okie dokie. ya'll get a load of my hoopty. well, i can't even claim it, it belongs to the girl. now then, take a good long look, and then i'll take you for a virtual ride.







first of all, the thing is noisy as hell. it sounds like a misfiring stock car. and the colder it is, the harder those pistons tap, tap, tap. i'm waiting for the day when one of them just flat out pops through the hood, crashes through the windshield and bashes me in the head. i can see the headline, "death by piston."



it is a five speed, and the first gear winds out around 10-15 mph. that's not very much, folks. the idle is so high, and the gears set so low, that even in town, i can easily drive around in fifth gear.



we have a lot of low grade rolling hills in town and i swear to god that as i'm shifting through the gears, trying to get up to speed, i know i could run along side of it just as fast.



the worst(yet funniest part, cuz i have to have a sense of humor)is when i take off from a light and begin my shift through the gears, i can always see in my rear view mirror the vehicles behind me having to slow down with each of my shifts. in a town where everyone is in a hurry, i can also see the looks of impatience on their faces. then i have to sweet talk her, "come on girl, you can do it!"



honestly, even though it doesn't have any pickup, and i worry about breaking down all the time, it is fun to drive. it's fun to drive a piece of crap. people give you a wide birth and i dare people to pull out in front of me, cuz if i wreck it, i don't lose that much. but if they run into me, they lose a fine ass car.



the best part is the license plate. the girl had a new york plate on it when she first got it, but a week or so ago, she got pulled over in one of the small towns close by (the one my son works in). the cop dared her to come back with a different plate, knowing that the new york one wasn't valid. he confiscated it. so she called her cheatin' ass boyfriend who works in a restaurant with license plates from around the country hanging on the wall as decoration, and he brought her another one. this one's from nevada.



the new neighbor who moved in next door, asked hubby one day how long we'd been here from nevada. yeah, we had to laugh, and he told her to wait a month or so and that will probably change again.



speaking of the new neighbors, i was a little ticked because in our building, in a row, there were three empty townhomes, and across the street were three more empty ones. so what does the management do, but stick them in the one right next to us. i couldn't understand why they'd do that but then we saw that the new neighbors had dogs and immediately understood.



the new neighbors are two women, who i think moved here from florida. now i can't say for sure they're lesbians, but the odds are pretty good. not that i care, but i can't help but think that charlotte must be a great place to live for lesbians. i know we've had at least four or five different couples living in the complex over the last several years. see, these are the tiny bullshit things that i wonder about. what makes charlotte such an ideal spot?



oooo, last week, in the next town over(less than ten miles from us, because we live on the outskirts of charlotte) there was a massive shootout, ala bonnie and clyde in an upscale shopping center. apparently, a trucker stopped to help a couple with their flat, but he noticed a shit load of guns in their van, so he called the cops who then followed them off I-77 and into Huntersville. the couple pulled into the shopping center, and when the cops told them to surrender, they started shooting. the cops (by then there were about 6-7 cops, both local and state police) shot back, killing the man instantly, and wounding the woman, who later died at the hospital (located conveniently across the street).





there was account after account of shoppers watching the whole thing go down. some ducked for cover inside stores and restaurants, while others casually stood outside watching the whole thing, as if they were at the movies.



yesterday the news informed us that the couple had been pulled over the day before by a char-meck cop. the woman gave him permission to search the vehicle and when he found a stash of both costume and real jewelry, the couple's stories as to who's they were or how they got them didn't match up. the cop confiscated the jewelry and then let the couple go on their merry way. so there you go, if you're in charlotte and you can't explain how you got something, they'll take it from you, but let you go. hey, makes sense to me...yeah, right.





well, mark and i's weekends are ruined. we went from no one in the house to six people in the house this last weekend. it sucks, folks, i ain't gonna lie. i miss our quiet quality time together. we try when they're home, but it always ends up with them interrupting us. however, the girl has decided that she'll continue to live with us, so within the next few months, we'll be looking for a house to rent...hopefully. we hope to find one with an extra space either detached from the house or with it's own entry so that she can come and go as she pleases, giving her more of a feeling of independence. it won't be too hard to find something like that, but the trick will be to find it in one of the surrounding neighborhoods.





well, my life has been a borefest, so i guess that's just about it for me. see ya. (gee, how anti-climactic)