Useless Road Signs

There are at least three road signs I have seen around town, that are a waist to put up. One is a marquis sign telling people, "Air quality green, breath easy." What? Thanks for letting me know, I don't have to hold my breath any longer. So what will the sign read when or if the air gets to RED? Will it read, "Air quality red, buy an air mask... on sale at Walmart?" Hopefully our air quality doesn't get to Red or what ever color code the worst air quality is. I hope for it to stay "green."

The second sign reads, "Accident reduction zone." Shouldn't ALL areas that people drive in be an accident reduction zone? We as drivers should drive with caution and prevent accidents from happening in the other areas too. Not just that area the sign is posted, for that "zone."

The third sign I saw put up in my area is, "Drug Free Zone." Darn I wanted to deal my drugs on that corner and snort some crack on my lunch break! Where is the Drug Zone then? I'll go there! Silly. Of course that particular area and everywhere else is a "drug free zone" because drugs are illegal and there are not any designated places to do drugs.

Are we seriously spending our tax dollars on new signs stating the obvious and waisting money like this? We need to budget better, we are in a recession and economy is down. The city doesn't have the extra money to post at least 3 new signs up around town. I noticed these three useless signs, there are probably more posted that I don't know about.

Another thing is personalized car plates. The car infront of me this morning reads, "PRPLXD." What does it mean? Purple XD, and it is on a RED car? what is the XD part? There needs to be a bumper sticker decoding liscence plates when they are personalized and don't make sence. It should be a requirement. I don't get 1/2 of the plates I come across sitting in traffic. Some though are very clever!

Choices

My blogger-friend, Kimber, recently made a post about making choices and how some of those choices are made without a conscious or deliberate analysis. She got the list from a blog friend of hers and now I am choosing from the list of theoretical choices... (in bold)...

Milk chocolate or Dark chocolate
Scotch or Bourbon
Ketchup or Mustard
Ice Cream or Sorbet
Icing or No Icing
Mac or Windows
Pants or Skirt
Long Hair or Short Hair
Breast or Bottle
Ice Cream Soda or New York Egg Cream
Creamy or Chunky
Isle or Window
Smoking or Non-smoking
Plane or Train
White Gold or Yellow Gold
Rocks or Neat
Steam Room or Sauna
Tea or Coffee
Sugar or Splenda
Fiction or Non-fiction
Sleep or Work
Flats or Heals
Meat or No Meat
Sauce or Dry Rub
Automatic or Stick Shift
Bar Soap or Body Wash
Dressed Salad or Dressing on the Side
Driver or Passenger
Seek-n-Find or Crossword
Now or Later
Coke or Pepsi
White Wine or Red Wine
Cranberry Mimosas or Orange Juice Mimosas
Reality TV or Documentary
CNN or BBC
Camping or Lodging
Beaching or Hiking
White or Wheat
Betty or Wilma
Tom or Jerry

I don't know what this says about me in the choices I made or how you will perceive it. Don't read too deeply into some of these. It is just a fun little list of things in life we choose one over the other on. I choose Mustard over Ketchup only because there are so many kinds of mustard and only one kind of ketchup, it is so boring. Mustard is adventurous. My favorite mustard is the kind with the seeds. I choose the wheat over the white, because I never liked how white bread gets stuck to the roof of my mouth. Annoying! Wheat bread is the better choice. Passenger over Driver, I hate driving where I don't know where I am and someone else is giving the directions, I get all turned around. I just want to be the passenger, better yet a passenger sitting in the back of a limo and sipping on my Orange Juice Mimosas, not worrying about how to get from point a to point b...just as long as I get there. I suck at directions and can easily get lost. The train over plane I choose, because I have many fond memories of riding the train to my daddy Kenny's house to visit him for a week at a time and sitting in the viewing car, with the swivel chairs. I miss you dad, and miss my train trips to visiting you.

While on the topic of Choosing and choices...I never liked the phrase, "Beggars can't be choosers..." OK...so beggars can't be choosers, but can choosers choose to beg? I always think of this when some annoying person says that phrase.

BOGUS! Photo contest!

I submitted a cute baby pic of baby Kara to the "Great American Photo Contest" then I get the email telling me to forward on the link to friends and family members to help vote for Karas picture to win...Well here is the "link to vote" if you want...but I think it is a load of crap?

https://www.greatamericanphotocontest.com/voter1/index_e.aspx?referid=WlcmKobe&p=1527435&x=.jpg

Once you click on the link to vote it wants you to enter in more information and do surveys, or sign up for stuff...What kind of contest is this? Seems like a marketing ploy, to get people to sign up for junk. I was excited to submit a photo and POSSIBLY win a $2,500 savings bond.

THEN on top of the bogus voting part, I also get an email saying that my photo was selected to publish in a photo book of some sort...I can convienantly oder a copy of this published book with my daughters photo entry for a small fee...just fill out the credit card info, etc...NO THANK YOU

I am not going to pay for a photo contest, I should be winning the book with her photo published...another marketing scam.

Nature Kicked My Butt!

This morning I started the first of 4 exercise classes. The class is called Bikini Boot Camp, with 8 ladies in it. We all meet up at the park, where there are bike/hiking trails, and beautiful scenery. As a group we: hiked up steep hills and down to a flat area to do stretches, walked down 205 steps and back up to an area where we finished up with yoga, for a cool down. It was so rewarding in the end; I was able to physically do the hole routine.

I have not exercised in a whole year basically. I was pregnant most of 2008, but went on walks around the neighborhood...My little 1/2 hour walks around my neighborhood does not compare at all to the walking I did today! WOO! I worked up a sweat, got out of breath, drank my bottled water, etc. It was so rejuvenating. I look forward to next Saturday to do it all over again. The park we hike in is so beautiful, with trees and a lake down below. I might even want to go back on my own with a friend and do some Kayaking in the water there. I will have to look into more info on this park and see if there are rentals available for Kayaking.

All Hail the Gods!

It hailed this afternoon! Being from California, this is all new to me. Wow! I was looking out at my deck in the back yard and it was pouring rain with thunder and lightning and the trees were blowing all around from the wind. Then the hail became more dominate and there was more hail than rain at one point. Pouring down hail at the size of crushed ice. It was almost as if someone was on my roof throwing over buckets of ice on my deck. CRAZY!

I video taped it on my camera to share with my Cali folks. Those of you who don't really experience hail at all. There was a hail storm about 20 years ago in Morro Bay...but that was only one time and back when I was a kid. Other than that one time, this was a first for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_IYBqAftDw

the link will take you to my home-video of the hail storm that was in my back yard.

Happy Birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY HUBBY, ANDREW!

Kara is cooing a happy birthday to her daddy! It is the big 3-1, the start of a new decade... one year down 9 more to go until the big 40. eek!?

Google your name game!

Search your name as "Unfortunately _______" with the quotation marks! Then pick you favorite bits and leave it as a comment on this blog post. I was on Facebook and my friend, Michelle, and Janae did this and there were some doozies out there. Of course my name is not common enough. I did google just my name (Martiel) and found this story line scene from a game or something of the sort. It is so funny. Apparently "Martiel" is a character in a game. read below, from the following site. http://www4.wittenberg.edu/student_organizations/rpguild/2004-fall/vampsgnomes/

"...Four travelers appeared in a city in the middle of a commotion: two children, a boy twin and a girl twin, had disappeared from the local temple, along with a divinely-powered scepter of Pelor. Arturus, Austra, and Zephyr volunteer to look for the children, and they drag Martiel into it kicking and screaming and pulling her hat down over her ears. They are taken out of the village to the dark entrance in the ruins and caves of an underground dungeon. Down there they explore, fight undead and other beasties, see bloody remains of what could be kids, and begin to see a vampire history. They find the coffins of what appear to be a king, queen, and kid vampire, and Martiel takes the king's crown and scepter. Martiel later foolishly tries to do acrobatical feats in the vicinity of a well, down which she looses the crown, scepter, most/all of her worldly possessions (this is hotly debated by Adam and the DM), and nearly herself. "

Too cool.