I'll never live it down.
I'm telling you, it will never go away.
But since everyone thinks it's funny, it doesn't bother me now.
It's the situation where our company was having a "Town Hall" meeting.  If you can't attend physically, no matter, just call into an 800 number and give them the password/code/whatever.
Well, I was driving home from work one day while listening to the general manager and......arrived at home while it was still going on.

Of course, if the dogs happen to be outside when I come home, I get greeted.  By dogs. Large dogs with deep voices whose barks are very loud.  Well, these cheap cell phones from our work don't have a mute option, so the sound of those dogs barking loudly stops the meeting, actually.  The general manager can be heard saying: "is everything alright?, what's going on?" as the sound of my dogs barking can be heard over the speaker or whatever it is they have set up for those joining the meeting by phone.  I didn't hear what was said next, I had the phone behind me and I was yelling at the dogs to shut up.

Well, from what has been told me from numerous people that were there at the meeting, the entire place erupted into laughter at the sound of my yelling at my dogs to shut up.  They apparently thought I had yelled shut the F up, but I can assure you, the f word doesn't need to come out of my mouth to get my dogs to quiet down, instantly, when I tell them to.

That subject came up yet again when my manager was at an annual manager's meeting at some lavish restaurant/resort. You know, the kind of place the refills your water after every sip and replaces your silverware after each use? But, they were all laughing about it which was good enough for me.  I had thought badly of disrupting the meeting, to be honest, at the time.

Well, anyway.  I left the tire store today, got another tire at half price - it was under warranty and it's tread was below minimum tread depth.  85,000 mile tire that got 15,000 on it. Those tires are now 25,000 mile tires and cost a lot less money.  The used tire they sold me was re-balanced and away we go.  Out the door, into the car and on the freeway, cruising at my version of freeway speeds.  Very nice.  Nothing like fresh rubber on a car for great handling as well.

I'm half considering making the trip up north tomorrow with the dogs, since my mom won't be there.  But, the whole situation has caused me to step back and realize that - I would really have to have my own property to be happy.  Everyone does things differently and sometimes that grates on other people. You can't really do whatever you might normally do on someone else's property.  I don't mean anything destructive, loud or otherwise obnoxious.  Just you have to respect the owner's wishes and that can put a damper on the situation.  I thought I had thought this whole thing through before buying a trailer to take up there to have some time away from the heat at, but this particular thing totally escaped me during that thought process.

Well, whatever. My bedtime : )

Sitting at Discount Tire, waiting. The spare they sold me last week is vibrating; the "check tire pressure" light keeps coming on and I wanted the new tires on the front, as I asked them, not on the back.  I'm not dissing Discount tire, they always make things right, I just didn't want to have to come here today. But, I can't be driving a car around that has an extreme vibration coming from the front end, especially when I am at high speeds on the freeway, so, get it done. Fortunately, they aren't busy right now, I even more hate having to wait for long periods of time.

A fresh weekend starting now, regardless.  Plans include more work on the east side of the house and potentially cutting down the large, almost dead, plant that really sucks that it is dying. 90% of it is completely dead with no hope of coming back.  I am going to have replace it - but how do you replace something like that?  With a 2 foot thing that will take 3 or 4 years to get as big as this one did (and effectively cut out the view of one of the hoarding neighbor's hoards).  So, if I want something even relatively large, it's going to cost.  I did see something a few weeks ago at the tree nursery, the thing was about 10 feet tall and was $75 plus delivery.  I can't dump a 10 foot plant into the trunk of my car, unfortunately, worse, they want $50 for delivery even though it's only 3 miles away.

I'm going to go back tomorrow and take another look around.  They have a HUGE nursery covering a lot of acreage and a lot to look at and take in.  Like, to make a decision after looking at all of that will simply require me to go back and look again.

Nothing much else new on the home front. Had ideas of going up to the mountains, but I ain't driving up there today, too tired. I wanted to tackle this mouse problem, though mother apparently has been all over it anyway.  Problem is, she's not up there so any mice will have free reign of the trailer doing whatever they are doing in there.

Hooker Gate. Okay, that's a new one. If the Obama administration isn't the worst overall consortium of people of what I consider to be of bad character (in some cases, that's putting it mildly), it's gotta be in the top three.  "Hope and change", he said 4 years ago, yet the