Moving in Real Time

Guess what?? I have a smokin' cool new site for my blog now!

Check out http://www.eventsoccurinrealtime.com/. Let me know how sweet you think it looks. And don't forget to change your bookmarks and subscribe on my new site.

Also, if you haven't already, check out my weekly podcasts at http://www.businessnetblog.com.

Movin' on up, huh? In real time, of course. ;)

Drive Me Crazy

Those of you who know me personally know that my life is governed by a little thing I call "Allison law." It's sorta like Murphy's Law: anything bad that can happen, will happen. In my world, it's more like "anything insanely frustrating, irritating, inconvenient, semi-gross, mind-numbing, or of the highest unlikelihood that can happen, will happen." I have countless stories of evidence for this law, but my most recent I feel obliged to share.

I have a slightly unhealthy love for my Jeep. It's royal blue and (I believe) so freakin' cute. However, I had an incredibly strong desire last night to drive it into the lake. On a few occasions in the last few months, the car alarm on my Jeep has sounded off at random....usually only once or twice in a row and always in mid-afternoon. I usually just hit the alarm button on my remote and turn it off when this happens. However, this futile exercise was of no help as my typically-freakin' cute Jeep proceeded to sound its alarm constantly for about two hours straight at 3am last night. No jeep thiefs, way-ward cats, or crazy people in sight....it just apparently decided to make a lot of commotion for no reason.

Ya know how everything is more intense at night? Like, hearing a little noise can have you convinced that the world's worst serial killer is breaking into your house. Well, flashing headlights and a siren that would wake up people in Spain is a hundred times worse at night. I laid in my bed, remote in hand with finger poised on the only temporarily-silencing off button and pleaded with any available higher power to cease the insanity and allow me and everyone in my complex (whom I'm certain now hate me) to get some decent sleep.

There are two parts to the Allison Law that apply here: one, naturally my jeep's alarm decides to become positively unstoppable in the middle of the night, when nothing can be done about it. (If someone else was here that could have given me a ride back, I would have at least driven it out to the lake and left it there to beep it's freakin' heart out til morning.) Two, of course this inexplicable error occurs just three months after my factory warranty expires. So it will now cost me some crazy amount of money to fix/disable/remove-and-crush this annoying part that essentially serves no other purpose than to drive everyone in earshot to the brink of their sanity.

Car alarms should be outlawed. I'm starting a petition...

No Man's Land

I have decided that supermarkets and grocery stores are officially "no man's land." This is, apparently, the hangout of choice for the people that time forgot...when they are not, ya know, hanging out at the post office or the DMV.

During my last trip to the market, the dude in line behind me started interrogating me on "where the party was"...I bought 4 12-packs of coke (they were 4 for $10!) along with chips and a jar of salsa, which he kept inexplicably referring to as bean dip. "With all that bean dip (read: salsa) and coke, there must be a party going on...", he kept insisting. I"m not sure if this guy was attempting to flirt with me or something, but all I wanted to do was remove myself immediately from the checkout line with the creepy bean-dip-and-party-obsessed dude.

While at Costco last night, I found myself in an aisle with two other sets of people. One on the left and one on the right...thus blocking my way through. I was always under the impression that at this impasse, someone must take intiative and shuffle to allow for a clearing. Now, the lady on my left is off the hook for being oblivious because she was simultaneously shuffling a two-year-old and a gigundo case of applesauce. But chick-on-the-right...her ability to speak in some unidentifiable foreign language to her hubby is not reason enough to be oblivious to my need to pass. Granted they were in a pretty heated debate over tomato juice, but how long should I be required to wait for her to move her shopping cart to allow usually-polite-me to pass before it's acceptable for me to clock her with a nearby two-ton jar of pasta sauce?

While we are on the subject of shopping carts, I stumbled on this article on MSN the other day ( http://health.msn.com/dietfitness/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100165289). It states that the number one thing your grocery store doesn't want you to know is that the shopping carts have cooties. More cooties than public bathrooms, public phones, and escalators. Yuck. And while I have been known to push elevator buttons with my elbow and use all means possible to avoid touching public bathroom door handles, there is apparently no way for me to avoid the goo on the necessary-for-gathering shopping cart.

Note to self: Must look into online grocery delivery services....