My limo service

Why is it so cool to ride in a limousine? I mean, when you call the limousine service to reserve one, do they make you fill out a questionnaire to determine how cool you are? If they did, I bet it would go something like this:

1. How long does it take you to do your hair in the morning? How many hair products do you use? (And if it were still the 80's: How long is your hair, in inches?)
2. What kind of music do you plan on listening to in the limousine? (Those that reply “Yanni” are automatically disqualified.)
3. How many cats do you own? Dogs? Hamsters? Llamas? (Please end survey now if you have more than one cat, more than 3 dogs and if you own a hamster, well, you just need help. If you own a llama, you get 20 more cool points.)
4. How many times have you seen Star Wars? Batman? If you have watched all of the “Anne of Green Gables” movies in the last six months, please leave now.
5. For which reason did you call our limousine service? Was it to show off to your graduating class at your high school reunion? To pretend to be a celebrity? Or was it so you could ride to the midnight showing of Harry Potter in style? I think you know which category you fall in.

I seriously doubt that the limousine service in Washington, D.C. ask these sort of questions. But maybe they should. Oh, sorry. I have to go. The limousine service guy is on the phone.  

A lawyer joke

How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?

Fifty four. Eight to argue, one to get a continuance, one to object, one to demur, two to research precedents, one to dictate a letter, one to stipulate, five to turn in their time cards, one to depose, one to write interrogatories, two to settle, one to order a secretary to change the light bulb and twenty eight to bill for professional services.

Yeah, I thought it was funny, too. Mostly, though, because my brother is a lawyer, my sister works in a law office, a really good family friend is a lawyer and even my dad went to law school for a while. Lawyers are those people that everyone loves to hate. But the truth is, we only hate certain types of lawyers. We are mostly ok with the ones that help us get what we want (like the social security lawyer or the patent lawyer). We hate the other ones, like the personal injury lawyer or the criminal lawyer that helps the evil menace get off without ever spending real time in prison. The social security lawyer, though, he's harmless. He's just trying to help your grandpa get money from the government, who are truly evil. So let's lay off the social security lawyer jokes, ok?  

My Tree House

There is a song by Barenaked Ladies that I really like. It's called “If I had a Million Dollars”. I don't remember the tune, or even most of the words, I just remember that it is about all the things this guy would give this girl if he had a million dollars. He tells her, “I would build a tree fort in our yard, you could help me, wouldn't be that hard....”. I love that song.

However, I believe that building a tree fort would be hard. And I wonder, “Is this the kind of service that those tree services guys provide?” Because if the tree services guys DID do this, then I would totally hire them. I would love a tree house. Maybe even a tree mansion. I would live up there. It would be great.

I dreamed of it as a little kid. I wanted a house like the one the Berenstein Bears lived in. There was a cellar downstairs and then the living room/kitchen on the next floor. The parent's bedroom on the next floor, and the kid's rooms up top. All inside a tree. I suppose I would have to buy really good fire insurance, but I think it would be worth it. If the tree service guys in Atlanta could build that for me, I would totally hire them. I think I need to find the tree service guys....

No Attorney Needed, Thank You Very Much

Today, I'm going to tell you a story about a time when I didn't need a DUI attorney. I was living in a small, college town (no, it was not Colorado Springs). It was New Year's Eve. Now, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “But Ginny, I thought you said this was a story about a time when you DIDN'T need a DUI attorney!” I'm telling you, I didn't.

I don't drink normally. Ok, I don't drink ever. I just don't want to. But my friends did. So we all gathered at Jen's house, wearing our cutest “I'm dressed up for going out” clothes. Jen is pretty much a wine expert, and she had picked out her favorites. Well, as close to her favorites as she could; her favorites are straight from Italy, and slightly pricey for college students. They drank the wine, I drank the sparkling grape juice. They look identical, so I didn't feel left out at all.

Pretty soon, it was midnight. They were all tipsy, not drunk, just tipsy. Aaron needed to get his pj's from his house, though. Being the only sober one there, I drove him. And then I drove him back to Jen's.

I was completely sober, though, so I didn't need a DUI attorney. I'm just saying.  

The Flood

One summer, I was in the middle of a disaster. There was disaster recovery going on all over the place. (It's true.) But there was no disaster recovery in Denver. Not that summer, anyway. Maybe there will be a disaster in Denver one day. Then they will have disaster recovery there. But that won't be the summer of 1993. That was the year of the flood.

I don't remember when it started, exactly. It just did. It rained a lot that summer, almost every day. I remember playing a lot of Monopoly with my brothers that summer. I lost a lot. But that wasn't actually my fault. My sweet, kind older brothers cheated. A lot. One was the banker, and he “didn't do math well”. Like I believe that. These are the same brothers that knowingly fed me straight Tabasco Sauce (I didn't know what it was). But the Tabasco incident came later. First came the flood with its disaster recovery.

Like I said, there was a lot of rain. A lot of water. My gravel driveway became a pool of jello. If you threw a rock into it, it created waves. I'm not kidding. Dams were breaking everywhere. The high school became an evacuation center. It was a crazy summer. But the disaster recovery worked, and now we all live, happily ever after. Or close.  

Home Sweet Home

I don't know if I've already told you this or not, but um, I am from a large family. Really large. Most people I know will hear that and think, “Oh, you have what, like three sisters?”. And the answer is yes, I DO have three sisters. I also have five brothers. Now, if you can do the math, you know that that means that there are nine kids total in my house. Nine.

Some days it was like a zoo in there. Well, it was a little bit stricter and a lot more nurturing than that. Let's say that it was more like growing up in an animal clinic. Yep, I grew up in an animal clinic. Truth is that I do have a brother that I thought was a monkey. He was always climbing all over stuff. And he did tricks.

It was exciting, growing up in the animal clinic. There was regular feeding time, bathing, story time, play time and bed time. My parents were all about keeping us on a decently regular schedule. We even got treats on a semi-regular basis. It was fun. I enjoyed growing up in my house, even with the occasional madness that would befall us.

Some day, I hope to create an animal clinic for my own kids. Just not in Dallas....

Trees

One of my favorite questions to ask people when I first meet them is: if you could be any type of tree, what would it be? Just think about that for a moment. .... .... .... .... ....
Have you decided yet? That's ok. I haven't either. I bet those guys that work for the tree service have already decided. They are like that.
The first thing you have to ask your self is where are you going to live? The type of tree I pick is going to be very different if I lived in Austin, Texas as opposed to Holland, Michigan. Michigan has lots of trees. Texas....well, I don't honestly know. But I do know that it is very hot and humid there. And since that is the case, maybe if I'm living in Austin I would want to be a tree that sheds it's leaves every fall. You know, so that I can be cooler. The thing is that it might be too cold during the winter. But I don't think so because I don't think that Texas gets that cold in the winter. On the other hand, if I was living in Michigan, I might want to be an evergreen. Evergreens are pretty, and they keep at least some of their needles all year 'round, so it would be nice and warm in the winter. It would also be really hot in the summer. I need to ask a tree service guy. I bet he would know.
If I was a tree, though, I wouldn't want those tree service guys around, though. They would chop off all my arms. That might be a good thing, though. Then they wouldn't break off. Man, I have a lot of questions. Where are the tree service guys when you need them?

My Traumatic Story

This is a crazy story, but I swear it's true. I swear.
On my eighth birthday I was involved in a school bus accident. No personal injury lawyers were present. It was a rainy morning in Iowa. There was mud everywhere. My brothers and I got on the school bus like normal, and we started the thirty minute drive to our least favorite destination: school. Our bus driver was old, so old that he had started driving buses when my grandpa was driving them for our school district. That was a long time ago. Our bus driver, we'll call him Bob, was kind of an old fart (in the kindest sense of the term) who liked to joke with us, and who was famous for yelling back to us from his driver's seat, "Get up again [against] the winda [window]". He was hilarious and we loved him.
So there we were, driving to school. Again I would like to emphasize that no personal injury lawyers were present. We were driving along a back gravel road, and I was just as happy as a clam because it was my birthday, after all. I had my bucket full of cookies, and that's all I really needed. Then, all of a sudden, our bus was on its side. My cookies were everywhere. Realize: there were no personal injury lawyers present. People were screaming, people were crying, there was some confusion. The high schoolers lifted us small kids up through the windows onto the side of the bus that was now pointing upward. Bob kicked out the front window and the high schoolers went out through there. We climbed down very carefully. Again, there were no personal injury lawyers present. Another bus came and took us to school, where we were given the option to go home or stay there. I stayed. It was my birthday, after all.
No one got hurt, except for one girl that cut her thumb on a window and Bob, who hurt his hip kicking out the windshield. I'm glad no personal injury lawyers were present; Bob was sad enough as it was.
Do things like this ever happen in Houston? Maybe I'll move there....

Argyle Patterns

Once upon a time, I lived in Missouri. It was not so long ago. I went to school there, and I enjoyed it. While I was there, I had a friend. (Again, a shocker, I know.) This friend was slightly older than me. Ok, we was really older than me...she had kids that were about my age. (Why is it that I have a lot of friends that are so much older than me? Oh well.) 

Anyway, I had this friend. She had a project. She wanted to paint every room in her entire house. Her painting ambitions included painting the living room, bathroom, all the kids' rooms, the dining room....I could go on and on. There was a lot of painting going on in that place. And her painting wasn't just one coat-one color painting. No....this was intense painting. There were vertical stripes and horizontal stripes and there was even one room that she was painting with an argyle pattern. 

I helped her some with the painting. I really do like to paint. But after a while, I thought my arm was going to fall off. That woman must have had crazy strong arm muscles to be painting every day like that. End the end, it looked really nice, so I guess all that hard work paid off. Just don't ask me to do it. Unless I move to DuPage....

PETA would not like my Buffalo Leather Jacket

I am from a part of the country where people wear animals. In my neck of the woods, PETA stands for People for the Eating of Tasty Animals, not People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Not that we mistreat our animals, we treat them kindly, we just like to eat our iron in the form of beautiful red meat. It will kill us, but we don't really care.
After we are done eating our animals, we like to take their skins and make clothing. It's an exciting way of life, I imagine, inventing new clothing that we can wear from animal skins. There are mink coats and cow leather pants and raccoon skin caps (didn't Davy Crockett wear one of those?) and now, something even more exciting has popped up...(drum roll, please)... the buffalo leather jacket. Now, doesn't that sound like a barrel of fun? You can even get one for your husband in the form of a buffalo men's jacket. Or for your favorite biker...call it buffalo leather biker gear and then you can say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Hanukkah" or maybe "Happy Kwanzaa"! (Whatever holiday you want to celebrate is fine. Though, I prefer Hanukkah, not because I'm Jewish, but because I've heard they get to celebrate for eight whole days. Eight days of celebrations? I'm all for it!) Or, if there is a little diva in your life, buy her a diamond plate leather jacket. It is sure to please. Just don't take it to a national level, you never know what PETA will say.

Once upon a time in storage land....

Once upon a time, I went to college. It was a good school and I enjoyed my time there. The worst part about school was knowing what to do with all my stuff in between semesters. Granted, there wasn't much of a problem during the Fall and Spring semesters as I never needed to move and the break was only a month long, but over the summer I would have to pack up all my stuff to put in storage. And putting it into storage was never easy. I would have to dig around to find boxes to use as storage containers, pack all my stuff and then try and figure out where to put all those blasted storage containers. In the end, I would take it up to my parent's house 75 miles away where we would dump it all in the storage shed or in the garage for the next few months. Sure, I'd pull my clothes out of the storage boxes so that I could wear the cute stuff, but other than that, they just sat there, collecting dust for a couple of months.
One break we got smart, though. I was rooming with a couple of girls and we decided that since we would be together the following year, we would just rent a mini storage unit for the summer. I was in charge of the payments, which ended up being fine, if I remember correctly. It wasn't very expensive so we just each paid for a month up front and then I would pay the company as time went on.
Now I'm an adult and it's not as cool to have a bunch of my stuff sitting at my parents house in storage. I still do, though. Tucker, GA is a long drive from here....

All the options

For the last few years, our nation has been economically sinking. The economy is horrible, I'm told. I don't really know, to be honest. I'm too young to really know what it was like when it was good. For me, it's always been the same deal: if I want something, I save all my money, and then I buy it. Or, I get money, buy things, want something else but don't buy it because I have no money. I've learned to live without a lot of things.
Evidently, there are people that aren't like me. There are people that have been buying things with money they don't have. I'm not talking about essentials, I'm talking about fancy cars and big houses and all new furniture when they graduated from college two months ago. I'm talking about the people that are looking for a bankruptcy lawyer right now because they just lost their job or they couldn't get a job in this economy that pretty much stinks. And their bankruptcy lawyer will talk to them, but they will generally end up filing for bankruptcy (which their bankruptcy lawyer will charge them for) and then their credit will stink for the next seven years at least. And that stinks even more.
I feel bad for these people, I really do. But before you call the bankruptcy lawyer (who is probably from some place like Melville, by the way), please consider your options....

And maybe, one day, an Animal Hospital

My family is kind of smart. Ok, there are members of my family that are really smart. I find it funny that I just typed smart and had to go back and correct it because I had written "smat". Maybe not all of us are smart. But anyway, I'm not trying to brag, but one brother is a lawyer, one is working on his masters in Civil Engineering and I have a sister that is going into some sort of plant hybreeding. I forget which one. I forget the plant type, not the sister.

I also have a brother that is going to be a veterinarian. This is crazy to me. He's smart for sure, but it's crazy to me that he's going to maybe work in an animal hospital or open his own practice or something. He's going to know the ins and outs of hundreds of different animal species. Ok, maybe not that many, but quite a few. The point is that he is going to have his hands in animals. IN animals. I can still remember the day that he told me that he had stuck his hands in a cow's stomach. Literally IN it's stomach, while it was still alive. The cow had a plug in its side. That wasn't in an animal hospital. He was in a labratory. Craziness.

It would be crazy cool if he had an animal hospital. Maybe in Henderson, Nevada.