Weds/Thurs open thread

Man, what a weird day.

This afternoon, I had to leave the 8-5 for a couple of hours to meet the alarm repairman at my house, in order to get him to replace one of the sensors. Got to the house about five minutes before he did, opened my door and walking up the sidewalk was some dude who looked very similar to an ex of mine – who I dubbed over the years as “the one I let get away.” It wasn’t until we were standing face to face that I could actually tell it wasn’t him. Talk about freaky. I’ve always wanted the chance to make the wrong right with Mr. Right, but today wouldn’t be that day. Thank goodness – I wasn’t having my best hair day, anyway

The replacement of the sensor on one of my windows took a little longer than I anticipated today, partly because the reapairman was extremely chatty, but also because he had a slight issue with oversensitivity from one of the other sensors. Finally, that got done, and I headed back to work. About midway there, the car in front of me ran over what looked like a plastic bag that had once been filled with dirt but had blown onto the street. The driver went on as the bag blew in the breeze, and I figured I didn’t have to worry about it blowing on my car, when the thing gets stuck underneath my car. I know this because I can hear what sounds like a flag flapping in a strong wind. So I’m thinking by the time I hit Charlotte Motor Speedway (which I had to pass today on my way to work), where all the race car fans are piling in and setting up camp for this weekend’s big race, I’ll look like I sort of fit in with that crowd (LOL). Luckily just a couple of minutes later, after I was wishing the plastic bag had been like a cool flame color so it could be seen from the back of my car, the thing blew off again into the woods. Whew. I was safe from that little embarassment.

But not from another.

Sure enough, when I was approaching a stoplight near the speedway, I noticed a race car fan who had set up camp on one of the campgrounds across the street from the speedway. He was on the very edge of the campground, standing in front of a grill in what appeared to be pajama bottoms (at 3 in the afternoon) and no shirt, beer belly hanging out all over the place. With a farmer’s tan. I scowled and shook my head while looking, and about that time the guy looked up and must have thought I liked what I saw because he smiled and waved. At least he had teeth.

Ok, on to more interesting things:

—- Here’s some fun stuff, especially for the guys: Check out the F-35 helmet display system. It’s designed to scare the hell out of the enemy. I love it, and I’m sure you will, too (thanks to ST reader Sev for the link).

—- Any of you watch American Idol? I don’t watch it closely every week, but I watched enough to know that Melinda Doolittle kicked bootie and was the best singer out there. Everyone was expecting her to make it to next week’s final but tonight, she was voted off the show. Unreal! Oh well, she’ll still have a good career ahead of her, probably in gospel music. The gal can sing. Here she is singing “I’m a Woman”:

Go girl!

—- Did you hear about woman who survived an internal decapitation? Wow.

—- The Brit gov’t is taking heat over a new anti-smoking campaign which features a hook in the smoker’s mouth to symbolize how painful it is to get ‘hooked’ on smoking. Read all about it here.

—- ST reader tommynyc would be in heaven if he’d been the one who purchased a McDonald’s Happy Meal that contained marijuana. But it wasn’t him – it was an 8 year-old girl in Illinois.

—- Teachers Gone Wild: Part 2 -First the fake gun attack that was supposed to ‘prep’ students for a potential Va. Tech type situation, now this: Teacher threatens to shoot students if they talk in class.

—- Check out the world’s fastest sofa. Heh. (Thanks again to Sev)