Budget Cuts

What I would like to know is who had time to actually make this stuff and take pictures…either way I don’t own the copyright, but these pictures crack me up.

Something Quirky, Something Old, Something Blue

Jay over at The Depp Effect challenged a few bloggers in her Mind the Bell post to find something weird in our neighborhood that we take completely for granted, but something tourists would gaze at in perplexity.

Well just slight of getting the whole community together and taking a “family” portrait Maplewood is actually a picturesque, quaint, but “slightly backwards community”. I do take the people for granted as it is a community very rich in racial diversity, that’s one thing I do love about the area. Once known as South Orange Township before the name was changed to Maplewood in 1922, these Two Towns are still connected through our dual school district.
Picture of Maplewood Village

Something Quirky
So I had no problem stepping over into South Orange to find my quirky item because Maplewood won’t tolerate anything, other than the people, that would make visitors gaze in perplexity. This picture was not recently taken by me, but has always been one of my favorites and most intriguing.

I can’t explain this one, I’m not really sure who the victim is here, but since the tree is “alive” I’m going to say it’s the mailbox. If anyone can think of a reason of why these two should not be joined together…. They look quite happy together, don’t you think?

Something Old
Well for days I’ve tried to get a picture of this man, but I haven’t seen him in over a week. There’s an older gentleman, about 70 or 80 years old who lives on the same street as one of the high schools. His self-appointed job is to clean up everything that falls on the ground, sticks, branches, paper, flyers, wrappers, anything! He walks up and down the street with his cane and white bag picking up trash. It’s weird because he’s not wearing an orange vest. He is the norm to us, but visitors might find him weird.

Something Blue
The color of this house usually leaves people who pass it, perplexed. It’s a bit out of the norm and the first thing you see from the street. Even the locals stare, but after a while you get used to it.

On a side note, I found this interesting YouTube “documentary dealing with the complications that adolescents face in their town” and having no place to go after school. They put together this documentary about it, have a look!

Thanks Jay, this was fun and different! What’s going on in your neck of the woods, got weird? Post it.

Photo of Maplewood Village GNU Free Documentation License
Photo of the Hand by Walt Jabsco

How to Get Out and Stay Out of Debt Book Giveaway

I have a few financial books that I will be giving away on any given Monday for FREE! All you have to do is send me an email at vdm17 [at] yahoo dot com with the words, Get Out of Debt in the subject line.

One email will be chosen at random and the winner will be announced the following Monday. (I will accept email entries up until June 1st at 11:59 pm). This giveaway is not limited to the USA, I’ll be happy to ship overseas because you guys have money over there too. The book I’m giving away is How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt and Live Prosperously. You can read some reviews about this book on Amazon here.

An excerpt from the back of the book says you’ll learn:

• How to recognize the warning signs of serious debt
• How to negotiate with angry creditors, collection agencies, and the IRS
• How to design a realistic and painless pay-back schedule
• How to identify your spending blind spots
• How to cope with the anxiety and daily pressures of owing money
• Plus the three cardinal rules for staying out of debt forever, and much more!

I know not everyone has debt, but if you’re interested in reading this book or know of someone who would benefit from it, then send me an email. I’m closing the comments for the book giveaways since the entry is via email.

When Life Hands You Lemons, You Make A Blog Post

You know what’s so great about blogging? Being able to write about an unpleasant situation, laugh at yourself and blog about it the next day. It’s like I can’t believe this crap is happening to me, but it sure would make a great blog post. You almost want something ridiculous to happen so you can blog about it, or is that just me?

Like imagine the story I would have been able to post had I actually choked my co-worker. I would have even posted the pictures of [their] bruised neck had they not been considered evidence. I was having that kind of week, but I manage to control my emotions by being reminded of a time when I didn’t and in front of a judge.

I was on my way to work driving down a narrow street and on my left was a parked, empty school bus. There were three cars ahead of me and because there was no stop sign from the school bus, we drove past it and stopped at the light.

A few seconds later, a male cop motions for all of us to pull over to the side of the road and wait for another officer.

When the female officer arrived, she was instructed to write all of us a ticket for failing to yield to a school bus (the other officer claimed the yellow lights were flashing), I can’t remember the exact citation, but we had to appear in court.

When I arrived in court, the prosecutor was ready to play let’s make a deal = you pay the court fine and I’ll reduce your charges to no points, deal? I wasn’t ready to admit to something I did not do, so after speaking with the prosecutor, I spoke with the female officer.

She said saw ME drive on the other side of the street (the narrow road with the parked school bus; apparently being last in line, I also went around the cars in front of me) to sit at a red light. I said you weren’t even there, how would you know? Well that was her story and she was sticking to it. Fine, I’ll go before the judge and ask for a new hearing with my attorney.

She was clearly lying, but in a “he said-she said” situation the person in uniform usually wins. By the time I got in front of the judge I was incensed, and it showed, but I agreed to the plea deal because I wanted it to be over.

When it came time for me to sign a sheet of paper saying I accepted the plea, I scribbled my signature with a wave of my hand and then the judge got mad! He said I could not sign my name like that because that was not my signature! Two hot heads. I was held in contempt, never made it to cell, but had to pay a fine for that public display in addition to my other charges.

So as I’m walking out of the court room, I say something to another person who was also pulled over and the judge said I was being disrespectful for talking in court and for rolling my eyes at him. I admit I was trying to burn a hole in his dress with my eyes and may have shown some disgust when it didn’t work. I guess he let his emotions get the best of him too because he reversed all my charges and said to come back next week and to bring my attorney.

*&^%!

Just so happened I worked, and still do, at a law firm. When I got to work, I had a few minutes to calm down and realized my plan to show up dressed as a nun at my next court appearance was probably not a good idea. After being assigned an attorney to represent me, I faxed a letter of apology to the judge and the prosecutor for my behavior earlier and agreed to apologize in court.

Several days later when I arrived in court with my attorney in tow, I was calm and made sure I didn’t make eye contact with the judge. When my case was up, he called my attorney into chambers and I assume they were talking about me.

Turned out the judge was good friends with the female partner at my job and I had the wrong attorney. Standing before the court, I said some stuff I meant and the rest of it was hogwash! I felt like putting on an Emmy worthy performance, but instead, I paid the fine and quickly left before I got into any more trouble.

While I can look back at this situation with a slight grin, I will never trust a cop and I’m afraid of school buses. I still dream of revenge but now when life hands me lemons, I make a blog post.

Photo of Lemons by Shaunb.blogs.com
Photo of Gavel by by Lubbock
Photo of Flame by Rotten Tomatoes

I Think I Love My Car

My envy is showing. It’s dangling, it’s wagging, it’s out! How did the bobblehead get loose? A co-worker showed me a brochure of a car she plans to lease in a few months and after looking at the features cars come with nowadays, my mind started with the what-ifs and my car just seemed, well inadequate.

It’s not a bad looking car, now is it? It’s 14 years young, it has 102 hand-over-mouth mumbling miles, power windows (compliments of your arm rolling them down), it goes from 0 to 60 mph in about a minute and it comes with the 4/60 AC (you roll down all fours and go 60). It doesn’t give me any major problems, I do more maintenance than repairs and it can ride on E for two days or either the low fuel light is broken.

I will admit, it’s not the fastest car on the road, in fact, my back seat driver is always asking me to please just pass one car. She likes to look at the cars behind us, that will eventually pass us, and shake her head in shame. Once I heard applause coming from the back seat and I asked what happened. She said, you passed a car. (If you see a crying 8 year old on Rt. 22 in New Jersey, she’s probably mine, just feed her and send pictures).

Anywho, I didn’t start out with this particular car, but one that looks exactly like it, except it was an automatic and had power everything and was paid for. You know what happens to a car the minute the last payment is made, the engine falls out on the highway. I had planned on driving that car to the grave but it was hit while parked on the street. Totaled.

I was in town getting my hair done and in the midst of conversation we hear this bang and crash, so we ran outside to see what happened. Somebody, just coming from the dealer with his “new to me” car hit four parked cars, mine being one of them. Side note: This is why I like going to the ‘hood to get my hair done, people just don’t hit parked cars! They take them. They don’t leave you with nothing but memories of a car you used to have.

This man lost control of the car, I still don’t know what that means…you wanted to see if the car could drive itself so you let the wheel go and when you realized it couldn’t you tried to get control of it again? I had to watch my mangled car get towed away and ended up walking home. Several weeks later I found my current car, I was able to pay cash for it and was….

Doing okay because ignorance really is bliss, until someone bursts your bubble. Some of these cars have features that would make living in them seem like a better alternative. I don’t want to know that I have the option of warming up my butt with a push of a button. Now I’m looking at dirty new car brochures and I feel like I’m cheating. I’m starting to look at other cars and fantasize about polishing someone else’s exterior. I want to experience high performance rubber on slick conditions. I’m imagining what it would be like to shift someone else’s gears and pop someone else’s hood. I’m finding it very hard to uh, what’s the word I’m looking for…….focus!

I hate that I looked at that brochure, it’s going to take me weeks to get those images out of my head. When my co-worker gets her new car, I’m not riding in it or anyone’s car that is nicer than mine, which is most of them. I don’t love what you do for me Toyota.