Happy Thanksgiving!!! (my iPod won't let me write in the body of the post)

You may be a winner!!!

Anyone want further reason to hate car salesmen? Here goes...

So this weekend, I was helping Hayley find a misplaced item. I was looking through our stack of mail and came across an ad for a car dealership. The ad caught my eye because there was a key attached to it. I looked a little closer, and the mailer--addressed to Hayley--said we may have won a brand new Charger. For fun, I pulled the key off of the ad, and used it to scratch off the "scratch here" box to see if I was a winner. Three silver cars means you win. Any other combination of silver and red cars means you lost.

So I start scratching and the oddest thing happened. I scratched away to reveal three silver cars... I was a winner! I was a little shocked, and said, out loud, and in an incredulous voice, "I'm a winner...?" Hayley responded asking me what I meant, and I told her we might have won a new car. She immediately said, "Yeah, right..." but came over to look at the advertisement. We both kind of looked at each other and wondered what in the world was going on. There was a telephone number printed on the ad, so I called it. A recording asked me to enter a number from the ad, then told me, "Congratulations! Your prize is being held for you. Please see your local dealer at [address] to claim your prize!" Again, not much help on figuring out what was going on.

So, we had a couple errands to run and decided, what the heck... if the dealer told us we didn't win a car, we'd simply hate them forever and never buy a car from them. When we pulled up to the dealership, a 12 year old with uneven, scruffy, facial hair trying to hide his acne approached us. I told him we had this ad and it said we won something. He had us sit down and went to get a little notebook. He started asking a few questions (address, name, car we drive, you know...), and I butted in by saying we really weren't looking for a car, just wondered about this prize we supposedly won. He said it could be one of four prizes. The new Charger, an ATV, three gold coins, or $1,000 cash--all with no strings attached, but he needed to get our information first. He asked about the car we drive and if we were looking to trade it in. Again, I said no. At this point, our 12 year old assistant went off to get one more scratch card so we could find out what we won.

Left to ourselves, Hayley and I wondered if this was worth it. I said I hoped for the thousand bucks, but wondered what we could get on eBay for the three gold coins. Well, the pre-pubescent came back, I scratched the card, and lo and behold.... THREE GOLD COINS!!! What luck! The sixth grader then left again, and Hayley and I shrugged our shoulders at each other and waited for our prize. The kid came back with three dollars. In coin form. Sacajawea and Ben Franklin coin dollars, to be exact. Here they are in all their glory:


So yeah. Stupid car salesmen. As we drove away, Hayley wondered, if we had said we were looking for a car, would our second scratch card have been pulled from a different stack... possibly the you've-won-a-thousand-dollars stack? Maybe even the you've-won-a-new-car stack? Very probably... One thing's for sure though. I couldn't stop saying "THREE GOLD COINS!" The rest of the day.

Could I be SAD?

Just a quick post...

So SAD is Seasonal Affected Disorder that people get when it's all wintery outside and dark and they get depressed. Well, I'm not depressed in the slightest, I promise. I was just telling Hayley that I don't love going to work before the sun comes up--or just as it is rising--and coming home after it goes down--or just as it's setting.

I like snow. As much as a person who doesn't ski or snowboard can like the snow. I just don't like driving in it. What I do like is that the break room in my workplace has a whole wall of windows, so I sit right next to the window to soak up as much natural light as I can. Luckily the wall of windows is on the South side of the building, so the sun shines right in. I openly voice my opinion of how dumb I think it is to close the blinds in that room if they're closed when I get there. Hopefully THAT nonsense will stop.

So, while I'm not dreading winter or anything--and I'm actually looking forward to seeing a little snow--I just wish the winter could come and still have normal amounts of daylight. That's all. I'm not mopey or sad about it or anything. In fact, there's one particular day in winter--January, specifically--that I'm REALLY looking forward to. :)

Tagged!

Hayley tagged me. I was actually just thinking that no one does tags anymore. Not that I'm complaining, it's just I don't blog much anymore because mostly I could just put links to Hayley's blog. So here's a tag (from Hayley even) to give me a higher post count for November. :) Enjoy!

Five Things I don't leave the House without

1. Wallet
2. Keys
3. nu... phone
4. iPod (now. I had never had an iPod before the Touch, and I really like it)
5. One inverted nipple

Five Cartoons I watched when I was Younger

This depends on what you mean by "younger." When I was a small kid, the cartoons I watched were different than when I was a teenager... yes, I watched cartoons as a teenager. I think I'll list a mixture of both.

1. Loony Toons (with Bugs Bunny)
2. Tiny Toons (with Babs and Buster Bunny)
3. Transformers
4. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
5. Anamaniacs

Five Things That Terrify Me

1. Heights
2. Lawn gnomes (Seriously. They're so freakin' creepy!)
3. Clowns
4. Having onion breath
5. ........hungry cannibals?

Five Things I hate/dislike that everyone else seems to like

1. Mafia Wars on Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Macs OR PCs (Not that I hate either... I just have no strong feelings one way or the other, and it seems like everyone else has a strong preference...)
4. Dancing
5. the TV show Glee. I don't get it

Five Things I want to do before I Die

1. Go to Chicago with Hayley
2. Retire without debt and with enough money to not have to work during retirement
3. Have a yard in which to do yard work
4. Go on a cruise with Hayley (sorry, Hayley. Totally stole that one from you. But it doesn't mean I want to do it any less!)
5. Write a book, maybe?

(I know, not super exciting things... but I'm kind of a practical guy. At least there's two fun vacations in there!)

Five People I tag

1. Katey
2. Diane
3. Caron
4. Cindy
5. Erin

(Some of the tags are to see if you still read my bloggy blog. :) be sure to comment when you post!)

Seemingly random thoughts

hmmmm... I'm sure everyone is sick of looking at that duck... so here's something new.

Hayley asked me to blog today... but I can't think of anything to blog about! So here are a few thoughts going through my head right now. Are you prepared for the madness?? To help, I'll separate thoughts by bullet points.

• I watched V last night. Didn't really grab me right away and it felt like they had re-written the pilot episode a bunch of times, finding that they needed to move things along quickly to keep the audience interested. (If you haven't seen the episode yet, you may want to stop here.) So the aliens show up, start doing nice stuff, taking people on tours of their ships, and start giving clues that they're not entirely well-intended. But it seems like in that first episode, two months or so passed... Also, I wasn't a huge fan of the acting. The saving grace was Juliet from Lost was in it, and so was Alan Tdyk. So we'll probably give it a couple more episodes.
• I like Cash Cab. I'm watching it now while I wait for Hayley to get home from parent teacher conferences. Mostly because I love trivia. I may or may not have 3 trivia aps on my iPod Touch. Even thought I like Cash Cab, I'd rather have Hayley home...
• I caught up on a bunch of stuff at work today. With so many RFPs to work on, my desk got kinda cluttered, and I was behind on one of my monthly reports. Now I'm good to go, my desk is cleared, and the other projects I'm working on are doing just great. Yay for being on top of things!
• Hayley let me make picaditas for dinner the other night, and I'm going to be making one of my favorite salsa recipes soon, too. Dinner didn't even suck that night! Pretty soon I'll be wearing a sombrero, pancho, and want to make agua de Jamaica (pronounced huh-mike-uh) for Hayley, too! ...kidding!
• I'm looking forward to the holidays! I like the spirit of the season, the hot chocolate, and extra time with Hayley. I'm not looking forward to driving in the snow, however...
• I'm looking forward to the last season of Lost! It starts in 2010 sometime... so I've got some time to wait, but it'll be fun once it starts.
• I'm looking forward to going to Chicago with Hayley! She has a list of stuff we're going to do on her blog, and I sometimes click the links and get excited.
  
• I like the Dr Pepper pajama pants I'm wearing right now. Comfy.
  
• I kinda want a Reese's peanut butter cup right now. And for some reason, I pronounce it ree-seas, not ree-sez. Whatev.
  
• I'm still wearing my brown work socks right now.
• I find it interesting that my thoughts got increasingly shorter. Must be time to stop.
  

There ya go. What's going through your mind?