Toyota Beats GM Like It Stole Stomething

In high school I drove an underpowered, shitbox Chevy that got 13 MPG and broke down every two months, I vowed never to purchase another GM product as long as I lived. Now it looks like Toyota has finally overtaken GM as Numero Uno and I can't say that I feel at all bad about it. My toyota, which gets about 30 MPG was made in Kentucky and hasn't given me any shit. Hoo-Haa

Yet Another "You're Married" Moment

Laura was going through a comingled box of her and my old photos and came across a nudie pic of an old girlfriend. I took it only a couple of months before the relationship ended, but I developed that roll of film after it ended. I just put that picture, along with the three other non-nudie pics from that roll in a paper case and tossed it in my non-organized-photo box and forgot about it for four years.

Anyone who knows me knows that four years equates to roughly 7 moves, so it's pretty spectacular that the little bugger was able to hang in there for so long. Luckily, Laura was pretty good natured about it and made a show of being all pissed off and throwing it on the desk for me to open. Suffice it to say, I had a good laugh and tossed it into the trash.

St. Louis on the National Scene

Article on St. Louis' downtown revitalization. St. Louis City has been trying to make a comeback for the last five years or so with mixed results. North St. Louis public high schools recently lost their accredidation and St. Louis city was recently named the most dangerous city in the country. On the plus side, the downtown of St. Louis has seen a hell of a lot of developement and there are now a crap ton of loft buildings and new buildings going up downtown and the population of St. Louis city has stabilized for the first year since 1950, and could actually start to rise. As far as I can tell, it's a 20 year tossup that depends a lot on the schools, investment and policing.

Yarwood Runs the City

Mr. John Yarwood ran his first marathon in Boston today. It was apparently one of the shittiest days in the Boston's 110 years of existance. John was also waylayed in his training by a knee injury. Nevertheless, he was able to break the four hour barrior at a remarkable three hours and forty-seven minuts.

He told me just about everything about it except whether or not he got the Gatorade shits in front of thousands of people.

Congrats John!!!

Travel and Beer

Woke up at 5:00 am to get Laura on a 6:30 flight to Ann Arbor for a management training course. Pulling out of the driveway the empty light blinked on and after passing two empty gas stations, we turned around and used my dad's car. He loaned it to me about a month ago and hasn't taken me up on any offers from me to return it. This morning I was particularly grateful.

Went by my bro's place later and spent an extremely enjoyable morning and early afternoon hanging out on his rear porch, brewing beer and slowly shooting an ice sculpture to pieces with a bb-gun. There was the minor hiccup that had to be dealt with when Laura arrived in Ann Arbor only to find out that her debit card didn't work, but it was nothing that three hours of calling, panicing and an enormous charge from Western Union couldn't fix.

In other news I landed a part time job about two miles from my house at a local cafe/restaurant. It frees up my time for the business and it looks like it'll be paying better than the full time job I had in NC. There's actually a lot of good things moving on that front, but out of superstition and the possibility of a poorly timed Google search, I won't be mentioning any of the play by play in this forum. I will say that I dodged a bullet recently by passing on a deal to purchase a failing cafe in a crap locaiton. They just closed their doors today.

Money Maker #285

In the process of looking at different ideas for Laura and my Cafe, I stumbled up on this one:

"THROUGH N' THROUGH"

a healthy, fast food restaurant that only serves food made with Olestra. In light of New York City's ban on trans-fats and America's increased tolerance for runny, anal discharge, I can't see how it wouldn't work.


Right?

Pederasty Stinkeye

Laura's 15 year old cousin, Candice is in town visiting us for her spring break. Laura needed to get some work done, so the two of us went off to go to the top of the Arch. The line was going to be over an hour, so I bought the tickets for later that afternoon. Candice is a metabolical freak and needs to be fed every few hours, so I took her to a South City cafe I wanted to check out. While sitting there waiting for our food a man and woman sat down at the table next to us. The woman had a do-rag on and had obviously gone through chemotherapy so I decided not to stare. As Candice and I talked over the finer points of Law and Order the original, Criminal Intent and Special Victems Unit, I kept feeling a set of eyes on me. Then I caught the woman sneaking a peek at me, sitting there on a weekday, having lunch with a minor and chatting away.

When I got out I told her: "Candice, if anyone asks, you are my girfriend and we met on the INTERNET!!!!"