[sung to the tune of "Frere Jacques"]: “I am special, I am special. Look at me.”
[with my hands on my head like The Scream] AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

Speaking of which Chewy believes she saw Gheorghe Muresan at Costco the last night.  I’m not sure how I missed the 7′ 7″ giant but I did.  While emailing her family telling them about who she saw she asked how to spell his name and I promptly replied G-H-E-O-R-G-H-E   M-U-R-E-S-A-N.  She quickly asked how could I remember how to spell that but have problems with normal, everyday words.  Three words baby, three words … PG County schooling!

Unbelievable!  Due to a scheduling error my eye doctor sent me to their other office near White Flint mall.  This office building has a parking garage run by Colonial Parking which wasn’t that expensive to park but their particular business practices kinda irked me.  The parking charge was $3 of which I give the attendant a $20 since I only had yuppy bills on me.  He proceeded to ask if I had any smaller bills.  I politely said “No, but I can charge it if you accept charge.”  He shook his head and asked if I could write a check.  Aroo?  Again I said no I couldn’t and he questioned why?  “I don’t have a check on me.”  A line started to form behind me and the guy at first was going to get change from a shop within the building but then told me he was going to raise the gate so I could get out of the way so he could tend to the other cars behind me.  Sure, fine, whatever.  This is when it gets weird.  He gave me my $20 back mumbled something, and then proclaimed (after I said excuse me since I couldn’t hear him) that I should go get some change.  Eh?  The guy wouldn’t accept my legal U.S. tendered money for the charge, expected to me to go find parking not within the parking garage and then go get change just because he didn’t want to break a $20.

So the question is what should I have done?

I ended up finding metered street parking, bought a protein bar at the building shop and paid off the $3.  I figured I musta done the right thing since the street parking was easy to find (I had to parallel park into a huge space ) and there was still time in the meter.   My beef with the business practice is if the guy can’t make change and therefore won’t accept the money you give him then that’s on them.  They should let you go and not expect you to find change.  I was more than willing to wait for the guy to get change and told the guy that I didn’t mind waiting.  I just don’t expect that a business of this magnitude would do something as idiotic as this.

I’ve never been big on letters of complaint to a company (I tend to just boycott companies but a parking garage company would be hard to do) but they will be hearing from me.  Booth #616 you did a terrible job today.

It might be worth watching.  Especially since I’ve never heard of the Talpiot Tomb.

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From our Sunday snow adventures…a self portrait

Raljon – City Of The Future!

Today, on my works internal website they informed us that February is Heart Awareness month.  Good things there’s only a few days left in the month.  Talk about timing!  I can’t wait until they declare March Bacon month!  I luv me some bacon. 

I haven’t actually tried these but if your quest to get through the whole internet has been slowed down here are some tips for modifying Firefox.

I’m such an infomercial junkie.

oooh Japanese for Gamers.  The article tells the meaning of various Japanese video game company names.

3.5 Hours and a broken shovel later …

Needless to say I was both exhausted and sore shoveling the half-inch of ice/2 inches of snow/half-inch of ice sandwich yesterday.  For some reason the snowplows tends to bury our driveway when they come by so we’re always doing their job to make sure we can totally free our cars.  It really only took about three hours to clean out my driveway and the neighbors driveway and then another 30 minutes helping this lady down the street free her car.
Before:

During the night more plows came and look what happens (includes the drop in temperature):

Yep thats a frozen river and another poorly done snow plowing job by those whom my HOA fee contributions go to.

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Props go to Chipotle not only because I dig their food but because they honored the Free Valentine’s burrito deal one day late.   I had done the first part of the deal on Sunday (that’s when I took the picture of Sharka) but because of the weather didn’t want to venture out Monday night or yesturday to claim the free burrito.  So today I went to Chipotle to see if I could possibly get the freebie, if not I had the gift card so it wasn’t that big of a deal.  And sure enough, the cashier said “Yep” and I got my free burrito.  Chioptle is cool.  Go eat at Chipotle.

In the Christian church, love is not only expressed by showing respect; it also expressed through self-sacrifice and servanthood.  In fact, it can be defined as “selfless giving,” reaching beyond friends to enemies and persecutors.  Love should be the unifying force and the identifying mark of the Christian community.  Love is the key to walking in the light because we cannot grow spiritually while we hate others.  Our growing relationship with God will result in growing relationships with others.

From Lil Formers (a hilarious Transformers comic):