In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I must say, I am so thankful for the invention of hot water heaters, even my own, which only allows 2 minute showers of hot water. When something is sparse, I think you appreciate it even more.

While I was in the bodyshop getting an estimate on my car, I casually asked the guy if he knew a good body shop. See, Tim's car isn't driving well (we think it's the transmission) and we would probably get more money selling the parts than selling the car.

John, the bodyshop employee that offered the best customer service I have ever experienced in a car place, dialed up his friend who worked at a salvage yard.

"How much for a '98' Ford Contour that might have a bad tranny?"

John looked at me, then turned his chair to face the other way.

"Could she take it anywhere else to get more?"

Then, after a long silence,

"Okay, thanks."

"How much?" I asked when his chair faced me, hoping for good news.

"100 dollars, and he'll pick it up."

100 dollars for the Ford Contour.

First, Tim's car stops running, then someone hits me. That's what you call bad carma (haha).

This week in Storytelling in the Cinema class, we did a visual experiment. We were shown a video, about 30 seconds, in which 6 people were fairly crowded on screen. 3 wore white shirts, 3 wore black shirts, and each team had a basketball. We were suppose to watch the white team and count how many times they passed the ball, and how many of those passes were a bounce pass.

The class participated whole-heartedly, and at the end of the experiment, we pretty much agreed: there were 14 passes, 2 of which were bounce passes.

We waited for the trick question, like how many did the black team throw, or that we had gotten the wrong number, or something.

Instead, the teacher said, "I don't care. Did anyone see the man in the gorilla walk into the middle of the screen, beat his chest, then walk off?"

All 9 of us honestly hadn't.

We watched it again, and sure enough, the gorilla walks right into the middle of the crowd of people passing basketballs, beats his chest, and walks off screen.

I mean, how could we all not see that?!?

Why Razorback Stadium is the Best Stadium (in comparison to South Carolina)

1) Razorbacks do not have an annoying, pre-recorded caw that sounds whenever the team does something good.

2) AQ Chicken. I never thought it was that exciting until all I wanted to eat was chicken strips at a football game, and my only options were pizza, pretzels, and nachos. (To continue this story, we then stopped at a Wendy's/Dairy Queen, and they also did not have chicken strips. Is that not a staple fast food?)

3) The jumbotron, not just for helping those of us who are sitting 2 rows from the very top of the stadium, but to pass the time before the game starts.

And here is the one advantage of sitting 2 seats from the top:

And finally, perhaps the most interesting thing on the trip was this huge place called "South of the Border" on the North/South Carolina border. There were restaurants, fireworks stands, grocery stores, etc. all lit up like Las Vegas. Also, there were more billboards advertising for it in the few miles approaching than there are in the entire Branson vicinity. I wish I could have gotten a better picture, but here is something that lets to know to what extent they take themselves seriously:

I'll finish with saying, it sure was nice to talk to Fayetteville folks, even strangers that just randomly fly to the game.

Men on the streets: Fear Me.

Today, I graduated from self-defense class. I don't remember much about the final simulation, except for at one point I realized I wasn't yelling for help, and proceeded to do so.

When I walked into the hallway afterwords, the freshman girls looked at me solemnly.

"You were really loud."

At least, I wanted to tell them, I fought. That probably wouldn't happen in real life, because on the "fight or flight" scale, my instinct leans for flight about 99% of the time. This has been proven on many occasions. But, it is now good to know that I have yet another option that I'm good at: yelling my guts out.

Today, in the church bulletin, it said:

There is a brief "information reception" in the Columbarium and Memorial Garden today, immediately following the service. All who wish to know more about this ministry of our church are cordially invited to join us there."

I read this as, come find out about the ministries available for this church.

What it really meant was, come learn about THIS ministry: the Columbarium and Memorial Garden.

So, Tim and I stood for about a minute, among the other people (all of whom had one foot in the grave, and I mean that in the nicest way possible) and listened to how we could have our ashes scattered in the Memorial Garden, or placed in the Columbarium.

I hope they were thinking: those folks know how to plan early.
Which was not what I was actually thinking.

Halloween 08:

Hi, I'm Mac.

And I'm PC! (what you can't see is the pillow stuffed into my shirt and pants and ratty tennis shoes. Plus, my hair is graying, if you couldn't tell)

(thanks to Lindsay for the picture)