While watching PBS News, I learned last week that a major coffee lounge was allowing people to openly bring guns in with them. Further in the piece, I watched in disbelief as a video portrayed a Starbuck's in Alabama. A man who had a rifle strapped on his back walked up to the counter to get a brew.
Within the same week, two men in Michigan were engaged in road rage. One man followed the other into a parking lot and they shot each other dead. Both men had a concealed weapon permit. The guns were legal, but the resulting murders were not.
This weapons craze is very baffling to me. I really thought carrying guns for protection was settled long ago in the wild west.The futility of arming yourself for protection is linked to the thinking that society can wage permanent war to achieve lasting peace.
Dear Mr ..........,
I’m sending you this picture of my new Cruze for two reasons. The first is that I’m proud of it. GM and Chevrolet have done a great job! Test driving this car bought back the driving excitement of the Fieros that I have owned in the past. I purchased it as soon as I returned from the test drive.
While writing up the deal, the salesman mentioned that a spare tire wasn’t included with the car. Not to squirrel the deal, I decided that I would buy my own temporary spare later. My guess was that it wouldn’t cost more than a hundred dollars to remedy this oversight.
The spare arrived yesterday with another surprise. The price tag was over four hundred dollars! When I called Chevrolet a month ago, they provided $100 in “good will” money to help out. I don’t think either of us had a clue that it would be up in this price range. When I called back this Wednesday with the dollar amount, the man replied that the limit of good will had already been reached and he wouldn’t be allowed to go any further.
The second reason I’m sending you the picture is that a spare tire is an integral part of a car. I would wager that 99 out of 100 people viewing this picture would assume that it had a spare in it somewhere (a Fiero has the spare cleverly hidden under the hood). A few eBay sellers issue the disclaimer that if you don’t see it in the picture then you don’t get it (caveat emptor) but that thinking leads to many unhappy customers which both of us want to avoid.
Yesterday, I bargained with the manager and he contributed some money for the tire which leaves me paying a balance of $200. This is my proposition. Chevrolet doubles their good will to $200. Small price for “good will”. Otherwise, to mar an excellent machine with an economy of measure that diminishes the customer is to be short sighted.
Sincerely,
I can hear the wings rhythmically beating against the body as it flies in circles about two foot over my head. The sound that I know so well is back! I roll out of bed quickly in my attempt to turn on the bedroom light, and open the bedroom door. Nothing is working very well at one-thirty am.
Vain attempts appear to be the order of the day, but after five tries, one success. I fling open the door and it follows me out of the room. Then, I scramble for my flashlight on the shelf. Dimly it illuminates a much larger arena
Up, down, around and around flies the bat.
I jerk open the heavy wooden outside door hoping he will make his escape, but he chooses to land and hide instead. An hour later, with the aid of my diminishing return of a flashlight, I track and net him. Catch and release. As I finally lay back down in bed, I hear the faint sound of tiny wings against my window pane like "Rats feet over broken glass."
I stopped to give Mike a hand today. Not the same situation, but it did remind me of fifth grade in Carsonville. Perhaps it was the pristine Allis Chalmers. I loved them even more later in life when I discovered they manufactured air craft engines.
When Michigan went to a program to recycle bottles and cans, a friend of the family went ballistic. He was a beer truck driver, and if you listened to him, it was tantamount to economic ruin for the state. Instead, the law just worked out to be a different economy for many people. Beer and pop didn't cost any less other places without the return law, but at least a person didn't get any return deposit for their investment.
Mike told me last week that Bose called him and offered to buy his radio back for $150 and sell him a new one for $500. He asked as an after thought, "What are you going to do? Take a sledge hammer to it?" The response confirmed his suspicion so he declined the offer. It was still a great radio and deserved a better fate.
Erin and Randy gave me back my Mac G4 Cube. A very generous act! The only problem was that Apple technicians wouldn't work on it anymore and steered me to eBay instead. It was too old and getting parts would be difficult. I bought another Cube for $150 and was able to swap enough parts to arrive at a working model. Now you're looking at the ultimate computer music machine of the 20th century. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever"
Crackhead had two vacations, in short order, in one of her nine lives in Florida. I think you can see in this photographic evidence some remorse on her part... then again, maybe not.
The eyes have it!
Returned from St. George Island with lots of new ideas, and a different weather pattern all together.
The road trip was flawless. The fog didn't really make any difference as I wasn't traveling very fast. The fog lights were a luxury. One of the signs that I passed on the causeway cautioned, watch for birds. I didn't see any birds, which worked out well as I was listening intently to my box cd set. The sun cleared long enough for me to take a picture of a road machine at rest.
The music looped my attention as the same song played on the bridge in as well as the bridge out.
