, and I cross in front of him. While I'm crossing he lurches forward and blows his horn. I just kept riding and ignored him. Then he preceeds to pull up next to me on the road, slow down, roll his window down, stick his head out, glare at me, and say "you're lucky you don't get yourself killed, you fuckhead", and he stares me down while driving off.

I guess yesterday must have been a day for the F-bomb in general. I also went to the Honda dealership to drive a Civic with a manual transmission to see if I might like that better than an automatic. I like the automatic better. I was walking around the Civics when I see this short skinny car saleslady walk quickly through the parking lot with a dealer tag and keys in her hand. She has really tall high heeels and is wearing all black - she looks like she means business. She hurries up to a car, looks inside and shouts "F*CK! It's a f*cking stick!". I thought "well, there's the one I should test drive then"

I took Walter to Hines Park today. I took a towel so I could read and let him walk around me, even though he couldn't go very far. I only have 4 weeks until I get my new car - it's getting very exciting. Nana is coming this weekend too for a visit!

Open Mouth, Put Foot In and Conversations

Open Mouth, Put Foot In:
I was at one of our plants yesterday and today because some of my parts were being assembled for a customer build. I went to watch and learn a little more about how they're assembled. I didn't really get to see much, because there were tooling problems that halted things. This morning I walked out to the floor to a machining cell, and a guy just looks at me and goes "who are you, another intern?" I said "no, actually I'm the design engineer for this program". Then said "you mean you're the designer then?". I said "No, I'm the engineer". (A designer is someone who just does CAD work, not an engineer, by the way). Engineers are expected to do both though. He just said "oh...sorry about that".

I think he felt really akward. It's nice to know I still look so young though.

Conversations:
At lunch we went to a "New York Style" Chinese Buffet. What's a "New York Style" buffet? I noticed there were 3 older women who came in, and walked up to the buffet. One of them was older than the other 2, but not old enough to be one of their mothers. Well, the older one, I'll call her Mildred (I don't know her name though) started to get her food. One of the other women was walking beside Mildred and saying "Oh look sweetheart, here's some chicken" and "Oh no honey, that's hot" and "Oh I know sweetie, those are breaded" and "Sweetheart, here's some of the beef you like" and "Look honey, here's the dumplings". All of this was said with a thick Michigan accent too. I wanted to say "she's OLDER than you, she's not your honey, or your sweetheart, or your sweetie". It's odd when people address those older than them as terms of endearment...except when I do it, then it's ok.

Saturn Story #3

Tonight I decided to list all the states my Saturn has been to. It's been around to Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Washington DC, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky, and Canada...whoo.

And...I got my oil changed tonight in my Saturn...for the last time. It's like when a movie comes to an end, you can tell it's about to end. That's like the ownership with my Saturn, some of the things are happening for the last time.

It's okay though, because my new Civic will take care of that. While I was getting the oil changed I test drove a new VUE. I'm just not impressed with the new Saturns at all. They feel so cheap. The service was really great though. My oil change was free because last time they messed up and used the wrong oil, so they gave me my last oil change free and this one free too which I thought was nice.

I also just got an email that made me do a double take. Northwest Airlines and Delta Airlines are merging to create one large airline, which will be called Delta Airlines. So there will effectively be no more Northwest Airlines. The email said they will keep all existing hubs, but I wonder what's going to happen to the Detroit hub? Interesting news though.

Mona Pizza

Mona Pizza is the name of a really great song I stole. I stole around 100 songs these past few days, thanks to Paul's help. "Stole" is relative, I don't think it's stealing so it's ok.

Yesterday was just nasty. It was cold and rainy. I expected it to be the same today, so when I woke up I peeked out the blinds in my bedroom and did a double take. It was snowing. Snowing. As in frozen precipitation. In April. It was actually snowing pretty hard, but the ground must not have been cold enough because it wasn't sticking. Friday was 70, and today was snow. That's crazy.

Not much exciting happened this weekend. I played Brawl online with Kiki and Paul for a while Saturday night. I think tonight I'm going to a movie with Terissa and Alex, if they call back.

Tomorrow it's back to work. I have a meeting at Ford tomorrow. I hope it will be painless. I'm going to go in with the best attitude I can. Hopefully this week I can do some more bike riding after work if the weather is nice. This week I'm also taking care of Dan's cats while he's in Japan. They're not staying here, but I'll feed them and check on them everyday. I really love the one cat, Harley. She stayed with me for a week once. She's an angel, and very affectionate. His other cat, Bobo, is nice too but he's got a little bit of an attitude problem (like smacking you when you walk by).

I drove around Saturday to some parts of Livonia and Canton to check out the neighborhoods and houses. They're nice, and priced much lower than Plymouth for the same houses. However, real estate is all about location, location, location (or so they say) and apparantly Plymouth is that location. The search will be on more seriously this summer I'm sure.

I hope this Pokemon of the week is better. I've been wanting to do this one for a long time, and this week is the week. Enjoy! David loves planes!

Cycling

Today after work I really wanted to ride my bike, because it was around 70 degrees outside. So when I got home, I took Walter out for a walk and clouds started to move in and it rained really hard. It was a quick rain, and it stopped raining around 6:45 PM or so.

Earlier this week Dan rode to my apartment from Plymouth, and I drove him back home. So I decided to do the same. The distance to Plymouth is about 7.5 miles, but the ride is really nice. I got really lucky, because when I was riding the sun was starting to go down and was cascading really pretty colors on the darker clouds. Since the ground was wet it had a golden sheen to it. The bike ride was good exercise too, so that's always a good thing.

Just Like The Movies

I had to watch two movies tonight that I didn't want to watch. I was obligated. One of the movies, "Rear Window" was loaned to me by Paul at work. He loaned me two movies. "North by Northwest" and "Rear Window" and said I had to watch both of them. The problem is, they were made before 1980-ish and movies like that (i.e. old) don't hold my attention at all. It's what I call "mid-evil crap". Anything old is classified as that to me, that's how I describe it.

Anyway I watched "North by Northwest" about 2 weeks ago, and it wasn't bad, but wasn't that great either. So I never got around to "Rear Window", and the other day Paul asked if I had watched it and when I said know, he kind of huffed and said "well am I ever going to get my movies back?" So I figured it'd be good if I went ahead and watched it. When I say I watched it, I mean I turned it on, and did stuff around my apartment like cook, eat, surf the internet, and then read the plot of the movie on Wikipedia incase he asked me, then turned it off about 45 minutes before it ended. I just couldn't take it.

So that was the first movie. The second movie I had to watch was "Monty Python and The Quest for the Holy Grail". Alex called and asked if I wanted to watch it, because it was supposed to be really funny. I always hear people quoting it and talking about it. Since it seemed so legendary I thought I should go ahead and watch it. Well, it wasn't good either. British humor is just stupid. Have you ever tried watching one of those British sit-coms with Judy Dench? Well it was like that, only this WAS set in Authurian mid-evil times so it was that much worse for me!

I guess sometimes you have to watch things you don't want to.

It's Tuesday

We took a field trip today at work. It was a pretty interesting field trip. I also went rock climbing tonight, in my new climbing harness that I bought this past weekend.

Granmda Hazel (Nana) is coming to visit at the end of the this month. I'm really looking forward to seeing her and having her here with me for a few days.

I'm a little confused now, too.

Saturn Story #2

I will admit, I had severe buyer's remorse after I bought you. I wondered what would happen to my old Saturn. Would the new owners take care of my old Saturn like I did? Buyer's remorse also came from the fact that I had to add massive amounts of oil to you when I first bought you. I even tried to trade you back in on a new Saturn, but that didn't happen and I wished you would just be totalled out so I didn't have to deal with you. In the end I just kept adding oil to you until you developed a slight ticking noise that kept getting louder and louder. Finally, to be on the safe side, your older engine was replaced with a new one. I didn't have to add oil anymore and you seemed fine. I racked up miles on you like crazy commuting from Spartanburg to Anderson everyday. I think in one summer I put around 20,000 miles on you.

It was at that 165,000 mile mark that you just began to tease me for the fun of it. Your sunroof track decided to crack when I was driving to Lake City for a job interview. Finally, on my way home from Charlotte after my interview in Michigan, your sunroof decided to pop up and not shut. So when I got home, I physically ripped the tracks out of you and broke them, and sealed the glass back down. That felt nice. Then it was the shifter cables...ohhhh the shifter cables. If you ever want to torment me, give me a Saturn with broken shifter cables...

*aside* When the shifter cables broke, I had to ride the CAT bus to class for a week. I woke up very early, because the bus only ran on 30 minute intervals and if I wanted to work out it meant I had to leave at 6:00 AM. I met this very odd lady at the bus stop. She was in her late 50's I'd say, and was a "cat" lady who was in school to be an English major, and worked in the school cafeteria. Come to think of it, she was actually from Michigan. That was weird.

That's enough about shifter cables. If you really want to hear the rest of it, ask Paul. He may not be able to repeat most of it though. Then, I think it was the radiator that decided to spring a leak. That was another thing.

I guess those were the only major things that broke on you...what was it, your engine, radiator, shifter cables, sunroof? I guess you still have your original transmission...that's a plus.

I think next week I'll do a photo story of your damage that occured during my ownership. You still look very good for a 10 year old car, but there are a few bumps and bruises I'll point out.

ALSO! The Pokemon of the week is, let me just say, BAMF this week. I wish I would have found this one earlier!

I Missed You As Well

Gosh I must have gotten slack again towards the last part of the week. Sorry about that.

This weekend was wonderful. Wonderful fun and wonderful weather. It was filled with game playing, house (apartment cleaning), fixing a car (not mine), detailing a car (not mine), and more game playing at work, on a Sunday night in a conference room.

Walter had fun this weekend too since he stayed out almost all Saturday. I'm tired now, so unfortunately the Pokemon update will be postponed until Monday.

No Really I'm Serious...

It's probably best not to discuss work all that much on here, because I have learned that Google's search function works well and people find this blog; people I don't even know.

All I want to say is that I love working with the Japanese. They actually know what they're doing, and that's nice for a change.

...this is no April Fool's. The Japanese are wonderful to work with, and there's another company...welllll, they're not so great to work with.