Crash! Part 2

So this morning I was in another car accident. Or should I say 'a MAV full of teenagers driven by a 45 year old man crashed into the back of me when he became enraged that I passed him'. Either way, right? (MAV= mormon assault vehicle for those of you who don't know. Utah residents will know right away what I'm talking about. For those of you not in Utah, imagine a prison transportation vehicle full of polygamists)

Seriously. No joking here. I'm in my car driving, listening to some Michael Jackson, I pass this guy and 'BAM' I feel my car lurch forward. (I can't resist: what is it about Michael Jackson and getting rear ended?) I look in my rear view mirror and there is a guy shouting and waving his fist at me. I put some distance between me and the guy, write his plate number down and pull out my phone to call the police. I pull over at the next light and get out of my car to see what kind of damages we're looking at. Out comes the next Big Brothers Big Sisters star shouting at me. The dispatcher hears me about to get my ass handed to me and suggests I get back into my car. Relenting, I hung out in my car until the cops showed. I ended up getting a lecture about passing someone to merge rather than slowing down to merge. No tickets were issued. Damages were minimal. No harm, no foul I guess.

Like attracts like, I guess. I finally met my match in the anger department. How many times have I thought to myself 'I'd love to ram my car into that jerk'. In a sick way, I kind of respect the guy. Kind of. As much as you can respect a middle aged guy that hangs out with teenagers driving around ramming their car into other drivers.

Random Cell Phone pictures last week

I got a new phone last week and due to the novelty, I have been taking more pictures than normal. As I was looking at some of the pictures, there were 2 that I thought were pretty strange and worthy of sharing.


This first one is of our cat Roxy and her new hobby: watching TV. Being the refined feline that she is, she is not satisfied with mere romantic comedies or action adventure movies. She prefers 1 program. The documentary 'Planet Earth'. I have never seen a cat pay attention to anything that wasn't a flying thing or something to eat like this before. We're talking 15 straight minutes of a cat staring at one thing. Sometimes she tilts her head when she gets particularly interested. Other times she has to go look behind the TV to make sure the birds on the screen didn't disappear behind there. As soon as we watch something else, she leaves; but as soon as we put it on, she'll come from any part of the house to take her spot - right in front of the TV. (p.s. - I know what you're going to say Mom. Yeah, yeah, we need some kids...)





This second one is a letter I received. A letter that causes me to believe I'm being stalked from afar by someone who isn't very good at stalking. When I opened the letter, which was addressed to my first name (Steven) it was 1 sentence written in small font in the middle of the page. It said, simply: 'You are a sad, sad 'little' man' It was sent with no return address, but the postal stamp was to a town in California. A town I've never been to. I can be tough to get along with, so I figure I probably got someone upset enough to look up my new address and send me a mean letter. I still can't figure out why it was addressed to my first name, though....

Why Katie is lucky to have me

This morning as I was driving to work I was contemplating something that I think about quite often: I was thinking how lucky my wife was to have snagged me. Take yesterday, for example. While she was at work being lazy, I was home with the day off working hard. I did my laundry. I changed the oil and spark plugs on my car. I watched Casablanca. I caught a meeting. Just typing what I did reinforces to me that Katie is one lucky lady to have snagged such a renaissance man. I even let her cook dinner for my dad and I after her lazy day at work. Man I'm a good guy.


Speaking of old movies: I recently made a decision to watch all of the American Film Institutes's top 100 movies of all time. I want to have them all in my collection one day, so I started buying the films in the top 10. So far I've collected Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Godfather, Gone With The Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Schindler's List, The Graduate, and On The Waterfront. I've watched all of them but The Graduate and On The Waterfront. At the risk of sounding ignorant - I've been a little surprised to find that these movies are not only watchable, but really good movies. I had this idea that movies in black and white were old and boring. It may be true with some of them, but not these. Citizen Kane, in particular, is fantastic. I found myself caught up right away. I think that I've seen enough cartoon spoofs of it to know the relevance of 'Rosebud' right from the beginning. Even with that knowledge, though, the movie was amazing. To think of a 25 year old first time director coming up with that film boggles the mind. I would encourage anybody to watch the film.


On January 27th, I celebrated 18 months of sobriety. If I continue on this path, later this year I will be able to say that I have YEARS of sobriety. That's something I haven't been able to say since I was 11.