...we have reached the pinnacle of societal evolution much to the universe's chagrin.

But let me get back to that.

I was standing in the Sprint store and the response I got back on fixing the phone error was, "Um, yeah, I can't help you with this. You'll have to call them."

Me: "This is my only phone. How can I call tech support for trouble shooting on this when it specifically states I can't use this line if I call them?"

Sprint: "Well, we can't help you from the store."

Me: "Every time I've called that 800 number since I've had Sprint, for four years, I get hung up on."

Sprint: "Yeah, the 800 number sucks."



Driving back home, I started thinking ferocious and rude thoughts which eventually turned and morphed into the following:

Sentient life. It's a rare and amazing thing. Life itself even, from the smallest single celled organism to the most complex life form, is miraculous. The chance of life evolving in the universe is incredibly minute. The required conditions exacting and rare.

Earth forms, settles and begins the joy of creating an atmosphere from the single celled organisms that expel various chemicals. Oxygen is expelled from simple plant life. Plants expand from the ocean to the land and soon animals follow.

The Cambrian explosion is a magnificent time where innumerable unique and astounding forms of life evolve. It's as though life is dancing ecstatically through these incredibly limitless forms - stretching itself as it experiences existence.

Man.

After many dead-ends, man finally manages to scrap himself up from the muck and beget a humble existence.

Life, you see, was apparently still excited by all these creations and thought man was just as good. Little did Life know it had created the most abominable malformation known to the Earth and even the universe.

Life had created something capable of inventing accountants, concrete, convoluted egotistical psychological theorems, unending legal loop-holes, and hot dogs (perhaps the worst invention out of them all as it is a piece of intestine stuffed to the breaking point with random bits of leftover unidentifiable meat).

The pinnacle of evolution - as we have apparently named ourselves - and what do we show the universe in response? Life, sentient life, is so rare and we have taken that mind-boggling existence and given Earth....

Bills. Bills. Bills. Don't you think something is wrong when you end up needing a day planner to keep track of when all the bills are due (all inevitably at completely different times)?

Interest rates, due dates, rent, mortgage, credit cards, credit reports, lobbyists (sorry, couldn't resist that last one).

After millions of years of evolution...of trial and error...of extreme conditions and survival of the fittest we live on a world that glorifies bills, late fees, and contractual agreements.

Yah for humanity. What a way to suck the fun out of a once in a gazillion chance.

I spent the past two and a half days helping K and his dad put my car back together after we ripped it apart.

Remember the story about how the car decided to hunker down and sleep for a bit in the road? Yeah...

Out came the transmission, the axles, the tires, the catalytic converter, the air filter and everything it sits with, and finally the clutch.

There are four springs inside a clutch. They're pretty hefty springs. What had caused my problem was that one of the springs had broken into two pieces and lodged itself in the other springs. And they must have been bouncing around in there for awhile because not only where they flat as pancakes, but rubbed all the way down to a nice shiny reflective silver.

Long story short, the car is back together again and I finally got to drive her yesterday.

The main test drive is the trip to school today for precalculus. Oi, math. I'm doing okay in the class right now, but math is definitely not my favorite subject.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In other news, my cell phone has died a mysterious death. It cannot make outbound phone calls without throwing up an error code and cannot receive incoming calls at all.

This figures for Sprint, if you ask me. I've had them for a service provider for four years now and I have never had one good experience with their customer service, billing, web-site, or even the phone. And since I only have two months left on my plan until I leave them for someone else...

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I'm taking dad out to putt-putt and then to dinner this weekend. Hopefully that morning Sam and I will be able to make it out to Mutt Strut - a doggie walk for benefiting some of our local dog organizations around here. If so, I'll have pictures to post!



BryM: If you can wake up and get to the Raleigh dog park by 8am - want to tag along for the Strut?

This was sent to me by a friend. Normally, I don't post these, but I enjoyed this one too much.

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Dear Tech Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a
 distinct slow down in overall system performance, particularly in the
 flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under
 Boyfriend 5.0.



In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5 and then installed undesirable programs such as NBA 5.0, NFL 3.0, and Golf Clubs 4.1.

Conversation 8.0 no longer runs and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system.

Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.

What can I do?

Signed,

Desperate

Dear Desperate,

First, keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package while Husband 1.0 is an operating system.

Please enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1. Please note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Farting and Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do, DO NOT under any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.)

In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Cooking 3.0 and Hot Lingerie 7.7.

Tech Support

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Told you it was entertaining.

It was today that I realized I have become one of them. Allow me to provide you with a definition of "them" in this particular context.

Them: The creepy, hermit-like individuals that bird/squirrel/plant/people watch from their apartment/balcony. In bad cases one of "them" may name and/or watch out for particular birds/squirrels/plants/people.

Remember the squirrel that gets on the balcony of my third story apartment? Yeah, he looks like someone that has been picked up by life and summarily eaten, partially digested and spat back up and out again. I actually took the time to balcony train this damn squirrel - off my plants, feeders and stay on the ground of the balcony to eat (*shakes fist*).

Not bad, not bad yet.

Then another squirrel started coming. He gets on the balcony in the morning (by the way, I notice these things because my balcony has giant doors that are faux French-paned windows/doors. So, if I'm in the kitchen, living room or office, those panes are right in eye view).

This squirrel has the funkiest waddle under his neck. No other squirrel has it. It's not his cheek pouches. It's...a waddle. And he has a hideous overbite. My god, I think to myself, this is Old Man Squirrel. He's so ugly on some levels that his appearance alone would qualify him for arch-nemesis anti-super-hero-bad-guy status.

It was at this moment of thought (the one right there, above, you can't miss it) that I realized I was becoming one of "them". Pretty soon, I theorized, I would end up rocking back and forth in a chair by the window, binoculars in my lap.

"Oh, look there," I would say to the cat. "It's a rare red throat bottle butter bird migrating from the remote region of Nigeria." Lift binoculars, ooh and aah some more. Meanwhile, the cat has long since stopped paying attention to me and may even, at this point, be plotting my death. More than any cat normally does, that is.

It can't get any worse, right? The beginning of my indoctrination into the category of "them"? I've noticed the signs, I can begin the long and painful process of rehabilitation.



In other news: I want to know why chance decided to put the three people (yes, myself included) in my math class together for a group project that are, possibly, the three individuals that abhor and struggle with math the most.

And, yes, before you think it was some intentional design of the professor to better aid us in our studies, it was a completely random point based pick of group members. Oi.

But, we survived! Huzzah. Now I just wonder what our grade will be.

There's nothing quite like taking an afternoon trip to a few book stores and Tiger Direct to ogle the video cards you certainly can't afford. It's even a better afternoon when it progresses to evening and the weather is glorious - nice and soft, the kind you can roll your windows down in your car to better feel the breeze on your face.

...To better hear the horrible grinding sound coming out from under the hood of your car as you realize it no longer accepts gears 3, 4, or 5. Oh, and need I forget, reverse.

Luckily for me there was a glorious and happy little turning lane just waiting for me, my friend R and my car to coast into.

I turned on the emergency lights, hop skipped (more like ran across traffic for fear of getting squashed by the never ending oncoming vehicles) and sat down in the grass at the curb.

You know, I don't often get to see my car on the road from the outside. Especially a dozen or so feet a way. She really is a pretty car. Yup, a pretty car. That can't move. But, that's okay. I mean, plenty of art is stationary, eh? Sigh.

So, I called the beau about triple A. My fear was that the car had just dropped its transmission out of retaliation to R's presence. Clearly, nothing I had ever done or the age of my vehicle had anything to do with its mechanical failure.

Momentarily, I thought of the black cloud of doom that BryM accuses me of having. I wonder if I can figure out how to consciously control that cloud...

After twenty minutes of sitting in the grass and deciding I might as well enjoy the night joking back and forth with R (because honestly anger or frustration wasn't going to help any), K arrives with good news.

Not the transmission. Just the clutch. He manages to get her home without the tow truck. So, the weekend plans have changed again.