Finally, I can make money NOW!

Wow. Look how popular I am!

I post a new blog and immediately two (2) people respond and they want me to make money now! What thoughtful people. They don’t even know me. And you say the world is going to hell….

I’m all for it. I’d sign up right now except I don’t seem to have any “get started” money in my bank. I’m still waiting for that $2 million that guy in Nigeria promised me if I would give him my bank account number.

What? He said he needed help. He’s a refugee and needs somewhere to store his money. What are you, heartless? Come on.

But if that doesn’t come, I’m still not worried because my name is at the top of the chain letter list and pretty soon I should be getting $800,000 1-dollar bills from people all over the country.
So don’t give up on me Mr. Anonymous! As soon as I start making $3,000 a week at my new envelope-stuffing job, I’m SO there.

This is what I get paid for

I moved into a new house this weekend. Shortly afterward Sarah moved into my armoire.

So anyway. I now have two roommates, Katie and Sabrina.

Katie’s completely insane so we get along most of the time. Sabrina … well she’s Sabby. I also have like 400 pets all of a sudden, which is interesting since none of them are mine.

Katie’s cat, Jeremiah, I have an understanding with. He knows I hate cats. He’s okay with it. We nod disdainfully at each other as we pass in the hall and that’s the extent of our communication. But our relationship is based on mutual respect for our enemy. That’s why we get along.

Sabrina’s cats have a different philosophy. Princess, for instance, took one look at me and said, almost audibly, “Oh you hate cats do you? From now on I’ll sleep on your face.”

We cuddle.

So if you wonder why I haven’t updated in a while, it is because every single time I go to write something I find out I have absolutely nothing funny to say. I mean nothing.

It’s very depressing. I went back through my old posts last week, which was my first mistake. That’s when I found out that I used to be much funnier. Probably because I was more cynical during election season. I no longer get all worked up about politics and as a sad byproduct, I no longer have any edgy comedic columns to post. But hey, maybe I’m just in a rut. I’m sure I’ll make a comeback. How could I not? I mean do you remember how funny I used to be? Seriously.

In the meantime, here are a few fun facts to chew on.

According to http://www.md.lp.org/weird_laws.html, everyone walking on the streets of Elko, Nevada is required by law to wear a mask, and men in Eureka who wear moustaches are forbidden from kissing women.

Frogs have teeth.

The king of hearts is the only king with a moustache.
If you question my sources on any of these things or think you need verification that they are true…get a life.

Maybe someday I'll start thinking these things through first

So I ended my last blog with “I’m kind of an idiot.”

Allow me to reinforce that point.

I took my car to the Volkswagen dealership to get it fixed this weekend. This, in and of itself, does not make me an idiot. We’ll get to that part (sheesh, stop being so impatient!)

Allow me to give you some background info. It’s plot exposition, it has to go somewhere. (Only one or two extremely cultured readers will understand that reference. Haha. The rest of you suckers just have to assume it’s funny for some reason, or just on principle. But come on. It’s me. Just trust me. It’s funny).

Anyway, the car sometimes just wouldn’t come out of park. This caused some very awkward moments for me in San Francisco, sitting in the car, wrestling with my gear shifter lever while everyone just sat in my car mulling over the possibilities of surviving if we happened to get stuck there forever.

Luckily, before anyone got any extreme ideas (like going Donner party and eating one of us, or – worse yet – staying in San Francisco), the lever mysteriously shifted. Since I hadn’t done anything different at the time it did so than I had been doing for the previous fifteen minutes, I have to assume the car simply ceased to be amused with it’s little game and decided to move on.

So anyway I took it to get fixed the following weekend. And they seem to have fixed it. When I drove it away, it came right out of park very smoothly. Unfortunately the horn also started blaring, completely independent of me, as soon as I started driving. I had to turn out of the dealership, into another parking lot, back out onto the road, and back into the dealership, honking loudly and incessantly the entire time, while everyone on the road and in the dealership talked about what a jerk I was.

Seriously. Once everyone figured out that it wasn’t my fault they all laughed at me and told me what a jerk they thought I had been intentionally being.

So while I was waiting for them to fix the horn, my friend Sarah, who had given me a ride to pick up my car, was looking at Volkswagen merchandise in the parts department. She found one way cool track jacket that was about four sizes too big for her and put it on. She zipped it up over her head and wandered blindly around the room, feeling walls and such. The picture at the top right shows kind of what she looked like. I mean it's basically it's a photo.

I know what you’re thinking. And YOU’RE the idiot, Kate? I know! You’re right. Up to this point anyway.

But at this point, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to come up and try to zip down the jacket – which, as illustrated, was over her head. Immediately a large number of her hairs got caught in the zipper, causing what sounded like a good deal of pain.

We spent the next few minutes with me trying to get her hair out of the zipper while various staff and customers walked by, laughing and shaking their heads.

It sounded something like this.

Sarah: Ow, ow, ow…OW! Stop!

Me: Wait. No…I have to…it’s gonna hurt for a second. Wait…

Various bystanders: Hahahahahaha

Sarah: What’s wrong with you? Ow!

Me: I’m SO sorry. I’m sorry. Here. No I’m trying to help! I’m sorry…

Various bystanders: HAHAHAHA.

And so on and so forth. So there you have it.

San Francisco: Spanish for "gone off the deep end"

I really don’t think the word “arbitrary” is used enough in conversation. So there you have it okay? I’m just putting it out there. What you do about it is up to you.

So I went to San Francisco for the first part of Labor Day weekend.

I know what you’re thinking. Clearly she’s lost her mind. What moron would go to San Francisco? For any reason? Ever? And on Labor Day Weekend? Stupid!

Well, you’re right. I mean let’s not beat around the bush. It was a great trip, in that I got to do a lot of God’s work while I was there and hang out with some of the coolest people I know by far (two of whom I could have hung out with in Carson, so that doesn’t really help my case).

But the plain and simple fact is, I hate San Francisco. Not because it is full of sin and decadence (I live in Nevada – home of legalized prostitution, gambling, and Burning Man – we’ve got our own vices to worry about), but because the entire city is insane. Especially the roads.

Driving in that city is basically a recipe for disaster – at least I think. I wouldn’t know. We took my car but I made Sarah do all the driving – simultaneously making fun of her and profusely thanking her the entire time. I’m lucky she didn’t push me out the passenger door. Come to think of it she probably would have if she hadn’t been vigilantly focused on not dying the entire time.

So here are some of the things that happened while we were there.

We planned to visit the sightseeing places (the Golden Gate Bridge, Pier 39, Fisherman’s Warf, etc.). Instead we went to this great church that Sarah’s friend Barbara will soon be working for. We met the pastor’s wife and kids, who were cleaning it, so we volunteered to help. The odd thing was how surprised they were by this.

“Really?” they asked. “Are you sure?”

Of course we’re sure! We’re here, right? We’re Christians and we’re in your church. It made perfect sense to us. It’s kind of sad that Christians are so surprised when others are willing to serve. Isn’t that what we’ve all been called to do? Jesus told us to wash each other’s feet for crying out loud.

We helped the outreach director move after that. We did some serious prayer time that night and then went to do outreach. We were promoting a concert that included some Christian bands at a bar downtown. We handed out flyers and stuff, but since Amy and Sarah are under 21, didn’t go the actual concert. It was a kind of outreach I don’t often get the chance to do, being from Carson City, and the enemy would like me to believe I was a complete failure at it. Thank God for grace.

Sarah drove the wrong way on a one-way street. It took her a really long time to figure out what was going on. I guess she thought all four lanes of traffic headed directly at us were drunk drivers. It really wasn’t her fault. They should put signs up or something. I mean they did, but they should make them more visible.

On the way home, after three hours of sleep and on the first day of a coffee fast for me, I was driving in stop and go traffic on the freeway. Sarah and Amy were asleep, or mostly. I said, mostly to myself, “I wonder if this would be a good time to learn how to drive with both feet.”

Seconds later I tried to brake with my left foot and we came to a halt far more suddenly than I expected, waking both the girls up and causing more than one quizzical look from other drivers who were probably either questioning my sobriety or wondering if I’d just come from San Francisco. Oddly, not everyone thought it was as funny as I did.
In my defense I’m kind of an idiot.